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] | |
| FOOTNOTES | [321] | |
| 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]]
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]]
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]]
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.
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]]
“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]]
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]]
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]]
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.
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
A warrant was issued “to pay to Alice Bearden £100 for certain cutworks furnished to the Queen for her own wearing.”[[52]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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.
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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.
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.
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]]
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.
Chapter III
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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.
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]]
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.
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]]
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]]
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.
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]]
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]]
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]]
“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]]
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]]
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]]
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]]
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 the wage-earning class than in the class of farmers and husbandmen. The narrowness of their circumstances and the fact that their destitution brought them continually under the notice of the magistrates at Quarter Sessions have preserved data in greater completeness from which to reconstruct the picture. Had this information been wanting such a reconstruction would have demanded no vivid imagination, because the results of the semi-starvation of mothers and small children are very similar whether it takes place in the seventeenth or the twentieth century; the circumstances of the wives of casual labourers and men who are out of work and “unemployable” in modern England may be taken as representing those of almost the whole wage-earning class in the seventeenth century.
The most important factors governing the lives of wage-earning women admit of no dispute. First among these was their income, for wage-earners have already been defined as the class of persons depending wholly upon wages for the support of their families.
Throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century the rate of wages was not left to be adjusted by the laws of supply and demand, but was regulated for each locality by the magistrates at Quarter Sessions. Assessments fixing the maximum rates were published annually and were supposed to vary according to the price of corn. Certainly they did vary from district to district according to the price of corn in that district, but they were not often changed from year to year.
Prosecutions of persons for offering and receiving wages in excess of the maximum rates frequently occurred in the North Riding of Yorkshire, but it is extremely rare to find a presentment for this in other Quarter Sessions. The Assessments were generally accepted as publishing a rate that public opinion considered fair towards master and man, and outside Yorkshire steps were seldom taken to prevent masters from paying more to valued servants. That upon the whole the Assessments represent the rate ordinarily paid can be shown by a comparison with entries in contemporary account books.
The Assessments deal largely with the wages of unmarried farm servants and with special wages for the seasons of harvest, intended for the occasional labour of husbandmen, but in addition there are generally rates quoted by the day for the common labourer in the summer and winter months. Even when meat and drink is supplied, the day-rates for these common labourers are higher than the wages paid to servants living in the house and are evidently intended for married men with families.
In one Assessment different rates are expressly given for the married and unmarried who are doing the same work,[[121]] a married miller receiving with his meat and drink, 4d. a day which after deducting holidays would amount to £500 by the year, while the unmarried miller has only 46s. 8d. and a pair of boots.
Assessments generally show a similar difference between the day wages of a common labourer and the wages of the best man-servant living in the house, and it may therefore be assumed that day labourers were generally married persons.
Day rates were only quoted for women on seasonal jobs, such as harvest and weeding. It was not expected that married women would work all the year round for wages, and almost all single women were employed as servants.
The average wage of the common agricultural labourer as assessed at Quarter Sessions was 3½d. per day in winter, and 4½d. per day in summer, in addition to his meat and drink. Actual wages paid confirm the truth of these figures, though it is not always clear whether the payments include meat and drink.[[122]]
If we accept the Assessments as representing the actual wages earned by the ordinary labourer we can estimate with approximate accuracy the total income of a labourer’s family, for we have defined the wage-earner as a person who depended wholly upon wages and excluded from this class families who possessed gardens. Taking a figure considerably higher than the one at which the Assessment averages work out, namely 5d. per day instead of 4d. per day, to be the actual earnings of a labouring man in addition to his meat and drink, and doubling that figure for the three months which include the hay and corn harvests, his average weekly earnings will amount to 3s. 2d. Except in exceptional circumstances his wife’s earnings would not amount to more than 1s. a week and her meat and drink. The more young children there were, the less often could the wife work for wages, and when not doing so her food as well as the children’s must be paid for out of the family income.
In a family with three small children it is unlikely that the mother’s earnings were more than what would balance days lost by the father for holidays or illness, and the cost of his food on Sundays, but allowing for a small margin we may assume that 3s. 6d. was the weekly income of a labourer’s family, and that this sum must provide rent and clothing for the whole family and food for the mother and children.
A careful investigation of the cost of living is necessary before we can test whether this amount was adequate for the family’s maintenance.
There is no reason to suppose that a diet inferior to present standards could maintain efficiency in the seventeenth century. On the contrary, the English race at that time attributed their alleged superiority over other nations to a higher standard of living.[[123]]
A comparison between the purchasing power of money in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries is unsatisfactory for our purpose, because the relative values of goods have changed so enormously. Thus, though rent, furniture and clothes were much cheaper in the seventeenth century, there was less difference in the price of food. Sixpence per day is often given in Assessments as the cost of a labourer’s meat and drink and this is not much below the amount spent per head on these items in wage-earners’ families during the first decade of the twentieth century.
One fact alone is almost sufficient to prove the inadequacy of a labourer’s wage for the maintenance of his family. His money wages seldom exceeded the estimated cost of his own meat and drink as supplied by the farmer, and yet these wages were to supply all the necessaries of life for his whole family. Some idea of the bare cost of living in a humble household may be gained by the rates fixed for pensions and by allowances made for Poor Relief. From these it appears that four shillings to five shillings a week was considered necessary for an adult’s maintenance.
The Cromwell family paid four shillings weekly “to the widd. Bottom for her bord.”[[124]] Pensions for maimed soldiers and widows were fixed at four shillings per week “or else work to be provided which will make their income up to 4s. per week. Sick and wounded soldiers under cure for their wounds to have 4s. 8d. per week.”[[125]]
The Justices in the North Riding of Yorkshire drew up a scale of reasonable prices for billeted soldiers by which each trooper was to pay for his own meat for each night—6d; dragoon, 4½d; foot soldier, 4d.[[126]]
“Edward Malin, blacksmith, now fourscore and three past and his wife fourscore, wanting a quarter” very poor and unable “to gett anything whereby to live,” complained to the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions that they receive only 1s. 6d. a week between them; “others have eighteen pence apiece single persons” and desire that an order be made for them to have 3s. together which is but the allowance made to other persons.[[127]]
In cases of Poor Relief where payments were generally intended to be supplementary to other sources of income, the grants to widows towards the maintenance of their children were often absurdly small; in Yorkshire, Parish officers were ordered to “provide convenient habitation for a poor woman as they shall think fit and pay her 4d. weekly for the maintenance of herself and child.”[[128]] In another case to pay a very poor widow 6d. weekly for the maintenance of herself and her three children.[[129]] The allowance of 12d. weekly to a woman and her small children was reduced to 6d., “because the said woman is of able body, and other of her children are able to work.”[[130]] On the other hand when an orphan child was given to strangers to bring up, amounts varying from 1s. to 5s. per week were paid for its maintenance.[[131]]
Thus the amount paid by the Justices for maintaining one pauper child sometimes exceeded the total earnings of a labourer and his wife. Other pauper children were maintained in institutions. The girls at a particularly successful Industrial School in Bristol were given an excellent and abundant diet at a cost of 1s. 4d. per head per week.[[132]] At Stepney, the poor were maintained at 2s. 10d or 3s. per week, including all incidental expenses, firing and lodging. At Strood in Kent, 2s. was paid for children boarded out in poor families, while the inmates of the workhouse at Hanstope, Bucks, were supposed not to cost the parish more than 1s. 6d. a week per head.[[133]] At Reading it was agreed “that Clayton’s wief shall have xiiiiid. a weeke for every poore childe in the hospitall accomptinge each childe’s worke in parte of payment.”[[134]]
These and many other similar figures show that a child must have cost from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a week for food alone, the amount varying according to age. Above seven years of age, children began to contribute towards their own support, but they were not completely self-supporting before the age of thirteen or fourteen.
According to the wages assessments, a woman’s diet was reckoned at a lower figure than a man’s, but whenever they are engaged on heavy work such as reaping corn or shearing sheep, 6d. or 8d. a day is allowed for their “meate and drinke.” On other work, such as weeding or spinning, where only 2d. a day is reckoned for wages, their food also is only estimated as costing 2d. to 4d. As in such cases they are classed with “other impotent persons” it must not be supposed that 2d. or 3d. represents the cost of the food needed by a young active woman; it may even have been prolonged semi-starvation that had reduced the woman to the level of impotency. Unfortunately, there is often a wide difference between the cost of what a woman actually eats and what is necessary to maintain her in efficiency. Probably the woman who was doing ordinary work while pregnant or suckling a baby may have needed as much food as the woman who was reaping corn; but in the wage-earner’s family she certainly did not get it; thus when a writer[[135]] alleges that a man’s diet costs 5d. a day and a woman’s 1s. 6d per week, his statement may be correct as to fact, though the babies have perished for want of nourishment and the mother has been reduced to invalidism.
Another writer gives 2s. as being sufficient to “keep a poor man or woman (with good husbandry) one whole week.”[[136]] Certainly 2s. is the very lowest figure that can have sufficed to keep up the mother’s strength. The bare cost of food for a mother and three children must have amounted to at least 5s. 6d. per week, but there were other necessaries to be provided from the scanty wages. The poorest family required some clothes, and though these may have been given by charitable persons, rent remained to be paid. Building was cheap. In Scotland, the “new house” with windows glazed with “ches losens” only cost £4 12s. 3d. to build, while a “cothouse” built for Liddas “the merchant” cost only £1 0 0;[[137]] other cots were built for 4s., 11s. 1d,, 5s. and 14s. 4d. These Scottish dwellings were mud hovels, but in England the labourers’ dwellings were not much better.
Celia Fiennes describes the houses at the Land’s End as being “poor Cottages, Like Barns to Look on, much Like those in Scotland, but to doe my own country its right yᵉ Inside of their Little Cottages are Clean and plaister’d and such as you might Comfortably Eat and drink in, and for curiosity sake I dranck there and met with very good bottled ale.”[[138]]
In some places the labourers made themselves habitations on the waste, but this was strictly against the law, such houses being only allowed for the impotent poor.
Many fines are entered in Quarter Sessions Records for building houses without the necessary quantity of land. By 39 Eliz. churchwardens and overseers were ordered, for the relief of the impotent poor, to build convenient houses at the charges of the Parish, but only with the consent of the Lord of the Manor. 43 Eliz. added that such buildings were not at any time after to be used for other inhabitants but only for the impotent poor, placed there by churchwardens and overseers.
The housing problem was so acute that many orders were made by the justices sanctioning or ordering the erection of these cottages. “Rob. Thompson of Brompton and Eliz. Thompson of Aymonderby widow, stand indicted for building a cottage in Aymonderby against the statute, etc., upon a piece of ground, parcell of the Rectorie of Appleton-on-the street, and in which the said Eliz. doth dwell by the permission of John Heslerton, fermour of the said Rectorie, and that the same was so erected for the habitation of the said Elizᵗʰ. being a poore old woman and otherwise destitute of harbour and succour ... ordered that the said cottage shall continue ... for the space of twelve yeares, if the said Elizᵗʰ. live so long, or that the said Heslerton’s lease do so long endure.”[[139]] In another case, Nicholas Russell, the wife of Thomas Waterton, and Robert Arundell, were presented for erecting cottages upon the Lord’s waste ... at the suit of parishioners these cottages are allowed by Mr. Coningsby, lord of the manor.[[140]]
It was often necessary to compel unwilling overseers to build cottages for the impotent poor, and for widows. “A woman with three children prays leave for the erection of a cottage in East Bedwyn, she having no habitation, but depending upon alms; from lying in the street she was conveyed into the church where she remained some small time, but was then ejected by the parish.” The overseers are ordered to provide for her.[[141]]
The overseers at Shipley were ordered to build a house on the waste there for Archelaus Braylsford, to contain “two chambers floored fit for lodgings” or in default 5s. a week. At the following sessions his house was further ordered to be “a convenient habitation 12 feet high upon the side walls soe as to make 2 convenient chambers.”[[142]]
The housing problem however could not be settled by orders instructing the overseers to build cottages for the impotent poor alone. Petitions were received as often from able-bodied labourers and for them the law forbade the erection of a cottage without four acres of land attached. The magistrates had no power to compel the provision of the land and thus they were faced with the alternatives of breaking the law and sanctioning the erection of a landless cottage on the waste or else leaving the labourer’s family to lie under hedges. The following petitions illustrate the way in which this situation was faced:
George Grinham, Norton-under-Hambton, “in ye behalfe of himselfe, his poore wife and famelye” begged for permission “for my building yᵉʳ, of a little poor house for ye comfort of my selfe, my poore wife and children betwixt those other 2 poore houses erected on the glebe ... being a towne borne childe yᵉʳ myselfe.”[[143]]
Another from William Dench, “a very poor man and having a wife and seven children all born at Longdon,” who was destitute of any habitation, states that he was given by William Parsons of Longdon, yeoman, in charity, “a little sheep-cote which sheep cote petitioner, with the consent of the churchwardens and overseers converted to a dwelling. Afterwards he having no licence from Quarter Sessions, nor under the hands of the Lord of the Manor so to do, and the sheep-cote being on the yeoman’s freehold and not on the waste or common, contrary to Acts 43 Eliz. c. 2 and 31 Eliz. c. 7 he was indicted upon the Statute against cottages and sued to an outlawry. He prays the benefit of the King’s pardon and for licence in open session for continuance of his habitation.”[[144]]
Eliz. Shepperd of Windley alleged she “was in possession of a Certayne cottage situate in Chevin, which was pulled downe and taken away by the Inhabitants of Dooeffield, shee left without habitation and hath soe Continued Twelve months at the least, shee being borne in Windley, and hath two small children” prayed the inhabitants should find her a homestead—the case was adjourned because the overseers raised a technical objection; that Eliz. Shepherd was married, & a woman’s petition could only proceed from a spinster or widow—meanwhile another child was born, and at the Michaelmas Sessions a joint petition was presented by Ralph Shepherd and Eliz. his wife, with the result that “the overseers are to find him habitation or show cause.”[[145]]
Joseph Lange of Queene Camell “being an honest poore laborer and havinge a wife and 2 smale Children” prayed that he “might haue libertie to erect a Cottage uppon a wast ground”.... This was assented to “for the habitacon of himselfe for his wife and afterwards the same shall be converted to the use of such other poore people etc.”
