Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London: Consumption and Domesticity After the Plague 9780812299533

Citation preview

HOUSE HOLD GOODS AND GOOD HOUSE HOLDS IN LATE MEDIEVAL LONDON

T H E M I D D L E AG E S S E R I E S Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

HOUSE HOLD GOODS and GOOD HOUSE HOLDS in LATE MEDIEVAL LONDON Consumption and Domesticity After the Plague

Katherine L. French

un iver sit y of pen nsy lvan i a press phil adelphi a

Copyright © 2021 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8122-5305-4

For Kerry

By wisdom the house shall be built, and by prudence it shall be strengthened. Proverbs 24:3

contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction. The Challenges of Increased Consumption

1

Chapter 1. Living in London Before the Plague

17

Chapter 2. Valuing Household Goods

42

Chapter 3. Interior Decorating After the Plague

73

Chapter 4. Good Housekeeping in Post-Plague London

99

Chapter 5. Some Brought Flesh and Some Brought Fish

128

Chapter 6. When a Woman Labors with a Child

155

Chapter 7. Praying upon Beads

190

Conclusion. What Londoners Learned as They Learned to Live with More

217

Appendix

221

Notes

231

Bibliography

275

Index

307

M a p s , F i g u r e s , a n d Ta b l e s

MAPS 1. Medieval London and environs 18 2. Arrival points for plague in 1348 38

FIGURES 1. Distribution of wills leaving movable goods in the Commissary Court and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 11 2. Cut-away view of an open-hall house 23 3. Burl on a maple tree 34 4. Fifteenth-century mazer 54 5. Fifteenth-century nut, or coconut cup 55 6a. Percentage of wills leaving mazers, nuts, and metal cups in London, 1384–1540 57 6b. Percentage of cups bequeathed by type in London, 1384–1540 57 7. Serpentine mazer (ca. 1500) 62 8. Late fifteenth-century ceramic tankard with bearded face 64 9. Historiated initial C with a woman in childbed (ca. 1490) 66 10. Henry VII’s marriage bed 68 11. Blind Tobit 82 12. Robert Campin, Annunciation, Merode Altarpiece (1427–30) 107 13. Detail of the Merode Altarpiece 108 14. Roller-towel holder (1520–25) 109 15a. Late medieval chest with a rounded top 112 15b. Fifteenth-century chest with a flat top 112 16. Beneficiaries receiving household goods by sex in London, 1384–1540 115 17. Distribution of bequests of chests in London, 1384–1540 118

18. 19. 20. 21. 22a. 22b. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31a. 31b. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40a. 40b. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Mid-fifteenth-century Italian cassone 118 Cook using a meat hook and a skimmer 135 Late fifteenth-century apostle spoon 145 Wooden bowl 146 Pewter spoon 147 Detail of pewter spoon 147 Late fifteenth-century paternoster 160 Distribution of bequests of paternosters in London, 1384–1540 161 Beneficiaries receiving paternosters by sex in London, 1384–1540 161 Amber paternoster (ca. 1350–1400) 163 Agnus Dei belt buckle (fourteenth or fifteenth century) 163 Middleham Jewel 164 Cramp ring (1308–1550) 166 Late medieval turned jet bowl 173 Prayer scroll or birthing girdle 176 Printed birthing girdle (1533–34) 177 Distribution of bequests of girdles in London, 1384–1540 178 Beneficiaries receiving girdles by sex in London, 1384–1540 178 Fifteenth-century Italian swaddling bands 184 So-called cradle of Henry V (fifteenth century) 185 Selection of pressed-metal toys 187 London inventories with religious items 195 Distribution of bequests of religious items in London, 1384–1540 196 Metal holy water stoup (ca. 1066–1600) 197 Ceramic figurine of the Virgin Mary 198 Pressed-metal stand 199 Recipients of religious books by sex in London, 1384–1540 202 Sarum Use book of hours 203 Devotional tablet 204 Pressed-metal St. John’s head 205 Terra-cotta cake or sweetmeat mold of St. Katherine (1450–1520) 207 Recipients of religious items in London, 1384–1540 208 Percentage of post-plague wills leaving moveable goods in Husting Wills, Commissary Court, and Prerogative Court of Canterbury 223 48. Number of post-plague wills in Commissary Court and Prerogative Court of Canterbury 224 49a. Percentage of wills in Commissary Court leaving moveable goods by sex 225

49b. Percentage of wills in Prerogative Court of Canterbury leaving moveable goods by sex 225 50. Chronological distribution of post-plague London inventories 227

TABLES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5a. 5b. 6a. 6b. 7.

Occupations of those with post-plague inventories 12 Average wealth of households in three sets of post-plague inventories 13 Husting Wills with Moveable Goods, 1344–1428 32 Beneficiaries of Beds and Bedding in London, 1384–1540 70 Cooking Facilities in London’s Fourteenth-Century Inventories (1350–99) 132 Cooking Facilities in London’s Sixteenth-Century Inventories (1500–1544) 132 Meat-Cooking Capabilities in London’s Fourteenth-Century Inventories (1350–99) 136 Meat-Cooking Capabilities in London’s Sixteenth-Century Inventories (1500–1544) 136 Numbers of Post-Plague Inventories Used 229

Acknowledgments

The questions that inspired this book emerged when I renovated my two-hundredyear-old farmhouse in New York’s Hudson Valley. Undoing unfortunate decisions from the 1980s repeatedly uncovered evidence of how differently previous owners had lived in this house. The original owners cooked and ate in the basement, and a ninety-five-year-old neighbor, who grew up in the house, told me that everywhere I had a bookcase, his family had a bed. As I write these acknowledgments, I am staying home trying to flatten the curve of COVID-19. I am increasingly aware of how living with a pandemic is changing how I live in my current house, but I have yet to learn which of these new behaviors will remain. I started this book at SUNY–New Paltz and I finished it at the University of Michigan. In both places I have been extremely fortunate in having supportive colleagues. At New Paltz, I am particularly grateful to Lee Bernstein, Kathy Dowley, Andy Evans, Nancy Johnson, Susan Lewis, Heather Morrison, Lou Roper, and Michael Vargas; at Michigan, John Carson, Jay Cook, Deirdre de la Cruz, Hussein Fancy, Anna Bonnell Freidin, Tom Green, Dena Goodman, Sue Juster, Valerie Kivelson, Tori Langland, Brian Porter-Szucs, Helmut Puff, Cathy Sanok, Pat Simons, Minnie Sinha, and Paolo Squatriti have been tremendously supportive. My graduate students Haley Bowen, Sheree Brown, Bethany Donovan, Erin Johnson, Emily Price, Taylor Sims, and Shai Zamir also played an important role in this book. They offered their own insights, suggestions, citations, and enthusiasm. Taylor served as my Research Assistant at a crucial point in wrangling the Husting Wills, and Emily turned in the index with efficiency and timeliness. Sigrid Anderson and Alexa Pearce, librarians extraordinaire, were endlessly helpful in talking through setting up my databases, and the staff at Hatcher Library are all that a historian could want. Greg Parker sorted out many of my digital-image dilemmas. Corey Proctor of the office of CSCAR at the University of Michigan tested my data for statistical significance. Beyond my academic homes I have also received much material, emotional, and intellectual support. Kate Kelsey Staples lent me her microfilm of the Husting wills; Maryanne Kowaleski gave much needed advice on databases; Thomas McSweeney

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helped with the legal tangle that is heirlooms, appurtenances, and Swinburne; Isabelle Cochelin pointed out the long legacy of Heloise’s objections to motherhood and housekeeping; Kathleen Kennedy shared her great knowledge on all things relating to coconuts; and Monica Green provided her expertise on medieval medicine. Justin Colson helped me learn to negotiate London’s wills and shared his Excel spreadsheet of the Commissary Court wills and his thoughts on medieval London. Shannon McSheffrey’s great knowledge of medieval London and numerous examples from her own elaborate databases appear throughout, and she shared flats and pints with me over the course of many trips to London. Christopher Mills, head of library, art, and archives collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, answered many questions about maples, and James Robinson, formerly of the British Museum, and Michael Willis of the British Museum arranged for me to actually handle the British Museum’s collection of mazers. Sonja Drimmer gave me valuable advice on finding the right medieval manuscript illustrations. Gordie Thompson made my maps. Libby Mulqueeny drew Figure 2, and Kate Gilbert edited the manuscript. Beth Alison Barr, Caroline Barron, Cordelia Beattie, Judith Bennett, Charlotte Berry, Martha Carlin, Mark Gardiner, Roberta Gilchrist, Richard Goddard, Christopher King, and Eleanor Standley all suggested works I needed to read, explained the finer points of their scholarship, and asked the right questions at the right time. David Constable, Ian Coulson, and Chris Pickvance generously provided images from their personal collections. At the last minute, many people, but particularly Anne Marie D’Arcy, Randy Schiff, and Jennifer Thibodeaux, provided full citations for things not digitized and unavailable during the COVID shut down. I am tremendously grateful for everyone’s help and encouragement. In 2017, Elisheva Baumgarten invited me to participate in her ERC Working Group “Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe.” Further support was provided by the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University. The seminars, talks, and one-on-one discussions helped turn a loose collection of conference papers and articles into a book. I am so thankful for the input of all participants. Initial archival research was funded in part by several Research and Creative Projects Awards and Term Faculty Development Awards from SUNY–New Paltz and the United University Professors. Hope Mahon helped transcribe the probate inventories as part of a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience Grant. Once I moved to Michigan, funding for this project has been provided by the History Department and the J. Frederick Hoffman chair, which I am fortunate to hold. A sabbatical in the spring of 2011 gave me the chance to start conceptualizing the project. My cousins Andrew and Erika Bradner lent me their house in Plum

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Beach, Rhode Island, while they were working abroad. A sabbatical in the academic year of 2018–19 let me finish writing the manuscript. In between, a leave in 2013–14 at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities provided the time, luxury, and intellectual stimulation to ask larger questions and figure out how I might answer them. Previous portions of this book appeared as articles. I am delighted that Kathryn Smith and Sarah Stanbury agreed to write “An Honest Bed: The Scene of Life and Death in Medieval England” with me. It appeared in a special issue of Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of the Ancient and Medieval Pasts 5 (2016): 61–95. The special issue was the brainchild of Robin Fleming. Her belief in the value of collaboration and interdisciplinarity fueled by good food have had a profound impact on this book. Other parts of this book were published as “Material Culture of Childbirth in Late Medieval London and Its Suburbs,” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 2 (2016): 126–48; and “Nouveaux arts de la table et convivialitiés sexuées: Angleterre, fin de l’époque médiévale,” Clio 40, no. 1 (2014): 45–67. I am delighted to be working again with Jerry Singerman and Ruth Karras at the University of Pennsylvania Press. Gratitude also to the anonymous readers, whose comments and criticisms have helped improve the book, and for the hard work of copyeditor Jennifer Shenk. As the acknowledgments show, writing a book requires the forbearance of many. The difficulties, exasperations, and triumphs are more bearable and sweeter for sharing them. Robin Fleming, Gary Gibbs, Shannon McSheffrey, and Allyson Poska have all been with me since this project was just an old house with a flooding basement in the Hudson Valley. They all read versions of the entire manuscript and it is better for their suggestions, wisdom, and time. I am immensely grateful for their support, input, and friendship. Last is my family, who share my fascination with old houses, and Kerry, whose wide technical knowledge was frequently helpful and his encouragement always appreciated. This book is for him.

Introduction The Challenges of Increased Consumption

In 1990, when the borders of the former Czechoslova kia opened up, busloads of Czechs flocked to Vienna. Standing in a department store, I watched women surround the toiletry and perfume displays excitedly trying all the free samples. The Eastern bloc’s controlled economy had famously limited access to such luxury items, and my first vision of the “fall of Communism” was women applying scented lotion to their hands and faces.1 Greater access to new products would change the lives of residents of the former Soviet bloc in ways big and small. A beauty regimen requires money for products, a place to store them, and time for a routine to use them. These changes have repercussions for domestic habits and relationships because people and their things are entangled in dense and unpredictable ways, with material culture structuring behavior and interactions and creating unexpected dependencies with unforeseen consequences.2 Dramatic rises in consumption, such as the one that accompanied the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, have social repercussions. Indeed, the move from a user to a consumer society is often understood as a hallmark of modernity.3 A similar change took place in the mid-fourteenth century, in the years following the so-called Black Death. As a consequence of devastating population loss over two years, wages and consumption rose. This book looks at changes to domestic material culture after this great mortality: the things people bought to furnish their houses, the houses they lived in, and the changes in domestic behavior, identity, and gender roles that emerged from these material changes. I focus on London’s merchants and artisans, those most intimately connected to trade, manufacturing, and consumption in England’s largest city. Within a time frame of 1300 to 1540, 1348/49

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stands as a pivotal moment that unleashed economic changes that in turn shaped the story of the material changes explored in this book. I have chosen London because of its economic and cultural importance to England, the abundance of its surviving sources, and the city’s rich historiography.4 By 1300, London had achieved self-rule, and merchant and artisan companies were entrenched in both its city government and economic life. It was a marketplace for the luxuries imported by both the Italians and the Hanseatic League, and it was home to immigrants whose aspirations fueled manufacturing and domestic ser vice in the workshops and houses of London’s merchants and artisans.5 The period of this study, 1300–1540, is generally understood as a time of economic contraction sandwiched between the growth and maturation of the medieval economic system in the twelfth century and the rapid expansion of the sixteenth century. This time frame includes a variety of interrelated environmental, political, and economic crises, the most notable of which is the appearance of bubonic plague in Europe for the first time in six hundred years. In the mid-fifteenth century the European economy went into a serious recession.6 The fifteenth century is something of an enigma for historians, as is reflected in the various ways it is periodized: the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the early modern period. This protracted economic crisis, I argue, resolved questions about household behavior that had emerged with the expansion of trade in the twelfth century but became more pressing after the initial outbreak of plague. An end date of 1540 legitimately raises the question of how long after 1348 we can talk about the plague’s consequences. The Black Death was not an emotional reference point for the sixteenth century, but it had initiated a demographic and economic dynamic that makes the two centuries after the plague worth considering in their totality. My endpoint of 1540 sees the population and commerce recovering, but avoids the economic impact of overseas colonization and slavery, which would change England’s economy and consumption habits yet again.7 Ever since the Dutch historian Jan Huizinga characterized the late Middle Ages as morbid and death-obsessed, scholars have debated how much responsibility should be given to the plague as a catalyst for cultural and social transformation.8 This debate is beset by a number of conceptual questions. To what degree was the plague a major driver of change, and in what ways was it simply an accelerator of trends already under way, particularly those coming from the expansion of commerce in the twelfth century? How do we see, measure, and understand its impact on medieval society and culture? And if institutions, policies, and material culture endured from before the plague, can we talk about the Black Death as bringing

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change?9 To some degree this is a debate about whether economics or population drive change.10 While the drama of the Black Death’s appearance attracts most historiographical attention, its sudden appearance in the fourteenth century was tied in with broader climate changes that had started at the end of the twelfth century.11 Both its name, which does not have medieval origins, and its massive mortality rate feed dire visions of what it was like to live in the Middle Ages.12 Now conclusively identified as bubonic plague, over the course of five years this disease spread via trade routes out of the Steppes of Asia into the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and northern Europe, killing between a third and half of the population.13 Had there been only this one outbreak, the population would have recovered, but the plague returned every fifteen years or so, and consequently England’s population would remain low until the beginning of the sixteenth century.14 A stagnant population was a new demographic dynamic for England.15 Between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries, the medieval population had largely expanded. With land as a measure of status and a source of food, not enough land for the growing population meant that the value of English land escalated, while the status of most people declined. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, there was an increasing population of landless poor, and England could barely feed itself. The massive loss of life in 1348/49 reversed this situation. There was an immediate and severe labor shortage. To attract workers, employers offered higher wages and better lease terms, and within a generation serfdom had all but disappeared. With their newfound wealth, workers spent a smaller percentage of their income on food and were able to spend more on clothing, bigger houses, household furnishings, and entertainment. Wages would remain high until the end of the fifteenth century, giving workers new buying power.16 Economic historians have argued that in the short term, post-plague economic conditions led to a rise in consumption. To some scholars, this increase was significant enough to be understood as a consumer revolution. While “revolution” is a term that historians often adopt, the hallmarks of post-plague consumption, like the consumer revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, included structural increases in demand driven by rising wages, social mobility, the greater availability of luxury goods, and a growing sense that identity could be expressed by choice in goods.17 Whether or not we use terms like “revolution,” the fourteenth century’s increase in consumption had social repercussions: this book seeks to understand what London’s merchants and artisans learned as they learned to buy, use, and live with more stuff not only right after the plague, but in the generations that followed.18

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Some scholars have understood this increased consumption in terms of bourgeois material acquisition that was part of the rise in urbanism and commerce in the twelfth century.19 I do not dispute these continuities, but these preexisting economic and political processes have material consequences that were influenced by massive population decline visited upon a stagnating economy.20 Survivors and their families had possibilities that they would not have had other wise, and they realized them in ways that were particular to their status, ambition, and experience. Bruce Campbell argues that the combined effects of climate change, extreme population decline, and economic and governmental responses brought broad structural changes to medieval society.21 Regardless of where one places one’s emphasis, the multiple and integrated crises of the fourteenth century had a knock-on effect on how people lived for the next few centuries. This book looks at what that response looked like in the short and long term as a new population and economic dynamic took over and survivors and their descendants lived in a very different world. Material culture provides a witness to changes and continuities after the plague in ways that textual narratives and economic sources do not. Those who lived through the first, second, and third epidemics were both too aware and not aware enough of what was changing and what was staying the same. Immediate political, moral, and economic concerns created a horizon beyond which chroniclers found it difficult to see, and moral paradigms and biblical precedents made it difficult to identify and explain change. And indeed, chroniclers ultimately accepted the plague as a seasonal event, and doctors wrote treatises that proffered cures.22 Regular appearances normalized it, people adapted to it, and life and culture continued, weaving the old with the new in often unremarkable and unnoticed ways. On the other hand, changes to London’s merchant and artisan houses and their furnishings between 1350 and 1540 provide a different way of thinking about the world after the Black Death. Changes made to houses and their furnishings in the first generation after the plague changed the way people lived. As residents added new items and replaced old ones, old expectations confronted new habits. Tracing these material changes to houses specifically includes the experiences of women and the implications for gender roles. As sites of social reproduction, houses and their furnishings frame routines, shape behavior, underlie expectations, and ultimately order a universe. Houses serve as a negotiation space for residents, as structures that compel the individual to meet the municipality, and as places to shelter occupants from the crowd.23 More furnishings and bigger houses require accommodation from humans to be useful, to endure, and even to be ignored. They change how people live, how they raise their children, and how they interact with each other and their polity.

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These accommodations shape human movement and behavior, and, in so doing, they consciously and unconsciously produce routines, expectations, and memories. Accommodations do not happen in a vacuum, but are themselves informed by previous accommodations, expectations, and behaviors. Pierre Bourdieu called this process “habitus.” He writes, “In short, the habitus, the product of history, produces individual and collective practices, and hence history, in accordance with the schemes engendered by history.”24 This internal sense of how things and spaces ought to be arranged, deployed, and accommodated creates identity, based not only on economic status but also on behavior. As archaeologist Ian Hodder argues, “Who I am as a person is dependent on the equipmental contexts in which I dwell.”25 London’s merchants and artisans and their wives definitely wished to make meaningful statements about themselves and their households with their adoption of new objects and their new uses for familiar ones, but they rooted these claims in their own memories, expectations, and habits. When these claims are strung together and compared over time, they reveal the changes and continuities in self-presentation, household behavior, and social expectations in the period after the plague.26 Because it is impossible to predict all the ways that one might use objects or foretell the consequences of these choices, the rise of consumption in post-plague London had repercussions for how Londoners would come to define what was acceptable behavior for men and women, both inside and outside the house.27 A house was a home to a family, which the king, city leaders, and Christian theologians all understood as a moral, ideological, and legal unit, one created through the sacrament of marriage.28 In a world organized around patriarchal authority, Christian duty, and adherence to the law, household behavior was either a credit or a liability to the house and the men who had charge over it. Patriarchal authority put controlling women’s behavior front and center in the making and breaking of household reputations. Women’s chastity and fidelity were important, but so were their speech, movements, and labor. Controlling women was more than simply constraining their movements and interactions; it was also defining and evaluating their behavior and activities. The late Middle Ages increasingly defined women’s good behavior as demure, modest, and passive and their mobility as limited.29 Whether or not women adhered to these expectations, medieval urban society came to believe that women’s use of their houses and their contents had moral implications. At the same time, women were not unwitting dupes in the perpetuation of these ideologies. Women both acquiesced to and resisted this process, giving any interaction between them and things multiple possibilities. The morality that came to be embedded in houses and their furnishings by the mid-fifteenth century was a negotiation, informed both positively and negatively by the beliefs and priorities of

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medieval society, the realities of embodied needs inside the home, and the possibilities of consumption for their families.30 Looking at the material culture of households requires exploring gender dynamics and labor. Historically, housework, the low-status work of managing bodies and things and the dirt and chaos that they create, has been unproblematically defined as women’s work.31 Housework, however, is neither timeless nor ahistorical. The arrival of new possessions and the creation of new household spaces give women’s household activities a history. Part of learning to live with more was deciding who could legitimately use particular items, when, where, and how. Proper use was, therefore, coded not simply by status but also by gender. Gendered use of particular items, such as weapons, created and reinforced gender roles, but in the wake of increased consumption, the gender coding of many new household furnishings would be up for grabs. Following the decisions that Londoners made about the legitimate use of their household possessions offers a way of historicizing both women’s housework and patriarchy.32 The evolving gender codes of particular items and the activities and behaviors that they created were some of the lessons Londoners learned as a consequence of learning to live with more things. Not only did the rise in consumption after the plague change how merchants and artisans lived in their houses, but these changes ultimately created a social identity, or “burgeis ethos,” to use Felicity Riddy’s term, among merchants and artisans.33 These changes did not happen overnight, but took about a century to become visible in our surviving records. Many scholars doubt that London’s merchants and artisans shared a common social identity or constituted a coherent social group or class. Wealth was a powerful divider. Merchants ranked higher than artisans, had greater access to political office, and had more international experience; wholesalers frequently fought—literally—with retailers.34 This was true before the plague and it would remain so afterward.35 Before the plague, rich merchants also lived very differently from how modest ones lived. With the rise in consumption after the plague, however, rich and modest merchants and artisans developed common practices of household furnishing and domestic organization, despite differences in the size of their households and workshops. These shared habits and routines, their “habitus,” meant that despite differences in wealth merchants and artisans had come to inhabit their domestic spaces in similar ways, because these spaces embodied shared values of hierarchy, gender, piety, industry, and civic participation.36 The development of shared habits and behaviors across a spectrum of wealth clearly disturbed some people, and the fifteenth century was also a time when institutions, such as parish and civic guilds, tried to become more

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restrictive.37 Sumptuary legislation, which tried to define appropriate clothing by rank, was another response.38 Nevertheless, whether London’s richest and poorest merchants and artisans ever sought common cause in city politics, socialized with each other, or intermarried is not the only basis of what I believe we can see as a shared identity among them. Houses and the behaviors they create sit at the nexus of law, theology, economics, and routine. Owning or leasing a house in London required participation in layers of city bureaucracy and law, which in turn mapped the property’s location and history through the documentation process, so tenants and owners could buy, sell, lease, and bequeath it. Their shared acquiescence to this process happened inside the all-encompassing framework of Christian theology, parish membership, and the necessary literate practices of commerce and law. They bound London’s merchants and artisans and their households together in ways that were meaningful to them and that distinguished them in recognizable ways from others. Although there was a recognized ranking of the city’s guilds, guild membership provided another commonality that members, regardless of wealth, vigorously articulated through rituals and events and defended in court and debate.39 After the plague, the particularities of commerce and urban citizenship made merchants and artisans live in their houses differently from how elites and peasants lived and similarly to each other, in ways that transcended the differences in wealth. The demographic crisis and emotional trauma after the plague must also have put a great deal of pressure on social identities.40 “Trauma” has medical and psychological definitions that I am wary of applying to medieval people given our evidence, and medieval narrative sources make cultural trauma difficult to recognize, but the work of sociologists can help us identify it in our sources. Jeffrey Alexander defines “cultural trauma” as occurring “when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways.”41 For Alexander, identifying responsibility is important. The Black Death, unlike the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide, had no human perpetrators motivated by politics or racism, so the consequences did not lead to rethinking identity and memory in the same way. But sudden social upheaval, whether initiated by humans or by climate change, brings with it its own trauma when communities are lost, moral chaos reigns, resources are reallocated, and violence breaks out, all of which happened in London after the plague.42 As Londoners moved on from these events, new routines, values, and habits that grew out of this crisis were

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perpetuated and elaborated on, leaving residues of trauma in everyday behaviors, even after its immediate memory had faded. For survivors of the plague, their children, and their grandchildren, social identity and community belonging were unraveling. With upwards of 30  percent of London’s guild masters dead, London’s commercial world was devastated.43 While most merchants and artisans were born outside of London both before and after the plague, integrating newcomers into London’s guild culture afterward presented challenges because of the sheer numbers of new men bringing new ideas and different customs and behaviors all at once.44 Many, moreover, did not come from the right families or have the best connections. New opportunities for consumption allowed them to live differently, even as they climbed the guild hierarchy. The urgent need to restore the world necessitated social integration and social reproduction, which compelled merchants and artisans to define themselves. Houses, their furnishings, and the behaviors that occupants created through their use and protection served as sites both of social reproduction and social regeneration.

Sources and Methods The kinds of sources a historian uses shape the narrative that emerges. The majority of texts used for this book are the wills and inventories of London’s merchants and artisans and their households. Both types of texts are legal documents created to track possessions of monetary worth. Through a last will and testament, those who were dying made provisions for both their souls and their movable and immovable goods. Two hundred and forty years of wills preserve changing inheritance patterns, the rise and decline in appreciation for particular items, and the different ways memories and expectations accrued to things. Changes in the inheritance patterns of chattels serve as a proxy for seeing changes in attitudes toward possession and what Londoners learned as they learned to live with more possessions. Inventories over the same period provide a list of household items, their values, and sometimes even their locations within the house. They complement the information provided by wills, capturing the introduction of new rooms and furnishings and how owners grouped particular things in their house. This information illustrates something of how residents arranged and lived in their houses. Archaeological finds also play a role in this book, but for London, most artifacts are recovered from the Thames shore or trash dumps, not in situ, obscuring their household contexts.45 They do, however, provide tangible evidence of a range of goods that rarely appear in the written records, such as wooden and ceramic items. Archaeol-

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ogy provides a basis in reality for the legal formula and terminology that dominate wills and inventories, making it possible to use these often-intractable documents for social history. Technically, wills disposed of real property, and testaments bequeathed movable goods or chattels, but conventionally we use the term “will” when discussing both.46 The medieval Church enjoined all Christians to make a last will and testament. London law more particularly required residents with goods valued at £10 or more to write one, as well as any citizen whose death created issues regulated by borough custom, such as burgage tenure and the care of orphans.47 These value thresholds, the cost of making and probating a will, and the law of coverture, which prohibited married women from making a will without their husband’s permission,48 meant that most Londoners probably never made a will, skewing any study using them in favor of men with property.49 Rooted in a society where land was the basis of power, English common law paid much more attention to the disposal of land (immovable goods) than chattels (movable goods).50 In cities, however, movables were not only the basis of merchant and artisan life; they had great monetary value as well, so paying attention to them allows us not only to track the ways households and families lived and interacted with their household furnishings and each other, but to take into account a significant portion of the wealth of Londoners. Usually individuals made their will shortly before death, although merchants often wrote theirs prior to setting out on a long journey. This means that the majority of testators are male, and because of coverture, the majority of female testators are widows. Moreover, the majority of male testators were married. By and large, widows were breaking up a household, while most male testators were trying to provide for their families. As a result, married men mention movable goods less frequently than widowed women.51 Common law allowed a married man to dispose of his property and chattels as he wished during his lifetime, including anything his wife brought with her when they married. When he died, his property, both movable and immovable, was subject to the law. London law required a third, called her dower, to go to his widow, and third to his children, and the final third he could dispose of as he chose. He was free to leave his wife more, but he could not leave her less.52 Richard Helmholz has questioned how much common law actually enforced division of a married man’s property, but many London testators refer to these rules in their wills.53 With such strictures, many men’s wills are brief, with only dispositions for the soul and body, a reutterance of the legal expectations, and no delineation of any property. Dower, called “ free bench” in London, gave a widow life use of a share in her

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husband’s house and furnishings and life interest in a third of his lands and/or tenements, from which she could derive income.54 While a wife could not make a will without her husband’s permission, widows were free to do so, and the paucity of married women’s wills suggests that most couples accepted this legal limitation.55 Widows had fewer restrictions on how they could dispose of their possessions, but they could not alienate their free bench. Despite these limitations, wills constitute an important source of women’s writings. Looking at how they described, disposed of, and interacted with their household goods reveals women’s perspectives on their households, information that is other wise unavailable.56 To identify and analyze changes in how testators and assessors documented household furnishings, I have applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to a sample of London wills made between 1344 and 1540. Because of the sheer number that survive, wills are in some ways well suited to quantitative analysis, but their legal underpinnings and formulaic nature make both quantitative and qualitative approaches chancy. Used together, however, both methods allow these often anodyne and terse documents to reveal a wealth of information about changing behaviors and attitudes toward household possessions. Quantitative methods prevent overgeneralization from a single copiously detailed will, but qualitative methods allow for the details from an unusually informative text to be meaningfully contextualized. London has wills surviving from many different courts, covering different territories and legal jurisdictions. The longest and earliest sequence of wills is from London’s own Court of Husting, beginning in 1258 and continuing into the seventeenth century. This court primarily dealt with landed property.57 Ecclesiastical courts had the capacity to deal with both movables and immovables, but the documents they generated begin only after the plague.58 Of the four ecclesiastical courts handling London wills, the Commissary Court (CC) and Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) have the earliest and longest series of wills—starting in the 1370s and 1380s respectively. Thousands of wills survive for these three courts. I sampled the Husting, Commissary, and Prerogative Courts in five-year segments every fifteen years, using only those wills from testators who identified themselves as citizens, merchants, artisans, or members of their households living within the city’s walls. I discuss my sampling process more fully in the Appendix. I have included just over three thousand post-plague wills in my analysis, almost half of which left movable goods of some kind. Movable goods gradually become more common as bequests in the two hundred years following the plague (Figure 1). Theoretically, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury was for testators with property in more than one diocese, while the Commissary Court was for those

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50% 45%

40% 35% 30% 25%

20% 15% 10% 5% 0 15

36

–4

0 15

16

–2

8 14

84

–8

8 14

64

–6

8 14

44

–4

8 –2 24 14

–8 04 14

13

84

–8

8

0%

Movable goods

Figure 1. Distribution of wills leaving movable goods in the Commissary Court (CC) and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC).

with property only in the city of London. As a result, those using the Prerogative Court tended to be wealthier. Because wills rarely include a full statement of an estate’s total value, it is difficult to categorically demonstrate the greater wealth of Prerogative Court testators, but there are several indicators that show this trend. In my sample of Prerogative Court wills, twenty, or 7 percent of the male testators, were aldermen, while only one male testator in my Commissary Court sample claimed this status. While 62  percent of the Prerogative Court testators belonged to one of the twelve great companies, only 28 percent of male testators in the Commissary Court did. In the Commissary Court sample, 10 percent of male testators also belonged to the lesser guilds, such as the bakers, carpenters, joiners, tilers, and fletchers, compared to only 3 percent from the Prerogative Court. The Prerogative Court sample also had fewer female testators, only 9  percent compared to 18 percent of Commissary Court testators. These economic and social differences shaped testamentary behavior. Not only did a greater percentage of male testators in the Prerogative Court than in the Commissary Court leave movable goods; Prerogative Court testators generally bequeathed more costly items, such as books, jewelry, and plate. These differences speak not only to economic differences but to social ones as well. Yet these differences notwithstanding, patterns of bequests, the arrangement of rooms, and the clustering of particular items are similar among testators in both courts, showing

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Table 1. Occupations of Those with Post-Plague Inventories Occupation

Number inventories

Armorer, baker, barber, brewer, butcher, cooper, currier, cutler, embroiderer, haberdasher, hosier, inn holder, joiner, merchant, plumber, shoemaker, smith, timbermonger, trunkmaker, upholder, stationer, wool packer

1 each

Carpenter, chandler, clothmaker, dyer, glover, ironmonger, scrivener, stockfishmonger, vintner

2 each

Fishmonger, leather seller, saddler

3 each

Goldsmith, skinner

5 each

Tailor

6

Draper

7

Grocer, mercer

11 each

Not specified

17

common ideas about how to live in a house and how to use and value household furnishings. The second major source for this book is inventories—that is, records that list things. Medieval people made inventories for all sorts of reasons. Arranging a marriage, executing a debt, and probating an estate were probably the three most common occasions, but individuals convicted of a felony also had their goods inventoried before they were confiscated.59 Few inventories of goods a woman brought to her marriage survive, but debt inventories span the more than two hundred years covered by this book, felon inventories survive from before the plague, and probate inventories start in the mid-fifteenth century.60 Far fewer inventories than wills survive, and as with wills, those from before the plague are also more rare. Most of the post-plague inventories I use for this book are debt and probate ones. Most debt inventories are from extents for debt, and most surviving probate inventories are from estates proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, with a few from London’s Consistory Court at the very end of my period. Including inventories from Southwark and Westminster, I found 123 post-plague inventories for 128 houses. Appraisers list the company of eighty-four men whom they inventoried; most come from the most prestigious guilds but there are artisans from less prestigious ones as well (Table 1). There are also inventories from four widows, two of whom were the widows of artisans, including one who had taken over her husband’s shop. The other two were widows of knights.61 The social profile of those inventoried

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for probate was higher than those inventoried for debt. None of those inventoried for debt served as mayor, and I can only comfortably identify one as an alderman; there is also little evidence that the men inventoried for debt served in company offices.62 Among those inventoried for probate, four served as aldermen, two of whom also served as mayor, and several held offices within their companies.63 The average and median worth of the households inventoried for debt was also lower than that of those inventoried for probate in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury but higher than that of those inventoried for probate in the Consistory Court, even when inflation is taken into account (Table 2). With a median income of £154, those inventoried for probate in the Prerogative Court did not collectively rank as high as esquires with landed income of £100. They also did not meet the threshold of wealth to serve as aldermen, which was set at £1,000.64 However, the wealthiest man inventoried, Robert Amadas, goldsmith to Henry VIII—whose estate, including livestock, was valued at nearly £4,000 when he died in 1533—was on a par with barons in terms of wealth.65 Much more modest was Edward Charnock, a skinner who died in 1536 and was assessed at only £16.66 However wealthy these men were, household goods were not usually the bulk of their wealth. For example, Thomas Gilbert, a draper, was assessed at nearly £500, 80  percent of which was drapery in his shop and warehouse, whereas John Skyrwyth, a hugely successful leather seller, had only about 20  percent of his wealth in merchandise and nearly 16 percent in outstanding debts owed to him when he died in 1485.67 In contrast, a tailor from Southwark, whose name is mostly torn off his inventory, had less than a pound’s worth of goods in his shop, but £25 in ready money, 69 percent of his assessed worth.68 Together, these three sets of inventories show a comprehensive range of merchant and artisan households. For more on inventories and how I used them, see the Appendix. Most work with inventories has been done by early modern scholars and has focused on probate inventories, because by the late sixteenth century they survive in much larger numbers for a wider segment of the population.69 Neither historians nor archaeologists have systematically analyzed surviving medieval English Table 2. Average Wealth of Households in Three Sets of Post-Plague Inventories Consistory court inventories

Extents for debt inventories

Prerogative court inventories

Average worth

£15

£44

£271

Median worth

£11

£19

£154

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ones, because of their poor survival rate, lack of cataloging, and poor condition.70 Scholars have justifiably questioned both the reliability of inventories and the utility of using wills for making claims about households. Clive Burgess warns of making too many assumptions about the status and worth of testators, because the laws of inheritance allowed much to go unstated.71 Lena Orlin similarly argues that the unknown silences and absences in inventories make them unreliable as well.72 Margaret Spufford’s analysis of inventories shows that the valuing of goods was often inconsistent.73 Giorgio Riello reminds us that appraisers and the appraised had different relationships to the items under consideration, and they played different roles in the inventorying process; words can only imprecisely capture the subjective values and experiences of possessions and their locations.74 So, the lack of clarity about what was included and why makes these records problematic, but they are also what we have, especially for the period before 1540. And while neither wills nor inventories record everything a house contained, what they do list was included intentionally and in consultation with the testator, relatives of the deceased, or the bankrupt individual, sometimes in rich and evocative detail. They provide a minimal list of household goods, and in some cases the rooms in which they were kept, at least at the moment when the appraisers arrived. In the aggregate, changing inheritance patterns, the appearance and disappearance of household furnishings, and descriptions of household possessions show that as the generations after the plague learned to live with more, they came to live in their houses differently than their parents and grandparents had.

