STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

                               Edited by
  The Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science

        No. 56 in the series of Monographs by writers connected
       With the London School of Economics and Political Science

                  ------------------------------------

                       THE WORKING LIFE OF WOMEN

                                 IN THE

                          SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

                         WORKING LIFE OF WOMEN

                                 IN THE

                          SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

                                   BY

                              ALICE CLARK

 Shaw Research Student of the London School of Economics and Political
                                Science

                                LONDON:
                     GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
                     NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO.

                                  1919

                               DEDICATED
                                 TO MY
                           FATHER AND MOTHER

                                PREFACE

THE investigation, whose conclusions are partly described in the
following treatise, was undertaken with a view to discovering the actual
circumstances of women’s lives in the Seventeenth Century.

It is perhaps impossible to divest historical enquiry from all personal
bias, but in this case the bias has simply consisted in a conviction
that the conditions under which the obscure mass of women live and
fulfil their duties as human beings, have a vital influence upon the
destinies of the human race, and that a little knowledge of what these
conditions have actually been in the past will be of more value to the
sociologist than many volumes of carefully elaborated theory based on
abstract ideas.

The theories with which I began this work of investigation as to the
position occupied by women in a former social organisation have been
abandoned, and have been replaced by others, which though still only
held tentatively have at least the merit of resting solely on
ascertained fact. If these theories should in turn have to be discarded
when a deeper understanding of history becomes possible, yet the picture
of human life presented in the following pages will not entirely lose
its value.

The picture cannot pretend to be complete. The Seventeenth Century
provides such a wealth of historical material that only a small fraction
could be examined, and though the selection has been as representative
as possible, much that is of the greatest importance from the point of
view from which the enquiry has been made, is not yet available. Many
records of Gilds, Companies, Quarter Sessions and Boroughs which must be
studied _in extenso_ before a just idea can be formed of women’s
position, have up to the present been published only in an abbreviated
form, if at all.

Another difficulty has been the absence of knowledge regarding women’s
position in the years preceding the Seventeenth Century. This want has
to some extent been supplied through the kindness of Miss Eileen Power,
who has permitted me to use some of the material collected by her on
this subject, but not yet published.

The Seventeenth Century itself forms a sort of watershed between two
very widely differing eras in the history of Englishwomen—the
Elizabethan and the Eighteenth Century. Thus characteristics of both can
be studied in the women who move through its varied scenes, either in
the pages of dramatists or as revealed by domestic papers or in more
public records.

Only one aspect of their lives has been described in the present volume,
namely their place in the economic organisation of society. This has its
own special bearing on the industrial problems of modern times; but Life
is a whole and cannot safely be separated into watertight departments.

The productive activity which is here described was not the work of
women who were separated from the companionship of married life and the
joys and responsibilities of motherhood. These aspects of their life
have not been forgotten, and will, I hope, be dealt with in a later
volume, along with the whole question of girls’ education.

How inseparably intertwined are these different threads of life will be
shown by the fact that apprenticeship and service are left to be dealt
with in the later volume as links in the educational chain, although in
many respects they were essential features of women’s economic position.

The conception of the sociological importance of past economic
conditions for women I owe to Olive Schreiner, whose epoch-making book
“Women and Labour” first drew the attention of many workers in the
emancipation of women to the difference between reality and the commonly
received generalisations as to women’s productive capacity. From my
friend, Dr. K. A. Gerlach came the suggestion that I, myself, should
attempt to supply further evidence along the lines so imaginatively
outlined by Mrs. Schreiner. To Dr. Lilian Knowles I am indebted for the
unwearied patience with which she has watched and directed my
researches, and to Mrs. Bernard Shaw for the generous scholarship with
which she assists those who wish to devote themselves to the
investigation of women’s historic past.

I should like here to express the deep sense of gratitude which I feel
to those who have helped my work in these different ways, and to Mrs.
George, whose understanding of Seventeenth Century conditions has
rendered the material she collected for me particularly valuable. My
thanks are also due to many other friends whose sympathy and interest
have played a larger part than they know in the production of this book.

    _Mill Field,_

        _Street, Somerset._

                                CONTENTS

                    I. INTRODUCTORY                  1

                   II. CAPITALISTS                  14

                  III. AGRICULTURE                  42

                   IV. TEXTILES                     93

                    V. CRAFTS AND TRADES           150

                   VI. PROFESSIONS                 236

                  VII. CONCLUSION                  290

                       LIST OF AUTHORITIES         309

                       LIST OF WAGES ASSESSMENTS   320

                       INDEX                       322

                               CHAPTER I

                              INTRODUCTORY

EFFECT of environment on Women’s development. Possible reaction on men’s
   development—Importance of seventeenth century in historic development
   of English women—Influence of economic position—Division of Women’s
   productive powers into Domestic, Industrial, and Professional—Three
   systems of Industrial Organisation—Domestic Industry—Family
   Industry—Capitalistic Industry or Industrialism—Definition of these
   terms—Historic sequence. Effect of Industrial Revolution on Women—in
   capitalistic class—in agriculture—in textile industries—in crafts and
   other trades. Transference of productive industry from married women
   to unmarried women—with consequent increase of economic independence
   for the latter and its loss for the former. Similar evolution in
   professions shows this was not due wholly to effect of capitalism.

HITHERTO the historian has paid little attention to the circumstances of
women’s lives, for women have been regarded as a static factor in social
developments, a factor which, remaining itself essentially the same,
might be expected to exercise a constant and unvarying influence on
Society.

This assumption has however no basis in fact, for the most superficial
consideration will show how profoundly women can be changed by their
environment. Not only do the women of the same race exhibit great
differences from time to time in regard to the complex social instincts
and virtues, but even their more elemental sexual and maternal instincts
are subject to modification. While in extreme cases the sexual impulses
are liable to perversion, it sometimes happens that the maternal
instinct disappears altogether, and women neglect or, like a tigress in
captivity, may even destroy their young.

These variations deserve the most careful examination, for, owing to the
indissoluble bond uniting the sexes, and the emotional power which women
exert over men, the character of men’s development is determined in some
sort by the development which is achieved by women. In a society where
women are highly developed men’s characters are insensibly modified by
association with them, and in a society where women are secluded and
immature, men lack that stimulus which can only be supplied by the other
sex.

It may be true, as Goethe said, that the eternal feminine leadeth us
onwards, but whether this be upwards or downwards depends upon the
characters of individual women.

Owing to the subtle reactions which exist between men and women and
between the individual and the social organism in which he or she lives,
accurate and detailed knowledge of the historic circumstances of human
life becomes essential for the sciences of Sociology and Psychology. The
investigation, of which the results are described in the following
chapters, was undertaken with the object of discovering these
circumstances as regards women in a limited field and during a short
period.

The economic field has been chosen because, though woman no more than
man lives by bread alone, yet without bread assuredly she cannot live at
all, and without an abundant supply of it she cannot worthily perform
her maternal and spiritual functions. These latter are therefore
dependent upon the source of her food supply. The economic position has
a further attraction to the student because it rests upon facts which
can be elucidated with some degree of certainty. When these have once
been made clear the way will have been prepared for the consideration of
other aspects of women’s lives.

The period under review, namely the seventeenth century, forms an
important crisis in the historic development of Englishwomen. The gulf
which separates the women of the Restoration period from those of the
Elizabethan era can be perceived by the most casual reader of
contemporary drama. To the objection that the heroines of Shakespeare on
the one hand and of Congreve and Wycherley on the other are creations of
the imagination, it must be replied that the dramatic poet can only
present life as he knows it. It was part of Shakespeare’s good fortune
to live in a period so rich and vivid in its social life as was the
reign of Elizabeth; and the objective character of his portraits can be
proved by the study of contemporary letters and domestic papers.
Similarly the characters of the Restoration ladies described in the
diary of Samuel Pepys and by other writers, confirm the picture of
Society drawn by Congreve.

So profound a change occurring in the character of women indicates the
seventeenth century as a period of special interest for social
investigation, and consequently the economic position has been
approached less from its direct effect upon the production of wealth
than from its influence upon women’s development. The mechanical aspect
has in fact only been touched incidentally; an attempt being rather made
to discover how far the extent of women’s productive capacity and the
conditions under which it was exercised affected their maternal
functions and reacted upon their social influence both within and beyond
the limits of the family.

Generalisations are of little service for this purpose. Spinoza has said
that the objects of God’s knowledge are not universals but particulars,
and it is in harmony with this idea that the following chapters consist
chiefly of the record of small details in individual lives which
indicate the actual relation of women to business and production,
whether on a large scale or a small. The pictures given are widely
representative, including not only the women of the upper classes, but
still more important, those of the “common people,” the husbandmen and
tradesmen who formed the backbone of the English people, and also those
of the tragic class of wage-earners, who, though comparatively few in
numbers, already constituted a serious problem in the seventeenth
century.

In the course of the investigation, comparison is frequently made with
the economic position of mediæval women on the one hand, and with
women’s position under modern industrial conditions, on the other. It
must be admitted, however, that comparisons with the middle ages rest
chiefly on conjecture.

Owing to the greater complexity of a woman’s life her productive
capacity must be classified on different lines from those which are
generally followed in dealing with the economic life of men.

For the purposes of this essay, the highest, most intense forms to which
women’s productive energy is directed have been excluded; that is to
say, the spiritual creation of the home and the physical creation of the
child. Though essentially productive, such achievements of creative
power transcend the limitations of economics and one instinctively feels
that there would be something almost degrading in any attempt to weigh
them in the balance with productions that are bought and sold in the
market or even with professional services. Nevertheless it must never be
forgotten that the productive energy which is described in the ensuing
chapters was in no sense alternative to the exercise of these higher
forms of creative power but was employed simultaneously with them. It
may be suspected that the influences of home life were stronger in the
social life of the seventeenth century than they are in modern England,
and certainly the birth-rate was much higher in every class of the
community except perhaps the very poorest.

But, leaving these two forms of creative power aside, there remains
another special factor complicating women’s economic position, namely,
the extent of her production for domestic purposes—as opposed to
industrial and professional purposes. The domestic category includes all
goods and services, either material or spiritual, which are produced
solely for the benefit of the family, while the industrial and
professional are those which are produced either for sale or exchange.

In modern life the majority of Englishwomen devote the greater part of
their lives to domestic occupations, while men are freed from domestic
occupations of any sort, being generally engaged in industrial or
professional pursuits and spending their leisure over public services or
personal pleasure and amusement.

Under modern conditions the ordinary domestic occupations of
Englishwomen consist in tending babies and young children, either as
mothers or servants, in preparing household meals, and in keeping the
house clean, while laundry work, preserving fruit, and the making of
children’s clothes are still often included in the domestic category. In
the seventeenth century it embraced a much wider range of production;
for brewing, dairy-work, the care of poultry and pigs, the production of
vegetables and fruit, spinning flax and wool, nursing and doctoring, all
formed part of domestic industry. Therefore the part which women played
in industrial and professional life was in addition to a much greater
productive activity in the domestic sphere than is required of them
under modern conditions.

On the other hand it may be urged that, if women were upon the whole
more actively engaged in industrial work during the seventeenth century
than they were in the first decade of the twentieth century, men were
much more occupied with domestic affairs then than they are now. Men in
all classes gave time and care to the education of their children, and
the young unmarried men who generally occupied positions as apprentices
and servants were partly employed over domestic work. Therefore, though
now it is taken for granted that domestic work will be done by women, a
considerable proportion of it in former days fell to the share of men.

These circumstances have led to a different use of terms in this essay
from that which has generally been adopted; a difference rendered
necessary from the fact that other writers on industrial evolution have
considered it only from the man’s point of view, whereas this
investigation is concerned primarily with its effect upon the position
of women.

To facilitate the enquiry, organisation for production is divided into
three types:

    (a) Domestic Industry.
    (b) Family Industry.
    (c) Capitalistic Industry, or Industrialism.

No hard-and-fast line exists in practice between these three systems,
which merge imperceptibly into one another. In the seventeenth century
all three existed side by side, often obtaining at the same time in the
same industries, but the underlying principles are quite distinct and
may be defined as follows:

(a) _Domestic Industry_ is the form of production in which the goods
produced are for the exclusive use of the family and are not therefore
subject to an exchange or money value.

(b) _Family Industry_ is the form in which the family becomes the unit
for the production of goods to be sold or exchanged.

The family consisted of father, mother, children, household servants and
apprentices; the apprentices and servants being children and young
people of both sexes who earned their keep and in the latter case a
nominal wage, but who did not expect to remain permanently as
wage-earners, hoping on the contrary in due course to marry and set up
in business on their own account. The profits of family industry
belonged to the family and not to individual members of it. During his
lifetime they were vested in the father who was regarded as the head of
the family; he was expected to provide from them marriage portions for
his children as they reached maturity, and on his death the mother
succeeded to his position as head of the family, his right of bestowal
by will being strictly limited by custom and public opinion.

Two features are the main characteristics of Family Industry in its
perfect form;—first, the unity of capital and labour, for the family,
whether that of a farmer or tradesman, owned stock and tools and
themselves contributed the labour: second, the situation of the workshop
within the precincts of the home.

These two conditions were rarely completely fulfilled in the seventeenth
century, for the richer farmers and tradesmen often employed permanent
wage-earners in addition to the members of their family, and in other
cases craftsmen no longer owned their stock, but made goods to the order
of the capitalist who supplied them with the necessary material.
Nevertheless, the character of Family Industry was retained as long as
father, mother, and children worked together, and the money earned was
regarded as belonging to the family, not to the individual members of
it.

