Agricultural History Review, Volume 72 Part 2 (2024), pp. 191–222

A link between marriage seasonality and the broad patterns of agriculture across early modern England was identified in the 1980s by Kussmaul. Subsequently, though, little use appears to have been made of the methodology she developed. This paper revisits her approach by means of a case study using parish registers of the majority of early modern Surrey. Its findings are twofold. First the robustness of Kussmaul’s methodology is supported, both by consideration of its sensitivity to changes in its criteria for differentiating between arable and pastoral areas and by comparison of its findings for contiguous parishes on similar soils. Second the sub-regional study area’s responses to shifting economic conditions is explored using marriage seasonality to identify spatial and temporal patterns of agriculture across the area between the late sixteenth and the early eighteenth centuries. The results suggest a move from locally-based farming to a greater market focus, a shift which in much of Surrey appears to have started in the early seventeenth century. Of particular interest is the identification of a marked shift from a pastoral to an arable emphasis on the light soils in the west of the county between the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, a response, it is suggested, to a combination of shifts in the profitability of different types of farming and changes in transport increasing the area’s ability to move its produce to markets. The results of the two parts of the study suggest Kussmaul’s approach could valuably and readily (given the, by now, widespread availability of digitized parish registers) be replicated to explore agricultural change as represented by husbandry type on a county-by-county basis across much of early modern England.