Snapshots of village life sparkle through the letters.  The writers succeed in telling not only Henry Slade about his home village, but us as well.  Inevitably, the account of village life has its gaps and it has its bias, but it retains its value all the same.  We look at events of the 1840s happening in two Berkshire villages through the eyes of the farming gentry.

The letters tell us very little about the administration of the villages, but then that may have lay mostly in the hands of the senior farming families, the Slades and the Fullers.  One tantalising insight, however, shows us how, within the villages, Church and State might overlap.  Charlotte habitually frequented the Ranting meetings, held at least weekly.  Primarily they seem to have had a religious purpose.  Occasionally, they also seemed to have a role in maintaining order within the society. At the Ranting Meeting, Munday’s chap, Jack Redhead and your man Shiner had to pay 5 shillings each and be bound in a bond of £10 to keep the peace for a twelve month.  Charlotte herself had summoned these people before ‘magistrates’ for disorderly conduct on the Sabbath.  We do know, however, that Chapel Wardens existed at this time.  The diaries of the Reverend Hooper recount the later events surrounding the divorce of Aston Upthorpe and Upton from Blewbury, much to the chagrin of the incumbent, the irascible Reverend MacDonald.  They mention how the Chapelwardens become Churchwardens.

Instead, the letters tell us about human progress, through births, marriages and, particularly, deaths; we hear about work and play; we hear about commercial success and catastrophe.  The vast majority of the letters cover events that happen in the villages.  Just occasionally a ray from the outside world penetrates and makes itself notable by its exception.