From the point of view of the economic position of women a system can be
classed as family industry while the father works at home, but when he
leaves home to work on the capitalist’s premises the last vestige of
family industry disappears and industrialism takes its place.

(c) _Capitalistic Industry_, or _Industrialism_, is the system by which
production is controlled by the owners of capital, and the labourers or
producers, men, women and children receive individual wages.[1]

Footnote 1:

  The term “individual wages” is used here to denote wages paid either
  to men or women as individuals, and regarded as belonging to the
  individual person, while “family wages” are those which cover the
  services of the whole family and belong to the family as a whole. This
  definition differs from the common use of the terms, but is necessary
  for the explanation of some important points. In ordinary conversation
  “individual wages” indicate those which maintain an individual only,
  while “family wages” are those upon which a family lives. This does
  not imply a real difference in the wages, as the same amount of money
  can be used to support one individual in comfort or a family in
  penury. In modern times the law recognises a theoretic obligation on
  the part of a man to support his children, but has no power to divert
  his wages to that purpose. His wages are in fact recognised as his
  individual property. The position of the family was very different in
  the seventeenth century.

Domestic and family industry existed side by side during the middle
ages; for example, brewing, baking, spinning, cheese and butter making
were conducted both as domestic arts and for industrial purposes. Both
were gradually supplanted by capitalistic industry, the germ of which
was apparently introduced about the thirteenth century, and gradually
developed strength for a more rapid advance in the seventeenth century.

While the development of capitalistic industry will always be one of the
most interesting subjects for the student of political economy, its
effect upon the position and capacity of women becomes of paramount
importance to the sociologist.

This effect must be considered from three stand-points:—

    (1) Does the capitalistic organisation of industry increase or
    diminish women’s productive capacity?

    (2) Does it make them more or less successful in their special
    function of motherhood?

    (3) Does it strengthen or weaken their influence over morals and
    their position in the general organisation of human society?

These three questions were not asked by the men who were actors in the
Industrial Revolution, and apparently their importance has hitherto
escaped the notice of those who have written chapters of its history.

Mankind, lulled by its faith in the “eternal feminine” has reposed in
the belief that women remain the same, however completely their
environment may alter, and having once named a place “the home” thinks
it makes no difference whether it consists of a workshop or a boudoir.
But the effect of the Industrial Revolution on home life, and through
that upon the development and characters of women and upon their
productive capacity, deeply concerns the sociologist, for the increased
productive capacity of mankind may be dearly bought by the
disintegration of social organisation and a lowering of women’s capacity
for motherhood.

The succeeding chapters will show how the spread of capitalism affected
the productive capacity of women:—

(1) In the capitalist class where the energy and hardiness of
Elizabethan ladies gave way before the idleness and pleasure which
characterised the Restoration period.

(2) In agriculture, where the wives of the richer yeomen were
withdrawing from farm work and where there already existed a
considerable number of labourers dependent entirely on wages, whose
wives having no gardens or pastures were unable to supply the families’
food according to old custom. The wages of such women were too irregular
and too low to maintain them and their children in a state of
efficiency, and through semi-starvation their productive powers and
their capacity for motherhood were greatly reduced.

(3) In the Textile Trades where the demand for thread and yarn which
could only be produced by women and children was expanding. The
convenience of spinning as an employment for odd minutes and the
mechanical character of its movements which made no great tax on eye or
brain, rendered it the most adaptable of all domestic arts to the
necessities of the mother. Spinning became the chief resource for the
married women who were losing their hold on other industries, but its
return in money value was too low to render them independent of other
means of support. There is little evidence to suggest that women shared
in the capitalistic enterprises of the clothiers during this period, and
they had lost their earlier position as monopolists of the silk trade.

(4) In other crafts and trades where a tendency can be traced for women
to withdraw from business as this developed on capitalistic lines. The
history of the gilds shows a progressive weakening of their positions in
these associations, though the corporations of the seventeenth century
still regarded the wife as her husband’s partner. In these corporations
the effect of capitalism on the industrial position of the wage-earner’s
wife becomes visible.

Under family industry the wife of every master craftsman became free of
his gild and could share his work. But as the crafts became capitalised
many journeymen never qualified as masters, remaining in the outer
courts of the companies all their lives, and actually forming separate
organisations to protect their interests against their masters and to
secure a privileged position for themselves by restricting the number of
apprentices. As the journeymen worked on their masters’ premises it
naturally followed that their wives were not associated with them in
their work, and that apprenticeship became the only entrance to their
trade.

Though no written rules existed confining apprenticeship to the male
sex, girls were seldom if ever admitted as apprentices in the gild
trades, and therefore women were excluded from the ranks of journeymen.
As the journeyman’s wife could not work at her husband’s trade, she
must, if need be, find employment for herself as an individual. In some
cases the journeyman’s organisations were powerful enough to keep wages
on a level which sufficed for the maintenance of their families; then
the wife became completely dependent on her husband, sinking to the
position of his unpaid domestic servant.

In the Retail and Provision Trades which in some respects were
peculiarly favourable for women, they experienced many difficulties
owing to the restrictive rules of companies and corporations; but where
a man was engaged in this class of business, his wife shared his
labours, and on his death generally retained the direction of the
business as his widow.

The history of brewing is one of the most curious examples of the effect
of capitalism on women’s position in industry, for as the term
“brewster” shows, originally it was a woman’s trade but with the
development of Capitalism it passed completely from the hands of women
to those of men.

The tendency of capitalism to lessen the relative productive capacity of
women might be overlooked if our understanding of the process was
limited to the changes which had actually taken place by the end of the
seventeenth century. No doubt the majority of the population at that
time was still living under conditions governed by the traditions and
habits formed during the period of Family and Domestic Industry. But the
contrast which the life described in the following chapters presents to
the life of women under modern conditions will be evident even to
readers who have not closely followed the later historical developments
of Capitalism.

In estimating the influence of economic changes on the position of women
it must be remembered that Capitalism has not merely replaced Family
Industry but has been equally destructive of Domestic Industry.

One unexpected effect has been the reversal of the parts which married
and unmarried women play in productive enterprise. In the earlier stages
of economic evolution that which we now call domestic work, _viz._,
cooking, cleaning, mending, tending of children, etc., was performed by
unmarried girls under the direction of the housewife, who was thus
enabled to take an important position in the family industry. Under
modern conditions this domestic work falls upon the mothers, who remain
at home while the unmarried girls go out to take their place in
industrial or professional life. The young girls in modern life have
secured a position of economic independence, while the mothers remain in
a state of dependence and subordination—an order of things which would
have greatly astonished our ancestors.

In the seventeenth century the idea is seldom encountered that a man
supports his wife; husband and wife were then mutually dependent and
together supported their children. At the back of people’s minds an
instinctive feeling prevailed that the father furnished rent, shelter,
and protection while the mother provided food; an instinct surviving
from a remote past when the villein owed to his lord the labour of three
or four days per week throughout the year in addition to the boon work
at harvest or any other time when labour was most wanted for his own
crops; surely then it was largely the labour of the mother and the
children which won the family’s food from the yard-land.

The reality of the change which has been effected in the position of
wife and mother is shown by a letter to _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ in
1834 criticising proposed alterations in the Poor Law. The writer
defends the system then in use of giving allowances from the rates to
labourers according to the number of their children. He says that the
people who animadvert on the allowance system “never observe the cause
from which it proceeds. There are, we will say, twenty able single
labourers in a parish; twenty equally able married, with large families.
One class wants 12s. a week, one 20s. The farmer, who has his choice of
course takes the single.” The allowance system equalises the position of
married and single. Formerly this inequality did not exist “_because it
was of no importance to the farmer whether he employed the single or
married labourer, inasmuch as the labourer’s wife and family could
provide for themselves_. They are now dependent on the man’s labour, or
nearly so; except in particular cases, as when women go out to wash, to
nurse, or take in needlework, and so on. The machinery and manufactures
have destroyed cottage labour—spinning, the only resource formerly of
the female poor, who thus were earning their bread at home, while their
fathers and husbands were earning theirs abroad.... In agricultural
parishes the men, the labourers, are not too numerous or more than are
wanted; but the families hang as a dead weight upon the rates for want
of employment. The girls are now not brought up to _spin_—none of them
know the art. They all handle when required, the hoe, and their business
is weeding. Our partial remedy for this great and growing evil is
allotments of land, which are to afford the occupation that the distaff
formerly did; and so the wife and daughters can be cultivating small
portions of ground and raising potatoes and esculents, etc., the while
the labourer is at his work.”[2]

Footnote 2:

  _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1834, Vol. I., p. 531. _A Letter to Lord
  Althorp on the Poor Laws_, by Equitas.

These far-reaching changes coincided with the triumph of capitalistic
organisation but they may not have been a necessary consequence of that
triumph. They may have arisen from some deep-lying cause, some tendency
in human evolution which was merely hastened by the economic cataclysm.

The fact that the evolution of women’s position in the professions
followed a course closely resembling that which was taking place in
industry suggests the existence of an ultimate cause influencing the
direction in each case.

                               CHAPTER II

                              CAPITALISTS

Term includes aristocracy and _nouveau riche_. Tendency of these two
   classes to approximate in manners—Activity of aristocratic women with
   affairs of household, estate and nation—Zeal for patents and
   monopolies—Money lenders—Shipping trade—Contractors—Joan Dant—Dorothy
   Petty—Association of wives in husbands’ businesses—Decrease of
   women’s business activity in upper classes—Contrast of Dutch
   women—Growing idleness of gentlewomen.

PERHAPS it is impossible to say what exactly constitutes a capitalist,
and no attempt will be made to define the term, which is used here to
include the aristocracy who had long been accustomed to the control of
wealth, and also those families whose wealth had been newly acquired
through trade or commerce. The second group conforms more nearly to the
ideas generally understood by the term capitalist; but in English
society the two groups are closely related.

The first group naturally represents the older traditional relation of
women to affairs in the upper classes, while the second responded more
quickly to the new spirit which was being manifested in English life. No
rigid line of demarcation existed between them, because while the
younger sons of the gentry engaged in trade, the daughters of wealthy
tradesmen were eagerly sought as brides by an impoverished aristocracy.
Therefore the manners and customs of the two groups gradually
approximated to each other.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century it was usual for the women
of the aristocracy to be very busy with affairs—affairs which concerned
their household, their estates and even the Government.

Thus Lady Barrymore writes she is “a cuntry lady living in Ireland and
convercing with none but masons and carpendors, for I am now finishing a
house, so that if my govenour [Sir Edmund Verney] please to build a new
house, that may be well seated and have a good prospect, I will give him
my best advice gratis.”[3]

Footnote 3:

  Verney Family, _Memoirs during the Civil War_, Vol. I., p. 210.

Lady Gardiner’s husband apologises for her not writing personally to Sir
Ralph Verney, she “being almost melted with the double heat of the
weather and her hotter employment, because the fruit is suddenly ripe
and she is so busy preserving.”[4] Their household consisted of thirty
persons.

Footnote 4:

  _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 12.

Among the nobility the management of the estate was often left for
months in the wife’s care while the husband was detained at Court for
business or pleasure. It was during her husband’s absence that
Brilliana, Lady Harley defended Brampton Castle from an attack by the
Royalist forces who laid siege to it for six weeks, when her defence
became famous for its determination and success. Her difficulties in
estate management are described in letters to her son:

“You know how your fathers biusnes is neglected; and alas! it is not
speaking will sarue turne, wheare theare is not abilltise to doo other
ways; thearefore I could wisch, that your father had one of more
vnderstanding to intrust, to looke to, if his rents are not payed, and I
thinke it will be so. I could desire, if your father thought well of it,
that Mr. Tomas Moore weare intrusted with it; he knows your fathers
estate, and is an honnest man, and not giuen to great expences, and
thearefore I thinke he would goo the most frugally way. I knowe it would
be some charges to haue him and his wife in the howes; but I thinke it
would quite the chargess. I should be loth to haue a stranger, nowe your
father is away.”[5]

Footnote 5:

  Harley, _Letters of Brilliana, the Lady_, pp. 146-7, 1641.

“I loos the comfort of your fathers company, and am in but littell
safety, but that my trust is in God; and what is doun to your fathers
estate pleases him not, so that I wisch meselfe, with all my hart, at
Loundoun, and then your father might be a wittnes of what is spent; but
if your father thinke it beest for me to be in the cuntry, I am every
well pleased with what he shall thinke best.”[6]

Footnote 6:

  Harley, _Letters of Brilliana, The Lady_, p. 167, 1642.

One gathers from these letters that in spite of her devotion and ability
and his constant absence Sir E. Harley never gave his wife full control
of the estate, and was always more ready to censure than to praise her
arrangements; but other men who were immersed in public matters
thankfully placed the whole burthen of family affairs in the capable
hands of their wives.

Lady Murray wrote of her father, Sir George Baillie, “He had no ambition
but to be free of debt; yet so great trust and confidence did he put in
my mother, and so absolutely free of all jealousy and suspicion, that he
left the management of his affairs entirely to her, without scarce
asking a question about them; except sometimes would say to her, ‘Is my
debt paid yet?’ though often did she apply to him for direction and
advice; since he knew enough of the law for the management of his own
affairs, when he would take the time or trouble or to prevent his being
imposed upon by others.”[7]

Footnote 7:

  Murray (Lady), _Memoirs of Lady Grisell Baillie_, p. 13.

Mrs. Alice Thornton wrote of her mother:

“Nor was she awanting to make a fare greatter improvement [than her
dowery of £2000] of my father’s estate through her wise and prudential
government of his family, and by her care was a meanes to give
opportunity of increasing his patrimony.”[8]

Footnote 8:

  Thornton (Mrs. Alice), _Autobiography_, p. 101, (Surtees’ Society Vol.
  lxii.

