The Professions in Early Modern England

First published in 1987, The Professions in Early Modern England highlights the significant role of professional and quasi-professional occupations in English society before the industrial revolution, contrary to what was once historiographical and sociological orthodoxy. The editorial introduction provides an overview of the history of the professions as a distinct field of scholarly investigation, suggesting that neither historians nor social theorists have adequately mapped or explained the rise of the professions to their present place in modern societies. The following chapters bring together original contributions by researchers who have made a close study of various occupational groups over the period c. 1500-1750. Besides the traditional learned professions and their practitioners in the church, medicine and the law, they survey occupations generally lacking institutional coherence: school teachers, estate stewards and those following the profession of arms. This book remains of interest to students of history, literature and sociology.

Wilfrid Prest

List of Tables Preface List of Contributors List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction: The Professions and Society in Early Modern England 2. The Anatomy of Profession: the Clergy of the Church of England 3. Lawyers 4. Medical Practice in Early Modern England: Trade or Profession? 5. A Drudgery of Schoolmasters: the Teaching Profession in Elizabethan and Stuart England 6. The Estate Steward 7. The Profession of Arms Index