This book - the first scholarly synthesis of its kind designed for a student and non-specialist readership - investigates the domains of belief and behaviour in the everyday lives of the rural and urban communities of early modern England.

Barry Reay uses both primary and secondary sources to recapture, and explore, the shared attitudes and values to be found amongst these communities.

To do so, he has deliberately chosen to focus on areas where there is already a sophisticated historiography, so he is able to draw on a wealth of recent scholarship as well as his own research; but he also uses much material from the past to give readers a feel for early modern modes of description. (As he shows, the language of the record can often be as illuminating to the social historian as the events or objects recorded.).