Next there was the farmer either renting or owning a farm. Very often farming would be combined with spinning or weaving wool. Agriculture of this kind, partly for subsistence and partly for the market, supplemented by the practice of domestic industries, remained the dominant type in England until the introduction of capitalist farming in the eighteenth century, and indeed can still be found in backward districts. The part played in it by women can be illustrated by a curious account of the duties of the wife of a husbandman given in Fitzherbert’s “Book of Husbandry” (1534).
“First in a morning when thou art waked and purposiste to rise, lyfte up thy hands and blesse thee.... And when thou art up and redy, then first sweep thy house, dress up thy dysshe-board, and sette all things in good order within thy house. Milk thy kye, suckle thy calves, sye up thy mylke, take up thy children and array them, and provide for thy husband’s brekefaste, dinner, souper, and thy children and servants, and take thy part with them. And to ordayne corn and malt to the myll, to bake and brue withal whanne need is. And meete it to the mill and fro the mill, and see that thou have thy measure again 159 beside the toll or else the miller dealeth not truly with the or els thy corn is not drye as it should be. Thou must make butter or cheese whan thou maist, serve thy swyne both morning and evening, and give thy poleyn[58] meat in the morning, and when tyme of the year cometh, thou must take heed how thy duckes henne and geese do lay and to gather up their eggs and when they wax brodie to get them.... And in the beginning of March or a little before is time for a wife to make her garden and to gette as many good seedes and herbes as she can and specially such as be good for the potte and to eat. [Then come lengthy and technical directions for sowing and working up flax and hemp] and thereof may they make shetes, bordclothes, towels, shirts, smocks and such other necessaries and therefore let thy distaff be always ready for a pastime that thou be not idle.... It is convenient for a husband to have shepe of his owne for many causes, and then maye his wife have part of the woll to make her husband and herself some clothes. And at the very least way she may have the locks of the sheep either to make clothes or blankets or coverlets or both. And if she have no wool of her own, she may take wool to spyn of cloth-makers and by that means she may have a convenient living.... It is a wife’s occupation to wynowe all manner of corns, to make malt, to wasshe and wrynge, to make haye, shere corn, and in tiyme of nede to help her husband to fyll the muck-wain or dung-cart, 160 drive the plough, to load hay, corn or such other. And to go or ride to the market, to sell butter, cheese, eggs, chekyns, capons, hennes, pigs, geese, and all manner of corns, and also to bye all manner of necessary things belonging to the household and to make a trewe reckoning and account to her husband what she hath paid. And if the husband go to the market to bye or sell, as they oft do, he then to show his wife in like manner.”
It is interesting to note in this extract the mixture of natural and money economy, the appearance of domestic manufactures, and the energetic co-operation of the wife in the work of the farm. The sixteenth century would have had little sympathy with the sentimentalists who hold that womanhood in itself is a burden so heavy that all active occupations should be forbidden to the married woman.
According to Harrison[59] the standard of comfort among the agricultural classes rose markedly at this time. Chimneys became common, pewter plates and silver or tin spoons are used in place of “tinn platters and wooden spoons.” A farmer thinks his gains very small “if he have not a fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in odd vessels going about the house, three or four feather-beds, so manie coverlids or carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a bowl for wine if not a whole nest, and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit.”
Food, too, according to Harrison, was plentiful and varied. The increase in pasture farming and the decrease in arable land had made meat (often, it is true, salted) cheaper and corn-stuffs dearer, at least in proportion. This tendency can be traced in the menus and accounts of the period, and certainly appears in the following extract:[60] “The artificers and husbandmen make greatest account of such food as they may soonest come by and have it quickliest ready. Their food also consisteth principallie in beef and such meat as the butcher selleth; that is to saie, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, whereof he findeth great store in the markets adjoining, besides souse,[61] brawn, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, fowles of sundrie sort, cheese, butter, eggs.” A little lower down he notes that venison and a cup of wine are luxuries reserved for special occasions.
It is not easy to estimate the worth of Harrison’s testimony to the social habits of a class which he did not probably know intimately. It is certain, too, that he was not speaking here of the poorest class of labourers,[62] those who later recruited the class eligible for poor-law relief. But even making these admissions, his words seem to be evidence of a standard of comfort higher in some respects than could be attained by the corresponding classes to-day. Chicken, for instance, practically never forms part of the dietary of even the well-to-do urban artisan of the present time.
In the organisation of the wealthy household, 162 the economic changes of the time produced important alterations. The increase in buying and selling made the landlords more anxious to dispose of their surplus produce in the markets, and on the other hand provided new luxuries on which money could be spent. There resulted a tendency, which can be traced in all the household books of the period, to limit the numbers of servants and retainers. At the same time there was a growing desire for privacy, and a widening gulf between the upper and the lower classes of society. Hence the hall, the general assembly-place for the entire household, lost its importance; dining-rooms and withdrawing-rooms for the exclusive use of the family and guests, took its place, and the servants were relegated to their own part of the house. Partly as cause of this, partly as effect, domestic administration ceases to be a career for men of better social rank, a tendency which would of course be intensified by the fact that in commerce, in literature, in exploration, &c., new opportunities were perpetually being opened up. Hence Elizabeth’s reign is a turning-point for the history both of domestic service and of domestic architecture. It was probably about this time that women superseded men as cooks and cleaners, and it is certain that the increase in Elizabeth’s reign of industries worked for profit must have diminished the production for use in the household of many articles of common domestic utility.[63]