And in the myddle there was resplendyshaunte
A dulcet spring and marvaylous fountaine
Of golde and asure made all certaine.”
The great ladies had their bevy of maids in attendance, who sat at the spinning-wheel and embroidered. They made all kinds of fine things for themselves; they had their hawks and hounds; they practised music; they understood how to distil certain things. In the City, the merchant’s wife had her servants who made things, but not so much as in the country because there were shops where one could buy. Many of them, however, were skilled in the properties of herbs; they understood midwifery—it is remarkable that in the whole of Riley’s Memorials the midwife is never mentioned. Was every married woman, then, a practitioner among her friends? Or were there sages femmes? The amusements of the better sort in the City were, one imagines, principally the gossip and daily chat among friends, particularly after the morning mass. The women dined with their husbands in the Companies’ Halls; they held banquets in their own halls; they had dancers and mummers to amuse them; they had their children to bring up; and they paid great attention to their dress.
If we descend a step we find ourselves among the retailers and the craftsmen. The retailers or shopkeepers included many women—regratresses: there were alewives—brewsters—who made and brewed and sold their own beer; there were fish-wives—from time immemorial there have been fish-wives—there were “broiderers” and dressmakers of all kinds in immense numbers; there were weaverwomen—websters; women who baked—baksters; those who spun—spinsters; there were domestic servants; and there were many thousands of matrons who took care of the house, brought up the children, brewed the ale, bought and dressed the food, made and mended the clothes.
A married woman could rent a house, or carry on business in a shop or a craft on her own account; if her husband had nothing to do with the business she was to be charged as a femme sole. She could be sued for debt and she could be cast into prison, her husband being untouched.
MAKING TAPESTRY
From MS. in British Museum. Add. 20,698.
The women who worked for their livelihood were cheated and defrauded, as they are now, for they had no companies or guilds, and no associations; they were paid in kind. Edward IV., for instance, passed an ordinance that the carders should pay their women servants in coin and should give them full weight of wool. Some of the women, as has happened since, occasionally got drunk; some played dishonest tricks, as that woman who was set in stocks for putting pitch into the beer measure, thereby lessening the quantity of the quart; or that fish-wife who sold stinking fish and stood in the stocks while her fish was burnt under her nose—a terrible punishment; there were scolds among them; there were in fact as many kinds of women as there are at present.