Financial Failure in Early Modern England
Financial Failure in Early Modern England

Author: Aidan Collins

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2024-10-29

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1837651906

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Analyses how bankruptcy was litigated within the court to gain a more nuanced understanding of early modern bankruptcy. This book examines cases involving bankruptcy brought before the court of Chancery - a court of equity which dealt with civil disputes - between 1674 and 1750. It uncovers the numerous meanings attached to financial failure in early modern England. In its simplest sense, personal financial failure occurred when an individual defaulted on their debts. Because they had not fulfilled their responsibilities and behaved in a trustworthy and credible manner, bankrupt individuals were seen to be immoral. And yet bankruptcy was linked to wider notions of credibility, trustworthiness, and morality. Financial failure was described and debated not just in economic terms, but came to rely on a combination of social, community, and religious values. Bankruptcy cases involved an interconnected network of indebtedness, often including relatives, neighbours, and traders from the local community. As such, conceptions of failure implicated individuals beyond just the bankrupt. As people began to look back and appraise the actions and words of those involved in trade, a far wider network of creditors, debtors, and middlemen were blamed for the knock-on effect of an individual failure. Ultimately, the book investigates the negative aspects of early modern trade networks and the active role of the court when such networks broke down, providing unique access to contemporary understandings of what was considered right and wrong, honourable and deceitful, and criminal and compassionate within the moral landscape of debt recovery during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Lending to the Borrower from Hell
Lending to the Borrower from Hell

Author: Mauricio Drelichman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-12-13

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 069117377X

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What the loans and defaults of a sixteenth-century Spanish king can tell us about sovereign debt today Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth analyze the lessons from this important historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, Drelichman and Voth examine the incentives and returns of lenders. They provide powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults—they thrive. Drelichman and Voth also demonstrate that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The authors unearth unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, Lending to the Borrower from Hell offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.

The Intersections of the Public and Private Spheres in Early Modern England
The Intersections of the Public and Private Spheres in Early Modern England

Author: Paula R. Backscheider

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1135215189

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The public and private spheres are conceived to be separate and complementary, useful in understanding human experience and social phenomena, gendered and perhaps "natural". Taking the usefulness of this model as a focus, these essays ask how the spheres interpenetrate.

Gender Relations in Early Modern England
Gender Relations in Early Modern England

Author: Laura Gowing

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-30

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1317862341

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This concise and accessible book explores the history of gender in England between 1500 and 1700. Amidst the political and religious disruptions of the Reformation and the Civil War, sexual difference and gender were matters of public debate and private contention. Laura Gowing provides unique insight into gender relations in a time of flux, through sources ranging from the women who tried to vote in Ipswich in 1640, to the dreams of Archbishop Laud and a grandmother describing the first time her grandson wore breeches. Examining gender relations in the contexts of the body, the house, the neighbourhood and the political world, this comprehensive study analyses the tides of change and the power of custom in a pre-modern world. This book offers: Previously unpublished documents by women and men from all levels of society, ranging from private letters to court cases A critical examination of a new field, reflecting original research and the most recent scholarship In-depth analysis of historical evidence, allowing the reader to reconstruct the hidden histories of women Also including a chronology, who’s who of key figures, guide to further reading and a full-colour plate section, Gender Relations in Early Modern England is ideal for students and interested readers at all levels, providing a diverse range of primary sources and the tools to unlock them.

Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England
Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England

Author: Alexander Wakelam

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0429647921

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Throughout the eighteenth century hundreds of thousands of men and women were cast into prison for failing to pay their debts. This apparently illogical system where debtors were kept away from their places of work remained popular with creditors into the nineteenth century even as Britain witnessed industrialisation, market growth, and the increasing sophistication of commerce, as the debtors’ prisons proved surprisingly effective. Due to insufficient early modern currency, almost every exchange was reliant upon the use of credit based upon personal reputation rather than defined collateral, making the lives of traders inherently precarious as they struggled to extract payments based on little more than promises. This book shows how traders turned to debtors’ prisons to give those promises defined consequences, the system functioning as a tool of coercive contract enforcement rather than oppression of the poor. Credit and Debt demonstrates for the first time the fundamental contribution of debt imprisonment to the early modern economy and reveals how traders made use of existing institutions to alleviate the instabilities of commerce in the context of unprecedented market growth. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in economic history and early modern British history.

Women, Madness and Sin in Early Modern England
Women, Madness and Sin in Early Modern England

Author: Katharine Hodgkin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1351871579

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A fascinating case study of the complex psychic relationship between religion and madness in early seventeenth-century England, the narrative presented here is a rare, detailed autobiographical account of one woman's experience of mental disorder. The writer, Dionys Fitzherbert, recounts the course of her affliction and recovery and describes various delusions and confusions, concerned with (among other things) her family and her place within it; her relation to religion; and the status of the body, death and immortality. Women, Madness and Sin in Early Modern England presents in modern typography an annotated edition of the author's manuscript of this unusual and compelling text. Also included are prefaces to the narrative written by Fitzherbert and others, and letters written shortly after her mental crisis, which develop her account of the episode. The edition will also give a modernized version of the original text. Katharine Hodgkin supplies a substantial introduction that places this autobiography in the context of current scholarship on early modern women, addressing the overarching issues in the field that this text touches upon. In an appendix to the volume, Hodgkin compares the two versions of the text, considering the grounds for the occasional exclusion or substitution of specific words or passages. Women, Madness and Sin in Early Modern England adds an important new dimension to the field of early modern women studies.

Early Modern England 1485-1714
Early Modern England 1485-1714

Author: Robert Bucholz

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-12-31

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 1118532228

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The new, fully-updated edition of the popular introduction to the Tudor-Stuart period—offers fresh scholarship and improved readability. Early Modern England 1485-1714 is the market-leading introduction to the Tudor-Stuart period of English history. This accessible and engaging volume enables readers to understand the political, religious, cultural, and socio-economic forces that propelled the nation from small feudal state to preeminent world power. The authors, leading scholars and teachers in the field, have designed the text for those with little or no prior knowledge of the subject. The book’s easy-to-follow narrative explores the world the English created and inhabited between the 15th and 18th centuries. This new edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect the latest scholarship on the subject, such as Henry VIII’s role in the English Reformation and the use of gendered language by Elizabeth I. A new preface addresses the theme of periodization, while revised chapters offer fresh perspectives on proto-industrialization in England, economic developments in early modern London, merchants and adventurers in the Middle East, the popular cultural life of ordinary people, and more. Offering a lively, reader-friendly narrative of the period, this text: Offers a wide-ranging overview of two and half centuries of English history in one volume Highlights how social and cultural changes affected ordinary English people at various stages of the time period Explores how the Irish, Scots, and Welsh affected English history Features maps, charts, genealogies and illustrations throughout the text Includes access to a companion website containing online resources Early Modern England 1485-1714 is an indispensable resource for undergraduate students in early modern England courses, as well as students in related fields such as literature and Renaissance studies.

The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800
The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800

Author: David Hitchcock

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 1351370995

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The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.