pp xv193 1996 hardback ISBN 0-7083-1315-9
The chapel and the coal-mine have become the symbols of the Welsh experience in the eighteenth century. This study argues for a broader perspective of the great changes confronting the Welsh community.
' . . . a pioneering study . . . ' (Northern History)
' . . . its elegegantly written and logicaly-arugued pages are a credit both to Dr Humphreys himself and the scholarship of the series editors . . . his book is a fine example of the genre.' (Agricultural History Review)
The traditional, hierarchical community and the agrarian craft economy which supported it may have appeared stable enough in 1700. However, the sharp increase in the population and a greater dependency on the returns of day labour pauperized a growing sector of Welsh society. For the tenant farmers, the symptoms of a skimping and scraping land hunger were well in evidence by the 1770s and intensified as the return from farming failed to keep pace with demands for rents and tithes. An increasing detachment an aggressively exploitative attitude on the part of the landowning élite sharpened the popular sense of crisis. Industry, particularly the woollen industry, provided a material escape, while Nonconformist and Methodist meetings provided spiritual comfort. And for many, the rioting, political agitation and emigration that increasingly characterized Wales from the 1790s were also legitimate responses to the new order in Welsh society.
The crisis of community is examined through the experience of the people of Montgomeryshire, a county that lies at the heart of Wales, and which in its combination of mountain and valley, Welshry and Englishry, can be justly regarded as Wales in microcosm.