In addition to the Household Accounts those of the whole of Judge Fell’s
estate at Swarthmore, Lancashire, were kept by his daughter Sarah. The
following entries show that the family affairs included a farm, a forge,
mines, some interest in shipping and something of the nature of a Bank.

July 11, 1676, is entered: “To mᵒ Recᵈ. of Tho: Greaves wife wᶜʰ. I am
to returne to London foʳ her, & is to bee pᵈ, to her sonn Jⁿᵒ. ffellꝑ
Waltʳ. miers in London, 001. 00. 00.”

Jan., 14, 1676-7, by money lent Wiƚƚm Wilson our forge Clarke till hee
gett money in for Ireon sold 10. 0. 0.

Aug. ye 9º 1677 by mᵒ “in expence at adgarley when wee went to chuse
oare to send father 000. 00. 04.”

Other payments are entered for horses to “lead oare.”[9] &c., &c.

Footnote 9:

  Fell (Sarah), _Household Account Book_.

In addition to those of her family Sarah Fell kept the accounts for the
local “Monthly Meeting” of the Society of Friends, making the payments
on its behalf to various poor Friends.

One of the sisters after her marriage embarked upon speculations in
salt; of her, another sister, Margaret Rous, writes to their mother:
“She kept me in the dark and had not you wrote me them few words about
her I had not known she had been so bad. But I had a fear before how she
would prove if I should meddle of her, and since I know her mind wrote
to her, being she was so wickedly bent and resolved in her mind, I would
not meddle of her but leave her to her husbands relations, and her salt
concerns, since which I have heard nothing from her. But I understand by
others she is still in the salt business. I know not what it will
benefit her but she spends her time about it. I have left her at
present.”[10]

Footnote 10:

  Crosfield (H. G.), _Life of Margaret Fox, of Swarthmore Hall_, p. 232,
  1699.

A granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, the wife of Thos. Bendish, was also
interested in the salt business, having property in salt works at
Yarmouth in the management of which she was actively concerned. It was
said of her that “Her courage and presence of mind were remarkable in
one of her sex, ... she would sometimes, after a hard day of drudgery go
to the assembly at Yarmouth, and appear one of the most brilliant
there.”[11]

Footnote 11:

  Costello, _Eminent Englishwomen_, Vol. III, p. 55.

Initiative and enterprise were shown by Lady Falkland during her
husband’s term of office in Ireland whither she accompanied him.

“The desire of the benefit and commodity of that nation set her upon a
great design: it was to bring up the use of all trades in that country,
which is fain to be beholden to others for the smallest commodities; to
this end she procured some of each kind to come from those other places
where those trades are exercised, as several sorts of linen and woollen
weavers, dyers, all sorts of spinners and knitters, hatters,
lace-makers, and many other trades at the very beginning.”

After a description of her methods for instruction in these arts the
biographer continues: “She brought it to that pass that they there made
broad-cloth so fine ... that her Lord being Deputy wore it. Yet it came
to nothing; which she imputed to a judgment of God on her, because the
overseers made all those poor children go to church; ... and that
therefore her business did not succeed. But others thought it rather
that she was better at contriving than executing, and that too many
things were undertaken at the very first; and that she was fain (having
little choice) to employ either those that had little skill in the
matters they dealt in, or less honesty; and so she was extremely cozened
... but chiefly the ill order she took for paying money in this ...
having the worst memory in such things in the world ... and never
keeping any account of what she did, she was most subject to pay the
same things often (as she hath had it confessed to her by some that they
have in a small matter made her pay them the same thing five times in
five days).”[12]

Footnote 12:

  _Falkland, (The Lady), Her Life_, pp. 18-20.

Lady Falkland received small sympathy from her husband in her dealings
with affairs—and though her methods may have been exasperating, their
unfortunate differences were not wholly due to her temperament. He had
married her for her fortune and when this was settled on their son and
not placed in his control, his disappointment was so great that his
affections were alienated from her.

Of her efforts to further his interests Lord Falkland wrote to Lord
Conway:

    “My very good Lord,

          By all my wife’s letters I understand my obligations to
    your Lordship to be very many; and she takes upon her to have
    received so manifold and noble demonstrations of your favour to
    herself, that she begins to conceive herself some able body in
    court, by your countenance to do me courtesies, if she had the
    wit as she hath the will. She makes it appear she hath done me
    some good offices in removing some infusions which my great
    adversary here (Loftus) hath made unto you ... it was high time;
    for many evil consequences of the contrary have befallen me
    since that infusion was first made, which I fear will not be
    removed in haste; and must thank her much for her careful pains
    in it, though it was but an act of duty in her to see me righted
    when she knew me wronged ... and beseech your Lordship still to
    continue that favour to us both;—to her, as well in giving her
    good counsel as good countenance within a new world and court,
    at such a distance from her husband a poor weak woman stands in
    the greatest need of to dispatch her suits,” ... etc., etc.

        “Dublyn Castle this 26th of July, 1625.”[13]

Footnote 13:

      _Falkland (The Lady), Her Life_, pp. 131-132.

Later he continues in the same strain:

    “... I am glad your Lordship doth approve my wife’s good
    affection to her husband, which was a point I never doubted, but
    for her abilities in agency of affairs, as I was never taken
    with opinion of them, so I was never desirous to employ them if
    she had them, for I conceive women to be no fit solicitors of
    state affairs for though it sometimes happen that they have good
    wits, it then commonly falls out that they have over-busy
    natures withal. For my part I should take much more comfort to
    hear that she were quietly retired to her mother’s in the
    country, than that she had obtained a great suit in the
    court.”[14]

Footnote 14:

      _Ibid._, pp. 132-3.

The sentiments expressed by Lord Falkland were not characteristic of his
time, when husbands were generally thankful to avail themselves of their
wives’ services in such matters.

While Sir Ralph Verney was exiled in France, he proposed that his wife
should return to England to attend to some urgent business. His friend,
Dr. Denton replied to the suggestion:

    “... not to touch upon inconveniences of yʳ comminge, women were
    never soe usefull as now, and though yᵘ should be my agent and
    sollicitour of all the men I knowe (and therefore much more to
    be preferred in yʳ own cause) yett I am confident if yᵘ were
    here, yᵘ would doe as our sages doe, instruct yʳ wife, and leave
    her to act it wᵗʰ committees, their sexe entitles them to many
    priviledges and we find the comfort of them more now than
    ever.”[15]

Footnote 15:

      _Verney Family_, Vol. II., p. 240, 646.

There are innumerable accounts in contemporary letters and papers of the
brave and often successful efforts of women to stem the flood of
misfortune which threatened ruin to their families.

Katharine Lady Bland treated with Captain Hotham in 1642 on behalf of
Lord Savile “and agreed with him for the preservation of my lords estate
and protection of his person for £1,000,” £320 of which had already been
taken “from Lord Savile’s trunk at Kirkstall Abbey ... and the Captain
... promised to procure a protection from the parliament ... for his
lordships person and estate.”[16]

Footnote 16:

  _Calendar State Papers_, Domestic, April 8, 1646.

Lady Mary Heveningham, through her efforts restored the estate to the
family after her husband had been convicted of high treason at the
Restoration.[17]

Footnote 17:

  _Hunter (Joseph), History and Topography of Ketteringham_, p. 46.

Of Mrs. Muriel Lyttelton, the daughter of Lord Chancellor Bromley, it
was said that she “may be called the second founder of the family, as
she begged the estate of King James when it was forfeited and lived a
pattern of a good wife, affectionate widow, and careful parent for
thirty years, with the utmost prudence and economy at Hagley to retrieve
the estate and pay off the debts; the education of her children in
virtue and the protestant religion being her principal employ. Her
husband, Mr. John Lyttelton, a zealous papist, was condemned, and his
estates forfeited, for being concern’d in Essex’s plot.”[18]

Footnote 18:

  Nash, _Hist. and Antiq. of Worcester_, Vol. I., p. 492. It appears by
  depositions in the Court of Chancery that she paid off £25,000 which
  was charged upon the estate, and only sold lands to the value of
  £8,854, _Ibid._, p. 496.

Charles Parker confessed, “Certainly I had starved had I not left all to
my wife to manage, who gets something by living there and haunting some
of her kindred and what wayes I know not but I am sure such as noe way
entangle me in conscience or loyalty nor hinder me from serving the
King.”[19]

Footnote 19:

  _Nicholas Papers_, Vol. I., p. 97. Charles Parker to Lord Hatton.

Lady Fanshawe said her husband “thought it conveniente to send me into
England again, ... there to try what sums I could raise, both for his
subsistence abroad and mine at home.... I ... embarked myself in a hoy
for Dover, with Mrs. Waller, and my sister Margaret Harrison and my
little girl Nan, ... I had ... the good fortune as I then thought it, to
sell £300 a year to him that is now Judge Archer in Essex, for which he
gave me £4,000 which at that time I thought a vast sum; ... five hundred
pounds I carried to my husband, the rest I left in my father’s agent’s
hands to be returned as we needed it.”[20]

Footnote 20:

  _Fanshawe (Lady), Memoirs of_, pp. 80-81.

The Marquis of Ormonde wrote: “I have written 2 seuerall ways of late to
my wife about our domestick affaires, which are in great disorder
betweext the want of meanes to keepe my sonnes abroad and the danger of
leaueing them at home.... I thank you for your continued care of my
children. I haue written twice to my wife to the effect you speake of. I
pray God shee be able to put it in execution either way.”[21]

Footnote 21:

  _Nicholas Papers_, Vol. III., pp. 274-6. Marquis of Ormonde to Sir Ed.
  Nicholas, 1656.

This letter does not breathe that spirit of confidence in the wife’s
ability which was shown in some of the others and it happened sometimes
that the wife was either overwhelmed by procedure beyond her
understanding, or at least sought for special consideration on the plea
of her sex’s weakness and ignorance.

Sarah, wife of Henry Burton, gives an account of Burton’s trial in the
Star Chamber, his sentence and punishment (fine, pillory, imprisonment
for life) and his subsequent transportation to Guernsey, “where he now
is but by what order your petitioner knoweth not and is kept in strict
durance of exile and imprisonment, and utterly denied the society of
your petitioner contrary to the liberties and privileges of this
kingdome ... debarred of the accesse of friends, the use of pen, inck
and paper and other means to make knowne his just complaintes,” and she
petitions the House of Commons “to take her distressed condition into
your serious consideracion and because your peticioner is a woman not
knowing how to prosecute nor manage so great and weighty busines” begs
that Burton may be sent over to prosecute his just complaint.[22]

Footnote 22:

  _State Papers, Domestic_, cccclxxi. 36, Nov. 7, 1640.

Similarly, Bastwick’s wife pleads that he is so closely imprisoned in
the Isle of Scilly “that your petitioner is not permitted to have any
access unto him, so that for this 3 yeares and upward hir husband hath
been exiled from hir, and she in all this time could not obtayne leave,
although she hath earnestly sued for it, neither to live with him nor so
much as to see him, and whereas your peticioner hath many smale children
depending uppon hir for there mauntenance, and she of hir selfe being
every way unable to provide for them, she being thus separated from her
deare and loving husband and hir tender babes from there carefull father
(they are in) great straights want and miserie,” and she begs that her
husband may be sent to England, “your Petitioner being a woman no way
able to follow nor manage so great and weighty a cause....”[23]

Footnote 23:

  _S.P.D._, cccclxxi. 37, 1640.

The above efforts were all made in defence of family estates, but at
this time women were also concerned with the affairs of the nation, in
which they took an active part.

Mrs. Hutchinson describes how “When the Parliament sat again, the
colonel [Hutchinson] sent up his wife to solicit his business in the
house, that the Lord Lexington’s bill might not pass the lower house ...
she notwithstanding many other discouragements waited upon the business
every day, when her adversaries as diligently solicited against her” a
friend told her how “the laste statemen’s wives came and offered them
all the information they had gathered from their husbands, and how she
could not but know more than any of them; and if yet she would impart
anything that might show her gratitude, she might redeem her family from
ruin, ... but she discerned his drift and scorned to become an informer,
and made him believe she was ignorant, though she could have enlightened
him in the very thing he sought for; which they are now never likely to
know much of, it being locked up in the grave.”[24]

Footnote 24:

  _Life of Colonel Hutchinson_, by his Wife, pp. 334-336.

Herbert Morley wrote to Sir William Campion in 1645:

“I could impart more, but letters are subject to miscarriage, therefore
I reserve myself to a more fit opportunity.... If a conference might be
had, I conceive it would be most for the satisfaction of us both, to
prevent of any possible hazard of your person. If you please to let your
lady meet me at Watford ... or come hither, I will procure her a
pass.”[25]

Footnote 25:

  _Sussex Arch. Coll._, Vol. x., p. 5. To Sir William Campion from
  Herbert Morley, July 23rd, 1645.

Sir William replied: “For any business you have to impart to me, I have
that confidence in you, by reason of our former acquaintance, that I
should not make any scruple to send my wife to the places mentioned; but
the truth is, she is at present soe neare her time for lying downe, for
she expects to be brought to bed within less than fourteen days, that
she is altogether unfit to take soe long a journey....”[26]

Footnote 26:

  _Ibid._, Vol. x., p. 6.

A book might be wholly filled with a story of the part taken by women in
the political and religious struggles of this period. They were also
active among the crowd who perpetually beseiged the Court for grants of
wardships and monopolies or patents.

