The Weaker Vessel: Women's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England

by Antonia Fraser

  Rachel Lady Russell herself had to imagine the spectacle of her daughter’s apotheosis since her eyesight was by now very bad; she followed to Belvoir more slowly and in some discomfort. Ultimately however, it was a great source of satisfaction to her that all three titles with which she was associated, Bedford, Devonshire and Rutland, were transformed into dukedoms. Bedford – her father-in-law – and Devonshire – her son-in-law were created dukes in 1695. Transforming the earldom of Rutland into a dukedom took a little more time in view of John, ninth Earl of Rutland’s obstinate dislike of London; despite Rachel’s pleas he refused to attend the coronation of Queen Anne, the perfect opportunity for securing such titular advancement. Finally in 1703 John Manners, formerly the unhappy cuckolded Lord Roos, was made the first Duke of Rutland. His story had ended happily after all.

  The story ended happily in another way. It had been written into Katherine Russell’s marriage contract – oh shades of the past! – that she would forfeit her jointure ‘if ever she lived in town without his [her husband’s] consent’.54 So amiable, so diligent and so virtuous did this Lady Roos prove herself that eventually her father-in-law relaxed the prohibition. When in 1711 Katherine died giving birth to her sixth child at the age of thirty-five not only Rachel Lady Russell but all her adopted family were cast into despair. It was appropriate that where woman’s reputation was concerned, the ghost of the wanton and ‘impudent’ Lady Anne Roos should be finally laid by the daughter of the noble Rachel Lady Russell; for the one was the classic villainess, the other the classic heroine of the age in which they lived.

  1It was not until 1857 that divorce was made generally available in England – to men on grounds of their wives’ adultery alone, and to wives on grounds of their husbands’ adultery, accompanied by cruelty or desertion.

  2Today both titles are still represented in the ranks of the peerage: there is a Baroness de Ros (for the ancient barony is currently held by a woman) and Baron Roos of Belvoir is among the titles held by the Duke of Rutland; this new barony being created in 1896.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Benefiting by Accomplishments

  ‘It is no ambitious design of gaining a Name in print … that put me on this bold undertaking; but the mere pity I have entertained for such Ladies, Gentlewomen and others, as have not received the benefits of the tithe of the ensuing accomplishments.’

  HANNAH WOOLLEY, The Gentlewomans Companion, 1675

  What other course than marriage was open to the gently bred but dowerless female of post-Restoration society? Hannah Woolley, in a book of domestic conduct, addressed herself to those ‘many Gentlewomen forced to serve, whose Parents and Friends have been impoverished by the late Calamities, viz., the late Wars, Plague and Fire’ (she was writing in the 1670s). Let them forget their glorious past! ‘If your Father hath had large Revenues, and could talk loudly of his Birth, and so [you] may think this servile life beneath you, yet thank God you can do something for an honest livelihood, and be never the less submissive.’1

  What Hannah Woolley meant was that virtually the only respectable profession open to such a relict was that of ‘gentlewoman’ or waiting-woman to another more prosperous female. A natural chameleon, such an attendant took on the worldly colouring of her employer: thus her status varied considerably, and was not necessarily debased. At the highest level a gentlewoman, acting as a companion, confidante or what would now be termed personal secretary to a great lady, enjoyed a powerful and protected position which had little of the menial about it; as Mrs Wall, confidential servant to the King’s French mistress Louise de la Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, exercised her own form of petticoat patronage.2

  In all cases however, intimacy was the rule not the exception. Sighing over Dorothy Sidney, before the war, Edmund Waller took the trouble to apostrophize her waiting-woman Mrs Brangton:

  You the soft season know when best her mind

  May be to pity, or to love, inclined.