Book Outline To understand what changed and what stayed the same, the first chapter explores pre-plague London houses and their furnishings. With fewer wills and inventories, the results are more impressionistic than concrete. What emerges is the sense that Londoners lived in crowded conditions with commercial concerns dominating domestic furnishings in the houses of both rich and poor merchants and artisans. Yet, the impact of wealth was obvious, with modest artisans having few household furnishings in common with their richer counterparts. The six chapters that follow the first explore the domestic experience of postplague London. Chapter 2 looks at the multiple values that London’s merchants and artisans gave to their possessions. While commerce assigned goods a monetary value, possessions also held affective value through the preservation of memories,

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the promotion of ideologies, and the creation of identity. Part of learning to live with more was learning how to negotiate these often-competing values. Chapter 3 discusses the houses that held these furnishings, arguing that while house design did not appreciably change, the smaller population after the plague purchased more furnishings, which allowed them to use domestic space differently. Merchants and artisans who could afford it had more rooms for their possessions, but those who lived in smaller dwellings still deployed the same kinds of furnishings, only on a more modest scale. One consequence was that Londoners developed new behaviors, such as private contemplation, and altered old concerns, such as household hierarchies. Through common domestic furnishings Londoners developed common behaviors and expectations for how to use urban domestic space. Chapters 4–6 historicize the various tasks usually lumped together under the rubric of housekeeping: cleaning and tidying, cooking and eating, and childcare. The rise in consumption not only added to the responsibilities of housekeeping, it changed them. By tracking the sex of beneficiaries receiving items associated with cleaning, provisioning, and managing a household in the first century after the plague, Chapter 4 argues that while male servants had originally carried out many of these duties, even if a housewife supervised them, the economic crisis of the mid-fifteenth century drove women from better jobs in manufacturing into domestic ser vice, thereby gendering urban housekeeping as female at both the supervisory and laboring levels. Chapter 5 argues that even as London households used eating together as a means of defining and promoting household order and hierarchy, the influx of new equipment for cooking, drinking, and eating changed eating habits, creating anxiety about how women might use their proliferating household items. The very things that should promote an orderly household and social reproduction could also be used to undermine them. Chapter 6 argues that both new products and old ones that were now more widely available gave women new ways of expressing what care of their household, particularly children, meant to them. Together these three chapters show how women’s domestic roles changed with the increase in consumption. These changes were not made out of whole cloth but were drawn from long-standing ideas and priorities. Nevertheless, they were enacted differently when a house had more things. The vita activa, a religious practice that promoted a religious life in the world as opposed to the monastery, offered an ideology that helped owners explain and justify their decisions with respect to their houses, possessions, management, and household behav ior. The seventh and final chapter thus takes up the issue of domestic piety, arguing that the vita activa expanded with the commercial

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availability of affordable devotional objects. As domestic piety became a part of urban household practices, it moralized the housekeeping tasks that were increasingly performed by women. The demographic crisis that followed the initial outbreak of plague in 1348/49 put social identities into crisis. This crisis was both social and material. As new merchants and artisans from outside of London replaced those who had died, consumption enabled them to create their identities through the use of things, not just through engagement with commerce and politics. While some individuals were bound to be more successful than others, the shared notion of how a house should be organized and lived in gave merchants and artisans new identities. In the twentyfirst century, as we face an overabundance of manufactured goods that threaten our very existence, it is worth thinking about consumption’s social impact. Throughout, I have modernized Middle English spelling, added punctuation, and sometimes added words to clarify the meaning of Middle English prose. All currency is in the old style, with d. meaning penny and s. meaning shilling. There were 12d. to a shilling, 20 s. to a pound (£), and 240d. to a pound.

chapter 1

Living in London Before the Plague

A Crowded City After the first visit of the bubonic plague in 1348/49, London would be both very different and very familiar to survivors. The most striking change would be in the loss of people; London lost between a third and a half of its population in the space of a year.1 It would no longer be overcrowded and densely packed with tenants and landlords jockeying for space. Yet the loss of people did not alter the street plan, dissolve the city’s government or its bureaucracy, or bring down buildings. While neighbors and family members died, their clothing, furnishings, and tools remained. Survivors would repeatedly confront this combination of continuity and change as they picked up the pieces of their lives. In order to understand what changed and what remained the same, this chapter looks at London’s houses and their furnishings before the plague. While many people would die, things would survive, along with habits and routines for using them. London’s enduring street plan meant that survivors passed the same houses, churches, and company halls when they went to market, the riverfront, or to worship as they had before the plague (Map 1). The enrollments, deeds, wills, and contracts written up before the plague that gave them ownership, tenancy, and legal status still had the force of law afterward. Survivors still wore the same clothing, slept in the same bedding, and ate off the same dishware that they had before the plague.2 Nevertheless, the new economic and demographic context for houses and their furnishings would gradually change how people used these things, change which people would use these things, and change what and how much people bought. Londoners would have more space in which to live, and they would fill that space with more possessions, which they would use in new ways. Before the plague, London was densely populated, but houses were sparsely furnished;

18

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Map 1. Medieval London and environs. Map by Gordon Thompson.

afterward, the city had thinned, but the houses would become filled with things that brought color and comfort to their occupants. Even those of modest means would eventually embrace changing consumption and domestic habits. Changes to how London’s merchants and artisans lived in their houses did not happen all at once; they occurred over the course of many decades, as repeated visitations of plague kept the population low and the economic and demographic consequences of a smaller population worked themselves out against the backdrop of royal and civic politics. A smaller population would have a profound impact on everything from staffing government bureaucracies to the purchasing power of the penny. While there were more sawmills, fulling mills, coal mines, and trade via larger and faster ships, which would all technically affect how artisans and merchants made and sourced the products that people put into their houses,3 technology was not the major driver of these changes after the plague; rather, they were driven by demographic and economic changes. For example, milling was an established technology by 1300, but with fewer people to feed, some grain mills were converted to fulling mills, thereby taking advantage of survivors’ disposable income.4 Londoners would make small decisions about how to live in their houses in

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the post-plague world that would ultimately change how they understood themselves and their relationships to others. In 1300, London was crowded. Derek Keene cautiously estimates that its population may have been upwards of eighty thousand people.5 Immigrants from across Britain and beyond moved to London searching for a better life. London offered something for nearly everyone: the ambitious servants of the royal court and its aristocratic hangers-on built and furnished lavish stone houses to be near both the center of political power and merchants who dealt in luxury items; gentry families set their younger sons up in trade, because there was no land or title for them to inherit; the sons and daughters of small-town artisans went to serve as apprentices in London shops; the sons and daughters of peasants hoped London wages would improve their marriage prospects back home; and the poor and destitute begged for a living. Merchants, sailors, diplomats, and clergy from the other side of the Channel added to this mix.6 With so many people, the rich and the poor lived next to one another, often even inhabiting the same buildings. Merchants and artisans were a minority of London’s population, but they were its economic drivers. An even smaller number of those who identified themselves by an occupation were citizens.7 Medieval cities jealously guarded their right to define and bestow citizenship, also known as “freedom of the city.” Those who became citizens or freemen received the right to buy and sell retail, train apprentices, trade in other towns without paying tolls, and hold civic office; these benefits provided economic and political advantages. Citizenship could be purchased, gained by birth, or earned via apprenticeship; given the high mortality rate of medieval cities in general, most citizens came from someplace else.8 Freedom of the city did not, however, grant equal access to political influence or guarantee a materially comfortable life.9 Although central to the economic successes of merchant and artisan households, women were not citizens, but as the wives and daughters of citizens, they could pass this status on to their children.10 Guilds expected their masters to be married, but masters’ wives could not be full members of a guild, in spite of the fact that some were skilled artisans and savvy businesswomen in their own right.11 Lack of a wife hindered a man’s ability to move up in his guild. Citizen households included not only wives and usually their children, but also journeymen, apprentices, and servants. Most of the men and women studied in this book were citizens or members of citizen households. Yet I use the more generic terms “merchant” and “artisan,” because some testators only identified themselves by their occupation and did not state whether or not they had citizenship.12 As London’s citizens were technically not burgesses, I have avoided that term as well.13

20

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Merchants occupied a difficult place in medieval conceptions of social organization. The expansion of commerce and cities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries profoundly altered the relationship that medieval people had to wealth and property. Cities based their economies and governments on trade and manufacturing, not agricultural production and war. Trade, rooted in movable goods, not land, the basis of medieval political power, required goods to be fungible, that is, their value needed to be abstracted so that dissimilar items could be comparatively valued and traded. Dependent on money and credit, the ultimate forms of abstraction, merchants dealt in separating identity from worth. Artisans, for their part, with their ability to make ordinary materials look like luxury ones, skirted the boundaries of duplicity and fraud, prohibited by guild statute and the law.14 These practices were too easily identified as deceit, greed, and usury, all serious sins.15 The boundaries between rich merchants and their social betters was porous; some landed elites dabbled in trade and some successful merchants married their children into the gentry.16 The difference between rich and poor merchants was often only a shipwreck or an unscrupulous business partner. Poorer merchants and artisans also had a lot in common. While merchant companies ranked higher in city government, a well-to-do artisan could live better than a modest merchant. Both merchants and artisans also depended on elites to buy their wares, and the most successful among them would have been familiar with how the gentry and aristocracy lived. Unsurprisingly, merchants and artisans were frequently accused of social emulation or worse. The idea that merchants and, to a lesser degree, artisans were social climbers has long been a part of historiography. Consumption and social emulation are a historiographical package, but looking at London’s merchants and artisans or any other group only in terms of imitation implies that they lacked a social identity of their own.17 While wealth would remain an important divider of merchants and artisans, their domestic habits, commercial values, and religious ideologies would unite them, creating a common way of inhabiting domestic space and conceptualizations of ideal behavior that their domestic space and furnishings would create and enable.

Pre-Plague Houses The legal and social meaning of houses changed over the course of the fourteenth century. Some of these changes were driven by demography, some by technology, some by law. The major change was in the value of urban houses relative to the plots of land upon which they sat, with the house becoming the more valuable asset.18 A

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number of transformations propelled this shift—the rise of corporate landlords, the increased association of urban citizenship with guild membership rather than urban landholding (also known as burgage tenure), the development of written leaseholds, and house building technology. Written leaseholds required tenants to pay an entry fee for the lease, which was often more than the annual rent. Landlords justified large entry fees by improving or repairing the house and establishing rent reductions for tenants, who agreed to maintain their house themselves. These legal and social changes particular to cities, Sarah Rees Jones argues, “accelerated investment in the notion of the house as a ‘home.’ ”19 Timber framing, a construction technique where an external wooden frame creates, defines, and supports the building, had also grown more sophisticated in London by the end of the twelfth century.20 These improvements allowed carpenters to construct buildings of more than one story, with larger rooms, at less cost than stone ones. Often built over a stone cellar and regulated by building codes aimed at diminishing the threat of fire, timber-framed buildings became long-term investments, offering owners a chance to add a range of additions, adornments, and adaptations as they needed or wanted.21 Buildings added value to a tenement, the plot of land upon which a building stood, and were now durable enough that they could be bequeathed to a succession of heirs. Plague mortality and increasing immigration after the plague combined with these social, legal, and material factors to weaken the ties between individual families and burgage plots and to strengthen the ones between families and houses. Timber-framed buildings housed the majority of London’s population from the thirteenth century on.22 It was a flexible technology allowing cantilevered, or “jettied,” upper stories to expand living space beyond the building’s footprint, which helped address the pressures of a growing city population.23 The need to house ever more people meant that many owners took advantage of timber framing’s technical possibilities to add on rooms, sometimes ignoring or challenging the limits of property boundaries. Little of medieval London still survives aboveground. Cases from the Assize of Nuisance, a court that enforced building codes, provide some of our best opportunities to peer inside London’s pre-plague houses. For example, in 1314 one Cambin, son of Fulbert, sought to repair a room built over his entrance supported at one end by the party, or shared, wall that separated his property from his neighbor. His neighbor challenged his right to have such a chamber.24 Owners often rented out individual rooms; Margery de Northamptone rented a chamber in her house to Alan de Hacford.25 Such practices made the building itself, not just the activities conducted within it, a source of revenue, but it also meant that household space was limited and cramped.26

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When a property owner died, the property—the building and/or the tenement upon which it sat—was often subdivided among the heirs. These arrangements made property holding more complicated as heirs died or leased out their inheritances or further subdivided their holdings. For example, Robert le Pestour’s wife inherited a house in Aldersgate with her three sisters. The three sisters sold their portion of the house to Thomas Juvenal, “and the house was partitioned according to the custom of the city, by the sworn carpenters and masons.”27 Juvenal then proceeded to remove timber from his part of the house, much to le Pestour’s unhappiness. When Simon de Canterbury, a carpenter, died in 1340, he left his brewery, “The New Woodhouse,” to his wife Isabel, and the room and attic above the brewery to his daughter Alice, “with free egress and ingress through the brewery late and early, whenever and as often as she may wish to go in or out of the same like a good and faithful woman.”28 Once Isabel died, Alice was to inherit the brewery. She might continue to live above it, but if she moved, the egress and entrance rights would presumably remain attached to the rooms. A case before the Assize of Nuisance raised just this issue. Margery de Somery complained that her lease of a hall on a tenement in the parish of St. Michael Wood Street granted her “right of free entry and exit as well by night and by day through a great entrance adjoining the tenement of William le Chaundeler and Christine his wife.” The Chaundelers, however, had “so filled it with stalls, timber, and other impedimenta that she cannot go freely in and out to transact her business.” De Somery added that they had also obstructed the common well. The Chaundelers, for their part, claimed they were merely tenants of Robert Burdeyn, a goldsmith who owned the tenement but lived elsewhere. They further claimed that issues of access and obstruction were his responsibility. The city found for de Somery, and Burdeyn, the absent landlord, had to remove the impediments.29 These cases illustrate London’s crowded conditions and the ways building technology and the law interacted with London’s housing shortage. The relative ease of adding onto timber-framed buildings meant that houses came in many different sizes and street orientations. Some were large with courtyards; others were narrow row houses built abutting one another. Some went up three stories, while others stood only one and a half stories high.30 The particular design, size, and orientation of the house reflected the wealth of the owner and the owner’s commercial needs, but it makes it difficult to classify houses. John Schofield groups London houses into four categories: courtyard mansion, midsize house, small row house, and small house, also known as a “rent.”31 Although focusing on the later Middle Ages and early modern period, Roger Leech employs a simpler scheme of hall house, shop house, and small house, categories that focus on the core structure of the building.32

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Figure 2. Open-hall half-timbered house. This cut-away drawing shows both the jettied upper story and the open hall, where smoke from the hearth can either leave via louvers in the roof or collect up in the rafters. Reconstruction based on fifteenth-century urban buildings in Sandwich, Kent. Drawing by Libby Mulqueeny. © Mark Gardiner, used with permission.

The distinction between a shop and hall house was one of form, not quality or always size. At a minimum, hall houses had a multistory hall open to the rafters (Figure 2). Additional wings might form a courtyard. Usually they also had a service section to one side and a chamber either above or on the other side of the hall. The house that London skinner William de Hanigtone contracted in 1308 was just such a building. The building contract specified that a carpenter was to build him a house with a “hall and chamber with a passageway, and a storage room or larder [dispensa] . . . with 1 room [solar] above the hall and chamber.”33 Domestic life centered on the hall, where eating, sleeping, and working all took place. Usually owners situated hall houses at the back of the tenement, with other buildings such as shops and market stalls facing the street frontage, providing rental income or more space for the holder of the tenement. There is a lengthy archaeological debate on the origins of the urban hall house, whether it was derivative of rural houses or was an urban innovation. Jane Grenville argues that the hall house derived from the peasant house, and that small houses with their shops on the ground floor were the urban innovation.34 Shop houses could vary in size, but had no central, multistory hall, even if their main room was still called a hall. Larger shop houses could even have three or more floors, with a couple of rooms on each floor and a shop on the ground floor. Juliana Kelleseye, for

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example, held a house with just a “hall, cellar, and solar,” a combination that suggests a shop house rather than a hall house.35 “Solar” was the generic term for a room in an upper floor.36 In addition, any room or combination of rooms could have been separately leased out.37 In 1318, Hugh de Waltham and Juliana, his wife, held a portion of a two-story shop house on Bread Street. They had the shop and the cellar, while Osbert and Isabel de Bray held the solar over the shop.38 The solar in the rent of Henry de Gysor, for example, was reportedly thirty feet in the air.39 By 1400, the term “solar” largely disappears from use, replaced by the term “chamber.”40 Rents, in contrast, were small, inexpensive houses for those of modest or little means, such as new immigrants in search of work, widows downsizing after the death of their husbands, and pieceworkers and laborers working for someone else.41 They typically consisted of a single room on the ground floor, which might also function as a shop, and a room above.42 In the crowded conditions of early fourteenth-century London, some householders may have built rents onto their larger hall houses for their adult children. The extended family would have shared facilities such as kitchens, privies, and workspaces, and they might have eaten together in the hall.43 In their need for space, residents tried to build not only upward, but also below ground. Cellars, which provided needed storage, were a particularly urban phenomenon. Increasingly built out of stone, by the twelfth century some were only partially underground, with ground-level doors accessible from outside the house, and stairs going downward once inside.44 Surviving single-aisled cellars in Cheapside and Jewry Street lie on street frontages, probably originally underneath shops. In large cellars, often associated with wine storage, vaulted ceilings created maximum space and supported the weight of what was above. The integrity of their cellars exercised a number of plaintiffs appearing at the Assize of Nuisance. When Andrew and Joan Aubrey objected to their neighbor cutting a hole for a door in their cellar wall, they inadvertently provided us with further information about cellars.45 They argued that even if the cellar had “corbels and beams in it to uphold their solar, or arches or cupboards [alamaria],” cutting the hole violated the city’s building code. Residents also worried about the proximity of privies or the way that neighbors directed their rainwater run-off. In 1301, William de Béthune complained that the cesspit of his neighbor’s privy was leaking into his cellar.46 Whether the dwelling in question was a hall or a shop house, the danger of fire meant many Londoners placed their kitchens in a separate building on the tenement. For example, Alan Gille complained that his neighbor Robert le Roo had built a wall eighteen feet long and ten feet high between his hall and his kitchen, something that is hard to visualize unless the kitchen was in a separate building.47 Furthermore, a kitchen in a separate building allowed the other inhabitants of the

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tenement to share it. Although some tenements clearly had separate kitchens, there were other possibilities for cooking. Some residents cooked on an open hearth in their hall, while others might have had a kitchen in their house.48 This lack of space meant that households carried out many activities in a single room.49 Solars were particularly adaptable spaces. According to the coroners’ rolls, records created at the investigation of a sudden and unexpected death, William de Branthingge was in his solar shearing cloth, when a “certain piece of wood . . . fastened to a solar . . . for the purpose of drying saddles” fell, killing a passerby.50 Robert de Kent, a cordwainer, his wife Matilda, and their two sons slept in their solar.51 Maud and Stephen le Barber used theirs as a public drinking place but drew the line at their clients’ using it as a place for sex.52 In a hall house, the hall was at the core of domestic life, where residents would have carried out different activities. The addition of more rooms gave residents choices, allowing them to separate tasks and formulate priorities. Dirt could be differentiated from cleanliness, working and eating could be removed from sleeping, and access to furnishings, places, and people could be curtailed or scheduled. If the practices of elites are any guide, sleeping away from the hall was a privilege that householders sought.53 The few pre-plague inventories that survive for London provide some evidence for how Londoners lived in these different kinds of houses. Of the seventeen inventories that survive, thirteen are from convicted felons, whose chattels were assessed and then confiscated.54 Of the remaining four, one is from probate and one from a debtor, and two are the inventories of goods bequeathed to orphans who had come of age, and so are not inventories of houses.55 Inventories from felons differ from debt and probate ones because of the timing of their composition. Probate or debt inventories usually have some preparation behind them. Debtors sold off their valuable goods to pay creditors, and testators might give away items prior to making a will, so in both cases, the occupants altered their house in anticipation of the assessors’ arrival. Felons’ inventories caught individuals unaware and in the course of daily life. The reception of the assessor would have varied in these different instances as well. Most of these felony inventories lack room labels, but we can still infer what spaces these people lived in and how they used them by the order and grouping of their possessions.56 To try to contextualize the impressionistic evidence from London’s few preplague inventories, I am comparing them to a cache of thirty-five inventories from one ward in King’s Lynn (Norfolk).57 Made in 1290 in advance of a royal tax, they were systematically created, unlike those for London, which were a consequence of individual household crises. Although King’s Lynn had a population of only perhaps six thousand at the end of the thirteenth century, it had a city rather than

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manorial form of government. It was a major port and was tied by trade to both London and the Continent. Residents of both cities would have been familiar with a similar range of imported goods and exposed to similar behaviors, languages, and ideas.58 The King’s Lynn inventories detail the possessions of thirty-one men and four women. Only two of the men are given an occupation—a taverner and a furrier—but occupational last names identify an ironmonger, a couple of barbers, and a few smiths. The contents of many houses imply that some residents were merchants. The richest person was Philip de Bekx, assessed at just over £246, and the poorest was Peter le Ankersmit, worth only 7s. 6d. This is a broader social range than is represented by the London pre-plague inventories.59 The range and consistency of these inventories allows us to extrapolate what would also have been common in London houses, or exceptional, and what furnishings came with wealth. While elites were building extra rooms to separate themselves from their retinues, by the thirteenth century, most Londoners appear to have lived in only one or two rooms.60 Two of the London inventories, one from a felon and one from probate, provide a useful comparison, because the first is for a hall house and the second for a shop house. Hugh le Bevere, the felon inventoried in 1337, appears to have lived in a hall house; John le Tirteyner, who died in 1339, lived in a shop house.61 Le Bevere’s goods came to more than £15, making him a man of some means. The city records do not list le Bevere’s occupation, but his last name and his collection of furred robes imply that he was a skinner. He also had an accounting table, further evidence of business endeavors. Le Tirteyner lived in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate and was a modest cloth merchant, assessed at slightly more than £4, of which nearly a pound was in coin and 10s. in cloth for sale. The order in which appraisers listed the items they found in these two houses, how they grouped them, and how they described them reveal something of how these men arranged their houses.62 Broadly speaking, le Bevere’s inventory starts with bedding, clothing, and napery, followed by five cushions and an ax-head, then pots, pans, and fireplace equipment, and then some furniture: a folding table, two chairs, a small cupboard, the accounting table, two coffers, and six chests. Last were six casks of wine, possibly stored in a cellar. An addendum included several pieces of silver that he had pawned, including six silver spoons. The proximity of the cushions, ax-head, and fireplace tools suggests that le Bevere lived in an open hall with a hearth. Chimney technology was in its infancy in the early fourteenth century, so this would have been an open hearth, with smoke escaping through vents in the roof.63 The appraisers grouped cookware and fireplace equipment together, implying that he had no separate kitchen. The ax-head might mean that le Bevere was a citizen and thus required to serve in London’s

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militia.64 As with an elite home, the hall was the place to display weaponry, to remind visitors of the kind of person who lived in the house. Without room labels, we do not know if le Bevere had a separate room for sleeping. But with much of the bedding listed first, it seems likely that his household slept in the hall. All together he had one mattress, three featherbeds, two pillows, eight sheets, and a torn coverlet of silk. How many beds this bedding reflected is less clear. The folding and accounting tables also imply that he used the space in different ways. The hearth was at both the center of his inventory and the center of household activities, providing heat, light, and the ability to provide nourishment. John le Tirteyner arranged his house differently than Hugh le Bevere did, but the two men still shared some common practices. Helpfully, le Tirteyner’s inventory is the one pre-plague inventory for London with room labels. The inventory starts with a heading listing the “hall (aula) and chamber (camera)”; their contents are listed together, but the order of furnishings argues that the chamber functioned as a shop and the appraisers visited it first and then went to his hall.65 Next is a home office (domo officii), and finally a kitchen (coquina). The first items on the inventory are money, bedding, and clothing, followed by a piece of tiretaine, twenty ells long, and a piece of striped (stragulato) tiretaine, twelve ells long. Tiretaine was a luxury cloth of wool mixed with linen, used in France by royalty for summer clothing.66 According to le Tirteyner’s inventory, his two “old” robes without hoods and the old coverlet for his bed were also made of this material. These personal items would have helped advertise the various uses for the cloth he sold. After the bolts of fabric are “3 small chests in the chamber,” which appear to mark the end of the chamber and the beginning of the hall. The hall contained plate, an old cloth bench covering called a “banker,” and six worn cushions, along with a small trestle table and some weaponry, specifically a short sword and two gauntlets, which marked his identity as a citizen. As in Hugh le Bevere’s house, the trestle table could be taken down and stored, allowing the space to be used for other activities. There was no fireplace equipment, however, so no hearth to warm or light the room. The office, or workroom, contained scraps of wool and “the tools of his trade.” The inventory does not explain whether the kitchen was attached to the house or in a separate building. In it were some brass pots, a tripod to hang the pots over the fire, a frying pan, and a griddle. The order of le Tirteyner’s possessions indicates that he slept in his shop. This was not unusual. Several cases in the coroners’ rolls imply that artisans often kept beds in their shops. When John de Waltham, beadle of Walbrook ward, was attacked, neighbors carried him to his shop where he received last rites and died three days later, suggesting he had a bed or a pallet there, too.67 Bernard de Irlaunde’s baby

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daughter Johanna slept in her cradle, which he kept in the shop, presumably to keep an eye on her.68 Crowded conditions combined with the need for security for money and goods made sleeping in the shop practical. Most of the other felons appear to have lived in much smaller residences. The first six items in barber John de Kirkeby’s inventory are related to barbering: several brass pans and basins, a ewer, dishes, and towels. These are followed by meager clothing and bedding, two silver rings, and then more barbering equipment: three razors and a pair of forceps and finally a chair with a tray (buffettum).69 There is no evidence he had a hearth or even that he cooked his own meals in a shared kitchen. The intermingling of work-related possessions and bedding items implies that he lived and worked in only one room. Hugh le Bevere, John le Tirteyner, and John de Kirkeby, two merchants and an artisan, did not have large houses. All slept among their tools or inventory, but the differences in their houses made them use their spaces differently. The King’s Lynn inventories allow the same kind of analysis of where residents slept relative to their hearth. With the larger number of inventories and a greater chance of connecting household organization with wealth, they contextualize the choices provided by the limited London evidence. Even the richest houses inventoried in King’s Lynn do not appear to have many rooms. Of the thirty-five inventories, twenty had both fireplace equipment and bedding. Twelve listed the bedding before the fireplace, suggesting a smaller dwelling, perhaps just a hall and ser vice area, with these residents sleeping closest to the entry way. The remaining eight had bedding toward the end of the inventory, possibly because they slept in a separate room and thus lived in more complex houses. These last eight inventories are also generally from wealthier residents, including Philip de Bekx. The merchant Simon Leverington, however, had eight featherbeds and sixteen coverlets, implying a fairly large household, although all the bedding was listed before the cookware.70 Finally, those inventories without a hearth or bedding are generally the poorest. Likely they did have some bedding, but it was of such poor quality that it was worthless in the eyes of appraisers. Hugh le Bevere’s London house, with its open hall and hearth, was reminiscent of elite homes. While both he and John le Tirteyner seem to have provided their own nighttime security by sleeping close to their entry ways, they other wise lived differently. Le Tirteyner’s business as a cloth merchant was the organizing principle for his household space. Visitors would have first entered his shop, not his hall. In addition to his shop, he also had a workroom and a kitchen, spaces that le Bevere lacked. In le Bevere’s house, visitors first entered his hall, where he had a hearth for both cooking and heat as well as chairs and a candlestick to provide

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light after dark, showing that he used his hall differently from how le Tirteyner used his. Both Hugh le Bevere and John le Tirteyner also kept cushions and weapons in their halls, items absent from the barber John de Kirkeby’s inventory. Cushions along with bench coverings provided comfort and color. Weapons were both worn and displayed. Men of the right status could wear weapons about town, but they were also placed in halls as a way of signaling the status of the household. Four of the King’s Lynn inventories have a similar combination of weapons and colorful soft furnishings.71 They were not the four richest, although none was assessed below £45, but they included the richest man, Philip de Bekx, and Simon Leverington, the merchant. This pairing of weapons and soft, colorful furnishings would become more widespread after the plague. Their presence in le Bevere’s and le Tirteyner’s houses illustrates a shared expectation for hall furnishings and the hall’s social meaning, even if their halls were structurally quite different. The inventories provide only a partial picture of what houses contained. Appraisers seem to have recognized a threshold of value, as they rarely include items valued at less than a penny, and they did not include certain legal categories of goods. An inventory made for probate, such as le Tirteyner’s, would not include items owned by his wife. While legally a husband owned all of his wife’s movables and immovables, he did not own her paraphernalia, that is, “goods so personal to a woman that they remained to her on her husband’s death, rather than going to his executor.”72 What constituted paraphernalia generated a great deal of legal debate. The most limited definition was only “necessary and convenient clothing, and no more,” but London custom also included chests as paraphernalia. Appraisers would also exclude appurtenances of the tenement, that is, items belonging to the house or property. Court cases in London’s Mayor’s Court held that cisterns and different kinds of vats and tubs—items uses for brewing—were appurtenances.73 One defendant tried to claim that the seats and bed frames built into the timber framing were also appurtenances, but the jury found other wise.74 In his will, John le Tirteyner left his tenement and the house with all its appurtenances to his wife, Margaret.75 A generous interpretation of either paraphernalia or appurtenances would leave out a number of items that filled up the house and explain some of their apparent lack of furnishings. The murder of one Hervey, a cook, adds some dynamism to the other wise static descriptions offered by inventories.76 This incident shows the relationship between status and the way residents lived in a house. The murder took place in a hall house located in the parish of St. James, Garlickhythe. Its owner, John Wade, according to his 1307 will, appears to have been a brewer of some wealth. In addition

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to his house in Garlickhythe, he had a brewhouse, some shops and rents, and several granaries.77 One night in early December of 1300, two of Wade’s servants sitting in his hall began arguing about a missing strongbox.78 John Bradequoer, Wade’s clerk, “moved to anger” at being accused of theft, took a handy club and killed Wade’s cook, Hervey. Wade, meanwhile, was in his chamber “with his shoes off,” preparing to go to bed. Upon hearing the fight, he “came down into the hall,” whereupon Bradequoer fled the house via the hall door. In elite homes servants slept in halls, and Hervey and Bradequoer may have been getting ready for bed or were there simply to socialize. Wade also kept his strongbox along with a weapon in his hall. The strongbox and the weapon suggest that Wade conducted some of his business there and that he needed security. The club might also have been part of his contribution to London’s militia. The hall was thus a center of many activities. Wade slept away from his servants in a separate chamber, apparently on another level. He had furnished his chamber with a bed and likely a chest for his clothes. As Hervey was a cook, there might have been a separate kitchen, but not necessarily. Whatever other rooms the house contained, the hall was a place of many different activities, but status determined how and when residents used it. Security was a concern, but Wade, who slept in a less accessible and more secure place, did not have to make his body the first line of defense; he had servants for that. Whether in a shop or a hall house, one of the most significant factors for London householders was the location of the bed relative to the hearth. Those who slept beyond the hearth were less accessible to those entering the building. They might also have been warmer. The wealthiest households from King’s Lynn typically arranged their houses this way too, connecting the values of security, comfort, and limited access with greater economic resources. While the inventories do not stipulate it, those sleeping beyond the hearth may have slept in a separate chamber. Yet wealth notwithstanding, the furnishings of commerce, whether tools, inventory, or accounting tables, were common to all the London houses. What distinguished the houses from one another was whether they also contained things, such as weapons, cushions, or other soft furnishings.