Ann Wallwyn writes to Salisbury soliciting the wardship of the son of
James Tomkins who is likely to die.[27] The petition of Dame Anne
Wigmore, widow of Sir Richard Wigmore, states that she has found out a
suit which will rectify many abuses, bring in a yearly revenue to the
Crown and give satisfaction to the Petitioner for the great losses of
herself and her husband. Details follow for a scheme for a corporation
of carriers and others.[28]

Footnote 27:

  _C.S.P.D._ lxvii, 129, 1611.

Footnote 28:

  _C.S.P.D._ clxii, 8, March 2, 1630.

Dorothy Selkane reminds Salisbury that a patent has been promised her
for the digging of coals upon a royal manor. The men who manage the
business for her are content to undertake all charges for the discovery
of the coal and to compensate the tenants of the manor according to
impartial arbitrators. She begs Salisbury that as she has been promised
a patent the matter may be brought to a final conclusion that she may
not be forced to trouble him further “having alredie bestowed a yeres
solicitinge therein.”[29] In 1610 the same lady writes again:—“I have
bene at gte toyle and charges this yere and a halfe past as also have
bene put to extraordinarie sollicitacion manie and sundry waies for the
Dispatching of my suite ...” and begs that the grant may pass without
delay.[30]

Footnote 29:

  _S.P.D._ xlviii, 119, 22nd October, 1609.

Footnote 30:

  _S.P.D._ liii, 131, April 1610.

A grant was made in 1614 to Anne, Roger and James Wright of a licence to
keep a tennis court at St. Edmund’s Bury, co. Suffolk, for life.[31]
Bessy Welling, servant to the late Prince Henry, petitioned for the
erecting of an office for enrolling the Apprentices of Westminster, etc.
As this was not granted, she therefore begs for a lease of some
concealed lands [manors for which no rent has been paid for a hundred
years] for sixty-one years. The Petitioner hopes to recover them for the
King at her own charges.[32] Lady Roxburgh craves a licence to assay all
gold and silver wire “finished at the bar” before it is worked, showing
that it is no infringement on the Earl of Holland’s grant which is for
assaying and sealing gold and silver after it is made. This, it is
pointed out, will be a means for His Majesty to pay off the debt he owes
to Lady Roxburgh which otherwise must be paid some other way.[33]

Footnote 31:

  _C.S.P.D._ lxxvii, 5 April 5, 1614.

Footnote 32:

  _S.P.D._ cxi, 121, 1619.

Footnote 33:

  _S.P.D._ clxxx, 66, 1624.

A petition from Katharine Elliot “wett nurse to the Duke of Yorke” shows
that there is a moor waste or common in Somersetshire called West Sedge
Moor which appears to be the King’s but has been appropriated and
encroached upon by bordering commoners. She begs for a grant of it for
sixty years; as an inducement the Petitioner offers to recover it at her
own costs and charges and to pay a rent of one shilling per acre, the
King never previously having received benefit therefrom.[34] The
reference by Windebank notes that the king is willing to gratify the
Petitioner. Another petition was received from this same lady declaring
that “Divers persons being of no corporation prefers the trade of buying
and selling silk stockings and silk waistcoats as well knit as woven
uttering the Spanish or baser sort of silk at as dear rates as the first
Naples and also frequently vending the woven for the knit, though in
price and goodness there is almost half in half difference.” She prays a
grant for thirty-one years for the selling of silk stockings, half
stockings and waistcoats, to distinguish the woven from the knit
receiving from the salesmen a shilling for every waistcoat, sixpence per
pair of silk stockings and fourpence for every half pair.[35]

Footnote 34:

  _S.P.D._ cccxxiii, 109, 18th June, 1637.

Footnote 35:

  _S.P.D._ cccxxiii., 7, _Bk. of Petitioners_, Car. I.

Elizabeth, Viscountess Savage, points out that Freemen of the city enter
into bond on their admittance with two sureties of a hundred marks to
the Chamberlain of London not to exercise any trade other than that of
the Company they were admitted into. Of late years persons having used
other trades and contrived not to have their bonds forfeited, and the
penalty belonging to His Majesty, she begs a grant of such penalties to
be recovered at her instance and charge.[36]

Footnote 36:

  _S.P.D._ ccciii., 65, Dec. 6th, 1635.

The petition of Margaret Cary, relict of Thomas Cary Esquire, one of the
Grooms of the Chamber to the King on the behalf of herself and her
daughters, begs for a grant to compound with offenders by engrossering
and transporting of wool, wool fells, fuller’s earth, lead, leather,
corn and grain, she to receive a Privy Seal for two fourth-parts of the
fines and compositions. Her reasons for desiring this grant are that her
husband’s expense in prosecuting like cases has reaped no benefit of his
grant of seven-eighths of forfeited bonds for the like offences. She
urges the usefulness of the scheme and the existence of similar
grants.[37]

Footnote 37:

  _S.P.D._ cccvi., 27, 1635.

Mistress Dorothy Seymour petitions for a grant of the fines imposed on
those who export raw hides contrary to the Proclamation and thereby make
coaches, boots, etc., dearer. The reference to the Petition states: “It
is His Majesty’s gratious pleasure that the petitioner cause impoundr.
to be given to the Attorney General touching the offences above
mencioned ... and as proffyt shall arise to His Majesty ... he will give
her such part as shall fully satisfy her pains and good endeavours.”[38]

Footnote 38:

  _S.P.D._ cccxlvi., 2, Feb. 1st, 1637.

The projecting of patents and monopolies was the favourite pursuit of
fashionable people of both sexes. Ben Johnson satirises the Projectress
in the person of Lady Tailebush, of whom the Projector, Meercraft says:

                                  ... “She and I now Are on a
    Project, for the fact, and venting Of a new kind of fucus (paint
    for Ladies) To serve the Kingdom; wherein she herself Hath
    travel’d specially, by the way of service Unto her sex, and
    hopes to get the monopoly, As the Reward of her Invention.”[39]

Footnote 39:

      Jonson, (Ben.) _The Devil is an Ass_, Act III., Scene iv.

When Eitherside assures her mistress:

                                              “I do hear
                You ha’ cause madam, your suit goes on.”

Lady Tailebush replies:

    “Yes faith, there’s life in’t now. It is referr’d If we once see
    it under the seals, wench, then, Have with ’em, for the great
    caroch, six horses And the two coachmen, with my Ambler bare,
    And my three women; we will live i’ faith, The examples o’ the
    Town, and govern it. I’ll lead the fashion still.”...[40]

Footnote 40:

      (_Ibid._), Act IV., Scene ii.

From the women who begged for monopolies which if granted must have
involved much worry and labour if they were to be made profitable, we
pass naturally to women who actually owned and managed businesses
requiring a considerable amount of capital. They not infrequently acted
as pawn-brokers and moneylenders. Thus, complaint is made that Elizabeth
Pennell had stolen “two glazier’s vices with the screws and
appurtenances” and pawned them to one Ellianor Troughton, wife of Samuel
Troughton broker.[41]

Footnote 41:

  _Middlesex Co. Rec. Sess. Books_, p. 18, 1690.

Richard Braithwaite tells the following story of a “Useresse” as though
this occupation were perfectly usual for women. “Wee reade in a booke
entituled the _Gift of Feare_, how a Religious Divine comming to a
certaine Vseresse to advise her of the state of her soule, and instruct
her in the way to salvation at such time as she lay languishing in her
bed of affliction; told her how there were three things by her to be
necessarily performed, if ever she hoped to be saved: She must become
_contrite_ in heart ... _confesse_ her sins ... make _restitution_
according to her meanes whereto shee thus replyed, _Two of those first I
will doe willingly: but to doe the last, I shall hold it a difficulty;
for should I make restitution, what would remaine to raise my children
their portion?_ To which the Divine answered; _Without these three you
cannot be saved. Yea but_, quoth shee, _Doe our Learned Men and
Scriptures say so? Yes, surely_ said the Divine. _And I will try_,
(quoth shee) _whether they say true or no, for I will restore nothing_.
And so resolving, fearefully dyed ... for preferring the care of her
posterity, before the honour of her Maker.”[42]

Footnote 42:

  Braithwaite, (Richd.), _The English Gentleman_, p. 300, 1641.

The names of women often occur in connection with the shipping trade and
with contracts. Some were engaged in business with their husbands as in
the case of a fine remitted to Thomas Price and Collet his wife for
shipping 200 dozen of old shoes, with intention to transport them beyond
the seas contrary to a Statute (5th year Edward VI) on account of their
poverty.[43] Others were widows like Anne Hodsall whose husband, a
London merchant, traded for many years to the Canary Islands, the
greatest part of his estate being there. He could not recover it in his
lifetime owing to the war with Spain and therefore his wife was left in
great distress with four children. Her estate in the Canary Islands is
likely to be confiscated, there being no means of recovering it thence
except by importing wines, and it would be necessary to take pipe-staves
over there to make casks to bring back the wines. She begs the council
therefore “in commiseration of her distressed estate to grant a licence
to her and her assignes to lade one ship here with woollen commodities
for Ireland, To lade Pipe staves in Ireland (notwithstanding the
prohibition) and to send the same to the Canary Islands.”[44]

Footnote 43:

  Overall _Remembrancia, Analytical Index to_, p. 519, 1582.

Footnote 44:

  _Council Register_, 8th August, 1628.

Joseph Holroyd employed a woman as his shipping agent; in a letter dated
1706 he writes re certain goods for Holland: that these “I presume must
be marked as usual and forward to Madam Brown at Hull ...” and he
informs Madam Hannah Browne, that “By orders of Mr. John Whittle I have
sent you one packe and have 2 packes more to send as undʳ. You are to
follow Mr. Whittle’s directions in shipping.”[45]

Footnote 45:

  Holroyd, Joseph (Cloth Factor) and Saml. Hill (clothier), _Letter Bks.
  of_, pp. 18-25.

In 1630 Margrett Greeneway, widow of Thos. Greeneway, baker, begged
leave to finish carrying out a contract made by her husband
notwithstanding the present restraint on the bringing of corn to London.
The contract was to supply the East India Company with biscuit. Margrett
Greeneway petitions to bring five hundred quarters of wheat to
London—some are already bought and she asks for leave to buy the rest.
The petition was granted.[46]

Footnote 46:

  _C.R._, 3rd December, 1630.

A Petition of “Emanuell Fynche, Wm. Lewis Merchantes and Anne Webber
Widow on the behalfe of themselves and others owners of the shipp called
the _Benediction_” was presented to the Privy Council stating that the
ship had been seized and detained by the French and kept at Dieppe where
it was deteriorating. They asked to be allowed to sell her there.[47]
The name of another woman ship-owner occurs in a case at Grimsby brought
against Christopher Claton who “In the behalfe of his Mother An Alford,
wid., hath bought one wessell of Raffe of one Laurence Lamkey of Odwell
in the kingdome of Norway, upon wᶜʰ private bargane there appeares a
breach of the priviledges of this Corporation.”[48]

Footnote 47:

  _S.P.D._ ccxxxvi., 45, 12th, April, 1633.

Footnote 48:

  _Hist. MSS. Com._, 14 Rep., VIII., p. 284, 1655.

In 1636 upon the Petition of Susanna Angell “widowe, and Eliz. her
daughter (an orphan) of the cittie of London humbly praying that they
might by their Lordshipps warrant bee permitted to land 14 barrels of
powder now arrived as also 38 barrells which is daily expected in the
_Fortune_ they paying custome and to sell the same within the kingdome
or otherwise to give leave to transport it back againe into Holland from
whence it came” the Officers of the customs were ordered to permit the
Petitioners to export the powder.[49]

Footnote 49:

  _S.P.D._ ccxcii., 24, March 23, 1636/7., _Proceedings of Gunpowder
  Commissioners_.

Women’s names appear also in lists of contractors to the Army and Navy.
Elizabeth Bennett and Thomas Berry contracted with the Commissioners to
supply one hundred suits of apparel for the soldiers at Plymouth.[50]

Footnote 50:

  _S.P.D._ xx., 62, Feb. 9th, 1626.

Cuthbert Farlowe, Elizabeth Harper Widowe, Edward Sheldon and John
Davis, “poore Tradesmen of London” petition “to be paid the £180 yet
unpaid of their accounts” for furnishing the seamen for Rochelle with
clothes and shoes “att the rates of ready money.”[51]

Footnote 51:

  _S.P.D._ cxcvii., 64, July, 1631.

A warrant was issued “to pay to Alice Bearden £100 for certain cutworks
furnished to the Queen for her own wearing.”[52]

Footnote 52:

  _S.P.D._, clix., 27th Jan. 1630.

Edward Prince brought a case in the Star Chamber, v. Thomas Woodward,
Ellenor Woodward, and Georg. Helliar defendants being Ironmongers for
supposed selling of iron at false weights to undersell plaintiff.
“Defendants respectively prove that they ever bought and sold by one
sort of weight.”[53]

Footnote 53:

  _S.P.D._, clxxxi., 138, 1630.

For her tenancy of the Spy-law Paper Mill, Foulis “receaved from Mʳˢ.
lithgow by Wᵐ. Douglas Hands 85 lib. for ye 1704 monie rent. She owes me
3 rim of paper for that yeir, besydes 4 rim she owes me for former
yeirs.”[54]

Footnote 54:

  Foulis, Sir John, _Account Book_, 5th Jan., 1705.

