Matthew Cragoe
University of Lincoln, School Of History And Heritage, Department Member
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Research Interests: Welsh and Annexation
Russell Davies begins his new social history of nineteenth-century Wales by criticising previous accounts for their overly narrow outlook. Both ‘nationalist’ and ‘socialist’ approaches, he suggests, have left untold the stories of... more
Russell Davies begins his new social history of nineteenth-century Wales by criticising previous accounts for their overly narrow outlook. Both ‘nationalist’ and ‘socialist’ approaches, he suggests, have left untold the stories of countless Welsh men and women whose lives did not fit the chosen paradigm: ‘People who worshipped in church, or nowhere, those who did not speak Welsh, soldiers, industrialists, landowners with their ‘claret and Havana Tory voices’, indeed many who were prosperous and successful in the nineteenth century, were excluded from the Welsh nation and their histories forgotten (p. 4). In setting out to remedy this deficiency, Davies declares his determination to get at ‘the history of the emotions and passions of the Welsh’ (p. 21), and his willingness to use sources hitherto under-used by historians of Wales, such as ballads, ceramics, diaries, folksongs, furniture, gravestones, hymns, letters, paintings, photographs, poems and songs.
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The ‘Welsh Land Question’ became an important factor in British politics in the last 20 years of the nineteenth century.1 The campaign orchestrated by the young Tom Ellis, Liberal MP for Merioneth — often designated ‘the Member for Wales’... more
The ‘Welsh Land Question’ became an important factor in British politics in the last 20 years of the nineteenth century.1 The campaign orchestrated by the young Tom Ellis, Liberal MP for Merioneth — often designated ‘the Member for Wales’ by his many admirers — to secure for Wales the famous ‘three Fs’ granted to Ireland in 1881— Fair rents, Fixity of tenure and Free sale — has an established place in the history books. Yet Ellis’s activities represented the culmination of a much longer agitation by Welsh radicals, and in this chapter, the ways in which the land question came to be politicized in Wales will be explored. In particular, the radicals’ frequent invocation of the Irish experience as a way of explaining what was going in the Welsh countryside will be examined. For all that the parallel outraged landowners of all political persuasions — one Gladstonian supporter condemned the Welsh radicals’ land campaign as ‘a contemptible mimic of the Irish … like a poor travesty of a tragedy’2 — its persistent use is suggestive.
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Research Interests: History, Modern History, Economic History, Cultural Geography, Historical Geography, and 15 moreDemography, Early Modern History, Landscape Archaeology, Ethnology, Cultural Historical Geography, Agricultural History, Anthropology of Hunting, Historical Ecology, Legislation, John Clare, Historical Studies, Enclosure, Human Animal Relations, Parish Research, and Da
In Britain, Wales has gained a reputation as a nation wedded to pacifism, but this view ignores the long history of Welsh involvement in armed conflict. The essays assembled in Wales and War examine the reactions of Welsh people to a... more
In Britain, Wales has gained a reputation as a nation wedded to pacifism, but this view ignores the long history of Welsh involvement in armed conflict. The essays assembled in Wales and War examine the reactions of Welsh people to a series of conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars to the conflict in the Falklands. The impact of Britain's imperial economy on Welsh support for and participation in war, as well as the role played by geography, are among the range of illuminating topics considered in this collection. Featuring work from a new generation of historians, Wales and War is an innovative addition to our understanding of British history.
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In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, the Church in Wales experienced a remarkable revival. At the time of the 1851 religious census, the Church had seemed to be in severe decline, as only one- fifth of those attending... more
In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, the Church in Wales experienced a remarkable revival. At the time of the 1851 religious census, the Church had seemed to be in severe decline, as only one- fifth of those attending divine workship did so under its auspices. The extent of its minority encouraged the opponents of Anglicanism in Wales to press for disestablishment, a demand that became more vociferous after the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869. Yet, contrary to expectation, the Church in Wales began to grow again, the threat of disestablishment arguably lending an urgency to its operations that had hitherto been lacking. From the 1860s and, more strongly, from the 1870s, all indices of Church performance, such as the number of people being baptized, confirmed and taking communion, experienced a steep and sustained rise in the principality.
