The round woolen “flat cap” (it had a low, flat crown) is particularly associated with London apprentices. In an attempt to regulate commerce, a series of sumptuary laws had been passed to force people to wear English woolen caps. In 1511 no one below the degree of knight was to wear a foreign cap or hat. In 1529 the upper classes were forbidden to spend more than 2s. on an imported cap or bonnet. A 1572 Act of Parliament declared that every person above the age of six years, except women and certain specified officials, was henceforth on Sundays and holy days to wear a woolen cap manufactured in England. These laws were largely ignored. The 1572 act was repealed in 1597.
WORKERS WITHOUT GUILDS
Goods were sold on a small scale by unorganized workers variously called chapmen, higglers, hucksters, badgers, hawkers, and pedlars. On a larger scale, “factors” were paid on a commission basis to sell wares. Those who called themselves “clothiers” were generally the middlemen in the sale of cloth. They bought wool from chapmen and fellmongers, put it out to combers, spinners, weavers, and fullers, then sent the finished product to market. Woolens were England’s leading export.
In the Jacobean period, one needed stock worth £70 to set up as a merchant and stock worth £30 to set up as a tradesman. Samuell Gorton, a yeoman’s son from the Manchester area, did well enough as a factor for a cloth merchant to marry the daughter of a prosperous London haberdasher, set himself up as a clothier, and style himself a gentleman. He went on to emigrate to New England and found the settlement which later became Warwick, Rhode Island.
Spinning, lacemaking, buttonmaking, and knitting were occupations associated with the poor. Workers were paid by the piece and were never guild-organized. Spinning and knitting were done by both men and women. Even without a knitting frame (invented in 1590), a part-time knitter could complete two pairs of worsted stockings a week. Stockings were always in demand, even though the average person only wore out two pairs a year.
THE TOBACCO TRADE
The most lucrative trades in London in 1614 were alehouse-keeper, tobacco-seller, and proprietor of a brothel. Tobacco was cultivated commercially in Virginia from 1614 on and, although the date of its introduction into England by John Hawkins in 1565 has been questioned, there is no doubt that by 1590 “drinking tobacco” was “commonly known” in London. Londoners were reportedly “constantly smoking” by 1598. By 1613, Englishmen spent £200,000 or more a year on tobacco, most of that in London. By 1615 tobacco shops were as common there as alehouses. The sale of tobacco frequently provided a front for an unlicensed tippling house or bawdy house as well. The boldest brothel-keepers displayed tobacco pipes on their signs.
In 1618, Virginia tobacco cost between 3s. 9d. and 4s. 9d. a pound wholesale. An attempt was made to glow tobacco in Gloucestershire. One entrepreneur was said to have made £20,000 in just a few years. As early as 1619, however, growing tobacco in England was prohibited. No real attempt was made to suppress the crop before 1627 and even then the effort was not particularly successful. In 1638 local tobacco sold for 3s. 4d. a pound while “outlandish’’ tobacco cost as much as 5s. As the value of imports rose from £55,143 in 1620 to £230,840 by 1640, the price slowly came down. A great deal more tobacco was smuggled in, in spite of King James’s well-known dislike of the habit (be wrote Counterblaste to Tobacco, first published in 1604). After the London monopoly on tobacco importation was broken in 1639, Bristol and other ports began to import it legally and also began to manufacture tobacco pipes.
MINING
Lead and tin were England’s major exports after cloth. Lead was the most profitable (it was used in roofing) and England was its leading European producer. Steel was successfully manufactured in Sussex by 1565. Zinc and copper mining began in England in the sixteenth century.
The Weald (a tract of land covering parts of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent) was a source of iron ore even before the Romans mined there. Iron was refined close to the mines. The first blast furnace was in operation at Newbridge, Sussex, in 1496, and by the 1570s, there were at least sixty-seven of them, mostly in the Weald. In 1650 there were eighty-six blast furnaces operating in England. The process for producing wrought iron used charcoal for fuel and, as a result, the area was soon stripped of most of its oak and beech. At the Rievaulx ironworks in the 1620s, the labor force of eighty included thirty woodcutters, eight general laborers on day wages, twelve miners for ore, nine carriers of ore and charcoal, six carriers of wood, and six colliers. The output was nearly all in crude bar iron.
