The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England

by Kathy Lynn Emerson

  There was a proliferation of lay preaching by both men and women in the 1640s. In 1645 this was forbidden by Parliament. By the beginning of the Civil War, approximately 6% of the population were participating in organized dissent.

  RELIGIOUS “PARTIES”

  Anglicans: Members of the state church of England.

  Arminians: Followers of the Dutch theologian Arminius, they rejected the concept of predestination and upheld the Catholic doctrine of free will.

  Covenanters: Scottish Protestants opposed to Archbishop Laud’s policies.

  Jesuits: Members of the Society of Jesus, known for their missionary zeal. They went to England to convert the English to Catholicism and willingly became martyrs.

  Levellers: This group within the Parliamentary army, while not a religious sect, did want the House of Commons to be supreme over the king and the House of Lords and thus over the Church of England. They tried to define and limit the powers of Commons but did not, as is often charged, advocate abolition of private property or redistribution of wealth.

  Lollards: Followers of John Wycliffe (d. 1384), they were persecuted until the 1530s, then absorbed into the reformed religion.

  Presbyterians: Activist Puritans who were also followers of John Knox, they disputed the supreme authority of the Crown and sought a church governed by assemblies of clergy and lay elders rather than bishops. They also wanted to replace the Anglican prayer book with the Directory (order of worship) used in Geneva.

  Puritans: A term originally coined by Catholics for their enemies, primarily the followers of John Calvin who based their beliefs on the doctrine of predestination, its meaning remained ambiguous throughout this period. Puritans were never a separate sect but worked within the Church of England. Anglican and Puritan within that church are roughly parallel to liberal and conservative within any present-day American political party. In a political sense, Puritan generally meant anyone who advocated an anti-Spanish foreign policy.

  Quakers: Founded by George Fox in 1647, the Quakers rejected ordained clergy.

  Ranters: The Ranters rejected all conventional morality by meeting in alehouses and allowing divorce.

  Recusants: Also called Papists, recusants were Catholics remaining in England after 1562, when the Council of Trent declared that Catholics could not be present at a heretic service. There were thirty recusant women in gaol in York between 1579 and 1594 for refusing to attend church. Eleven of them died there. In 1590, 700 of the 941 recusants presented in Lancashire were indicted. In 1604 the bishop of Chester estimated he still had 2,400 recusants in his diocese, the majority of them women. One recusant, Grace Babthorpe, after spending five years in prison, went to Louvain in 1617 and joined the community of English nuns there. One of her sons was a Jesuit. Although some 200 priests were executed between 1571 and 1603, it is estimated that there were still 60,000 Catholics in England in 1650. Another estimate gives the number of priests at about 600 in 1642. In the 1640s less than 2% of the population was still Catholic.

  Separatists: Puritans who rejected the idea of reform from within. In 1593 they were given a choice between conformity and exile and many chose exile in the Low Countries, including those Pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Colony.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Byrne, M. St. Clare. Elizabethan Life in Town and Country. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961.

  Collinson, Patrick. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

  Cressy, David. Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  Scarisbrick, J. J. The Reformation and the English People. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: EMPLOYMENT

  In many cases, a person’s clothing revealed his occupation. Hooded, ankle-length, woolen gowns and square caps distinguished the academician, from university don to student to schoolmaster. At Cambridge, scholars were to wear their hair “polled, knotted, or rounded” and dress in gowns of “black, puke, London brown, or other sad color.” Protestant clergymen were advised to wear “a comely black surplice with sleeves.” Physicians usually wore long, fur-sleeved, black gowns with a cap of white linen beneath a close-fitting black velvet cap. Civic officials such as mayors, sheriffs, and aldermen wore different gowns for different occasions. In London, they might wear scarlet trimmed with sable or violet (really indigo) trimmed with bear fur. Headgear was a black silk cocked hat with a steel chain ornament. Counsel below the rank of serjeant wore no headgear and robes of “sad” (any dark) color. Serjeants-at-law wore a headdress of white taffeta called “the coif” with a black velvet or silk skullcap over it. Their robes might be any color or combination of colors. Judges robes were lined with silk or miniver and varied in color from scarlet to violet. The use of wigs and black gowns for lawyers and judges came after this era.