The Best and Worst Things To modern eyes, these pre-plague homes lacked furnishings. Without much experience in living in or furnishing many rooms, how did plague survivors know what to purchase and how to deploy it? Survivors did not have to completely reinvent

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their world after the plague.79 They knew both the physical and symbolic meaning of a warm hearth, they understood the social and emotional power of a shared drink, and they delighted in the sparkle and splendor of colorful things and a soft and cozy place to sleep. These things and the practices they created were already in the houses of the rich, and those who survived the plague, who would earn more because their labor was worth more, wanted them for themselves and their  households. In the first instances, their desires might be covetousness and imitative, but Londoners would ultimately come to use their new possessions to fit and shape their lives in ways that made sense to them. To understand what changed after the plague, it is important to learn what habits and uses survivors carried over from before. This means looking at what items they did treasure and how they used them. One way of discovering what furnishings Londoners particularly valued is to look at what movables they left in their wills. These were the things that they wanted to pass on to their children. What they left supports the contention that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century houses were not brimming with possessions, even when we consider appraising practices. We are at somewhat of a disadvantage with London’s pre-plague wills, because those that survive are from the Husting Court, which primarily dealt with real rather than movable property. When executors brought a will to be enrolled in the Husting Court, clerks working there tended to copy only the real property to be bequeathed, not the entire will.80 For example, Thomas Kent, a tanner who wrote his will in 1337, left someone, probably his son, “his best robe etc.”81 The clerk left out not only the other goods, but the name of the beneficiary as well. However, until the early fifteenth century, when there was a change in recording practices, and scribes stopped listing movables almost completely, they appear to have generally entered the movables that testators left to their children and spouses.82 In general, the items listed most frequently in the Husting wills were the most valuable household possessions. In my five-year sample of the pre-plague Husting wills (1344–48), only 13 percent of the 215 wills enrolled in Husting mention movables at all (Table 3). The first two post-plague samples show a marked increase in movable goods, possibly a consequence of changing scribal practices but also in keeping with the welldocumented rise in consumption after the plague. The things Londoners valued before the plague would remain valuable afterward. For the twenty-eight pre-plague testators who did leave movable goods in their wills, nearly 40  percent of them bequeathed plate, something of silver or pewter, usually a cup. The second most common type of item bequeathed was bedding, with 36  percent of these testators leaving at least one sheet. Tools and brass cooking ware tied for the third most common kind of items, with a quarter of the testators leaving them. This ranking

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Table 3. Husting Wills with Movable Goods, 1344–1428 Chronological sample

No. Husting Wills

% with movable goods

1344–48

215*

13%

1364–68

76

39%

1384–88

68

44%

1404–8

60

3%

1424–28

60

0%

*This number reflects the large number of wills made during the plague.

largely reflects what assessors found valuable enough to inventory. The only kinds of furniture specifically named were chests or cupboards, and these were stipulated in only four wills (14  percent). They provided the beneficiary with the means to carry away the items they inherited. With limited furniture, the furnishings that take center stage are plate and textiles, the items that projected wealth and status, provided color, and created an aesthetic expectation for internal furnishings. Without them, a room would be drab. The appraisers describe Hugh le Bevere’s coverlet (chalon) as having “shields of cendale,” a type of silk imported from France or Italy. He also had a green carpet, which probably covered a chest, not the floor.83 These items all provided visual interest to his hall. Coverlets and wall hangings also brought color to the King’s Lynn houses. While only three households had hangings, half of them contained coverlets. Most, in fact, had more than one, suggesting they were sometimes part of a merchant’s inventory. They were some of the most valuable items in the King’s Lynn inventories. Robert de London had twelve coverlets worth £1 10s., as valuable as his twenty-three pigs.84 The more modest London homes of Agnes de Wycoumbe and the unmarried couple John de Multone and Juliana Aunsel, both inventoried for felonies, contained cushions and table linens.85 Cushions and coverlets, whether in London or King’s Lynn houses, all expressed the same desire or expectation for display and comfort. Plate had both practical and monetary value, which is reflected in its frequency as a bequest. The variety of silver and pewter vessels is not particularly evident in wills, but it is in the list of goods that Richard de Blountesham left his daughters Idonia and Joan. He left each a set of twelve plates and dishes, eighteen saltcellars, and two pewter wine flagons, all vessels associated with high-status feasting and reflective of de Blountesham’s ambitions for his daughters.86 Most silver and pewter that testators bequeathed was more modest, spoons and cups, usually described as

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a silver cup (ciphum argenteum), but sometimes with a more elaborate description, such as “the silver cup with the ancient escutcheon of the lord the king” that Philip Gentile left his grandson, also named Philip.87 The prominence of cups as a bequest reflects the importance of ceremonial drinking to medieval people. Informed by the traditions created in the halls of great lords, drinking together promoted largess and bound people together. Rising interest in Eucharistic piety also gave it sacrificial and redemptive significance. A shared drink routinely celebrated completed business arrangements and was a central event at guild feasts.88 The variety of different drinking vessels that artisans manufactured reflects this cultural importance. At the low end were wooden drinking cups, such as the set of “six small white wooden cups” that the appraisers found among one of the felons’ possession and which that they valued at only 3d., so a halfpenny apiece.89 At this price, they represent what Londoners more typically used for drinking. At the high end were silver cups and special wooden drinking vessels, called mazers. Mazers were made of maple burls, growths that form over a wound or a cluster of dormant buds on a maple tree (Acer campestre), the way pearls form over an irritant in an oyster (Figure 3; see also Figure 4).90 A burl’s knobby surface and dense, irregular grain produce an attractive piece of wood, still sought after by woodworkers today. The medieval practice of pollarding trees produced burls, which doubtless helped support the mazer market.91 Mazers came in a variety of sizes. Hugh le Bevere had one assessed for 6s. that must have been large, while John le Tirteyner had one worth only 1s. Just over half of the King’s Lynn inventories list at least one mazer, even the inventory of Peter le Ankersmit (the poorest man assessed), so le Bevere’s and le Tirteyner’s ownership of them was typical.92 Mazers were further enhanced with a metal boss that covered the lathe hole in the bottom, a foot for stability and height, a rim to increase the depth of the bowl and to provide protection for the wooden edge, and often a cover.93 These metal additions frequently sported decorations and inscriptions, which made them visually interesting and point to some of the additional meanings they held for owners. Thomas Giles left six of them in his will, all of them distinguished by their decoration.94 One had the name of Jesus in the metal boss, a pair named “Bride” and “Bolloc,” likely played a role in bawdy wedding festivities, with “bollocks” meaning testicles.95 These descriptions not only helped his executors identify and disburse them appropriately; they reveal some emotional connection to these objects. Mazers owned by monastic communities illustrate some of their ritual uses and affective meanings. According to its 1328 inventory, the monastery of Canterbury owned 180 mazers.96 The inventory describes the mazers in detail, sometimes

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Figure 3. Burl on a maple tree. Burls are growths that form over a wound or a cluster of dormant buds on a maple tree. Their grain is dense and irregular, producing an attractive piece of wood. Photograph by author.

distinguishing them according to their decorations and sometimes by the name of the donor or first user, such as the “smaller mazer bowl of Thomas of Selling without a foot with a shield on the roundel, band and socket.”97 When a monk died, his mazer was assigned to a new monk. Durham Priory had a great mazer, which the monks passed around at the shared meal following mass. Handed down from one monk to another, mazers helped the Canterbury monks commemorate their dead while binding the living together in Christian harmony.98 The Durham monks’ shared use of their great mazer likewise celebrated and fostered community harmony, bringing the unity of the mass they had just celebrated into the refectory.99

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Both monks and Londoners shared an attachment to mazers. While the events that the mazers named Bride and Bolloc celebrated were not part of male-monastic culture, both Londoners and monks would have shared the Christian values of commemoration and community, which drinking together created. When Philip received the mazer from his grandfather, it became a commemorative item for him as well. Bedding was the second most common type of item bequeathed. Testators typically gave a coverlet and two sheets. Bedding had not only monetary worth but cultural associations as well. The bed was, in Hollie Morgan’s words, “the culturally recognized space for sex.”100 As the site where couples consummated their marriages, women conceived children and recovered from childbirth, and people died, beds carried considerable symbolic weight, associating them with lineage, family, and human vulnerability. Londoners promoted these meanings with decorated bedding. The shields, a common heraldic device, on Hugh le Bevere’s silk coverlet, for example, implicitly conveyed a message of family and lineage, even if they were not his own arms.101 Walter Blund’s bequest of bedding to his daughter Joan provides a sense of high-end bedding. She received six sheets, three feather beds, three bolsters, and six counterpanes, three of which were wool, a fourth of “Reyns,” the fifth of common gray fur called “gris,” and the final one gilded, probably of silk.102 This was probably bedding for three beds, and the different coverlets not only offered seasonal or occasional use but also created a hierarchy of beds. Husting wills do not provide much information about what material Londoners used for sheets or the color and decoration of most coverlets. However, Agnes Francey’s coverlet, “green, powdered with roses and lilies,” was singular enough that the Husting clerks recorded it.103 Owners further adorned their beds with cushions or “ear pillows,” different from the pillows used for sleeping.104 Blund gave four to his daughter, two of tapestry and two of silk, materials probably imported from the Continent. This luxurious material added to the richness of the bed’s appearance. In the King’s Lynn inventories, 46 percent had at least one set of sheets, more than had coverlets. None of the beds appear to have canopies or bed curtains, and the wills make no mention of frames. Cooking equipment was the third most common bequest. Medieval home cooking fell into three categories: boiling, frying, and roasting. All forms required heat, but boiling and frying required fewer specialized tools, just a pot or a pan, which could be made of either metal or ceramic.105 Roasting required different equipment: dripping pans, basting ladles, spits, and cob irons to support them. It also required more labor, as someone had to turn and baste the meat continually, so that it would not burn or dry out. It was a high-status form of cooking.106

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Most cooking ware either listed in the pre-plague inventories or left in wills was made of brass. Brass is a copper alloy with a lower melting temperature than iron, which made it easier to cast as large objects, such as pots, pans, and kettles. Until the eighteenth century, when industrialists standardized the proportions of copper and zinc, the term “brass” covered a wide array of copper alloys, although the most common was a mixture of copper and zinc. Most iron found in medieval kitchens was wrought iron heated in a forge and then hammered into shape, because medieval smiths could not build blast furnaces big enough or reliable enough to cast large objects.107 Wrought iron was typically used for fireplace equipment, such as andirons, trivets, gridirons, spits, and pothangers.108 As bequests of “all my vessels and utensils of brass, iron, wood, stone, and tin” indicate, brass and iron were not the sum total of cooking equipment. Archaeologists have also uncovered a great deal of locally produced ceramic used for cooking.109 It broke easily, was inexpensive to replace, and was not, therefore, valuable enough to be bequeathed or assessed. The different cooking and fireplace equipment listed in both Hugh le Bevere’s and John le Tirteyner’s inventories tells us something of how their households ate. Among le Bevere’s fireplace tools were two andirons and a spit, as well as several brass pots, a frying pan, and a grate. The spit gave him the ability to roast meat, further indication of his higher standard of living. Le Tirteyner did not own this kind of cooking equipment. He had a hand mill, for grinding grains and legumes for potages. For cooking he only had brass pots, a tripod for hanging small pots over the fire, and a griddle and frying pan. These items meant that he and his household generally ate meals produced by boiling and frying, rather than roasting. The six bowls further imply a diet based on stews and soups.110 Most furniture was not valuable enough to bequeath. Until the fifteenth century, householders did not prize furniture, nor was it particularly sophisticated. Elites kept their valuables with them as they moved from estate to estate, and peasants had limited resources to spend on luxuries. In both cases, they owned minimal, adaptable, and often portable furnishings, ideal for living in one room where multiple tasks took place.111 The folding and trestle tables owned by many of those inventoried reflect the same need for versatility. In King’s Lynn, those who owned bankers presumably had benches to put them on, but they were not valuable enough to be appraised. When appraisers listed furniture, they grouped items together, as in the case of Philip de Bekx, the wealthiest man assessed, who had “tables, chairs, benches, and stools,” collectively worth only 2s. 8½ d.112 The exception to the lack of furniture was chests. Their utility, mobility, and adaptability were their attractions. Absent dressers or closets, chests provided necessary storage for tools, supplies, clothing, and valuables. Reginald Laurenz, inven-

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toried for felony, apparently kept beans in his.113 The growth in sawmills in the fourteenth century made wooden boards easier to produce, and chests therefore became more widely available.114 They came in many sizes and shapes and served as luggage, furniture, and room decoration. The basic variations in design were either flat or domed lids and either feet or flat bottoms (see Figures 15a and 15b). Feet kept the contents off damp floors and made it more difficult for vermin to climb aboard, but they posed a hazard during travel, where they could catch and break off. Flat lids could turn a chest into a seat or a table, but domed lids threw off rain and snow during travel.115 Appraisers assessed felon William de Grymesby’s chest together with his table, which implies that he sat on the chest at the table.116 Despite their terse language, inventories and wills allow us to see something of the variety in chests. They were large and small, with and without locks, and some were better than others. Nicholas Peautrer left his son Thomas his “best chest,” implying he had others that were less good.117 The “trunk of small things” in the MultoneAunsel inventory was assessed at 12d., and the one de Blountesham left his daughter Idonia was worth 10s. It had belonged to her deceased mother.118 Not only part of her mother’s paraphernalia, it was something by which to remember her mother. The pre-plague records are admittedly thin, but they illustrate that before the plague, even the better-off Londoners lived in cramped and minimally furnished rooms. Most of what they had was not worth much and was not worth passing on. A few had some luxury items that illustrate the potential of urban domestic life and the direction that Londoners looked when seeking comfort and luxury. Cushions and coverlets softened the edges of rude furniture and brought color to small spaces, while mazers helped their owners celebrate over a drink with family and friends. These are, unsurprisingly, the items missing from the poorest artisan households, making living in well-to-do and modest houses very different experiences.

So Much Misery Climate change was already taxing an overstretched economy. The Black Death was just the most extreme of many crises to hit Europe in the fourteenth century. Starting in 1315, too much rain ruined several years of crops, and a cattle panzootic killed off generations of cattle in the 1320s.119 There was widespread starvation, and London may have lost 10  percent of its population during what is known as the Great Famine. Most of those starving to death in London would have been the poor.120 Those with money to buy food, however, found themselves paying higher prices, which would have curtailed luxury consumption and might have

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necessitated selling off valuables that households already owned. While the crisis was more evident and pressing in the countryside, it probably escalated the influx of migrants into London, as those who were starving came in search of food, and many young men left unproductive land in search of work.121 Indeed, London probably recovered much of its lost population in the next twenty years through immigration. Within twenty years of the Great Famine, the Black Death came to England, arriving first on the south coast, then Bristol on the west coast, and then finally to London in November of 1348 (Map 2). Robert of Avesbury, a secular clerk in London, wrote, “It grew so powerful that between Candlemas [2 February 1349] and Easter [12 April 1349], more than 200 corpses were buried almost every day in the new burial ground made next to Smithfield, and this was in addition to the bodies buried in other churchyards in the city.”122 The plague would rage through the city for nearly a year. Ranulphus Higden, another chronicler, bitterly stated that “so much misery ensued that the world will hardly be able to regain its previous condition.”123

Map 2. Arrival points for plague in 1348. Map by Gordon Thompson.

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The death toll was catastrophic.124 Exact numbers are impossible to calculate, but in 1377, London’s population was down to between 50,000 and 60,000, almost half of what it had been in 1300.125 A quarter of the aldermen died, as did possibly more than a third of the city’s guild masters.126 Barney Sloane’s analysis of the changing numbers of Husting wills concludes that over 50  percent and possibly over 60 percent of London’s citizens died, a figure that does not include the bulk of the city’s population. If the mortality rate of those with resources was that high, then those with less surely suffered more. These figures are not out of line with those from other cities, both in England and on the Continent.127 Historians debate what age cohort suffered the most. Current thought is that it hit the very young and the very old first and hardest.128 The plague returned in 1361, 1368, and 1375 and then every ten to fifteen years after that, becoming a dreaded routine.129 But for the long shadow cast by the original outbreak in 1346–53, some of these outbreaks would have been a major event on their own. While the first outbreaks were catastrophic, they generally lessened in severity and became a seasonal routine until 1665, London’s last outbreak.130 Nevertheless, London’s population would remain low until the sixteenth century, influencing the cityscape, its economics, and ultimately its culture.

Empty Buildings One immediate consequence of the plague in London was the abundance of abandoned buildings. For example, one section of London, St. Martin’s Seld in Cheapside, had contained twenty-one shops and kiosks in 1250, while in 1360, the number was only eleven.131 As a consequence, property values declined.132 In 1357 in an effort to reduce a royal tax burden, Londoners complained that a third of the city’s houses were vacant. While this might have been an excuse to escape a tax, the city’s Possessory Assizes had been dealing with an increasing number of property disputes after the plague, and given the previously crowded living conditions, it is not unreasonable to think that survivors and new arrivals tried to move into abandoned buildings.133 Pamela Nightingale found in her study of the Grocers’ Company that the high mortality broke up blocks of property held by guilds.134 In 1380, in an effort to attract tenants, the city reduced its £3 entry fine to encourage people to take up vacant property.135 Temporarily, English cities, including London, became more open. Urban franchises accepted large numbers of new citizens in an effort to replace members lost during the epidemic.136 New men rose quickly through the ranks, rather than serving their time in lower positions to gain experience and contacts.137

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The overwhelming loss of life created a labor shortage, which immediately raised both wages and the price of goods. In an effort to freeze wages at pre-plague levels, Edward III (r. 1327–77) issued the Ordinance of Labourers in the summer of 1349, followed by the Statute of Labourers in 1351.138 Although largely directed at helping out landholders who were being ruined by the rising cost of agricultural labor, this legislation had an impact on cities too. In London, the city council brought charges against artisans for price hikes, and there was concern that “aliens,” that is, immigrants from the Continent, were taking jobs away from qualified Londoners.139 The city council, for example, charged the Saddlers’ Company with selling saddle trees for two and three times what they had cost before the plague. The Saddlers countered “that they could not find apprentices or serving men [journeymen] to help them, and that at a time when they needed more comfort in the matter of food and clothing, conditions were so evil that the gallon of beer cost 2d. instead of 1d., and other necessaries had also risen in like proportion.”140 The short-term economic consequences are obvious in the sources, the social and emotional ones less so, but the overall impression is one of dislocation played out in familiar territory with familiar institutions. London would benefit from these and other post-plague changes. Even with a smaller population, a greater percentage of Britain’s total population would come to live there.141 England’s wool trade declined, but its cloth production increased, moving its center of gravity from the north to the south. English cities and market towns in the north constricted and those in the south and east, such as London, flourished.142 By 1377, real wages had risen by 45 percent, with London wages generally the highest.143 For example, wages in London’s building industry were 25  percent higher than Oxford’s and Cambridge’s.144 London became known for the quality of its artisanal work and its abundant luxury items.145 Immigrants, both those starting out and established merchants from other towns, came to London looking for robust markets and higher wages. Many of London’s most successful merchants were born elsewhere.146 Some merchants found themselves richer than their landholding, luxury-loving customers, able to buy country estates and marry their children into landholding families strapped for cash.147 As men quickly moved up the ranks in their guilds, they left behind the rudimentary piecework that would have occupied them for years in a crowded labor market. This work was now increasingly taken up by young single women, who, while attracted by London higher wages, did not earn as much as men.148 A counter response to this change was that London’s guilds became more specialized, women could neither become full members of the guild nor form their own,

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and increasingly guilds tried to prevent unskilled laborers from forming their own associations.149

Conclusion In this less-crowded London, Londoners across the city had access to a greater variety of better-quality food, higher-quality textiles, and bigger houses.150 The overall rise in the standard of living fueled accusations that merchants and artisans were too imitative of their betters. Indeed, large swaths of London’s population adopted aristocratic tastes for tight-fitting clothing and roasted meat.151 For many, the rise in wages, along with the decline in the value of land, was not only an economic crisis; it was a social one with moral implications.152 It cut to the heart of how medieval society was ordered, with a small rural population of landholding aristocrats and gentry at the top and large numbers of unfree peasants at the bottom, whose agricultural labor supported landholders’ lavish lifestyles. Food, housing, and clothing were all supposed to mark status and identity. As survivors and their children lived better, ate better, and dressed better, it became difficult to distinguish legitimate social status from social-climbing parvenus. The government, to little avail, tried to stem this tide of ambition through a new round of sumptuary legislation. Although medieval people might not have understood how the “invisible hand of the market” worked, they could see on a daily basis how the expanding use of material culture breached social boundaries, undermining old assumptions about social hierarchies. Those who survived, their children and grandchildren, would enjoy higher standards of living, which changed not only their behavior but also their way of being in the world. As Londoners came to accept plague as a seasonal tragedy, they did not revert to pre-plague ways of living but built upon what high mortality wrought.

chapter 2

Valuing Household Goods

Personal Worth Increased consumption after the plague would not only improve standards of living, it would teach Londoners new behaviors and new attitudes. Central to these attitudes was how to think about their new possessions. Before the plague, descriptions of individual possessions in wills and inventories were typically limited and generic. After the plague they became both more routine and more specific. Londoners also created more documents to address and protect the legal status of their goods. These changes are all consequences of what else people were learning as they learned to consume. They were learning to identify their possessions and track them, in order to capitalize on their monetary worth. Embedded in these legal descriptions, however, is evidence for another value that Londoners were learning to attach to their goods, the value of sentiment. Things helped preserve memories in a world with high mortality. Paying attention to the different ways that testators and appraisers described household goods reveals two stories of increasing consumption, one of economics and one of affect. The purpose of inventories, whether debt or probate, was to assign a value to household goods so that they could be used to pay off creditors. London had an active secondhand clothing trade that allowed owners to sell their linens, bedding, and clothing.1 Owners and creditors could also realize the value of the precious metals and jewels in dishware and jewelry by selling them to be broken up and melted down. But through material, design, and use, household goods also created and sustained certain behaviors and experiences, so these objects accrued significant social and emotional significance. With texture, heft, scale, and appearance, household possessions created physical encounters that promoted emotion and memory, which in turn strengthened familial, neighborly, and household relation-

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ships and obligations. So, in addition to participating in a household’s economic well-being, household goods also sustained and advanced household values through their existence and use. As the post-plague economy careened from depression to expansion to depression again, the competing pulls of both economy and sentiment compelled Londoners to reevaluate continually their relationship to their household goods. Balancing the financial and emotional work of household possessions was part of learning to live with more stuff. The post-plague increase in consumption built upon the dramatic commercialization of the medieval economy in the twelfth century. Commercialization required wealth to be movable, which fundamentally altered people’s relationship to property—both movable and immovable.2 For trade to succeed and grow, goods became fungible, meaning that the value of an item became abstracted from the good itself, because dissimilar goods, such as a necklace and a chair, needed to be equated in terms of their value.3 Acceptance of the concept of fungibility had broader social implications, as the desire for and use of so-called luxury goods moved down the social order in the years after 1348/49. The ability of more people to afford luxury items challenged older ideas about the relationship between luxury and high social status—that is, the belief that one’s status should be identifiable by what one wore or ate or the house one lived in.4 As rare items became common, the relationship between identity and presentation shifted, giving rise to accusations that merchants and artisans were imitating their social betters. Central to the fungibility of goods was the late medieval economy’s chronic shortage of coin. In England, mint output fluctuated throughout the later Middle Ages, but it was never as high as it was in the early fourteenth century.5 Archaeologists record the number of stray coins—as opposed to hoards—dated to the years 1279 to 1351 as five times the number for the years 1412 to 1464.6 Under these circumstances, the economic value of household goods was of critical concern to their owners, and indeed much of what Londoners consumed after the plague had monetary value that helped them weather a constant lack of coin. Another issue that influenced thoughts about the value of household goods was the evolving legal concept of heirloom.7 The earliest definitions come from borough law, that is, town law, and referred to what furnishings a widow must leave behind if she chose to give up her life use in the house she had inherited from her husband. Heirlooms were the best of every sort of thing that went with a house or property. Some town statutes even detailed the cooking equipment, furniture, and types of linens that the widow must leave behind.8 At the same time, law’s conservative nature meant that not only was the law on movables or chattels generally less developed relative to land law; it was slow to keep up with the expanding

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significance of goods. While London’s compendium of borough law, the Liber Albus, has no entry for heirlooms, testators and appraisers quickly learned how to compare household goods and their functions in a house and to understand that owners wanted to pass on to the next generation particular things, much in the manner of land. These concerns all played a role in how testators identified the goods they left in their wills. As testators came to value individual objects for their connection to deceased family members, they increasingly treated them as heirlooms by ranking, ordering, and categorizing them, and passing them on to the next generation. Owners even tried to keep particular items in the family by specifying who was to inherit them if their beneficiary had no heirs.9 As a result, medieval Londoners filled their houses with old things that they valued for many different reasons: for their materials, which could be reprocessed; for their legal status as heirlooms; and, increasingly, for their personal histories, associations, and qualities that invoked attraction, discussion, and maybe even awe.10 We can see the negotiation of monetary and affective worth in the descriptions that testators and appraisers gave to household possessions in wills and inventories. Testators and appraisers had different positions vis-à-vis a house’s possessions, and proximity could blind the observer to their significance. Some items were compelling because of their scale, color, and opulence; that is, they had charisma.11 Such items were difficult to ignore and invoked a response from appraisers, while those who lived with them sometimes grew inured to their charms. Proximity worked the other way too. Familiarity or intimacy with an object acquired through daily use could change its value from merely financial to emotional, with that significance lost to the appraiser. Wills reveal both the financial and affective value that Londoners assigned to their households’ goods. These two categories of value were interconnected and often mutually reinforcing. Many testators assigned monetary values to bequests of movable goods that helped beloved beneficiaries set up their households, and they bequeathed items of little financial worth and great sentimental value in order to acknowledge significant relationships. Moreover, it is clear that beneficiaries valued the things that had been left to them not only because they were fungible, but also because they were from a parent or other loved one. The embodied experiences children had with household goods meant that some of the objects they inherited were freighted with memories and could be used to promote shared family concerns. Owners of inherited objects continually toggled between these two systems of value. Some household possessions played outsized roles in wills, suggesting their particular importance to owners and to household dynamics.12 After looking at how owners signaled their emotional attachment to their possessions, this chapter

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will then look at two common household goods that continued to play important roles in London households after the plague: mazers and beds. The importance of both mazers and beds to medieval Londoners before and after the plague shows that while London’s merchants and artisans wanted to personalize their world, they were not masters of their universe. Consumption before the plague had already laid out expectations for how to furnish a house if one had the means. These expectations did not evaporate with the plague, but they were refracted through the concerns of a society that had lost upwards of a third of its population and was remaking itself at a time when more people were able to own these items. At times, mazers’ and beds’ social and metaphorical significance seems to overwhelm their practical function, as owners used them to create solidarities, memories, hierarchies, and identities. In the process of looking at the roles these two items played in households, we learn about the rise of consumption from the consumers’ point of view. Merchants’ and artisans’ experience with trade taught them that things were fungible, but their experiences with consumption taught them to choose, use, and cherish their possessions in ways that promoted and created certain kinds of behaviors that not only made their lives more comfortable but made them who they were.

The Monetary and Affective Value of Goods In 1496 or 1497, an anonymous Venetian nobleman marveled on his trip to London at the quantity of silver in London shops. But the most remarkable thing in London, is the wonderful quantity of wrought silver. I do not allude to that in private houses . . . but to the shops of London. In one single street, named the Strand, leading to St. Paul’s, there are fifty-two goldsmith’s shops, so rich and full of silver vessels, great and small, that in all the shops in Milan, Rome, Venice, and Florence put together, I do not think there would be found so many of the magnificence that are to be seen in London.13 Plate composed some of the most valuable items in a household, and assessors listed it in a separate category in inventories. Richard Britnell suggested that in the late Middle Ages, “conceivably fashion among the wealthy had shifted to holding more wealth in plate and jewellery rather than in coin” because of its financial value.14 This practice was essential, given late medieval Europe’s chronic bullion shortage. Because of its value, plate appears infrequently in the extents for debt

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inventories, probably because those inventoried for financial trouble had already sold it in an attempt to head off bankruptcy and imprisonment.15 According to London’s probate inventories, however, most testators had upwards of 40  percent of their assessed wealth in plate or jewelry, with the median being between 49 and 55  percent. While it was by no means a new practice, late medieval bullion shortages encouraged individuals to store monetary value in the form of household goods. Alexandra Shepard argues that even in the seventeenth century, the process of inventorying still “made manifest the functions of goods as repositories of wealth and objects of exchange, functions which only much later became more exclusively associated with cash.”16 The possession of large quantities of coin was not necessary for assessing a person’s worth or value. Three problems stood behind Europe’s bullion crisis.17 First, there was an actual shortage of gold and silver. Political instability in Bohemia, the source of most of Europe’s silver, and in North Africa, the source of most gold, meant less of each metal came to western Europe. Another cause of the bullion shortage was an imbalance of trade. In Europe’s quest for silk and spices from the Middle East and China, what silver and gold Europe had flowed out in greater quantities than it flowed in. Third was the issue of bimetallic currency—the production of coinage in both gold and silver—a practice that Edward III introduced to England when he minted a gold coin in 1344. The two types of coin value needed to be in a fixed ratio, so that one metal would not disadvantage the other. Competition among mints, another source of international tension, and fluctuating bullion prices made it difficult for medieval governments to keep a constant ratio between the price of gold and silver. As a result, one metal or the other was constantly being bought by rival mints, further hindering the supply. This lack of coin influenced available credit, and while economic historians debate the extent of this relationship, the diminished coin supply negatively influenced the availability of credit, which only added to the importance of the monetary value of household goods.18 Although quantity was a continual problem, the quality of English coinage remained high throughout the fifteenth century. What coinage was available, however, at least until the late 1460s, was often unsuitable for small-scale, daily-life transactions.19 As a result, coin was less important as a source of wealth than household possessions. Even after the recoinage of 1489, which ushered in a new era of monetary history, the possessions in one’s house continued to represent a more nebulous sense of “worth” to the owner than money on hand.20 While higher wages and fewer people contributed to late medieval England’s rising standard of living across much of the social spectrum, the bullion famine, depopulation, and constricting credit led to repeating cycles of depression and recession throughout

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the fifteenth century.21 These things all shaped the way merchants and artisans depended on the economic value of their household possessions. The probate inventories demonstrate that Londoners routinely lived without cash. In the thirty inventories where information on cash holdings is legible, cash constituted on average 15  percent of the total assessed worth, excluding debts.22 The mean, however, is between 5 and 7  percent. There seems to be no relation between the assessed worth represented in these inventories and the amount of available cash, and there seems to be no correlation between the amount of cash and the date of the inventories, which were written between 1468 and 1539. Mercer Richard Everly, one of the wealthiest testators inventoried, was worth just over £1,200 in 1473 when he died, but only 3 percent of his worth was in cash.23 Undoubtedly the amount of cash on hand varied with the business cycle, but most merchants and artisans kept relatively little coin on hand and relied on credit as a matter of routine.24 Londoners had a keen interest in the monetary worth of their household goods, but money did not prove their worth in either the long or short term. With so much value stored in their possessions, extending credit and using them as collateral was routine in London life.25 For example, when a Southwark tailor died in 1490, he owed money to the butcher, the baker, and the shoemaker, along with the laundress, the beer brewer, and the woodman.26 On the other side of the balance sheet, when Richard Everly died, five men owed him nearly £1,100, money the appraisers labeled as “desperate,” meaning they did not think his estate would collect on these loans, and Everly owed nearly £60 to nineteen different people, including a thatcher, a blacksmith, a tallow chandler, and three women.27 The 1481 will of Sir Richard Roos, a knight, describes the loan process. He stipulated that “Anne the wife of John Edward, baker [is to] have that narrow girdle of silk harnessed with silver and the pair of coral beads with silver and gilt gauds, which she gave to me in pledge for 13s. 4d. if the said Anne pay to my said executors the said 13s. 4d.”28 Among the pawns London widow Anne Taverner received as collateral for a loan was a gilt goblet with a cover, valued at 47s. 8d. When the owner failed to redeem the goblet, it became part of Taverner’s estate. Londoners routinely loaned money not only to customers and suppliers but also to family, friends, and neighbors. They habitually kept records of these financial obligations. Richard Wether, a haberdasher who died in 1492, forgave the £100 that his sister and brother-in-law owed him, explaining to his three executors, one of whom was his wife, that evidence of this debt “appears in my books.”29 Such behavior was not limited to men. Agnes Jegyns left to her brother Robert Haynes “all my writings and specialties [details] to make the best of them that he can.” Likely she is referring to some sort of account book and collection of debts, because her

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will also mentions the “specialties of the butcher” along with references to past and current problems with debts.30 James Lang, a London plumber, brought suit in the Court of Chancery sometime in the early sixteenth century, claiming that he did not owe the estate of Thomas Say, poulterer, because he had repaid Say, who had struck his debt out of his “book of debts.”31 Although such books only rarely survive from London, credit practices and their documentation were a quotidian part of London life.32 They further emphasize that there was a relationship among household goods, credit, and worth, with money merely one measure of worth but not crucial for daily life. The availability of credit and the financial value of household goods made it difficult to define what was a luxury item, because households could buy fancy things on credit. The desire for and use of so-called luxury goods had moved down the social order in the years after 1348/49, overturning the older ideas about the relationship between luxury and high social status.33 As credit and consumption made rare items more common, the relationship between identity and presentation shifted, contributing to the condemnation of late medieval merchants and artisans as social climbers. Although testators routinely acknowledged the monetary value of their household goods when making their wills, they clearly assigned other kinds of value to them as well. We see this process in the will of John Wheler, a spurrier. He left both of his underage sons plate valued at £30, but he did not specify which pieces his sons should receive. To his married daughter, however, he left “as many beads, rings, a mazer, and a salt of silver as shall amount and be in value of the sum of £8 sterling.”34 Wheler understood that his goods had monetary value, but that he specified what kinds of items his daughter would inherit implies he knew that his daughter might want these particular items not just for their monetary value but because of their affective value. As his daughter had presumably received her share of the family estate when she married, the chance to pick out specific pieces of jewelry and tableware allowed her to choose pieces associated with memories of previous owners, such as her mother. Wheler based some of his choices on the age and marital status of his children, but his decisions were also seemingly related to the specific objects themselves and the roles they had played in his household. Assigning value to a testator’s goods required identifying the item, noting its size, material, and in some instances details of its construction.35 Chairs, for example, might be little, round, folding, turned (as on a lathe), or joined, have footstools, and be made of oak, while benches could be long or short, stools high or low, and andirons, pots and pans, and chests could be great or small. Appraisers also noted the color, quantity, and size of soft furnishings, such as hangings, curtains, or

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cushions. They described the seven tapestries in Matthew Phelips’s bedroom as green with trees and flowers, and the six cushions in John Barny’s hall as having griffins.36 Thomas Gilbert’s inventory included eleven pairs of servants’ sheets, fourteen pairs of flaxen sheets, and three fine christening sheets.37 While the identity, quantity, and material of an item was not usually subject to discussion, appraisers also applied qualitative judgments. The appraisers further described the hangings in Matthew Phelips’s bedroom as “feeble” and “perished with moths,” while John Barny’s griffin cushions were “old” and covered in mold, and one of the pairs of sheets in Thomas Gilbert’s house was “sorely worn.”38 These issues of quality and condition had consequences for the value that appraisers gave to an item. The “broken basin” in Richard Everly’s house was worth only 10d, while the undamaged basin of the same size was worth 4s.39 Yet even appraisers could fall under the spell of a household’s furnishings, as they counted, sorted, and peered into the rooms, chests, and cupboards of the deceased. They frequently make some mention of the images on wall hangings and cushions. For example, the appraisers of John Bate’s estate noted that his hall hangings, which measured thirty yards, had birds and trees and that the cushions in the same room were embellished with pelicans.40 Large tapestries with their color, detail, and life-sized imagery had charisma that made them difficult for appraisers to ignore when seeing them for the first time.41 If we look at the adjectives that testators used when describing goods in their wills, we see that, like assessors, they routinely acknowledged size, color, material, and quantity, but they also offered more subjective descriptions that acknowledge the item’s own history and its meaning to the testator. In this process, testators reveal the sentiments and memories that their possession had for them.42 Bequeathing a memorable object helped solidify the testator’s relationship to the beneficiary not only by the act of giving but also through the meanings attached to the gift.43 Among the many items Agnes Mower left in her will were her “best girdle,” “best gown,” her “best ring,” her “second girdle,” her “second beads of coral gauded with silver and gilt,” “a gown of musterd de villars [gray] that was . . . Thomas Mower my husband’s” “a signet [ring] that was Will Lokk’s my first husband’s,” and “a dozen spoons of silver with locks on the knobs.”44 Interspersed with the physical descriptions, Mower described her relationship to these items—her favorite, second favorite, and their provenance. Color, material, and size descriptors all helped executors distinguish among similar items, but how did she distinguish between her second and first sets of beads or her best girdle, and why did she mention that the spoons had locks on their ends when, according to her inventory, she only owned one set?

