This book provides a new approach to the history of social conflict, popular politics and plebeian culture. Based on a close study of the Peak Country of Derbyshire c. 1520-1770, it has implications for understandings of class identity, popular culture, riot, custom and social relations. Important insights are offered into early modern social and gender identities, civil war allegiances, the appeal of radical ideas and the making of the English working class. Above all, the book challenges the claim that early modern England was a hierarchical, "pre-class" society.