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Anyone familiar with newspaper accounts of nineteenth-century elections will recognise the standard nodding reference made to the presence of women at election time. By far the most common observation made by contemporary reporters was,... more
Anyone familiar with newspaper accounts of nineteenth-century elections will recognise the standard nodding reference made to the presence of women at election time. By far the most common observation made by contemporary reporters was, as in the following example from 1837, of the way in which the ‘windows of many houses were open, displaying the fashion and beauty of Canterbury, waving small banners and colours’ as the rival candidates’ parades wound through the streets below.1 Less frequently, it was recorded that a group of women had got together a subscription in order to present their favoured champion with some token of their esteem — a snuff-box, perhaps, or his party banners.2
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Research Interests: Engineering and Estate
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Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA.Peer reviewe
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ABSTRACT
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... The Reconstruction of Conservatism, 194551', in Nick Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years (London, 1991), 156; AB Philip, The ... in Wales, 18801935', in Francis and Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds., Conservatives and British... more
... The Reconstruction of Conservatism, 194551', in Nick Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years (London, 1991), 156; AB Philip, The ... in Wales, 18801935', in Francis and Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds., Conservatives and British Society, 96110; M. Cragoe, 'Conservatives, Englishness ...
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One of the most striking aspects of recent scholarship concerning electoral politics in the Victorian countryside is the widespread consensus that has developed that landlords did not – as was so commonly averred by Radical politicians at... more
One of the most striking aspects of recent scholarship concerning electoral politics in the Victorian countryside is the widespread consensus that has developed that landlords did not – as was so commonly averred by Radical politicians at the time – use the threat of eviction as a weapon with which to terrorise farming tenants into voting as they were instructed. In the work of Norman Gash, Richard Olney and Frank O'Gorman, English tenants are represented as being quite happy to follow the lead offered them by their landlords, both from a ‘semi-feudal’ sense of loyalty and from a sense of gratitude for past favours and the hope of further favours to come. Even in Ireland, where a historiography dominated by Pomfret presented a much bleaker picture of landlord-tenant relations, the process of revision has considerably modified the received view. J. H. Whyte has argued that the landowners were far less tyrannical than had been generally thought, and regards as particularly erroneo...
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This article explores the impact of parliamentary enclosure on the cultural life of English villages after 1750. It focuses on parish-sponsored vermin control, arguing that the popular ‘hunting’ sanctioned by parish vestries under Tudor... more
This article explores the impact of parliamentary enclosure on the cultural life of English villages after 1750. It focuses on parish-sponsored vermin control, arguing that the popular ‘hunting’ sanctioned by parish vestries under Tudor legislation, and persisting into the early nineteenth century, created a highly participatory recreational culture which continued to exist under the radar of the game laws. Using a sample of parishes from the heavily enclosed county of Northamptonshire, the article demonstrates that this communal activity survived the reworking of the landscape by parliamentary enclosure, and that, by extension, the level of disruption to village cultural life was less than has been suggested.
Research Interests: History, Modern History, Economic History, Cultural Geography, Historical Geography, and 15 moreDemography, Early Modern History, Landscape Archaeology, Rural History, Property Law, Social History, Cultural Historical Geography, Agricultural History, Anthropology of Hunting, Historical Ecology, John Clare, Historical Studies, Enclosure, Human Animal Relations, and Parish Research
This account of nineteenth-century Carmarthenshire emphasizes the social and political dominance of the Anglican and landowning nobility and gentry for much of the period. Matthew Cragoe explores the nature and public roles of a governing... more
This account of nineteenth-century Carmarthenshire emphasizes the social and political dominance of the Anglican and landowning nobility and gentry for much of the period. Matthew Cragoe explores the nature and public roles of a governing elite, arguing that their influence was not simply a function of their members' wealth or their control of local government and the administration of the law, but had a vital ideological dimension in the aristocracy's paternalistic ethic, which found powerful and practical expression in the 'moral economy' of the landed estate.
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In the past twenty years a considerable amount of work has been undertaken on the ‘middling sort’ in eighteenth-century England. This amorphous social group, stretching between the labouring classes on the one hand and the lower reaches... more
In the past twenty years a considerable amount of work has been undertaken on the ‘middling sort’ in eighteenth-century England. This amorphous social group, stretching between the labouring classes on the one hand and the lower reaches of the gentry on the other, has formed a key element in discussions of the social, economic and political history of urban England during this period. The new culture of association that characterised middling sort life in towns has been subject to particular scrutiny. Historians such Jonathan Barry have shown how the middling sort came to rely upon ‘a network of social and institutional relationships’ within their respective towns that took in business partnerships, charities and friendly societies, political clubs, learned societies, local government, and, of course, the churches. The values ‘embedded in associational life’, he argues, taught members how to negotiate the dialectic tension between ‘self control and obedience to others, between competition and cooperation, between restraint and liberality’: they provided a ‘prudential code for bourgeois life’. As such, the associational culture of the middling sort was central to how eighteenth-century towns operated, bolstering both civic and bourgeois identities.