Women's social life and common action in England from the fifteenth century to the eve of the civil war

The first draft of this article was read at the January 1985 Conference of the Social History Society and I am grateful for a number of helpful comments made on that occasion.

1 Walter, J., ‘Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law: Maldon and the crisis of 1629’, in Brewer, J. and Styles, J., ed., An ungovernable people: The English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London, 1980), 47–84; Walter, J. and Wrightson, K., ‘Dearth and the social order in early modern England’, Past and Present 71 (1976), 22–42; Clark, P., ‘Popular protest and disturbance in Kent, 1558–1640’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 29 (1976), 365–82.

2 Illick, J. E., ‘Child-rearing in seventeenth-century England and America’, in de Mause, L., ed., The history of childhood (London, 1976), 306; Macfarlane, A., The family life of Ralph Josselin: A seventeenth-century clergyman (Cambridge, 1970), 85–6; Davis, N., ed., Paston letters of the fifteenth century (Oxford, 1971, 1976), I, 602; Meads, D. M., ed., Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605 (London, 1930), 117, 191, 195, 212, 218.

3 Smith, T., De republica anglorum. The maner of gouernement or policie of the realme of England (London, 1583), 12; Fuller, T., The holy state and the profane state, Walten, M. G., ed. (New York, 1938), n, 2; Fitzherbert, A. (really J.), The book of husbandry, 1534, Skeat, W. W., ed., English Dialect Society, xiii (1882), 97–8.

4 Clark, A., Working life of women in the seventeenth century (London, 1982), 51, 107–9.

5 Ibid., 60–7, 219–21; Roberts, M., ‘Sickles and scythes: Women's work and men's work at harvest time’, History Workshop Journal 7 (1979), 3–28; Kussmaul, A., Servants in husbandry in early modern England (Cambridge, 1981), 34; Everitt, A., ‘Farm labourers’ in Thirsk, J., ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, iv, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), 432; Parry, E. A., ed., Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple 1652–54 (London and Manchester, 1903), 86–7; Berkshire Record Office, Reading D/A 2/c154, f. 164^v (1594 reference to return of a group of maids from milking in West Hendred).

6 Rye, W. B., ed., England as seen by foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James I (London, 1865), 72.

7 Halliwell, J. O., ed., Westward for smelts: An early collection of stories, Percy Society, LXXVIII (1848), 41; Macfarlane, , Family life of josselin: 85–6.

8 Thomas, Deloney, Thomas of Reading. Or, the sixe worthy yeomen of the west (London, 1612), sig. H^3r–v

9 Wright, T., ed., Songs and carols, now first printed, from a manuscript of the fifteenth century, Percy Society, LXXIII (1847), 92–5. Cf. Chappell, W. and Ebsworth, J. W., eds., The Roxburghe ballads (London and Hertford, 1869–1899), i, 50, 95, 106, 152, 298.

10 Cawdrey, R., A godlie forme of hovseholde gouernment: for the ordering of private families, according to the direction of God's word (London, 1600), 95; Gataker, T., Marriage dvties briefely couched togither; ovt of Colossians, 3. 18, 19 (London, 1620), 22; Rogers, D., Matrimoniall honour: or the mutuall crowne and comfort of godly, loyall and chaste manage (London, 1642), 250–1, 277–8.

11 Halliwell, , Westward for smelts, 7, 63.

12 Judges, A. V., The Elizabethan underworld (London, 1930), 101–5.

13 Ingram, M., ‘Ridings, rough music and the “reform of popular culture” in early modern England’, Past and Present 105 (1984), 79–113, esp. 86–90.

14 Cox, J. C., Churchwardens' accounts from the fourteenth century to the close of the seventeenth century (London, 1913), 36–7, 39, 59, 167; Thomas, K. V., Religion and the decline of magic (London, 1971), 180; Somerset Record Office, Taunton D/D/Cd/71 (unfoliated), Bale als. Culliford c. Garvin, c. 1634; Halliwell, , Westward for smelts, 38.

