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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Brewing was an important part of the medieval peasant economy. There are different views, however, about the nature and position of those who brewed. It has been suggested that brewing was an integral part of the household economy, that is, at the fully developed stage of the household and family, whilst others have connected brewing with the early stages of the life-cycle of individuals, before household formation. Either as part of the household economy or before household formation, brewing may have supplemented income from agrarian activity, whether from the direct holding of land, or from wages for work on the land. Brewing may also have been a feature of the sexual division of labour within the household. Moreover, it has been proposed that brewing was more important for the household economy of cottagers and lesser landholders than for the tenants of standard holdings, who, perhaps, needed to supplement their income less than the smaller landholders. When related to the life-cycle of individuals, however, brewing may have been undertaken more consistently by those who would later acquire land and would then divest themselves of brewing as a major part of their income, although Chayanov believed brewing to relate more widely to the developmental cycle of all peasant households. His perception was that brewing would have been necessary at that stage of household development where there were many mouths to feed and many hands to perform the labour, whereas, when the siblings left the household, the supplementary income from brewing would no longer be required. There are thus a number of issues involved in the question of who, in the main, brewed, and at what stage of their life-cycle they did so.
1. R.M. Smith, in idem, (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 27–30Google Scholar, argued that brewing related mainly to the life-cycle of siblings before marriage and household formation; Bennett, J.M., ‘Village ale-wives’ in Hanawalt, B.A., (ed.), Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986)Google Scholar, and eadem, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar, considered brewing largely in the context of production by the peasant household and particularly by women in the family; Hanawalt, B.A., The Ties that Bound (Oxford, 1986), p. 298, n.14Google Scholar; Hilton, R.H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), pp. 45–6Google Scholar; Dyer, C., Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 346–9Google Scholar. Chayanov, A.V., The Theory of Peasant Economy, ed. Horner, D. (Homewood, Illinois, 1966), pp. 57–61, 78–82Google Scholar; Gatrell, P., ‘Historians and peasants: studies on medieval English society in a Russian context’, in Aston, T. H. (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 416–19Google Scholar. A further consideration, not pursued here, is whether income from such by-employment allowed marriage and family formation at an earlier age than might otherwise have been possible. Judith Bennett and Maryanne Kowaleski have kindly advised on several points, comments have been gratefully received from two anonymous referees and Keith Snell, but I alone am responsible for the remaining shortcomings of this paper.
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11. DRO CR 1288 (Ottery St Mary); British Library Add MS 28838, fos 77v–84r (‘Rentale manerii beate marie de Otery …’); DRO Bedford Papers Werrington court rolls and rentals. The court rolls distinguished between brewers and tapsters: ‘semel braciauit et fregit assisam ceruisie’; ‘vendidit tappale contra assisam’. For dislocation of the production of ale by epidemic in Colchester in the 1460s, Britnell, , Colchester, p. 202.Google Scholar
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13. Exeter Dean and Chapter Archives 4784–4786.
14. Public Record Office SC2 Portfolio 168 no 57; DRO CR 1429–1438; DRO 346M/M1.
15. For husbands' responsibilities for wives' brewing, Raftis, J.A., Tenure and Mobility (Toronto, 1964), p. 101.Google Scholar
16. Based on biographical analysis of the brewers in the Werrington court rolls and rentals. For example, Jurdan Ilond, who appears transiently in the court rolls between 1384 and 1386, fleetingly involved in brewing and debt.