Joan Dant was one of the few women “capitalists” whose personal story is
known in any detail. Her husband was a working weaver, living in New
Paternoster Row, Spital Fields. On his death she became a pedlar,
carrying an assortment of mercery, hosiery, and haberdashery on her back
from house to house in the vicinity of London. Her conduct as a member
of the Society of Friends was consistent and her manners agreeable, so
that her periodic visits to the houses of Friends were welcomed and she
was frequently entertained as a guest at their tables. After some years,
her expenses being small and her diligence great, she had saved
sufficient capital to engage in a more wholesale trade, debts due from
her correspondents at Paris and Brussels appearing in her executor’s
accounts. In spite of her success in trade Joan Dant continued to live
in her old frugal manner, and when she applied to a Friend for
assistance in making her will, he was astonished to find her worth
rather more than £9,000. He advised her to obtain the assistance of
other Friends more experienced in such matters. On their enquiring how
she wished to dispose of her property, she replied, “I got it by the
rich and I mean to leave it to the poor.”

Joan Dant died in 1715 at the age of eighty-four. In a letter to her
executors she wrote, “It is the Lord that creates true industry in his
people, and that blesseth their endeavours in obtaining things necessary
and convenient for them, which are to be used in moderation by all his
flock and family everywhere.... And I, having been one that has taken
pains to live, and have through the blessing of God, with honesty and
industrious care, improved my little in the world to a pretty good
degree; find my heart open in that charity which comes from the Lord, in
which the true disposal of all things ought to be, to do something for
the poor,—the fatherless and the widows in the Church of Christ,
according to the utmost of my ability.”[55]

Footnote 55:

  _British Friend_, II., p. 113.

Another venture initiated and carried on by a woman, was an Insurance
Office established by Dorothy Petty. An account of it written in 1710
states that:—“The said _Dorothy_ (who is the Daughter of a Divine of the
Church of _England_, now deceas’d) did Set up an _Insurance Office_ on
_Births, Marriages, and Services_, in order thereby to serve the
Publick, and get an honest Livelyhood for herself.... The said _Dorothy_
had such Success in her Undertaking, that more Claims were paid, and
more Stamps us’d for Policies and Certificates in her Office than in all
other the like Offices in _London_ besides; which good Fortune was
chiefly owing to the Fairness and Justice of her Proceedings in the said
Business: for all the Money paid into the Office was Entered in one
Book, and all the Money paid out upon Claims was set down in another
Book, and all People had Liberty to peruse both, so that there could not
possibly be the least Fraud in the Management thereof.”[56]

Footnote 56:

  _Case of Dorothy Petty_, 1710.

In 1622 the names of Mary Hall, 450 coals, Barbara Riddell, 450 coals,
Barbara Milburne, 60 coals, are included without comment among the
brothers of the fellowship of Hostmen (coal owners) of Newcastle who
have coals to rent.[57] The name of Barbara Milburne, widow, is given in
the Subsidy Roll for 1621 as owning land.[58] That these women were
equal to the management of their collieries is suggested by the fact
that when in 1623 Christopher Mitford left besides property which he
bequeathed direct to his nephews and nieces, five salt-pans and
collieries to his sister Jane Legard he appointed her his executrix,[59]
which he would hardly have done unless he had believed her equal to the
management of a complicated business.

Footnote 57:

  _Newcastle and Gateshead, History of_, Vol. III., p. 242.

Footnote 58:

  _Ibid._, p. 237.

Footnote 59:

  _Ibid._, p. 252.

The frequency with which widows conducted capitalistic enterprises may
be taken as evidence of the extent to which wives were associated with
their husbands in business. The wife’s part is sometimes shown in
prosecutions, as in a case which was brought in the Star Chamber against
Thomas Hellyard, Elizabeth his wife and John Goodenough and Hugh
Nicholes for oppression in the country under a patent to Hellyard for
digging saltpetre ... “in pursuance of his direction leave and authority
... Nicholes Powell, Defendants servant, and the said Hellyard’s wife,
did sell divers quantities of salt petre. More particularly the said
Hellyard’s wife did sell to Parker 400 lbs. at Haden Wells, 300 or 400
lbs. at Salisbury and 300 or 400 lbs. at Winchester at £9 the hundred.”
Hellyard was sentenced to a fine of £1,000, pillory, whipping and
imprisonment.

“As touching the other defendant Elizabeth Hellyard the courte was fully
satisfyed with sufficient matter whereupon to ground a sentence against
the defendant Eliz. but shee being a wyfe and subject to obey her
husband theyr Lord ships did forbeare to sentence her.”[60]

Footnote 60:

  _S.P.D._, cclx., 21, 1634.

Three men, “artificers in glass making,” beg that Lady Mansell may
either be compelled to allow them such wages as they formerly received,
or to discharge them from her service, her reduction of wages disabling
them from maintaining their families, and driving many of them away.[61]
Lady Mansell submits a financial statement and account of the rival
glassmakers’ attempts to ruin her husband’s business, one of whom “hath
in open audience vowed to spend 1000li, to ruine your petitioners
husband joyninge with the Scottish pattentie taking the advantage of
your petitioners husbands absence, thinckinge your petitioner a weake
woman unable to followe the busines and determininge the utter ruine of
your petitioner and her husband have inticed three of her workemen for
windowe glasse, which shee had longe kepte att a weeklie chardge to her
great prejudice to supplie the worke yf there should be anie necessitie
in the Kingdome,” etc., etc., she begs justice upon the rivals, “your
petitioner havinge noe other meanes nowe in his absence (neither hath he
when he shall returne) but onelie this busines wherein he hath engaged
his whole estate.”[62]

Footnote 61:

  _S.P.D._, cxlviii., 52, 1623.

Footnote 62:

  _S.P.D._, dxxi., 147. Addenda Charles I., 1625.

Able business women might be found in every class of English society
throughout the seventeenth century, but their contact with affairs
became less habitual as the century wore away, and expressions of
surprise occur at the prowess shown by Dutch women in business. “At
_Ostend_, _Newport_, and _Dunkirk_, where, and when, the _Holland_ pinks
come in, there daily the Merchants, that be but Women (but not such
Women as the Fishwives of _Billingsgate_; for these _Netherland_ Women
do lade many Waggons with fresh Fish daily, some for _Bruges_, and some
for _Brussels_, etc., etc.) I have seen these Women-merchants I say,
have their Aprons full of nothing but _English Jacobuses_, to make all
their Payment of.”[63]

Footnote 63:

  _England’s Way_, 1614. _Harleian Misc._, Vol. III., p. 383.

Sir J. Child mentions “the Education of their Children as well Daughters
as Sons; all which, be they of never so great quality or estate, they
always take care to bring up to write perfect good Hands, and to have
the full knowledge and use of Arithmetick and Merchant Accounts,” as one
of the advantages which the Dutch possess over the English; “the well
understanding and practise whereof doth strangely infuse into most that
are the owners of that Quality, of either Sex, not only an Ability for
Commerce of all kinds, but a strong aptitude, love and delight in it;
and in regard the women are as knowing therein as the Men, it doth
incourage their Husbands to hold on in their Trades to their dying days,
knowing the capacity of their Wives to get in their Estates, and carry
on their Trades after their Deaths: Whereas if a Merchant in England
arrive at any considerable Estate, he commonly with-draws his Estate
from Trade, before he comes near the confines of Old Age; reckoning that
if God should call him out of the World while the main of his Estate is
engaged abroad in Trade, he must lose one third of it, through the
unexperience and unaptness of his Wife to such Affairs, and so it
usually falls out. Besides it hath been observed in the nature of
Arithmetick, that like other parts of the Mathematicks, it doth not only
improve the Rational Faculties, but inclines those that are expert in it
to Thriftiness and good Husbandry, and prevents both Husbands and Wives
in some measure from running out of their estates.”[64]

Footnote 64:

  Child, Sir J., _A New Discourse of Trade_, pp. 4-5. 1694.

This account is confirmed by Howell who writes of the Dutch in 1622 that
they are “well versed in all sorts of languages.... Nor are the Men only
expert therein but the Women and Maids also in their common Hostries; &
in Holland the Wives are so well versed in Bargaining, Cyphering &
Writing, that in the Absence of their Husbands in long sea voyages they
beat the Trade at home & their Words will pass in equal Credit. These
Women are wonderfully sober, tho’ their Husbands make commonly their
Bargains in Drink, & then are they more cautelous.”[65]

Footnote 65:

  Howell, (Jas.), _Familiar Letters_, p. 103.

This unnatural reversing of the positions of men and women was censured
by the Spaniard Vives who wrote “In Hollande, women do exercise
marchandise and the men do geue themselues to quafting, the which
customes and maners I alowe not, for thei agre not with nature, yᵉ which
hath geuen unto man a noble, a high & a diligent minde to be busye and
occupied abroade, to gayne & to bring home to their wiues & families to
rule them and their children, ... and to yᵉ woman nature hath geuen a
feareful, a couetous & an humble mind to be subject unto man, & to kepe
yᵗ he doeth gayne.”[66]

Footnote 66:

  Vives, _Office and Duties of a Husband_, trans. by Thos. Paynell.

The contrast which had arisen between Dutch and English customs in this
respect was also noticed by Wycherley, one of whose characters, Monsieur
Paris, a Francophile fop, describes his tour in Holland in the following
terms: “I did visit, you must know, one of de Principal of de State
General ... and did find his Excellence weighing Sope, jarnie ha, ha,
ha, weighing sope, ma foy, for he was a wholesale Chandeleer; and his
Lady was taking de Tale of Chandels wid her own witer Hands, ma foy; and
de young Lady, his Excellence Daughter, stringing Harring, jarnie ...
his Son, (for he had but one) was making the Tour of France, etc. in a
Coach and six.”[67]

Footnote 67:

  Wycherley, _The Gentleman Dancing Master_, p. 21.

The picture is obviously intended to throw ridicule on the neighbouring
state, of whose navy and commercial progress England stood at that time
in considerable fear.

How rapidly the active, hardy life of the Elizabethan gentlewoman was
being transformed into the idleness and dependence which has
characterised the lady of a later age may be judged by Mary Astell’s
comment on “Ladies of Quality.” She says, “They are placed in a
condition which makes that which is everyone’s chief business to be
their only employ. They have nothing to do but to glorify God and to
benefit their neighbours.”[68] After a study of the Restoration Drama it
may be doubted whether the ladies of that period wished to employ their
leisure over these praiseworthy objects. But had they the will,
ignorance of life and inexperience in affairs are qualifications which
perhaps would not have increased the effectiveness of their efforts in
either direction.

Footnote 68:

  Astell, (Mary), _A Serious Proposal_, p. 145, 1694.

The proof of the change which was taking place in the scope of
upper-class women’s interests does not rest only upon individual
examples such as those which have been quoted, though these instances
have been selected for the most part on account of their representative
character.

It is quite clear that the occupation of ladies with their husband’s
affairs was accepted as a matter of course throughout the earlier part
of the century, and it is only after the Restoration that a change of
fashion in this respect becomes evident. Pepys, whose milieu was typical
of the new social order, after a call upon Mr. Bland, commented with
surprised pleasure on Mrs. Bland’s interest in her husband’s affairs.
“Then to eat a dish of anchovies,” he says “and drink wine and syder and
very merry, but above all things, pleased to hear Mrs. Bland talk like a
merchant in her husband’s business very well, and it seems she do
understand it and perform a great deal.”[69] The capacity of a woman to
understand her husband’s business seldom aroused comment earlier in the
century, and would have passed unnoticed even by many of Pepys’
contemporaries who lived in a different set. Further evidence of women’s
business capacity is found in the fact that men generally expected their
wives would prove equal to the administration of their estates after
their death, and thus the wife was habitually appointed executrix often
even the sole executrix of wills. This custom was certainly declining in
the latter part of the century. The winding up of a complicated estate
and still more the prosecution of an extensive business, could not have
been successfully undertaken by persons who hitherto had led lives of
idleness, unacquainted with the direction of affairs.

Footnote 69:

  Pepys, (Sam.), _Diary_, Vol. II., p. 113, Dec. 31, 1662.

That men did not at this time regard marriage as necessarily involving
the assumption of a serious economic burden, but on the contrary, often
considered it to be a step which was likely to strengthen them in life’s
battles, is also significant. This attitude was partly due to the
provision of a dot by fathers of brides, but there were other ways in
which the wife contributed to the support of her household. Thus in a
wedding sermon woman is likened to a merchant’s ship, for “She bringeth
her food from far” ... not meaning she is to be chosen for her dowry,
“for the worst wives may have the best portions, ... a good wife tho’
she bring nothing in with her, yet, thro’ her Wisdom and Diligence great
things come in by her; she brings in with her hands, for, _She putteth
her hands to the wheel_.... If she be too high to stain her Hands with
bodily Labour, yet she bringeth in with her Eye, for, _She overseeth the
Ways of her Household_, ... and eateth not the Bread of _Idleness_.” She
provides the necessities of life. “If she will have Bread, she must not
always buy it, but she must sow it, and reap it and grind it, ... She
must knead it, and make it into bread. Or if she will have Cloth, she
must not always run to the Shop or to the score but she begins at the
seed, she carrieth her seed to the Ground, she gathereth Flax, of her
Flax she spinneth a Thread, of her Thread she weaveth Cloth, and so she
comes by her coat.”[70]

Footnote 70:

  Wilkinson, (Robert), _Conjugal Duty_, pp. 13-17.

The woman here described was the mistress of a large household, who
found scope for her productive energy within the limits of domestic
industry, but it has been shown that the married woman often went
farther than this, and engaged in trade either as her husband’s
assistant or even on her own account.

The effect of such work on the development of women’s characters was
very great, for any sort of productive, that is to say, creative work,
provides a discipline and stimulus to growth essentially different from
any which can be acquired in a life devoted to spending money and the
cultivation of ornamental qualities.

