Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England

Service in husbandry was the usual occupation of early modern rural youths. They left their parents as children, and departed from service as adults. The progress in status from child to servant to householding adult is conspicuous in the few parish censuses that include information on age and occupation (Table 5.1). Ealing's pattern is the most striking. All males and females aged 10 to 14 were children resident at home, but only 21 per cent of males 15 to 19 were. The rest were servants. Householding then began to take the place of service among the 25–9 age group. Fewer women appear to have left home before their marriage, and they married younger. In Corfe Castle and Ardleigh, the progression is repeated. The proportion of males aged 15 to 19 who were farm servants was higher than the proportion of females, and the rapid movement away from service into householding came between the age groups of 20–4 and 25–9. The median age of servants to farmers ranges narrowly in the three listings from 19 to 21 for males, and from 19 to 20 for females. The median ages of householding farmers and labourers in the three listings ranged from 36.5 in Corfe Castle (labourers) to 55 in Ealing (yeomen).

Entry into service in husbandry

There was no fixed age at which children left home to become servants in husbandry. The normal age in the north of England in 1843 was, as one observer put it, ‘ten to twelve to fourteen’.