Grantham during the Interregnum: The Hallbook of Grantham, 1641-1649. by Bill CouthReview by: William B. RobisonThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 496-498Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544153 .

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496 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVII / 2 (1996)

Peter Matheson's translation, Collected Works of Thomas Mintfzer (Edinburgh, 1988), so that we have two English translations of the Miintzer corpus. Matheson's is more comprehensive in terms of items translated and in terms of a critical apparatus, though Baylor is at paints to point out in his introduction that new findings regarding MiIntzer's writings make the Matheson translation less than complete. My own sense is that Matheson used much the same sources that Baylor did. Whether or not that constitutes a sufficient explanation for a second translation will be a matter of opinion. Baylor's translation reads well and appears, at least to this reviewer, accurate in its rendering of Miintzer's frequently enigmatic German prose. As Baylor notes, the difficulty of Miintzer's prose makes a translation of his writings at times an interpretation. Unfortunately, Baylor, while insisting that he translates and thus interprets MiIntzer differently than does Matheson, does not explicitly indicate where these different interpretations occurs.

Fauth's monograph, originally a doctoral dissertation in education, is an effort to under- stand Thomas MiIntzer in terms of his pedagogical orientation and background It painstak- ingly identifies all possible leads connecting MiIntzer with the pedagogical enterprise of his time, beginning with his actual involvement in education. The study then examines Miintzer's pedagogical vocabulary, explores his hermeneutic categories, such as "order," "Beginning," "End," "The Whole and Its Parts." This is followed by a study of Miintzer's sources for this theological and his pedagogical notions (patristics,Tauler, Seuse). Fauth sees MiIntzer's pedagogical notions as incisively influenced by mysticism. His approach is to examine Miintzer's writings in terms of specific concepts (Gottesfurcht, Veruwunderung, Bespren- gung, Entgrobung, Entleen4ng, Gelassenheit, Lduterung), and, in a lengthy section, explores the significance of the "heart" for MiIntzer. This section includes an informative discussion of the "heart in the various seals used by Miintzer.

Most significant is the last section of the book, which discusses Miintzer's anthropology, again in terms of his pedagogical concerns. Fauth concludes that Miintzer is determined by the Bible (original state; fall; redemption) as well as by Paul, mysticism, Augustine, and Ter- tullian.

The expert will find many familiar themes in Fauth's book notably Hans Jurgen Goertz's understanding of MiIntzer's theological roots. Abraham Friesen's worthwhile monograph on MiIntzer's sources, unfortunately, was not used by Fauth. The value of the book lies in the industrious accumulation of sources relevant for the broader theme of education and MiIntzer. In so doing, Fauth has confirmed a variety of emphases already familiar in Miintzer scholarship.

Hans J. Hillerbrand .............. Duke University

Grantham during the Interregnum: The Hallbook of Grantham, 1641- 1649. Ed. Bill Couth. Publications of the Lincoln Record Society: Rochester, N.Y: Boydell Press, 1995. 149 pp., incl. maps. $35.00/JT19.50.

A more accurate title for this volume might have been "Grantham during the Civil Wars" or"Gantham during the Long Parliament" since it covers the period from October 22, 1641, to October 19, 1649. According to a general editor's note, Couth has transcribed the com- plete Hallbook, which commences in 1633 and contains 201 folios; this volume begins with folio 97v and thus includes about half the folios. Couth includes a sketch plan of the town center, an index of persons (with minimal biographical information for some individuals), and brief indexes of places and subjects; however, he provides no introduction or annota- tions, so the user is largely left to his or her own devices.While much of the Hallbook is self-

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Book Reviews 497

explanatory, it would have been helpful to have some discussion of Grantham's governmental structure, the local economy, the church, and the town's role in the Civil War, as well as a table of abbreviations and an indication that the editor has retained Old Style dating. There is one unexplained instance in which the last assembly of Alderman Edward Christian (October 15, 1644) appears to have occurred after the first assembly held under his successor, Thomas Mills (October 24). These quibbles aside, Couth has produced an excellent tran- scription, which adds to our growing knowledge about urban life in early modern England.

What emerges from studying this volume is the picture of an active and apparently con- scientious town government. It was headed by an alderman elected each October on the Friday after Saint Luke's Day in the "Prebendarie Church" by an assembly of a dozen com- burgesses and a dozen burgesses, known respectively as the first and second twelve; the alder- man was chosen from among three comburgesses.The alderman's court, which included the first and second twelve, met anywhere from six to twenty-five times a year during this period; in 1647 the court prescribed that it should meet on the first Friday of every month and as often otherwise as necessary. Normally at a new alderman's first court, his predecessor turned over to him the town's plate, municipal records, and the "green desk."

