Friends, neighbours and strained relationships in seventeenth-century Norwich and Norfolk

• Main Author: WILLIAMSON, Fiona
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3457
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Drawing on the current cautious historiographical approach and the overarching aims of this collection, this chapter explores neighbourliness and social cohesion, not as a linear process, but for its own sake. Employing evidence from the Norwich Sessions and Mayor’s Court, the Norfolk Quarter Sessions and the Norwich Diocesan Court (for the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk), it analyses neighbourly relations in these urban and rural areas during the seventeenth century, a period of heightened tension. The chapter aims to overcome common issues that affected neighbourhood harmony in three ways. First, it directs discussion towards a consideration of behaviours before, during and after the Civil War period to consider whether communities were unified when facing external threats. Second, the chapter compares neighbourly relationships in urban and rural areas. A good neighbour could rely on a support network of compurgators, petitioners, protectors and friends. Finally, it avoids making broad claims about long-term behavioural shifts.