Up and Down Stairs

by Jeremy Musson

  However, Mun himself was not above having affairs with three women in his own household, and sired at least one child by a servant. Indeed, the mother of one of his illegitimate offspring, one ‘Mathew Verney’, was the wetnurse to his own children. Mun left her a house and income in his will.75 John Verney, the eventual heir to Sir Ralph, is said in his turn to have fathered a child with a servant while a young man.76 Those familiar with Samuel Pepys’s diary will need no reminding of the vulnerability of maidservants to the repeated attentions of their masters.77

  Whilst at the end of the seventeenth century many of the servants in the Verney household may have been recruited locally, some migrated to London to improve their opportunities. In 1695, the coachman who worked for John Verney, Sir Ralph’s heir, gave notice ‘not to get a better place, but . . . to set up a hackney coach and drive it himself’. John added, in a revealing aside that could have been written in 1895, ‘His wife is a proud woman and he hath a little of it himself, and they think it below ’em to be a servant.’78

  Although the civil war and the Commonwealth may not have changed country-house life overnight, during that period political attention was shifted away from the great households and their country seats, to focus instead on Parliament, London and the court. After the Restoration, the London season is born, following the rhythm of the sittings of Parliament and the location of the court; it was then that the landowner would spend time in the capital and, indeed, invest dizzying sums on his social life there.

  The account books of the Earl of Bedford, based at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, show that he still maintained a considerable household at the Restoration, and spent money with the intention of reasserting some of the social prestige and courtliness of the aristocracy, which had been suspended under the Commonwealth. Some relate to the earl’s presence in the procession attending the king’s return after the Commonwealth in appropriate – and highly expensive – glamour, an illustration of the display felt necessary after the years of Commonwealth austerity.79

  As it began to expand, there is a sense of the household at Woburn Abbey being gently revived in the same hopeful spirit as the procession of 1660. The account books reveal a somewhat traditional hierarchy, with the steward as the senior officer, and a clerk of the kitchen and the house bailiff as his second in commands. The steward, William Baker, was described as a gentleman and was paid £40 per year, twice the wage of the house bailiff. Baker was succeeded in 1668 by Randolph Bingley, who was still there in 1700, an example of the longevity of senior servants. In 1664, the salaries bill for the whole household was £600.

  In what was then the established pattern, the steward was in charge of all the household staff, although responsibility for the footmen and pages was shared between the house and the stables, coming under the steward for duties in the house, and the master of the stables for duties relating to coach or horses. A gentleman of the privy purse, with the splendid name of Dixy Taylor, was authorised to make regular small purchases on behalf of his master, such as ‘a coffee-pot, a china dish and coffee’ for £1 2s 2d in 1670.80

  There were normally twelve footmen (double the number listed at Knole in the early seventeenth century), paid between £2 and £6 a year. Two or three of them served the family in closer attendance than the others; one Clem Robinson stands out as especially trusted, judging by the payments made to him for journeys he made. The footmen’s liveries were supplied by the master of the horse, as were those of the pageboys. There are numerous mentions in the accounts of silk stockings, shirts, haircuts, periwigs ‘for my lady’s page’ and sometimes accomplishments such as studying music: ‘1663–1664 For teaching the page of the flageolet [a recorder-like instrument], £2 10s.’81

  There appear to have been only seven or eight women in the household, reporting to the housekeeper, Ann Upton, who certainly came under the steward, but was clearly an important figure. In the sixteenth century her duties would have been the responsibility of men but by the end of the seventeenth century the female housekeeper, almost as a proxy for the lady of the household, is well established pivotal in the administration of a country house. Even so, none of the women under Ann Upton worked in the kitchen.82

  That was still run by a man, the clerk of the kitchen, who was responsible for the supplies of butcher’s meat, game, fruit and vegetables and dairy produce, purchases that were recorded in a kitchen book that was signed weekly by the earl; the steward would be advanced money each week for the following week’s purchase. There appears to have been no home farm and the only major source of meat from the earl’s own demesne was his deer park, whilst most of the fish consumed came from the Woburn ponds.