The effect on social relations was also marked, for their work implied
an association of men and women through a wide range of human interests
and a consequent development of society along organic rather than
mechanical lines. The relation between husband and wife which obtained
most usually among the upper classes in England at the opening of the
seventeenth century, appears indeed to have been that of partnership;
the chief responsibility for the care of children and the management and
provisioning of her household resting on the wife’s shoulders, while in
business matters she was her husband’s lieutenant. The wife was subject
to her husband, her life was generally an arduous one, but she was by no
means regarded as his servant. A comradeship existed between them which
was stimulating and inspiring to both. The ladies of the Elizabethan
period possessed courage, initiative, resourcefulness and wit in a high
degree. Society expected them to play a great part in the national life
and they rose to the occasion; perhaps it was partly the comradeship
with their husbands in the struggle for existence which developed in
them qualities which had otherwise atrophied.

Certainly the more circumscribed lives of the Restoration ladies show a
marked contrast in this respect, for they appear but shadows of the
vigorous personalities of their grandmothers. Prominent amongst the many
influences which conspired together to produce so rapid a decline in the
physique, efficiency and morale of upper-class women, must be reckoned
the spread of the capitalistic organisation of industry, which by the
rapid growth of wealth made possible the idleness of growing numbers of
women. Simultaneously the gradual perfecting by men of their separate
organisations for trade purposes rendered them independent of the
services of their wives and families for the prosecution of their
undertakings. Though the stern hand of economic necessity was thus
withdrawn from the control of women’s development in the upper classes,
it was still potent in determining their destiny amongst the “common
people,” whose circumstances will be examined in detail in the following
chapters.

                              AGRICULTURE

Agriculture England’s leading Industry—Has provided the most vigorous
   stock of English race—Division into three classes:—

   (A) _Farmers._ Portraits of Farmers’ Wives—Fitzherbert’s
   “Prologue for the Wyves Occupacyon.” Size of household—The Wife
   who “doth not take the pains and charge upon her.” Financial
   aptitude—Market—Occupation of gentlewomen with Dairy and
   Poultry—Expectation of the wife’s ability to work and do service.

   (B) _Husbandmen._ Economy of their Small Holding—The more they worked
   for wages the greater their poverty—Strenuous but healthy life of the
   women—Extent to which they worked for wages—Character of work—Best’s
   account of Yorkshire Farms—other descriptions. Spinning—The wife’s
   industry no less constant when not working for wages, but more
   profitable to her family, whom she clothed and fed by domestic
   industry.

   (C) _Wage-earners._ Maximum rates of wages fixed at Assizes represent
   generally those actually paid. Common labourers’ wage, winter and
   summer—Women’s wages seasonal—Not expected when married to work week
   in, week out. Cost of living—Cost of labourers’ diet—Pensions and
   Allowances—Poor Relief—Cost of clothes and rent—Joint wages of father
   and mother insufficient to rear three children—Recognised insolvency
   of Labourers’ Family—Disputes concerning labourers’ settlements.
   Farmers’ need for more labourers—Demoralisation—Demand for sureties
   by the Parish. Infant mortality—Life history of labourers’
   wives—Explanation for magistrates’ action in fixing maximum wages
   below subsistence level—Proportion of wage-earning families.

ALTHOUGH the woollen trade loomed very large upon the political horizon
because it was a chief source of revenue to the Crown and because
rapidly acquired wealth gave an influence to clothiers and wool
merchants out of proportion to their numbers, agriculture was still
England’s chief industry in the seventeenth century.

The town population has had a tendency to wear out and must be recruited
from rural districts. The village communities which still persisted at
this period in England, provided a vigorous stock, from which the men
whose initiative, energy and courage have made England famous during the
last two centuries were largely descended. Not only were the farming
families prolific in numbers but they maintained a high standard of
mental and moral virtue. It must be supposed therefore that the
conditions in which they lived were upon the whole favourable to the
development of their women-folk, but investigation will show that this
was not the case for all members alike of the agricultural community,
who may be roughly divided into three classes:

(a) Farmers. (b) Husbandmen. (c) Wage-earners.

(a) _Farmers_ held sufficient land for the complete maintenance of the
family. Their household often included hired servants and their methods
on the larger farms were becoming capitalistic.

(b) _Husbandmen_ were possessed of holdings insufficient for the
complete maintenance of the family and their income was therefore
supplemented by working for wages.

(c) _Wage-earners_ had no land, not even a garden, and depended
therefore completely on wages for the maintenance of their families.

In addition to the above, for whom agriculture was their chief business,
the families of the gentry, professional men and tradesmen who lived in
the country and smaller towns, generally grew sufficient dairy and
garden produce for domestic consumption.

The above classification is arbitrary, for no hard-and-fast division
existed. Farmers merged imperceptibly into husbandmen, and husbandmen
into wage-earners and yet there was a wide gulf separating their
positions. As will be shown, it was the women of the first two classes
who bore and reared the children who were destined to be the makers of
England, while few children of the wage-earning class reached maturity.

                             A. _Farmers._

However important the women who were the mothers of the race may appear
to modern eyes, their history was unnoticed by their contemporaries and
no analysis was made of their development. The existence of vigorous,
able matrons was accepted as a matter of course. They embodied the
seventeenth century idea of the “eternal feminine” and no one suspected
that they might change with a changing environment. They themselves were
too busy, too much absorbed in the lives of others, to keep journals and
they were not sufficiently important to have their memoirs written by
other people.

Perhaps their most authentic portraits may be found in the writings of
the Quakers, who were largely drawn from this class of the community.
They depict women with an exalted devotion, supporting their families
and strengthening their husbands through the storms of persecution and
amidst the exacting claims of religion.

John Banks wrote from Carlisle Prison in 1648 to his wife, “No greater
Joy and Comfort I have in this world ... than to know that thou and all
thine are well both in Body and Mind ... though I could be glad to see
thee here, but do not straiten thyself in any wise, for I am truly
content to bear it, if it were much more, considering thy Concerns in
this Season of the Year, being Harvest time and the Journey so
long.”[71] After her death he writes, “We Lived Comfortably together
many Years, and she was a Careful Industrious Woman in bringing up of
her Children in good order, as did become the Truth, in Speech,
Behaviour and Habit; a Meet-Help and a good Support to me, upon the
account of my Travels, always ready and willing to fit me with
Necessaries, ... and was never known to murmur, tho’ I was often
Concerned, to leave her with a weak Family,... She was well beloved
amongst good Friends and of her Neighbours, as witness the several
hundreds that were at her Burial ... our Separation by Death, was the
greatest Trial that ever I met with, above anything here below. Now if
any shall ask, Why I have writ so many Letters at large to be Printed
... how can any think that I should do less than I have done, to use all
Endeavours what in me lay, to Strengthen and Encourage my Dear Wife,
whom I so often, and for so many Years was made to leave as aforesaid,
having pretty much concerns to look after.”[72]

Footnote 71:

  Banks (John), _Journal_, p. 101, 1684.

Footnote 72:

  Banks, (John), _Journal_, pp. 129-30.

Of another Quaker, Mary Batt, her father writes in her testimony that
she was “Married to _Phillip Tyler_ of _Waldon_ in the County of
_Somerset_ before she attained the age of twenty years.... The Lord
blessed her with Four Children, whereof two dyed in their Infancy, and
two yet remain alive: at the Burial of her Husband, for being present,
she had two Cows valued at Nine Pounds taken from her, which, with many
other Tryals during her Widowhood, she bore with much Patience,... After
she had remained a Widow about four Years, the Lord drew the affection
of _James Taylor_ ... to seek her to be his Wife, and there being an
answer in her, the Lord joyned them together. To her Husband her Love
and Subjection was suitable to that Relation, being greatly delighted in
his Company, and a Meet-Help, a faithful Yoak-fellow, ... and in his
Absence, not only carefully discharging the duty as her Place as a Wife,
but diligent to supply his Place in those affairs that more immediately
concerned him.”[73] And her husband adds in his testimony, “My outward
Affairs falling all under her charge (I, being absent, a Prisoner for my
Testimony against Tythes) she did manage the same in such care and
patience until the time she was grown big with Child, and as she thought
near the time of her Travail (a condition much to be born with and
pittyed) she then desired so much Liberty as to have my Company home two
Weeks, and went herself to request it, which small matter she could not
obtain, but was denyed; and as I understood by her, it might be one of
the greatest occasions of her grief which ever happened unto her, yet in
much Meekness and true Patience she stooped down, and quietly took up
this her last Cross also, and is gone with it and all the rest, out of
the reach of all her Enemies, ... Three Nights and Two Days before her
Death, I was admitted to come to her, though I may say (with grief) too
late, yet it was to her great joy to see me once more whom she so dearly
loved; and would not willingly suffer me any more to depart out of her
sight until she had finished her days, ... Her Sufferings (in the
condition she was in) although I was a Prisoner, were far greater then
mine, for the whole time that she became my Wife, which was some Weeks
above Three Years, notwithstanding there was never yet man, woman, nor
child, could justly say, she had given them any offence ... yet must ...
unreasonable men cleanse our Fields of Cattle, rummage our House of
Goods, and make such havock as that my Dear Wife had not wherewithal to
dress or set Food before me and her Children.”[74]

Footnote 73:

  Batt (Mary), _Testimony of the Life and Death of_, pp. 1-3, 1683.

Footnote 74:

  Batt (Mary), _Testimony to Life and Death of_, pp. 5-7, 1683.

The duties of a Farmer’s wife were described a hundred years earlier by
Fitzherbert in the “Boke of Husbandrie.” He begins the “Prologue for the
wyves occupacyon,” thus, “Now thou husbande that hast done thy diligence
and laboure that longeth to a husband to get thy liuing, thy wyues, thy
children, and thy seruauntes, yet is there other thynges to be doen that
nedes must be done, or els thou shalt not thryue. For there is an olde
common saying, that seldom doth ye husbande thriue without leue of his
wyf. By thys saying it shuld seem that ther be other occupaciõs and
labours that be most cõvenient for the wyfes to do, and how be it that I
haue not the experience of all their occupacyions and workes as I haue
of husbandry, yet a lytel wil I speake what they ought to do though I
tel thẽ not how they should do and excersyse their labour and
occupacions.

“_A lesson for the wyfe_ ... alway be doyng of some good workes that the
deuil may fynde the alway occupied, for as in a standyng water are
engendred wormes, right so in an idel body are engendered ydel
thoughtes. Here maie thou see yᵗ of idelnes commeth damnatiõ, & of good
workes and labour commeth saluacion. Now thou art at thy libertie to
chose whither waye thou wilte, wherein is great diversite. And he is an
unhappye man or woman that god hath given both wit & reason and putteth
him in choise & he to chose the worst part. Nowe thou wife I trust to
shewe unto the diuers occupacions, workes and labours that thou shalt
not nede to be ydel no tyme of yᵉ yere. What thinges the wife is bounde
of right to do. Firste and principally the wyfe is bound of right to
loue her husband aboue father and mother and al other men....

“What workes a wyfe should do in generall. First in the mornyng when
thou art wakéd and purpose to rise, lift up thy hãd & blis the & make a
signe of the holy crosse ... and remembre thy maker and thou shalte
spede muche the better, & when thou art up and readye, then firste swepe
thy house; dresse up thy dyscheborde, & set al thynges in good order
within thy house, milke yᵉ kie, socle thy calues, sile up thy milke,
take up thy children & aray thẽ, & provide for thy husbandes
breakefaste, diner, souper, & for thy children & seruauntes, & take thy
parte wyth them. And to ordeyne corne & malt to the myll, to bake and
brue withall whẽ nede is. And mete it to the myll and fro the myll, & se
that thou haue thy mesure agayne besides the tole or elles the mylner
dealeth not truly wyth the, or els thy corne is not drye as it should
be, thou must make butter and chese when thou may, serue thy swine both
mornyng and eueninge, and giue thy polen meate in the mornynge, and when
tyme of yeare cometh thou must take hede how thy henne, duckes, and
geese do ley, and to gather up their egges and when they waxe broudy to
set them there as no beastes, swyne, nor other vermyne hurte them, and
thou must know that all hole foted foule wil syt a moneth and al clouen
foted foule wyl syt but three wekes except a peyhen and suche other
great foules as craynes, bustardes, and suche other. And when they haue
brought forth theyr birdes to se that they be well kepte from the gleyd,
crowes, fully martes and other vermyn, and in the begynyng of March, of
a lytle before is time for a wife to make her garden and to get as manye
good sedes and herbes as she can, and specyally such as be good for the
pot and for to eate & as ofte as nede shall require it muste be weded,
for els the wede wyll ouer grow the herbes, and also in Marche is time
to sowe flaxe and hempe, for I haue heard olde huswyues say, that better
is Marche hurdes then Apryll flaxe, the reason appereth, but howe it
shoulde be sowen, weded, pulled, repealed, watred, washen, dried, beten,
braked, tawed, hecheled, spon, wounden, wrapped, & ouen. It nedeth not
for me to shewe for they be wyse ynough, and thereof may they make
shetes, bord clothes, towels, shertes, smockes, and suche other
necessaryes, and therfore lette thy dystaffe be alwaye redy for a
pastyme, that thou be not ydell. And undoubted a woman cannot get her
livinge honestly with spinning on the dystaffe, but it stoppeth a gap
and must nedes be had. The bolles of flaxe whan they be rypled of, muste
be rediled from the wedes and made dry with the sunne to get out the
seedes. How be it one maner of linsede called lokensede wyll not open by
the sunne, and therefore when they be drye they must be sore bruien and
broken the wyves know how, & then wynowed and kept dry til peretime cum
againe. Thy femell hempe must be pulled fro the chucle hẽpe for this
beareth no sede & thou muste doe by it as thou didest by the flaxe. The
chucle hempe doth beare seed & thou must beware that birdes eate it not
as it groweth, the hempe thereof is not so good as the femel hẽpe, but
yet it wil do good seruice. It may fortune sometime yᵗ thou shalte haue
so many thinges to do that thou shalte not wel know where is best to
begyn. Thẽ take hede whiche thinge should be the greatest losse if it
were not done & in what space it would be done, and then thinke what is
the greatest loss & there begin.... It is cõvenient for a husbande to
haue shepe of his owne for many causes, and then may his wife have part
of the wooll to make her husbande and her selfe sum clothes. And at the
least waye she may haue yᵉ lockes of the shepe therwith to make clothes
or blankets, and couerlets, or both. And if she haue no wol of her owne
she maye take woll to spynne of cloth makers, and by that meanes she may
have a conuenient liuing, and many tymes to do other workes. It is a
wiues occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte wash and
wring, to make hey, to shere corne, and in time of nede to helpe her
husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough, to
lode hey, corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell
butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees, and
al maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges
belonging to a houshold, and to make a true rekening & accompt to her
husband what she hath receyued and what she hathe payed. And yf the
husband go to the market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew
his wife in lyke maner. For if one of them should use to disceiue the
other, he disceyveth him selfe, and he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore
they must be true ether to other.”[75]

Footnote 75:

  Fitzherbert (Sir Anth.), _Boke of Husbandrye_.