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The difference in how testators and appraisers describe the same items illustrates some of the emotional labor these objects performed, making some of the affective relationships people had with their goods more obvious. Of the sixty-five London testators with surviving probate inventories, thirty-seven also have surviving wills, allowing us to compare the ways testators and appraisers described and valued the same objects.45 When appraisers went through Agnes Mower’s goods, for example, they tended to value similar items in groups: “6 coarse girdles of diverse colors, 9 coarse girdles great & small of diverse colors [with] black ribbon[s] [and] with aglets,” “6 rings of gold garnished with stones feeble,” and “12 spoons with knobs.”46 The difference between how Mower understood her goods and how the appraisers did speaks to her familiarity and daily interactions with them, the memories they evoked, and the relationships they marked. Mower’s evaluation of her belongings stands in stark contrast to the legal and financial objectives of the appraisers. The familiarity, emotion, and experience had all created value for Mower that was more than monetary.47 Lisa Liddy argues that gifts of items that adorned or belonged to the testator’s body, such as jewelry and clothing, but also bedding, “signified a close emotional link between testators, object, and recipient, as each time the new owner wore or used the bequeathed item they would presumably be reminded of the former owner.”48 Mower’s spoons with locks on the end were a rebus, that is, a puzzle or symbolic representation of her first husband’s last name, something their daughter Anne, who received them, might have appreciated. As appearance did little to influence the spoons’ monetary worth, the appraisers did not need to describe their decoration. Mower’s description rehearsed a family joke and summoned past mealtime conversations, and it illustrates the way a set of particularly meaningful spoons helped perpetuate family memories and sentiment. Similarly, the appraisers only found six rings worth appraising, but Mower bequeathed eight. As she gave them away, she noted other differences: the kind of stones—green, ruby, emerald—that one was her best, and that one was the “ring that I used to wear on my finger,” and another was “the ring of my wearing with a stone.” Did the two rings reflect her two husbands? A souvenir? Or did their stones offer medical protection? To the appraisers they were a generic assortment of not-very-valuable rings; to Mower, who matched them to individual beneficiaries, they were tokens of meaningful events and relationships, marking affection and connections. Her detailed descriptions reflect the nonmonetary values that she gave to her possessions and point to the characteristics that, for her, created their value. Bequests helped the next generation set up a household, ensured that friends would remember the deceased, fulfilled old obligations, and forged new ones. So,

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while testators did use the adjectives to describe their possessions, they were usually descriptions that emphasized connection to the beneficiary, not the object’s defects. Elizabeth Dalmer allowed a beneficiary to choose four green hangings from among her goods. The appraisers, however, tell us the hangings were in her hall, they were part of a set of seven, and they were “sore worn.”49 Even if in the eyes of the theoretically unbiased appraisers they might have been tatty or decayed, because they were freighted with history and memory, they were valued by donor and beneficiary. The hierarchy of Agnes Mower’s girdles or paternosters might have been obvious to those confronted with the actual objects and thus useful to her executors when dividing up her estate, but some descriptions would not have aided in distinguishing among similar items. These descriptions instead identified a different kind of value the object had for its owner and attempted to instill in the new owner a particular relationship with the object. Matthew Phelips’s inventory, for example, listed in his hall three hangings of tapestry and embroidery lined with canvas. The one-time mayor had complemented them with twelve matching feather cushions and three matching bench coverings. Together appraisers valued this set at more than £7, making them the most expensive items in his hall.50 The assessment’s details tell us the appraisers had handled them to learn the hangings’ lining and the cushions’ stuffing. Phelips fully appreciated the value of these items as well, and in his will, he tells us they were imported from Arras, a center of tapestry work.51 His information hints at his connoisseurship, cosmopolitanism, and experience. So, while his testimonial speaks to value, it also signals his fine taste and knowledge. These hangings were also imbricated in his family relationships. Phelips was married to his second wife, Beatrice. This marriage had no issue, although Phelips had a son from his first marriage.52 Phelips’s will implies he and Beatrice had an unhappy marriage. In keeping with London’s laws, he left Beatrice a bequest of household goods, jewels, plate, and land in Kent. But he added that “if the said Beatrice at any time after my decease . . . demand, claim, challenge, or ask of my said goods more than my said bequest to her made, then I will that all my said bequest to the said Beatrice before made . . . be utterly void and of no force, strength, nor effect.”53 Moreover, he specifically ordered that she was not to get the hall tapestries and cushions, and unusually, although under the circumstances not unexpectedly, she was not made an executor of his will.54 In Matthew Phelips’s will, the luxurious hangings that so impressed the assessors allowed him to express animus toward his wife. He left them instead to his son, the product of his first marriage, thus using them and their prestige to underscore the importance of his first marriage and the child it had produced.

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The value and charisma of Phelips’s household goods materialized a wedge between members of his family, but value and charisma could also strengthen familial connections.55 We can see this process in the series of wills drawn up by the Langrich family of St. Martin Orger. In 1464, draper Walter Langrich died, leaving a widow, four sons, two of whom were underage, and two daughters.56 With the bulk of the household goods to go to his widow Margery, only the two eldest sons received items from the household, while the remaining children received money. Both eldest sons received pieces of clothing, with the oldest son, John, also receiving Walter’s “best bed,” a symbol of family lineage, an almery of “Estrichborde” (that is, made of timber from the Baltic) to be delivered at the death of his mother, and “a goblet of silver over gilt,” while Thomas, the second son, received a cup described as a “flat piece of silver over gilt.” In 1470, Margery, the widow of Walter and mother of John and Thomas, died, and in her will we learn a little more about the family and its household furnishings.57 One daughter, Alice, had apparently died, and the third and fourth sons were still underage. Margery divided her household goods evenly among her five surviving children, paying particular attention to linens and plate. Her linens were all monogrammed with her children’s initials. Her bequests to her second son, Thomas, included six silver spoons “marked with a K,” a nut—a prized type of drinking vessel made from a coconut shell—“the body and foot silver and gilt with a covering of the same silver and gilt,” and many pieces of linen for both the table and the bed “marked with T & L,” along with bed curtains and a canopy “stained with 2 pelicans.”58 These were all items that had monetary value, but the monograms further personalized some items. Some fifteen years later, Thomas, a draper like his father, died. His will offers a great deal of detail about his house and its furnishings, and it allows us to see that he had kept some of the items his mother left him. He still had “napery marked with T and L of red silk given me by my mother’s gift of her testament,” and “a nut covered, which I had of the gift of my mother by her testament.”59 He also owned a flat piece, or cup, which he described in the same way as the one his father had given him. However, his six silver spoons now have an L, not a K, and the curtains on his bed are decorated with flowers, not pelicans. The pelican bed curtains may have worn out or may have been on the bed in his “second chamber,” which he did not describe. By keeping some of the items his mother left him, however, Thomas has prioritized their familial value over their monetary value. They had continued to reside in his household doing their expected work, with family experiences adding to their significance, which he acknowledged in his will. The descriptions not only

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created legal protection for conveying them to his sister, but they underscored family memories created through use and design. He also appears particularly invested in monograms, as he also explains that the monogram on his sheets is in red silk, a detail his mother did not provide, and indicates that he had acquired spoons with his own monogram on them rather than continuing to use the ones with Ks that his mother had given him. Both his parents had given him cups of some monetary worth, but his mother’s nut remained in his possession, and he acknowledged it as such, and a cup like the one his father gave him was in his will, but Thomas did not give it a provenance. Furthermore, the items Thomas identifies as coming from his mother he left to his sister Margery, thus keeping them in the family. They would connect Margery to her family both visually and emotionally. The flat piece with no provenance Thomas gave to a Mary Hatfield, along with the bed and bedding of his chief chamber “to help her toward her marriage.” He does not explain their relationship, but we can see both that Thomas did not keep the flat piece in his immediate family and that Mary was important enough to receive his bed, an intimate gift that projected sex, lineage, and family. It was not, however, adorned with the pelican curtains that his mother had left him. He left his weapons, mounted in the entry of his house, a sign of his status as a citizen, to his older brother John, also a London draper. As Thomas had navigated the vagaries of his profession, he had hung on to items of financial and emotional worth, preserving both kinds of values for the next generation, but also embedded his own stories in the items he passed on to Mary Hatfield.60 Londoners, then, invested their household goods with more than financial value. They valued items because they came from loved ones, were souvenirs of a trip, or provided aesthetic pleasure and physical comfort in the dark, cold days of winter. Passed on to the next generation or to friends, they accrued still more affective value.61 In times of financial difficulty, owners might have to set aside the emotional worth of an object for the goal of economic survival. Such actions, however, did not erase these objects’ affective value, but instead marked the perils of the family’s economic situation. The affective value of household goods is invisible if we look only at inventories. Here we can see the power of certain objects to affect the appraisers, but not the intimacy of daily life that made Londoners feel that rings, girdles, and table linens were appropriate items to mark friendships and familial bonds. Wills allow individuals to identify possessions that they valued for their memories, associations, and experiences. When we compare how testators and appraisers described the same items, we see that who tells the story of rising consumption is important

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for understanding what this change meant to the players. Their stories overlap, but not completely.

Socializing the Family with Mazers The butteries and chests of London’s post-plague houses held a great variety of drinking vessels: wine bowls, standing cups or goblets, tankards, and drinking horns, all variously made from ceramic, wood, metal, horn, and even leather. Drinking vessels had both Eucharistic and convivial associations, which became increasingly important to London households. One of the most important drinking vessels for London families was the mazer and its “cousin” the nut. As discussed in Chapter 1, mazers are wooden drinking bowls, fashioned out of maple burls and banded with metal (Figure 4). Nuts were similar, in that they were banded cups, but they were made from coconut shells (Figure 5).62 Although rare in Europe, coconuts came from the Indian Ocean trade and were known in Europe from at least the fourteenth century.63 While the mazer was polished smooth so the grain of the burl showed, the coconut shells were sometimes carved or painted for additional decoration. For example, when Robert Lynton, vicar of All Hallows, died in 1488, he had among his possessions “a nut with a carving,” while the tailor Richard Leman had a “painted nut with a cover.”64 Given the rarity of coconuts, Eleanor

Figure 4. Hand-sized mazer, with an inscription on the silver band that reads: “Potvm et nos benedicat agyos” (May the Holy One bless the drink and us) (England, ca. 1490). British Museum, no. AF.3119. Image © British Museum.

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Figure 5. Nut, or coconut cup, with cover (England, ca. 1450–1500). Royal Ontario Museum, accession no. 997.158.7.1. Image © Royal Ontario Museum.

Kyng’s bequest of “a nut made of an egret’s egg, garnished with silver and gilt,” suggests that for some, the term “nut” broadly referred to any unusual or exotic organic material in the shape of a cup banded with metal, rather than a vessel specifically formed from a coconut.65 Mazers and nuts are some of the most lovingly described objects in medieval London-area wills. Not only do we learn of their physical qualities, but often we can glimpse the emotional role they played in the testator’s life. For example, John

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Caster left his wife Margery “a mazer that my brother gave me with a lion therein.”66 Alice Chester gave her clerk “for his labor and business herein to be had and for the love that I owe to him . . . a little painted nut covered.”67 Other descriptions of these vessels culled from wills include great, small, standing, with and without covers, with single and double bands, and with various images such as the saints John, Mary, Christopher, and Lawrence; the holy monogram; animals, including falcons, eagles, and pelicans; and a variety of flowers, such as roses or columbines, as well as strawberries and coats of arms. Some also sported mottoes or advice, showing them to promote certain kinds of drinking behavior. Walter Wylde, a London brewer, left his son Thomas a great mazer “garnished with one large band of silver and with writing in the band that says ‘benedictus deus in donis suis’ [blessed is God in his gifts].”68 Another mazer, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, sports the inscription “Hold your tongue and say the best / and let your neighbor sit in rest / how so desirous God to please / let his neighbor live in ease.”69 Collectively, these inscriptions promoted drinking with others as an avenue to harmony and Christian charity. These detailed descriptions benefited executors charged with disbursing an estate. For an executor unfamiliar with the household’s goods, details such as “one mazer with silver bands and with [the] image of St. Lawrence in the bottom of it” would have been helpful in matching bequest to beneficiaries.70 Yet testators did not generally treat other items this way, and such descriptions were unnecessary when the executor was the testator’s wife. These detailed descriptions argue for the emotional and moral weight carried by these special cups, a point emphasized by Alice Bartelot’s description of her mazer as “a mazer called my mother’s mazer with Jesus in the bottom.”71 Naming objects, Roberta Gilchrist argues, “can transfer the agency of the person they represent.”72 Jesus would have identified the mazer to those unfamiliar with her household goods, but naming it as her mother’s mazer gave her one more opportunity to remember her mother and imprint the object with memories and qualities of her mother for the beneficiary. Cups of all varieties were one of the most popular bequests, with 36 percent of the London testators who left movable goods bequeathing them.73 More than half of these testators bequeathed a mazer, while only 6 percent left nuts (Figure 6a). At the same time, most testators left more than one cup in their will, with cups made of plate the most common type bequeathed, a practice that further highlighted the specialness of mazers and nuts (Figure  6b). Mazers were one of the first luxury items to be purchased with the rise of consumption after the plague. In my first sample (1384–88), 90  percent of wills leaving movable goods left at least one cup, with mazers constituting 45 percent of all these cups. Mazers’ popularity remained

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Figure 6a. Percentage of wills leaving mazers, nuts, and metal cups in London, 1384–1540.

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Figure 6b. Percentage of cups bequeathed by type in London, 1384–1540.

constant, hovering around 40  percent of all cups bequeathed until the midsixteenth century. In my last sample (1536–40), the percentage of wills leaving any kind of cup dropped precipitously. Only 51  percent of the wills in this sample left cups and of these fewer cups, mazers composed just under a quarter. An increase in the number of nuts, made more available with the growth of the Indian Ocean

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trade after Vasco da Gama’s discovery of a sea route, does not fully compensate for the declining interest in cups more generally.74 By the sixteenth century, the majority of cups bequeathed in wills were plate. It is difficult to say why this change happened. Changing Eucharistic theology coupled with reform-minded Christians’ rising discomfort with images of the saints, which often adorned mazers, might have influenced people’s preferences. Moreover, Alexander Barclay’s second eclogue of “The Miseryes of Courtiers,” written in the early sixteenth century, disparages wooden drinking bowls and shared cups as filthy. While satire, the poem anticipates the decline in mazers as bequests, suggesting that drinking behavior was changing. Of a wooden vessel from which you must drink, Old, black and rusty, lately taken from a sink: And in such vessel drink shall you often time find, That the bottom is full of filth and slime75 So, I suspect that fashion played some role in this decline. These vessels’ ubiquity might also have worked against them. They had become so common that they were no longer special. Mazers appear in many kinds of households and inspired particular kinds of drinking rituals. As we saw in Chapter 1, before the plague monastic communities passed along mazers from one monk to another as a means of commemorating dead brothers and binding the living ones together in Christian harmony.76 They remained valuable to monastic communities after the plague; according to its 1540 inventory, Westminster Abbey possessed forty mazers.77 London’s merchants and artisans also assigned commemorative roles to their mazers and nuts. For example, Rauf Sowthworth left his “ brother Master William Sowthworth parson of Middlewich, in Cheshire a standing mazer with a cover of the same harnessed silver and gilt to remember my soul in his prayers.”78 Drinking was also a social activity and highly ritualized behavior in London households. Details from Juliana Maryner’s will of 1516 provide a sense of this dynamic. She left a female beneficiary “a little cup that I gave her as I sat at dinner,” detailing a scenario where the diners discussed the “ little cup.”79 London wills and inventories describe most mazers as “ little,” suggesting that within households, users drank from them individually more often than they shared them.80 Ellen Langwith, a silkwoman, specifically left “two mazers with bands of silver and gilt which I daily occupy [use]” to her servant John Brown.81 Through such use, Langwith’s mazer created habit, intimacy, and comfort. Descriptions thus pointed to the

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personal value that owners placed upon their mazers and clarified in some way the connection testators made between the vessel and the beneficiary. The emotional and social importance of mazers is reflected in who received them as bequests. Children, whether biological children, grandchildren, or stepchildren, constituted the largest category of beneficiaries receiving drinking vessels in general and mazers in particular. Offspring made up 54 percent of the beneficiaries receiving mazers in the Commissary Court and 40 percent in the Prerogative Court, with no particular preference shown for either sons or daughters. By leaving these vessels to their children, London’s merchants and artisans connected these objects to family and used them to foster memories of lineage. For example, John Pyers gave “to Joan my daughter a mazer, which I had of the gift of my good mother Margaret Peurse to pray for her soul and her husband,” instructions that not only hint at oft-told stories but turned the vessel into a memorial every time Joan used it.82 In another example, Thomas Smyth left his mazer with his “badge” engraved on the boss to his underage son William, to be delivered when William came of age or married.83 Its decoration would remind him of his father and his lineage or occupational identity every time William drank from it. Emotional worth notwithstanding, the financial value could imperil a family’s continued ownership of such prized possessions. Alice Slendon explains in her will that “I will that if Shipton’s wife pay 20s. that I lent her upon a mazer, she [is] to have her pledge delivered [to] her again.”84 John Combe, a London tailor, left a mazer to his daughter Anne rather than to either of his two sons.85 This was his second marriage, and the mazer might have been a bequest from Anne’s mother, but Combe had also paid the rent on behalf of one of his sons and had forgiven the debt in his will. This detail suggests an alternative interpretation. For an unreliable son, the mazer’s monetary value made it a temptation for sale, but if Combe valued it for its family significance, then it was better off in Anne’s hands. Testators without spouses or children also wished to keep mazers in their families. Alice Holdness left her brother “after my decease a mazer with 4 turrets upon the boss in the bottom of the mazer and after his decease I will that Elizabeth Bowe, his daughter, have the same mazer.”86 Holdness’s chain of beneficiaries highlights how mazers manifested the importance of lineage and family memories. Most images adorning mazers bequeathed between 1350 and 1540 were of a saint or a biblical scene. Owners understood these images as apotropaic, that is, protective, illustrating yet another set of meanings given to mazers. The silver band on John Osburn’s mazer recorded “the names of the [Kings] of Cologne [the Magi],” an inscription popularly believed to protect against illnesses, particularly falling sickness.87 Images also provide evidence for how owners connected individual

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vessels to a beneficiary. Mary Martyn left Beatrice Robys, daughter of John Robys, “a mazer with a narrow mouth band with St. John Baptist in the bottom.”88 This mazer both commemorated her father and invoked the protection of the saint. Isabel Godying left her daughter Margaret a mazer with St. Margaret in the boss.89 As Margaret was both the patron saint of childbirth and her daughter’s name saint, the decoration on this mazer made it a particularly appropriate bequest for a daughter of childbearing age. While not all bequests of drinking vessels are so easily decoded, in a symbolic economy where saints promoted identification with particular behaviors and concerns, where believers prayed to individual saints for protection, and where name saints carried the memories of deceased parents, these images allowed testators to visualize their aspirations for particular beneficiaries and to call upon the saints to look out for their new owners. Because making mazers was complex, requiring skill and the cooperation of different artisans, they also embodied the values of craft workers.90 These were the values promoted by craft guild ordinances and city government, which legislated against poor work and shoddy materials and for the proper training of apprentices.91 After harvesting the burl, a turner shaped it on a lathe. Maple trees (Acer campestre), which produce burls, have a hard wood prone to chipping and cracking when worked. The dense and irregular grain of a burl makes working it particularly difficult. Maple had been popular for bowls and other eating vessels in the early medieval period, but by the thirteenth century, ash, alder, and beech had replaced it, because they were easier to work and ash and alder were water resistant.92 The bowls and cups recovered from the Mary Rose, the warship of Henry VIII that sank off the north coast of the Isle of Wight in 1545, are mostly made of beech.93 The use of maple for making mazers was, therefore, a choice guided by motivations other than the ease of working with it, such as aesthetics or display of skill. Surviving mazers suggest that consumers particularly desired thin wooden bowls. Fashioning such a bowl required patience and restraint on the part of the turner in order not to remove too much wood all at once and break the burl. A metalsmith also had to make and affix the rim, boss, and foot, again without breaking the bowl.94 An additional complicating factor is that wood shrinks and expands with humidity and temperature, while for all practical purposes metal remains stable. Medieval artisans understood the similarity in manufacturing nuts and mazers; although coconut shells came ready formed, artisans still had to polish and carve them. Building both styles of vessels thus required the cooperation and labor of two different kinds of artisans, and at many points in the process something could go wrong.95 Mazers were not unique in requiring cooperation among different companies, and guilds often chafed at these relationships, but the manufacturing process, coupled

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with the social significance of drinking together, made mazers and nuts appropriate vessels to embody merchant and artisan values and illustrates how these values crossed the workshop threshold to shape domestic behavior and identity.96 The rarity of coconuts and the difficulty of working with maple led to counterfeiting. Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) also has an attractive grain, which when worked and polished can be difficult to distinguish from maple. It is much easier to work but is not water resistant. It was rare in England until the late Middle Ages, but once introduced, it was sometimes substituted for maple.97 The goldsmiths’ guild statutes explicitly prohibited the sale of mazers made of sycamore, claiming their sale “into the provinces as mazers [is] to the damage of the common people and the great discredit of the craft.”98 When the currier Thomas Mower died, he had among his plate a “counterfeit mazer with a single band, weighing 8½ ounces.”99 The concern with counterfeiting further emphasizes the skills necessary for making real mazers, because making a successful counterfeit mazer required understanding and duplicating the process with fraudulent materials. Skill was not just an end unto itself; it was related to cleverness and could promote wit, as further manifested in the names and decorations that owners gave to their mazers. William Hawed left his mazer “called ‘Long Nose’ ” to his parish to remember him at his anniversary.100 Did someone with a long nose have difficulty using it? Did this gift then impose a humorous memory on an other wise somber occasion? Humor and wit were also brought to bear on mazers when burnished or polished burls mimicked marble. This connection is suggested by the so-called serpentine mazer, probably made in London circa 1500 and now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 7). Artisans might have appreciated the playfulness behind making a common material (wood) imitate an elite one (marble). At the same time, this mimicry served as an unspoken commentary on guild statutes and prohibitions against counterfeiting, by overtly rather than covertly substituting one material for another. It is also possible that a burl’s resemblance to serpentine marble added to its appeal. Both Dioscorides and Pliny believed that serpentine marble cured snakebites, counteracted other poisons, and helped against diseases such as colic, gout, pleurisy, and intestinal pain.101 Cornelius Agrippa, citing Albertus Magnus, says that “stones which resemble the rays of the sun by their golden sparklings” are efficacious against falling sickness and poisons.102 While there is no evidence that maple held any healing properties, the ability to imitate such curative material must have been enticing.103 By the end of the Middle Ages, many people also believed that coconuts had special properties. Both Marco Polo and Ibn Battúta declared them healthful,

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Figure 7. Serpentine mazer (London [?], ca. 1500). Instead of a burl, this mazer is made with serpentine marble, believed to protect against poison. Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. M.248-1924. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum.

with Polo saying they would relieve dropsy and clean the lungs and spleen.104 In the late fifteenth century, some seem to have thought that cups made from coconuts could detect poison.105 While Rolf Fritz in his study of coconuts in medieval Europe found no written evidence for this belief prior to 1611, a nut listed in the Duke of Berry’s 1416 inventory was described as decorated with a snake’s tongue, possibly evidence of this belief.106 By the seventeenth century, coconuts had gained greater popularity as an exotic curiosity and an aphrodisiac.107 Taken together, mazers and nuts might have had some healthful, albeit undefined associations, but it was not their primary attraction. Using mazers successfully required different behavior than other cups.108 Comparisons between them and the ceramic tankards and jugs that merchants and artisans also owned and used show that merchant and artisan households created and memorialized specific forms of sociability around these high-end drinking vessels. Mazers and nuts could be difficult to use, because their metal rims made them top-heavy and the shallowness of some mazers made them prone to spilling. Thus, they required careful handling on the part of the user. Drinking

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from these vessels, therefore, promoted restraint, teaching the new user or reminding the seasoned one how to drink as a sober and restrained citizen. The metal rims could also demarcate a point beyond which the vessel should not be filled, therefore limiting consumption. Thomas Howell’s standing mazer with toad’s feet, a symbol of sin, reminded the user of the consequences of too much drink.109 Great mazers were big enough so that not only did users need both hands; they also had to be careful not to spill the contents down their front. Mimi Hellman’s observations about how eighteenth-century furniture fashioned a civilized body are apt here. She writes, “furniture elicited aesthetically and socially desirable conduct from its users precisely by appearing not to regulate their behavior, by a strategy of prescription through agreeable accommodation.”110 Mazers worked in a similar manner, creating desired behavior through the physical requirements necessary to use them. Compared with the shape of a tankard, with its steep sides and handles, mazers created a different kind of drinking behavior. Tankards would have held more drink and were easier to use, especially after a great deal of alcohol consumption (Figure 8). They also frequently sported bearded faces as decoration, a reference to virility.111 Users could gesticulate wildly and hold onto their drink, behavior much more difficult when using a mazer. Drinking vessels in general, but mazers and nuts in particular, performed a lot of work and carried significant meaning for London households. Because they were luxury items but were also quite common, they challenged definitions of luxury even as owners could realize their sometimes-substantial monetary value.112 Affectively, they not only tied families together across the generations, but they required skill to make and use, thus constantly affirming through their presence the particular values of skill, cooperation, and sociability that was central to merchants’ and artisans’ behavior. These attributes were not evident in the descriptions that appraisers gave to the mazers and nuts they found in London houses, which focused instead on their size, condition, and the presence or absence of metal fittings. It was use within convivial and familial contexts that gave them the value testators commemorated in their wills, values not evident by simply looking at them.

Making Household Status with Beds and Bedding Beds also received extensive attention from both testators and appraisers. This attention reflects their moral, symbolic, and monetary worth.113 Beds held powerful associations with lineage, family, human vulnerability, and the life cycle.114 Although the Church expected marrying couples to receive the priest’s blessing at the

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Figure 8. Ceramic tankard with bearded face (late fifteenth or early sixteenth century). Tankards held more drink than most mazers and their handles made them easier to use. The beard face promoted a message of masculinity and sexuality, which may have complemented the ability to drink a lot. Museum of London, accession no. 6572. Image © Museum of London.

church, the blessing did not so much create a binding marriage as ratify it. Couples could exchange marriage vows anywhere—at home or in a tavern—and without witnesses or in the presence of strangers. If the couple exchanged vows in the future tense, then consummation created the sacrament of marriage.115 By extension, beds were associated with marital intimacy and household order and harmony.116 Death ideally also took place at home in or near a bed, with the household surrounding the dying, hoping the priest would arrive in time to administer last rites.117 Beds were so imbricated in these life-cycle concerns that testators often re-

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ferred to the bed in which they were lying as they dictated their wills. Alice Langshort left her son “my whole bed complete that I lie in with the celor, tester, and curtains.”118 As Lisa Liddy points out, these sorts of statements imply not only that this was the best bed in the house, but that the beneficiary was a particular intimate of the testator, worthy of such a powerfully symbolic gift.119 Both London testators and appraisers acknowledged beds’ symbolic and moral weight and their potential as intimate spaces in the ways they described them. The term “honest bed,” which appears in both literary and administrative records, expressed beds’ great moral weight.120 The word “honest” began its life in antiquity as a social and ethical category. In the Middle Ages it acquired aesthetic and stylistic implications as well.121 The medieval Latin honestare means to ornament or adorn. Thus, to make something “honest” is to adorn or decorate it in a fitting manner, one that “people of honour . . . will appreciate and judge as appropriate for [its] purpose.”122 In Bonum Lectum, a fifteenth-century domestic allegory, making “an honest bed” serves as a metaphor for the careful ordering of the soul.123 It picks up the reference to the bed in the Song of Songs and makes it both literally and figuratively a place to encounter God. At the beginning and end of a day, through prayers and contemplation, with or without a devotional book, the bed becomes a place to meet God, and putting on sheets and blankets, highly valued items, honored him. The phrase also turns up in several wills, illustrating widespread recognition of the concept. In 1425, John Hungh left his son “unum lectum honestum [an honest bed].”124 The use of this term and the attention testators and appraisers gave to beds recognized both aspects of the meaning of “honest” and its applicability to beds. London houses held many different types of beds, and the kind one slept in both made and reflected one’s status and identity within the household. For example, Thomas Cowper’s “chief chamber” had three different kinds of beds: a “standing bed,” which, by the end of the fifteenth century, when Cowper died, probably had posts, possibly a headboard, footboard, side rails, and maybe a wooden canopy. Underneath the standing bed was a “running bed,” a trundle bed. The inventory valued the two as a set. Also in the bedroom was a cradle.125 As the householder, Cowper slept in the grandest and most adorned bed; children, servants, apprentices, and tenants used more modest ones, such as trundle beds or simple box beds, also called forms, frequently found throughout houses, and an infant slept in the cradle. The different beds marked not only household status but occupant age. The standing bed was always visible and opulently adorned. The running bed was an obstacle, tucked out of the way when not in use. As a “hide-abed,” it marked its occupants as temporary members of the household: children,

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Figure 9. Historiated initial C with a woman in childbed. From Liber astronomiae (London, ca. 1490). The bedding includes a celor, tester, and bed curtains of blue, with a coverlet of pink. London, British Library MS Arundel 66, fol. 148r (detail). Image © British Library.

who would grow up and move away, or servants or apprentices, who would leave for marriage or a new employer.126 Expensive bedding and curtains, usually more valuable than the bed frame itself, typically adorned a standing bed or bedstead. By the middle of the fourteenth century, at their fullest expression, beds had a cloth canopy (celor) and a curtain hanging at the head (tester) and three more curtains at the bed’s two sides and foot, which could be moved to expose or hide occupants (Figure  9).127 Usually owners coordinated the material, colors, and decorations, with the celor and tester constructed out of the richest and most elaborate material. Beds might have any portion or combination of these hangings. Richard Northampton, a draper, had

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only two curtains and a canopy for his bed when he went bankrupt in 1370.128 For those with more means, bedding could change with the season or according to whim, manifesting wealth and taste. Among the many coverlets Alice Bartelot discussed in her will was “a covering [for] lying upon my bed in the summer.”129 By the sixteenth century, wooden canopies and wainscoting frames become more common, with the carving competing with or augmenting the bedding. In addition to curtains and canopies, a bed also had a mattress and feather bed (sometimes more than one of each), variously filled with straw, flock (leftover wool), feathers, or down, and sheets, blankets, coverlets, and pillows for both display and sleeping.130 The variety and quality of bedding further delineated household status. Wills and inventories identify sheets as fine, coarse, canvas, fustian, or linen, making feel or touch a component of identification and preference. To fit a mattress, sheets were woven in panels or “leaves” and sewn together to make them the appropriate size.131 Margaret Halle left her cousin “a pair of sheets of 3 leaves.”132 Panels could be replaced when they wore out, but ill-fitting sheets would have meant sleeping on an uncomfortable and lumpy seam. A number of households had separate sheets for their servants’ beds. Alice Kyrkeby, for example, stored her servants’ sheets in one chest and her own in another.133 Servants’ sheets were likely also made of coarser material, such as flax or canvas. Sleeping on second-class sheets added to the burdens of being a domestic servant. Crawling into modest beds with rough, stained, ill-fitting, or threadbare sheets at the end of a hard day of labor reminded servants of their place, even when their employer was asleep and therefore unable to make the point verbally. Differences in quality and comfort contributed to how a bed created and maintained household hierarchies. The display of a fully made-up bed filled with color and texture signaled wealth. As we saw in Chapter 1, those households with money for luxuries often spent it on colorful coverlets made from valuable textiles such as silk. Swaths of colored fabric, but also elaborate tapestries, or painted, woven, or embroidered images decorated the fabric of the bed curtains, canopy, coverlet, and throw pillows. Possible decorations included coats of arms, foliage, flowers, animals, and religious imagery. These options were more widely available after the plague. Elizabeth Bevell’s bed curtains had the Trinity on them, while Robert Otelby’s children slept under matching coverlets adorned with white lions.134 Picking up on the bed’s potent associations with lineage and marriage, decorations on bedding often promoted lineage or protected the occupant with apotropaic images. Who better than the saints to watch over a sleeping or ailing person? Although the beds described in our texts are no longer extant, the marriage bed of Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) still survives (Figure 10), and it suggests what the

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Figure 10. Henry VII’s marriage bed (English, late fifteenth century). The carved images on the headboard and canopy promote marriage, fertility, and dynasty. The lighter wood is the recent restoration. Langley Collection, photo courtesy of Ian Coulson.

best beds in the houses of wealthy Londoners might have looked like. Elaborate carvings symbolized lineage and dynasty. Among the images on the royal bed are two figures thought to represent Adam and Eve, progenitors of the human race. Further adornment included acorns, grapes, and strawberries, all fertility symbols, as well as biblical imagery associated with temptation and redemption, heraldic

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imagery, and royal motifs. This once richly painted bed promoted the notion of Henry and his wife Elizabeth as fecund, righteous founders of a new dynasty.135 Nor was the projection of lineage onto a bed limited to the monarchy, or even to titled families. Richard Fawkener, a London ironmonger, had a “celor and curtains stained with falcons” on his bed, which he left to his son.136 The birds, a play on the family’s surname, are reminiscent of heraldic animal charges and pointed to Fawkener’s lineage, but the staining cost much less than tapestry. Like wall hangings, bedding had a visual impact, or charisma, that struck appraisers when making the inventories. The 1484 inventory for Thomas Gilbert describes “a celor and tester of Sandwich bastard stained with leaves and vines with the salutation of our lady and 2 curtains of blue buckram,” blue being the Virgin’s color.137 The visual impact of the bedding was so important that it sometimes identified a room. Robert Stodley’s “Green Chamber” took its name from the colors of the bed’s drapery. The tester was old, of green buckram, and the curtain of green sey (inexpensive wool cloth). A decorated covering complemented the curtains.138 Between wall hangings and bedding, households often had a significant percentage of their capital in bedchamber textiles. Sheets and table linens alone made up 10  percent of the value of John Skyrwyth’s household goods.139 The old and worn bedstead in Alexander Plymley’s maids’ quarters was decorated with a celor “of sey yellow and green, paned and 3 large curtains of the same sey with a double valance, fringed.”140 Appraisers valued the entire ensemble at 13s. 4d., eight times more than the 20d. of the bed frame. One suspects that Plymley had purchased a fancier bed and recycled his old bed by moving it to the maids’ quarters. Although made out of carved oak, the bedstead Robert Stodley used was similarly outstripped in value by its bedding, which included curtains of yellow and red linen, a mattress, a feather bed for both the bedstead and the trundle bed underneath it, down pillows, a quilt of linen, blankets, and two coverings, one with flowers and one with “imagery,” together valued at more than 54s., twice the value of the bed frame. Since the inventory does not mention a celor and tester, they may have been of wood and counted as part of the frame.141 The cost of all this bedding meant that owners kept it, even as it became tattered and worn. Although the appraisers described the linens in Richard Leman’s guest chamber as “sore worn,” they still valued them collectively at over 31s., far more than the bed boards they covered.142 Inheritance patterns demonstrate what beds, as symbolic or moral objects, meant in practice. While lineage had undeniable masculine associations, childbed and preparation of the corpse for burial were female concerns. Unlike mazers and nuts, testators recognized these gendered associations when disposing of beds in their wills. While both men and women valued them, they held somewhat differing

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views on their affective value, because they were gendered differently at particular moments in their use. Testators rarely left bed frames of any kind—they appear in only 2 percent of wills—but bed curtains, sheets, feather beds, mattresses, and all the other accessories for a well-appointed or “honest” bed were some of the most commonly bequeathed items, given both individually and as sets. Among the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) wills, 28  percent of citizen testators bequeathed bedding, and among the Commissary Court (CC) citizen testators, 42  percent did. Overall, women were more likely than men to leave bedding, but women were also typically disbanding a household. Just over half the women in both courts, compared with just over a quarter of men from both courts, left bedding. Analyzing the recipients of beds and bedding reveals something of how male and female testators thought about these items (Table 4). More than half the beneficiaries receiving beds and bedding were female, while 36  percent were male. Clergy, which I did not count for purposes of this analysis, and groups, such as parishes or guilds, made up the remaining 8  percent. Both male and female testators favored female beneficiaries over male ones. Female testators, however, also remembered younger beneficiaries more frequently than men, counted here as a generation or two below the testator, and including young servants and apprentices as well as offspring and nieces and nephews. As a group, they would all have been saving to set up for their own households. In contrast, male testators in both courts were more likely to leave beds to family members, who might be children, but might also be the testators’ own siblings or cousins, so not necessarily young people. In favoring family members, men focused on the bed’s place as a source of family identity and lineage. Table 4. Beneficiaries of Beds and Bedding in London, 1384–1540

Beneficiaries Males

PCC male testators

PCC female testators

CC male testators

CC female testators

n = 115

n = 67

n = 349

n = 374

43%

24%

42%

36%

Females

55%

69%

52%

55%

Family

50%

39%

55%

34%

Servants/Apprentices

17%

34%

18%

20%

Young

43%

72%

58%

67%

Unspecified

23%

24%

16%

34%

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Beds and their coverings had material and aesthetic value for both men and women, and unlike mazers and nuts, they remained a constant bequest throughout our entire period, appearing in nearly a third of all wills in each sample. But men and women situated these values within their own gendered household and social experiences. While progeny and household figure as themes in both men’s and women’s bequests of beds, their choice of beneficiary shows them thinking about these themes differently. Women’s bequests of beds emphasized that they were places where households began and ended, moments that dominated women’s household lives. Men, for their part, tended to understand beds as places of identity and lineage, themes that legally and socially privileged them.

