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Sexual impropriety, petitioning and the dynamics of ill will in daily urban life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2015

KAREN O’BRIEN
KAREN O’BRIEN*
Affiliation:
Sociology and Social Policy Department, A26 – R.C. Mills Building, The University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia
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Abstract:

This study offers an investigation into the prevalence of interpersonal verbal hostility and litigation in Nantwich, a town that was undergoing radical change during a period of crisis in the seventeenth century. It surveys the vicissitudes of midwife and moneylender, Anne Knutsford, whose outrageous language was met with a petition by opposing factions of Nantwich society. Through an intensive case-study, it identifies a complex interplay of dispute, transaction and reputation during one turbulent decade from 1660 to 1670. Such a close telling of the intimate details and dynamics of relationships gives rare insights into the goings on of daily urban life. Pieced together from a complicated labyrinth of suit and counter-suit, it establishes Anne Knutsford as a formidable creditor and highlights the fragility of social relationships under pressure from material hardship.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 177 - 199
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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20 See, for example, Ingram's comments in his ‘Scolding women cucked and washed’ in Kermode and Walker (eds.), Women, Crime and the Courts, where he argues that ‘barratry’, a similar crime to scolding, involved men to the same extent as women. He does not, however, provide concrete evidence of this.

21 Ibid. Ingram does not suggest where such hotspots may have been, nor does he provide evidence to support this view.

22 Ibid., 51.

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26 There were also 44 citations to individuals to appear during this period which I have not included in the overall figure.

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29 www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Gender/gowing.html, accessed 29 May 2014.

30 Ibid.

31 Cheshire Records Office (CRO) EDC5/1663/4/16.

32 See CRO EDC5/1662/18 in which it is recorded that ‘Anne Knutsford is commonly reputed to be the daughter of Raphe Elcocke the younger’. Anne was brought up in a house on Mill Street.

33 See CRO EDC5/1668. However, it is unlikely that Anne Knutsford gave birth to all of these children. Some of the children listed were probably the children of her eldest son, Thomas, born in 1645.

34 Anne Knutsford gave birth to daughter Jane on 5 Nov. 1662. The three children born between 1671 and 1677 were more likely than not the children born to her son, Thomas.

35 For information about the scope of Anne Knutsford's practice, see CRO EDC5/1663/54 which gives information about ‘the severall townes and parishes of Nantwich’ she encompassed in her rounds as midwife.

36 See CRO DTW 2477/B/28. This map records the streets of Nantwich in some detail.

37 See CRO MF 13 Hearth Tax Records, Nantwich, 1664.

38 See CRO EDC5/1667/2 in which Knutsford's close neighbour, Mr Illedge (he lived nine doors away from her) refers to an argument which occurred ‘in the open street in Nantwich in Pepper Street, near Thomas Knutsford's house’. Anne Knutsford's house on Pepper Street was nine doors away from neighbours, Hugh Delves, Thomas Proudman, Richard Illidge and Richard Yoxall.

39 CRO EDC5/1662/18/19 Nantwich, EDC5/1663/16 Nantwich, EDC5/1663/54 Nantwich, EDC5/1664/6 Nantwich, EDC5/1664/57, EDC5/1664/68 Nantwich, EDC5/1662/59, EDC5/1667/2 Nantwich, EDC5/1667/62 Nantwich, EDC5/1668/10 Nantwich. Reference was made within EDC5/1663/4/16 to six more separate suits that were settled between neighbours outside the jurisdiction of the Chester Consistory court.

40 CRO EDC5/1663/4/16; CRO EDC5/1667/2 Nantwich, Anne Knutsford cites Margaret Howell for slander.

41 Anne Knutsford cites Margaret Howell for pulling her by the bosom. CRO EDC5/1667/2 Nantwich.

42 I have calculated the population of Nantwich in 1664 to be approximately 9,590. For the calculation of this number, see O’Brien, K., ‘Companions of heart and hearth: hardship and the changing structure of the family in early modern English townships’, Journal of Family History, 39 (2014), 186–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 CRO EDC5/1667/2, Deposition of Richard Jackson.

44 Ibid., Deposition of Richard Jackson.

45 Ibid.

46 For more information about attitudes towards mothers of ‘the bastard child’, fathers of illegitimate children and bringing up a child in severe poverty, see Crawford, P., Parents of Poor Children in England, 1580–1800 (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 CRO EDC5/1663/4/16 Nantwich.