Order that Robert Morris of Overstowey, husbandman, a very poor man having a wife and children, and no place of habitation “soe that hee is like to fall into greate misery for want thereof” may erect and build him a cottage on some part of the “wast” of the manor of Overstowey ... (subject to the approbation of the Lord of the said Manor).[[146]]
The predicament of married labourers is shown again in the following report to the Hertfordshire Quarterly Sessions: “John Hawkins hath erected a cottage on the waste of my mannour of Benington, in consideration of the great charge of his wife and children that the said Hawkins is to provide for, I do hereby grant and give leave to him to continue the said cottage during his life and good behaviour.”[[147]]
Labourers naturally were unwilling to hire cottages while there was a possibility of inducing the justices to provide one on the waste rent free. The churchwardens of Great Wymondley forwarded a certificate stating “that the poor people of the said parish that are old and not able to work are all provided for and none of the poor people of the said parish have been driven to wander into other unions to beg or ask relief, for this thirty years last past. This Nathaniel Thrussel, which now complains, is a lusty young man, able to work and always brought up to husbandry, his wife, a young woman, always brought up to work, and know both how to perform their work they are hired to do, and have at present but one child, but did not care to pay rent for a hired house when he had one nor endeavour to hire a house for himself when he wants.”[[148]]
The scarcity of cottages resulted in extortionate rents for those that existed; Best noted that in his district “Mary Goodale and Richard Miller have a cottage betwixt them; Mary Goodale hath two roomes, and the orchard and payeth 6s. per annum; and Richard Miller, hayth one roomestead and payeth 4s. per annum.... They usually lette their cottages hereaboutes, for 10s. a piece, although they have not soe much as a yard, or any backe side belonging to them.”[[149]]
The rents paid elsewhere are shown in the returns made in 1635 by the Justices of the Peace for the Hundreds of Blofield and Walsham in Norfolk concerning cottages and inmates:
Thos. Waters hath 3 inmates:
Wm. Wyley pays £1. per annum
Anthony Smith pays £1. per annum
Roger Goat pays 12s. per annum
“which are all poore labourers and have wifes and severall children and if they be put out cannot be provided in this towne and by reason of their charge and poverty are not likely to be taken elsewhere.”
“Wm. Browne hath 2 inmates:
Edmund Pitt 14s. per annum
Wm. Jostling 14s. per annum
that are very poor and impotent and take colleccion.
Wm. Reynoldes hath 2 inmates:
Anthony Durrant £1 16s. per annum
Wm. Yurely 16s. per annum
both are very poore labourers and have wifes and small children. Jas. Candle owner of a cottage [has] Robert Fenn, 13s. a poore man. Anne Linckhorne 1 inmate Philip Blunt that pay £1. 17. 0 that is a poore man and hath wife and children.”[[150]]
Thus it appears that while a labourer who obtained a cottage on the waste lived rent free, twenty or thirty shillings might be demanded from those who were less fortunate.
Whatever money was extorted for rent meant so much less food for the mother and children, for it has been shown that the family income was insufficient for food alone, and left no margin for rent or clothes.
The relation of wages to the cost of living is seldom alluded to by contemporary writers, but a pamphlet published in 1706 says of a labourer’s family, “a poor Man and his Wife may have 4 or 5 children, 2 of them able to work, and 3 not able, and the Father and Mother not able to maintain themselves and Families in Meat, Drink, Cloaths and House Rent under 10s. a week.”[[151]]
A similar statement is made by Sir Matthew Hale, who adds “and so much they might probably get if employed.”[[152]] But no evidence has been found from which we can imagine that an agricultural labourer’s family could possibly earn as much as 10s. a week in the seventeenth century. Our lower estimate is confirmed by a report made by the Justices of the Peace for the half hundred of Hitching concerning the poor in their district; “when they have worke the wages geven them is soe small that it hardlye sufficeth to buy the poore man and his familye breed, for they pay 6s. for one bushell of mycelyn grayne and receive but 8d. for their days work. It is not possible to procure mayntenance for all these poore people and their famylyes by almes nor yet by taxes.”[[153]]
The insolvency of the wage-earning class is recognized by Gregory King in his calculations of the income and expense of the several Families of England, for the year 1680. All other classes, including artisans and handicrafts show a balance of income over expenditure but the families of seamen, labourers and soldiers show an actual yearly deficit.[[154]]
A still more convincing proof of the universal destitution of wage-earners is shown in the efforts made by churchwardens and overseers in every county throughout England to prevent the settlement within the borders of their parish of families which depended solely on wages.
Their objection is not based generally upon the ground that the labourer or his wife were infirm, or idle, or vicious; they merely state that the family is likely to become chargeable to the parish. Each parish was responsible for the maintenance of its own poor, and thus though farmers might be needing more labourers, the parish would not tolerate the settlement of families which could not be self-supporting.
The disputes which arose concerning these settlements contain many pitiful stories.
“Anthony addams” tells the justices that he was born in Stockton and bred up in the same Parish, most of his time in service and has “taken great pains for my living all my time since I was able and of late I fortuned to marry with an honest young woman, and my parishioners not willing I should bring her in the parish, saying we should breed a charge amongst them. Then I took a house in Bewdley and there my wife doth yet dwell and I myself do work in Stockton ... and send or bring my wife the best relief I am able, and now the parish of Bewdley will not suffer her to dwell there for doubt of further charge.... I most humbly crave your good aid and help in this my distress or else my poor wife and child are like to perish without the doors: ... that by your good help and order to the parish of Stockton I may have a house there to bring my wife & child unto that may help them the best I can.”[[155]]
Another petition was brought by Josias Stone of Kilmington ... “shewinge that he hath binn an Inhabitant and yet is in Kilmington aforesaid and hath there continued to and fro these five yeares past and hath donn service for the said parishe and hath lately married a wife in the said parish intendinge there to liue and reside yet since his marriage is by the said parishe debarred of any abidinge for him and his said wife there in any howse or lodginge for his mony.”[[156]]
Another dispute occurred over the case of Zachary Wannell and his wife who came lately from Wilton “into the towne of Taunton where they haue been denyed a residence and they ly upp and downe in barnes and hay lofts, the said Wannell’s wife being great with child; the said Wannell and his wife to be forthwith set to Wilton and there to continue until the next General Sessions. The being of the said Wannell and his wife at Wilton not to be interpreted as a settlement of them there.”[[157]]
There were endless examples of these conflicts often attended as in the above case with great cruelty.[[158]]
The Justices were shocked at the consequent demoralization and generally supported the demands of the labourers as regards their settlement and housing. One writes to the clerk of the Peace: “I have sent you enclosed the recognizance of William Worster and William Smith, of Bovindon, for contempt of an order of sessions ... in the behalfe of one, John Yorke, formerly a vagrant, but now parishionir of Bovingdon. Yet I believe the rest of the inhabitants will doe their utmost to gett him thence though they force him to turn vagrant againe. Yorke will be with you to prove that he was in the parish halfe-a-year or more before they gave him any disturbance, and that not privately, for he worked for severall substantiall men and was at church, and paid rent.”[[159]]
But the Justices never suspected that the rate of wages which they themselves had fixed below subsistence level was at the root of the settlement difficulty. The overseers believed that all the troubles might be solved if only young people would not marry imprudently, and they petitioned the Justices begging that overseers of parishes might not be compelled to provide houses for such young persons “as will marry before they have provided themselves with a settling.”[[160]]
While the overseers were seeking to exclude all wage earners from the parish, individual farmers, perchance the overseers themselves wanted more labourers. To meet this difficulty, the overseers discovered an ingenious device. Before granting a settlement, they required the labourer to find sureties to save the parish harmless from his becoming chargeable to it. Obviously a labourer could not himself find sureties, but the farmer who wished to employ him was in a position to do so, and thus the responsibility for the wage-earner’s family would be laid upon the person who profited by his services. Petitions against this demand for sureties came before the Quarter Sessions. One from Robert Vawter stated that he was “a poore Day labourer about a quarter of a yere sithence came into the said parish of Clutton, and there marryed with a poore Almesmans Daughter, now liveing with her said father in the Almeshouse of Clutton aforesaid, and would there settle himselfe with his said wife.” He was ordered to find sureties or to go to gaol.[[161]]
It was reported at Salford “Whereas Rich. Hudson is come lately into the towne with his wife and ffoure children to Remaine that the Burrow-reeve and Constables of this towne shall give notice unto Henry Wrigley, Esq., upon whose land he still remaynes that hee remove him and his wife and children out of this Towne within this moneth unlesse hee give sufficient security upon the paine of ffive pounds.”[[162]]
Similar orders were made re Nathan Cauliffe, his wife and three children, Robert Billingham with wife and two children, Peter ffarrant and his wife, & Roger Marland and wife. Later the record continues, “and yet the said parties are not removed” order was therefore made “that this order shalbee put in execution.”[[163]] Another step in the proceedings is recorded in the entry, “Whereas James Moores, George Moores and Adam Warmeingham stand bound unto Henry Wrigling Esq. in £20 for the secureinge the Towne from any poverty or disability which should or might befall unto the said James, his wife, children, or family or any of them. And whereas it appeares that the said James Moores hath been Chargeable whereby the said bond is become forfeit yet this Jury doth give the said George Moores and Adam Warmeingham this libtie that the said James shall remove out of this towne before the next Court Leet.”[[164]]
Fines were exacted from those who harboured unfortunate strangers without having first given security for them, and no exception was made on the score of relationship. James Meeke of Myddleton was presented “for keeping of his daughter Ellen Meeke, having a husband dwelling in another place, and having two children borne forth of the parishe.”[[165]]
Rules made at Steeple Ashton by the Churchwardens declare: “There hath much povertie happened unto this p’ish by receiving of strangers to inhabit there and not first securing them ag’st such contingencies and avoyding the like occasions in tyme to come, It is ordered by this vestrie that ev’ry p’son or p’sons whatsoev’r w’ch shall lett or sett any houseinge or dwellinge to any stranger and shall not first give good securite for defending and saving harmeless the said inhabitants from the future charge as may happen by such stranger comeing to inhabite w’thin the said p’ish and if any p’son shall doe to the contrary Its agreed that such p’son soe receiving such stranger shal be rated to the poor to 20s. monethlie over and above his monethlie tax.”[[166]]
The penalties at Reading were higher. “At this daye Wm. Porter, th’elder was questioned for harboringe a straunger woman, and a childe, vizᵗ, the wief of John Taplyn; he worketh at Mr. Ed. Blagrave’s in Early: Confesseth. The woman saith she hath byn there ever syns Michaellmas last, and payed rent to goodman Porter, xxs a yeare; her kinsman Faringdon did take the house for them. Wm. Porter was required to paye xs a weeke accordinge to the orders and was willed to ridd his tenant with all speed upon payne of xs a weeke and to provide suretyes to discharge the towne of the childe.”[[167]]
The starvation and misery described in Quarter Sessions Records were not exceptional calamities, but represent the ordinary life of women in the wage earning class. The lives of men were drab and monotonous, lacking pleasure and consumed by unending toil, but they did not often suffer hunger. The labourer while employed was well fed, for the farmer did not grudge him food, though he did not wish to feed his family. There was seldom want of employment for agricultural labourers, and when their homes sank into depths of wretchedness and the wife’s attractiveness was lost through slow starvation, the men could depart and begin life anew elsewhere.
The full misery of the labourer’s lot was only felt by the women; if unencumbered they could have returned, like the men, to the comfortable conditions of service, but the cases of mothers who deserted their children are rare.
