The texture of rural society in parts of Britain and Ireland

Abstract

The framing and content of requests are superficially similar across the British Isles because petitioning indicated a want of something that the estate could supply. Yet the estate itself was much more important to Scottish and Irish peasants than to Cumbrian. The latter resorted to their lord when they could not get what they wanted through manorial courts; on Breadalbane and in the north of Ireland, by contrast, the estate could be the first port of call. There are also marked differences both in the subjects of petitions and their styles. Appeal to personal service by tenants is an important theme in the Irish and Breadalbane petitions, but it is almost absent from the Cumberland series, except in the case of a handful of direct employees of the estate. Poverty and piety were standard reference points used to add legitimacy to requests, while actual appeals for poor relief or direct financial aid were bread and butter to Scottish and Irish petitioners. Yet they, too, are largely absent from the Cumberland series because: poor relief was more often supplementary in the north of England than in the south; rights to relief were less firmly established in the north of England; clearly set-out rights might be accompanied by onerous obligations; personal bonds with the lord were loose and he felt that the parish and neighbourhood should largely absolve him of responsibility for relief. Irish and Scottish petitions frequently allude to the shortage of hard cash to pay rents and other dues, a subject on which the Cumbrian petitions are silent, even in the seventeenth century.