Conclusion Testators’ and appraisers’ descriptions of things worked on different but overlapping registers. Both took into account the manufacturing processes and artisanal skill that produced the item. However, testators also had memories of these possessions accrued through use. Owners of things balanced the difference between the monetary and emotional values of beloved objects, depending on their circumstances. When households faced financial difficulties, owners sold or pawned treasured heirlooms, but inexpensive goods could also become beloved through association and use. After the plague, consumers did not choose to fill their houses with things that had no prior meaning or cultural capital. They started with the items such as beds and mazers that already had powerful symbolic and metaphorical associations, and they realigned their preexisting meaning and significance to suit a new context, a new economic reality, and a new social environment. It was a new world after the plague, but it had continuities with what had come before. By looking at the records that consumers themselves created, we learn that this is more than a story of acquisition and imitation; it is a story of learning what living with more meant for creating identity and household. The competing values of affect and finance demonstrate that the story of the rise of consumption after the plague is more than just an economic one, when rising wages allowed people to purchase items previously unavailable to them. It is also more than a story of merchants and artisans mimicking their betters through the imitative use of luxury goods. These are the stories told by moralists, as they denounced the erosion of the relationship between appearance and status, and the courts, as they inventoried the possessions in debtors’ and testators’ houses. They

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are certainly part of the story but not the whole story. The story told by the consumers themselves is different. It is a story of their learning to live with and among more things and using things to create behavior and identities through use and experience that were meaningful to them during a time of social dislocation and economic difficulty. One of the lessons London consumers had to learn was how to move back and forth between two registers of value: the financial and the affective. Both were important to this commercially oriented population. Who tells the story of the impact of consumption is, therefore, important.

chapter 3

Interior Decorating After the Plague

Accumulating and Amassing With upwards of 50 percent of London’s population dead from the plague, empty houses could be found on every street. It is tempting to think that plague survivors and new immigrants to London simply took over these empty buildings, but London law and its administration remained robust enough to preclude this as a permanent solution. Vacant property needed owners, and both city administrators and neighbors remained committed to the lawful occupancy of empty buildings.1 Still, householders could take up more space for themselves rather than renting it out, and their higher wages allowed them to furnish these spaces more extensively.2 Both changes would alter how London’s merchants and artisans lived in their houses after the plague. They had many models for how to use their larger dwellings. The most appealing were those provided by the gentry and aristocracy, who constituted London’s most important consumers. London’s wealthiest merchants would have known of these elite households’ furnishings through personal experience, but as landholding aristocrats established town houses, gossip must also have played a role in spreading information about these houses and their contents to those of lesser means.3 Londoners who could afford it divided their expanded living space into more rooms. Living in more rooms allowed residents to separate activities, thereby creating new domestic priorities through furnishings and use.4 Many of these furnishings came from the Continent, and with their adoption came new ways of being, but more things rather than simply more space drove changes to how Londoners lived in their houses after the plague. With the expansion of domestic consumption emerged common domestic behaviors that transcended differences in wealth. Owners used their furnishings to promote their economic success, manifest their piety, and

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reassert household hierarchies. Their furnishings also helped them convince themselves of their own legitimate right to such behavior in an uncertain world.5 At the same time, medieval moralists argued that individual behavior, rooted in an orderly household, had implications for society. The bible, Aristotle’s Poetics, its medieval commentators, and late medieval conduct literature all took for granted that fundamental to the harmony and virtue of the polity were relations and behaviors crafted within the household. Royal, city, and guild governments made male householders legally responsible for the behavior of those living under their roofs. The household was thus a moral project that occupants participated in through the way they lived in a house.6 Changes to domestic spatial constraints, as well as increasing consumption, would therefore have serious moral implications. Merchants’ and artisans’ expanding consumption put them increasingly in the crosshairs of the moralists. Although some wealthy merchants were the younger sons of country gentry, sent to make their way in the city because of lack of opportunity at home, moralists routinely denounced all members of this group as imitators assuming illegitimate identities via their increasing standards of living. For example, The Book of Vices and Virtues, written around 1375, opined that “the burgess hopes to accumulate, amass, and trade all to the purpose of getting rich and being regarded as noble and greatly honored.”7 Merchants’ and artisans’ use of material culture, whether clothes or house furnishings, created anxiety, because, as sumptuary legislation makes clear, living standards were supposed to reflect status and identity, not create it.8 Contemporaries knew that despite common consumption habits, London’s merchants and artisans lived and behaved differently than did elites.9 So why the accusation of imitation and social climbing? Christopher Dyer has argued that the shared material culture of luxury in particular was the issue. A shared material culture of ordinary ceramics, such as archaeologists find both in cities and around castles, raised no concerns, but luxury served to distinguish the elites from everyone else.10 While merchants and artisans may have accepted the idea that consumption should match status in principle, they also knew their financial success allowed them to marry up or purchase a rural estate. So, in effect the most successful merchants knew that their use of material culture did make and change them. If they were successful enough, their grandchildren might have a title. They also lived in a world where innovations and modification were essential skills for their economic and professional survival.11 Thus, in both their businesses and their social lives, merchants and artisans used material culture differently than the elite did and, in the process, created new behaviors and identities.

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The characterization of merchants and, to a lesser degree, artisans as imitative continues to inform our historical understanding of this group.12 However, the concepts of adaptation or innovation rather than imitation provide us with more room to understand how London’s post-plague merchants and artisans used and adapted the material culture now available to them. Their reasons for using a shared material culture were both more complex and more interesting than simply aping their social betters. Both adaptation and emulation draw inspiration from something already in existence, but adaptation employs creativity, local knowledge, and technical skill to alter something for a new purpose or situation. Adaptation allows us to ponder the implementation of priorities and choices. While the material world of London’s post-plague merchants and artisans, especially the wealthiest, was similar to the gentry’s in many ways, urban location, mercantile needs, and domestic organization profoundly influenced how merchants and artisans engaged this material world. They were neither simply imitating their betters nor completely inventing new ways of living, but were rather expanding, adapting, and modifying habits that predated the plague in ways that distinguished them from the gentry and aristocracy. Adaptation allows us to take them seriously as a group that had generated its own shared values, practices, and even identity that transcended their economic differences.13 Literary scholars have argued that based on the literature that merchants read, they and their households shared a common or “bourgeois” culture or ethos, which distinguished them from the excess and display of aristocratic life.14 If the conduct literature they purchased and read is evidence for how they understood themselves, then merchants saw themselves not as social climbers but as being industrious, moderate, self-restrained, respectful of order, and pious.15 Guild organization and values, legal structures, property holding, and parish-based religious culture further generated shared values, behaviors, and identity, which drew in artisans as well. In arguing that merchants and artisans were adaptive and innovative in order to realize their own priorities, we need to ask what these priorities were. Industry, order, and piety were not new values, but the post-plague house and its furnishings manifested them in ways particular to this period. Industry required secrecy16 or a nascent form of privacy; order initiated new forms of hierarchy that responded to current demographic conditions; and piety prompted self-examination and contemplation. To see how post-plague houses produced these behaviors, this chapter looks first at the new rooms built into houses and their furnishings. It then analyzes two houses’ inventories made within eight years of each other in the fifteenth century to see specifically how their owners furnished them and the different

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concerns and needs these furnishings realized. Finally, it looks at how residents of small houses incorporated these same concerns and values in their domestic practices without benefit of multiple rooms.

More Rooms, New Priorities The classification of hall house, shop house, and rent employed in Chapter 1 to analyze pre-plague London houses still holds for post-plague London. Residents of both shop and hall houses, however, now added rooms to their houses. Some householders filled in their open halls to create additional rooms above the ground floor, some built additions on to their houses, and others purchased adjacent houses and either moved into them or demolished them and built new and larger residences.17 These rooms shared labels and furnishing practices with those of the gentry, thereby contributing to the impression that London’s merchants and artisans lived and behaved like their betters. Business concerns and urban constraints, however, required urban householders to adapt and modify these commonalities. Their adaptations created important differences between how merchants and artisans, on the one hand, and the gentry and aristocracy, on the other, arranged and used their domestic spaces. Adding rooms, sometimes at the expense of the great hall, manifested new ideas about the role of space in social display and hospitality; with fewer people, urban space was no longer at a premium, so large, open halls ultimately ceased to signal status and wealth in quite the way they had in the pre-plague period. Multiroom houses allowed householders to control access to people, spaces, and things in new ways, giving access both positive and negative connotations. Some rooms with limited access were especially prized as a mark of privilege. Other rooms with limited access, however, were difficult to reach, were no doubt dark and cramped, and were used by the least privileged members of the household. Many more inventories and wills survive for post-plague London. In this chapter, I use 123 debt and probate inventories for 128 different houses owned by Londoners. The earliest is from 1356 and the latest from 1543.18 Ecclesiastical court wills also survive and are a better source for tracking inheritance practices related to household goods than the Husting wills used in Chapter 1, because ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over movable goods.19 The increase in the number of rooms used by post-plague households is evident when we compare the houses of two mercers who lived nearly 150 years apart. In 1389, assessors valued John Barbour’s estate at just over £100. In 1536, Robert Stodley had an estate worth just over £200.20 Allowing for inflation, these two

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mercers were of nearly comparable worth, but they lived very differently in very different houses. Barbour lived in a two-to-four-room house, while Stodley had a nine-room house on Trinity Lane, another at Queenhithe, and a third in Stepney, a village northeast of London. Barbour’s inventory does not delineate rooms, but the order of his furnishings indicates the arrangement of his house, with clusters of related items implying the existence of separate rooms. First the appraisers encountered plate displayed in an almery, or cupboard. Then came barrels and other stores, some weaponry, a chest, a bed and bedding, another chest for clothing, a wall hanging, another bed, fireplace equipment, cushions, more wall hangings, and two tables and benches.21 This order suggests an initial room, a hall furnished with the plate, stores, and weaponry. The fireplace, wall hangings, tables, and benches at the end of the list suggest a second room. The items in between make it difficult to tell whether these two rooms each contained a bed, a third room held the two beds, or if there was a room for each bed. By contrast, Robert Stodley’s house on Trinity Lane had nine named rooms.22 Based on the number of beds alone—seven beds, including a trundle bed—Stodley lived in a much larger establishment. His Trinity Lane residence also included a number of buildings, all probably organized around a courtyard. The inventory starts with a warehouse, then the hall, followed by a parlor and four named chambers that held beds, including one for “maidens” and one for “men,” his servants. A buttery and a kitchen followed lists of clothing and “stuff of the household,” suggesting they were in a separate building on the tenement. The living quarters in Stodley’s Queenhithe house were more compact, but the house was also a hall house. Appraisers first entered a hall, followed by a buttery and kitchen, but there were only two chambers upstairs. In separate buildings he had a brewing house and a millhouse. More rooms not only allowed Stodley’s household to behave differently than Barbour’s did: they required it.23 The differences between Barbour’s and Stodley’s houses point to how increased consumption and diminished population would come to permit London’s merchants and artisans to live differently in their houses after the plague. As households expanded into more rooms, the rooms’ scale and their furnishings directed occupants’ activities. With more rooms Stodley could spatially separate tasks and create new ones that Barbour could not. This process required assigning relative values to spaces and their contents, which invested them further with relational meaning and significance. As we will see, more rooms allowed some occupants to separate sleep from work, develop habits of self-reflection, security, and secrecy, distinguish different kinds of sociability, and define what tasks produced dirt. Commercial interests still dominated the post-plague domestic habits of merchants and artisans. While the urban houses of merchants and artisans could share

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with rural elite houses halls, butteries, kitchens, and chambers, several rooms in merchant and artisan houses had no elite analogues.24 These rooms specifically enabled manufacturing, retail, or trade, practices that made mercantile lives. First and foremost, commerce and manufacturing required warehouses, storerooms, and workshops. In these spaces, master artisans taught apprentices, bossed around their journeymen, and displayed their hard-won skills. John Barnys, a dyer who died in 1489, had a dye house as part of his house complex.25 Robert Amadas, a goldsmith who included the king among his clients, had a “working shop” in his London residence.26 The workshop held the tools of his trade—goldsmith’s bellows and work tables, along with tongs, ladles, and iron stock—but he did not have a workshop in his country house in Essex. London merchants usually located workrooms in separate buildings, situated around their tenement or on separate property in the city. Aristocratic and gentry homes would have had some of these workspaces, but these supplied the household instead of producing for commercial purposes. Another room related to commerce was the counting house (domus computatorum). The idea for this room, as well as the term itself, was a Continental import, designating a place to keep accounts, store money, and make business deals, all activities that needed to be protected from the prying eyes of the uninitiated.27 Chaucer provides the earliest English literary examples of the term counting house, and the house of Richard Toky, a rich grocer inventoried for debt in 1391, provides one of the earliest physical examples.28 In his counting house, Toky kept a strongbox bound with iron, weights and a brass balance, a book of laws, a quire of paper, writing implements, “a box for silver with iron bindings,” a great deal of weaponry, and alabaster statues of the Virgin and St. John the Baptist.29 This combination of items argues for business, but also the need for both divine and worldly protection, because of the risk posed by travel, trade, and keeping money and valuables on hand. Robert Amadas, our royal goldsmith, also had a counting house. The appraisers visited this room second to last, because Amadas had positioned it far from the entry. Containing as it did a fortune in gems and precious metals, limited access would have been a definite priority for this room. When the appraisers assessed the house of wealthy mercer Alexander Plymley, the last room they visited was his “upper counting house.”30 Counting houses were highly specialized, appearing in only a few houses. Of the sixty-five London inventories with room labels, only six have counting houses, all were hall houses, and two were in houses owned by Plymley.31 The values of limited access, secrecy, and skill, however, were also possible in more modest houses. The shop was another commercial space missing from elite rural homes but found in many urban ones. John Skyrwyth lived in a tenement in the parish of

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St. Lawrence Jewry but owned another dwelling along London Wall.32 The inventory for his tenement at St. Lawrence starts with goods stored in what must have been a large shop filled with haberdasher ware. It also had a cellar underneath for storage. Next was another shop with mercery ware, then a third shop, called the “red shop,” which sold purses, bags, and “points,” or aglets for laces. Next were an “inner warehouse,” a garret, which would have been an attic room, and a bakehouse. Only after inventorying all these spaces devoted to business did the appraisers arrive at the living spaces. The first room listed on an urban house inventory is usually the hall or the shop. In inventories lacking room labels, the distinction between the two can be difficult to see, although for medieval visitors, the difference would no doubt have been obvious. Both halls and shops gathered people together and sought to impress through display, all the while allowing the householder to keep either customers or residents in sight.33 While we expect shops to be filled with items for sale, furniture to display and store goods, and balances, weights, and packing supplies, some halls contained these items because they were also places of work and business.34 William Edward, a grocer, kept his accounting table in his hall, and Bernard Axe, a hosier, stored wine barrels in his.35 Both shops and halls might also have a mattress tucked away in the corner for an apprentice or servant, along with work tables.36 A set of luxurious shops contracted by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s in 1369 even offered fireplaces and Flemish tile work.37 Luxury shops notwithstanding, halls, especially if they were open, delivered grandeur through scale, furnishings, and decorations that were designed to elicit an emotional and moral response. The textual blurring of shops and halls, however, reflects the primacy of commercial concerns to London’s merchants and artisans and the ebb and flow of business cycles. If a warehouse was full, overflow might temporarily be stored in a hall, and under these conditions, customers would come to the hall for merchandise. In bad economic times, a merchant or artisan might have to give up a warehouse and consolidate his inventory in his house. The hall was the first domestic room an outsider typically saw, and hall furnishings worked hard to instruct visitors about the household’s order, prosperity, largess, and civic engagement. As symbolic of the house and household, the hall was frequently the place where couples contracted marriages.38 The urban hall was related to the feudal hall, which was valued as an expression of traditional social order in a time of rapid social change. In London houses, the hall was the place where the household worked, ate, and met with visitors. Elements from pre-plague halls such as colorful soft furnishings continued to play an important role in postplague self-promotion. Although households were less peripatetic and houses had

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more furniture by the fifteenth century, throughout our period soft furnishings promoted and reinforced the importance of the cloth trade, the heart of London’s economy.39 Matthew Johnson argues that late medieval owners of rural houses routinely built halls into their new houses as “an expression of visual stylistic stability and conservatism,” an observation that might apply to London as well.40 The purposeful asymmetry of hall houses, with their ser vice room on only one end, emphasized social hierarchy.41 Owners did not intend their halls and their furnishings to be innovative in the part they played there, even as they acquired new furnishings and new styles. Jeremy Goldberg has argued that luxury was an intrinsic component of bourgeois values, whereas peasants invested their surplus in land and livestock. In his study of urban and rural inventories, he finds that cushions and silver spoons are key objects that distinguished urban from rural households.42 Both were items carried over after the disruption of the plague. Goldberg’s spoons are uncommon in London’s earliest inventories, the ones created due to debts, probably because debtors had already liquidated them in an attempt to pay off their creditors.43 They are, however, listed in nearly all probate inventories, which survive beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, and testators commonly bequeathed them throughout our period. Cushions were ubiquitous, regularly appearing in the inventories of even the most modest artisans after the plague.44 Typically grouped by appraisers with wall hangings and bench coverings, cushions came in sets and were decorated with animals, flowers, or other motifs. They softened hard surfaces and indicate a desire to bring color and comfort to houses. They would have complemented other colorful items found in houses of this period that are not listed in inventories, such as imported majolica and decorated, highly glazed Rhenish ware.45 While cushions were not new to merchant and artisan houses, wall hangings generally were. In the halls of rural elites, wall hangings of luxurious cloth called “dorsers” hung behind the high table, while coordinating or complementary “costers” hung on side walls.46 Wall hangings are rare in London inventories until the 1380s, but they became progressively more common in the next century.47 Some hangings were expensive imported tapestries, but most were made of sey. In the 1390s, merchants from the Low Countries and London drapers involved in the linen trade began adding a new, less expensive type of wall hanging, painted cloths, to their consignments of imported cloth.48 This new import quickly found its way into London houses.49 Commonly called “Flanders cloths,” painted cloths provided an inexpensive alternative for those unable to afford tapestries who nevertheless wished to participate in the fashion for wall hangings.50

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Inventories and wills show hangings becoming an established feature of London’s post-plague houses. They do not appear in pre-plague inventories. Only a third of those from the last half of the fourteenth century include them, while among the fifteenth-century inventories, more than half do. By the sixteenth century, however, nearly all houses had them.51 Hangings were never a common bequest, but even so, it still took about a generation after their first appearance in London for testators to deem them worthy of passing on.52 They start appearing in wills in the 1420s, but the majority of those bequeathed appear in the late fifteenthand sixteenth-century samples of wills. Whether a rich tapestry or a simple painted cloth, wall hangings filled the large spaces of post-plague houses with images. The painted cloth in John Wodchurch’s hall was twenty-eight yards long, while the one in Richard Leman’s hall measured just eight yards, perhaps used like the one shown in Figure 11.53 Their life-size images would have enlivened a room, especially when they moved in a breeze. As such, their images “animated” a household’s sophistication, piety, or political engagement, helping affirm for residents and visitors alike the household’s priorities and values as much as they promoted them to visitors.54 The most common images on wall hangings were religious, such as the saints, biblical stories, or moralistic themes. Nonreligious images included scenes from romances, historical scenes, and, by Henry VIII’s reign, the king’s arms. Elizabeth Keynes’s hall hanging of the Annunciation offered a more conventional message about her household’s pious concerns than Katherine Long’s hall hangings of the Nine Worthies, a Continental theme that promoted chivalric virtues.55 Householders mixed and matched hangings throughout the house. Stephen Bedyngton’s house, assessed in 1546, for example, had a number of painted cloths: one with “the story of Holofernes,” another with the Prodigal Son, a third “of the rich man and Lazarus,” and one “with Ferdinand,” possibly either Ferdinand of Portugal, whom Jean Froissart, a medieval chronicler, wrote about, or Ferdinand of Castile, whose conquest of Andalusia Thomas Elyot celebrated in his 1531 text The Boke Named the Governour.56 Hangings might have provided some insulation against the damp cold of winter and the heat of the summer, and they also might have divided a room, but their primary function appears to have been decoration, self-identification, and self-promotion, part of the display that created and affirmed a household’s reputation. Lawrence Stockwood’s house had a banner with John the Evangelist and St.  Lawrence, Stockwood’s name saint.57 Richard Bromer accessorized his hall hangings telling the story of Daniel with lion cushions.58 These choices manifested

Figure 11. Blind Tobit. From the Bible historiale (Bruges, 1470–79). Behind the settle on the wall is a blue hanging cloth with stylized vines. London, British Library Royal MS 15 D I, fol. 18r. (detail). Image © British Library.

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a concern for what images hung in the hall, whether motivated by the desire to establish a relationship with the saints, inspire household behavior, or a maybe by a sense of humor, as in the case of Bromer’s lion cushions. Weapons constituted another important hall furnishing, and these, as we have seen, were also found in pre-plague halls. Weapons were both bodily and household objects. Worn on the body, they signaled masculinity and status. In the houses of London’s citizens, weapons further connoted membership in the city’s militia, signaling that the householder was a citizen.59 Among the forty-three houses inventoried for debt between 1350 and 1400, more than two-thirds had weapons, more than had wall hangings. Half of the twenty-nine houses inventoried for probate before 1500 had weapons, and appraisers found most of them in the hall. By the sixteenth century, however, only about one-third of the twentythree inventories listed them, and owners less frequently displayed them in halls. Although men still bequeathed their daggers, short swords, and knives in their wills, they now stored their weapons in out-of-the-way rooms such as servants’ quarters rather than displaying them in halls.60 With the disappearance of weapons from halls and the appearance of wall hangings and painted cloths, merchants and artisans telegraphed new messages with their displays. Piety and Continental sophistication gradually replaced militaristic notions of citizenship. In his 1484 translation of Raymond Lull’s treatise The Order of Chivalry, William Caxton, England’s first printer, complained about this change in merchants’ priorities; they promoted the cult of chivalry but lacked military preparedness.61 But perhaps Caxton offered the wrong diagnosis. After Gascony fell in 1453, hostilities with France declined, and London had fewer reasons to call out its militia.62 Weapons remained a sign of masculinity, but perhaps for London’s citizens, they ceased to be as potent a manifestation of citizenship. Urban masculinity and citizenship were increasingly defined by membership in one of the city’s companies, running a successful business, producing a family, and maintaining an orderly home.63 Even though the hall was a conservative room, it was not immune to changing household priorities and evolving decor. The rise of the parlor further contributed to changes in how residents furnished and used their hall.64 Variously termed an interlocutorium or a parlorium, after the room in a monastery where monks could speak, parlors appear in both aristocratic and merchant and artisan houses in the fourteenth century. Although an Assize of Nuisance case from 1330 mentions a parlor as a boundary, the earliest London example of a parlor for which we have meaningful evidence is from 1373, for the house of Thomas Mockyng, a wealthy, but bankrupt fishmonger.65 His house consisted of two chambers (camerae), a hall (aula), a storage room or larder

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(dispensa), a parlor (interlocutorium), a workroom (camera serviencium), a room above for his apprentices (prentiseschaumbre), and a kitchen (coquina). Comparing hall and parlor furnishings illustrates how he used these rooms. Mockyng placed wall hangings and a table in both his hall and parlor, but the hall also had a fireplace, cushions, a candelabra, and washbasins. In contrast, his parlor contained his account book, a cupboard, and some cups. The cups and account books indicate that this was where Mockyng conducted business negotiations and sealed deals with a drink. Mockyng may well have wanted to keep his account book away from the prying eyes of hall occupants. If the order of the inventory reflects the arrangement of his house’s rooms, then appraisers visited his parlor third, after the hall and storeroom, meaning it was not very accessible. His hall, with its fireplace, wall hangings, and cushions accommodated many people and was visually more impressive. The kinds of objects found in halls and parlors differentiate the ways their occupants used these rooms. Both rooms were equally likely to have fireplaces and wall hangings, but appraisers identified the images on parlor wall hangings less frequently, possibly because they and the room were smaller and thus less visually striking. Parlors were also more likely to have books, desks, devotional objects, and items for entertainment. For example, Thomas Mower kept a set of bells played with a mallet in his parlor, and John Skyrwyth read his well-thumbed printed copy of Ranulphus Higden’s chronicle, the Polychronicon, in his parlor and entertained with the two gaming tables he kept there as well.66 Of the thirty-three parlors inventoried, ten had at least one of these items and four had two. In contrast, of the thirty-seven halls inventoried, only seven had any of these items, and of these seven, three were found in houses without parlors. The contents of parlors indicate that owners used this room as a place for socializing with intimates, individual study, contemplation, and self-reflection.67 These behaviors aligned not only with the need for confidentiality in business dealings but with the aspirations of the vita activa, a devotional practice that sought to translate monastic discipline to lay households. The vita activa demonstrated the possibility of living a spiritual and morally upright life in the secular world, rather than in a monastery.68 The parlor’s more intimate scale and personal contents indicate it was not a place to overawe clients. By encouraging introspection and intimacy, the parlor altered household behavior and maybe even household relations, particularly between husbands and wives.69 With its smaller scale, the parlor was a counterpoint to the hall. If the hall promoted encounter and surveillance, parlors, like counting houses, offered limited access to and observation of occupants. In parlors and counting houses, householders negotiated, entertained, studied, and contemplated out of view of the rest of the household.70 They were spaces where householders could realize the

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values and identities they promoted in their halls. These rooms operated as retreats or enclosures carved out from the busy, crowded, and other wise easily accessible spaces of a house. We might label the collective desires enabled in these rooms as “privacy.”71 Given the construction of walls within timber-framed houses, the wish not to be observed would not reliably include not being overheard. Walls were thin, and it was hard to conceal conversation, although wall hangings would have somewhat muffled sounds. In this sense, Londoners did not associate “privacy” with shame, modesty, or sex, as in modern understandings of privacy.72 Rather, the furnishings and space of parlors allowed users to focus on improving themselves as moral subjects, through conviviality, study, or prayer, while the hall created and displayed a reputation or an outer shell.73 Although not all residents could enjoy the privileges that parlors or counting houses conferred, at this point privacy does not appear to be a particularly gendered concept. Rather, it was a consequence of household status and wealth; privacy or retreat came with power and possession, behaviors unavailable to servants. Most London houses probably did not have parlors. Just over half of all London inventories with room labels had one, and they were more common in the sixteenth century.74 Without room labels they are difficult to see in the debt inventories, but the arrangement of possessions found in these texts often argues against their existence. Books and items for entertainment and devotion are rare in the extents for debt inventories. Those that are listed are usually placed close to the beginning of the inventory, suggesting that no parlor existed and that residents of most houses both socialized and relaxed in the hall. For example, John Norwich, a prosperous grocer, had furnished his house with luxury goods from across Europe and Asia by the time he was inventoried for bankruptcy in 1397.75 Nonetheless, his turtledoves are listed after his weapons and wall hangings at the beginning of his inventory, suggesting that despite his ability to afford prestige furnishings, he did not have a parlor.76 For those living in houses with parlors, however, the changing value of wall hangings in their halls versus the ones in their parlors emphasizes the evolving roles of these two rooms. In the second half of the fourteenth century, when wall hangings became popular, householders hung their most expensive ones in the hall, but by the mid-sixteenth century, the more opulent textiles were hung in the parlor. Appraisers valued the hall hangings in Mockyng’s fourteenth-century house at more than £4, while they only valued those in his parlor at 10s. By the time Thomas Cokkes died in 1538, however, the appraisers valued his “old hanging” in the hall at just 3s., but those in his parlor at more than twice that.77 As the parlor gained in importance, the hall’s furnishings diminished in value.

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The difference between Robert Stodley’s hall and parlor in his sixteenthcentury Trinity Lane house illustrate how the parlor, along with the significance and prestige of certain furnishings had evolved by the sixteenth century. Stodley, the wealthy mercer discussed earlier in the chapter, died in 1536. His hall held no fireplace or weapons, and assessors valued the canvas wall hangings at only 20d. It contained a great deal of furniture, however. There were several cupboards, tables, along with a desk, a bench, and a chair. Most of the furniture was of wainscoting, and the chair “of English oak” had “a woman’s face on the back.” Wainscoting had appeared by the late fifteenth century, as the growth of sawmills made it easier to produce wide smooth boards, and it became common in the sixteenth century.78 The use of paneling, which gave joiners a surface to show off their carving skills, made furniture more visually impressive and more expensive, giving it a starring role in the vocabulary of household display. During the same period, furniture was also becoming less versatile, which furthered its status as a luxury item. Lastly, the appraisers found a counting table in the hall for rendering his mercery accounts.79 The contents make it clear that this hall was a place of business that could accommodate many associates, whom Stodley hoped to impress with the carved furniture. Stodley’s parlor, on the other hand, had a large fireplace and much nicer wall hangings of green wool, valued at eight times the ones in the hall (13s. 4d.). There were also two leather chairs; a drop-leaf table, also with wainscoting; two pictures, one of a gentlewoman spinning and another of the Virgin Mary; a desk; and a second “English oak chair with the image of a woman on the back.”80 Among “other Stuff of the Household” the inventory lists an assortment of cushions, rugs, and curtains, and two harps for making music. With its leather chairs, luxurious hangings, and art, the parlor was not only visually interesting, it was softer and more comfortable. Here, Stodley likely retired with his intimates on cold days at the end of business. Inventories designated the rooms beyond the hall, parlor, shop, and counting house as chambers, often named according to location, “the chamber over the stairs,” or decor, “the green chamber.” Most chambers had beds in them, with about a third of all the chambers in the probate inventories having more than one.81 The more chambers, the wealthier the household. The householder slept in the great, or chief, chamber. Sometimes the householder’s children had their own rooms, and by the end of the fifteenth century, some very wealthy merchants’ houses even had nurseries, a room inspired by aristocratic residences.82 For wealthy householders and their families, chambers separated sleeping from working or eating. Sleeping away from one’s work came with household status that most servants would not have enjoyed, as their beds were scattered throughout the house and could be found in shops, halls, parlors, cellars, or even in their employer’s chamber.

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Located above the ground floor, chambers also had restricted access. As places of sex, whether licit or not, chambers connoted intimacy. By the early modern period, the front of the house held the better chambers, allowing an occupant to see the street or courtyard and monitor the goings-on.83 This may have held true for the immediate post-plague period as well, but without floor plans it is difficult to tell. Chamber furnishings, such as tables, chairs, chests, and prayer books, imply that other activities such as dressing, work, study, and prayer also took place in these rooms, thus supplementing the parlor or compensating for the lack of one.84 Some large households provided their servants with a separate bedroom, allowing at least some of their household staff to sleep away from their masters or their work. Of the sixty-five house inventories with room labels, nineteen include a separate chamber for household servants. Probate inventories for these ample houses come from across the whole of the post-plague period. “Servant” is a capacious term, with testators using it interchangeably with “apprentice.” Domestic ser vice was usually performed by young people, before they got married, making it a part of their life cycle.85 Servants might do domestic work, but they might also do piecework. Despite clauses in their contracts prohibiting it, apprentices sometimes performed domestic work.86 Servants had to do what employers asked of them; they were heavily supervised; the provision of housing and food was subject to an employer’s whim; the pay was poor and usually given only at termination. Servants were also vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault.87 In light of all the ways employers were able to control their servants’ lives, for the servants to have a space of their own seems desirable; it certainly taught them the experience of escaping surveillance. The furnishings that employers provided for their servants’ rooms indicate their secondary household status, but the difference among the furnishings of the servants’ rooms further reflects hierarchies among the servants. Robert Stodley’s male servants slept in a “square bed of boards” valued at just 10d., and his female servants slept in a “bed of boards” worth 12d.88 The difference in value might speak to either the beds’ size or their condition. Servants would have shared a bed, rather than having one to themselves. In contrast, Stodley enjoyed a “trussed bed of English oak” valued at 26s. 8d. that came with a trundle bed valued at 3s. 4d. Alexander Plymley had placed decorative objects in his servants’ room.89 His female servants had a “Flanders painted cloth, new,” as well as an old devotional tablet “of wood fine, stained with our lady and a great looking glass, broken.” These objects, valued collectively at 14d., provided color, interest, and moral guidance to the room’s occupants.90 It is likely some of these items were castoffs from “downstairs,”

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but their presence in the maids’ room nevertheless gave the women access to the experiences that these items brought. Frequently servants’ quarters doubled as storerooms. Richard Everly stored a harp case, weaponry he no longer kept in the hall, a vat, and several chests in his “maidens chamber.” Stodley’s male servants also shared their sleeping quarters with weaponry, along with tools for managing cattle.91 The implication is that servants’ rooms were less accessible, but their lack of accessibility came with other liabilities like tricky stairs, dark and cramped size, and heat in the summer and cold in the winter. For servants, their room’s lack of accessibility reflected their low status, not their need for protection or privacy. In those houses with separate rooms for male and female servants, the women appear to have had nicer rooms, or at least rooms with more decor. Westminster baker John Hanson provided his female servants with a canopied bed, a mattress, blankets, and other bed linens, along with a table, chair, and three painted cloths.92 To be sure, assessors described the bedding as old and the furniture as little, but the room was more than a bare chamber with a pallet. In contrast, his male servants had a bed with no curtains or canopy and only two old mattresses for comfort. The men also shared their space with items too worthless to name or value.93 These differences suggest a number of possibilities: female servants might have behaved better and kept the room’s furnishings in better condition; or they reflect a hierarchy among the servants. The female servants might have been relatives from outside London, who received better treatment.94 Lodging with the overflow of stuff accumulated by prosperous families implies that some servants’ rooms were an afterthought. Separate servants’ quarters were a measure of the household’s wealth, but they may also reflect the changing demographics of urban servants, another adaptation Londoners of means had to make to their households. While men typically worked as servants in aristocratic houses, female servants (as opposed to apprentices and journeymen) were common in London, although the ratio would have varied depending on the size of the household and the craft or occupation that supported it.95 Based on the evidence from York, Barbara Hanawalt argues for a greater percentage of male servants in fourteenth-century London.96 Goldberg argues that the mid-fifteenth-century recession cut York’s women out of more skilled jobs, such as piecework in the cloth industry, and relegated them to nonindustrial domestic work; this would seem to be the case in Coventry as well.97 If London underwent the same changes, it might explain the greater preponderance of “maidens’ chambers” in probate inventories; greater numbers of female domestic servants meant greater numbers of “maidens’ chambers.” Richard Everly’s house, inventoried in 1473, had a maidens’ and a men’s chamber, but the maidens’ chamber had three beds,

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while the men’s chamber only had one, suggesting he employed more women.98 While male servants often slept in halls in elite houses, having male and female servants sleep together in an urban hall would have been morally unacceptable.99 Counting houses, servants’ rooms, and parlors, the rooms that were new for London’s merchant and artisan houses after the plague, fostered new forms of household order. Household order, where hierarchy, access, and privacy intersected, was an important dimension of civic morality. In some cases, accommodating one value came at the expense of others. Householders may have given up the privacy and contemplation offered by a parlor for the necessity of morality, because they had both male and female servants. Neither the butcher Richard Bele, who died in 1483, nor Hanson the Westminster baker who died in 1495, had parlors, but both had servants’ quarters.100 As a butcher and a baker, could they not afford a parlor? Had they simply not yet adopted the new fashion of having one, or did they sacrifice space for the sake of morality in an effort to separate male and female servants at night? Bunking badly paid servants with grandfather’s sword seems like a dangerous practice, but it underscores the need for storage as one of the consequences of increased consumption.101 Among the variety of storage solutions were chests and cupboards, but large houses such as Plymley’s also had warehouses, storerooms, cellars, and butteries. The buttery had its origins in twelfth-century elite homes.102 The name comes from the wine butts, or barrels, originally stored there. Aristocratic homes paired the buttery with the pantry, another ser vice room, which was the place to store bread. This division, Mark Gardiner argues, grew out of the logic of separating wet and dry foodstuffs. By the thirteenth century, the buttery and pantry had come to assume Eucharistic associations, further inculcating domestic life with Christian theology.103 London houses that had butteries, both before and after the plague, did not usually pair them with another ser vice room, although names for this room in Middle English texts sometimes acknowledge the practice.104 William de Hanigtone’s 1308 building contract, discussed in the Chapter 1, specified a dispensa, which modern translators variously interpret as “larder,” “storeroom,” or “buttery.”105 While we do not know how Hanigtone intended to use his dispensa, in 1373, Mockyng, the bankrupt fishmonger, kept napery, wine, and plate in his. Neither Hanigtone nor Mockyng had a second ser vice room. Richard Toky, a bankrupt grocer inventoried in 1391, also had a single ser vice room, which the appraiser called his “Pantry & Buttery.” It too contained napery, wine barrels, and plate, but also candlesticks and knives.106 In 1395, appraisers of draper John Eston’s house labeled the room containing wine bottles and a cloth press as the “larderhouse.”107

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Whatever their name, these rooms held the items necessary for feasting. Their presence indicates not only that London households valued hospitality but that ceremony and ritual accompanied some meals. By the mid-fifteenth century, London appraisers keeping their accounts in Middle English used the term “buttery,” which seems to reflect its common usage. Even the largest merchant houses, which conceivably had space for both a buttery and a pantry, only had butteries.108 Some were quite large. In a witness deposition for a bigamy case, the deponent, Ann Frisell, claimed she was in a storeroom called a buttery (promptuario vocato a botry) large enough to hold her and the couple in question.109 Alexander Plymley’s buttery held furniture and was decorated. There was “a great meat almery of wainscoting joined . . . with 3 floors,” along with two wall hangings of red sey with canvas borders and linen shelf cloths.110 Robert Amadas’s sixteenth-century inventory offers yet another variation in terminology and translation. The appraisers list both a buttery and a larder house.111 The buttery had the usual complement of serving dishes and candlesticks; the larder had cupboards for “meat” made of oak and a wicker hamper. Along with candlesticks, lamps, and wine pots, householders now typically stored basins and ewers, dishes, chafing dishes, and sometimes a bread bin in their butteries, thereby combining it with the pantry’s function.112 The type of items kept in a London buttery remained constant throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the early modern period, the term “buttery” evolved in different ways. It applied to the commissary that sold food and drink beyond what a college served in its dining hall, and Henry Wotton’s seventeenth-century work Elements of Architecture argued that, in a grand house, the buttery provided the necessary sign of hospitality.113 It is this later meaning that reflects late medieval Londoners’ practice. London householders seem to have appropriated the term, having already created the room, its function, and its connotations. In post-plague London, assessors typically paired butteries with kitchens, and most of the houses inventoried for probate had them both.114 Because of the danger of fire, aristocratic houses continued to place kitchens in separate buildings.115 The post-plague London evidence is less clear, but it suggests that kitchens were increasingly part of a house, rather than a separate building on the tenement. A 1410 building contract for three houses on Friday Street stipulates that kitchens be built on the second floor, along with a hall and service room.116 Thomas Gilbert, who died in 1484, had a kitchen with a bedroom over it, although this does not preclude its being a separate building in the back of the lot.117 A kitchen contiguous with the rest of the house further distinguished rural elite from urban houses.118

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The loss of population in the plague allowed survivors and their children to live in more space and use that space differently both from before the plague and from rural elites afterward. While starting with the things valued before the plague, such as cushions and weapons and the desire to sleep away from work, London’s merchants and artisans adapted and modified these expectations to suit the new, post-plague conditions. More spaces allowed for the creation of a nascent form of privacy. The adaptations that merchants and artisans made to elite domestic practices would have been obvious to visitors, even if they still chose to think of merchant and artisan behavior as grasping.