The hardships suffered by the women of the wage-earning class proved fatal to their children. Gregory King estimated that there were on an average only 3½ persons, including father and mother in a labourer’s family though he gives 4.8 as the average number of children for each family in villages and hamlets.[[168]] Another writer gives 3 persons as the average number for a labourer’s family.[[169]] The cases of disputed settlements which are brought before Quarter Sessions confirm the substantial truth of these estimates. It is remarkable that where the father is living seldom more than two or three children are mentioned, often only one, though in cases of widows where the poverty is recent and caused as it were by the accidental effect of the husband’s premature death, there are often five to ten children. In Nottingham, of seventeen families, who had recently come to the town and been taken in as tenants, and which the Council wanted to eject for fear of overcrowding, only one had four children, one three, and the rest only two or one child apiece.[[170]]
In fact, however large the birth-rate may have been, and this we have no means of ascertaining, few children in the wage-earning class were reared. Of those who reached maturity, many were crippled in mind or body, forming a large class of unemployables destined to be a burthen instead of strength to the community.
This appalling loss and suffering was not due to the excessive work of married women but to their under-feeding and bad housing. Probably the women of the wage-earning class actually accomplished less work than the women of the husbandman class; but the latter worked under better conditions and were well nourished, with the result that their sons and daughters have been the backbone of the English nation.
The sacrifice of the wage-earners’ children was caused by the mother’s starvation; vainly she gave her own food to the children for then she was unable to suckle the baby and grew too feeble for her former work. Probably she had herself been the daughter of a husbandman and was inured to labour from child hood. “Sent abroad into service and hardship when but 10 years old” as Oliver Heywood wrote of a faithful servant, she met the chances which decide a servant’s life. The work on farms was rough, but generally healthy. At first the child herded the pigs or the geese and followed the harrow and as she grew older the poultry yard and the cows divided her attention with the housework. Sometimes she was brutally treated and often received little training in her work, but generosity in meat and drink has always been characteristic of the English farmer, and during the hungry years of adolescence the average girl who was a servant in husbandry was amply nourished. Then came marriage. The more provident waited long in the hope of securing independence, and one of those desirable cottages with four acres of land, but to some the prospect seemed endless and at last they married hoping something would turn up; or perhaps they were carried away by natural impulses and married young without any thought for the future. Such folly was the despair of Churchwardens and Overseers, yet the folly need not seem so surprising when we consider that delay brought the young people no assurance of improvement in their position. Church and State alike taught that it was the duty of men and women to marry and bring forth children, and if for a large class the organisation of Society made it impossible for them to rear their children, who is to blame for the fate of those children, their parents or the community?
After one of these imprudent marriages the husband sometimes continued to work on a farm as a servant, visiting his wife and children on Sundays and holidays. By this means he, at least, was well fed and well housed. The woman with a baby to care for and feed, could not leave her home every day to work and must share the children’s food. In consequence she soon began to practise starvation. Her settlement was disputed, and therefore her dwelling was precarious. Nominally she was transferred on marriage to the parish where her husband was bound as servant for the term of one year, but the parish objected to the settlement of a married man lest his children became a burden on them.
No one doubted that it was somebody’s duty to care for the poor, but arrangements for relief were strictly parochial and the fear of incurring unlimited future responsibilities led English parishioners to strange lengths of cruelty and callousness. The fact that a woman was soon to have a baby, instead of appealing to their chivalry, seemed to them the best reason for turning her out of her house and driving her from the village, even when a hedge was her only refuge.
The once lusty young woman who had formerly done a hard day’s work with the men at harvesting was broken by this life. It is said of an army that it fights upon its stomach. These women faced the grim battle of life, laden with the heavy burden of child-bearing, seldom knowing what it meant to have enough to eat. Is it surprising that courage often failed and they sank into the spiritless, dismal ranks of miserable beings met in the pages of Quarter Sessions Records, who are constantly being forwarded from one parish to another.
Such women, enfeebled in mind and body, could not hope to earn more than the twopence a day and their food which is assessed as the maximum rate for women workers in the hay harvest. On the contrary, judging from the account books of the period, they often received only one penny a day for their labour. Significant of their feebleness is the Norfolk assessment which reads, “Women and such impotent persons that weed corne, or other such like Labourers 2d with meate and drinke, 6d without.”[[171]] Such wages may have sufficed for the infirm and old, but they meant starvation for the woman with a young family depending on her for food. And what chance of health and virtue existed for the children of these enfeebled starving women?
On the death or desertion of her husband the labouring woman became wholly dependent on the Parish for support. The conduct of the magistrates in fixing maximum wages at a rate which they knew to be below subsistence level seems inexplicable; is in fact inexplicable until it is understood that these wages were never intended to be sufficient for the support of a family. Statute 31 Eliz. and others, show that the whole influence of the Government and administration was directed to prevent the creation of a class of wage-earners. It was an essential feature of Tudor policy to foster the Yeomanry, from whose ranks were recruited the defenders of the realm. Husbandmen were recognised as “the body and stay” of the kingdom.[[172]] They made the best infantry when bred “not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in some free and plentiful manner.”[[173]] If the depopulation of the country-side went on unchecked, there would come to pass “a mere sollitude and vtter desolation to the whole Realme, furnished only with shepe and shepherdes instead of good men; wheareby it might be a prey to oure enymies that first would sett vppon it.”[[174]]
Probably the consideration of whether a family could be fed by a labourer’s wage, seldom entered the Justices’ heads. They wished the family to win its food from a croft and regarded the wages as merely supplementary. The Justices would like to have exterminated wage-earners, who were an undesirable class in the community, and they might have succeeded as the conditions imposed upon the women made the rearing of children almost impossible, had not economic forces constantly recruited the ranks of wage-earners from the class above them.
The demands of capital however for labour already exceeded the supply available from the ranks of husbandmen, and could only be met by the establishment of a class of persons depending wholly on wages. The strangest feature of the situation was the fact that the magistrates who were trying to exterminate wage-earners were often themselves capitalists creating the demand.
The actual proportion of wage-earners in the seventeenth century can only be guessed at. The statement of a contemporary[[175]] that Labourers and Cottagers numbered 2,000,000 persons, out of a population of only 5,000,000 must be regarded as an exaggeration; in any case their distribution was uneven.
Complaints are not infrequently brought before Quarter Sessions from parishes which say they are burdened with so great a charge of poor that they cannot support it; to other parishes the Justices are sometimes driven to issue orders on the lines of a warrant commanding “the Churchwardens of the townes of Screwton and Aynderby to be more diligent in relieving their poore, that the court be not troubled with any further claymours therein.”[[176]]
On the other hand there were many districts where the wage-earner was hardly known and the authorities, like the Tithing men of Fisherton Delamere could report that they “have (thanks to the Almighty God theirfor) no popish recusants; no occasion to levy twelvepence, for none for bear to repair to divine service; no inns or alehouses licensed or unlicensed, no drunken person, no unlawful weights or measures, no neglect of hues and cries, no roads out of repair, no wandering rogues or idle persons, and no inmates of whom they desire information.”[[177]] Or the Constable of Tredington who declared that “the poor are weekly relieved, felons none known. Recusants one Bridget Lyne, the wife of Thos. Lyne. Tobacco none planted. Vagrants Mary How, an Irish woman and her sister were taken and punished according to the Statute and sent away by pass with a guide towards Ireland in the County of Cork.”[[178]] or as in another report “We have no bakers or alehouses within our parish. We cannot find by our searches at night or other time that any rogues or vagabonds are harboured saving Mr. Edward Hall who lodged a poor woman and her daughter. We do not suffer any vagrants which we see begging in our parish but we give them punishment according as we ought.”[[179]]
A review of the whole position of women in Agriculture at this time, shows the existence of Family Industry at its best, and of Capitalism at its worst. The smaller farmers and more prosperous husbandmen led a life of industry and independence in which every capacity of the women, mental, moral and physical had scope for development and in which they could secure the most favourable conditions for their children—while among capitalistic farmers a tendency can already be perceived for the women to withdraw from the management of business and devote themselves to pleasure. At the other end of the scale Capitalism fed the man whom it needed for the production of wealth but made no provision for his children; and the married woman, handicapped by her family ties, when she lost the economic position which enabled her through Family Industry to support herself and her children, became virtually a pauper.
Chapter IV
TEXTILES.
(A) Introductory. Historical importance in women’s economic development—Predominance of women’s labour—Significance in development of Industrialism—Low wages.
(B) Woollen Trade. Historical importance—Proportions of men and women employed—Early experiments in factory system abandoned—Declining employment of women in management and control—Women Weavers—Burling—Spinning—Organization of spinning industry—Women who bought wool and sold yarn made more profit than those who worked for wages—Methods of spinning—Class of women who span for wages—Rates of wages—Disputes between spinsters and employers—Demoralisation of seasons of depression—Association of men and women in trade disputes.
(C) Linen. Chiefly a domestic industry—Introduction of Capitalism—Increased demand caused by printing linens—Attempt to establish a company—Part taken by women—weaving—bleaching—spinning—Wages below subsistence level—Encouragement of spinning by local authorities to lessen poor relief—Firmin.
(D) Silk. Gold and Silver. Silk formerly a monopoly of gentlewomen—In seventeenth century virtually one of the pauper trades. Gold and Silver furnished employment to the poorest class of women—Factory system already in use.
(E) Conclusion.
From the general economic standpoint, the textile industries rank second in importance to agriculture during the seventeenth century, but in the history of women’s economic development they hold a position which is quite unique. If the food supply of the country depended largely on the work of women in agriculture, their labour was absolutely indispensable to the textile industries, for in all ages and in all countries spinning has been a monopoly of women. This monopoly is so nearly universal that we may suspect some physiological inability on the part of men to spin a fine even thread at the requisite speed, and spinning forms the greater part of the labour in the production of hand-made textile fabrics.
It requires some effort of the imagination in this mechanical age to realize the incessant industry which the duty of clothing her own family imposed on every woman, to say nothing of the yarn required for the famous Woollen Trade. The service rendered by women in spinning for the community was compared by contemporaries to the service rendered by the men who ploughed. “Like men that would lay no hand to the plough, and women that would set no hand to the wheele, deserving the censure of wise Solomon, Hee that would not labour should not eat.”[[180]]
Textile industries fall into three groups: Woollen, Linen, and Miscellaneous, comprising silk, etc. Cotton is seldom mentioned although imported at this time in small quantities for mixture with linen.
The predominance of women’s labour in the textile trades makes their history specially significant in tracing the evolution of women’s industrial position under the influences of capitalism; for the woollen trade was one of the first fields in which capitalistic organization achieved conspicuous success.
The importance of the woollen trade as a source of revenue to the Crown drew to it so much attention that many details have been preserved concerning its development; showing with a greater distinctness than in other and more obscure trades, the steps by which Capitalistic Organization ousted Family Industry and the Domestic Arts. It is surely not altogether accidental that Industrialism developed so remarkably in two trades where the labour of women predominated—in the woollen trade which in the seventeenth century was already organized on capitalistic lines, and, one hundred years later, in the cotton trade.
Some characteristic features of modern Industrialism were absent from the woollen trade in the seventeenth century. The work of men and women alike was carried on chiefly at home, and thus the employment of married women and children was unimpeded; nor are there any signs of industrial jealousy between men and women, who on the contrary, stand by each other during this period in all trade disputes. Nevertheless, the position of the woman wage-earner in the textile trades was extraordinarily bad, and this in spite of the fact that the demand for her labour appears nearly always to have exceeded the supply. The evidence contained in the following chapter shows that the wages paid to women in the seventeenth century for spinning linen were insufficient, and those paid for spinning wool, barely sufficient, for their individual maintenance, and yet out of them women were expected to support, or partly support, their children.
Possibly the persistence of such low wages throughout the country was due in a measure to the convenience of spinning as a tertiary occupation for married women. She who was employed by day in the intervals of household duties with her husband’s business or her dairy and garden, could spin through the long winter evenings when the light was too bad for other work. The mechanical character of the movements, and the small demand they make on eye or thought, renders spinning wonderfully adapted to women whose serious attention is engrossed by the care or training of their children. A comparison of spinster’s wages with those of agricultural labourers, which were also below subsistence level, will show however that such an explanation does not altogether meet the case.
The fact is that far from underselling the spinsters[[181]] who were wholly dependent on wages for their living, it seems probable that the women who only span for sale after the needs of their own households had been supplied, received the highest rates of pay, just as the husbandman, who only worked occasionally for wages, was paid better than the labourer who worked for them all the year round, and whose family depended exclusively on him. Disorganization and lack of bargaining power, coupled with traditions founded upon an earlier social organization, were responsible for the low wages of the spinsters. The agricultural labourer was crippled in his individual efforts for a decent wage because society persisted in regarding him as a household servant. The spinster was handicapped because in a society which began to assert the individual’s right to freedom, she had from her infancy been trained to subjection.
It must however be remembered that though a large part of the ensuing chapter is concerned with spinsters and their wages, much, perhaps most, of the thread spun never came into the market, but was produced for domestic consumption. Thus we find all three forms of industrial organisation existing simultaneously in these trades—Domestic Industry, Family Industry, and Capitalistic Industry.
Domestic Industry lingered especially in the Linen Trade until machinery made the spinning wheel obsolete, and Family Industry was still extensively practised in the seventeenth century; but Capitalistic Industry, already established in the Woollen Trade, was making rapid inroads on the other branches of the Textile Trades.
