Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700: Turning Inside by Paul Griffiths is a comprehensive exploration of changes in local governance in early modern England towards greater exactitude in information and institutions. Griffiths is a historian of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England with a wide range of scholarship interests. He has worked on crime, punishment, urbanity, and government among other topics. Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700 looks to build on this research, but turns away from London, which Griffiths has previously written a considerable amount on, to focus on local governments across the country. It is an impressive and dense piece of historical scholarship.
In Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700, Griffiths argues that government in England in 1700 was markedly different from that in 1550 with a significant shift in the balance between public and private displays of authority towards the latter. This change was complex and multifaceted. Griffiths terms it as ‘turning inside’ which refers to “principles and practices of local government in which magistrates put their faith in information systems that in their procedures and range were innovative and developed institutions that were distinctive in their numbers and purpose” (Griffiths, 287). This was in turn matched by greater concerns and questions about the effectiveness of public displays of authority and public punishment of petty crime (‘manifestaccon’). Griffiths emphasizes time and again that this was not a replacement or sharp break, but rather a gradual shift in balance where both approaches coexisted throughout the period in question. This was the start of a process that continued after the seventeenth-century into the modern period in which “Important aspects of local government turned inside, where they have remained ever since” (Griffiths, 289).
A critical theme of the monograph, and concept which drove the ‘turn inside,’ is ‘precyson.’ This concept of exactitude, along with its opposite ‘mysprecyson,’ is the focus of Chapter 1. Griffiths argues that “Pursuing precision defined the art of local government” (Griffiths, 66). Local magistrates, almost exclusively from the ‘middling sort,’ were focused on eradicating ‘mysprecyson’ with collection of detailed, accurate information as an important part of local government. This pursuit, drawn both from governmental pragmatism and the growing commercial need for records of the ‘middling sort,’ was a key factor in the broader shift in governmental practice which Griffith’s tracks.
Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the public facing side of governance and authority. Chapter 2 addresses ‘manifestaccon’ more broadly and the increasing scrutiny of its effectiveness. Chapter 3 is more focused as it deals specifically with punishment as an aspect of ‘manifestaccon’ and how opinions advocating it be moved from public to private spaces gained traction. Griffiths shows that as part of ‘turning inside’ far fewer punishments were carried out in public at the end of the period in question than at the start. He claims that “the number of ‘publique’ whippings fell as whipping inside soared” and that the use of ducking stools and stocks almost vanished (Griffiths, 148). Public punishments did not entirely disappear, but they were significantly less common.
Griffiths’ final chapters deal with the private rather than the public. In Chapter 4 he explores the spread of bridewells, corrections houses, across England and their integral role in local government and the shifting of punishment to private spaces. The growth of the bridewell system was gradual like other changes Griffiths follows; however, he does argue that “The only possible watershed moment is the 1610 bridewell legislation” which mandated their establishment in every county (Griffiths, 287). In Chapter 5 Griffiths turns to the collection of information by local governments. He analyzes how contemporaries believed accurate information and surveillance were critical for ‘good government.’ He also connects this back to ‘precyson’ and examines the creation of archives through local governmental record keeping. In doing so, Griffiths problematizes the archives in the same fashion as scholars like Michel-Rolph Trouillot. He recognizes their constructed nature as products of history and those who created them as well as the contingent nature of what records survived. This theoretical approach to the archives strengthens his arguments as how governments created and organized record keeping is both telling of their own function and affects the kind of information available to Griffiths.
Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700 is a longue durée history. As Griffiths argues, “The ‘turn inside’ was a time-consuming manoeuvre driven slowly in low gear over 150 years through experiential decision-making for the most part rather than by design” (Griffiths, 2). This was a gradual change driven by ‘middling sorts’ in response to the practical needs of local governance and society in the face of significant local and national challenges demographically, culturally, and economically. This extended, measured approach to change over time is foundational to the work as Griffiths looks to draw continuities from Tudor, particularly the number focused Elizabethan, England to the country at the heart of a global empire a century and a half later.
This approach places Griffiths in direct opposition to the arguments of Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Griffiths critiques Foucault’s approach, which eschews any of the connective tissue of change over time, instead characterizing different periods of penal practice as sharp breaks (Griffiths, 289). Furthermore, he claims that Foucault conflates punishment for felonies with general punishment and does not recognize the early modern coexistence of public and private punishment in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Griffiths claims that “Foucault’s grasp of early modern theology and jurisprudence is thin at best” leading him to not recognize the reformative goal of punishment in institutions like bridewells (Griffiths, 10). While Griffiths’ critique is at times scathing, and perhaps unfair to Foucault who was focused on modern France not early modern England, it does lay out Griffiths’ position quite clearly. It is a gradual, change over time approach which is focused on the complex coexistence of different punishments and authority instantiations, not a stark comparison like seen in Foucault’s work.
Griffiths also sets himself in conversation with other scholars. In addition to Foucault, he challenges others who have worked on punishment such as Faramerz Dabhoiwala. Griffiths claims historians of criminal justice in the long eighteenth-century “pay too little attention to events before 1675” and therefore fail to recognize this later time period as a continuation not a turning point (Griffiths, 148). In addition to these interventions, he builds on the work of historians Keith Wrightson, Norman Jones, Mike Braddick, and Steve Hindle whose research elucidates the “two-way process of delegation” between Whitehall and local government that facilitated state formation (Griffiths, 2). This places Griffiths in line with other modern historians; such as Mark Stoyle, Christopher Dyer, Lucy Kaufman, and Lloyd Bowen; who have tried to move early modern English history away from London and into other regions of the country.
The vast body of primary sources Griffiths draws upon also aligns him with many contemporary scholars. Drawing on nearly three dozen archives, he uses local government records of all sorts: government officials’ accounts, meeting minutes and session books, corporation and town records, court proceedings, church wardens’ accounts, and published texts such as books and plays. In addition, he also draws on visual media of the period and state records in national archives. Impressive on its own, Griffiths’ primary source research also interweaves with his methodology. Like Kaufman, who also uses church wardens’ records, Stoyle, and Dyer, his approach is from the bottom up. It is social history.
Rather than examine this shifting phenomenon from the elite, state perspective in London, like historians of Elizabethan information collection, Griffiths focuses his lens on the ‘middling sort’ who made up local governments. He focuses on the concerns, needs, and challenges faced by England’s population at the immediate, local level to demonstrate how society as a whole made this transition. This supports his argument that “Nothing changed in a flash” (Griffiths, 287) as it shows that it was not mandates from the top which caused the ‘turn inside.’ Instead, it was the concerns and practical appeal of choices at the local level which so drastically changed governance.
Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700 is a dense monograph. Rich in primary source research and broad in scope, Griffiths’ approach can be overwhelming in its details. At times the main thrust of sections, or even the overall argument. is obfuscated by the complexity of Griffiths’ argument and the copious number of examples he provides. It is easy for the reader to lose sight of the larger picture as the author dives into the granular details of corporations and towns purchasing records of government decrees for x number of shillings or specific instances of whipping when the monograph’s scope is so large. However, while Griffiths’ ambition at times leads to the work being less approachable, the quality of research and historical thinking on display is par excellence. Paul Griffith’s Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700 persuasively shows that shifts in governance in early modern England lay “Not in the plush offices, comfy corridors, and handily centralized archives of royal government, but in the chores of churchwardens, constables, overseers, and surveyors in their little part of England that through them have left records in archives everywhere” (Griffiths, 12).