Lessons from the alehouse

England in the 17th and 18th centuries was a bloody place. The period between 1620 and 1745 saw civil war, the murder of one king and the overthrow of another, and two further uprisings by supporters of the deposed royal house. From the 1720s onwards, a series of criminal statutes – the ‘Bloody Code’ – exponentially expanded the number of offences to which the death penalty could be applied. Riots and local unrest were common. 

This work, originally published in 1980 and reissued now, explores issues of criminality and conflict between government and governed during the period. It provides a fascinating insight into public order and the popular understanding of the nature of the law. 

Perception of law and government in the 17th and 18th centuries was divided over two separate views of ‘order’. In the opening essay, historian Keith Wrightson recounts an incident from mid-17th century Lancashire, in which a pair of watchmen confronted the occupants of an alehouse drinking late into the night in breach of a statute prohibiting serving alcohol after 9pm. Being told in clear terms to depart, the watchmen left. 

Wrightson notes the distinction here between the government’s idea of order as a grand aspiration to social harmony through moral improvement and law to be enforced through the actions of the magistrate (in the Lockean sense of the word); and the popular understanding of ‘order’ as avoiding conflict through pragmatic enforcement of local custom. (The government should be understood perhaps more as a ‘governing class’ including legislators, philosophers, academics, preachers, and what we would think of as the professional and mercantile middle class; more of a ‘cultural elite’ than specifically ‘the government’.)

Although charged with enforcing the magistrate’s idea of order, the watchmen nevertheless accepted that, in practice, there was no wider danger to the community. There were far more potentially significant consequences for their area if a confrontation with their drunk neighbours turned nasty, so there was no benefit to enforcing the law. 

Both schools of thought have at their heart a determination to act for the common good. For the government, it was a top-down process of modifying people’s behaviour; for the common people, a horizontal process of rubbing along and raising grievances when needed. 

This concept of locally enforced ‘order’ appears throughout the work. The local community, and those from the community charged with enforcing the law, take a more pragmatic view than the central authorities. Whether it is local magistrates refusing warrants to shut down industrial-scale coin counterfeiting around Halifax which boosted the faltering local economy; customs men turning blind eyes to illegal alehouses; or the reluctance of authorities to stop barricading of customs posts by Bristolian colliers in the face of local support for their campaign – the importance of local communities governing themselves (even in opposition to central government) raises its head. 

What also comes across is that the ordinary English person was often knowledgeable about their legal rights. They respected government but also expected it to comply with its duties. Many incidents of riot and civil unrest were responses to a particular grievance that had been left unresolved by those in power. They were rarely just undirected and purposeless violence, and their targets were frequently limited to things and people associated with their grievance.

The impression left is that the 17th and 18th centuries are more complicated and nuanced than they first appear. It was an era where central government, lacking the kind of communication familiar to the modern world, largely relied on local communities to manage themselves, which they often did in ways that were pragmatic and respected local concerns.

This work is interesting from a historical point of view and draws some unexpected conclusions. However, it also, perhaps, tells us something about the importance of government being carried out at a local level. While the government thought it was acting for the common good in prohibiting ale being sold after a certain time at night – and was no doubt acting in good faith while doing so – those two Lancashire watchmen, knowing their community and the likely consequences to it, could make an informed decision about the outcome of enforcing the law and take the action they thought best. Governing is ultimately grounded in discerning and enacting what is most beneficial to the common good. The ‘chaotic’ 17th and 18th centuries have something to teach us yet.

James E Hurford is a solicitor at the Government Legal Department, London