Since Vinogradoff described merchet payments as ‘the most odious’ of the numerous manorial exactions for which villein tenants were liable, the fine for marriage, classically defined as a levy due from the villein upon the marriage of his daughter, has received a good deal of attention from historians. Although the issue of marriage licences has accordingly been tackled from various perspectives, in recent years the subject at the heart of a number of contributions to the topic was the question of seigneurial control. In tackling this matter, one has to ask what kind of control a manorial lord could or would want to exercise over the matters of matrimony of his social inferiors.

An important contribution to the debate was provided in 1979 by Eleanor Searle. A key element in her argument was that marriage licences essentially constituted a tax on the chattels taken as dowry by the bride into her marriage, and as such were not universally enforced. Further, in her view merchet did not so much constitute a test of the status of the individual as one of tenure. At the same time she argued that merchets could be used by the lord to vet prospective marriage partners and thus control the transfers of tenant property lest the latter should slip into freehold tenure. By imposing financial disincentives, merchets, it was argued, also encouraged endogenous marriages. Richard Smith, while arguing that the rates of licences to marry were unlikely to reflect a proportional tax on dowries, nevertheless showed that merchets were not universally exacted and tended to fall predominantly upon richer tenants. Thus he took issue with R. Faith, who in a rejoinder to Searle's contribution suggested that the marriage licence constituted a tax on the marriage itself and was as such universally exacted.

In order to consider these problems and test some of the propositions that have been made, this study aims to examine the practice of seigneurial exaction and hence the function of marriage licences, on the one hand, and the relevance and nature of tenant evasion of merchet payments on the other, on one manor from 1330 to 1377. Changes in seigneurial policy towards merchet payments will be analysed and placed in the wider context of the demographic and socio-economic changes affecting manorial life in this period. Within this framework three intertwined aspects of the licence to marry will be examined. First, focusing on the question of which tenants were liable to pay merchets and what constituted the criteria for this liability, the theory and practice of merchet exaction will be considered. Secondly the reasons for the lord's interest in the marriages of his tenants in conjunction with the routes open to him to influence villein marriages to his advantage will be explored. Thirdly the extent and consequences of tenant evasion of merchet fines will be assessed, whilst the clash between lord and tenant over marriage fines will be viewed in the wider context of lord–tenant friction, especially in the post-Black Death period. Central to this discussion, the role and importance of women in this particular act of non-compliance will be examined.

In an article which recently appeared in Social History, Craig Muldrew has argued that ‘the culture of the early modern market was explicitly “moral” and not only in “severely dysfunctional years”“. During the sixteenth century, population growth brought with it a shortage of currency and a significant increase in trade through barter; moreover, the scarcity of currency produced an increase in debt or credit relations, which were based mostly on agreements that were verbal rather than written. Both tendencies were possible because the parties to credit agreements knew each other personally, and consequently believed that they could trust each other; thus, the system was held together by confidence and trust. In the course of the century, however, the increasing complexity of the market and the enlargement of exchange areas placed a strain on the ethical foundations of the market. The alteration can be demonstrated by the rapid increase in litigation over contracts and debts. Muldrew argued that markets expanded due to population growth in the sixteenth century, and that ‘increasingly complex networks of credit transactions were created’ with the result that ‘the need to maintain trust … [was] emphasized even more strongly’. But during the period the maintenance of trust occurred more and more through the intervention of a legal tribunal, while the cultural norms that directed creditor–debtor relations altered.

According to Muldrew, without more complex arrangements, credit transactions can spread only in limited social environments in which the participants share some basic moral principles: people know one another, they know who can be trusted and who cannot, and they grant extensions for payments from others because at times they request them for themselves. Credit relationships are thus ‘embedded’ in a moral economy that relies on trust, and which rests on respect for agreements guaranteed by the logic of reciprocity. A growth in the number of transactions and the development of credit networks, together with the fact that these agreements are mostly oral ones, however, tends to undermine the traditional system of trust, forcing the parties to turn to civil justice more and more frequently.

On the basis of the records from Roman archives (where commercial development occurred early but in a milieu in which the papacy influenced the economic culture), this study aims to show that the extension and the very existence of credit networks have to be viewed not only in the context of currency scarcity but also with regard to the peculiarities of the pre-industrial economy. To be more precise, in early pre-consumer societies where transactions were largely unwritten, litigation occurred as a way of establishing the terms of transactions.

Since the late 1980s historians of the family have been interested in the socio-demographic analysis of the role of domestic service in European societies during the Ancien Régime. These scholars have been concerned with the consequences of life-cycle service since it appeared that a significant proportion of Europe's inhabitants were in service at some point in their lives. This proportion was highest in countries of Northwestern Europe, such as England, where between 10 and 12 per cent of the population worked as servants, usually while young, moving readily from one household to another. This process began at an early age, around adolescence, and tended to end with a change in occupation, generally just before entering into marriage, in other words, prior to forming a separate family unit. By relating the mobility of servants to the specific characteristics of the marriage-formation model, historians have been able to highlight the contribution of domestic service to social and familial reproduction. Encouraged by their results, the next step for social historians was to elaborate an explanatory model of this system of family reproduction. Although the model offered was derived from the behaviour of a concrete social and demographic structure which was basically Northern European, it was nonetheless presented as the principal model for all of Western Europe.

This article questions whether indoor medical care for the elderly provided under the poor law and by voluntary hospitals during the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century was rationed on the basis of age and, given that the elderly were discriminated against compared with other age groups, how their ability to secure medical care changed over time and between providers.

The research was motivated by the current debate on the allocation of scarce health care resources in the British National Health Service. This debate has contrasted the traditional approach of doctors who ration care on the basis of medical need, that is through clinical assessment of a patient's state of health, with new solutions developed by health economists and medical ethicists who seek to maximize the health care outputs society can buy or the welfare individuals can achieve over their lifetime.

I use admission and discharge registers from two case studies – a voluntary hospital in Bristol and a workhouse infirmary in East London – to test the following hypothesis: that during the period medical resources, as defined by admissions and hospital days, were allocated according to the medical need of age groups. Differential access to medical and nursing staff, to remedies or interventions, and standards of hygiene or diet are not considered. Although these care components were clearly important, and some aggregate indicators may be calculated for the two providers, the available sources do not allow comparison of the allocation of these components between age groups.

Section II outlines the theoretical framework underpinning this article and Section III introduces the historical context. The sources of data are described in Section IV and the evidence is presented in Section V. The final section contributes to the historiography of old age for nineteenth-century England by suggesting ways in which to interpret the findings.

J. Robin, From childhood to middle age: cohort analysis in Colyton, 1851–1891. (Cambridge: Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Working Paper Series, no. 1, n.d.). Pages iv+83. £2.50.

H. Cunningham and P. P. Viazzo (eds.), Child labour in historical perspective, 1800–1985: case studies from Europe, Japan and Colombia. (Florence: United Nations Children's Fund, International Child Development Centre, 1996.) Pages 105. US$9.00.

L. Marks, Metropolitan maternity: maternal and infant welfare services in early-twentieth century London. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996.) Pages xxii+344.

A. Walker (ed.), The new generational contract: intergenerational relations, old age and welfare. (London: UCL Press, 1996). Pages xiii+241.

These four publications vary significantly in their geographical coverage and general subject matter, but it is still possible to identify a number of common themes. They are particularly important for what they reveal about the links between formal welfare provision, protective legislation, family care, and the standard of living. They also yield many individual insights into such matters as family reconstitution, migration, child labour, working conditions, municipal welfare services, the decline of infant and maternal mortality, and the possible existence of a demographic threat to the viability of modern welfare states.