Although Capitalism undermined the position of considerable economic independence enjoyed by married women and widows in the tradesman and farming classes, possibly its introduction may have improved the position of unmarried women, and others who were already dependent on wages; but such improvements belong to a later date. Their only indication in the seventeenth century is the clearly proved fact that wages for spinning were higher in the more thoroughly capitalistic woollen trade, than in the linen trade. Further evidence is a suggestion by Defoe that wages for spinning in the woollen trade were doubled, or even trebled, in the first decade of the eighteenth century, but no sign of this advance can be detected in our period.
B. Woollen Trade.
The interest of the Government and of all those who studied financial and economic questions, was focussed upon the Woollen Trade, owing to the fact that it formed one of the chief sources of revenue for the Crown. At the close of the seventeenth century woollen goods formed a third of the English exports.[[182]]
Historically the Woollen Trade has a further importance, due to the part which it played in the development of capitalism. The manufacture of woollen materials had existed in the remote past as a family industry, and even in the twentieth century this method still survives in the remoter parts of the British Isles; but the manufacture of cloth for Foreign trade was from its beginning organized on Capitalistic lines, and the copious records which have been preserved of its development, illustrate the history of Capitalism itself.
It was estimated that about one million men, women and children were exclusively employed in the clothing trade,—“all have their dependence solely and wholly upon the said Manufacture, without intermixing themselves in the labours of Hedging, Ditching, Quicksetting, and others the works belonging to Husbandry.”[[183]]
In 1612 eight thousand persons, men, women and children were said to be employed in the clothing trade in Tiverton alone.[[184]] While giving 933,966 hands as the number properly employed in woollen manufacture, another writer says that women and children (girls and boys) were employed in the proportion of about eight to one man.[[185]]
Such figures must be taken with reserve, for the proportions of men and women employed varied according to the quality of the stuff woven, and pamphleteers of the seventeenth century handled figures with little regard to scientific accuracy.[[186]] But the uncertainty only refers to the exact proportion; there can be no doubt that the Woollen Trade depended chiefly upon women and children for its labour supply.
For the student of social organization it is noteworthy that in the two textile trades through which capitalism made in England its most striking advances—the woollen trade, and in later years, the cotton trade, the labour of women predominated,—a fact which suggests obscure actions and reactions between capitalism and the economic position of women, worthy of more careful investigation than they have as yet received.
The woollen trade passed through a period of rapid progress and development in the sixteenth century. It was then that the Clothiers of Wiltshire and Somerset acquired wealth and fame, building as a memorial for posterity the Tudor houses and churches which still adorn these counties. Leland, writing of a typical clothier and his successful enterprises and ambitions, describes at Malmesbury, Wiltshire “a litle chirch joining to the South side of the Transeptum of thabby chirch, ... Wevers hath now lomes in this litle chirch, but it stondith ... the hole logginges of thabbay be now longging to one Stumpe, an exceding riche clothiar that boute them of the king. This Stumpes sunne hath maried Sir Edward Baynton’s doughter. This Stumpe was the chef causer and contributer to have thabbay chirch made a paroch chirch. At this present tyme every corner of the vaste houses of office that belongid to thabbay be fulle of lumbes to weve clooth yn, and this Stumpe entendith to make a stret or 2 for clothier in the bak vacant ground of the abbay that is withyn the toune waulles.”[[187]]
There must have been a marked tendency at this time to bring the wage-earners of the woollen industry under factory control, for a description which is given of John Winchcombe’s household says that
“Within one room being large and long
There stood two hundred Looms full strong,
Two hundred men the truth is so
Wrought in these looms all in a row,
By evry one a pretty boy
Sate making quills with mickle joy.
And in another place hard by,
An hundred women merrily,
Were carding hard with joyful cheer
Who singing sate with voices clear.
And in a chamber close beside,
Two hundred maidens did abide,
In petticoats of Stammell red,
And milk-white kerchers on their head.”[[188]]
These experiments were discontinued, partly because they were discountenanced by the Government, which considered the factory system rendered the wage-earners too dependent on the clothiers; and also because the collection of large numbers of workpeople under one roof provided them with the opportunity for combination and insubordination.[[189]] Moreover the factory system was not really advantageous to the manufacturer before the introduction of power, because he could pay lower wages to the women who worked at home than to those who left their families in order to work on his premises. Thus the practice was dropped. In 1603 the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions published regulations to the effect that “Noe Clotheman shall keepe above one lombe in his house, neither any weaver that hath a ploughland shall keepe more than one lombe in his house. Noe person or persons shall keepe any lombe or lombs goeinge in any other house or houses beside their owne, or mayntayne any to doe the same.”[[190]]
Few references occur to the wives of successful clothiers or wool-merchants who were actively interested in their husband’s business, though no doubt their help was often enlisted in the smaller or more struggling concerns. Thus the names of three widows are given in a list of eleven persons who were using handicrafts at Maidstone. “The better sorte of these we take to bee but of meane ability and most of them poore but by theire trade the poore both of the towne and country adjoyning are ymploied to spynnyng.”[[191]]
A pamphlet published in 1692 describes how in former days “the Clothier that made the cloth, sold it to the merchant, and heard the faults of his own cloth; and forc’d sometimes not only to promise amendment himself, but to go home and tell Joan, to have the Wool better pick’d, and the Yarn better spun.”[[192]]
A certain Rachel Thiery applied for a monopoly in Southampton for the pressing of serges, and having heard that the suit had been referred by the Queen to Sir J. Cæsar, the Mayor and Aldermen wrote, July 2, 1599, to let him know how inconvenient the granting of the suit would be to the town of Southampton.
I. Those strangers who have presses already would be ruined.
II. Many of their men servants (English and strangers) bred up to the trade would be idle.
III. “The woeman verie poore and beggarlie, altogether unable to performe it in workmanshipp or otherwise.... Againe she is verie idle, a prattling gossipp, unfitt to undertake a matter of so great a charge, her husband a poore man being departed from her and comorant in Rochell these 11 yeres at least. She is verie untrustie and approoved to have engaged mens clothes which in times past have been putt to her for pressinge. Verie insufficient to answer of herself men’s goodes and unable to procure anie good Caution to render the owners there goodes againe, havinge not so much as a howse to putt her head in, insomuch as (marvellinge under what coullour she doth seeke to attaine to a matter of such weight) we ... should hold them worsse than madd that would hazzard or comitt there goodes into her handes. And to conclude she is generallie held amongest us an unfitt woeman to dwell in a well governed Commonwealth.”[[193]]
An incident showing the wife as virtual manager of her husband’s business is described in a letter from Thomas Cocks of Crowle to Sir Robert Berkely, Kt., in 1633. He writes complaining of a certain Careless who obtained a licence to sell ale “because he was a surgeon and had many patients come to him for help, and found it a great inconvenience for them to go to remote places for their diet and drink, and in that respect obtained a licence with a limitation to sell ale to none but his patients ... but now of late especially he far exceeds his bounds.... A poor fellow who professed himself an extraordinary carder and spinner ... was of late set a work by my wife to card and spin coarse wool for blankets and when he had gotten some money for his work to Careless he goes.” Having got drunk there and coming back in the early hours of the morning he made such a noise in the churchyard “being near my chamber I woke my wife who called up all my men to go into the churchyard and see what the matter was.”[[194]]
That Mrs. Cocks should engage and direct her husband’s workpeople would not be surprising to seventeenth century minds, for women did so naturally in family industry; but when capitalized, business tended to drift away beyond the wife’s sphere, and thus even then it was unusual to find women connected with the clothing trade, except as wage-earners.
Of the processes involved in making cloth, weaving was generally done by men, while the spinning, which was equally essential to its production, was exclusively done by women and children.
In earlier days weaving had certainly been to some extent a woman’s trade. “Webster” which is the feminine form of the old term “Webber” is used in old documents, and in these women are also specifically named as following this trade; thus on the Suffolk Poll-Tax Roll are entered the names of
“John Wros, shepherd.
Agneta his wife, webster.
Margery, his daughter, webster.
Thomas his servant and
Beatrice his servant.”
It appears also that there were women among the weavers who came from abroad to establish the cloth making in England, for a Statute in 1271 provides that “all workers of woollen cloths, male and female, as well of Flanders as of other lands, may safely come into our realm there to make cloths ... upon the understanding that those who shall so come and make such cloths, shall be quit of toll and tallage, and of payment of other customs for their work until the end of five years.”[[195]]
Later however, women were excluded from cloth weaving on the ground that their strength was insufficient to work the wide and heavy looms in use; thus orders were issued for Norwich Worsted Weavers in 1511 forbidding women and maids to weave worsteds because “thei bee nott of sufficient powre to werke the said worsteddes as thei owte to be wrought.”[[196]]
Complaint was made in Bristol in 1461 that weavers “puttyn, occupien, and hiren ther wyfes, doughters, and maidens, some to weve in ther owne lombes and some to hire them to wirche with othour persons of the said crafte by the which many and divers of the king’s liege people, likely men to do the king service in his wars and in defence of this his land, and sufficiently learned in the said craft, goeth vagrant and unoccupied, and may not have their labour to their living.”[[197]]
At Kingston upon-Hull, the weavers Composition in 1490, ordained that “ther shall no woman worke in any warke concernyng this occupacon wtin the towne of Hull, uppon payn of xls. to be devyded in forme by fore reherced.”[[198]]
A prohibition of this character could not resist the force of public opinion which upheld the woman’s claim to continue in her husband’s trade. Widow’s rights are sustained in the Weaver’s Ordinances formulated by 25 Charles II. which declare that “it shall be lawfull for the Widow of any Weaver (who at the time of his death was a free Burgesse of the said Town, and a free Brother of the said Company) to use and occupy the said trade by herselfe, her Apprentices and Servants, so long as shee continues a Widow and observeth such Orders as are or shalbe made to be used amongst the Company of Weavers within this Town of Kingston-upon-Hull.”[[199]]
Even when virtually excluded from the weaving of “cloaths” women continued to be habitually employed in the weaving of other materials. A petition was presented on their behalf against an invention which threatened a number with unemployment: “Also wee most humbly desire your worship that you would have in remembrance that same develishe invention which was invented by strangers and brought into this land by them, which hath beene the utter overthrowe of many poore people which heretofore have lived very well by their handy laboure which nowe are forced to goe a begginge and wilbe the utter Destruccion of the trade of weaving if some speedy course be not taken therein. Wee meane those looms with 12, 15, 20, 18, 20, 24, shuttles which make tape, ribbon, stript garteringe and the like, which heretofore was made by poore aged woemen and children, but none nowe to be seene.”[[200]]
The Rules of the Society of Weavers of the “Stuffs called Kiddirminster Stuffes” required that care should be taken to have apprentices “bound according to ye Lawes of ye Realme ... for which they shall be allowed 2s. 6d. and not above, to be payd by him or her that shall procure the same Apprentice to be bound as aforesayd.”[[201]]
John Grove was bound about the year 1655 to “the said George and Mary to bee taught and instructed in the trade of a serge-weaver,” and a lamentable account is given of the inordinate manner in which the said Mary did beat him.[[202]]
It is impossible from the scanty information available to arrive at a final conclusion concerning the position of women weavers. Clearly an attempt had been made to exclude them from the more highly skilled branches of the trade, but it is also evident that this had not been successful in depriving widows of their rights in this respect. Nor does the absence of information concerning women weavers prove that they were rarely employed in such work. The division of work between women and men was a question which aroused little interest at this time and therefore references to the part taken by women are accidental. They may have been extensively engaged in weaving for they are mentioned as still numerous among the handloom weavers of the nineteenth century.[[203]] Another process in the manufacture of cloth which gave employment to women was “Burling.” The minister and Mayor of Westbury presented a petition to the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions in 1657 on behalf of certain poor people who had obtained their living by the “Burling of broad medley clothes,” three of whose daughters had now been indicted by certain persons desirous to appropriate the said employment to themselves; they show “that the said employment of Burling hath not been known to be practised among us as any prentice trade, neither hath any been apprentice to it as to such, but clothiers have ever putt theyr clothes to Burling to any who would undertake the same, as they doe theyr woolles to spinning. Also that the said imployment of Burling is a common good to this poore town and parish, conducing to the reliefe of many poore families therein and the setting of many poore children on work. And if the said imployment of Burling should be appropriated by any particular persons to themselves it would redound much to the hurt of clothing, and to the undoing of many poore families there whoe have theyre cheife mainteynance therefrom.”[[204]]
It was not however the uncertain part they played in the processes of weaving, burling or carding, which constituted the importance of the woollen trade in regard to women’s industrial position. Their employment in these directions was insignificant compared with the unceasing and never satisfied demand which the production of yarn made upon their labour. It is impossible to give any estimate of the quantity of wool spun for domestic purposes. That this was considerable is shown by a recommendation from the Commission appointed to enquire into the decay of the Cloth Trade in 1622, who advise “that huswyves may not make cloth to sell agayne, but for the provision of themselves and their famylie that the clothiers and Drapers be not dis-coraged.”[[205]]
The housewife span both wool and flax for domestic use, but this aspect of her industry will be considered more fully in connection with the linen trade, attention here being concentrated on the condition of the spinsters in the woollen trade. Their organization varied widely in different parts of the country. Sometimes the spinster bought the wool, span it, and then sold the yarn, thus securing all the profit of the transaction for herself. In other cases she was supplied with the wool by the clothier, or a “market spinner” and only received piece wages for her labour. The system in vogue was partly decided by the custom of the locality, but there was everywhere a tendency to substitute the latter for the former method.
