Barry Coward has revised his wide-ranging text which outlines the major social changes that occurred in England in the two hundred years after the Reformation. He examines the religious and intellectual changes resulting from revolutionary pressures, as well as considering the impact of rapid inflation and population expansion in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Overall he stresses that social change combined with social continuity to produce a distinctive early modern English society.

Barry Coward is Reader in History at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Part One: The Structure of Early Modern English Society.
1. The Social Order in Early Modern England.
2. Geographical Mobility.
3. An Agrarian Society.
4. Contrasting Communities.
5. Family and Kinship.
6. Local Communities and the Nation.

Part Two: Changing Material Conditions
7. Population Fluctuations and Changing Social Fortunes.
8. Poverty and Dearth.
9. Affluence and Prosperity.

Part Three: Changing Ideas
10. Education and Literacy.
11. The Impact of Protestantism.
12. The Scientific Revolution.

Part Four: Documents.
Bibliography.
Index.