Eighteenth-Century English Society

The period from 1688-1820 was marked throughout with riots and rebellions, seditions and strikes, as the lower classes rebelled against the state bias towards the interests of higher social groups.

This book draws together the implications of recent work on demography, labour, and law. By focusing on the experience of the eighty percent of the population who made up England's `lower orders', Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers accord new significances to food shortages, changes in poor relief, use of the criminal law, and the shifts in social power caused by industrialization which would bring about the birth of working-class radicalism.