Townspeople and Nation

Robert Tittler is Professor of History at Concordia University, Montreal. His most recent book is The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540-1640.

• Introduction; 1. Browne, town and crown: John Browne and the quest for crown lands in Boston; 2. John Pitt and the building of the Blandford forum town hall; 3. John and Joan Cooke: civic portraiture and urban identiy in Gloucester; 4. Sir Thomas White of London: civic philanthropy and the making of the merchant-hero; 5. Henry Manship: constructing the civic memory in Great Yarmouth; 6. Henry Hardware and the face of puritan reform in Chester; 7. Swaddon the swindler and Pulman the 'Thief-Taker': crime and variations in the Great Metropolis; 8. Joyce Jefferies and the possibilities of Spinsterhood in Hereford; Glossary of terms; Abbreviations; Notes; Index.

"We know much more about the court and the country in early modern England than we do about urban society and life. What Tittler . . . does successfully in this fine and innovative book is to tell us about this relatively hidden England and to give it a human face by discussing specific individual lives."—Paul S. Seaver, Stanford University "This brief book will enhance Robert Tittler's reputation as a sensitive interpreter of the early modern English urban experience. . . . All of the stories are interesting and well told. . . . Robert Tittler has written a short, but fascinating book on English urban life from about 1540 to 1640. Everyone interested in early modern England will profit from reading it."—Renaissance Quarterly "In this very readable and engaging collection of essays, Tittler aims to "help us understand 'the ordinary' to an extraordinary extent," and he succeeds admirably by fully exploiting the chance remains of a few individuals' lives to re-tell their stories. . . . The book is a model for historians willing to broaden their source base and their methods, and committed to keeping people and their stories at the center of urban studies."—The Journal of Interdisciplinary History "Townspeople and Nation is dedicated to the notion that scholarly reconstructions of the lives of individual townsmen and women can reveal much about the history and structure of towns and cities in the past. Each of the author's eight detailed biographies succeeds splendidly in this avowed purpose . . . .Tittler's essays have established that taking a biographical rather than a 'communal' or 'town-based' approach to urban history is not just a valid approach, but an exceptionally revealing one . . . .[Townspeople and Nation] represents an implicit challenge to urban historians to make more sustained attempts to uncover the processes underlying urban history via the reconstruction of the lives of townsfolk. The material for such work is plentiful, and there are of course scattered examples or urban biographies or case-studies, but few which draw out the general lessons from the particular example with as much skill and clarity as Professor Tittler."—H-Net Book Review "Tittler has painted for us a series of portraits in words of some significant and interesting townsmen, and his book will be read with profit by students and their teachers."—English Historical Review "We have here a book that brings into sharp, human focus some of the many people who shaped and energized English towns between the Reformation and the Civil War, and for that we are grateful."—Albion