This article examines the rise of a culture of local petitioning, through which growing numbers of ordinary people sought to win the support of state authorities through collective claims to represent the “voice of the people” at the local level. These participatory, subscriptional practices were an essential component in the intensification of popular politics in the seventeenth century. The analysis focuses on over 3,800 manuscript petitions submitted to the magistrates across fifteen jurisdictions with “sessions of the peace” in England, with nearly 1,000 dating from before 1640. Over the course of the early seventeenth century many, if not most, English parishes witnessed attempts to persuade the authorities through collective petitioning. Groups of neighbors across the kingdom formulated their grievances, organized subscription lists, and articulated their own role in the polity as “the inhabitants” or “the parishioners” of a particular community. In so doing, they not only directly shaped their own “little commonwealths” but also unintentionally helped to develop habits of political mobilization in a crucial period of English history.

中文翻译：

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近代早期英国地方请愿的流行政治

本文探讨了地方上访文化的兴起，越来越多的普通民众通过集体主张在地方代表“人民的声音”来寻求赢得国家当局的支持。这些参与性、订阅性的做法是 17 世纪民众政治强化的重要组成部分。该分析重点关注英格兰 15 个辖区的治安法官提交的 3,800 多份请愿书手稿，其中近 1,000 份可追溯至 1640 年之前。在 17 世纪初，许多（如果不是大多数）英国教区目睹了试图通过集体上访的方式说服当局。王国各地的邻居团体表达了他们的不满，组织了订阅名单，并阐明了他们自己在政体中作为特定社区的“居民”或“教区居民”的角色。他们的这样做不仅直接塑造了自己的“小共和国”，而且无意中帮助养成了英国历史关键时期的政治动员习惯。