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Margaret Spufford obituary

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Historian with a sympathetic understanding of common people in 16th- and 17th-century England

As a historian of the unconsidered people of 16th- and 17th-century England, Margaret Spufford, who has died aged 78, changed the understanding of her period through her precision of mind and unsparing sympathy for her subjects. In three books, she brought to light the particularities of peasant life, considering both souls and soils.

Her subjects appeared as active shapers of their own fate rather than passive victims; people with minds and hearts, not just physical needs. "The villager was indeed a sentient reflecting being, with opinions of his own, and he should be treated as such even if the nature of his opinions can only occasionally be established," she wrote in Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1974).

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