Statute I. Edward VI. chap. 6 recites that “the greatest and almost the whole number of the poor inhabitants of the county of Norfolk and the city of Norwich be, and have been heretofore for a great time maintained and gotten their living, by spinning of the wool growing in the said county of Norfolk, upon the rock [distaff] into yarn, and by all the said time have used to have their access to common markets within the said county and city, to buy their wools, there to be spun as is aforesaid, of certain persons called retailers of the said wool by eight penny worth and twelve penny worth at one time, or thereabouts, and selling the same again in yarn, and have not used to buy, ne can buy the said wools of the breeders of the said wools by such small parcels, as well as for that the said breeders of the said wools will not sell their said wools by such small parcels, as also for that the most part of the said poor persons dwell far off from the said breeders of the said wools.”[[206]]
During a scarcity of wool the Corporation at Norwich compelled the butchers to offer their wool fells exclusively to the spinsters during the morning hours until the next sheep-shearing season, so that the tawers and others might not be able to outbid them.[[207]]
It is suggested that nearly half the yarn used in the great clothing counties at the beginning of the seventeenth century was produced in this way: “Yarn is weekly broughte into the market by a great number of poor people that will not spin to the clothier for small wages, but have stock enough to set themselves on work, and do weekly buy their wool in the market by very small parcels according to their use, and weekly return it in yarn and make good profit, having the benefit both of their labour and of their merchandize and live exceeding well.... So many that it is supposed that more than half the cloth of Wilts., Gloucester and Somersetshire is made by means of these yarnmakers and poor clothiers that depend wholly on the wool chapman which serves them weekly for wools either for money or credit.”[[208]]
Apparently this custom by which the spinsters retained in their own hands the merchandize of their goods still prevailed in some counties at the beginning of the following century, for it is said in a pamphlet which was published in 1741 “that poor People, chiefly Day Labourers, ... whilst they are employed abroad themselves, get forty or fifty Pounds of Wool at a Time, to employ their Wives and Children at home in Carding and Spinning, of which when they have 10 or 20 pounds ready for the Clothier, they go to Market with it and there sell it, and so return home as fast as they can ... the common way the poor women in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, and I believe in other counties, have of getting to Market (especially in the Winter-time) is, by the Help of some Farmers’ Waggons, which carry them and their yarn; and as soon as the Farmers have set down their corn in the Market, and baited their Horses, they return home.... During the Time the waggons stop, the poor Women carry their Yarn to the Clothiers for whom they work; then they get the few Things they want, and return to the Inn to be carried home again.... Many of them ten or twelve miles ... there will be in Market time 3 or 400 poor People (chiefly Women) who will sell their Goods in about an Hour.”[[209]]
According to this writer other women worked for the “rich clothier” who “makes his whole year’s provision of wool beforehand ... in the winter time has it spun by his own spinsters ... at the lowest rate for wages,” or they worked for the “market spinner” or middleman who supplied them with wool mixed in the right proportions and sold their yarn to the clothiers. In either case the return for their labour was less than that secured by the spinsters who had sufficient capital to buy their wool and sell the yarn in the dearest market. When the Staplers tried to secure a monopoly for selling wool, the Growers of wool, or Chapmen petitioned in self-defence explaining “that the clothier’s poor are all servants working for small wages that doth but keepe them alive, whereas the number of people required to work up the same amount of wool in the new Drapery is much larger. Moreover, all sorts of these people are masters in their trade and work for themselves, they buy and sell their materials that they work upon, so that by their merchandize and honest labour they live very well. These are served of their wools weekly by the wool-buyer.”[[210]]
Opinion was divided as to whether the spinster found it more advantageous to work direct for the Clothier or for the Market Spinner. A proposal in 1693 to put down the middle-man, was advised against by the Justices of Assize for Wiltshire, on the ground that it was “likely to cause great reduction of wages and employment to the spinners and the poor, and a loss to the growers of wool, and no advantage in the quality of the yarn.”
The Justices say in their report: “We finde the markett spinner who setts many spinners on worke spinnes not the falce yarn, but the poorer sorte of people (who spinne theyr wool in theyr owne howses) for if the markett spinners who spinne greate quantitys and sell it in the markett should make bad yarne, they should thereby disable themselves to maynetayne theyre creditt and livelyhood. And that the more spinners there are, the more cloth will be made and the better vent for Woolls (which is the staple commodity of the kingdome) and more poor will be set on worke. The markett spinners (as is conceived) are as well to be regulated by the lawe, for any falcity in mixing of theyr woolles as the Clothier is, who is a great markett spinner himselfe and doth both make and sell as falce yarne as any market spinner.... We finde the markett spinner gives better wages than the Clothier, not for that reason the Clothier gives for the falcity of the yarne, but rather in that the markett spinners vent much of their yarne to those that make the dyed and dressed clothes who give greater prizes than the white men do.”[[211]]
The fine yarn used by the Clothiers required considerable skill in spinning, and the demand for it was so great in years of expansion that large sums of money were paid to persons able to teach the mysteries of the craft in a new district. Thus the Earl of Salisbury made an agreement in 1608 with Walter Morrell that he should instruct fifty persons of the parish of Hatfield, chosen by the Earl of Salisbury, in the art of clothing, weaving, etc. He will provide work for all these persons to avoid idleness and for the teaching of skill and knowledge in clothing will pay for the work at the current rates, except those who are apprentices. The Earl of Salisbury on his part will allow Walter Morrell a house rent free and will pay him £100 per annum “for instructing the fifty persons, to be employed in:—the buying of wool, sorting it, picking it, dying it, combing it, both white and mingle colour worsted, weaving and warping and quilling both worsted of all sorts, dressing both woollen and stuffes, spinning woollen (wofe and warpe), spinning all sortes of Kersey both high wheel and low wheel, knitting both woollen and worsted.”[[212]]
A similar agreement is recorded in 1661-2 between the Bailiffs and Burgesses of Aldeburgh and “Edmund Buxton of Stowmarket, for his coming to set up his trade of spinning wool in the town and to employ the poor therein, paying him £50—for 5 years and £12—for expense of removing, with a house rent free and the freedom of the town.”[[213]]
The finest thread was produced on the distaff, but this was a slow process, and for commoner work spinning wheels were in habitual use—
“There are, to speed their labor, who prefer
“Wheels double spol’d, which yield to either hand
“A sev’ral line; and many, yet adhere
“To th’ ancient distaff, at the bosom fix’d,
“Casting the whirling spindle as they walk.”[[214]]
The demands made on spinning by this ever expanding trade were supplied from three sources: (1) the wives of farmers and other well to do people, (b) the wives of husbandmen and (c) women who depended wholly on spinning for their living, and who are therefore called here spinsters. The first care of the farmers’ wives was to provide woollen stuffs for the use of their families, but a certain proportion of their yarn found its way to the market. The clothiers at Salisbury who made the better grades of cloth were said to “buy their yarn of the finer kinds that come to the market at from 17d the lb. to 2s. 4d, made all of the finer sortes of our owne Welshire wool, and is spun by farmers’ wives and other of the better sorte of people within their owne houses, of whose names wee keep due Register and do write down with what cardes they promise us their several bundles of yarne are carded, and do find such people just in what they tell us, or can otherwise controule them when wee see the proofe of our cloth in the mill, ... and also some very few farmers’ wives who maie peradventure spinne sometimes a little of those sortes in their own houses and sell the same in the markett and is verie current without mixture of false wooll grease, etc.”[[215]]
Probably a larger supply of yarn came from the families of husbandmen where wife and children devoted themselves to spinning through the long winter evenings. Children became proficient in the art at an early age, and could often spin a good thread when seven or eight years old. This subsidiary employment was not sufficient to supply the demand for yarn, and in the clothing counties numbers of women were withdrawn from agricultural occupations to depend wholly upon their earnings as spinsters.
The demand made by the woollen trade on the labour of children is shown by a report from the Justices of the Peace of the Boulton Division of the Hundred of Salford, ... “for apprentices there hath beene few found since our last certificate by reason of the greate tradeing of fustians and woollen cloth within the said division, by reason whereof the inhabitants have continuall employment for their children in spinning and other necessary labour about the same.”[[216]]
Those who gave out the wool and collected the yarn were called market spinners, but the qualifying term “market” is sometimes omitted, and when men are referred to as spinners it may be assumed that they are organising the work of the spinsters, and not engaged themselves in the process of spinning.[[217]] Though the demand for yarn generally exceeded the supply, wages for spinning remained low throughout the seventeenth century. A writer in the first half of the eighteenth century who urges the establishment of a nursery of spinners on the estate of an Irish landlord admits that their labour is “of all labour on wools the most sparingly paid for.”[[218]]
Wages for spinning are mentioned in only three of the extant Quarter Sessions’ Assessments, and it is not specified whether the material is wool or flax:
1654. Devon. 6d. per week with meat and drink, or 1s. 4d. without them.
1688. Bucks. Spinners shall not have by the day more than 4d. without meat and drink.
1714. Devon. 1s. per week with meat and drink, 2s. 6d. without them.
These rates are confirmed by entries in account books,[[219]] but it was more usual to pay by the piece. Though it is always more difficult to discover the possible earnings per day of women who are working by a piece rate in their own homes, it so happens that several of the writers who discuss labour questions in the woollen trade specially state that their estimates of the wages of spinners are based on full time. John Haynes quoted figures in 1715 which work out at nearly 1s. 6d. per week for the spinners of wool into stuffs for the Spanish Trade, and about 2s. 11d. for stockings,[[220]] another pamphlet gives 24s. as the wages of 9 spinsters for a week,[[221]] while in 1763 the author of the “Golden Fleece” quotes 2s. 3d. a week for Spanish wools.[[222]] Another pamphlet says that the wages in the fine woollen trade “being chiefly women and children, may amount, one with another to £6 per annum.”[[223]] A petition from the weavers, undated, but evidently presented during a season of bad trade, declares that “there are not less than a Million of poor unhappy objects, women and children only, who ... are employed in Spinning Yarn for the Woollen Manufacturers; Thousands of these have now no work at all, and all of them have suffered an Abatement of Wages; so that now a Poor Woman, perhaps a Mother of many Children, must work very hard to gain Three Pence or Three Pence Farthing per Day.”[[224]]
Though these wages provided no margin for the support of children, or other dependants, it was possible for a woman who could spin the better quality yarns to maintain herself in independence.
John Evelyn describes “a maiden of primitive life, the daughter of a poore labouring man, who had sustain’d her parents (some time since dead) by her labour, and has for many years refus’d marriage, or to receive any assistance from the parish, besides yᵉ little hermitage my lady gives her rent free: she lives on fourepence a day, which she gets by spinning; says she abounds and can give almes to others, living in greate humility and content, without any apparent affectation or singularity; she is continualy working, praying, or reading, gives a good account of her knowledge in religion, visites the sick; is not in the least given to talke; very modest, of a simple not unseemly behaviour, of a comely countenance, clad very plaine, but cleane and tight. In sum she appeares a saint of an extraordinary sort, in so religious a life as is seldom met with in villages now-a-daies.”[[225]]
It is probable that the wages for spinning were advanced soon after this date, for Defoe writes in 1728 that “the rate for spinning, weaving and all other Manufactory-work, I mean in Wool, is so risen, that the Poor all over England can now earn or gain near twice as much in a Day, and in some Places, more than twice as much as they could get for the same work two or three Years ago ... the poor women now get 12d. to 15d. a Day for spinning, the men more in proportion, and are full of work.”[[226]] “The Wenches ... wont go to service at 12d. or 18d. a week while they can get 7s. to 8s. a Week at spinning; the Men won’t drudge at the Plow and Cart &c., and perhaps get £6 a year ... when they can sit still and dry within Doors, and get 9s. or 10s. a Week at Wool-combing or at Carding.”[[227]] “Would the poor Maid-Servants who choose rather to spin, while they can gain 9s. per Week by their Labour than go to Service at 12d. a week to the Farmers Houses as before; I say would they sit close to their work, live near and close, as labouring and poor People ought to do, and by their Frugality lay up six or seven shillings per Week, none could object or blame them for their Choice.”[[228]] Defoe’s statement as to the high rate of wages for spinning is supported by an account of the workhouse at Colchester where the children’s “Work is Carding & Spinning Wool for the Baymakers; some of them will earn 6d. or 7d. a Day.”[[229]] But there is no sign of these higher wages in the seventeenth century.