  Margaret Duchess of Newcastle dedicated her CCXI Sociable Letters to ‘her friend and former maid’ Mrs Elizabeth Topp. Dorothy Osborne had her ‘sweet jewel’ Jane Wright, daughter of Sir Peter Osborne’s bailiff on the island of Guernsey (her sister Maria seems to have married the local rector at Chicksands, an example of delicate upward mobility).3

  The female correspondence of the time bears witness to the existence of many such ‘sweet jewels’. One who proved not quite so delightfully precious was the gentlewoman named merely as ‘B–’ by Evelyn, describing the testamentary letter of Margaret Godolphin. ‘B–’ (presumably Beck, her chief maid) was, it is true, to receive the princely sum of £100 from Sidney Godolphin; but this was merely a charitable endowment to enable her to live without employment at her father’s house, since no one else would endure her lack of ‘good service’ with as much patience as had Margaret Godolphin.4

  Very often the chosen companion would be some form of family connection, a poor relation perhaps, as in the case of ‘Cousin Henderson’ the intelligent and resourceful kinswoman of Bess Countess of Dysart, subsequently Duchess of Lauderdale. First Cousin Henderson instructed the young Bess Murray (she was the only child of Charles I’s faithful servant William Murray, created Earl of Dysart, from whom Bess eventually inherited the title in her own right). Then Cousin Henderson settled down with Bess on her first marriage to Sir Lionel Tollemache, helping her with her business affairs – Cousin Henderson remaining a great deal more literate than her pupil. Finally when Bess’s numerous Tollemache progeny began to create those problems in adolescence and later which multiplicity does nothing to alleviate, Cousin Henderson found herself with fresh responsibilities: when young William Tollemache, for example, got into trouble for killing a man in a duel in Paris, it was Cousin Henderson who went over to France to rescue William from the consequence of his rashness.5

  The ultimate triumph of the poor relation in the guise of gentlewoman was however that of Abigail Hill, better known to history as Mrs Masham. Abigail Hill was the famous favourite who succeeded in supplanting Sarah Duchess of Marlborough in the affections of Queen Anne with disastrous political consequences for the Whigs. In fact the two women – Sarah Jennings, later Duchess of Marlborough, and Abigail Hill – were first cousins, and the ousted Sarah’s furious claim that she had raised Abigail from ‘a broom’ had a great deal of substance to it.6 Abigail’s first appointment occurred before the Queen’s accession, her father having been a merchant who ruined himself with unfortunate speculations. Sarah, hearing that she had a relative living in penury, secured for Abigail the post of Bedchamberwoman to the then Princess Anne; Abigail’s sister Alice was subsequently made laundress to the Princess’s son, the little Duke of Gloucester.

  Even then, Abigail’s appointment was not made without some awkwardness, since it was known that Abigail had been working as a domestic servant in the household of Lady Rivers (an awkward example of downward mobility), and this would normally have ruled her out from the position of Bedchamberwoman to a Princess, where the work was, as we shall see, menial enough but the public prestige considerable. In principle a Bedchamberwoman had to display respectable antecedents, even if she was spared the haughty standards of a Lady of the Bedchamber: no one below the rank of an earl’s daughter was considered.

  Abigail was saved by the fact that none of the other members of the Princess’s household were ‘gentlewomen’ – who might be supposed to be contaminated by the arrival of this former domestic servant – except one Mrs Danvers; but she had sacrificed the advantages of her birth by marrying a tradesman.7 Once appointed, Abigail’s duties as Bedchamberwoman included sleeping on the floor of the royal bedroom at night, and emptying the royal slops in the morning. From this – literally – lowly position, Abigail Hill was able to proceed upwards until she had as Queen’s favourite achieved the glorious rank of Baroness Masham – Samuel Masham, her husband, being a Groom of the Bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark. The sympathetic approach by which Abigail as Bedchamberwoman was able to
win the Queen’s confidence stood in contrast to Sarah’s natural loftiness of temperament; the attention paid by Abigail to the personal tribulations of the Queen’s daily round, and her attempts to alleviate it, was particularly effective where a sick woman was concerned: Queen Anne was plagued with ill health – the consequence of her numerous pregnancies and other cruel afflictions – throughout her reign. This aspect of Abigail’s rise, leaving aside her relationship to the Tory Robert Harley, was underlined when Queen Anne hesitated to create Samuel Masham a peer because it was not seemly for a peeress to lie on her floor ‘and do several other offices’ as Abigail was wont to do; yet Queen Anne was loath to relinquish Abigail’s services. In the end a compromise was reached by which Abigail became Lady Masham but she also continued as Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen.8

  Thus the career of Abigail Masham stood not only for the triumph of the poor relation, but also for the possibilities of female advancement in the role of personal companion – one area outside marriage where such advancement was to be secured.