Coal mining was the most important of the small scale operations. In the 1560s, 35,000 tons of coal per year were carried from Newcastle to London by ship. In the 1650s, it was 500,000 tons per year. By the 1630s, about 6,000 workers depended on the local coal industry there. Nearly half of them worked underground.
MANUFACTURING
Technological advances in the late sixteenth century led to the use of coal to fire furnaces for the production of both glass and bricks. There was a glasshouse in London as early as 1549 and two glasshouses were built at Fernfold in Sussex in 1567. In the last quarter of the century, glasshouses were built in Rosedale in Yorkshire. Both bottle and window glass were produced. English delftware was being made by 1567, but stoneware had to be imported from Germany until around 1626.
Coal-fired furnaces were also used to produce table salt by boiling sea water in large iron salt pans. At Droitwich in Worcestershire and at Nantwich, Middlewich, and Northwich in Cheshire, salt came from the crystallization of naturally occurring brine. Salt was also imported from the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay.
Production of guns and cannons was another new industry. Guns were cast in iron at Buxted, Kent, from about 1543. Manufacture of gunpowder, however, depended upon saltpeter, which continued to be imported from the Continent until the 1560s. After that, artificial saltpeter was manufactured in England. One factory near Fleet Prison in London blew up during a fire in 1588. The area along the Thames between Woodford and Bow Bridge became a center for the production of gunpowder. London gun foundries were located in Houndsditch and at the corner of Water Street and Thames Street.
Starchworks also proliferated. The practice of clear-starching had been introduced from the Netherlands in 1560 by the wife of William Boonen, Queen Elizabeth’s Dutch coachman. By 1564, Mistress Dinghen van der Plasse began to give instruction in starch making for 20s. and taught the art of starching ruffs for £5. Blue pother starch was more costly than white. Although Queen Elizabeth attempted to ban “the use of blue starch in making up linen” in 1595 and 1596, her edicts were apparently ignored. Early in the next century, yellow starch, colored with saffron and other dyes (most dyes were imported), came into fashion. By 1614 the starchworks at Stratford, Essex, had thoroughly polluted the air.
UNEMPLOYMENT
Although some occupations expanded rapidly during this period (there were 200 chimney sweeps in London by 1618), there was also widespread unemployment. London counted about 1,000 beggars in 1517; by 1594 there were more than 12,000. Many people ended up on the Tudor equivalent of welfare, too poor and uneducated to break out of the pattern. The “meaner husbandman” and the laborers who worked for a daily or yearly wage (as hedgers, ditchers, reapers, shepherds, herdsmen, and the like) were already at subsistence level, and in bad times they either starved to death or turned to crime in order to survive.
Legislation to deal with the poor was passed in 1531, 1547 (including unenforceable measures against vagrancy), 1563, 1572, 1576, and 1597. The 1572 statute mandated that beggars fifteen years of age and older be whipped and burnt on the ear unless “some honest person would take the offender into service for a year.” “Rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars” included the unemployed, the petty chapmen, counterfeit scholars, tinkers, minstrels, players, jugglers, fortune-tellers, and seafaring men pretending to have lost their ships. Under the law of 1597, offenders, male or female, were stripped to the waist and whipped until they were bloody, then sent from parish to parish until they were
back in the parish in which they had been born.
Vagrancy was a crime, but most vagrants were not the petty criminals and con-men portrayed in the popular pamphlets of Robert Greene (whose mistress was the sister of the famous cutpurse “Cutting” Bull). One estimate indicates that unmarried men made up 51% of vagrants, single or separated women approximately 25%, married couples 13%, and children under fifteen 10%. It was rare they could travel more than forty miles without being caught.