Continual recriminations took place between clothiers and spinsters, who accused one another of dishonesty in their dealings. A petition of the Worsted Weavers of Norwich and Norfolk, and the Bayes and Sayes makers of Essex and Suffolk, to the Council proposes: “That no spinster shall winde or reele theire yarne upon shorter reeles (nor fewer thriddes) than have bene accustomed, nor ymbessell away their masters’ goodes to be punished by the next Justices of the Peace.”[[230]]
And again in 1622 the Justices of the Peace of Essex inform the Council: “Moreover wee understand that the clothiers who put forthe their woolle to spinne doe much complaine of the spinsters that they use great deceit by reason they doe wynde their yarne into knottes upon shorter reeles and fewer threedes by a fifth part than hath beene accustomed. The which reeles ought to be two yardes about and the knottes to containe fowerscore threedes apeece.”[[231]]
On the other hand in Wiltshire the weavers, spinners and others complained that they “are not able by their diligent labours to gett their livinges, by reason that the Clothiers at their will have made their workes extreme hard, and abated wages what they please. And some of them make such their workfolkes to doe their houshold businesses, to trudge in their errands, spoole their chains, twist their list, doe every command without giving them bread, drinke or money for many days labours.”[[232]]
Report was made to the Council in 1631-2 that the reele-staffe in the Eastern Counties “was enlarged by a fift or sixt part longer than have bene accustomed and the poores wages never the more encreased.” Whereupon the magistrates in Cambridge agreed “that all spinsters shall have for the spinning and reeling of six duble knots on the duble reele or 12 on the single reele, a penny, which is more by 2d. in the shilling than they have had, and all labourers and other artificers have the like increase. Essex and Suffolk are ready to make the same increase provided that the same reel and rate of increase is used in all other counties where the trade of clothing and yarn-making is made, otherwise one county will undersell another to the ruin of the clothiers and the poor dependent on them. Therefore the Council order that a proportional increase of wages is paid according to the increase of the reel and the officers employed for keeping a constant reel to give their accounts to the Justices of the Assize.”[[233]]
Other complaints were made of clothiers who forced their workpeople to take goods instead of money in payment of wages. At Southampton in 1666 thirty-two clothiers, beginning with Joseph Delamot, Alderman, were presented for forcing their spinners “to take goods for their work whereby the poor were much wronged, being contrary to the statute, for all which they were amerced severally.” The records however do not state that the fine was exacted.[[234]]
Low as were the spinster’s wages even in seasons of prosperity, they, in common with the better-paid weavers endured the seasons of depression, which were characteristic of the woollen industry. The English community was as helpless before a period of trade depression as before a season of drought or flood. Employment ceased, the masters who had no sale for their goods, gave out no material to their workers, and men and women alike, who were without land as a resource in this time of need, were faced with starvation and despair.[[235]] The utmost social demoralisation ensued, and family life with all its valuable traditions was in many cases destroyed.
Complaints from the clothing counties state “That the Poor’s Rates are doubled, and in some Places trebbled by the Multitude of Poor Perishing and Starving Women and Children being come to the Parishes, while their Husbands and Fathers not able to bear the cries which they could not relieve, are fled into France ... to seek their Bread.”[[236]]
These conditions caused grave anxiety to the Government who attempted to force the clothiers to provide for their workpeople.[[237]]
Locke reported to Carleton, Feb. 16th, 1622: “In the cloathing counties there have bin lately some poore people (such chieflie as gott their living by working to Clothiers) that have gathered themselves together by Fourty or Fifty in a company and gone to the houses of those they thought fittest to relieve them for meate and money which hath bin given more of feare than charitie. And they have taken meate openly in the markett without paying for it. The Lords have written letters to ten Counties where cloathing is most used, that the Clothier shall not put off his workemen without acquainting the Councill, signifying that order is taken for the buying off their cloathes, and that the wooll grower shall afford them his wooll better cheape but yet the cloathiers still complaine that they can not sell their cloath in Blackwell Hall....”[[238]]
The Justices of Assize for Gloucester reported March 13, 1622, that they have interviewed the Clothiers who have been forced to put down looms through the want of sale for their cloth. The Clothiers maintain that this is due to the regulations and practices of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. They say that they, the Clothiers, have been working at a loss since the deadness of trade about a year ago, “their stocks and credits are out in cloth lying upon their hands unsold, and that albeit they have bought their woolles at very moderate prices, being such as do very much impoverish the grower, yet they cannot sell the cloth made thereof but to their intolerable losses, and are enforced to pawne theire clothes to keepe theire people in work, which they are not able to indure ... that there are at the least 1500 loomes within the County of Gloucester and in ... the Citie and that xxs. in money and sixteene working persons and upwards doe but weekly mainteyne one loome, which doe require 1500li. in money, by the weeke to mainteyne in that trade 24000 working people besides all others that are releeved thereby, and so the wages of a labouring person is little above xiid. the week being much too little.”[[239]]
In June of the same year the Justices of Gloucester wrote to the Council: “The distress of those depending on the Cloth trade grows worse and worse. Our County is thereby and through want of money and means in these late tymes growne poore, and unable to releeve the infynite nomber of poore people residinge within the same (drawne hither by meanes of clothing) ... therefore very many of them doe wander, begg and steale and are in case to starve as their faces (to our great greefes) doe manifest.... The peace is in danger of being broken.”[[240]]
The distress was not limited to the rural districts; the records of the Borough of Reading describe efforts made there for its alleviation. “At this daye the complainte of the poore Spynners and Carders was agayne heard etc. The Overseers and Clothiers apoynted to provide and assigne them worke apeared and shewed their dilligence therein, yett the complaint for lacke of worke increaseth; for a remedye is agreed to be thus, viz: every Clothier according to his proportion of ... shall weekly assigne and put to spynning in the towne his ordinarye and course wooffe wooll, and shall not send it unto the country and if sufficient be in the towne to doe it.”[[241]] At another time it is recorded that “In regard of the great clamour of divers poore people lackinge worke and employment in spynninge and cardinge in this Towne, yt was this daye thought fitt to convent all the undertakers of the stocke given by Mr. Kendricke, and uppon their appearaunce it was ordered, and by themselves agreed, that every undertaker, for every 300li. shall put a woowf a weeke to spyninge within the Towne, as Mr. Mayour shall apoynt, and to such spynners as Mr. Mayour shall send to them[[242]]....”
In these times of distress and in all disputes concerning wages and the exactions of the employers, men and women stood together, supporting each other in their efforts for the improvement of their lot. Thus the Justices of the Peace of Devonshire reported that “complaints were made by the most parte of the clothiers weavers, spinsters and fullers between Plymouth and Teignmouth,”[[243]] and the Council is informed that at the last Quarter Sessions in Wilts, many “weavers, spinners, and fullers for themselves and for manie hundreds more ... complained of distress by increasing want of work.... Clothiers giving up their trade, etc.”[[244]]
Sometimes the petitions, though presented on behalf of spinners as well as weavers, were actually signed only by men. This was the case with the Weavers, Fullers and Spinners of Leonard Stanley and King Stanley in Gloucestershire, who petitioned on behalf of themselves and others, 800 at the least, young and old, of the said parishes, “Whereas your poore petitioners have heretofore bene well wrought and imployed in our sayd occupations belonging to the trade of clothing whereby we were able in some poore measure and at a very lowe rate to maintaine ourselves and families soe as hitherto they have not suffered any extreme want. But now soe it is that we are likely for the time to come never to be imployed againe in our callinges and to have our trades become noe trades, whereunto we have bene trained up and served as apprentices according to the lawe, and wherein we have always spent our whole time and are now unfitt for ... other occupations, neither can we be received into worke by any clothiers in the whole countrey.”[[245]]
At other times women took the lead in demanding the redress of grievances from which all were suffering. When the case of the say-makers abating the wages of the spinsters, weavers and combers of Sudbury was examined by the Justices, the Saymakers alleged that all others did the same, but that they were content to give the wages paid by them if these were extended by proclamation or otherwise throughout the kingdom. “But if the order is not general it will be their undoing ...” Whereupon the Justices ordered the Saymakers to pay spinsters “for every seaven knottes one penny, the reel whereon the yarne is reeled to be a yard in length—no longer,” and to pay weavers “12d. a lb. for weaving thereof for white sayes under 5 lbs. weight.”[[246]]
Shortly afterwards the Council received a petition from the Mayor asking to be heard by the Council or Commissioners to answer the complaint made against them. “by Silvia Harber widow set on worke by Richard Skinnir of Sudbury gent ... for abridging and wronging of the spinsters and weavers of the said borough in their wages and for some other wrongs supposed to bee done to the said Silvia Harber,” followed by an affidavit stating “Wee whose names are hereunder written doe testifye as followeth with our severell handes to our testification.
“1. That one Silvia Harber of our Towne of Sudbury comonly called Luce Harbor did say that shee had never undertaken to peticion the Lordes of the Counsell in the Behalfe of the Spinsters of Sudbury aforesaid but by the inducement of Richard Skinner gentleman of the Towne aforesaid who sent for her twoe or three times before shee would goe unto him for that purpose, and when shee came to him hee sent her to London and bare her charges. Witness, Daniel Biat Clement Shelley.
“2. That having conference with Richard Skinner aforesaid Gentleman, hee did confesse that hee would never have made any stir of complaint against the saymakers in behalf of weavers and spinsters, but that one Thomas Woodes of the towne abovesaid had given him Distaystfull wordes.” Witness, Vincent Cocke.[[247]]
No organisation appears to have been formed by the wage-earners in the woollen Trade. Their demonstrations against employers were as yet local and sporadic. The very nature of their industry and the requirements of its capitalistic organisation would have rendered abortive on their part the attempt to raise wages by restricting the numbers of persons admitted into the trade; but the co-operation in trade disputes between the men and women engaged in this industry, forms a marked contrast to the conditions which were now beginning to prevail in the apprentice trades and which will be described later. Though without immediate result in the woollen trade, it may be assumed that it was this habit of standing shoulder to shoulder, regardless of sex-jealousy, which ensured that when Industrialism attained a further development in the closely allied cotton trade, the union which was then called into being embraced men and women on almost equal terms.
The broad outline of the position of women in the woollen trade as it was established in the seventeenth century shows them taking little, if any, part in the management of the large and profitable undertakings of Clothiers and Wool-merchants. Their industrial position was that of wage-earners, and though the demand for their labour generally exceeded the supply, yet the wages they received were barely sufficient for their individual maintenance, regardless of the fact that in most cases they were wholly or partly supporting children or other dependants.
The higher rates of pay for spinning appear to have been secured by the women who did not depend wholly upon it for their living, but could buy wool, spin it at their leisure, and sell the yarn in the dearest market; while those who worked all the year round for clothiers or middlemen, were often beaten down in their wages and were subject to exactions and oppression.
