Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530–1730

Abstract

While remaining appropriately humble about the crudity of his data and the limitations of his sources, the social historian who is willing to employ numerical methods and statistical procedures can make reasonably confident estimates of the extent of illiteracy in early modern England. A careful examination of the ability of witnesses before the ecclesiastical courts to sign their depositions, of testators to sign their wills, of applicants for marriage licences to sign the allegations and bonds, and of subscribers to protestations and declarations actually to write their names on the document, reveals a pattern of widespread but unevenly distributed illiteracy. The best of these sources provides evidence not only on the social structure of illiteracy, but also on its changing level between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Progress towards the reduction of illiteracy was decidedly erratic.

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