  In some parts of Europe, clothing was also used to distinguish persons who were considered inferior. Lepers wore gray coats and red hats, prostitutes wore either yellow dresses or scarlet skirts, and Jews wore a huge yellow circle on the breast. This practice does not seem to have been followed in Renaissance England. The only color consistently used to denote any one group is blue, which symbolized constancy and was therefore associated with serving men and apprentices.

  DOMESTIC SERVANTS

  Service in a household began in the early teens. Most servants were between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine. Household servants received wages, board, lodging, and an allowance of clothing. In most households they were regarded as chattels (but then, so were wives and children) and their time was wholly their master's. A box of the ear or a whipping with a horsewhip was acceptable punishment for a servant. Severe beatings, however, were cause for the justices to release a servant from his or her commitment.

  Thomas Cullum was one of 250 drapers in London in 1634. He had a shop in Gracechurch Street, purchased cloth from factors, and employed dyers in the finishing process. His expenses ran between £550 and £850 a year. In 1644 he bought six houses for £800, four in the Minories and two on Tower Hill and received rents the next year totaling £82. In 1645-6 he served as sheriff. By that time he was a widower and his children were grown, so for his year in office, which carried social responsibilities, he hired a cook, an undercook, cook's laborers, a steward, butler, porter, two underporters, a yeoman of the wine cellar, a running porter, a scouring woman and maid, a coachman, and a footman. Their combined wages came to £134. His expenses that year totaled some £2,394 more than those of a normal year.

  In London, St. Paul’s functioned as an employment bureau, while fairs served the same purpose in rural areas. Those who sought jobs indicated they were available by signs or symbols. For example, a cook wore a red ribbon and carried a beating spoon, a housemaid wore a blue ribbon and carried a broom, and a milkmaid carried a pail.

  Great households had numerous servants, ruled over by a steward, sometimes called a house-steward but never butler or majordomo. The butler was only in charge of the buttery. Provisions were obtained by an acater. One list of servants in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart eras includes positions as varied as mole catcher, bargekeeper, and spaniel keeper. Some servants are listed by their post rather than their surname, as in “Richard Horsekeeper.” Also on the list is a nameless “blackamore” who received clothing but no wages. Women servants included the housekeeper, laundresses, and maids and, when the family included women and children, waiting gentlewomen, nursemaids, and governesses. Most cooks in gentlemen’s and noblemen’s households were men.

  Lord Marney’s household in 1523 numbered thirty-two. Among the earls, Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex, had a household of fifty in 1533. The thirteenth earl of Oxford had several hundred people in his household. The earl of Rutland’s household in 1539 numbered 135 and in 1612 had increased to 194. The earls of Northumberland always had large retinues. The seventh earl, who used his poverty as one reason to rebel against the queen
in 1569, had a household that numbered 120 in 1568, while the ninth earl, even during his imprisonment in the Tower (1605-1621), had enough servants, including a “reader,” to require that some of them live in a rented house on Tower Hill. The custom of using pages, traditionally the first post assigned to young gentlemen sent into a noble household to be trained, was dying out by the middle of the seventeenth century, but Northumberland still kept “riders” who wore his livery and were used to send messages.

  Livery

  All noblemen and many gentlemen put their household servants in livery. In its simplest form, livery consisted of loose, hanging shoulder-sleeves embroidered with the master’s arms. Blue and gray were the most common colors for livery, though tawny livery was often worn by the servants of churchmen.

  Meant to deter noblemen from keeping private armies, the Tudor law of “livery and maintenance” required those who kept liveried retainers in addition to regular attendants and household officers to obtain a license from the Crown. Though illegal private armies might wear livery, there was neither an army nor a navy uniform at this time.