  Where Abigail Masham emerges triumphant, Paulina Pepys – ‘Pall’ – the diarist’s plain and rather pathetic younger sister, appears as a victim: both of the husband shortage, and of the use of domestic service to cope with the problem of a poor relation. When Samuel Pepys offered to have Pall come and live with him and his wife in London in November 1660, she received his offer with tears of joy; despite the fact that Pepys told Pall quite plainly that he would receive her ‘not as a sister in any respect but as a servant’. This was because she had been living with her father in the country, virtually dowerless and with small prospect of finding a husband. Pall arrived the following January, but Pepys, unlike those great ladies such as Lady Sandwich who were graciously inviting their housekeepers to sit down at table with them, was quick to define her position downwards: ‘I do not let her sit down at table with me’, he noted in his diary with some complacency. ‘Which I do at first, that she may not expect it thereafter from me.’9

  Despite this cutting treatment, Pall was reported as having grown ‘proud and idle’ by July, and her brother resolved not to keep her.10 The trouble was that at the same time as Samuel Pepys was trying to define his sister’s position downwards (and thus solve the problem of her keep at the smallest expense to himself), his wife Elizabeth was in the process of defining her own position upwards – and since one of the marks of a lady was that she kept a waiting-woman, a waiting-woman was what Mrs Pepys would have. Poor Pall was not really able to fulfil the expectations of either Pepys. One of those unfortunate people, it is clear, who was rendered increasingly disagreeable by adversity, she scarcely added that note of social grace to the establishment desired by Mrs Pepys. Nor was she able to fit easily into the menial position conceived for her by her somewhat callous brother.

  Home to the country went Pall. The next time Pepys saw her in October 1662 – still with no husband in view – he found her ‘so ill-natured’ that he could not love her, and ‘so cruel an Hypocrite’ that she could cry when she pleased.11 (While we may accept the fact that Pall was by now thoroughly ill-natured, her tears at her situation were probably quite sincere.)

  In the meantime, Elizabeth Pepys’s search for the ideal refined attendant or ‘woman’ as she sometimes simply described her, went on apace; as with her other search for the perfect cook and perfect maid or some combination of the two, it provides one of the most fascinating and long-running of the great domestic dramas of the diary. Admittedly Pepys’s particular sexual nature is one of the component parts of the drama: he could not be long close to any pretty young female, without wishing at very least to touch ‘ses mamelles’ but such advances were, as we have seen, a recurring problem where female domestics were concerned; gentlewomen were not excepted.

  The rise of the idea of the lady, too genteel or too languid or just too ladylike to do her own housework (as opposed to the robust working housewife, whatever her class, of the pre-war period), is amply demonstrated by the gathering domestic ambitions of Mrs Pepys. From a woman who did her own cooking, with the aid of perhaps one servant, she developed into the mistress of the household; one moreover who needed a gentlewoman at her side to sing with her and accompany her to plays. Pepys accurately drew attention to the fact that ‘the increase of man’s fortune, by being forced to keep more servants … brings trouble’. At the same time he criticized his wife for not looking neater now she had two servants; and noted that ‘want of work’ was one of his wife’s problems.12

  The first ‘woman’ hired was called Gosnell; Pepys hoped that she would make Elizabeth less lonely, and was himself impressed to find that Gosnell had a good singing voice and was ‘pretty handsome’ (although he did have a dark suspicion that she might have been bred ‘with too much liberty’ for his household). Convincing himself, however, that Gosnell would cost nothing but her board and her small wages, as well as saving him a great deal of money by occupying his wife at home, Pepys purchased a book of country dances for her arrival.

  Gosnell herself had put a different interpretation upon her post. Her singing did please, and she ‘dressed’ Mrs Pepys, that is, helped her with her toilette and did her hair. (This was beginning to be considered such an arduous job that Betty Verney at about the same date, angrily maidless, said that her arms ached with doing her own hair, and it would be scarcely less exhausting to go out to the plough.) But Gosnell was very put out to find that the Pepyses did not go to the court every week, nor often enough to plays, and she also claimed for herself the ‘liberty of going abroad as often as she pleased’.13 So Gosnell departed – to join certain other moneyless young ladies in another racier world than that of the respectable gentlewoman. With other actresses, we shall meet Gosnell again in the future.