The Houses of Thomas Salle and Matthew Phelips Shared domestic expectations did not make all London houses the same. Wealth played an important and obvious role in differentiating houses, but so did individual decisions and household priorities.119 Just as owners could make choices in cushions and wall hangings, they could make choices in how to use a house. Although London’s merchants and artisans took cues from elites on respectability and forms of social capital, their use of the rooms in their houses was not inevitable or natural, but determined by individual needs and choices.120 Through their choices, householders positioned themselves to make their way in society and decide how they would engage the city and their neighbors.121 These changes, however, did not happen all at once, and not every householder made the same decisions. The differences between the two houses inventoried in two of London’s earliest surviving probate inventories have less to do with wealth and more to do with the owners’ needs and concerns.122 These contemporaries, both merchants of considerable means, had filled their houses with luxurious imports from the Continent, but they kept very different kinds of houses. If houses and their furnishings project attitudes, define behaviors, and order a personal universe, then these men’s livelihoods and personal life offer clues as to why they made some of the choices they did and, by extension, clues to how houses and furnishings created status, social identities, and religious reputations. The two inventories, only eight years apart, illustrate both the process of learning to live with more possessions and how owners used them. The damaged and now incomplete inventory of Thomas Salle, a draper who died in 1468, describes a house with a hall, parlor, buttery, kitchen, and at least one chamber.123 In his hall was a fireplace and three tables, one long and two short. On

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the walls, hangings of red worsted accompanied nine cushions of the same material. He also had a small painted cloth of “our lady & [the] 3 kings of Cologne” and an abundance of weaponry: one spear, twelve spear shafts, a boar spear, an ax, a mail glove, and a shield. Matthew Phelips, a goldsmith, died just eight years later.124 His inventory is also damaged and incomplete, but his Cheapside house had a hall, parlor, buttery, and at least four chambers.125 As discussed in Chapter 2, the hangings in his hall, tapestries imported from Arras, were valued at £7 and were the most expensive items in the room. Three complementing tapestry curtains, twelve tapestry cushions, a large hanging candelabrum with five “noses,” several stools, several tables, both trestle and folding, a cupboard, wicker floor coverings, and an “iron border” for the hearth completed the furnishings. Phelips also owned six spears, two boar spears, seven battle-axes, seventeen “great and small” shields, and a gauntlet.126 The common furnishings of hangings, tables, and weapons do not disguise the fact that Phelips had a more luxurious, and probably larger, hall than Salle. Phelips not only had furnished his hall with higher quality objects, but his available seats, the candelabrum, and floor coverings accommodated many more people. Furthermore, the trestle and folding tables allowed the room to serve multiple purposes. Both houses also had parlors, but Salle had not yet fully embraced the room’s potential. His furnishings imply that he used it more as a storeroom or workroom than a place of relaxation or study.127 It had a stone mortar, a small iron-bound chest, a saddle, a torch, a chair, and wall hangings. Altogether the appraisers valued the contents at just 8s. 6d., a third less than the value of his hall furnishings. In contrast, Phelips’s parlor had a fireplace, hangings, curtains, and numerous cushions, including seven with lions and eight with griffons. Appraisers did not find these soft furnishings to be as costly as the ones in his hall; these hangings— painted cloths, not tapestries—were valued at just 10s. The parlor also had tables, benches, a cupboard, and a turned chair.128 A birdcage and “1 English book of chronicles of London” further established the room’s character.129 While neither man put his most expensive furnishings in his parlor, Phelips’s parlor had many more signs that someone used it for relaxation, entertainment, and study. Differences continue into their chief chambers. Like his hall and parlor, Salle’s chamber was comparatively modest, even old-fashioned.130 His bed had only three curtains and a valance of blue buckram. He had not added a canopy, an object too valuable not to be listed, even if old and worn. Wall hangings, a cupboard, eight joined chests for clothing and bedding, and a holy water stoup completed the room. In addition to conferring a blessing, holy water was believed by many to cure illnesses and ward off dangerous forces. The bedroom was a logical place for it, as it was a place where sleeping occupants were vulnerable to sudden fire, prowlers, and

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the health risks that many feared traveled in the night air. Phelips’s chamber, on the other hand, had an elaborate bed, with a tapestry canopy (“celor” and “tester”), three bed curtains of green tartan, and a choice of many coverlets.131 Underneath the bed was a trundle bed. Unusually, the room also had a fireplace. Further furnishings included a square chair, joined, with a turned stool, several chests of various kinds covered with carpets and cloths, six cushions embroidered with roses, a “round of glass for a woman,” a holy water stoup of latten, and many articles of clothing.132 The mirror, a rare possession in the Middle Ages, provides evidence of Phelips’s wife Beatrice. Less clear is what associated it with a woman: its size, its decoration, its use in checking one’s appearance?133 The fireplace, chair, stool, and wall hangings imply that this room, like the parlor, also served as a retreat. Yet the appraisers also noted that the hangings had “perished with moths,” thereby diminishing the overall effect. These two men lived in very different kinds of houses, despite their wealth and the fact that they were contemporaries. Their personal lives offer some explanation for these differences and in the process illustrate how houses and possessions created social identities and civic reputations. Although Salle was a draper, more than £200 of his estate lay in gems and jewelry. Since his inventory is incomplete, we do not know the full extent of his worth, but Salle likely imported much more from Bruges than just linen.134 For his part, Matthew Phelips was not only a goldsmith but also an alderman of Aldersgate ward and had served as mayor in 1463.135 London law required him to be worth at least £1,000.136 In addition to his London property, he also owned land in Kent.137 Wealth, then, did not determine the kind of house these men lived in; choice and self-fashioning were instead at play. As an alderman and former mayor, Phelips would have had to deal with his constituents. His hall’s rich furnishings not only needed to impress, even overawe, visitors, it needed it to be furnished and supplied to address different kinds of gatherings.138 Lighting gave Phelips further control over his surroundings, allowing him to observe his visitors and their conduct better. With so much of his wealth tied up in readily portable gems, Salle was less likely to want people hanging around his house. Security, manifest in the iron chest in his parlor, would have been a concern. However, we should not think of Salle as a recluse. In his will he asked that his tomb in the churchyard of St. Mary Abchurch be a “stone of marble . . . of such a height from the ground that two or three persons may sit there upon with their ease,” and his numerous individual bequests, including one to “John the son of . . . Isabelle [his stepdaughter] who is called in sport John Salle,” reveal an extensive network of family and friends.139 Still, he had not furnished his house in a way that encouraged visitors to venture beyond his hall. For Salle, socializing likely happened outside the house.

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Their chambers reflect the men’s marital statuses as well. Salle was a widower. Phelips, as we saw in Chapter 2, was unhappily married to his second wife, Beatrice. Likely his bedroom and the hangings “perished with moths” are left over from a more optimistic time in his marital life, either with his first wife, Joan (with whom he asks to be buried), or when newly married to Beatrice and hopeful about their future. With fireplaces and chairs in both the parlor and chief chamber, Matthew and Beatrice could each enjoy a fire but away from each other. While elite homes, organized around a great hall, associated chambers with women and halls with men, the marital dynamics rather than simply emulation of the elite explain the Phelipses’ house.140 The London chronicles in the parlor suggest that it was Matthew’s retreat, while the woman’s mirror links the chamber to Beatrice. By the time of their deaths, for different reasons, neither Phelips nor Salle had paid much attention to his bedroom. The wealth of these men gave them the wherewithal to furnish their houses as they desired, but they chose to use their houses differently. While the kinds of furnishings found in Phelips’s house could also be found in the houses of the gentry, in his house they aided his career as an alderman and mayor. He must have aspired to greater status, and indeed he was knighted in 1471 as we would expect of a former mayor; but his aspirations played out in London, with urban and mercantile goals guiding his choice of hangings and cushions.141 Salle, for all the evidence of his sociability, did not furnish his house as a place of hospitality or self-reflection. It safeguarded his possessions, but it did not encourage much more than that.

Small Houses, Common Concerns As Salle’s and Phelips’s houses show, their wealth allowed them to choose how to meet a variety of different needs. Nonetheless, as the fifteenth century progressed, small dwellings also came to contain many of the same kinds of furnishings as those found in large hall houses. Although situated differently and made of less valuable materials, they point to the growth of shared expectations for urban living, driven by consumption of goods rather than just the size of the house.142 Among these shared expectations was the desire for color, comfort, and privacy, the importance of hospitality, and the establishment of household hierarchies. Over the course of the fifteenth century, these commonalities grew more identifiable, as residents of small houses learned to use their furnishings to achieve these values, even if their small dwellings made it difficult to separate work, sleep, and other activities.

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Modest households might live in small houses of only a couple of rooms to a floor, only two or three floors to a building, and a shop on the ground floor. But a household might also simply rent a few rooms in a much larger building. The implications of these small living spaces are considerable. They not only limited the opportunities to control access or enhance security; they constrained inhabitants’ commercial ambitions. Without a workshop of their own, artisans found it difficult to marry, and if they were unmarried, guilds deemed them too unstable and underresourced to be productive to the level that full guild membership required.143 William Massynger, who identified himself as a citizen in his will, had an estate valued at only 42s. 6d. when he died in 1543.144 His accommodations consisted of one room, which held two bedsteads, their bedding, a trestle table, and a bench, along with some plate, cookware, cushions, a carpet, and clothing. He worked, slept, cooked, and ate all in one room, while rich merchants such as Alexander Plymley, who died in 1533, could conduct these activities in separate spaces. The increased production and consumption of inexpensive versions of popular furnishings allowed merchants and artisans across the social spectrum to deploy a common vocabulary of house use, even if the scale and quality differed. Among Massynger’s comparatively meager possessions were cushions, a carpet, and a bedstead. Through the presence of cushions, the appearance of wall hangings, and the diminishing importance of weaponry, those in small houses participated in the same medieval need for colorful display.145 The carpenter Thomas de Cantebrigge, living in one room in 1358, adorned his bed with a coverlet and bed curtains and decorated his walls with hangings. Seven cushions and a banker completed the decor.146 Of the fifteen inventories for one- or two-room houses from before 1400, cushions were ubiquitous; five also had weapons.147 Amenities, not just size, further determined the behavior of small-house residents. In the fourteenth century, small dwellings had fewer fireplaces.148 The oneto-two-room lodgings of John Standon, a glover inventoried for debt in 1396, did not have even one. Standon did, however, have a fire pan for hot coals.149 Houses with no fireplaces were distinctly different from rural houses, whether those of peasants or lords, whose hearths, however modest, provided a focal point for sustenance, warmth, and nurturance.150 Only in its most attenuated form did John Standon’s fire pan replace the hearth.151 Standon’s inventory also contained no cooking utensils. Without fireplaces, residents either had to cook elsewhere—some landlords offered a shared kitchen—or rely on takeout from one of London’s many pie shops.152 A Southwark tailor whose name is partially torn off his 1490 inventory had lived in two rooms attached to his shop.153 The “chamber” had a bed, and the “chamber over the shop” had a “small bed” along with a table and chairs. The

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tailor likely had his own bedroom, and a servant or apprentice slept in the “chamber over the shop” where other activities also took place. Neither chamber had a fireplace or cooking ware, nor did the shop. Also noteworthy is the fact that the appraisers did not identify either chamber as a hall. These small urban houses, an urban innovation, severed the primal connection between fire, sustenance, and reproduction.154 Cooking technology did not particularly improve during the late Middle Ages. Rather, the change appears to be simply an increase in the number of dwellings, even small ones, that had either a kitchen or a fireplace.155 Admittedly our evidence is thin. Among the eleven sixteenth-century probate inventories from London’s Consistory Court, seven are from testators who had lived in one room. Of these seven, three had fireplaces and cookware, and one more had cookware but no fireplace, and the remaining three had neither.156 With heat sources no longer distinguishing the well-off from the less well-off, the size of the house and numbers of rooms did.157 While small houses necessarily combined the functions and priorities that multiroom houses could delineate, small houses still manifested many of the same priorities and ideologies of large houses. Identical or similar room labels are one manifestation of these shared urban priorities. Some small houses had halls, but they were not large rooms open to the rafters. A building contract from 1410 for three houses on Friday Street stipulated that they would each have a shop on the ground floor and a hall along with other rooms on the second floor.158 Thomas Gilbert’s inventory from 1484 describes his hall as being over his shop and on the same level as the garret, typically understood as an attic room in a dormer.159 Whether a physically imposing place or simply a rhetorical device that referred to a central room, the term “hall,” with its associations of social order and domestic hierarchy, held ideological values shared by those living in large and small houses.160 The desire for privacy and contemplation was also not out of reach for residents of small houses. Chests stood in for the missing rooms, enabling a version of the security, order, and privacy that butteries, parlors, and counting houses created in larger dwellings. As the precursors to closets, wardrobes, dressers, and sideboards, chests were used to store everything from clothing to dishware. They are the item of medieval furniture that survives in the greatest quantity to this day.161 When John de Blankney went bankrupt in 1359, the appraisers found eight chests in his modest two-to-three-room house. Valued between 1s. and 6s. 8d., they served different storage functions. In the third chest he stored basins and ewers, candlesticks, dishes, and a wine pot, the things kept in a buttery.162 Whether or not he actually hosted people for meals in his modest house, his house’s size did not in-

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hibit the logic of the urban buttery and the belief that hospitality should guide the purchase of plate. Chests also performed some of the functions of parlors and counting houses. In a chest “in the chamber that he [lay in],” William Gyll kept “money, plate, and bills of reckoning,” the very items found in counting houses.163 Appraisers and testators often noted that chests had iron bands and multiple locks, and copper and iron chest mounts, hinges, and fittings survive in relative abundance in the archaeological record (see Figure 15a).164 If the quality of chest fittings is any indicator, security was more often a visual ploy than a physical reality. Nevertheless, their use indicates that security was still a goal and value for users of this kind of chest.165 Felicity Riddy argues that the differences between living in one room and more than one room created a “burgeis domesticity,” a “state of mind” that sought out privacy and discretion, settledness and order, and industry and skill.166 Evidence from inventories of modest Londoners after the plague shows that residents of small houses had come to share these values too, making “burgeis domesticity” part of a shared urban set of priorities and behaviors, with chests and affordable versions of household furnishings enabling this change.

Conclusion The ready availability of property after the plague allowed urban households to live in more space, and increased consumption allowed residents to furnish that space in new ways that distinguished them from rural inhabitants, whether peasants or elites. While some of these furnishings were not entirely new, such as colorful coverlets and cushions, they came in an increasing array of choices in styles and quality. The ready availability of these items in both deluxe and affordable versions allowed those across the social spectrum to consume for pleasure and comfort. This was a new kind of consumption for those outside the aristocracy.167 Rich or modest, as merchants and artisans increasingly lived in their houses in ways that enabled retreat, concealment, and separation, they relied less on aesthetics and practices that originated in peripatetic, military-elite households. The behaviors they created grew out of the needs of their trades: the acquisition of artisanal skill, the protection of trade secrets, and the need for physical security for their valuables. Late medieval fashions of piety, rooted in the vita activa, further justified these developments. There is no doubt that the richest merchants and artisans had social aspirations that were facilitated by imitation of their social betters. But this was only the

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story of the very richest merchants, and it did not mean that their houses looked and functioned like the gentry’s. Looking at the rest of London’s citizenry only in terms of emulation or imitation fails to recognize the world they were trying to create, a world focused on work, order, hierarchy, and piety at a time of tremendous economic and social uncertainty. The fruits of their labor were color and comfort: sensations that brought pleasure, the ability to create a sense of privacy and fulfill a need for contemplation. Even in crowded one-to-two-room houses, items could be stored when not in use, thus separating some activities. Larger houses and more furnishings followed from the opportunities offered by the post-plague economy, but owners deployed them to cultivate household dynamics and manage social relations in an effort to create stability in an unstable world.

chapter 4

Good Housekeeping in Post-Plague London

Too Much Stuff Whether one lived in a grand hall house of many rooms or a small one of one or two rooms, increased consumption meant that more stuff had to be cared for and managed. Household management, with its technologies, routines, and priorities, would enmesh Londoners ever more in their dependence on things.1 Ultimately the new regime of household management would become a way of living that outlasted memories of the plague. Household management tasks usually fall under the category of housework, or what archaeologists call “maintenance activities”: cleaning, provisioning, and caring for the household’s occupants.2 Although the actual tasks of housework vary according to time period, location, status, and household composition, housekeeping, wherever and whenever it takes place, focuses on caring for bodies, which includes managing the spaces they inhabit and the things that make them comfortable.3 In most cultural contexts, housekeeping is connected to women and is usually studied in terms of its material history. How did changing technology—things like washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and infant formula—transform the labor and lives of women?4 The division or combination of housekeeping’s various tasks, however, and the value judgments leveled at them also give housekeeping an intellectual and a cultural history, which allows us to think about who performed housekeeping’s different tasks and why.5 What constituted housekeeping and who performed it are historically contingent decisions, dependent on evolving notions of cleanliness, household hierarchy, and order but also on attitudes toward bodies, especially women’s bodies, often understood as unclean because of their association with sex and childbirth.6 Medieval society idealized women’s connection to housekeeping, but both before and after the plague

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that ideal transferred incompletely to London and probably to other urban households in England as well. In the late Middle Ages, it would not be technology that changed housekeeping, but consumption. The connection between women and housekeeping seems timeless, but we can and should historicize this connection. A predominantly male staff cared for medieval aristocratic homes. This arrangement meant that men performed most of the cleaning, provisioning, and cooking. Young male servants associated with an elite house gained valuable training that helped them form important social and political connections, in part because their work was not considered low status.7 Elite women did not fully care for the children either, as wet nurses, nannies, and tutors helped with much of the feeding, clothing, bathing, and teaching of babies and children.8 Status, wealth, location, and the presence or absence of servants all determined household organization, and who did the housekeeping had implications for how specific tasks were gendered, privileged, and moralized.9 If one includes family members, apprentices, and servants, merchant and artisan households often had more women in them than elite ones did, but this still did not necessarily make housework in London a female task. The rise in consumption thus raises a number of questions: How did Londoners divide up housekeeping’s tasks? How did rising levels of consumption change housekeeping? And how involved were women? In the fourteenth century, London had no clear answer to these questions. Moral literature and the law looked to women, but aristocratic models of household organization did not. Moreover, our best evidence for London’s population of domestic servants suggests that many were men. Embedded in housework practices that developed over the course of the fifteenth century was the challenge of how to adapt or modify the existing practices of running a house in a new and more cluttered world. Increasing quantities of household stuff changed London housework quite dramatically after 1348/49. It also came to be inextricably associated with women both ideologically and materially. The wealthiest household separated supervision of housework from the labor of housework, while modest homes combined them to some degree. In either situation, by the sixteenth century, whether as housewives or as servants, women both supervised and labored over housework in urban homes, and society identified and judged women by the quality of their housework.10

How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter Law, theologians, and social commentators have all moralized housekeeping, seemingly forever. For example, Proverbs 12:4 states, “A diligent woman is a crown

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to her husband: and she that does things worthy of confusion is a rottenness in his bones.” Proverbs 14:1 continues, “A wise woman builds her house: but a foolish one will pull down with her hands that also which is built.” Morality, order, and housekeeping constituted a conceptual package. Bracton, the thirteenth-century compendium of English common law, stated that a woman would come of age “whenever she can and knows how to order her house and do the things that belong to the arrangement and management of a house, provided she understands what pertains to ‘cove [small chamber or closet] and keye,’ which cannot be before her fourteenth or fifteenth year since such things require discretion and understanding.”11 In Bracton, housekeeping meant protecting and managing the goods of the house, and it was women’s knowledge. By the fifteenth century, John Fortescue, chief justice of the King’s Bench and a political theorist, argued that a woman’s housekeeping duties made her unfit for public office, an early articulation of the ideology of separate spheres.12 Housekeeping was and is a fraught subject, rife with moral judgments and contradictions. Christian devotional practices associated with the vita activa actively promoted an association of home with women. In helping men and women living in the world—as opposed to a monastery—find religious significance in their daily lives, the vita activa linked work and piety, which gave women’s household tasks spiritual value.13 Through their connection to the home, the vita activa taught women they could direct their own spiritual progress.14 Importantly, the housewife and the house in this literature were both moral and spiritual projects, capable of improvement. Spiritual growth came from performing their duties with the proper frame of mind or deportment, increasingly understood as obedience and passivity along with diligence and skill.15 The vita activa rose in popularity in the late fourteenth century, and housekeeping became both a concern and a motif in its instructional literature, a genre of great interest to London’s merchants and artisans.16 One prescriptive text that goes into great detail about the moral ramifications of women’s housekeeping is the poem “How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter,” an urban text that circulated in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.17 Most scholarship on this poem has focused on the instructions for young, unmarried women’s behavior— not gossiping in church, not flirting with men in the marketplace, and not gambling at cockfights.18 But the anonymous clerical author also imagines the duties and concerns of a housewife who must teach her daughter how to run a house. For the author, housekeeping is both a physical challenge and a moral issue. The good wife should set her servants to their tasks and supervise them; she is to keep them working when her husband is away; and if there is more work than time, the good

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wife is to pitch in to finish the necessary tasks. The author argues that “pride, rest, & idleness” make “unthriftiness.”19 The poem warns housewives to keep their keys in their care and be wary of whom they trust. The keys, the symbol of a woman’s status as housewife or housekeeper, protected the household’s valuables locked away in butteries, chests, or other storage places. The housewife needed to pay her servants’ wages on time and not to impoverish her husband by her own extravagant spending as she provisioned the house and family. The author’s understanding of housework is hierarchical: the housewife supervises unidentified servants, who do the actual labor. Although this is not described in any particular detail, their demeanor, which is obedient, courteous, and silent, is. With the good wife’s guidance, the servants fall into line and the household’s resources are managed and protected. A good wife’s moral worth comes as much from her efforts to combat the laziness and promiscuity of those she supervises as it does from protecting the household’s resources by curbing her own extravagance, controlling other’s access to the household’s goods, and realizing the household’s full economic investment in its servants.20 Housekeeping’s morality was physical, behavioral, and economic. A fifteenth-century cautionary poem entitled “The Serving Maid’s Holiday” describes the other side of the story. It details a serving maid’s desire to escape her chores and her mistress’s constant demands to rendezvous with her lover, Jack.21 Among the tasks that she is supposed to perform are spinning, weaving, and winding yarn, sweeping the floor, lighting the fire, cleaning shoes, kneading bread, and milking cows. Milking and bread baking suggest a rural location, but sweeping floors, lighting the fire, and cleaning shoes would also need to be done in a city house. Both her productive work of bread baking and wool working and her sustaining work of cleaning and fire making compromise cleanliness; even bread making leaves dough under her fingernails. Collectively her chores require her to manage different kinds of dirt. Housekeeping also served as a vehicle for explaining religious concepts. Two fifteenth-century sermons for the first Sunday in Lent use housekeeping as a metaphor for Lenten obligations.22 In an image likely taken from the second book of the Liber Celestis by Bridget of Sweden, one sermon compares laundering clothes, a task closely associated with women, to contrition.23 The sermon writer explains: A laundress in washing of clothes worships in this manner: First she takes lye and castes clothes therein and suffers them to be long in there. Afterwards she draws them out, turns, beats, and washes them, and hangs them up, and so the cloth is clean. This lye is made with ashes and

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water, and it is very bitter, so that it shall not fail to clean the stuff that she places in it. You ask, what does the bitterness mean? It signifies the bitter consideration of the pains of hell. In this lye should man’s soul lie eternally; how bitter the pains be, just as our faith teaches us. And by this consideration I trust God that you shall now get the fresh water to wash the clothes out of this lye. And this water shall be your own fresh tears.24 Then, in an image taken from the Doctrine of the Hert,25 a text created for convents, the sermon likens confession to housecleaning, telling the audience that they “must shrive like a woman cleans her house. She takes a broom and draws together all the uncleanness of the household. And lest the dust spread and encumber the place, she sprinkles it with water. And when that she has gathered it all together, she casts it with great violence out of the door. So must you do likewise. You must cleanse the house of the soul, and make it holy in the sight of God.”26 Confession cleanses the soul like mopping cleans a house. Unless penitents confess all their sins, the unconfessed sins will attract the devil, tempting the penitent to further sin. The movement of these images from devotional texts created largely for clerical and monastic audiences to sermons for a lay audience suggests widespread interest in turning domesticity and housework into vehicles for devotion.27 Similarly, writing ostensibly to his daughters, the eponymous knight in the fourteenth-century Book of the Knight of the Tower compares the tarnished spots on a silver plate to the stains that a sin leaves on the soul; both the plate and the soul must be polished clean.28 All these examples explicitly assume women are performing these tasks. While none of these authors directly equate a clean and orderly house with moral rectitude, comparing sin to dirt and disorder and confession to housecleaning provided a moral and spiritual framework for judging the reputation of a household according to its order and cleanliness. A clean soul is like a clean house, and, by implication, a dirty house is a morally questionable one. Even in the Middle Ages, cleanliness was next to godliness. The managerial prowess of housewives also features in urban theatrical productions, the plays performed at Corpus Christi, mayoral inaugurations, and other celebrations.29 In the so-called Wakefield Noah play, Mrs. Noah labors to keep the family clothed and fed, while her feckless husband tries to build the ark. Ultimately, she has to manage the carpenters who finish her husband’s boat. Similarly, in The Second Shepherd’s Play, from the same cycle, Mrs. Mak has to deal with the problem of the sheep her husband has stolen in order to feed his family.30 While intended as comic figures, these women work as characters because they were also familiar. A housewife was a central feature of the idealized citizen household, so

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much so that guilds required their members to marry before becoming masters. In mocking expected household hierarchies, the plays make clear the value and power of a competent housewife. This literature also imposes a hierarchy of virtue onto housekeeping tasks. The morally suspect servants directly confront the dirt of daily life through sweeping, laundry, fire building, and even making bread, while the chaste housewife supervises them in an effort to keep them on task, so they do not bring the household into disrepute with either their uncontrolled sexuality or slipshod work.31 Sexuality and housekeeping are implicitly linked: control of one is control of the other. These texts are not evidence of actual practice. For all their homey realism, they sought to naturalize a woman’s place within the house and her identity as a housekeeper at a time of worrying social dislocation on international, national, and local levels.32 Although the literature inspired by the vita activa tried to contain and constrain women’s authority, activities, and ambition, the actual tasks carried out by urban wives and domestic servants only gradually became fixed and gendered.33 Moralizing was part of this process.

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness The increasing number of wills with movable goods enrolled in both the Prerogative and the Commissary Courts reflects not only the increased importance of movables to an estate but the overall increase in household possessions.34 Because possessions require sorting, storing, and organizing, embedded in the acquisition of goods is the creation of routines to use them, care for them, and store them. These routines also created new forms of order and hierarchy.35 The increase in consumption would thus profoundly affect housekeeping tasks. Most of the goods Londoners increasingly purchased were made of cloth: clothing and napery, specifically table, washing, and bed linens. Of the wills leaving goods, a little more than a third of Commissary Court wills and a quarter of Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills left sheets, while a quarter of the Commissary Court wills and 15  percent of the Prerogative Court wills left table linens. Among the fourteenth-century inventories, both before and after the plague, the ratio of sheets to beds is quite low. In 1301, Joan Blund inherited from her wealthy father four feather beds, with only a single set of sheets for each.36 Henry Burton’s 1360 inventory also had one bed and one pair of sheets.37 The houses inventoried in the fifteenth century, however, had more than one set of sheets per bed.38 Thomas Gilbert’s house, inventoried in 1484, had eleven pairs of sheets and fourteen pairs

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of “flaxen sheets” for three beds, including one for the maids, for a ratio of eight pairs of sheets per bed, although pallets for the kitchen staff might have escaped the appraiser’s notice.39 Another sign of the increasing quantities of household linens is that, whereas testators in the fourteenth century usually gave only one pair of sheets as a bequest, by the mid-fifteenth century they commonly gave two. Whether for the table or the bed, napery quality varied according to size, kind of material, and weave. Tablecloths and napkins were typically made from linen, a desired and expensive import from the Low Countries.40 By the 1440s, the most sought-after form of linen was diaper, a type of fine weave, usually twill.41 It was more expensive than plain weave and highly desired because it was absorbent.42 Emmota Broun left her granddaughter one tablecloth and one towel, both of diaper, and two plain napkins for a table.43 Testators and appraisers also distinguished between “fine” and “coarse” sheets, which probably reflected the thread count and level of processing. By the 1530s, damask had appeared. It was a different type of weave, made on a technically more complicated loom, and more valuable still.44 Another, less desirable material for napery was canvas, made of hemp.45 Bernard Axe’s inventory identifies sheets for his servants, presumably made of coarser fibers than the ones on Axe’s own bed.46 In the early sixteenth century, Erasmus declared English houses to be filthy. Floors were covered with rushes that trapped “expectorations, vomitings, the leakage of dogs and men, ale-droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned,” and glass windows sealed in the miasma, thought to carry plague and other diseases.47 But Erasmus was often chauvinistically critical of English ways and manners, so he might not be the best witness to English housekeeping. Indeed, Richard Hill’s commonplace book, composed around the same time, includes an entry for removing spots from wool on one of its earliest folios.48 With cloth a major investment and often able to hold its value longer than coins, cleaning and maintaining cloth items, whether clothing or bed and table linens, were an investment in the household’s resources.49 Owning more clothing and bed and table linens also meant they could be changed when they became soiled, thus elevating standards of cleanliness. Cleaning was regular enough to warrant a market for cleaning equipment.50 London’s inventories and bequests include items that promoted cleanliness and order, even if they did not meet Erasmus’s sixteenth-century Netherlandish standards. Not only was there an increased interest in absorbent towels, but towels usually listed with tablecloths and napkins were part of the dining rituals that promoted eating without spilling or slopping. For example, Joan Brown left her grandson as a set “the best board cloth [tablecloth] and a washing towel.”51 London’s

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marketplace picked up on householders’ desire for cleanliness. According to Richard Boneby’s 1390 inventory, he sold material for washcloths in his shop, and Richard Bele’s 1483 inventory specifies that he had in his kitchen “2 great bowls and 2 little [ones] to wash in.”52 We cannot, however, tie the more visible post-plague attention to cleanliness to concerns with the plague. While health and medical literature did make general connections between health and cleanliness, there was no clear-cut association; notions of cleanliness varied, as did prescriptions for achieving it. London’s post-plague interest in cleanliness was more rooted in ceremonies tied to feasting and hospitality, physical appearance, and comfort, not disease prevention. Other items associated with cleaning are basins and ewers (pitchers), items that are absent from pre-plague inventories. Basins and ewers were used in welcoming ceremonies and dining rituals, but they also provided the primary means of moving water about a house, in a world with limited indoor plumbing.53 Basins and ewers appear as bequests in 13 percent of the Commissary Court wills, 8 percent of the Prerogative Court wills that I sampled, and half the inventories from the second half of the fourteenth century. They are ubiquitous in the fifteenth- and sixteencentury inventories, showing that they had become fundamental to a London house. Because testators commonly bequeathed them as a set, Elizabeth de Carywgys felt she had to specify that the “deep silver basin” she wanted to leave to her cousin had no ewer.54 Some basins and ewers were costly, such as the silver and gilt set that Agnes Morton gave to her son, but more commonly they were of pewter, latten, or ceramic, and not especially valuable.55 Inventories usually list them with the other items used in feasting that were stored in the buttery. John Skyrwyth’s buttery, for example, had three sets of counterfeit latten and two sets of plain latten.56 Householders also placed them in halls, where guests could wash their hands and faces upon entering the house.57 Thomas Mower and John Hanson both had them in their chambers as well, which would have enabled them to wash upon waking.58 The ornamentation of basins and ewers sometimes provided a commentary on the meaning of cleanliness, though in keeping with their utilitarian nature, they were rarely described as decorated. Those with decorations, such as the set Margaret Russell had in her house, usually had roses on the bottom, flowers that probably played both decorative and symbolic roles.59 Roses were associated with the Virgin Mary, and in depictions of the Annunciation there is often a ewer with roses or lilies to remind viewers of Mary’s purity (Figure 12).60 London archaeologists have also found the remains of a ceramic ewer with the virgin martyrs, young Roman women popularly venerated as saints for choosing virginity and martyrdom over marriage to pagan men.61 Both roses and virgin martyrs on basins and ewers connected cleanliness and sexual purity.