  Certain posts customarily called for the wearing of a particular color or style. Yeomen, keepers, and those who managed hunting-dogs usually wore Kendal green. Yeomen warders at the Tower of London still wear scarlet livery of early Tudor design. At one point in the reign of Henry VIII, court pages wore gold brocade and crimson satin in chequers while male attendants were in gray, white, and scarlet kersey, but there was no one pattern for the entire period.

  THE STATUTE OF LABORERS AND ARTIFICERS

  This 1563 statute regulated hired labor, provided for periodic wage assessments to be made by justices of the peace, and regulated apprenticeship. Every unmarried person between twelve and sixty, and every married person under thirty who had an annual income of less than forty shillings, was bound by law to hire out as a servant for a term of one year at a time. Not only were the wages fixed by statute, so were the hours of work, from 5 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M. from March to September and from dawn to dusk September to March. Two hours were allowed for meals but a penny was deducted from wages for each additional hour of work missed. From May through August, workers were allowed an extra half hour for a nap.

  Servants were forbidden to leave their employment and they could not be dismissed before the year was up without a hearing before two justices. A master who broke this law was fined forty shillings and a servant “unduly departing” was imprisoned until he or she undertook to finish out the year. Anyone who took on an uncertified worker could be fined £5.

  The term of apprenticeship was officially set at seven years for “every craft, mystery, or occupation.” Employers were supposed to be charged with breaking the law if they did not comply with compulsory apprenticeship. Enforcement, however, was inconsistent and in some areas almost nonexistent. In 1616, when London distributors of dairy products complained that they were being harassed because of the terms of this statute, the Privy Council stepped in to stop prosecutions and declare that, although the regulations were “good,” they would in this case stop a necessary trade if they were strictly adhered to.

  GUILDS

  The Twelve Great Livery Companies of London in order of precedence were: the Mercers, the Grocers (formerly called the Pepperers), the Drapers, the Fishmongers, the Goldsmiths, the Skinners, the Merchant Tailors (originally called the Linen Armourers), the Haberdashers (originally part of the Mercers), the Salters (first incorporated by Queen Elizabeth), the Ironmongers, the Vintners, and the Dyers (who were responsible for the swans on the Thames). When the Weavers Guild combined with fullers (from the Drapers) and shearmen (from the Tailors) to form the Clothworkers Guild, they supplanted the Dyers as one of the twelve. The Dyers became the first of the lesser companies.

  At York, the terms mercer, grocer, and chapman were at times synonymous. In general, however, mercers dealt in cloth, lace, pins, thread, ribbons, and buttons, while grocers sold dried fruits, spices, sugar, and so forth. To confuse matters, however, the haberdashers had two branches. One sold smallwares, everything from sewing cottons and silks to buttons, pins, needles, gloves, daggers, glass, pens, lanterns, and mousetraps. The other sold hats.

  A list of London crafts from 1422 includes 111 occupations. Turners were seventy-fifth on the list. To he admitted to this guild, a turner completed his apprenticeship and made a stool with turned legs as his “proof piece.” Master craftsmen could produce remarkable pieces. An organ-clock, built by Thomas Dallam, organmaker, and Randolph Bell, clockmaker, played a sequence of madrigals to mark the hours. Queen Elizabeth sent it as a gift to Mehmed III, Sultan of Turkey, in 1598.

  The same guilds existed on a local level throughout England. What varied was which one dominated the community. In York, Bristol, and Exeter the mercers were the largest guild. In Northampton, shoemakers (also called cordwainers) had greater numbers than any other guild. In Chester the shoemakers and glovers predominated. Butchers had the greatest numbers in Leicester, weavers in Worcester and Norwich, and butchers and cappers in Coventry. In every major town, mercers, tailors, shoemakers, butchers, bakers, and tanners were always included in any list of twelve largest guilds.