The court exercised a variety of functions, including supervision of its own officers, i.e., the coroner, escheator, churchwardens, chamberlains, high constables, underconstables, market "sear," "prisors" of corn, leather sealers, collectors for schoolhouse rents, sergeants at mace, gaoler and bailiff, sexton, scavenger, mill masters, coal buyers, parish clerk, and "nom- inated commoners." Accounts were generally rendered at the end of an alderman's term. Much of the court's work involved economic regulations, e.g., admission of strangers to free- dom of the borough (which came easily enough to arouse some complaints from towns- men), punishment of strangers who unlawfully practiced a trade, oversight of the town's fair, leases of town land, supervision of alehouses and victuallers, and so on. At times the court appears quite "progressive," e.g., in its administration of poor relief (which appears to have been generous), provision of a free school, and support of musicians (though, alas, in circum- stances that will elicit sympathy in modern academe, it had to lay off the musicians in 1648, "considering the troublesomnes of these tymes").The oligarchy which dominated the court also sought to enforce proper deference to authority, often fining individuals for "scandalous and uncivil speeches" (the most frequent offender was one Leonard Camocke, chapman, who nonetheless served as a petty constable). Predictably, there were occasional problems with town officials failing to perform their duties, including members of the alderman's court. The alderman (or his deputy in a few cases) sometimes held apparently extraordinary assemblies, which met in the Guildhall and at times included commoners.These usually dealt with some emergency, e.g., the arrest of alderman Robert Colcroft by a committee or the parliament at Lincoln in 1642.

It is striking how much the Hallbook remains concerned with routine business, there being only occasional indications that the Civil Wars intruded upon Grantham's affairs. Nonetheless, there is evidence of its impact. Both Charles I and parliament sought to collect revenue, the latter with more success. Parliamentary soldiers were quartered in the town, and several New Model Army officers appeared in the local records, including Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Rainsborough, and-most frequently-Sir Thomas Fairfax. The war seriously dis- rupted the town's affairs in 1642 and 1643, when Fairfax imprisoned Colcroft and other comburgesses at Nottingham and demanded C3,300 of the town. During Colcroft's year as alderman, the court met only six times, twice under deputies while he was in prison, and there were seven additional assemblies (perhaps instead of courts?), five under deputies, more than for any other year (the second highest number, six, occurred under the succeeding

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498 Sixteenth Century journal XXVII / 2 (1996)

alderman, Christian, 1643-1644). On the other hand, parliament's victory in the First Civil War-or at least the restoration of peace-led to an increase in the town government's activ- ity.The alderman's court met eighteen times in 1641-1642; only six times under Colcroft in 1642-43; twelve under Christian in 1643-44; ten in 1644-45, sixteen in 1645-46; twenty- five in 1646-47; eighteen in 1647-1648, and nineteen in 1648-49. The amount of business also increased-the latter half of this volume covers just the years 1647-1649.

These are only a few examples of the kinds of information found in this volume. It deserves the attention of anyone interested in urban history at this critical juncture in English history.

William B. Robison ....... Southeastern Louisiana University (Hammond)

Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-century England. Local Adminis- tration and Response. M. J. Braddick. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994. 353 pp. $63.00.

The factuality of death and taxes recognized by Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Franklin, while perhaps contested by dogmatic postmodernists, is strongly affirmed, at least as regards taxes, in this book. The work has its feet firmly in both local soil and central government records which leave little doubt about the "hard facts" of taxation. Braddick focuses through- out on the issue of local/central relationships, and the first section is hitched to the interpre- tive wagon of revisionist historians asserting the relative acquiescence of local taxpayers and consensus rather than conflict characterizing the political nation.

The book is scholarly and detailed-obviously an extension of a Ph.D. thesis-and infor- mative about a wealth of questions to do with parliamentary taxation, usefully tabulating local contributions to a variety of taxes and descriptive of the size, organization and man- power required to collect them. It explores in detail the problems created by tax collection and how far difficulties between central and local affairs were focused on taxation at a time when understandings of the role of the monarch and of government were crucially changing.

Large sections of the book deal with administrative details of the various parliamentary taxes: before 1640, the fifteenth, the tenth, and the subsidy; during the Interregnum, the assessment and the excise; and after 1660, the poll and the hearth tax. But there is also a recurrent interpretive theme, to question the earlier emphasis of historians on conflict between center and periphery created by the need to collect central taxation and seen as an essential ingredient for the causes of the civil war, and to argue instead, for shared consensus and a surprising lack of local tension resulting from taxes.

This is particularly interesting in the light of the fact that the records of taxation which survive, mostly those of the Exchequer, tend to record moments of tension and difficulty rather than long stretches of acquiescence and collaboration between payers, local officials, and the central administration. By examining these issues from both the central and the local perspective (the book concentrates on two local studies, Cheshire and Norfolk) Braddick is able to argue for collaboration rather than endemic conflict. Different responses might arise due to the type of tax, whether a "quota tax" where locals assessed their own neighbors or an "assessed tax" where valuations were determined by the center. The amount of existing documentation, as well as the degree of local resistance, varied according to these types of taxes. Thus, for example, disputes arising from the fifteenth and the tenth, Braddick argues, should be seen more as legitimate tax avoidance rather than constructed as part of a local opposition of the central state. By contrast, the subsidy, an assessed tax, was intimately linked

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