  What is surprising is that the more frugal earl’s household of the early Commonwealth era of the 1650s, which then numbered only about fifty, became larger and more splendid from 1658 onwards, with relatives visiting the abbey for prolonged periods, often with their own retinues of staff, with the result that annual household expenditure in the 1660s averaged £900–£1,000.83

  Below the clerk of the kitchen came the cook, who was in turn supported by various boy scullions and turnspits. There were also porters and nightwatchmen, paid between £3 and £4 a year; in the records for 1684, ‘to John Bradnock, being his lordship’s gift yearly to see all candles out every night £2 And to him for killing rats and mice, etc £1.’ The porters received livery uniforms, whilst the nightwatchmen did not, but, like the women in the household, they seem to have been made gifts of new clothes from time to time.

  With certain exceptions, the staff at Woburn Abbey were also the staff for Bedford House in London, and they moved back and forth with the family. In the London house the only permanent employees appear to have been a housekeeper, a nightwatchman and a gardener.84 The whole household continued to migrate to London once a year, but after 1660 the annual pilgrimage was larger in terms of numbers and lasted for a much longer period.85

  The wages of servants in gentry houses appear to have increased somewhat after the Restoration, but still varied considerably. An estate steward who had considerable economic responsibilities in managing the estate would earn the most, £40 or more, whilst in the years between 1660 and 1700 a cook could earn between £4 and £25, a butler from £3 to £10, a gardener anything from £4 to £20, and a coachman between £3 and £10. Of female servants, a housekeeper could earn £6 to £10 and a cook-maid £3 to £9.86 In July 1699, Alexander Popham of Littlecote in Wiltshire was prepared to pay an exorbitant £40 a year for a new cook to come down from London.87

  It is interesting to note that whilst stewards were powerful figures (sometimes minor landowners or clerics) who effectively had overall control of their masters’ property, they might be required to undertake surprisingly menial tasks. Lord Cholmondley’s chief steward William Adams received a request in May 1690 to order a housemaid ‘to brush my lord’s embroidered waistcoat that is in your custody and take care that the worms doth not get into it’.88

  Servants expected to have their income topped up with tips or ‘vails’. Sir John Pelham, in 1658, recorded his tips to servants at the houses he visited. At Burton Hall in Lincolnshire, he gave £3 12s 6d; at Rufford Abbey in Nottinghamshire, £3 10s. In 1697, when Sir Edward Harley stayed with Paul Foley of Stoke Edith in Herefordshire, his servant, William Thomas, made a record of the gratuities given out: 2s 6d each to the butler, coachman, and a chambermaid, 2s 2d to the cook and, to a groom, 3s 6d.89

  As we have seen, at Knole in the early seventeenth century two black servants worked in the kitchen. The black servant, often a slave, is ubiquitous in seventeenth-century country-house life, although their stories are not well recorded. In grand portraiture, as in Sir Peter Lely’s Countess of Dysart, with a Black Page, painted in the early 1650s, or in Van Dyck’s Earl of Denbigh, young, good-looking black servants appear with some regularity, and clearly are seen as indications of wealth, status and of having international connections.90

  The English had become involved in the slave
trade from the 1560s, when Sir John Hawkins acquired 300 slaves from the Guinea coast – previous to that Henry VIII had a black trumpeter. Queen Elizabeth I, who is known to have had black servants, and whose accounts show that a ‘lytle Blackmore’ was provided with a fine Gascon coat, nevertheless issued hostile proclamations towards them, such as the 1601 decree that the country should be stripped of ‘the great number of Negroes and blackamoors [that] are fostered and powered here, to the great annoyance of her own liege people which covet the relief which their people consume’. The decree failed. Like his predecessor, James I employed numerous black servants at court for their ‘exotic’ value, where they appeared in plays and masques, and served as musicians.91