The Poor Relief Act of 1601 made each parish responsible for its own poor. The poor were classified as deserving (those who were ill, disabled, or too young or old to work) and undeserving, a category which unfairly included those who were willing to work but unable to find jobs and those who had large families.
In 1637 a royal proclamation required all tradesmen and artificers within three miles of the capitol who had served a regular seven-year apprenticeship to incorporate. It prohibited those not belonging to any company from practicing their trade after November 1 of that year.
ILLEGAL PROFESSIONS
Smuggling
There were some bands of outlaws and highwaymen operating during this period, but the most widespread organized crime was smuggling. Called “free trade” by those who engaged in it, smuggling could involve everything from bribing officials and making false declarations at the Customs House to running goods ashore and loading vessels under cover of darkness. Customers (the officials in charge of customs for a port) also engaged in this illegal trade.
Prostitution
Some 20,000-30,000 unmarried apprentices provided a steady clientele for prostitutes in the area around London. A young man looking for a good time could buy company for 6d. in the Liberty of the Clink in Southwark. Although Henry VIII had tried to ban the “stews” there in 1546, they continued to thrive. Between eighteen and twenty-two licensed brothels were in operation at any given time during Elizabeth’s reign. They were painted white or whitewashed and had tradesmen’s signs such as The Cardinal’s Hat, chosen for its resemblance in color and shape to the tip of a penis. The Crane operated as a brothel from 1503 to 1633, when it was converted into a soap factory. It was owned by the Tallow Chandlers’ Company for that entire period. The “Single Women’s Churchyard” in Southwark was a burial ground for whores.
Elizabeth Holland was convicted of illegal brothel-keeping in 1597 and sentenced to be “carted.” This meant she was put into a cart at Newgate, probably wearing only her shift, possibly with her head shaved, but definitely wearing a piece of paper stuck to her forehead on which the name of her offense was written. The cart carried her to Smithfield, Cornhill, and the Standard in Cheapside. At each place crowds would gather to witness her public humiliation. The cart went on to Bridewell, where she was probably whipped, and finally back to Newgate, where she remained until she paid a fine of £40. All along the way, people threw fish and other garbage and “basons” were rung before her. For “basons” read basins, literally pots and pans. In London, barbers hired out their basins for cartings.
Most rural prostitution was amateur, as in the case of a married village woman who charged 4d. to fornicate in the fields. In Norton by Crannock, Staffordshire, however, Ellen Smith, enterprising wife of an ale-house keeper, employed five or six servant women to make “a solemn night’s dancing” to “recreate” the customers. Studies of Somersetshire records indicate that the Swan in Wellington and the Bear in Wells were notorious brothels and that Glastonbury was overrun with whores. Ann Morgan of Wells apparently had a sliding scale of fees. Soldiers were charged 2s. 6d., double the going rate.
Keeping a house of bawdry was a common-law offense, but a “bawd” was any person of either sex who procured or pandered to immorality. That definition included a man who got a woman pregnant and then paid someone else to marry her. Such behavior fell within the province of the church courts. In 1604 a revision of canon law required churchwardens to report all persons who committed adultery, whoredom, incest, or “other uncleanness or wickedness of life.”
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burford, E.J. Bawds and Lodgings: A History of the London Bankside Brothels c. 100-1675. London: Peter Owen, 1976. This book contains errors in historical fact and should be used with caution.
Charles, Lindsey and Lorna Duffin, eds. Women and Work in Pre-Industrial England. London: Croom Helm, 1985.
Clark, Alice. The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Augustus Kelley, 1968. A reprint of the “classic” 1920 study.
McMullan, John L. The Canting Crew: London's Criminal Underworld 1550-1700. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1984.
Quaife, G.R. Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth Century England. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1979. While largely a statistical study, this does give details of some of the cases heard by the Somerset Quarter Sessions and the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Bath and Wells during the years 1600-1660.
Salgado, Gamini. The Elizabethan Underworld. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.