  In Bristol in the seventeenth century, the sopers also flourished. They used olive oil imported from Spain to make “Castile” soap. Soap was often homemade but it was also imported. It came as liquid (imported in barrels from Flanders) and in solid tablet form, which cost more. Soap was manufactured in London as early as 1524. Two pounds of sweet soap, made into balls, cost 9d. in 1612. Laundry soap was made from boiling tallow and wood ash.

  WOMEN IN TRADES

  A guild of professional laundresses existed in London from early in the fifteenth century, but in most cases clothes were not washed as frequently as they are today. Once or twice a year was the norm and sometimes they were simply brushed and beaten with wooden bats to get the lice out. A scene of a public washing grounds in 1582 shows water being heated in large copper cauldrons for the purpose, but clothes were also washed directly in rivers and streams. Wet clothes were hung to dry on lines and over convenient bushes. Spots and stains were removed by dampening and rubbing with a ball made of bull’s gall, white of egg, burnt alum, salt, orris powder, and soap. Bluing for bleaching was introduced to England from Holland around 1500, but for badly discolored tablecloths and sheets, cleaning and sun bleaching was a ten-day process that involved long soakings in summer sheep’s dung and the application of a paste made of dog’s mercury (also used to make a bright yellow dye), mallow, and wormwood. This paste was spread over a buck sheet and doused with boiling lye to achieve results.

  In 1511 the Worsted Weavers of Norwich were forbidden to use women to weave worsteds because women were not strong enough to do it correctly. On the other hand, a widow was often allowed to take over the business of her late husband, running it until she remarried or until one of her sons was old enough to replace her. A list of smiths from Chester in 1574 includes thirty-five men and five widows. The lists of the Stationers Company from 1553-1640 show about 10% were women. Some had their own apprentices. In some cases a woman was regarded as her husband’s partner and was confirmed in the possession of his business on his death. There was a woman shoemaker in York in 1589 and there are records of women tanners, pewterers, tailors, and glovers. In Manchester a single woman could be a member of a merchant guild, although she could not be a burgess. Women were liable for duty as churchwardens if they owned or occupied tenements.

  A 1630 list from Salisbury indicates that fifteen of forty-three alehouse keepers were women. So were four cooks and three innkeepers. Some women got licenses to sell on their own after working for a shopkeeper. There are also early seventeenth-century accounts of women working as coal bearers, petty chapmen, and carriers.

  Silkwomen had no guild, but this employment, concentrated in London, was generally done by women married to men of wealthy merchant families. Raw silk was only imported in small quantities until the middle of the sixtee
nth century (11,904 tons in 1560), but by 1621 (with 117,740 tons) it was England’s largest raw material import.

  APPRENTICES

  Training in crafts, trades, and sometimes even professions such as the law was primarily done through apprenticeship, which usually began at fourteen and lasted seven years, at which time the apprentice was tested by the guild to determine if he should become a journeyman. During the apprenticeship, the apprentice received food, clothing, lodging, and education, in particular an education in the “mystery” of the master’s trade. During these years the apprentice was forbidden to contract a marriage (or fornicate), frequent alehouses or taverns, or engage in games of chance with cards and dice. At the end of the apprenticeship, the apprentice received two suits of clothing, a sum of money, and/or a set of tools.

  Under Elizabeth, younger sons of gentlemen began to be apprenticed in craft guilds, a career choice which would have been frowned upon in an earlier era. About 10% of those apprenticed by their parents were girls. The percentage was higher (25-30%) among pauper children apprenticed by their parish under the terms of the Statute of Laborers and Artificers (1563).

  The usual “uniform” of an apprentice was of russet cloth, often in a dark blue but seldom black. The doublet was tight-fitting, longer in the skirt than that of a gentleman, with tight sleeves of a different color, and buttons of polished pewter. It was worn with loose upper hose, gray stockings and shoes, and a leather belt and pouch. Apprentices also wore “sheep’s color” and the fabrics fustian, canvas, sackcloth, and wool. They wore blue cloaks in summer and blue gowns in winter, with breeches and stockings of white broadcloth. Their points were of leather or thread. They were forbidden to carry any weapon but a knife.