Petitioning in Ealy Modern England
Case-study 2: Qualitative dimensions
Let’s practice what we have learned during the first session on extracting information from qualitative dimensions. Let’s focus on a completely different data set that the one we have used so far. The Petitioning in Early Modern England data set consists of 2,847 petitions filed in England between 1573 and 1799 (Waddell and Howard 2022). As well as the text itself, it includes information on date, petitioners, topic, administrative responses, etc. Petitions were a crucial mode of communication between the ‘rulers’ and the ‘ruled’, so they provide a vital source for illuminating the concerns of the people, from noblemen to paupers. The data is hosted in this repository.
Download it into a folder of your choice and read it into R. Remember to set the working directory and load the necessary packages.
Explore how the data set looks like. How many observations does it contain? What each observations refers to (unit of analysis)? What kind of information does it report about each observation?
Were the petitions contained in this data set filed all over England or in particular counties?
What were the two most common topics for filing a petition. Draw a bar plot to visualise this information. Which fraction of all the petitions these two topics represent? Use also the information of subtopic to shed more light on this issue.
Imagine that you are especially interested in “poor relief”. Can you provide more information about who was filing these petitions and the type of response they got from the Royal authorities.