  It was then not long before Cromwell acquired through force West Indian colonies such as Jamaica and Barbados, which added to the trade between the former Spanish colonies, with their established slave populations, and England.92 By the later seventeenth century, black pages and dark-skinned servants remain popular and fashionable. Pepys, for instance, owned African slaves, mentioning in his diaries that on 30 May 1662 he saw ‘the little Turk and Negro’ acquired by his great patron, Lord Sandwich, to be pages to his family.93 Some of these unfortunates received a degree of education, for among the Verney papers is a letter written in 1699 by John Verney’s black servant from Guinea.94

  By the later years of the seventeenth century, the black servant, page and footman had become an established feature of the English country house. One unhappy tale of an unnamed boy, who became the focus of an extraordinary story of intrigue in the 1670s, illustrates the vulnerability of these young people. He was a servant to the Yorkshire landowner and MP, Sir John Reresby, who records his fate: ‘I had a fine More about sixteen years of age (given me by a gentleman, one Mr Drax, who had brought him out of the Barbadoes) that had lived with me some years, and dyed about this time of an imposthume [abscess] in his head.’95

  If that sad end were not enough, the story darkened still further. ‘I received an account in October (six weeks after he was buried) from London, that it was creditably reported that I had caused him to be gelt [gelded?], and that it had occasioned his death. I laughed at it at first, knowing it to be false, as a ridiculous story, till I was further informed that this came from the Duke of Norfolk and his family, with whom . . . I had some suits and differences.’96

  Reresby had a coroner and witnesses inspect the body: ‘some that laid him out, the rest that saw him naked, severall bycaus of his colour having the curiosity to see him after he was dead gave in their verdict that he dyed ex visitatione Dei (or by the hand of God)’. At least one more exhumation followed. There is no sadder example of the tragedy of these young black men, sold into slavery when often little more than children, and passed around as exotic objects at a distance of many thousands of miles from their own families or cultures.97

  As we have seen, by the late seventeenth century women had begun to make up a more substantial proportion of the servant numbers. Clear evidence of this is provided by one of the books published under the name of Hannah Wolley, The Gentlewomans Companion (1675), and by The Compleat Servant-Maid (1685), which includes detailed information about the principal female roles in domestic service at the time.98 This list includes: waiting woman, housekeeper, chambermaid, cook-maid, under-cook-maid, nurserymaid, dairymaid, laundrymaid, housemaid, and scullerymaid.99 Mrs Wolley, a remarkable former household servant, became a popular cookery author, and although this book may not in fact be entirely by her hand, nevertheless it built on her fame.

  According to The Gentlewomans Companion, in the decades immediately after the Restoration it had become the norm for many roles in domestic service to be increasingly undertaken by women. Whether entirely the work of Mrs Wolley or not, this book has its own place in the history of servants and, indeed, in the history of women’s education, offering an insight into the opportunities afforded by domestic service and the perceived character of the whole class of female servants, who had seemed almost invisible in the previous century. As well as having enhanced ‘housewife skills’, the would-be housekeeper, for instance, must be able to manage servants: ‘And as I told you before you must Preserve well; so you must have a competent knowledge in Distilling, making Cates [Cakes], all manner of spoon-meats [liquid foods, especially for children], and the like. Be carefull in looking after the Servants, that every one perform their duty in their several places, that they keep good hours in up-rising, and lying down, and that no Goods be either spoil’d, or embezzl’d.’100

  A housekeeper’s behaviour had to be ‘grave and solid’ to show that she was able ‘to govern a Family’, which meant to manage a household. The housekeeper was also by now responsible for the demeanour and behaviour of the lower women servants, and here the injunctions to senior servants echo those in John Russell’s Book of Nurture: ‘all Strangers [should] be nobly and civilly used in their Chambers; and that your Master or Lady be not dishonoured through neglect or miscarriage of Servants. To be first up, and last in bed, to prevent junketing.’101