48 Ibid.

49 CRO EDC5/1663/4/16, Nantwich, Items.

50 CRO EDC5/1663/4/16.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 CRO EDC5/1663/4/16, Deposition of Margaret Birkerton.

59 Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), 607Google Scholar.

60 Gowing, L., ‘“The manner of submission”: gender and demeanour in seventeenth-century London’, Cultural and Social History 10 (2013), 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Janet Brookett. Brookett asserted the following: ‘Anne Knutsford is said to have cursed James Wilson of Namptwich.’

62 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Barbara Croxton.

63 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Jane Wright. Jane Wright snubbed the midwife socially, but acknowledged her acquaintance professionally.

64 CRO EDC5/1663/4/16, deposition of Margaret Jackson.

65 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of William Blundell.

66 Ibid.

67 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Margaret Birkerton.

68 Ibid.

69 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Thomas Proudman.

70 Ibid.

71 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Margaret Birkerton.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Elizabeth Cliffe

76 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Richard Jackson.

77 Ibid.

78 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Margaret Wirkstadt.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid. Margaret Wirkstadt in her statement said the following: (her husband) was ‘neare a kin to the party prdcent but how neare she well knoweth not. Mr Wirkstadt was a Mariner by trade in Namptwich and followed it as long as he lived and since his death her sonne keeps the same ship and this deponent looks to his praise.’

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Janet Brookett.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

88 Ibid.

89 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Edward Blagg.

90 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Sir Phillip Egerton ‘paid Mrs Cliffe 40 shillings to occupy her’.

91 Van de Pol, L., trans. Liz Waters, The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (New York and London, 2012), 199Google Scholar.

92 Warner, J. and Lunny, A., ‘Marital violence in a martial town: husbands and wives in early modern Portsmouth, 1653–1781’, Journal of Family History, 28 (2003), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, these conclusions are generally supported with weak primary evidence.

93 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

99 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Margaret Jackson.

100 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid.

103 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16. Edward Blagg alleged that he heard the midwife accuse Mrs Leeth (who did not sign the petition or appear as a witness) ‘to her face’ of receiving stolen goods. The midwife implied that Mr Leeth, an excise man, stole commodities. The midwife bantered about the easy way in which Mr and Mrs Leeth obtained their livelihood.

104 See, for example, CRO EDC5 1664/68 Anne Knutsford cites Anne Blagg. This cause discloses further antagonism between Anne Knutsford and Anne Blagg. The events recorded in this case took place in July 1663. The conflict began, however, in the early months of 1663.

105 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16, Deposition of Elizabeth Proudman.

106 Addy, Sin and Society, 158. Addy suggests that fornication, of course, encouraged bastardy, and that bringing a child into the world was, in a patriarchal society, unacceptable. Furthermore, he argues, tying down the father was an ‘unquestionably anti-social act’.

107 CRO EDC5 1663/4/16 Deposition of Elizabeth Johnson.

108 See CRO EDC5/13/1675, Nantwich, Andrewes c Bristowe, marriage of Richard Walthall to Maria Wilbraham.

109 Ibid., Deposition of Barbara Croxton.

110 Ibid., Deposition of Janet Brookett.

111 CRO EDC5/1664/68 Nantwich.

112 Ibid.

113 CRO EDC5/1668/10, Deposition of Foulke Harte.

114 CRO EDC5/1668/10 Nantwich. Responsions of Anne Knutsford and Thomas Knutsford. ‘After sentences were given in this court on the behalfe of Edward Blagge and Anne his wife in two causes, clerk, Richard Williamson advised Anne to appeal to York, telling her it would but cost her fifteen shillings to prove the cause thither, but shortly after he advised her to agree with Blagge which she forthwith did, and paid Blagge in compensation £4, and had his peleace [word] for the same.’

115 CRO EDC5/1664/68 Nantwich, Statement of Anne Blagg.

116 Ibid.

117 CRO EDC5/1662/59 Nantwich, Anne Knutsford cites Barbara Croxton for Slander.

118 CRO EDC5/1662/59, Deposition of Anne Knutsford. ‘Barbara Croxton did report and say of Anne Knutsford, when you were in labour and in extremity of paine that you had occasion to say that Anne Knutsford bidd you shitt or do your business in her hands, for Mrs Bromhall, (one who Anne Knutsford is midwife unto) did shitt or do her business in her hands, and most of her children were brought into the world that way.’

119 CRO EDC5/1664/6, Deposition of Janet Brookett.