Moving county

[scottiow]

How common was it to move residence of county during 17th century?

Would it be common to move to another county, for ordinary people?

Cheers for any ideas

all the best

scott

[stanmapstone]

"The Oxford Guide to Family History" by David Hey has a whole chapter on mobility and stability.
He says that local studies of both rural and urban communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have often stressed the importance of stable core families that remained in or near the same place for generation after generation. Each English county still has its distinctive set of surnames. The families that tended to move on were either the rich or the very poor, the owners or occupiers of small or medium sized farms had neither the resources nor the ambition to move, earning a sufficient living to survive. It was the industrial revolution that saw the mass migration from the country to the manufacturing districts.
Stan

[stanmapstone]

Of course with the movement of the very poor you are into the subject of the  "Poor Laws". The Elizabethans introduced  an Act of 1601 which laid down that each parish was to be responsible for the maintenance of its own paupers, and anyone applying for poor relief outside his native parish  was returned to it, or to the last place he had lived for at least a year. This was followed by the 1662 Act of Settlement and Removal.

Stan

[scottiow]

Thankyou for you replies, useful informaiton.

All the best

scott