15 Cross, C., ‘“Great reasoners in scripture”; the activities of women Lollards 1380–1530’, in Baker, D., ed., Mediaeval women, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 1 (1978), 359–80; Pratt, J., ed., The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe (London, 1877), viii, 556–7; Thomas, K. V., ‘Women and the Civil War Sects’, Past and Present, 13 (1958), 42–57.

16 Houlbrooke, R. A., Church courts and the people during the English Reformation, 1520–1570 (Oxford, 1979), 45–6.

17 Elvey, E. M., ed., The courts of the archdeaconry of Buckingham 1483–1523, Buckinghamshire Record Society, xix (1975), 313.

18 Helmholz, R. H., Marriage litigation in medieval England (London, 1974), 88–90.

19 Houlbrooke, , Church courts and the people, 77; Norwich, Norfolk and Norwich Record Office, Norwich Archdeaconry Inquisitions 1550, at beginning of Walsingham deanery section; Burne, S. A. H., ed., The Staffordshire quarter sessions rolls, i: 1581–1589, William Salt Archaeological Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, liii (1931), 340, 341; Bates, E. H., ed., Quarter sessions records for the county of Somerset, i: James I, 1607–1625, Somerset Record Society, xxiii (1907), 18, 50, 148.

20 For juries of matrons see Cockburn, J. S., ed., Calendar of assize records. Home circuit indictments, Elizabeth I and James I: introduction (London, 1985), 121–3.

21 Hardy, W. J., ed., Hertford county records i: notes and extracts from the sessions rolls, 1581–1698 (Hertford, 1905), 35–6.

22 Clark, , Working life of women, 122–3, 138–9.

23 Higgins, P., ‘The reactions of women, with special reference to women petitioners’, in Manning, B., ed., Politics, religion and the English civil war (London, 1973), 179–222; Riley, H. T., ed., Annales monasterii S. Albani…(A.D. 1421–1440), quious praefigitur chronicon rerum gestarum in monasterio S. Albani…(A.D. 1422–1431), Rolls Series, xxviii (1870–1871), i, 20; Vickers, K. H., Humphrey Duke of Gloucester: A biography (London, 1907), 203.

24 Hilton, R. H., The English peasantry in the later middle ages (Oxford, 1975), 109.

25 Davis, Paston letters, n, 48.

26 Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO) SP 1/47/83; Brewer, J., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R., ed., Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, 1509–47, v, 526.

27 Collinson, P., The Elizabethan puritan movement (London, 1967), 82, 93; Gairdner, J., ed., Three fifteenth-century chronicles, with historical memoranda by John Stowe, the antiquary, and contemporary notes of occurrences written by him in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Camden Society, new ser. xxviii (1880), 139, 140; one renegade minister was physically attacked by a group of wives.

28 Walter and Wrightson, ‘Dearth and the social order’; Clark, , ‘Popular protest and disturbance in Kent’; Sharp, B., In contempt of all authority: Rural artisans and riot in the west of England, 1558–1660 (Berkeley, 1980); Lindley, K., Fenland riots and the English Revolution (London, 1982).

29 Hudson, W. and Tingey, J. C., ed., The records of the city of Norwich (Norwich, 1906–1910), ii, 163–5; reference to a 1528 rising of Norwich women in order to prevent the exportation of grain can be found in Blomefield, F. and Parkin, C., An essay towards a topographical history of the county of Norfolk, 2nd edn. (London, 1805–1810), iii, 198.

30 Horrocks, J. W., ed., The assembly books of Southampton i, 1602–8, Southampton Record Society Publications xix (1917), 61–3.

31 Walter, , ‘Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law’, 48–9, 53, 64–77. One of those condemned was reprieved.