C. Linen.
While the woollen trade had for centuries been developing under the direction of capitalism, it was only in the seventeenth century that this influence begins to show itself in the production of linen. Following the example of the clothiers, attempts were then made to manufacture linen on a large scale. For example, Celia Fiennes describes Malton as a “pretty large town built of Stone but poor; ... there was one Mr. Paumes that marry’d a relation of mine, Lord Ewers’ Coeheiress who is landlady of almost all yᵉ town. She has a pretty house in the place. There is the ruins of a very great house whᶜʰ belonged to yᵉ family but they not agreeing about it Caused yᵉ defaceing of it. She now makes use of yᵉ roomes off yᵉ out-buildings and gate house for weaving and Linning Cloth, haveing set up a manuffactory for Linnen whᶜʰ does Employ many poor people.”[[248]]
In spite of such innovations the production of linen retained for the most part its character as one of the crafts “yet left of that innocent old world.” The housewife, assisted by servants and children span flax and hemp for household linen, underclothes, children’s frocks and other purposes, and then took her thread to the local weaver who wove it to her order. Thus Richard Stapley, Gent., enters in his Diary: “A weaver fetched 11 pounds of flaxen yarn to make a bedticke; and he brought me ten yds of ticking for yᵉ bed, 3 yds and ¾ of narrow ticking for yᵉ bolster & for yᵉ weaving of which I paid him 10s. and ye flax cost 8d. per pound. My mother spun it for me, and I had it made into a bed by John Dennit, a tailor, of Twineham for 8d. on Wednesday, July 18th, and it was filled on Saturday, August 4th by Jonas Humphrey of Twineham for 6d.” The weaver brought it home July 6th.[[249]] Similarly Sarah Fell enters in her Household book: “Nov. 18th, 1675, by mᵒ. pᵈ. Geo. ffell weaver foʳ workeinge 32: ells of hempe tow cloth of Mothrs. at ld½ ell. 000.04.00.”[[250]]
By the industry and foresight of its female members the ordinary household was supplied with all its necessary linen without any need for entering the market, the expenses of middlemen and salesmen being so avoided. Nevertheless, it is evident that a considerable sale for linen had always existed, for the linen drapers were an important corporation in many towns. This sale was increased through an invention made about the middle of the century: By printing patterns on linen a material was produced which closely imitated the costly muslins, or calicoes as they were then called, imported from India; but at so reasonable a price that they were within the reach of a servant’s purse. Servants were therefore able to go out in dresses scarcely distinguishable from their mistresses’, and the sale of woollen and silk goods was seriously affected. The woollen trade became alarmed; riots took place; weavers assaulted women who were wearing printed linens in the streets, and finally, Parliament, always tender to the woollen trade, which furnished so large a part of the national revenue, prohibited their use altogether. The linen printers recognising that “the Reason why the English Manufacture of linnen is not so much taken notice of as the Scotch or Irish, is this, the English is mostly consumed in the Country, ... whereas the Scotch and Irish must come by sea and make a Figure at our custom’s house,”[[251]] urged in their defence that “the linens printed are chiefly the Growth and Manufacture of North Britain pay 3d. per Yard to the Crown, ... and Employ so many Thousands of British poor, as will undoubtedly entitle them to the Care of a British Parliament.”[[252]]
But even this argument was unavailing against the political influence of the woollen trade. The spirit of the time favouring the spread of capitalistic enterprise from the woollen trade into other fields of action, an attempt was now made to form a Linen Company. Pamphlets written for and against this project furnish many details of the conditions then prevailing in the manufacture of linen. “How,” it was said, will the establishment of a Linnen Company “affect the Kingdom in the two Pillars that support it, that of the Rents of Land and the imploying our Ships and Men at Sea, which are thought the Walls of the Nation. For the Rents of Land they must certainly fall, for that one Acre of Flax will imploy as many Hands the year round, as the Wooll of Sheep that graze twenty Acres of Ground. The Linnen Manufactory imploys few men, the Woollen most, Weaving, Combing, Dressing, Shearing, Dying, etc. These Eat and Drink more than Women and Children; and so as the Land that the Sheep graze on raiseth the Rent, so will the Arable and Pasture that bears Corn, and breeds Cattle for their Subsistence. Then for the Employment of our Shipping, it will never be pretended that we can arrive to Exportation of Linnen; there are others and too many before us in that.... That Projectors and Courtiers should be inspired with New Lights, and out of love to the Nation, create new Methods in Trades, that none before found out; and by inclosing Commons the Liberty of Trade into Shares, in the first place for themselves, and then for such others as will pay for both, is, I must confess, to me, a Mystery I desire to be a Stranger unto.... The very Name of a Company and Joint-Stock in Trade, is a spell to drive away, and keep out of that place where they reside, all men of Industry.... The great motive to Labour and Incouragement of Trade, is an equal Freedom, and that none may be secluded from the delightful Walks of Liberty ... a Subjection in Manufactories where a People are obliged to one Master, tho’ they have the full Value of their Labour, is not pleasing, they think themselves in perpetual Servitude, and so it is observed in Ireland, where the Irish made a Trade of Linnen Yarn, no Man could ingage them, but they would go to the Market and be better satisfied with a less price, than to be obliged to one master.... There was much more Reason for a Company and Joint-stock to set up the Woollen Manufactory, in that ignorant Age, than there is for this of the Linnen Manufactory; that of the Woollen was a new Art not known in this Kingdom, it required a great Stock to manage, there was required Foreign as well as Native Commodities to carry it on ... and when the Manufactory was made, there must be Skill and Interest abroad to introduce the Commodity where others had the Trade before them; but there is nothing of all this in the Linnen Manufactory; Nature seems to design it for the weaker Sex. The best of Linnen for Service is called House Wife’s Cloth, here then is no need of the Broad Seal, or Joint-Stock to establish the Methods for the good Wife’s weeding her Flax-garden, or how soon her Maid shall sit to her Wheel after washing her Dishes; the good Woman is Lady of the Soil, and holds a Court within herself, throws the Seed into the Ground, and works it till she brings it there again, I mean her Web to the bleaching Ground.... To appropriate this which the poorest Family may by Labour arrive unto, that is, finish and bring to Market a Piece of Cloth, to me seems an infallible Expedient to discourage universal Industry.... The Linnen Manufactory above any Trade I know, if (which I must confess I doubt) it be for the Good of the Nation, requires more Charity than Grandeur to carry it on, the poor Spinner comes as often to her Master for Charity to a sick Child, or a Plaister for a Sore, as for Wages; and this she cannot have of a Company, but rather less for her labour, when they have beat all private Undertakers out. These poor Spinners can now come to their Master’s Doors at a good time, and eat of their good tho’ poor master’s Chear; they can reason with him, if any mistake, or hardship be put upon them, and this poor People love to do, and not be at the Dispose of Servants, as they must be where their Access can only be by Doorkeepers, Clerks, etc., to the Governors of the Company.”[[253]]
On the other side it was urged that “All the Arguments that can be offer’d for Encouraging the woollen manufacture in England conclude as strongly in proportion for Encouraging the linnen manufacture in Scotland. ’Tis the ancient Staple Commodity there, as the Woollen is here.”[[254]]
The part taken by women in the production of linen resembled their share in woollen manufactures. Some were weavers; thus Oliver Heywood says that his brother-in-law, who afterwards traded in fustians, was brought up in Halifax with Elizabeth Roberts, a linen weaver.[[255]] Entries in the Foulis Account Book show that they were sometimes employed in bleaching but spinning was the only process which depended exclusively on their labour.
The rates of pay for spinning flax and hemp were even lower than those for spinning wool. Fitzherbert expressly says that in his time no woman could get her living by spinning linen.[[256]] The market price was of little moment to well-to-do women who span thread for their family’s use and who valued the product of their labour by its utility and not by its return in money value; but the women who depended on spinning for their living were virtually paupers, as is shown by the terms in which reference is made to them:—“shee beeinge very poore, gettinge her livinge by spinninge and in the nature of a widowe, her husband beeinge in the service of His Majesty.”[[257]]
Yet the demand for yarn and thread was so great that if spinners had been paid a living wage there would have been scarcely any need for poor relief.
The relation between low wages and pauperism was hardly even suspected at this time, and though the spinsters’ maximum wages were settled at Quarter Sessions, no effort was made to raise them to a subsistence level. Instead of attempting to do so Parish Authorities accepted pauperism as “the act of God,” and concentrated their attention on the task of reducing rates as far as possible by forcing the pauper women and children, who had become impotent or vicious through neglect and under-feeding, to spin the thread needed by the community. Schemes for this purpose were started all over the country; a few examples will show their general scope. At Nottingham it was arranged for Robert Hassard to “Receave pore children to the number of viij. or more, ... and to haue the benefitt of theire workes and labours for the first Moneth, and the towne to allowe him towards their dyett, for everie one xijid. a Weeke, and theire parents to fynde them lodginge; and Robert Hassard to be carefull to teache and instructe them speedyly in the spyninge and workinge heare, to be fitt to make heare-cloth, and allsoe in cardinge and spyninge of hards to make candle weeke, and hee to geue them correccion, when need ys, and the greate wheeles to be called in, and to be delivered for the vse of these ymployments.”[[258]]
A few years later in the scheme “for setting the poore on worke” the following rates of pay were established:—
6d. per pound for cardinge and spinning finest wool.
5d. per pound for ye second sort.
4d. ob. (＝ obolus, ½d.) for ye third sorte.
1d. per Ley [skein] for ye onely spinninge all sortes of linen, the reele beeing 4 yards.
ob. per pound for cardinge candleweake.
1d. per pound for pulling midling [coarser part] out of it.
1d. per pound for spininge candleweake.[[259]]
Orders for the Workhouse at Westminster in 1560, read that “old Women or middle-Aged that might work, and went a Gooding, should be Hatchilers of the Flax; and one Matron over them. That common Hedges, and such like lusty naughty Packs, should be set to spinning; and one according to be set over them. Children that were above Six and not twelve Years of Age should be sent to winde Quills to the Weavers.”[[260]]
At a later date in London “Besides the relieving and educating of poor friendless harborless children in Learning and in Arts, many hundreds of poor Families are imployed and relieved by the said Corporation in the Manufactory of Spinning and Weaving: and whosoever doth repair either to the Wardrobe near Black-friars, or to Heiden-house in the Minories, may have materials of Flax, Hemp, or Towe to spin at their own houses ... leaving so much money as the said materials cost, until it be brought again in Yarn; at which time they shall receive money for their work ... every one is paid according to the fineness or coarseness of the Yarn they spin ... so that none are necessitated to live idly that are desirous or willing to work. And it is to be wished and desired, that the Magistrates of this city would assist this Corporation ... in supressing of Vagrants and common Beggars ... that so abound to the hindrance of the Charity of many pious people towards this good work.”[[261]]
The Cowden overseers carried out a scheme of work for the poor from 1600 to 1627, buying flax and having it spun and woven into canvas. The work generally paid for itself; only one year is a loss of 7s. 8d. entered, and during the first seventeen years the amount expended yearly in cash and relief did not exceed £6 11s. rising then in 1620 to £28 5s. 10d., after which it fell again. The scheme was finally abandoned in 1627, the relief immediately rising to £43 7s. 6d.[[262]]
Richard Dunning describes how in Devon “for Employing Women, ... We agreed with one Person, who usually Employed several Spinsters, ... he was to employ in Spinning, Carding, etc., all such Women as by direction of the Overseers should apply to him for Work, to pay them such Wages as they should deserve.”[[263]]
“Mary Harrison, daughter of Henry Harrison, was comited to the hospitall at Reading to be taught to spyn and earne her livinge.”[[264]] Similarly at Dorchester “Sarah Handcock of this Borough having this day been complayned of for her disorderly carriage and scolding in the work house ... ... among the spinsters, is now ordered to come no more to the work house to work there, but is to work elsewhere and follow her work, or to be further delt withall according to the lawe.”[[265]]
At Dorchester a school was maintained for some years in which poor children were taught spinning: “This day John Tarrenton ... is agreed withall to vndertake charge and to be master of the Hospitall to employ halfe the children at present at burlinge,[[266]] and afterwards the others as they are willing and able, To have the howse and Tenne per annum: wages for the presente, and yf all the Children come into burlinge, and ther be no need of the women that doe now teach them to spinne, then the Towne to consyder of Tarrington to giue him either part or all, that is ix pownd, the women now hath....”[[267]]
Another entry, February 3rd, 1644-5, records that “Mr. Speering doth agree to provide spinning work for such poore persons that shall spin with those turnes as are now there [in the hospital house] ... and to pay the poore for their spinning after the vsual rates for the worke they doe.”[[268]]
In 1649 it is entered “This day Thos. Clench was here, and demanded 10 li. per ann. more than the stocke of the Hospital, which is 150 li. lent him for the furnishing of the house with worke for spinners, and for the overlooking to the children ... the spinners shall have all the yeare 3½d. a li. for yearne ... and that there be as many children kept aworke as the roomes will hold ... wee shall take into consideracion the setting of the poore on worke in spinning of worsted, and knitting of stockins, and also of setting vp a trade of making sackcloth.”[[269]]
Schemes for teaching spinning were welcomed with enthusiasm by the economists of the period, because in many districts the poor rates had risen to an alarming height. They believed that if only the poor would work all would be well. One writer urged “That if the Poor of the Place do not know how to spin, or to do the Manufacture of that Place, that then there be Dames hired at the Parish-Charge to teach them; and Men may learn to spin as well as Women, and Earn as much money at it as they can at many other employments.”[[270]] Another writer calculated that if so employed “ixcl children whᶜʰ daielie was ydle may earne one wᵗ another vjid. a weke whᶜʰ a mownte in the yere to jMiijcxxxvˡⁱ. Also that jciiijxx women ... ar hable to earne at lest some xijid., some xxd., and some ijs. vjid. a weeke.”[[271]]
This zest for teaching spinning was partly due to the fact that the clothiers were represented on the local authorities, and often the extending of their business was hampered by the shortage of spinsters. But the flaw in all these arrangements was the fact that spinning remained in most cases a grant in aid, and could not, owing to the low wages paid, maintain a family, scarcely even an individual, on the level of independence.
Children could not live on 6d. a week, or grown women on 1s. or 1s. 8d. a week. And so the women, when they depended wholly upon spinning flax for their living, became paupers, suffering the degradation and loss of power by malnutrition which that condition implies.
