7 Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order, 118-41.
8 David Cressy found that during the period 1580-1640 the proportion of East Anglian men who were unable to sign their own names was 44% for yeomen. In New England, from 1650 to 1670, a roughly comparable figure for all males was 40%. A much larger proportion of women were unable to sign their names—90-95% in East Anglia, 70% in New England. Cf. David Cressy, “Education and Literacy in London and East Anglia, 1580-1700” (thesis, Cambridge Univ., 1972); Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England, chaps. 1-3.
9 Keith Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680, (London, 1982), 186.
10 The texts of all these statutes appear in Marcus W. Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, 1607-1783 (Chicago, 1931), 87-99.
11The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes … (Cambridge, Mass., 1660), 47.