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Figure 12. Annunciation. Center panel of the Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin (Tournai, 1427–30). In this Annunciation scene, Mary reads next to a table with a glazed-ceramic ewer holding a lily. The Met Cloisters Collection, New York, accession no. 56.70b. Image © MET.

Roller towels often accompanied the basins and ewers located in halls. Their decorations also promoted moral and physical cleanliness.62 The wooden one in Alexander Plymley’s hall was embellished with a painted image. Painted towel rods appear to be another Continental import, and our few surviving examples show that they were sometimes quite bawdy. One with a wildman appears in the early fifteenth-century Merode Altarpiece, hanging next to a basin for water (Figure  13).63 The 1527 inventory of Thomas Cromwell’s possessions includes among the contents of his parlor “an image of a fool to hold a towel, painted. A hanging laver, with a cock, to wash with.”64 A similar example survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 14).65 This one features a fool grabbing an old woman’s breast. The grabbing of the woman’s breast plays off of the rack’s function,

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Figure 13. Detail of the Merode Altarpiece’s center panel. The towel rack has a red wildman face, and next to it is a brass basin for water so that visitors can wash their hands and maybe faces upon entering the house.

which is to hold (or grab) the towel. Just as the roses in the ewers and basins helped equate cleanliness and purity, these towel racks play with ideas of propriety and the grotesque and sin and dirt. Both genres of decorations emphasized the moral significance of cleanliness in London households. The increasing quantities of linens in London households also required cleaning. Households often outsourced their laundry to a laundress, who worked for many people.66 Among the debts owed at the death of a Southwark tailor was 2s. 4d. to his laundress.67 As their linen supplies increased, Londoners would have sent larger and larger loads to the laundresses, although probably less frequently. Once clean, linens then needed sorting and storing. Managing similar-looking sheets and towels posed a challenge. The labels that appraisers noted on the linens found in some of the largest households helped address the problem of tracking and organizing. Labels usually involved sequential numbers or letters and grouped linens into sets. Whether or not these labels helped assure that easily confused household items ended up back where they belonged after laundering, they manifested household organization and residents’ use of numeracy and literacy to that end.

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Figure 14. Wooden polychrome endpiece to a roller-towel holder (Lower Rhine, 1520–25). The fool, identifiable by his cap, is grabbing an old woman’s breast. Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. A.5-1952. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum.

Given the lack of standard bed or sheet sizes, it would be easy to start making a bed with the wrong size sheets. Matthew Phelips’s inventory largely grouped linens by bed to solve this problem. His “chief chamber” had a bedstead with a smaller trundle bed underneath it. One pair of sheets was marked with a “3,” another with a “4,” as were two feather beds, suggesting a pair of sheets and a feather bed made a set, probably based on bed size. The bedding in “Master Hussyes Chamber,” which

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included a tapestry, sheets, and feather bed, all carried “5s,” denoting them as part of the room’s furnishings. In the “Press Chamber,” three blankets, two bolsters, a feather bed, and a mattress all carried an “A.”68 The numbers and letters suggest two methods of marking bed linens, perhaps a reflection of systems of organization that Phelips’s two wives brought to the house. In John Skyrwyth’s household, the labeling system not only kept track of what bedding belonged together and to which bed, it tracked the content of sets. His tablecloths, towels, and napkins were all counted, with the napkins grouped into three sets of a dozen each and each set accordingly numbered.69 Linen marking systems appear somewhat idiosyncratic to a household, but all reflect common goals of sorting and tracking items that were subject to confusion. Pots and pans were another category of object marked for sorting and tracking in large households. Although primarily for meal preparation, they may have played secondary roles in transporting food and supplies to the house.70 In Richard Bele’s kitchen, there was a brass pot “with [a] mark of 1” weighing thirty pounds, another weighing thirty-four pounds “with [a] mark of 2,” and a third brass pot “with [a] mark of 3” weighing nineteen pounds.71 The numbering counts the pots, rather than specifying their size. Bele also had two chests, one “flat” and the other “little” similarly numbered.72 Juliana Fenrother, in contrast, simply had her name painted on her chests to distinguish them from others in her house.73 Like pots, chests transported things in and out of the house. Labeling helped assure that they ended up back in the right place after their work was done. For households such as the Phelipses’ and Amadases’, which moved back and forth from London to a “country” house, numbering items may have made the move easier, although by the sixteenth century owners were fully furnishing their secondary and even tertiary houses and no longer needed to take as many things with them when they changed houses.74 The kind of inventory controls necessary for running a successful business translated into running a household. Labels identified not only which sheets went on which bed, but also, which sheets a wife brought with her as part of her dowry and were thus hers when her husband died. Marks may have also helped a laundress determine which sheets belonged to which of her customers. Thus, while marking the sheets certainly saved time in making up the beds, it might also have curtailed family quarrels. This aspect of housekeeping guided household members to better behavior and greater efficiency. For all their practicality, the marking systems for items that looked alike do not appear in wills. When owners identified items, they focused on quality, location, size, age, and sometimes decoration. Elizabeth Baumfitz, for example, owned a tablecloth with popinjays.75 Margaret Halle left her cousin a pair of sheets with

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three leaves, or panels—quality sheets, because the sleeper could avoid the seams.76 Joan Fenwyk left her sister’s two servants each a set of “new sheets,” and Margaret Russell left her servant “the sheets which are occupied about me in the time of my sickness,” perhaps not the most generous bequest, but certainly an intimate one.77 Owners usually identified pots as the largest, smallest, quart size, second best, or “the one with the broken handle.” Marking systems thus appear to be situational. In making a will, testators thought in terms of the qualities that items possessed that made them appropriate bequests. In this situation, linen marks were irrelevant, because they served a different purpose; while visible to assessors, they could not express the meaning and significance motivating a bequest. More things also required more storage. The most common storage place in a house was a chest; less common were cupboards. Cupboards allowed a householder to display items, while chests kept things contained and out of sight. John Barbour, who went bankrupt in 1389, had a cupboard in his hall, which had probably displayed his silver and pewter before he sold it off to pay his creditors.78 Although already quite common before the plague, after it chests became ubiquitous, appearing in nearly every bankruptcy and probate inventory. After the plague, they also came in many more varieties and sizes and seem generally to have been more available than before the plague. They still came with and without feet, with domed or flat lids, the latter probably still used as seating (Figures 15a and 15b). Increasingly testators focused on their range of sizes—large, medium, and small—and their appearance—bound with iron, covered with leather, black, or, by the sixteenth century, with wainscoting.79 While carved chests had been produced for the aristocracy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, more modest households could now afford them.80 As we saw in Chapter 3, chests helped residents living in cramped quarters to replicate the functions of butteries and counting houses, allowing them to classify and separate different kinds of objects. By keeping track of possessions, maintaining and protecting them so they would continue to be useful and valuable, chests created behavior in alignment with merchant and artisan values. Chests were thus ideologically charged objects that enabled certain ways of living by promoting certain values. Their growing presence in houses allowed more people to practice these values. Training to organize items in boxes and chests began at an early age. Among the many items that John Elmesley left to his young godson in 1433 was a “ little coffer to put his small things [in].”81 Generally, the contents of chests were quite homogeneous: bows and arrows, clothing, silver, and napery each received its own chest.82 Robert Amadas, a wealthy goldsmith who died in 1533, even had a sugar chest.83 More prosaically, Anne Taverner, the widow of a stationer, had a chest in which she stored her napkins,

Figure 15a. Chest with a rounded top and no legs (late medieval). The iron bands provided some security against being broken into with axes. Canterbury Heritage Museum, photo courtesy of Chris Pickvance.

Figure 15b. Chest with a flat top, wainscoting, and legs (British, fifteenth century). The flat top made the chest useful as a seat or table, and the wainscoting added decoration to the room. Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession no. 21.89.1. Image © MET.

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towels, sheets, tablecloths, and pillow cases, all items made out of linen. Chests kept them free from the smoke, grease, soot, and the smell of a medieval household when they were not in use. In another chest Taverner stored five sets of paternosters, six girdles, and five purses, items particularly associated with women’s adornment. In a final two chests she stored rolls of parchment.84 Storing like with like made things easier to find, but it also reflects the organizers’ conceptualization of the world. Anne Taverner’s organization had economic but also ontological logic. The ability to organize increasing amounts of stuff conferred a new kind of authority. Someone had the power to decide how to categorize what went into each chest. For example, when John Andrewe bequeathed linens, plate, cooking items, belts, and a basin and ewer to his son, he placed them all together in a chest and stored it at one of his executors’ houses, with the keys to the chest at the other’s.85 Similarly, when Gilbert Strett left a chest to his parish of St. Bride’s guild of the Virgin Mary, he explained that the guild should “put in there [the] necessaries belonging to the same brotherhood, [such] as vestments chalices, books & other things pertaining to the same altar of the morrow masses of the said brotherhood.”86 Strett understood all these items as belonging together, because they were all the property of the guild. Others, however, might have wanted to store vestments with other vestments to keep them from moths, and books with other books to keep them from being torn or crushed. At the inventorying of Matthew Ernest’s goods in 1505, the appraisers found a spruce coffer (a corruption of Pruce, or Prussia) somewhere in the house and they itemized its varied contents: three coarse sheets “sore worn,” nine kerchiefs, three neckerchiefs, four smocks also “sore worn,” and a black velvet frontal. The chest also held two types of candle wax, two psalters, and a copy of the Golden Legend “in English,” with a picture of a serpent on the second folio. Lastly, appraisers found two broken panes of glass and a broken ship’s chest, which must have been quite small.87 Without any explanation, what are we to make of the varied contents? Perhaps they were waiting for an heir to come of age or a merchant, sailor, or itinerant priest to return home. Much like the varied contents of John Andrewe’s chest for his son, someone assembled this collection of objects for transport or storage for someone with limited space to call their own. Under the supervision of someone else, books nested among belts and their lumpy buckles, and clothes resided with pots and pans, perhaps still somewhat sooty and greasy from use. The authority to control space created forms of organization predicated not only on efficiency but on household status as well. Because she was in charge, Alice Kyrkeby could store her servants’ linens separately, so they would not be confused with the ones that belonged on her bed.88 Variations made touch a component of identification and the basis for preferences, which could be turned into hierarchies.

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Differences in quality and comfort then contributed to creating and maintaining household hierarchies, but so did storage. Chests directed residents to specific sheets for specific beds, ranked by their appearance and user, sparing someone the need to hunt in a stack of linens for the ones they wanted. Thus, embedded in coping with increasing quantities of stuff were the routines of cleaning, sorting, marking, and storing. Labels and storage facilitated systems of categorization that created household order predicated on hierarchy as much as they taught thought processes that guided behavior. Cleaning, sorting, marking, and storing were integral to a stable, efficient, and moral household. Looking at the systems created to run households helps us see that order but also allows us to see that “order” did not mean the same thing in every house. For some households, it meant keeping track of quantity, while some focused on identifying quality, others were attuned to types, and still others were based on age or provenance. Increased consumption created new forms of hierarchies because not all goods, or household members, were equal. Medieval housekeeping reflected accommodations to a household where some tasks, such as laundry and cooking, could happen elsewhere, where new wives took over from deceased ones, and where space was sometimes at a premium. Order included storage for things not in use, recognized similarities and variations based on quality and material, and promoted the practice of thriftiness in the service of hierarchy.

The Gender of Housework Organizing, cleaning, and tidying a household was labor—which, conduct literature would have us believe, was performed by women. If, however, imitation of the elites had any role in determining how merchants and artisans lived in their houses, we should not assume this was the case.89 Part of the process of adapting to new objects or technologies was gendering who was to use them. Merchant and artisan households thus had to decide who would care for their goods. Their decisions did not happen in a vacuum; many forces came into play. Housekeeping required great physical effort, economic savvy, and local knowledge, all of which came bundled with social and moral implications. Gendered assumptions about the world combined with demographics and social pressure further influenced the practice, scope, and conditions of London housekeeping. In the late fourteenth century, even small households seem to have had at least one servant.90 Larger establishments had more. In the second half of the fourteenth century, ironmonger James Maghfeld, for example, employed a butler and a cook, both men, and two female maids.91 Many or one, servants all required some super-

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vision, which created opportunities to divide and prioritize different tasks, adding an important dimension to household dynamics and hierarchies. Changing inheritance patterns for household goods expose the emergence of the gendered assumptions that Londoners began making about their possessions and household labor. During the first century after the plague, testators did not gender their bequests of items most obviously associated with housekeeping— bedding, dishes, basins and ewers, candlesticks, and chests. In London, between 1370, when the Commissary Court wills start, and 1468, the end of my fifth sample, male and female beneficiaries received these items almost equally (Figure 16). The implication is that testators did not particularly associate these items with one sex or the other. Unlike weapons, which women rarely inherited, testators thought the items most obviously associated with housekeeping equally appropriate bequests for men and women. In elite houses, ambitious young men usually wielded these items. In John Russell’s late fifteenth-century Book of Nurture, an instructional manual for young men learning to serve in a great household, the author advises: “Look that your napery be sweet and clean, and that your table-cloth, towel, and napkins be folded neatly, your table-knives brightly polished and your spoons fair washed.” Later on, he instructs the young man learning to serve as a chamberlain to remove the basin by the bed after his lord has awoken and washed.92 Sometime around 1450, apprentice William Elmeshall denounced his master in a

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Chancery petition for making him “wash pots, pans, and dishes.”93 This was inappropriate work for an apprentice, but it shows that boys and men might do this sort of labor in urban houses. While the wife of a London householder likely had charge of organizing and managing the house and its contents, bequest patterns in London, until the mid-fifteenth century, do not show a strong association of women with items associated with the actual labor of cleaning and sorting. As Figure  16 also shows, however, Londoners’ bequeathing habits began changing, with testators increasingly giving women basins and ewers, napery, chests, candlesticks, and dishware.94 There was, however, no commensurate change in how testators bequeathed cushions or mazers, items that also had value and that, as we have seen, were also very important to a properly furnished house. Thus, inheritance patterns for all household furnishings did not change in the midfifteenth century. The items that testators increasingly gendered female were the very items that played a central role in housework. After a hundred years of learning to use and accommodate household possessions, Londoners came to associate some items with women rather than men. This change in bequeathing patterns coincided with a serious recession. A combination of diminishing exports, a scarcity of bullion, and limited credit slowed England’s economy, and England went into recession.95 The end of peace between England and France in 1449 added to the region’s economic woes, as trade declined and taxes increased.96 To some degree changes in inheritance patterns reflect attempts by dying family members to help young female relatives set up a household in a difficult economic time. This recession constricted employment in all manufacturing sectors, which, Jeremy Goldberg argues, disproportionately affected women because it led guilds to restrict wives from practicing their husbands’ trade and froze female immigrants out of workshop jobs.97 As a consequence, both York and Coventry, where we have good surviving evidence, experienced a shift in the demographics of household servants, as women could only find low-status domestic work. It is likely that London experienced the same changes too.98 In Commissary Court wills, women make up 49  percent of the servants receiving bequests in the first century after the plague. From the 1460s onward, however, this percentage rises, so that between 1480 and 1540, they are 65 percent of the servants receiving bequests. This increase suggests a growing number of female domestic servants, but it is not statistically conclusive, given the total numbers of individually identified servants in each sample. Changes in the people to whom testators bequeathed particular household goods and the increased gender-coding of particular kinds of items would, however, seem to reflect a tightening of the association between women and the house and women and the work of sorting, cleaning, tidying, and managing.

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The growing practice of leaving basins, ewers, and towels to women, whether or not they were servants, signals a change in the understanding of domestic work more broadly. Women’s domination of the laundry trade shows a long-standing connection between women and some forms of cleaning, but as we have seen, the rise in consumption after the plague expanded the scope of cleanliness to include the cleaning of bodies and spaces.99 Managing a house was not only understood as women’s work; cleaning, tidying, and serving were increasingly performed by women as well. By the late fifteenth century, then, it seems more than likely that in London houses, basins and ewers were now in the hands of women, many of whom were poorly paid immigrants from the countryside. What had been a high-status male job in the elite houses of rural England had become a low-status female one in London. Testators also increasingly gave women chests, items that both facilitated and embodied housework. The utilitarian and ubiquitous nature of chests is indicated by the fact that while they are pervasive in inventories, until the mid-fifteenth century they rarely appear as bequests. Overall, they only appear in 10  percent of the Commissary Court wills and 5  percent of the Prerogative Court wills leaving goods in this period, so they are not as common as bedding, napery, or basins and ewers. When chests do appear as bequests, beneficiaries usually received other things, so the chest provided a means of carrying away the inheritance. For example, in 1465 Thomas Meyr left his wife’s goddaughter table linens, bedding, dishes, two dozen spoons, and his “best chest.”100 By the early sixteenth century, however, chests had become valuable in their own right and testators gave them on their own (Figure 17). In 1537, Elizabeth Wytwain remembered Margaret Barton with a bequest of the “chest under the chamber window” but nothing else.101 As chests became desirable, testators increasingly associated them with women. Before the sixteenth century men and women were equally likely to receive a chest as a bequest; in the sixteenth century women received almost twothirds of those bequeathed. The Continent had an older tradition of marriage chests that held a bride’s dowry goods. In Florence, the marriage chest, a cassone or forziere, sported elaborate carvings or paintings (Figure 18). Servants displayed it when processing the bride from her parents’ house to her new husband’s house.102 London law categorized chests as paraphernalia, but given all their other uses, Londoners still had not specifically gendered them female. The changing inheritance patterns imply that by the end of the fifteenth century England was developing the idea of a marriage chest as well.103 Certainly, both the number of Italians living in London and the trade ties between the two regions would have given Londoners an opportunity to learn of this tradition. John Freeman left his daughter a “joined chest that was her mother’s” in 1486, and in 1537 Roger Jonys

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Figure 18. Cassone (one of a pair; Italy, possibly Florence, mid-fifteenth century). It combines the rounded top with feet. On the front are painted scenes from Ovid’s story of Actaeon. Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession no. 41.190.129. Image © MET.

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bequeathed chests to each of his unmarried sisters.104 As a means of reproducing the household ideologies of order, authority, and privacy, chests came to promote gendered ones as well. Chests provided a useful metaphor for women’s bodies, which needed to be protected from excessive access. Locked, they protected their contents; overflowing, broken, or filled with mismatched items, they signaled a badly kept house and a promiscuous woman. While demography and economics may have driven these changes, religious and conduct literature provided plenty of justification for them. In this time of economic uncertainty, the largely illusionary and seemingly timeless image of women managing the household and doing the housework offered comfort and certainty in a changing world. This literature gave housework a moral frame that taught Londoners to judge both the work of housekeeping and those who performed it.105 Medieval English women confronted other changes to their status at this time as well. By the middle of the fifteenth century, there was growing enforcement of coverture, greater imposition of common law, and an overall strengthening of patriarchy.106 Immigrants from the countryside would have also brought their own ideas about how to run a house, even as they purchased and used items that were new to them. Barbara Hanawalt found a strong association of peasant women with all aspects of household work, while men worked in the fields.107 This was no unbridgeable divide, as women helped in the fields when necessary and men did useful things around the house, but it was different from the way merchants and artisans organized their households in the first century after the plague. The combination of rural traditions, ecclesiastical ideology, and economic forces pressing on urban households would have been difficult to resist. Taken together these changes appear as backlash against the new opportunities and choices available to women in the first century after the plague.108 The legal categories of dowry and paraphernalia made associations between women and essential personal and household goods, but these categories were designed to care for women in their widowhood, not the house after the death of the male householder. Still, they set the stage for expanding the connection between women and various household items. The changing gender-coding of household items associated with housekeeping therefore signals an increased association of the house, its management, and its keeping with women, either as housewives or as servants. To be sure, not all tasks were equal in status, even if women increasingly performed them all. Supervising servants, controlling access to spaces and resources, and setting routines were of higher status than the heavy and dirty labor of laundry, scrubbing, and carrying, something the authors of “How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter” and “The Serving Maid’s Holiday” both recognized.

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With this shift, the association of women with houses, at least in London, became naturalized, as both houses and their furnishings promoted and symbolized marriage, purity, and patriarchy—values that housewives needed to promote along with their housekeeping abilities. By the mid-sixteenth century, “housewife” was a label applied to women regardless of marital status. The term signified that a woman had the skills of housekeeping, something she might even have learned as an apprentice. As such, the term became a means of judging a woman’s reputation, in terms of both the kind of house she kept and the way she kept her own body.109

Real Housewives of Medieval London The association of women with housework was not newly invented in the fifteenth century, nor was it simply imposed on a resistant female population. Although some women would have resented the effort, drudgery, and tedium of many housekeeping tasks, some found meaning and use in this work, especially the supervisory aspects. It allowed them to create their own forms of order and manifest their own expertise, which promoted values important to them as members of merchant and artisan households. Because household goods created status and identity, housekeeping guarded respectability.110 Performed well, housekeeping gave women moral authority by safeguarding reputation and household prosperity. Women’s wills sometimes provide evidence for how they understood the tasks of housekeeping. While these documents had to conform to certain legal protocols and formulas, their organization and contents could be quite idiosyncratic and reflective of a lifetime of habits and practices, particularly with respect to interactions with their movable goods. We can thus read some women’s wills as expressions of how they ran their households, how they understood the value of housekeeping, and the household issues that concerned them.111 Many historians have argued that late medieval testamentary strategies were gendered.112 These differences come in part from the limited legal capacities of married women. Unable to make a will without their husband’s permission, 90  percent of female testators in my sample of Commissary Court wills and 92  percent of my sample of Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills were widows who were disbanding a household and distributing its goods. While male testators might also be widowed, 75 percent in the Commissary Court and 63 percent in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury were identifiably married, and thus needed to strategize about how to provide for their family after their death. Yet scholars have also argued that the gendered differences for disposing of household goods came

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from medieval women’s greater affinity for the material culture of their households, whether because they brought these items with them to their marriages, because household items constituted the legal category of paraphernalia, or because these objects occupied them and their work as housewives and thus defined their status and reputations.113 Women used their wills to promote and memorialize their own housekeeping skills and knowledge, demonstrating their identities as successful housewives. Doing so was part of a gendered testamentary strategy. Wills vary in their level of detail, wordiness, and organization. They range from terse to quite verbose. Some of the more intricate wills provide detailed descriptions of possessions, including where in the house the testator kept them. Some wills offer enough specifics that they can be rearranged to make a rudimentary inventory. These sorts of descriptions are not readily quantifiable because testators did not describe every object in equal detail, yet women specified twice as often as men the room in which an object could be found.114 Since most men made their wives their executors, detailed explanations were not required, as their wives would have already been familiar with the objects in question. Women, on the other hand, named friends, grown children, and other people less familiar with their household’s contents as executors.115 Moreover, most widows who made a will had outlived more than one husband, so they would have been well acquainted with the will making and probate processes.116 This familiarity undoubtedly influenced some of them when they made their own wills. Given women’s repeated involvement in the testamentary process, we might well ask why wills that mimic an inventory structure are not more common. The detailed wills I discuss in this section appear in the latter half of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century and are perhaps a consequence of the changing emphasis on housekeeping. Whatever the reason, some London widows produced unusually expansive wills that provide a vivid picture of their houses and the rooms in which they were lying as they dictated their wishes. The richness of their descriptions means that they were more than just aids to executors. The objects and spaces in question were meaningful in their own right, and testators used their wills to explain and memorialize their feelings. For example, Elizabeth Bayly’s descriptions of her “standing cup, gilt, engraved, which was bought of Master Ffenyther,” and “my husband’s little chain that he was wont to wear every day”117 were not visual indicators that helped executors identify which cup or which chain. Rather, rehearsing their stories in her will allowed Bayly to remember a special shopping trip or neighbor and moments of marital intimacy. As testimonies of the emotional value that she attached to these items, they also reflect how she ran her household and how she understood her role as housewife.118

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When Joan Kent made her will in 1487, she had outlived three husbands.119 Her will connects her housekeeping to her family’s lineage, directed through her daughter rather than her son. Her son John, a product of her third marriage, received “a cup of silver and gilt standing once his god mother’s & a girdle harnessed with silver once his father’s and £20 in money.” Kent further admonished him to be “therewith contented and in anywise not vex or trouble my executors after my decease, and if he will not so be contented and release to my executors after my decease all manner of actions personally, then I will that he have not the said £20 nor any penny thereof, but that my executors dispose of it for my soul’s health otherwise.”120 Kent also had a daughter, Isabel, who had married a gentleman whom she appointed one of her executors. Isabel, her husband, and their five children were to receive the bulk of Kent’s estate. Among the goods left to her daughter was “my best bed of Arras to have & to occupy to them & to the bequest of them living and after the decease of those living who received this bequest, I will that the same bed of Arras remains with the heirs of their bodies lawfully begotten from heir to heir as long as any such shall be, for a remembrance to pray for my soul & the souls of their ancestors.”121 Kent’s brother, the parson of Woolwich, Kent, received her mass book and breviary and “a tappet (hanging) of Arras with the Image of Saint Ambrose & Saint Isadore,”122 items appropriate to his position in life. She might have also added supplementary family materials to the prayer book, which would have further reflected her concerns for family.123 These bequests tell us that Kent had run a household orderly and secure enough so that she did not have to pawn the cup or the girdle and that she had cared for the valuable tapestries from Arras well enough so that she could pass them on. The bed, the cup, and the girdle were more than utilitarian items; Kent explicitly connected them to lineage, both past and future. The girdle was an intimate item worn by her son John’s father, and its appearance likely displayed the status and reputation that Kent may have wished John to assume. As we saw in Chapter 2, beds not only symbolized fecundity but also reflected one’s household status. The stern instructions to her son not to fight with his brother-in-law and uncle over his inheritance imply tensions in this blended family. Through her decisions about how to dispose of her goods, even if they were confirmations of bequests made by her children’s fathers, Kent used these particu lar household furnishings not only to promote her status and a particular version of family lineage but also to try to transfer that reputation and status to her children. We cannot know whether she hoped these items would change her children into something else or would simply confirm an identity and character that they already embodied.

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In her will written in 1498, Alice Bartelot distinguishes among the various items in her house by explaining how she used them. Her will describes coverlets, mazers, pewter vessels, and girdles and beads as her “new,” “best,” or “worst.” When describing her bedding, we learn that she had “a best covering for a bed of tapestry, a second coverlet of tapestry, a coverlet now being upon my bed sore worn, and a covering [for] lying upon my bed in the summer.”124 Perhaps when they were not in use she stored them in the “spruce chest standing at my bed’s foot.” Bartelot changed the decor of her room with the seasons. Her descriptions tell us she regularly acquired new household items and set some items aside for special occasions. She had a tablecloth for daily use, a best tablecloth, and a “second” one as well. Similarly, she had coarse towels for daily use but also better ones made of diaper. A concession to the messiness of dying led her to have an old coverlet on her bed as she dictated her will.125 With multiple or duplicated items, Bartelot’s habits acknowledged seasonal change and occasional specificity, thereby demonstrating her wealth, aesthetics, and the pace and cycles of her household. In a similar vein, Ellen Langwith, a successful silkwoman, describes in her will her two mazers as the ones “which I daily use” and one of her two new brass pans as the “[one] I bought last.”126 None of these descriptions provide visual clues as to which mazer or pan she was bequeathing, but they provide information about her daily activities and preferences. Both women’s descriptions tell us that routine and order contributed to their housekeeping.127 The problem of a moral household seemed very much on Isabel Hart’s mind when she composed her will late in November of 1526. Her concerns are evident in the ways in which she paralleled her descriptions of household goods with her charitable bequests. She required her executors to “buy as much canvas as shall make therewith five pallets to be stuffed with straw as large as six persons may lie conveniently upon every of the same pallets for the poor prisoners within Newgate of London.”128 She then stipulated that such implements and necessaries of mine now . . . within the great chamber . . . where I now do lie, that is to say: all the hangings, a joined bed, a trussing bed with four pillows, an altar with a superaltar, altar cloths, a pair of vestments, a corporal [cloth], a pax table, and pictures of saints, an holy water pot of pewter, with aspergillum, and all the empty chests and coffers, except the stuff being in the following: great press of wainscoting, a square table of wainscot with a chair, and other chairs and stools now being there, I will shall remain in the same chamber as long as they shall endure as standards to the use of the tenant and tenants dwelling and occupying my said house.129

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The juxtaposition of straw pallets on the floor crowded with six or more bodies in Newgate Prison and Isabel’s cluttered and comfortable great chamber with its wall hangings, pictures of the saints, chapel furnishings, and a large wooden bedstead and wainscoted furniture is vivid and intentional. Caring for prisoners was one of the seven works of mercy, a spiritual obligation, and giving to the prisoners allowed Hart to emphasize her own comfort and material displays of piety. While Hart aligned Christian charity and her household management, she also used her will to promote comfort and sociability, which had been the family business. Isabel was the well-to-do widow of John Hart, a member of the brewers’ guild. Their abundantly furnished house could accommodate many people and may have even served as a tavern. In addition to her bedroom, Hart lived in at least two other rooms, which she identified as a hall and a parlor. She stipulated that “all such tables, trestles, forms, cupboards, and chairs of mine, which be now in my hall and parlor . . . shall remain in the same hall and parlor as long as they shall endure as implements and standards of my said house, to the use of the tenant, which hath and shall have the occupying and dwelling in my said house.”130 The building itself would probably have contained many more rooms, which she rented out. Elsewhere in her will, she tells us her house had a “great gate” and that she also rented out a furnished tenement next to it. The thirty-seven named beneficiaries, the tables and benches in her hall and parlor, and the chairs and stools in her bedroom indicate a woman used to having people around her. Moreover, the trundle (“trussing”) bed beneath her “joined bed” and her bedroom chapel suggest servants and a chaplain to attend regularly to her physical and spiritual needs. In leaving her home and its contents to the next tenants she was trying to create heirlooms by turning her furnishings into appurtenances, while also shaping how future occupants would live and act in a space that had created her reputation. She used her will to dictate the conditions of her beneficiaries’ sociability, whether they were future tenants or prisoners at Newgate. Isabel and John had lived in the London parish of St.  James Garlickhythe. When John died Isabel remained in the parish, requesting burial in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in St. James’s church under the same stone as her husband. As the widow of a brewer and probably a brewster herself, her will with all its beneficiaries reflected a wide circle of friends and acquaintances that might have come from her experience in running a tavern. London’s merchants and artisans were particularly proud of and identified with their artisanal skills and work ethic. Good beer and ale promoted sociability, making Hart’s furnishings a manifestation of not only her family’s industry but also its skill.131 The bequests, then, serve

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as a kind of memorial to her interest in hospitality and sociability, themes she emphasized in the way she both managed her household and wrote her will. Alice Lord, the widow of a Westminster yeoman, drew up her will in 1539 after nearly eight years of widowhood. Although Westminster was not part of London proper, it shared London’s urban culture, and Lord’s will is unusually detailed, making it worth examining here. Lord focused her bequests on the equitable division of her household goods among her seven sons, arranging her will by the bequests each son would receive, starting with the oldest, who was married, and ending with the youngest, who was about to start his apprenticeship.132 In the process, she reveals her penchant for regimentation. Her eldest son, Edmund, received her large house in Westminster and many of its rich furnishings. This house had a hall, parlor, kitchen, and buttery, and several chambers, including one designated as Lord’s chamber, another for her maids, and a “chapel chamber.” Each room was hung with painted cloths. Lord owned chests and cupboards for storage, and guests entering the hall on a cold day would have been welcomed with a carpet and a fire in the fireplace. Lord disposed of her goods very methodically. Each son received the same basic package of bequests: bedding and napery that she specified were “trussed all together in a sheet and [their] name written upon it.”133 Each of her sons also received a girdle, a paternoster, a mazer, and six spoons, plus an apostle spoon, four platters, three dishes, two saucers, pots, spits, trivets, and other cooking items. Design carefully delineated the girdles, beads, mazers, and spoons. There were long and short girdles of varying color and decoration, while the beads were coral, plain silver, amber, or jasper. In addition to the divided up set of apostle spoons, Lord had spoons with diamond points, wreathed knobs, “naked boys” (cherubs), maidens’ heads, and nine acorns and a lion, while the mazers each had a boss at the bottom with an image: Jesus, St.  George, a pomegranate, a thistle, a damson (?), a quince (?), and a piece of silver. Lord’s detailed descriptions of the girdles, spoons, and mazers would have helped her executor, her eldest son, identify which item went to which of his brothers, but they also tell us that Alice liked nice things and collected sets. Whether or not she was fully literate, she used writing to run her household and to organize her bequests, in much the way linen labels were used to identify which sheets went on which bed. Lord carefully planned the disposal of her goods. She thought about which item was appropriate for which son. For example, she left the mazer with the image of St. George on the boss to her youngest son, Henry. She did not leave it to her third son, named George, who received his inheritance with a warning not to

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interfere with the probate process, lest he lose his inheritance.134 Since Lord’s husband, also named George, had been dead for eight years, her youngest son, Henry, about to enter his apprenticeship, must have barely remembered his father.135 Bearing the image of his late father’s name saint, the St. George mazer would remind Henry of his paternity. St. George also symbolized England and heroic virtue and served as a chivalric model for young men’s behavior, all values held by merchants and artisans and ones that Lord would want her young son to adopt but that she would not be around to teach.136 If he kept the mazer, every time he used it or saw it on a shelf it would remind him of his parents and of his family’s values. These women’s descriptions of their household goods and their instructions for their disposal are statements about their concerns for their household and its contents. Their wills are refracted through their housekeeping concerns of order, management, and child-rearing. Piety and pride in their lineage and family reputations, which housekeeping in the broadest sense promoted, underlay their concerns. Housekeeping might be drudgery, but in addition to creating order and maintaining hierarchies it negotiated intimacy and temporarily mitigated patriarchal authority, as housewives knew how to use their skills to achieve their own desires, at least momentarily, by calming an angry husband with soothing words or serving a favorite meal.137 Two of these women reprimanded wayward sons by threatening their inheritance. Housekeeping gave them moral authority, which they deployed to achieve other goals. Prosperity gave these women the opportunity to own more goods, but even more modest households had items that promoted these goals. While some women certainly ignored or failed to live up to the advice proffered by moralists, by the end of the fifteenth century some women had clearly absorbed this advice into their housekeeping practices. Embedded in these women’s concerns are the changes in housekeeping practices brought on by consumption, demographics, and economics.