32 Judges, , Elizabethan underworld: 146–8.

33 See for example Tail, J., ed., Lancashire quarter sessions records i: Quarter sessions rolls, 1590–1606, Chetham Society, new ser., LXXVII (1917), 207; Jeaffreson, J. C., ed., Middlesex county records i, Middlesex County Record Society i (1886), 98–9, 187; Cockburn, J. S., ed., Calendar of assize records. Hertfordshire indictments, James I (London, 1975), 151.

34 Dyer, C., Lords and peasants in a changing society: The estates of the bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 161; PRO STAC 2/21/136, 2/26/138.

35 PRO STAC 3/4/87.

36 PRO STAC 5/A2/34, 5/A14/10. The bill of complaint is missing. Alforde may have been renewing a boundary neglected during long periods when the lords of Hitcham had been minors. See Page, W., ed., Victoria county history of Buckinghamshire (London, 1905–1928), iii, 232.

37 PRO STAC 5/A2/18, 5/A29/20; Gardiner, S. R., ed., Reports of cases in the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, Camden Society, new ser. xxxix (1886), 59–65.

38 PRO STAC 8/32/10.

39 McCall, H. B., ed., Yorkshire Star Chamber proceedings, ii, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, XLV (1911), 90–1; PRO STAC 2/17/277, 4/3/16.

40 Whiting, R., ‘“Abominable Idols”: Images and image-breaking under Henry VIII’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982), 40; Brewer, Gairdner and Brodie, , Letters and papers: x, 109–10; Emmison, F. G., Elizabethan life: Disorder (Chelmsford, 1970), 106–7.

41 Burne, , Staffs, quarter sessions rolls, 1581–1589: 271; Tait, , Lanes, quarter sessions rolls, 1590–1606: 156, 268; Ellis, H., ed., The Chronicles of Fabyan (London, 1811), 598–9.

42 Davis, N. Z., Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford, 1975), 146.

43 Wiener, C. Z., ‘Is a spinster an unmarried woman?’, The American Journal of Legal History 20 (1976), 27–31; PRO STAC 2/17/277.

44 Marowe's dictum reads as follows in the original Law French: ‘Si plusours femmez ou enfauntz south lans de discression assemble par eux mesme pur loure propre cause, ceo nest riott. Mes si ascun autre person cause de assembler tile persones de faire tile Riott, en cest cas serra dit vne Riott.’ See Putnam, B. H., Early treatises on the practice of the justices of the peace in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History vii (Oxford, 1924), 115–40, 340 (I am indebted to Dr Mary Prior for guiding me to this book). Cf. Lambarde, W., Eirenarcha: or the office of the justices of peace (London, 1617), 180. Eirenarcha was first published in 1581.

45 Hawarde, J., Les reportes del cases in camera stellata, 1593, 1609, Baildon, W. P., ed., (London, 1894), 104, 247; cf. Gardiner, , Reports of cases: 64.

46 Brewer, Gairdner and Brodie, , Letters and papers, v, 530.

47 PRO STAC 5/A2/34, 5/A14/10, 5/A29/20, 5/A29/24, 8/42/11, 8/223/7.

48 PRO STAC 2/26/138, 3/4/87, 5/A2/18, 5/A2/34, 5/A14/10, 5/A29/20, 8/32/10, 8/42/11; Brewer, Gairdner and Brodie, , Letters and Papers, x, 109–10.

49 PRO STAC 5/A2/34, 5/A14/10.

50 PRO STAC 5/A14/10.

51 Walter, ‘Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law:’ esp. 72; Hudson, and Tingey, , Records of Norwich, ii, 164.

52 For two contrasting views of disturbances of different types, see James, M. E.,‘Obedience and dissent in Henrician England: the Lincolnshire rebellion 1536’, Past and Present xlviii (1970), 3–78; Sharp, , In contempt of all authority: 126–7, 133.

53 PRO STAC 5/A29/20, answers of Erne Baite; my italics.