  Any chambermaid ‘to persons of Quality’, it is stressed, must be skilled at washing and mending clothes. ‘You must make your Ladies bed; . . . lay out her Night-clothes; see that her Chamber be kept clean, and nothing wanting which she desires or requires to be done. Be modest in your deportment, ready at her call, always diligent.’102Some of these skills are associated with the later role of the lady’s maid, whilst the cleaning and fires would have fallen to the housemaid. The ‘Nursery-Maids in Noble Families’ are advised, with some good sense, ‘to be naturally inclined to love young children or else you will soon discover your unfitness to manage that charge’.103

  The female cook of the day was generally known as the cook-maid; her prowess ‘will chiefly consist in dressing all sorts of Meat, both Fish, flesh and Fowl, all manner of Baked-meats, all kind of Sawces, and which are most proper for every sort of Dish, and be curious in garnishing your Dishes’. Economy and cleanliness were key: ‘Be as saving as you can, and cleanly about every thing; see also that your Kitchen be kept clean, and all thin gs [sic] scoured in due time; your Larders also and Cupboards, that there be no bits of meat or bread lye about them to spoil and stink.’104

  The author advises against taking perquisites (meaning leftover food that could be sold for personal profit) but it must have been a common practice: ‘do not covet to have the Kitchin-stuff for your vails, but rather ask [for] the more wages, for that may make you an ill Huswife of your Masters goods, and of your Masters good, and teach you to be a thief.’105

  For under-cook-maids: ‘it behoves you to be very diligent and willing to do what you are bid to do; and though your employment be greasie and smutty, yet if you please you may keep your self from being nasty.’ Under-cook-maids should observe what their superiors do, ‘treasure it up in your memory’ and then put it into practice; ‘this course will advance you from a drudge to be a Cook another day. . . . Everyone must have a beginning.’106

  ‘Dairy-Maids in great Houses’ were exhorted to scald their vessels well and milk ‘your Cattel in due times’. They must also see that ‘Hogs have the whey, and that it be not given away to idle or gossiping people, who live merely upon what they can get from Servants.’ If pigs or chicken are in their care, they must ‘look to them that it may be your credit and not your shame when they come to the Table’.107 Laundrymaids in great houses were advised that their duty ‘will be to take care of the Linnen in the house, except Points and Laces; whatever you wash, do it up quickly, that it may not stink and grow yellow, and be forced to the washing again before it be used’.108

  Housemaids were not left in ignorance of their duty either: ‘Your principal Office is to make clean the greatest part of the house; and so that you suffer no room to lie foul; that you look well to all the stuff, and see that they be often brushed, and all the Beds frequently turned.’ At this point the housemaid is expected to ‘be careful for, and diligent to all Strangers, and see that they
lack nothing in their Chambers, which your Mistress or Lady will allow; and that your Close-stools and Chamber-pots be duly emptied and kept clean’. A housemaid might also be expected to assist in the laundry on a washing day and to help the housekeeper or waiting woman ‘in their Preserving and Distilling’.109

  The lowest in the ranks of female servants was the scullery-maid, who had some of the hardest work of all: ‘There are several Rooms that you must keep sweet and clean, as the Kitchen, Pantry, Wash-house, &c. That you wash and scowre all the Plates and Dishes which are used in the Kitchen, also Kettles, Pots, Pans, Chamber-pots, with all other Iron, Brass, and Pewter materials that belong to the Chambers or Kitchen; and lastly you must wash your own linnen.’ This could still serve as the job description of a scullery-maid until the early twentieth century, when advances in technology could take over some of its most physically demanding aspects.110

  In The Gentlewomans Companion (1675), the emphasis is also laid on good management of servants and the mistress of the house is urged to keep good hours for her repose, ‘that your servants may be the better disposed for the next day’s labour’. And later she is told: ‘rather be silent if you cannot speak good.’111