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The variety of women's experiences as servants in England (1548–1649): evidence from church court depositions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2018

Charmian Mansell
Charmian Mansell*
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article demonstrates, using evidence from church court depositions, that women's experience of service in early modern England was more varied than scholarship suggests. Moving beyond its conception as a life-cycle annual occupation, the article situates service within individual life-stories. It argues firstly, that service extended across the whole of women's working lives and secondly, that employment arrangements took a wide range of forms. Service for women is shown to have been flexible, varied and contingent, employing a diversity of individuals under a variety of different employment agreements.

Une variété d'expériences pour les femmes en tant que servantes en angleterre (1548–1649): leurs dépositions aux tribunaux d’église témoignent

Analysant les dépositions faites par les servantes dans le cadre des tribunaux de l’église anglicane, l'auteur démontre qu’à l’époque moderne les femmes engagées dans le service domestique ont pu connaître des expériences de type beaucoup plus variées que ne le laissait supposer l'historiographie du sujet à ce jour. Au-delà du modèle de service sous contrat annuel, correspondant à une vie de jeune fille, des histoires de vie sont présentées. Il apparaît d'une part que servir pouvait fort bien intervenir à différentes étapes de la vie active des femmes et que, d'autre part, les modalités d'emploi revêtaient de multiples formes. Le travail de servante se révèle ici flexible, varié et conjoncturel, mettant en jeu diverses personnes, engagées dans le cadre de différents contrats de travail.

Die bandbreite der erfahrungen weiblicher dienstboten in england (1548–1649): befunde aus kirchengerichtsakten

Auf der Grundlage von Kirchengerichtsakten zeigt dieser Beitrag, dass die Erfahrungen von Frauen als Dienstboten unterschiedlicher waren als es die Forschung unterstellt. Der Beitrag geht über die herkömmliche Vorstellung, es handele sich hierbei um eine lebenszyklisch begrenzte Jahresbeschäftigung, hinaus und verortet den Dienst innerhalb individueller Lebensgeschichten. Die These lautet, dass sich der Dienst erstens über das gesamte Arbeitsleben von Frauen erstreckte und zweitens die konkreten Beschäftigungsformen höchst unterschiedlich ausgeprägt waren. Dienstverhältnisse für Frauen waren flexibel, vielfältig und kontingent, und sie banden eine Vielzahl von Personen in ganz unterschiedliche Beschäftigungsformen ein.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , December 2018 , pp. 315 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

Notes

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17 The availability of sources bookends the period studied here. From the 1530s, the layout, form and structure of depositions became more regular. Around 1640, activity within the Exeter court appears to have ground to a halt due to the Civil War two years later, while a small smattering of cases continued to be heard in the Gloucester court until around 1650 when its activities were also suspended. In 1661, the courts were restored and continued to play an important role in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See Ingram, Church courts, 7; Outhwaite, R. B., The rise and fall of the English ecclesiastical courts, 1500–1860 (Cambridge, 2006), 93Google Scholar.

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22 Laslett, Family life and illicit love, 34.

23 The assignment of ages to these categories is based on the assumption that the average age of first marriage between 1600 and 1649 was 26. Those above the age of 30 were unlikely to have married. For data on age of first marriage, see Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The population history of England 1541–1871: a reconstruction (London, 1981), 255Google Scholar.

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27 GA GDR/114, Elizabeth Mathewe v. Thomas Mathewe, 1611.

28 Due to the sample size, it has not been possible to draw any conclusions about whether this period witnessed any change over time in terms of the age structure of service. This is not to argue that the period was chronologically static; rather, that a study of change over time would require additional data.

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33 The youngest female witnesses recorded in the Exeter, Gloucester and Winchester church courts were ten years old, but they were exceptional; the average age of female witnesses was around 38. See Charmian Mansell, ‘Female servants in the early modern community: a study of church court depositions from the dioceses of Exeter and Gloucester, c. 1550–1650' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2016).

34 GA GDR/168, Margaret Hill v. Thomas Whittingham, 1630.

35 Devon Heritage Centre, Church Court Depositions, 1556–1640 (hereafter DHC) Chanter 866, Eustice Peeke v. William Carewe, 1638.

36 DHC Chanter 860, John Dennys v. John Dennys jr, 1580.

37 DHC Chanter 855b, John Leache v. Hubert Colwell, 1565.

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54 GA GDR/95, Joan Compton v. Edward Townsend, 1605.

55 Baggs, A. P., Jurica, A. R. J. and Sheils, W. J., in Herbert, N. M. and Pugh, R. B. eds., A history of the county of Gloucester, volume 11: Bisley and Longtree hundreds (London, 1976), 20–30Google Scholar.

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57 Shepard found that the average worth of weavers in this period was between that of a husbandman and labourer. See Shepard, Accounting for oneself, 74.

