A Source-Book of English Social History

This volume assembles primary extracts—laws, manorial custumals, gild regulations, urban accounts, private correspondence, travel narratives, and company minutes—to illustrate social and economic developments in England from Saxon village arrangements through early modern commercial expansion. Passages reveal the origins and operation of manorial and village systems, the Church’s role in education and trade, the growth of towns and civic institutions, changing labour and enclosure, overseas exploration, and the rise of commerce and finance. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the selections invite direct analysis of original evidence and sketch the shifting institutions and everyday life that prepared the Industrial Revolution.