AD 1500-1750 Early modern

Travelling through Leicestershire in the 16th century AD, the Reverend John Leland (1506-52) found it ‘plentiful of corn and pasture’. It was typical of the counties of central England in being mainly good agricultural land and was famous for its Leicester sheep. There were no great towns in the region; most were market towns, but there were great castles in Warwickshire at Kenilworth, seat of the Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth’s favourite, and at Warwick.

The first battle of the First Civil War took place at Edgehill in Warwickshire in 1642, and for the next three years the whole of the region was a military zone over which armies of 120,000 to 140,000 men marched. The king was strong in the north and west, the Parliamentarians in the east and south. Campaigning was seasonal, but the lives of ordinary people were devastated.

Central England also suffered grievously from the plague in Charles II’s reign (1660-85). The ‘plague village’ of Eyam in Derbyshire became famous in 1665, when its inhabitants decided to cut themselves off from all outside contact lest they should infect others. Seven out of ten people died.

In the 18th century, the region began to benefit from improvements in communications like turnpike roads and canals, which paved the way for the industrial revolution.