58 Several recent works have questioned whether there really was a male breadwinner in early modern England. See Hurl-Eamon, Jennine, ‘The fiction of female dependence and the makeshift economy of soldiers, sailors, and their wives in eighteenth-century London’, Labor History 49, 4 (2008), 481–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erickson, ‘Married women's occupations’, 267–307; Shepard, Accounting for oneself, 176, 214–31.

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66 GA GDR/121, Agnes Brushe v. William Brushe sr, 1613.

67 Froide, Never married, 90.

68 GA GDR/114, Cressett Cox v. Silvester Nayle, 1612.

69 DHC Chanter 866, Sanders v. Sanders, 1637.

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72 DHC Chanter 856, Katherine Spenser v William Dearle and Agnes Dearle, 1567.

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75 HRO 21M65-C3-12, Ann Dansey v. Christopher Hide, 1631, emphasis added.

76 Wall, Richard, ‘Economic collaboration of family members within and beyond households in English society, 1600–2000’, Continuity and Change 25, 1 (2010), 83–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 91; Hindle, On the parish?, 26.

77 Ogilvie, A bitter living, 140–205.

78 GA GDR/79, John White v. John Thaier, 1592.

79 ‘The Statute of Artificers (1563)’, 340.

80 GA GDR/79, Henry Hooper v. Richard Mathewes, 1596.

81 See ‘The Statute of Artificers (1563)’, 340–1; Griffiths, Youth and authority, 356.

82 Hindle, On the parish?, 26.

83 GA GDR/122, William Heywood v. Mary Wyeman, 1616.

84 GA GDR/100, Mary Syer v. Margaret Woodcocke, 1606.

85 Ibid. William Gorway, a weaver, deposed that Margaret Wodcocke possessed ‘one flock bedd twoe bolsters one old overworne coverlidd two olde clokes an old gownde an old petticoate three payre of sheetes twoe coffers twoe pynneis, twoe partlettes & an olde hatt and apron one Candlesticke & certen writinges’.

86 GA GDR/168, Margaret Hill v. Thomas Whittingham, 1630; GA GDR/95, Joan Compton v. Edward Townsend, 1605; GA GDR/100, Mary Syer v. Margaret Wodcocke, 1606.

87 Griffiths, Youth and authority, ch. 7.

88 ‘The Statute of Artificers (1563)’, 340.

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92 DHC Chanter 858, John Roo v. Frances Yarde, 1568.

93 HRO 21M65-C3-8, Avice Hewes v. John Wayte, 1580.

94 DHC Chanter 858, John Roo v. Frances Yarde, 1568.

95 GA GDR/57 and GDR/65, Margaret Wathen v. Richard Dowdie, 1585.

96 Kussmaul, Servants in husbandry, 51–2.

97 Whittle found similarly varying lengths of employment in the Toke and Le Strange households. See Jane Whittle, ‘A different pattern of employment: servants in rural England, c. 1500–1660’, in Whittle ed., Servants in rural Europe: 1400–1900, 57–76.

98 GA GDR/114, Elizabeth Mathewe v .Thomas Mathewe, 1611.

99 GA GDR/8, Office v. John Curtesse, 1551.

100 DHC Chanter 866, William Harries v. Audrey Rowell, 1636.

101 HRO 21M65-C3-10, Parrie v. Turner, 1615.

102 DHC Chanter 866, Daniel Jackson v. Elizabeth Mordon, 1637, emphasis added.

103 GA GDR/122, Robert Payne v. Elizabeth Gawen, 1615, emphasis added.

104 Griffiths, Youth and authority, 382–4; Whittle, Development of agrarian capitalism, 276–7; Wales, ‘“Living at their own hands”’, 19–39, here 31.

105 See Charmian Mansell, ‘Female service and the village community in south-west England, 1550–1650: the labour laws reconsidered’, in Whittle ed., Servants in rural Europe: 1400–1900, 77–94.

106 GA GDR/95, Sheile v. Thomas Bishopp, 1604.

107 Hamilton, Alexander Henry Abercromby, Quarter sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne: illustrations of local government and history drawn from original records (chiefly of the county of Devon) (London, 1878), 163Google Scholar.

108 Humphries and Weisdorf have shown a 260-working-day year, based on 5 working days a week over 52 weeks of the year, to be a good representation of women's working patterns in the pre-modern period. See Humphries and Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women’, 412–13.

109 DHC Chanter 867, Elizabeth Faryes v. Grace Luscombe, 1618.

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112 DHC Chanter 866, Sanders v. Sanders, 1637.

113 HRO 21M65-C3-6, Richard Tanner v. Richard Widge, 1574.

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116 Recent comparisons between experiences of service in Europe between 1400 and 1900 are found in Whittle ed., Servants in rural Europe: 1400–1900.