This resource offers access to rare and invaluable sources for examining the lived experience of people in England between 1500 and 1700. From ‘ordinary’ people through to more prominent individuals and families, these documents show how everyday working, family, religious and administrative life was experienced across England.

Rather than dealing specifically with the great political and religious upheavals of these years, the project aims to look at the everyday happenings of people in different parts of England.

What topics can you research?

The sources are useful for the study of many aspects of life in early modern England. They include:

• Agriculture
• Arts, literature and culture
• Births, marriages and deaths
• Family life and relationships
• Finance
• Foreign affairs
• Health and medicine
• Land and property
• Law and order
• Monarchy
• Politics and government
• Possessions
• Poverty
• Religion
• Scholarship: science and humanities
• Trade and economics
• Travel
• War
• Women’s history
• Work and employment

What type of documents are included?

These experiences are revealed through a wide range of materials including legal records, family correspondence, tax records, administrative records, wills, inventories, petitions, military papers and commonplace books and more.

There is a strong material culture element to this project with the inclusion of images of everyday objects used in early modern households. Many can be viewed in 360-degree rotation.Which regions are covered?

The different collections of documents enable a regional comparison, for example with court records from the South East, London, the West Midlands and the North West.Searching

You can browse or search in many different ways. Useful are, for instance, indices for names, themes, regions and places.

The resource also offers searching of manuscripts using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology. This is still a developing area and results may not always be perfect.

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