Fitzherbert’s description of the wife’s occupation probably remained
true in many districts during the seventeenth century. The dairy,
poultry, garden and orchard were then regarded as peculiarly the domain
of the mistress, but upon the larger farms she did not herself undertake
the household drudgery. Her duty was to organise and train her servants,
both men and women.

The wages assessments of the period give some idea of the size of
farmers’ households, fixing wages for the woman-servant taking charge of
maulting in great farms, every other maulster, the best mayde servant
that can brewe, bake and dresse meate, the second mayd servant, the
youngest mayd servant, a woman being skilful in ordering a house, dayry
mayd, laundry mayd, and also for the men servants living in the house,
the bailiff of husbandry, the chief hinde, and the common man-servant,
the shepherd, and the carter.

That some women already aspired to a life of leisure is shown in an
assessment for the East Riding of Yorkshire, which provides a special
rate of wages for the woman-servant “that taketh charge of brewing,
baking, kitching, milk house or malting, that is hired with a gentleman
or rich yeoman, whose wife doth not take the pains and charge upon
her.”[76]

Footnote 76:

  Rogers (J. E. Thorold), _Hist. Agric. and Prices_, Vol. VI., pp.
  686-9, assess. for Yorks, East Riding, Ap. 26, 1593.

In addition to the management of the dairy, etc., the farmer’s wife
often undertook the financial side of the business. Thus Josselin notes
in his Diary: “This day was good wife Day with mee; I perceive she is
resolved to give mee my price for my farme of Mallories, and I intend to
lett it goe.” A few days later he enters “This day I surrendered
Mallories and the appurtenances to Day of Halsted and his daughter.”[77]

Footnote 77:

  Josselin (R), _Diary_, p. 86, April 9th, and 30th, 1650.

The farmer’s wife attended market with great regularity, where she
became thoroughly expert in the art of buying and selling. The journey
to market often involved a long ride on horseback, not always free from
adventure as is shown by information given to the Justices by Maud, wife
of Thomas Collar of Woolavington, who stated that as she was returning
home by herself from Bridgwater market on or about 7th July, Adrian
Towes of Marke, overtook her and calling her ugly toad demanded her
name; he then knocked her down and demanded her purse, to which, hiding
her purse, she replied that she had bestowed all her money in the
market. He then said, ‘I think you are a Quaker,’ & she denied it, he
compelled her to kneel down on her bare knees and swear by the Lord’s
blood that she was not, which to save her life she did. Another woman
then came up and rebuked the said Towes, whereupon he struck her down
‘atwhart’ her saddle into one of her panniers.[78]

Footnote 78:

  _Somerset Quarter Sessions Records_, Vol. III, pp. 370-1, 1659.

Market was doubtless the occasion of much gossip, but it may also have
been the opportunity for a wide interchange of views and opinions on
subjects important to the well-being of the community. While market was
frequented by all the women of the neighbourhood it must certainly have
favoured the formation of a feminine public opinion on current events,
which prevented individual women from relying exclusively upon their
husbands for information and advice.

The names of married women constantly appear in money transactions,
their receipt being valid for debts due to their husbands. Thus Sarah
Fell enters in her Household Book, “Pd. Bridget Pindʳ in full of her
Husband’s bills as appeares £3. 17s. 6d.”[79] by mᵒ pᵈ Anthony Towers
wife in pᵗ foʳ manneʳ wee are to have of heʳ 1.00[80] to mᵒ Recᵈ. of
Myles Gouth wife foʳ ploughing for her 1.04”[81]

Footnote 79:

  _Fell (Sarah) Household Accounts_, p. 317, 1676.

Footnote 80:

  _Fell (Sarah)_, _Household Accounts_, p. 339, 1676.

Footnote 81:

  _Ibid._, p. 386, 1677.

Arithmetic was not considered a necessary item in the education of
girls, though as the following incident shows, women habitually acted in
financial matters.

Samuel Bownas had been sent to gaol for tithe, but the Parson could not
rest and let him out, when he went to Bristol on business and spent two
weeks visiting meetings in Wiltshire. After his return, while away from
home a distant relation called and asked his wife to lend him ten pounds
as he was going to a fair. She not thinking of tithe which was much
more, lent it and he gave her a note, which action was approved by her
husband on his return; but the relation returned again in Samuel
Bownas’s absence to repay, and tore the note as soon as he received it,
giving her a quittance for the tithe instead. She was indignant, saying
it would destroy her husband’s confidence in her. The relation assured
her that he would declare her innocence, but he could not have persuaded
her husband, for “he would have started so many questions that I could
not possibly have affected it any other way than by ploughing with his
heifer.”[82]

Footnote 82:

  _Bownas (Samuel)_, _Life_, pp. 116-17.

Women’s names frequently occur in presentments at Quarter Sessions for
infringements of bye-laws. The Salford Portmote “p’sent Isabell the wyef
of Edmunde Howorthe for that she kept her swyne unlawfull, and did
trespas to the corn of the said Raphe Byrom.”[83]

Footnote 83:

  _Salford Portmote Records_, Vol. I, p. 3, 1597.

Katharine Davie was presented “for not paving before her doore.” Mrs.
Elizabeth Parkhurst for “layinge a dunghill anenst her barne and not
makinge the street cleane.” Isabell Dawson and Edmund Cowper for the
like and Mrs. Byrom and some men “for letting swyne go unringed and
trespassinge into his neighbors corne & rescowinge them when they have
beene sent to the fould.”[84] “Charles Gregorie’s wife complained that
shee is distrained for 3s. for an amerciament for hoggs goeing in the
Streete whereupon, upon her tendring of 3s. xijd is restored with her
flaggon.”[85] The owner of the pig appears very often to be a married
woman. At Carlisle in 1619: “We amarye the wief of John Barwicke for
keping of swine troughes in the hye streyt contrary the paine and
therefore in amercyment according to the orders of this cyttie,
xiiid.”[86]

Footnote 84:

  _Salford Portmote Records_, Vol. II., pp. 6-7, 1633.

Footnote 85:

  Guilding, _Reading Records_, Vol. IV., p. 512, 1653.

Footnote 86:

  Ferguson, _Municipal Records of Carlisle_, p. 278.

Such women may often not have been farmers in the full sense of the
word, but merely kept a few pigs to supplement the family income. Even
the gentry were not too proud to sell farm and garden produce not needed
for family consumption, and are alluded to as “... our Country Squires,
who sell Calves and Runts, and their Wives perhaps Cheese and
Apples.”[87]

Footnote 87:

  Howell, _Familiar Letters_, p. 290, 1644.

Many gentlewomen were proficient in dairy management. Richard
Braithwaite writes of his wife:

                “Oft have I seen her from her Dayrey come
                 Attended by her maids, and hasting home
                 To entertain some Guests of Quality
                 Shee would assume a state so modestly
                 Sance affectation, as she struck the eye
                 With admiration of the stander-by.”

The whole management of the milch cows belonged to the wife, not only
among farming people but also among the gentry. The proceeds were
regarded as her pin-money, and her husband generally handed over to her
all receipts on this account, Sir John Foulis for example entering in
his account book: “June 30 1693. To my wife yᵉ pryce of yᵉ gaird kowes
Hyde, £4 0 0.”[88]

Footnote 88:

  Foulis (Sir John, of Ravelston), _Acct. Bk._, p. 158.

Sometimes when the husband devoted himself to good fellowship, the farm
depended almost entirely on his wife; this was the case with Adam Eyre,
a retired Captain, who enters in his Dyurnall, _Feb. 10, 1647_, “This
morning Godfrey Bright bought my horse of my wife, and gave her £5, and
promised to give her 20s. more, which I had all but 20s. and shee is to
take in the corne sale £4.” _May 18, 1647_, “I came home with Raph
Wordsworth of the Water hall who came to buy a bull on my wife, who was
gone into Holmefrith.”[89]

Footnote 89:

  Eyre, (Capt. Adam), _A Dyurnall_, p. 16, p. 36.

The business capacity of married women was even more valuable in
families where the father wished to devote his talents to science,
politics, or religion, unencumbered by anxiety for his children’s
maintenance. It is said in Peter Heylin’s Life that “Being deprived of
Ecclesiastical preferments, he must think of some honest way for a
livelihood. Yet notwithstanding he followed his studies, in which was
his chief delight.... In which pleasing study while he spent his time,
his good wife, a discreet and active lady, looked both after her
Housewifery within doors, and the Husbandry without; thereby freeing him
from that care and trouble, which otherwise would have hindered his
laborious Pen from going through so great a work in that short time. And
yet he had several divertisements by company, which continually resorted
to his house; for having (God be thanked) his temporal Estate cleared
from Sequestration, by his Composition with the Commissioners at
_Goldsmith’s Hall_, and this Estate which he Farmed besides, he was able
to keep a good House, and relieve his poor brethren.”[90]

Footnote 90:

  _Heylin, (Peter)_, pp. 18-19.

Gregory King’s father was a student of mathematics, “and practised
surveying of land, and dyalling, as a profession; but with more
attention to _good-fellowship_, than mathematical studies generally
allow: and, the care of the family devolved of course on the mother,
who, if she had been less obscure, had emulated the most eminent of the
Roman matrons.”[91]

Footnote 91:

  King (Gregory), _Natural and Political Observations, etc._

Adam Martindale’s wife was equally successful. He writes “about
Michaelmas, 1662, removed my family from the Vicarage to a little house
at Camp-greene, ... where we dwelt above three years and half.... I was
three score pounds in debt, ... but (God be praised) while I staid there
I paid off all that debt and bestowed £40 upon mareling part of my
ground in Tatton.... If any aske how this could be without a Miracle, he
may thus be satisfied. I had sent me ... £41 ... and the £10 my wife
wrangled out of my successor, together with a table, formes and ceiling,
sold him for about £4 more.”[92] Later on he adds “My family finding
themselves straitened for roome, and my wife being willing to keep a
little stock of kine, as she had done formerly, and some inconvenience
falling out (as is usual) by two families under a roofe, removed to a
new house not completely furnished.”[93]

Footnote 92:

  _Martindale, (Adam),_ _Life_, p. 172.

Footnote 93:

  _Ibid._, p. 190.

That in the agricultural community women were generally supposed to be,
from a business point of view, a help and not a hindrance to their
husbands—that in fact the wife was not “kept” by him but helped him to
support the family is shown by terms proposed for colonists in Virginia
by the Merchant Taylors who offer “one hundred acres for every man’s
person that hath a trade, or a body able to endure day labour as much
for his wief, as much for his child, that are of yeres to doe service to
the Colony.”[94]

Footnote 94:

  Clode, (C.M.) _Merchant Taylors_, Vol. I., p. 323.

                            B. _Husbandmen._

Husbandmen were probably the most numerous class in the village
community. Possessed of a small holding at a fixed customary rent and
with rights of grazing on the common, they could maintain a position of
independence.

Statute 31 Eliz., forbidding the erection of cottages without four acres
of land attached, was framed with the intention of protecting the
husbandman against the encroachments of capitalists, for a family which
could grow its own supply of food on four acres of land would be largely
independent of the farmer, as the father could earn the money for the
rent, etc., by working only at harvest when wages were highest. As
however this seasonal labour was not sufficient for the farmers’
demands, such independence was not wholly to their mind, and they
complained of the idleness of husbandmen who would not work for the
wages offered. Thus it was said that “In all or most towns, where the
fields lie open there is a new brood of upstart intruders or inmates ...
loiterers who will not work unless they may have such excessive wages as
they themselves desire.”[95] “There is with us now rather a scarcity
than a superfluity of servants, their wages being advanced to such an
extraordinary height, that they are likely ere long to be masters and
their masters servants, many poor husbandmen being forced to pay near as
much to their servants for wages as to their landlords for rent.”[96]

Footnote 95:

  Pseudonismus, _Considerations concerning Common Fields and
  Enclosures_, 1654.

Footnote 96:

  Pseudonismus, _A Vindication of the Considerations concerning Common
  Fields and Enclosures_, 1656.

