Inheritance by the eldest son.

The most important administrative body in the country. Composed mainly of administrators and courtiers.

The legal scrutiny of wills. Wills are an invaluable source for sixteenth-century social historians.

Officials representing others in a legal capacity.

A synthesis of Liberal and Gradualist Socialist ideas for social reform.

Social class owning no property, and so dependent upon wage-earning – the working class. Marxists use the word in contradistinction to the bourgeoisie or capitalist/middle class.

A system of imposing tariffs (taxes) on imported goods in order to nurture and protect home-produced goods.

There were two major public health acts. The first in 1848 resulted from pressure by Chadwick and other public health reformers to do something to stop the spread of disease, particularly cholera. It created the General Board of Health which could set up Local Boards of Health if a) ratepayers petitioned for it, b) the death rate was particularly high. The second act in 1875 was passed by Disraeli and consolidated the 1866 Sanitary Act and other sanitary legislation.

Process of converting pig iron to wrought or bar iron, invented by Henry Cort and widely adopted in south Wales in the 1790s.

Strict Protestants who wished to 'purify' the Church of England of its apparently Catholic features.