9 Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (New York, 1972), 106; Many historians have argued that the “county community” was the most important unit of identity in Civil War. The seminal work was done by A. M. Everitt, “The County Community,” in E. W. Ives, ed., The English Revolution, 1600-1660, (London, 1968), 49; idem, The Local Community in the English Civil War, Historical Association Pamphlet G70 (1969); idem, Change in the Provinces: The Seventeenth Century (Leicester University Department of Local History, Occasional Papers, 2d ser., I, 1969).
Other “county community” studies include W. B. Willcox, Gloucestershire, 1590-1640 (New Haven, 1940); Thomas Garden Barnes, Somerset 1625-1640: A County’s Government during the Personal Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 1961); C. W. Chalkin, Seventeenth Century Kent: A Social and Economic History (London, 1965); Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 1640-1660 (Leicester, 1966); J. S. Morrill, Cheshire 1630-1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974); Anthony Fletcher, Sussex 1600-1660: A County Community in Peace and War (London, 1975); J. T. Cliffe, The Yorkshire Gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War (1969); B. G. Blackwood, The Lancashire Gentry and the Great Rebellion, 1640-1660 (1978); Clive Holmes, Seventeenth Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980).
A second generation of studies, as yet unpublished but made available to the author in manuscript, tends to stress the permeability of county communities and the importance of connections that carried across county lines—thus opening a quasi-regional consciousness.
10 In a pioneering regional history of England, series editors Barry Cunliffe and David Hey write, “English regional identities are imprecise, and no firm boundaries can be drawn … any attempt to define a region must be somewhat arbitrary, particularly in the midlands … yet regional differences are nonetheless real. … People still feel that they belong to a particular region within England as a whole.” Their taxonomy uses the following county-clusters:
Northern Counties (Cumb., Dur., Nhumb., Tyne and Wear, N. Cleve.); Lancashire/Cheshire (Lancs., Ches., Mersey, Gr. Mancs.); Yorkshire (N., S., W. Yorks.; S. Cleve., N. Humberside); West. Midlands (Salop, Staffs., W. Mid., Here, and Worcs., Warw., Glocs.); East Midlands (Derby, Notts., S. Humber, Lines., Leics.); South Midlands (Northants., Oxon., Beds., Bucks., Herts., NW London); Eastern Counties (Norf., Suff., Essex., Cambs., NE London); South West (Devon., Cornwall); Wessex (Avon, Wilts., Berks., Hants., Dorset, Somerset); South East (Surrey, Kent, E. and W. Sussex, S. London); see Nick Higham, The Northern Counties to AD 1000 (London, 1986), xv.