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]]