Spufford, Margaret. The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and Their Wares in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Williams, Neville. Contraband Cargoes: Seven Centuries of Smuggling. London: Longman, 1959.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ENTERTAINMENT
A 1541 statute designed to promote archery practice for national defense attempted to suppress unlawful games in alehouses and elsewhere. Artificers, laborers, and servants were not to play tables (backgammon), tennis, dice, cards, or slide-groat (also called shovel-board), and none but noblemen were supposed to play at bowls. Since the size of the fines levied against country gentlemen for this “crime” was no more than 8d. for each offense, it seems likely these were regarded as a bowling tax rather than as a punishment. In general, legislation concerning entertainment was cheerfully ignored.
King James felt the Puritans of Lancashire were too severe in limiting Sunday activities, and in 1617 he issued a list of sports that might lawfully be played after church, including on it archery, leaping (jumping contests, including leapfrog), May-games (any activities used to celebrate May Day), Morris dancing, and piping (playing the bagpipes). The Book of Sports (The Kings Majesties Declaration to his Subjects Concerning lawfull Sports to be used) was issued for the entire country in May 1618. King Charles reissued it in 1633. By 1642, however, with Puritans in control of Parliament, almost every recreation was prohibited, at least on Sundays.
FAIRS
Frost Fairs
In addition to water festivals, pageants, and firework displays on the Thames, there were also ice carnivals or frost fairs whenever the river froze solid enough to support booths and traffic. This happened a dozen times at London Bridge between 1550 and 1700. Particularly hard freezes occurred in 1517, 1537, 1564-5 (when there are records of archery and dancing on the Thames), 1595, 1607, 1608, and 1620.
Trade Fairs
The Cloth Fair of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield was one of the biggest trade fairs in England. On St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 25), the aldermen met the Lord Mayor and Sheriff of London at the Guildhall Chapel. After a prayer they rode to Newgate, where a proclamation was read. The procession then went through the fair, back through the churchyard to Aldersgate, and ended at the Lord Mayor’s house. Roast pork was traditional fare at this gathering.
Smaller trade fairs were held at Stratford on Holy Rood Day (September 14) and in Bristol on St. James’s Day (July 25). The Temple Fair was always held on St. Paul’s Day (January 25). St. Luke’s Day (October 18) was marked by the village of Charlton, near Greenwich in Kent, with the Horn-Fair, an event put on by women. Many fairs were held on Sundays.
FESTIVALS
Before the Reformation, there were ninety-five feast days and thirty saints’ eves. Afterward there were twenty-seven holidays. London celebrations were less spectacular than those in cities in Catholic Europe and shops stayed
open except on Christmas and Easter. Bell ringing was associated with many celebrations. Traditionally bells had been rung to mark the canonical hours (actually more than an hour in length) and as a call to arms.
The major festivals, religious and secular, were:
New Year’s Day (January 1): Gifts were given to the monarch.
Twelfth Night (Sundown January 5 through Epiphany, January 6): The final festivity of the Christmas season, often celebrated with mummings.
Plough Monday (first Monday after Epiphany): In the North, sword dancers performed and “Plough Stots” toured the villages asking for alms. The money they collected was used to keep “Plough Lights” in the church until the Reformation, after which it went to provide ale for the ploughmen. The ban on burning candles in church after the Reformation also ended celebrations of Candlemas (February 2).
St. Valentine’s Day (February 14): At the court of Henry VIII, valentines were chosen by lot. The man then had to give a suitable gift to the lady who selected him. In the seventeenth century, it was believed that birds chose their nesting mates on this day.
Shrove Tuesday: In a final fling before Lent (forty weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Easter Eve, during which eating meat was forbidden), Englishmen staged feasts, masques, and cockfights. Traditions included both eating and tossing pancakes, football matches, and cockthrowing, a sport in which a cock was tied to a fixed point and cudgels or broomsticks were thrown at it until it was killed. The dead bird went to the person who killed it. In some areas it was also traditional to attack brothels (and, in London, the playhouses). Twenty-four Shrove Tuesday riots are documented in London between 1603 and 1642.
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England Page 21