In a few cases this unsatisfactory aspect of spinning was perceived by those who were charged with relieving the poor. Thus, when a workhouse was opened in Bristol in 1654, the spinning scheme was soon abandoned as unprofitable.[[272]] Later, when girls were again taught spinning, the managers of the school “soon found that the great cause of begging did proceed from the low wages for Labour; for after about eight months time our children could not get half so much as we expended in their provisions. The manufacturers ... were always complaining the Yarn was spun couarse, but would not advance above eightpence per pound for spinning, and we must either take this or have no work.” Finally the Governor took pains therefore to teach them to produce a finer yarn at 2s. to 3s. 6d. per pound. This paid better, and would have been more profitable still if the girls as they grew older had not been sent to service or put into the kitchen.[[273]]
Thomas Firmin, after a prolonged effort to help the poor in London, came to a similar conclusion. He explains that “the Poor of this Parish, tho’ many, are yet not so many as in some others; yet, even here there are many poor people, who receive Flax to spin, tho’ they are not all Pensioners to the Parish, nor, I hope, ever will be, it being my design to prevent that as much as may be; ... there are above 500 more out of other Parishes in and about the City of London; some of which do constantly follow this Employment, and others only when they have no better; As, suppose a poor Woman that goes three dayes a Week to Wash or Scoure abroad, or one that is employed in Nurse-keeping three or four Months in a Year, or a poor Market-woman, who attends three or four Mornings in a Week with her Basket, and all the rest of the time these folks have little or nothing to do; but by means of this spinning are not only kept within doors ... but made much more happy and chearful.”[[274]]
Firmin began his benevolent work in an optimistic spirit, “had you seen, as I have done many a time, with what joy and satisfaction, many Poor People have brought home their Work, and received their money for it, you would think no Charity in the World like unto it. Do not imagine that all the Poor People in England, are like unto those Vagrants you find up and down in the Streets. No, there are many Thousands whose necessities are very great, and yet do what they can by their Honest Labour to help themselves; and many times they would do more than they do but for want of Employment. Several that I have now working to me do spin, some fifteen, some sixteen, hours in four and twenty, and had much rather do it than be idle.”[[275]]
The work developed until “He employed in this manufacture some times 1600, some times 1700 Spinners, besides Dressers of flax, Weavers and others. Because he found that his Poor must work sixteen hours in the day to earn sixpence, and thought their necessities and labour were not sufficiently supplied or recompensed by these earnings; therefore he was wont to distribute Charity among them ... without which Charity some of them had perished for want, when either they or their children fell ill.... Whoever of the Spinners brought in two pound of Yarn might take away with ’em a Peck of Coals. Because they soiled themselves by carrying away Coals in their Aprons or Skirts ... he gave ’em canvass bags. By the assistance and order of his Friends he gave to Men, Women and Children 3,000 Shirts and Shifts in two years.”[[276]]
“In above £4000, laid out the last Year, reckning House-rent, Servants wages, Loss by Learners, with the interest of the Money, there was not above £200 lost, one chief reason of which was the kindness of several Persons, who took off good quantities ... at the price they cost me to spin and weave ... and ... the East India Co., gave encouragement to make their bags.” But the loss increased as time went on.... “In 1690 his design of employing the poor to spin flax was taken up by the Patentees of the Linen Manufacture, who made the Poor and others, whom they employed, to work cheaper; yet that was not sufficient to encourage them to continue the manufacture.... The poor spinners, being thus deserted, Mr. Firmin returned to ’em again; and managed that trade as he was wont; But so, that he made it bear almost its own Charges. But that their smaller Wages might be comfortable to them he was more Charitable to ’em, and begged for ’em of almost all Persons of Rank with whom he had intimacy, or so much as Friendship. He would also carry his Cloth to divers, with whom he scarce had any acquaintance, telling ’em it was the Poor’s cloth, which in conscience they ought to buy at the Price it could be afforded.”[[277]] ... Finally, “he was persuaded by some, to make trial of the Woollen Manufacture; because at this, the Poor might make better wages, than at Linen-work. But the price of wool advancing very much, and the London-Spinsters being almost wholly unskilful at Drawing a Woollen-Thread, after a considerable loss ... and 29 months trial he gave off the project.”[[278]]
Firmin’s experiment, corroborating as it does the results of other efforts at poor relief, shows that at this time women could not maintain themselves by the wages of flax spinning; still less could they, when widows, provide for their children by this means.
But though the spinster, when working for wages received so small a return for her labour, it must not be forgotten that flax spinning was chiefly a domestic art, in which the whole value of the woman’s labour was secured to her family, unaffected by the rate of wages. Therefore the value of women’s labour in spinning flax must not be judged only according to the wages which they received, but was more truly represented by the quantity of linen which they produced for household use.
D. Silk, and Gold and Silver.
The history of the Silk Trade differs widely from that of either the Woollen or Linen Trades. The conditions of its manufacture during the fifteenth century are described with great clearness in a petition presented to Henry VI. by the silk weavers in 1455, which “Sheweth unto youre grete wisdoms, and also prayen and besechen the Silkewymmen and Throwestres of the Craftes and occupation of Silkewerk within the Citee of London, which be and have been Craftes of wymmen within the same Citee of tyme that noo mynde renneth unto the contrarie. That where it is pleasyng to God that all his Creatures be set in vertueux occupation and labour accordyng to their degrees, and convenient for thoo places where their abode is, to the nourishing of virtue and eschewyng of vices and ydelness. And where upon the same Craftes, before this tyme, many a wurshipfull woman within the seid Citee have lyved full hounourably, and therwith many good Housholdes kept, and many Gentilwymmen and other in grete noumbre like as there nowe be moo than a M., have been drawen under theym in lernyng the same Craftes and occupation full vertueusly, unto the plesaunce of God, whereby afterward they have growe to grete wurship, and never any thing of Silke brought into yis lande concerning the same Craftes and occupation in eny wise wrought, but in rawe Silk allone unwrought”; but now wrought goods are introduced and it is impossible any longer to obtain rawe material except of the worst quality ... “the sufferaunce whereof, hath caused and is like to cause, grete ydelness amongs yonge Gentilwymmen and oyer apprentices of the same Craftes within ye said Citee, and also leying doun of many good and notable Housholdes of them that have occupied the same Craftes, which be convenient, worshipfull and accordyng for Gentilwymmen, and oyer wymmen of wurship, aswele within ye same Citee as all oyer places within this Reaume.” The petitioners assumed that “Every wele disposed persone of this land, by reason and naturall favour, wold rather that wymmen of their nation born and owen blode hadde the occupation thereof, than strange people of oyer landes.”[[279]]
The petition received due attention, Statute 33, Henry VI enacting that “Whereas it is shewed to our Sovereign Lord the King in his said parliament, by the grevous complaint of the silk women and spinners of the mystery and occupation of silk-working, within the city of London, how that divers Lombards and other strangers, imagining to destroy the said mystery, and all such virtuous occupations of women in the said Realm, to enrich themselves ... have brought ... such silk so made, wrought, twined, ribbands, and chains falsely and deceitfully wrought, all manner girdels and other things concerning the said mystery and occupation, in no manner wise bringing any good silk unwrought, as they were wont.” Therefore the importation of “any merchandise ... touching or concerning the mystery of silk women, (girdels which come from Genoa only excepted,)” is forbidden.[[280]]
This statute was re-enacted in succeeding reigns with the further explanation that “as well men as women” gained their living by this trade.
Few incidents reveal more clearly than do these petitions the gulf separating the conception of women’s sphere in life which prevailed in mediæval London, from that which governed society in the first decade of the twentieth century. The contrast is so great that it becomes difficult to adjust one’s vision to the implications which the former contains. Other incidents can be quoted of the independence, enterprise, and capacity manifested by the prosperous women of the merchant class in London during the Middle Ages. Thus Rose de Burford, the wife of a wealthy London merchant, engaged in trading transactions on a large scale both before and after her husband’s death. She lent money to the Bishop in 1318, and received 100 Marks for a cope embroidered with coral. She petitioned for the repayment of a loan made by her husband for the Scottish wars, finally proposing that this should be allowed her off the customs which she would be liable to pay on account of wool about to be shipped from the Port of London.[[281]]
It is, however, a long cry from the days of Rose de Burford to the seventeenth century, when “gentilwymmen and other wymmen of worship” no longer made an honourable living by the silk trade; which trade, in spite of protecting statutes, had become the refuge of paupers. To obviate the difficulties of an exclusive reliance on foreign supplies for the raw material of the silk trade, James I. ordered the planting of 10,000 mulberry trees so that “multitudes of persons of both sexes and all ages, such as in regard of impotence are unfitted for other labour, may bee set on worke, comforted and releved.”[[282]]
The unsatisfactory state of the trade is shown in a petition from the merchants, silk men, and others trading for silk, asking for a charter of incorporation because “the trade of silke is now become great whereby ... customes are increased and many thousands of poore men, women and children sett on worke and mayntayned. And forasmuch as the first beginning of this trade did take its being from women then called silkwomen who brought upp men servants, that since have become free of all or moste of the severall guilds and corporacions of London, whose ordinances beeing for other particular trades, meet not with, nor have power to reprove such abuses and deceipts as either have or are likely still to growe upon the silk trade.”[[283]]
A petition from the Master, Wardens and Assistants of the Company of Silk Throwers, shows that by this “Trade between Forty and Fifty thousand poor Men, Women and Children, are constantly Imployed and Relieved, in and about the City of London ... divers unskilful Persons, who never were bred as Apprentices to the said Trade of Silk-throwing, have of Late years intruded into the said Trade, and have Set up the same; and dwelling in Places beyond the Bounds and Circuit of the Petitioners Search by their Charter, do use Divers Deceits in the Throwing and Working of the Manufacture of Silk, to the great Wrong and Injury of the Commonwealth, and the great Discouragement of the Artists of the said Trade.”[[284]]
An act of Charles II. provided that men, women and children, if native subjects, though not apprentices, might be employed to turn the mill, tie threads, and double and wind silk, “as formerly.”[[285]]
“There are here and there,” it was said, “a Silk Weaver or two (of late years) crept into some cities and Market Towns in England, who do employ such people that were never bound to the Trade ... in all other Trades that do employ the poor, they cannot effect their business without employing such as were never apprentice to the Trade ... the Clothier must employ the Spinner and Stock-carder, that peradventure were never apprentices to any trade, else they could never accomplish their end. And it is the same in making of Buttons and Bone-lace, and the like. But it is not so in this Trade; for they that have been apprentices to the Silk-weaving Trade, are able to make more commodities than can be easily disposed of ... because there hath not been for a long time any other but this, to place forth poor men’s Children, and Parish Boyes unto; by which means the poor of this Trade have been very numerous.”[[286]]
During this period all the references to silk-spinning confirm the impression that it had become a pauper trade. A pamphlet calling for the imposition of a duty on the importation of wrought silks explains that “The Throwsters, by reason of this extraordinary Importation of raw Silk, will employ several hundred persons more than they did before, as Winders, Doublers, and others belonging to the throwing Trade, who for the greatest part are poor Seamen and Soldier’s wives, which by this Increase of Work will find a comfortable Subsistence for themselves and Families, and thereby take off a Burthen that now lies upon several Parishes, which are at a great charge for their Support.”[[287]] The “comfortable subsistence” of these poor seamen’s wives amounted to no more than 1s. 6d. or 1s. 8d. per week.[[288]]
There seems here no clue to explain the transition from a monopoly of gentlewomen conducting a profitable business on the lines of Family Industry to a disorganised Capitalistic Trade, resting on the basis of women’s sweated labour. The earlier monopoly was, however, probably favoured by the expensive nature of the materials used, and the necessity for keeping in touch with the merchants who imported them, while social customs secured an equitable distribution of the profits. With the destruction of these social customs and traditions, competition asserted its sway unchecked, till it appeared as though there might even be a relation between the costliness of the material and the wretchedness of the women employed in its manufacture; for the women who span gold and silver thread were in the same stage of misery.
Formerly women had been mistresses in this class of business as well as in the Silk Trade, but a Proclamation of June 11th, 1622, forbade the exercise of the craft by all except members of the Company of Gold Wire Drawers.
Under this proclamation the Silver thread of one Anne Twiseltor was confiscated by Thomas Stockwood, a constable, who entered her house and found her and others spinning gold and silver thread. “The said Anne being since married to one John Bagshawe hath arrested Stockwood for the said silver upon an action of £10, on the Saboth day going from Church, and still prosecuteth the suite against him in Guild Hall with much clamor.”[[289]] Bagshawe and his wife maintained that the silver was sterling, and therefore not contrary to the Proclamation. Stockwood refused to return it unless he might have some of it. Therefore they commenced the suit against him.
Probably few, if any, women became members of the Company of Gold Wire Drawers, and henceforward they were employed only as spinners. Their poverty is shown by the frequency with which they are mentioned as inmates of tenement houses, which through overcrowding became dangerous to the public health. It was reported to the Council for example, that Katherine Barnaby “entertayns in her house in Great Wood Streate, divers women kinde silver spinners.”[[290]]
These poor women worked in the spinning sheds of their masters, and thus the factory system prevailed already in this branch of the textile industry; the costliness of the fabrics produced forbade any great expansion of the trade, and therefore the Masters were not obliged to seek for labour outside the pauper class.
The Curate, Churchwardens, Overseers and Vestrymen of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, drew up the following statement: “There are in the said Parish, eighty five sheds for the spinning Gilt and Silver Thread, in which are 255 pair of wheels.”
| The Masters with their Families amount unto | 581 |
| These imploy poor Parish-Boys and Girls to the number of | 1275 |
| There are 118 master Wire-Drawers, who with their wives, Children and Apprentices, make | 826 |
| Master weavers of Gold and Silver Lace and Fringes | 106 |
| Their Wives, Children, Apprentices and Journey Men amount unto | 2120 |
| Silver and Gold Bone-Lace makers, and Silver and Gold Button makers with their Families | 1000 |
| Windsters, Flatters of Gold and Silver and Engine Spinners with their Families | 300 |
| ──── | |
| Total | 6208 |
They continue: “The Poor’s Rate of the Parish amounts to near Four Thousand Pounds per annum.... The Parish ... at this present are indebted One Thousand Six Hundred and Fifty Pounds. Persons are daily removing out of the Parish, by Reason of this heavy Burthen, empty Houses increasing. If a Duty be laid on the manufacture of Gold and Silver wyres the Poor must necessarily be increased.”[[291]]
Such a statement is in itself proof that Gold and Silver Thread making ranked among the pauper trades in which the wages paid must needs be supplemented out of the poor rates.