In research into the social organisation of provincial English towns before the civil war, much work has been done on guilds and parishes. However, we still know little about the structure of the relationships of ordinary men and women outside formal urban institutions. This case study examines the neglected patterns of day-to-day economic and social relationships in the public, private and mixed spheres of an English county town, and explores how they affected the formal spatial views manifested in local by-laws and institutions. Analysis of pre-trial examinations conducted by local JPs demonstrates that Leicester was an open society where networks of freemen, non-freemen, and strangers were organised in open markets, streets, and houses for credit arrangements and private dealings. The involvement of freemen in informal society also has significant implications for local governance. As the analysis of Leicester town minutes suggests, the civic elite often incorporated informal relationships into the society of freemen by putting relevant regulations into statutory form. Through examining the situation in a typical inland town under the influence of growing demographic pressure and state power, this article highlights both the tension between and fusion of 'formal' and 'informal' forces in the local context, and brings the informal sphere of urban society to the centre stage of the historical debate on urbanisation.
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