The holdings of the husbandmen varied from seven acres or more to half
an acre or even less of garden ground, in which as potatoes[97] were not
yet grown in England the crop consisted of wheat, barley, rye, oats, or
peas. Very likely there was a patch of hemp or flax and an apple-tree or
two, a cherry tree and some elder-berries in the hedge, with a hive or
two of bees in a warm corner. Common rights made it possible to keep
sheep and pigs and poultry, and the possession of a cow definitely
lifted the family above the poverty line.

Footnote 97:

  Potatoes were already in use in Ireland, but are scarcely referred to
  during this period by English writers.

Dorothy Osborne describing her own day to her lover, gives an idyllic
picture of the maidens tending cows on the common: “The heat of the day
is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock I walk
out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young
wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads. I
go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient
shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but
trust me, I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to
them and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the
world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly, when we are in
the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows
going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings at
their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay behind, and when I see them
driving home their cattle, I think ’tis time for me to retire too.”[98]

Footnote 98:

  _Osborne (Dorothy), Letters_, pp. 103, 4. 1652-1654.

Husbandmen have been defined as a class who could not subsist entirely
upon their holdings, but must to some extent work for wages. Their need
for wages varied according to the size of their holding and according to
the rent. For copy-holders the rent was usually nominal,[99] but in
other cases the husbandman was often forced to pay what was virtually a
rack rent. Few other money payments were necessary and if the holding
was large enough to produce sufficient food, the family had little cause
to fear want.

Footnote 99:

  30s. Susanna Suffolke a young maid holds a customary cottage, ... and
  renteth per annum 2d.

  £28 Eliz. Filoll (widdow) holdeth one customary tenement. Rent per
  annum 26s. 8d.

  £2 Mary Stanes holdeth one customary cottage (late of Robert Stanes)
  and renteth per annum 7d.

  £12 Margaret Dowe (widdow) holdeth one customary tenement (her eldest
  son the next heir) rent 7s. 8d.

  Among freeholders. Johan Mathew (widow) holdeth one free tenement and
  one croft of land thereto belonging ... containing three acres and a
  half and renteth 3d.

  (Stones, Jolley. 1628. From a List of Copyholders in West & S.
  Haningfield, Essex.)

Randall Taylor wrote complacently in 1689 that in comparison with the
French peasants, “Our _English_ husbandmen are both better fed and
taught, and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread, and the
Gospel, that by the Calculations of our _Bills_ of _Mortality_ it
appears, that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is
starved.”[100]

Footnote 100:

  Taylor. (Randall), _Discourse of the Growth of England, etc._, p. 96,
  1689.

The woman of the husbandman class was muscular and well nourished.
Probably she had passed her girlhood in service on a farm, where hard
work, largely in the open air, had sharpened her appetite for the
abundant diet which characterised the English farmer’s housekeeping.
After marriage, much of her work was still out of doors, cultivating her
garden and tending pigs or cows, while her husband did his day’s work on
neighbouring farms. Frugal and to the last degree laborious were her
days, but food was still sufficient and her strength enabled her to bear
healthy children and to suckle them. It was exactly this class of woman
that the gentry chose as wet nurses for their babies. Their lives would
seem incredibly hard to the modern suburban woman, but they had their
reward in the respect and love of their families and in the sense of
duties worthily fulfilled.

The more prosperous husbandmen often added to their households an
apprentice child, but in other cases the holdings were too small to
occupy even the family’s whole time.

At harvest in any case all the population of the village turned out to
work; men, women, and children, not only those belonging to the class of
husbandmen, but the tradesmen as well, did their bit in a work so
urgent; for in those days each district depended on its own supply of
corn, there being scarcely any means of transport.

Except during the harvest, wages were so low that a man who had a
holding of his own was little tempted to work for them, though he might
undertake some special and better-paid occupation, such as that of a
shepherd. Pepys, describing a visit to Epsom, writes: “We found a
shepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses or sight of
people, the Bible to him, I find he had been a servant in my Cozen
Pepys’s house ... the most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I
saw in my life ... he values his dog mightily, ... about eighteen score
sheep in his flock, he hath four shillings a week the year round for
keeping of them.”[101]

Footnote 101:

  Pepys, Vol. IV, p. 428. 14 July, 1667.

Probably this picturesque shepherd belonged to the class of husbandmen,
for the wages paid are higher than those of a household servant. Four
shillings a week comes to £10.8.0 by the year, whereas a Wiltshire wages
assessment for 1685 provided that a servant who was a chief shepherd
looking after 1,500 sheep or more was not to receive more than £5 by the
year.[102] On the other hand, four shillings a week would not maintain
completely the shepherd, his boy and a dog, not to speak of a wife and
other children. Thus, while the shepherd tended his sheep, we may
imagine his wife and children were cultivating their allotment.

Footnote 102:

  _Hist. MSS. Miss. Com. Var. Coll._, Vol. I. p. 170.

The wages for the harvest work of women as well as men, were fixed by
the Quarter Sessions.[103] References to their work may be found in
account books and diaries. Thus Dame Nicholson notes: “_Aug. 13, 1690_,
I began to sher ye barin croft about 11 o’clock, ther was Gordi Bar and
his wife—also Miler’s son James and his sister Margit also a wife called
Nieton—they sher 17 threv and 7 chivis.”[104]

Footnote 103:

  A comparison of the assessments which have been preserved, in the
  different counties shows that men’s earnings varied in the hay harvest
  from:—

  4d. and meat and drink, or 8d. without, to
  8d. and meat and drink, or 1s. 4d. without

  and in the corn harvest from:—

  5d. and meat and drink, or 10d. without, to
  1s. and meat and drink, or  2s. without

  Women’s wages varied in the hay harvest from:—

  1d. and meat and drink, or 4d. without, to
  6d. and meat and drink, or 1s. without

  and in the corn harvest from:—

  2d. and meat and drink, or 6d. without, to
  6d. and meat and drink, or 1s. without

  The variations in these wages correspond with the price of corn in
  different parts of England and must not be regarded as necessarily
  representing differences in the real value of wages.

Footnote 104:

  Society of Antiquarians of Scotland, vol. xxxix, p. 125. _Dame
  Margaret Nicholson’s Account Book._

Best gives a detailed account of the division of work between men and
women on a Yorkshire farm: “Wee have allwayes one man, or else one of
the ablest of the women, to abide on the mowe, besides those that goe
with the waines.[105] The best sort of men-shearers have usually 8d. a
day and are to meate themselves; the best sorte of women shearers have
(most commonly) 6d. a day.[106] It is usuall in some places (wheare the
furres of the landes are deepe worne with raines) to imploy women, with
wain-rakes, to gather the corne out of the said hollow furres after that
the sweath-rakes have done.[107] ... We use meanes allwayes to gett
eyther 18 or else 24 pease pullers, which wee sette allways sixe on a
lande, viz., a woman and a man, a woman and a man, a woman or boy and a
man, etc., the weakest couple in the fore furre ... it is usuall in most
places after they gette all pease pulled, or the last graine downe, to
invite all the worke-folkes and wives (that helped them that harvest) to
supper, and then have they puddinges, bacon, or boyled beefe, flesh or
apple pyes, and then creame brought in platters, and every one a spoone;
then after all they have hotte cakes and ale; some will cutte theire
cake and putte into the creame and this feaste is called the
creame-potte or creame-kitte ... wee send allwayes, the daye before wee
leade, [pease] two of our boys, or a boy and one of our mayds with each
of them a shorte mowe forke to turn them.”[108]

Footnote 105:

  Best, _Rural Economy_, p. 36.

Footnote 106:

  _Ibid._ p. 42.

Footnote 107:

  Best, _Rural Economy_, p. 59.

Footnote 108:

  _Ibid._ pp. 93-4.

For thatching, Best continues: “Wee usually provide two women for helpes
in this kinde, _viz._, one to drawe thacke, and the other to serve the
thatcher; she that draweth thacke hath 3d. a day, and shee that serveth
the thatcher 4d. a day, because shee also is to temper the morter, and
to carry it up to the toppe of the howse.... Shee that draweth thatch
shoulde always have dry wheate strawe ... whearewith to make her bandes
for her bottles. She that serveth will usually carry up 4 bottles at a
time, and sometimes but 3 if the thatch bee longe and very wette.”[109]

Footnote 109:

  _Ibid._, pp. 138-9. “The thatchers,” Best says, “have in most places
  6d. a day & theire meate in Summer time, ... yett we neaver use to
  give them above 4d ... because their dyett is not as in other places;
  for they are to have three meale a day, viz. theire breakfaste att
  eight of the clocke, ... theire dinner about twelve and theire supper
  about seaven or after when they leave worke; and att each meale fower
  services, viz. butter, milke, cheese, and either egges, pyes, or
  bacon, and sometimes porridge insteade of milke: if they meate
  themselves they have usually 10d. a day.”

“Spreaders of mucke and molehills are (for the most parte) women, boyes
and girles, the bigger and abler sorte of which have usually 3d. a day,
and the lesser sorte of them 2d. a day.”[110] “Men that pull pease have
8d. women 6d. a day.”[111]

Footnote 110:

  Best, _Rural Economy_, p. 140.

Footnote 111:

  _Ibid._ p. 142.

A picture of hay-harvesting in the West of England given by Celia
Fiennes suggests that in other parts of England to which she was
accustomed, the labour, especially that of women, was not quite so
heavy. All over Devon and Cornwall she says, hay is carried on the
horses’ backs and the people “are forced to support it wᵗʰ their hands,
so to a horse they have two people, and the women leads and supports
them, as well as yᵉ men and goe through thick and thinn.... I wondred at
their Labour in this kind, for the men and the women themselves toiled
Like their horses.”[112]

Footnote 112:

  Fiennes (Celia), _Through England on a Side-saddle_, p. 225.

There was hardly any kind of agricultural work from which women were
excluded. Everenden “payed 1s. 2d. to the wife of Geo. Baker for
shearing 28 sheep.”[113] In Norfolk the wages for a “woman clipper of
sheepe” were assessed at 6d. per day with meat and drink, 1s. without,
while a man clipper was paid 7d. and 14d. It is noteworthy that only 4d.
per day was allowed in the same assessment for the diet of “women and
such impotent persons that weed corn and other such like Laborers” and
2d. per day for their wages.[114] Pepys on his visit to Stonehenge “gave
the shepherd-woman, for leading our horses, 4d.,”[115] while Foulis
enters, “Jan. 25, 1699 to tonie to give ye women at restalrig for making
good wailings of strae, 4s. (Scots money).”[116]

Footnote 113:

  Suss. Arch. Coll. Vol. IV., p. 24. _Everendon Account Book._

Footnote 114:

  Tingye (J. C.), _Eng. Hist. Rev._, Vol. XIII., pp. 525-6.

Footnote 115:

  Pepys, Vol. V., p. 302. (11th June, 1668).

Footnote 116:

  Foulis (Sir John) _Acct. Bk._, p. 246.

But the wives of husbandmen were not confined to agricultural work as is
shown by many payments entered to them in account books:[117] Thus the
church wardens at Strood, in Kent, paid the widow Cable for washing the
surplices 1s.[118]; and at Barnsley they gave “To Ricard Hodgaris wife
for whipping dogs” (out of the Church) 2s.[119] while “Eustace Lowson of
Salton (a carrier of lettres and a verie forward, wicked woman in that
folly)” and Isabell her daughter are included in a Yorkshire list of
recusants.[120]

Footnote 117:

  “Aug. 7th., 1701 to my wife, to a Bleicher wife at bonaley for
  bleitching 1. 3. 4.” (Scots)

  “Jan. 28th, 1703 to my good douchter jennie to give tibbie tomsome for
  her attendance on my wife the time of her sickness 5.16.0 (Scots).
  (_Foulis (Sir John) Acct. Bk._ p. 295, 314.)

  “Sep. 11th, 1676, pd. her (Mary Taylor) more for bakeing four days.
  Mothers Acct. 8d. (_Fell, (Sarah) Household Accts._ p. 309.)

  “Pd. Widow Lewis for gathering herbs two daies 6d. (Sussex, Arch.
  Coll. xlviii. p. 120. _Extracts from the Household Account Book of
  Herstmonceux Castle._)

  “Paid to goodwife Stopinge for 2 bundles of Rushes at Whitsuntide for
  the Church, iiijid. (_Churchwarden’s Account Book, Strood_, p. 95,
  1612.”

Footnote 118:

  _Churchwarden’s Account Book, Strood_, p. 197. 1666.

Footnote 119:

  Cox (J. C.) _Churchwarden’s Accts._, p. 309.

Footnote 120:

  _Yorks. North Riding, Q.S. Rec._, Vol. I., p. 62, Jan. 8., 1606-7.

No doubt the mother with young children brought them with her to the
harvest field, where they played as safely through the long summer day
as if they and she had been at home. But at other times she chose work
which did not separate her from her children, spinning being her
unfailing resource. It is difficult living in the age of machinery to
imagine the labour which clothing a family by hand-spinning involved,
though the hand-spun thread was durable and fashions did not change.

In spite of the large demand the price paid was very low, but when not
obliged to spin for sale, time was well spent in spinning for the
family. The flax or hemp grown on the allotment, was stored up for
shirts and house-linen. If the husbandman had no sheep, the children
gathered scraps of wool from the brambles on the common, and thus the
only money cost of the stuff worn by the husbandman’s household was the
price paid to the weaver.

The more prosperous the family, the less the mother went outside to
work, but this did not mean, as under modern conditions, that her share
in the productive life of the country was less. Her productive energy
remained as great, but was directed into channels from which her family
gained the whole profit. In her humble way she fed and clothed them,
like the wise woman described by Solomon.

The more she was obliged to work for wages, the poorer was her family.

                           C. _Wage-earners._

In some respects it is less difficult to visualise the lives of women in