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One of the least understood periods of English history is the century following the restoration of Charles II, when England was on the threshold of becoming the first industrialized country in the world. Urban historians of this period have told us much about county towns, cathedral cities and ports but little about the places that were soon to outpace these ancient centres to become our great Victorian cities. It is clear that by the late 17th century Sheffield and a few other industrial towns already had specialized economies that set them apart from the rest. Sheffied is worth studying, therefore, both as an interesting phenomenon of the times and as a harbinger of the complex industrial socieites of the Victorian era. The discipline of local history is moving towards the study of larger societies than a single urban or rural community, towards the study of those neighbourhoods or "countries" to which people felt that they belonged. Sheffield was the centre of a distinctive local society known as Hallamshire, whose inhabitants were united by a sense of common inheritance and fortune. This study, therefore, is concerned with the whole of Hallamshire, and with all the inhabitants therein, particularly the metal workers who gave the place its special character.