  The next suggestion was that Pall should be got back as Mrs Pepys’s ‘woman’; the economics of it pleasing Pepys, who did not like, as he put it, to spend money on a stranger when he could spend it on his sister. However, the girl who actually filled the position was called Mary Ashwell, a teacher from one of the fashionable Chelsea girls’ schools who had the merit of singing well, dancing charmingly after dinner, and being in all respects ‘a merry jade’. Too merry perhaps – she got into trouble with Mrs Pepys over a ribbon which had or had not been stolen, and eventually went back to teaching, finding the duties of a ‘woman’ insufficiently stimulating and wanting a place ‘where she might teach children, because of keeping herself in use of what things she had learned, which she doth not here or will there, but only dressing …’. 14

  Meanwhile the exiled Pall still wept. In the summer of 1664 she pleaded to be allowed to return to London to improve her chance of acquiring a husband; even Pepys had to concede that there was a danger in leaving her in the country to grow steadily older ‘till nobody will have her’ – then she would be ‘flung upon’ his hands for good. But now Mrs Pepys had set her heart on another symbol of gentility – a French maid; for along with French fashions, French songs, French dances, French wines and French cooking, French attendants had become the rage, as the returning cavaliers imported the civilized delights of their country of exile. (As a result, the absurd use of French by ladies of fashion was to be much mocked in Restoration plays. ‘Affected? Moi?’, exclaims Lady Fancyfull in Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife.) When this plan foundered, Mary Mercer was procured: a ‘decayed’ or ruined merchant’s daughter, one of the newly poor, like Abigail Masham. For all Mercer’s skill at the viol, however, there was soon trouble when Pepys was seen to pay too much attention to Mercer at table.15 Mercer departed.

  At least Mrs Pepys was beginning to see reason on the subject of Pall’s dowry (the alternative of housing Pall was grimmer): in October 1665 she agreed that Pall should have £400, despite the fact that times were hard. As for Pepys, a mere three days after a certain Philip Harman’s wife died in childbirth, Pepys was considering him as a bridegroom for Pall. With this in view, Pall was allowed up to London to be ‘fashioned’. At the age of twenty
-five, Pepys assessed her appearance as follows: even though she was ‘full of freckles and not handsome in face, she was at least pretty good-bodied … and not over thick …’ With the possibility of a portion to back up these charms, Pall also acquired another two suitors, even if one of them was ‘drunken, ill-favoured and ill-bred’.16

  Neither of these problems – Mrs Pepys’s desire for a gentlewoman and Pall’s desire for a husband – were however destined for immediate solution. It was not until 1668 that Pall, now aged twenty-seven, was finally married off to one John Jackson of Ellington in Huntingdonshire, a man with little to say for himself and of plain appearance, but a husband for all that. Pepys’s relief was profound; there had been some desperate moments when he feared he would never find her a husband before she had grown ‘old and ugly’. To his diary he confided that he could not love Pall, because she was so ‘cunning and ill-natured’. However, her appearance improved on marriage, although she remained ‘mighty pert’.17

  As for Mrs Pepys, she heard of a very fine lady who would replace Mercer for £20 a year, able to sing, dance and play on four or five instruments; but this paragon proved on inspection to be ‘tawdry’ and was in fact perfectly prepared to come for £8. (The genteel importance of the role of gentlewoman is underlined by the fact that even a ‘tawdry’ one might command more than twice a maid’s annual wage.) Under the circumstances Mrs Pepys preferred a girl called Barker; £7 or £8 was laid out on clothes for her by Pepys himself. Barker was ‘very plain’ but had good connections and a fine singing voice, two at least of the qualifications of a suitable gentlewoman. Barker duly accompanied Mrs Pepys on visits and learned part songs but proved to be a trouble-maker in the household. Her departure in May 1667 occurred when she was discovered to have been ‘abroad’ without permission and lied about it, so that Mrs Pepys found herself obliged to strike her.