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.