Conclusion The increase in household goods required learning to live with them, which meant creating care routines and deciding who would do these tasks. While inventories in the aggregate do demonstrate some change over time, unless items are labeled as male or female it is difficult to see the process by which Londoners made decisions about who would use and care for particular items. Moral literature provided some guidance, but Londoners did not immediately implement that vision in their houses. According to their patterns of bequests, it took them about a century to

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gender the household goods particularly associated with cleaning, tidying, and sorting. In the late fifteenth century, as the economy slumped, care of the house and its occupants fell increasingly to women, and the association of urban women with the work of housekeeping tightened. While society had long understood laundry and some aspects of childcare as women’s work, and supervising servants was the housewife’s duty, in London, cleaning, tidying, and sorting only became overtly gendered in the second half of the fifteenth century. The basins, ewers, and towels increasingly carried by women linked concerns for cleanliness to women’s bodies and their role in creating a household’s reputation. In the hands of domestic servants, these messages would have been especially pertinent, as employers wanted well-behaved servants who reflected well on the household. The practice of decorating basins and ewers with the Virgin’s symbol of a rose reinforced these expectations. The chests women brought to their marital home gave them a tool for protecting and tracking the goods they now had in their keeping and for creating and enforcing domestic hierarchies among residents of the house. Prescriptive literature such as “How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter” helped propel this move by assigning a positive moral, even spiritual value to the house, its furnishings, and their organization. These household changes put London women in a contradictory position, however. The values of hierarchy, diligence, and ambition, values crucial to a late medieval urban family’s commercial success, complemented increasing expectations that women be silent, passive, courteous, and modest.138 Households best achieved these values if women stayed home. These changing household dynamics thus caught late medieval urban women between, on the one hand, promoting their families’ and employers’ respectability through modeling demure behavior and on the other hand, participating in the burgeoning consumer culture upon which their families’ and employers’ survival depended.

chapter 5

Some Brought Flesh and Some Brought Fish

Foodways After the Plague Provisioning, cooking, and feeding, collectively what anthropologists call foodways, constitute another set of housekeeping tasks. Increased consumption by Londoners included purchasing specialized cooking equipment and new types of dishware and drinking vessels, which they used to cook, eat, and drink a more varied diet. Post-plague consumption thus brought big changes to London’s cooking and eating habits that would have implications for household behavior and household order. Eating and food have always been powerfully symbolic for Christian Europe.1 Eating together lay at the heart of canon law’s concept of a Christian marriage and, thus, the Christian household. According to Christian theology, the sacrament of marriage joined two bodies into one flesh in much the way eating joined food to the body, making incorporation and consumption useful metaphors for understanding the sacrament of marriage and the marital relationship.2 The brides’ vows in England’s Sarum rite, the primary liturgy used in England, include promising to be “bonour [good or obliging] and buxom in bed and at board, till death us depart.”3 Divorce (akin to a modern legal separation) used the same concepts: the legal language for divorce was a mensa et thoro (from table and bed).4 The great canonist Gratian instructed separated husbands that “you shall not eat with her, drink with her at the same table, or stay with her under one roof.”5 So basic was the assumption that husbands and wives must eat together that one fifteenth-century sermon even warned priests against assigning fasting as penance for a wife, because it could alert her husband that she was atoning for a sin.6 Eating together was not just at the heart of marriage, with husbands ruling over their wives, it was the centerpiece of household order, with gender and hierarchy as fundamental components

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of that order. Eucharistic theology added additional moral weight to husbands and wives eating together. It imbued their meals with the themes of sacrifice, redemption, and social harmony, which affirmed men’s rule over their wives.7 The importance of eating together made its way into much medieval advice literature.8 In summing up the essence of a harmonious and properly ordered marriage, the late-fifteenth century advice poem “How the Wise Man Taught his Son” advised choosing a poor wife who “serves you well and pleasantly . . . with rest and peace a nice meal of homey fare,” rather than a rich one who would serve you “a hundred dishes with grumbling and with much care.”9 A portion of this poem appears in one of the two commonplace books that survive for a London merchant, pointing to both the ubiquity of the idea that eating together was important for household order and its significance for London’s merchants and artisans.10 Eating together also served as legal evidence in marital cases across England. In a late fifteenthcentury London case, for example, John Brocher sued Joan Cardif for breach of marriage contract. According to the witness, who had served as a liaison during the couple’s courtship, John had sent a fish to Joan with the message that he “was coming right away with certain other people and that she should prepare the fish for their dinner. Joan received the fish happily,” cooked, and served it.11 The witness offered this story of a shared meal as evidence of the couple’s intention to wed. The metaphorical and symbolic potential of eating together made provisioning and cooking important tasks in all medieval households and eating together a central moment of the day. These tasks would be profoundly affected by changes in the material culture surrounding eating. London citizens incorporated ceremony and display into their meals, which in the context of increased consumption gave them new ways to create household order, status, and gender hierarchies and another way to distinguish themselves from the gentry. Material culture, however, also shapes behavior in unintended ways, because it is difficult to control how people will use it. A single item can serve multiple purposes, and many items can complete the same task. Changing foodways thus introduced both new choices and new behaviors. As foodways became more elaborate in London households after the plague, the correct use of serving and dining ware became critical in creating and maintaining household order. Misuse of food-related objects that were intended to promote harmonious and hierarchical relations between husbands and wives could, therefore, be used to challenge or upset these values.12 Wills and inventories clearly show the expansion of London foodways after the plague, while the contemporary literature that Londoners read about eating and drinking expressed anxiety about what these changes meant to household order. At a time when concepts of household order and gender roles were changing

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rapidly, London’s citizen households used their changing foodways to affirm their values of piety, order, and restraint. Yet the very material culture that was to create domestic order could also be a threat to household order and to relations between husbands and wives.

Producing a Meal Urban dwellers largely relied on markets for their food, although some Londoners had kitchen gardens and kept pigs and chickens.13 Unless they already worked in the food industry, however, merchants and artisans did not typically butcher, bake, or brew. Among the forty-three post-plague fourteenth-century inventories, only three had brewing equipment, and among the forty-six sixteenth-century ones, only one did.14 With brewing equipment often falling into the category of appurtenances, however, these findings probably undercount the regularity of brewing by many households. It was a common way for women to supplement household income.15 Yet ale and beerhouses were also common staples of the city marketplace, and Londoners would not have to go far from home to buy beer, ale, or wine for their tables. There is even less evidence of home baking. Robert Stodley’s house provides the clearest evidence for both brewing and baking capabilities. Along with bread-making equipment, the inventory of his kitchen equipment included iron doors for three ovens.16 Before the plague, dried food commonly appeared in inventories.17 The availability of a growing variety of fresh food in London markets after the plague probably explains the limited evidence for storing grain, legumes, and dried or smoked meat in inventories dated after circa 1350. The most commonly stored type of food or drink was wine.18 In the centuries after the plague, English diets became more diverse and higher in animal protein.19 The quality of bread is also thought to have improved, in terms of both freshness and the kinds of grain used. Generally, it was now made from wheat, which was preferred for its taste and softer texture, rather than barley or rye.20 Whether in the form of bread, ale, or beer, grain still provided the majority of a day’s calories. Other changes included the greater availability of beer (as opposed to ale) and an increase in demand for garden produce.21 As ubiquitous as bread and ale were, however, the most sought-after food was beef, which consumers preferred over pork.22 The regulation of London butchers saw to it that beef and lamb were readily available, and after the first outbreak of the plague, Londoners ate better cuts of meat from younger and, therefore, more tender animals.23 Cattle and sheep also provided milk for butter and cheese, and

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post-1350 slaughtering patterns culled young bull calves and old cows, practices that produced large dairy herds.24 Christian dietary rules for fasting meant that fish constituted a large part of the diet as well. Throughout the later Middle Ages, Londoners mostly ate cod, but they also came to eat less conger and more hake in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than they had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.25 Although vegetables, particularly legumes, were a staple of peasant diets, Londoners with money did not seek them out.26 The increase in gardens and orchards in the suburbs of London and Westminster after the plague, however, suggests that consumers desired fruit and other vegetables. Among the new food-preparation equipment in well-appointed kitchens were fruit chafers, or chafing dishes, for stewing fruit with spices at the table.27 Bioarchaeological evidence for London’s fruit consumption includes figs, apples, plums, cherries, pears, and nuts. Evidence for vegetables includes cabbage, cucumbers, borage, fennel, parsnips, leeks, onions, garlic, and celery. Demand for onions and garlic was so high that grocers had to import them from the Low Countries.28 Dependence on professional food and drink suppliers, the lack of refrigeration, and a desire for fresh food meant that regular trips to the market would have been part of someone’s household chores.29 From the very first step of putting together a meal, Londoners were warned about women’s involvement and the effect that their behavior could have on the household’s reputation. In the poem “How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter,” the author imagines a number of threats facing young women shopping in the marketplace.30 Particularly worrisome were predatory men, gossipy neighbors, and taverns selling cheap drink, along with wrestling matches, bearbaiting, and cockfighting. All could distract a girl from her errands, threatening efficiency at the very least and moral and financial danger at worst. In addition to warning of the marketplace’s dangers, the poem instructs the female servant not to talk to strangers and not to attract attention with bold looks and suggestive behavior.31 Once the ingredients had been purchased and brought home, the meal needed to be cooked. Historically there is a strong connection between women and food.32 Certainly women were involved in food production in London’s marketplace, but who did the cooking in post-plague London houses is less clear. By the end of the fifteenth century, in the grand houses of wealthy merchants, such as the mercers Robert Stodley and Alexander Plymley and the goldsmith Robert Amadas, cooks were likely men and members of the cooks’ guild.33 A few cooks even appear as beneficiaries in wills. The grocer John Olyve left a black gown to his cook, John Brydde.34 Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests wives did the cooking in more modest homes.35 In the case of Brocher c. Cardif discussed earlier, Joan Cardif

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cooked the fish John Brocher gave her. Certainly, women did most of the domestic cooking by the mid-sixteenth century, where the evidence is stronger.36 Women’s engagement with cooking would have been a major difference between most London houses and the richest households. A hearth or a fireplace was essential for cooking, but not all houses had them, and not all that did have them used them for cooking. Having a kitchen and having cooking equipment are the clearest indications of whether a household could cook its own food. The extents for debt inventories, however, lack room labels, making it difficult to see if the house described in them had kitchens or not. Most houses that I identified as shop and hall houses did have utensils to tend a fire, and more than half had some kind of cookware (Tables 5a and 5b). Fires required tools to manage them: andirons to hold wood, and tongs, fire shovels, and rakes for moving around the hot coals. In the late fourteenth century, whether or not they had a separate kitchen, households would have relied predominantly on an open hearth, Table 5a. Cooking Facilities in London’s Fourteenth-Century Inventories (1350–99) House type Single room = 9

Fireplace equipment

Cookware

Kitchen

7

6

0

Shop house = 13

11

9

5

Hall house = 20

19

18

9

Uncertain = 1

0

0

0

37 (86%)

33 (77%)

14 (33%)

Total = 43

Table 5b. Cooking Facilities in London’s Sixteenth-Century Inventories (1500–1544) House type

Fireplace equipment

Cookware

Kitchen

Single room = 6

2

2

0

Shop house = 5

4

4

2

Hall house = 31

30

27

23

Incomplete = 5

0

0

0

36 (77%)

33 (70%)

25 (53%)

Total = 47

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with smoke escaping out a roof opening regulated by ceramic roof louvers. By the sixteenth century, chimneys and fireplaces were more common.37 Chimneys not only allowed houses to vacate smoke more efficiently; they also expanded cooking possibilities. When inventoried for debt in 1398, William Woolaston, a fishmonger, lived in a hall house that appears to have had an open hearth. His fireplace tools included a rake, fire fork, and shovel.38 Some inventories with no cookware listed, such as the hall house of mercer William Harlawe and his wife Ellen inventoried for debt in 1375, were other wise amply furnished with fireplace equipment.39 They likely used ceramic cookware, which did not register in their inventory because it had little value.40 Archaeologists have turned up pottery bowls and dishes with burn marks, indicating that some people used them for cooking.41 Joan Awdy, a widow who died in 1542, had lived in one room and owned dishware and some cookware but no fireplace equipment. Her inventory, however, includes a chafing dish to hold burning coals, which would have warmed precooked food she bought at the market or kept food warm that she had cooked in a common kitchen in the tenement.42 In contrast, the Southwark tailor whose name is torn off a 1490 inventory lived in two rooms attached to his shop.43 Neither of the rooms nor the shop had fireplace tools or cooking ware. Where in the inventory appraisers listed cooking equipment hints at whether or not the household had a separate kitchen. When the appraisers placed cooking equipment at the end of an inventory, after clothing, napery, and bedding, the house likely had a kitchen, although the evidence for whether these kitchens were in an altogether different building on the tenement remains inconclusive. A number of post-plague Assize of Nuisance cases describe houses with separate kitchens.44 Roger and Margaret Lachebrok, for example, claimed “that the land between her [Margaret’s] tenements and those of the plaintiff is a lane, which has existed from time out of mind, and by which she and her ancestors and those whose estate she holds have always enjoyed free access to Chepe, and to her kitchen, which opens upon the lane.”45 Cooking equipment listed at the beginning of an inventory, near cushions, cupboards, and wall hangings, suggests the house had no separate kitchen and that residents cooked in the hall.46 For example, Henry de Bruton’s 1360 inventory starts with a table and chairs, moves to fireplace tools, cooking equipment, and then cushions.47 In one sense, this arrangement was similar to the fashion of castles, but it was also how peasants lived, so cooking in a hall was generally a medieval English practice, not necessarily a sign that merchants and artisans were mimicking their betters.48 In the fourteenth century, kitchens were more commonly associated with hall houses than shop houses. As Tables  5a and 5b show, however, by the sixteenth

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century, they were just more common. For example, the inventory for John Treyngham, a haberdasher who died in 1503, suggests that he had either retrofitted his house to make a kitchen from a preexisting room or had so added on to his original house that the kitchen was now in the “inner chamber,” where the appraisers found the cooking and fireplace equipment along with a canopied bed and bedding, possibly because Treyngham needed warmth during his last illness.49 The cooking equipment that does appear in inventories tells us a great deal about the cooking and eating habits of household residents. The rise in consumption did not so much change cooking technology as expand the number of people able to cook in their own homes and their access to more prestigious forms of cooking.50 As discussed in Chapter 1, medieval cooking largely consisted of boiling, frying, and roasting. All forms required heat, but boiling and frying needed just a pot or a pan.51 Metal pots, pans, and kettles were more durable but more expensive than ceramic ones, which often broke in high heat.52 Roasting required additional equipment: dripping pans, basting ladles, spits, and cob irons to support them. As before the plague, brass pots and pans were the most commonly bequeathed cooking items. Some were small, weighing only a few ounces, but they could weigh many pounds. Their ubiquity in both wills and inventories suggests that the most common type of cooking in fourteenth-century London was boiling, stewing, and frying, cooking styles that required the least labor and the simplest equipment. Of the thirty-three fourteenth-century households with cooking ware, all but had one had some kind of pot, whether identified as a frying pan, kettle, or simply pot or pan. Only William Woolaston, with the open hearth, had no pots or pans listed. His sole piece of cooking equipment was a spit, but he did not have cob irons to hold it. He may well have owned ceramic pots or sold his nicer-quality ones to pay his creditors.53 While archaeologists have recovered pots and pans made of ceramic, wood, and tin, most listed in the inventories or bequeathed in wills, both before and after the plague, were made of brass. Other related copper alloys included latten and lay metal, but they were not as robust.54 Most of the iron found in post-plague kitchens remained limited to wrought iron used for fireplace equipment.55 Smelting technology had still not improved enough to cast large items, but the presence of an iron pot in the 1397 inventory for John Norwich is evidence that more people were trying to expand the use of iron in cooking, because it was more durable than brass.56 In the fifteenth century, some pots were bound with iron, such as the “old patched pan bound with iron with 2 ears [handles],” weighing fifteen pounds found in Richard Everly’s kitchen in 1473.57 Appraisers valued it at more than the brass pans of comparable weight. Iron pots appear in a few of the sixteenth-century

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inventories, likely a by-product of the Tudors’ attempt to establish a cast-iron industry for military purposes.58 All of the kitchens inventoried in the sixteenth century had at least one brass pot or pan, usually both, but only six out of twentyfive kitchens, all in hall houses, had iron pots. Two of these houses belonged to Robert Amadas, goldsmith to King Henry VIII (r. 1509–47), so iron pots were restricted to the wealthiest households.59 The most prestigious food was meat, and the most prestigious way of cooking it was roasting. While Londoners would have been aware of the prestige of roasted meat, most households could not cook meat that way. Changing cooking equipment in both the archaeological record and in inventories indicates that in the immediate post-plague period, Londoners were increasing their meat consumption, but either boiling, simmering, or frying it.60 Flesh hooks, which increased in frequency between the late fourteenth and fifteenth century, allowed the cook to remove meat cooked on the bone from a broth or a frying pan (Figure 19). When cooking meat cut off the bone became fashionable, cooks gradually replaced their flesh hooks with skimmers, a precursor to slotted spoons that allowed cooks to scoop up meat, but drain the broth.61 The numbers of skimmers increased between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and flesh hooks had nearly disappeared.

Figure 19. Cook using both a meat hook and a skimmer. From Luttrell Psalter (England, fourteenth century). London, British Library Add. MS 42130, fol. 207r (detail). Image © British Library.

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Table 6a. Meat-Cooking Capabilities in London’s Fourteenth-Century Inventories (1350–99) Houses with flesh hooks

House with skimmers

Houses with spits

Single room = 9

0

0

1

Shop house = 13

1

0

4

Hall house = 20

1

1

8

House type

Incomplete = 1 Total = 43

0

0

0

2 (5%)

1 (2%)

13 (30%)

Table 6b. Meat-Cooking Capabilities in London’s Sixteenth-Century Inventories (1500–1544) House type Single room = 6

Houses with flesh hooks

House with skimmers

Houses with spits

0

0

2

Shop house = 5

0

2

3

Hall house = 31

4

9

25

Incomplete = 5

0

0

0

4 (9%)

11 (23%)

30 (64%)

Total = 47

Roasting required more fuel, labor, and specialized equipment to keep the meat continually basted and turned so that it would not burn or dry out.62 Only 30 percent of late fourteenth-century houses with cookware owned roasting equipment (Table 6a). By the sixteenth century, however, 64 percent had spits and only 9  percent had flesh hooks (Table 6b). In most cases, kitchens had more than one kind of spit: a square one for meat and a round one for poultry.63 Multiple spits meant that the fireplace had the capacity to cook more than one kind of meat at a time.64 When the Earl of Worcester upstaged Matthew Phelips at a banquet during his mayoralty, Phelips was able to host a rival feast and even served cygnets to his guests.65 Although his inventory is incomplete, producing such a meal required a large and well-equipped kitchen. The desire to roast meat is further reflected in the popularity of spits and the cob irons that held them as the most commonly bequeathed pieces of fireplace equipment, although it was never a common bequest. Among the fifty-one beneficiaries receiving fireplace equipment from testa-

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tors in the Commissary Court, two-thirds of these bequests were spits and/or cob irons, with 65 percent of these bequests made in the late fifteenth century. It was a less popular bequest among the richer Prerogative Court testators, possibly because they expected their beneficiaries to ultimately move to houses already well equipped for roasting. Of the only seven bequests of fireplace tools, six were spits. We can see the evolution of cooking and kitchens when we compare the kitchen of Richard Boneby, a mercer inventoried for debt in 1390, with that of Bernard Axe, a hosier who died in 1507. Boneby seems to have lived in a shop house with a separate kitchen. In his kitchen, he had three brass bowls, three brass pans, a frying pan, gridiron, two trivets, and a spit. Axe lived in a hall house that also had a separate kitchen. It had seven brass pots, six chafers, four pans, two kettles, two copper pans, a latten colander, four frying pans, seventeen spits of one kind and four of another, along with pot hangers, trivets, and gridirons. Neither had flesh hooks or skimmers. With Boneby assessed at just over £136, and Axe assessed at just over £58, the difference between their two kitchens was less a matter of wealth than chronology.66 Although not as wealthy as Boneby, Axe had the more complex kitchen, because sixteenthcentury kitchens generally had more equipment. These differences had implications for the men’s diets. Axe’s kitchen had the capacity to roast many large pieces of meat simultaneously, while also cooking other dishes; Boneby’s did not. Regardless of who did the actual cooking, a cook or Axe’s wife, his kitchen would also have required many servants to manage the many dishes such a kitchen was expected to produce, and some of these servants likely had specialized training.67 Boneby’s kitchen probably had servants too, but, given his equipment, he needed fewer of them, and whoever cooked, cooked fewer dishes at the same time. The multiplication of spits and the increase in fireplace accessories such as racks, bars, cranes, and pot hooks, as well as the overall increase in the numbers of pots and pans enabled increasingly sophisticated cooking for meals. No longer did households rely on pot-based stew; instead they ate more roasted meat and poultry and produced sauces and other dishes.68 To make these meals, most kitchens also had knives and “dressing” boards for cutting ingredients to the proper size and form. Other common preparatory tools included mortars and pestles as well as hand mills, or querns, for grinding, and archaeologists have recovered a variety of wooden implements, from spatulas to stir sticks, made from oak and yew.69 Also appearing in cookware inventories were sauce pans, bread graters, skimmers, ladles, new types of knives, and an increasing variety of pots and pans, all of which attest to a growing preference for meals with thickened sauces and gravies and a desire to have more than one kind of food served at a meal.70 As households came to cook different ingredients in separate pans, the labor required to prepare a meal

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increased. Altogether, these changes added tasks and choices to those who worked in the kitchen, changing the timing of their labor, the organization necessary to produce a meal, and cooking practices. These changes added to the hierarchies of a post-plague household and the number of people needing supervision. Comparing the different kitchens owned by the large and very wealthy London households of Robert Amadas, Robert Stodley, and Alexander Plymley shows that they had thought about their eating habits and had adapted them to particular purposes and situations. All three men owned more than one house, a London house and a secondary or tertiary house outside of London. Their London kitchens contained the equipment necessary to cook and dine on a large and elaborate scale. When at their country houses, their kitchens were furnished much more moderately. Not only is it likely that their London kitchens were in separate buildings; gentry or aristocratic tastes influenced the cooking practiced there.71 These households observed two ways of cooking and eating, which means that they were doing something other than simply imitating the gentry or aristocracy. Plymley’s London kitchen was more lavishly equipped than the one in Newington Green, a village north of London. His London kitchen boasted fifteen brass pots and fifteen brass pans of varying sizes, ten spits for meat and poultry, six pot hooks, which could be hung on one of two pot racks or a crane, and four kettles. His cooks could flavor his meals with herbs and spices ground in one of three different mortars, and he had a coffer with sugar. In contrast, his Newington Green kitchen had only six brass pans, four brass pots, four spits, one kettle, one mortar, and no sugar coffer. This pattern is replicated by both Amadas and Stodley, who each had three houses. In London, these men and their households enjoyed the most au courant menus, filled with ingredients from all over the Continent and Asia, while in the “country,” their kitchen equipment suggests much less opulent dining habits. Amadas, however, apparently had a fondness for fritters, as fritter chafers, a rather specialized pan, could be found in two of his three kitchens.72 Commercial and political aspirations dictated some awareness of elite dining habits. London’s political and economic well-being required the lord mayor and aldermen to host the king. Political engagement with either the city’s government or the guild also involved feasting.73 Richard Hill wrote up a discussion of the pewter dishes and other protocols for the lord mayor’s banquet in his commonplace book.74 Amadas, Stodley, and Plymley all saved their most grandiose feasting displays for London, where it would enhance their status among other merchants or make their aristocratic customers feel at ease. At their country houses, however, more informal priorities prevailed, suggesting that eating was more often limited to members of the household.

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Over the two hundred years after the plague, the complexity of cooking and the variety of available food grew for many Londoners, not just the most elite merchants. While the practices of the gentry or even the aristocracy influenced London’s material culture of eating, merchants and artisans adapted that culture to suit their own preferences and values. At the same time, it also varied according to the wealth of the household, and with very rich merchants, it changed according to the location of their houses. Less evident is who did the actual cooking. While there were concerns over female servants getting into trouble at the marketplace, the gender of who did the cooking is not evident, although women did inherit more cooking equipment than men.

Eating at Home The symbolic and legal importance of families eating together is reflected in both the dinner and drinking ware that adorned household tables and filled butteries and in the literature that instructed households on how to behave at the table. Traditionally, medieval households would have eaten in the hall.75 For aristocrats, eating together in a large space was a necessary manifestation of their power. In the thirteenth century, Bishop Robert Grosseteste advised the Countess of Lincoln to eat with her household in the hall in order to keep an eye on them.76 Through seating arrangements, order of ser vice, food, and toasting, lords choreographed hierarchy, preferment, and control of their retinues.77 Mealtime similarly allowed Londoners to engage in behavior that advanced their values and priorities. Medieval households had their main meal at midday, bookended by lighter collations after getting up and before going to bed.78 Servants would not have eaten with the family; some would have had to work during the meal, while others ate either in their room or in the kitchen. In merchant and artisan halls, folding accounting tables and trestle tables made it easy to change the hall over from business activities to dining.79 Tables also appear as one of the usual pieces of furniture in a parlor, making it another possible location for household meals.80 In William Edward’s house, inventoried in 1488, for example, he had the usual soft furnishings along with the accounting table in his hall, but in his parlor he had a joined square chair, six stools, and a little joined table with a pair of trestles.81 These furnishings suggest that his family ate in the parlor, with Edward, as head of the house, sitting in the joined chair and the rest of his family sitting on the stools.82 The joined furniture was not as flexible or movable as the trestle table, implying that Edward routinely ate in his parlor. Feasting in the parlor rather than the hall shifted some

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of the symbolic work of eating together. While the different kinds of seats implied that seating remained an important way to acknowledge order and hierarchy at the meal, the scale of eating together was diminished as the parlor augmented surveillance with intimacy. According to John Russell’s late fifteenth-century Book of Nurture, table linens and basins and ewers contributed to the display of feasting and emphasized the desire for courtesy and cleanliness. Tablecloths covered rough wooden tables, while towels, napkins, and basins and ewers kept diners’ hands clean during meals.83 Multiple sets of these items in London butteries, such as in William Edward’s house, indicate that many households had incorporated this ritual into their dining as well, even if these items were increasingly in the hands of female rather than male servants. Just as cooking equipment grew more diverse, so apparently did late medieval dishware. Ceramic, which survives in the archaeological record in greater quantities than wood or metal, is a good indicator of changing styles of dishware, because it is easily shaped, broken, and replaced. Prior to the plague, English potters had routinely imitated the designs of the more expensive glass and metal dishes adorning elite tables. This practice allowed households to keep up with changing styles.84 In the wake of the plague, the English pottery industry collapsed, and to fill the void Londoners imported pottery in new shapes and new colors from the Low Countries and the Rhineland.85 According to this post-plague ceramic evidence, Londoners ate and drank their enhanced diets from a growing variety of dishes and cups. The new shapes and sizes included tall and short beakers, wide and funnel-necked jugs, bowls and plates of varying diameters and depths, and a range of drinking vessels with and without handles, feet, and covers. Dishes valuable enough to be included in inventories and wills were typically made of pewter and latten at the low end and at the high end, silver and silver gilt. They also reflect a diversity of shapes and sizes.86 A short list of named pewter or silver dishes culled from London’s wills and inventories includes saltcellars, platters, chafing dishes, spice dishes, saucers, plates, chargers, porringers, and bowls. When he died in 1533, in addition to the plates, saucers, chargers, and bowls that had adorned his table, Amadas also had “a pint pot for ale,” “a dish for eggs,” “a quart vinegar pot,” several “mustard pots,” and large and small “fritter chafers.”87 Such variety both increased and reflected specialization in eating. Merchants and artisans amassed quantities of silver and pewter dishware over the course of the fifteenth century.88 The Venetian ambassador who commented on the profusion of goldsmith shops in London also believed that “there is no small innkeeper, however, poor and humble he may be, who does not serve his table with

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silver dishes and drinking cups.”89 However exaggerated his claims, they do suggest the ritual and largess that was routine at London tables. Thomas Cowper, a stockfishmonger whose house was inventoried when he died in 1488, had in his buttery a chafing dish, several candlesticks of latten, four basins, a colander, three pewter chargers, twenty-four platters, eighteen dishes, and twenty-two saucers. His pewter dishes alone weighed 180 pounds.90 As we saw in Chapter 4, dishes were among the items that testators increasingly gave to women in the mid-fifteenth century. By the fifteenth century, a set of dishes used to serve and hold food at the main meal consisted of a platter, dish, and saucer. A set of twelve in silver or pewter made a garnish.91 Garnishes or elements of one appear in 12  percent of the wills in both courts. Platters held meat dishes, saucers contained sauce, and plates held the portions eaten by the diner. Saucers were a post-plague addition, another sign of changing foodways. Richard de Blountesham’s bequest to his daughters in 1317 had no saucers among the quantity of plates he bequeathed to them, and indeed testators do not name saucers in their wills until my 1424–28 sample. Feasting created and maintained social hierarchies through the use of dishes. At feasts in elite homes and guild halls, many diners shared a single plate. The lower down the hierarchy, the more people to a plate.92 David Gaimster argues, however, that, influenced by the new varieties of dishware coming from the Continent in the fifteenth-century, Londoners were moving from shared dishes to individual ones.93 The evidence for this claim comes from a number of places. Archaeologists have excavated metal plates and wooden bowls with knife cuts, which indicate that people were eating from them.94 They have also found both wooden and metal bowls that had been customized with initials.95 Other evidence for the rise of individual dishes is the use of trenchers, flat, individual cutting boards to hold meat taken from a common dish. These might also hold individual portions of salt or sauce, again taken from a communal dish.96 While they could be made of precious metal, trenchers were often made of wood and were not very valuable. A shipment of 2,500 trenchers in 1499, for example, was valued at between sixteen and twenty-five to the penny.97 Their lack of value makes them scarce in inventories and wills. Richard Toky’s 1391 inventory includes nine trenchers among the plate he kept in his “Pantry and Buttery.”98 In the sixteenth century, appraisers found in the buttery of Plymley’s London house “a dozen Welsh trenchers in a box,” which they described as “fine” along with “other old trenchers.” Fine or not, appraisers valued them at only 2d.99 Similarly, appraisers only valued the dozen in Bartholomew Merry’s much smaller household at a penny.100 Another indication

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of individual dishes is the frequency of porringers in inventories, which allowed a diner to eat a single portion of pottage or stew.101 These findings challenge early modern historians who have argued that the shift to individual place settings happened first among elites in the seventeenth century and trickled down to rural inhabitants and the poor by the later part of the eighteenth century.102 Gaimster does not speculate on how widespread geographically this fifteenth-century change was, but imported ceramics were available in other parts of Britain and replication of Continental ceramic styles in cheaper local wares suggests that less well-off consumers wanted to participate in the latest elite fashions, which may have included new table manners as well. While rich merchants dressed their tables with linens and clearly owned and used eating and drinking ware that would have been at home on an aristocratic or gentry table, they did not necessarily use them in the same ways.103 The expansion of cooking practices and new varieties of dishware presented Londoners with new choices and options: the same dish or bowl could serve multiple purposes. Paul Blinkhorn has found that shallow bowls served for both skimming milk and measuring grain, two very different tasks.104 Anthropologists have also observed that special-purpose vessels such as fritter pans further divided the tasks of cooking, serving, and eating by transforming them into discrete events that each required a different piece of equipment, rather than running them together by using one pot or dish for all three tasks.105 The distance from which servers brought food, whether from a nearby hearth or from a separate building in the back of the property, and the ways in which they distributed it, whether from one pot or many sequential ones into common or individual dishes, all implicated mealtime dynamics. The order of ser vice, varieties and portions of food, and efforts to correct servers presented new opportunities for exercising authority. Individual dishes changed the social distance among those at the table and between the server and the served, and individual dishes allowed a server to interact with a diner differently than if diners ate from shared bowls. Taken together, varieties of foods, specialized dishes, and individual portions created new dynamics around meals that had the potential both to create and to destabilize household order. We can see some of these options and choices at work in the households of Plymley, Amadas, and Stodley discussed earlier. The butteries in their London houses, like their kitchens, were more fully stocked than those of their country houses. Stodley had two and a half garnishes in his London buttery, worth nearly £4, but only one, which was worth just 13s. 4d., in his buttery at Stepney, a village northeast of

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London.106 Similarly, Plymley had thirty-two candlesticks of various kinds in his London buttery, but only seventeen at his house in Newington Green.107 The differences between their London and country houses mean these men feasted differently in different houses, rather than just following gentry or aristocratic practices. Shared material culture is no guarantee of shared ways of using it. The eating habits of our three rich merchants show that despite having many of the same pieces found on an elite table, London merchants and artisans modified their use of tableware to reflect a number of possible concerns, such as wealth, household size, location, and type of house. The adoption of new dishware and new eating habits did not have to be an all or nothing proposition. Households that changed their eating habits would have done so gradually, as they acquired new cooking equipment, new dishware, and new recipes. Individual dishes might be associated with a particular kind of food or recipe, much as when non-Asian Americans use chopsticks for eating Chinese food but not Mexican food. Literary evidence suggests that merchants and artisans thought about their meals as a way of creating household behavior around the themes of piety, restraint, and hierarchy. Richard Hill’s commonplace book included a list of prayers to be said after meals throughout the year, showing that he intended to unite eating and praying with the discipline of following the ecclesiastical calendar.108 John Lydgate’s hugely popular poem “Dietary,” written in the first half of the fifteenth century, and included in the commonplace book of another sixteenth-century London merchant, John Colyn, specifically takes up the issue of how medieval merchant and artisan eating habits should be distinguished from those of the aristocracy.109 Lydgate juxtaposed the elite values of largess, opulence, and abundance that defined aristocratic banquets with the merchant and artisan values of restraint, moderation, and self-mastery that he felt should be represented in their meals. Suffer no overindulgence in your house at night; Beware of late supper of great excess; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . Drink not early in the morning before you eat; Clear air and walking make for good digestion Between meals drink not for pleasure But make thirst or work the occasion.110 A set of early fifteenth-century devotional instructions for a literate urban layman further weighs in on mealtime behavior at a merchant’s table. In this text, mealtime

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provides an occasion for the husband to display his household leadership, which was cast in terms of piety.111 Eucharistic symbolism ordered meals and family behavior. When you dine, and also after dinner, say grace standing. Let the book be brought to the table as readily as the bread. And lest the tongue speak vain or hurtful things, let there be reading, now by one, now by another, and by your children as soon as they can read. . . . Let the family be silent at table, and always, as far as possible. Expound something in the vernacular which may edify your wife and others. . . . You can make a cross on the table out of five bread-crumbs; but do not let anyone see this, except your wife; and the more silent and virtuous she is, the more heartily you should love her in Christ.112 This portion of the instructions singles out the man’s relationship with his wife; ignorant of Latin, she has to depend on her husband for instruction and guidance. With her passive acceptance of his instruction, she will earn her husband’s love. The manipulation of breadcrumbs into a cross creates an intimate Eucharistic-inspired moment that binds husband and wife together in a way that links Christian piety to his household leadership and her subservience. Restraint and self-mastery are also themes in these instructions. The decorations and images adorning dishes, spoons, and drinking vessels further integrated pious behavior with mealtimes. Spoons with the apostles on their ends, a popular household item, offered a visual reminder to inculcate Eucharistic piety into family meals (Figure 20). Thomas Teryngton gave half a set of apostle spoons to the foundling Robert Clerke, whom he was raising.113 Even the more affordable ceramic tableware could promote piety. The funnel-necked beaker imprinted with virgin martyrs, discussed in the Chapter 4, encouraged in young women—the very population who increasingly worked as urban domestic servants in the second half of the fifteenth century—the ideal female behaviors of passivity and courtesy.114 While decorations, colored glazes, and pleasing shapes had much to do with aesthetics, the choice of images on the bottom of cups, at the ends of spoons, or on the sides of jugs also connected pious expectations, mealtimes, and household order. Users also modified their dishes, cups, and spoons to invoke the saints and garner their blessing and protection during meals, showing that they had internalized a connection between eating and piety. Some of the recovered bowls and tankards from the wreck of the sixteenth-century warship the Mary Rose sport

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Figure 20. Silver-gilt apostle spoon (British, ca. 1490). Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession no. 55.42.8. Image © MET.

purposeful carvings. Some of these identify makers, others identify owners, and some appear to be protective devices, most commonly the monogram “VV” for virgo virginium, or “virgin of virgins,” a reference to Mary (Figure  21).115 One of the pewter spoons in the now disbanded Benson Collection also carries this inscription, as does one of the spoons excavated in London (Figures 22a and 22b).116 Merchants and artisans understood the daily activity of eating as a pious ritual, a time for contemplation and improving conversation, and a reaffirmation of the family. While meals might not be a religious event per se, the decorations on their spoons, cups, and dishware reminded them to remember Christ’s sacrifice and the blessings God had given the household. These objects had no specifically religious function, but they promoted thankfulness, humility, and Christian charity in users. The items on the table also manifested the ideals promoted by canon law

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Figure 21. Wooden bowl from the wreck of the Mary Rose, with an added carving of “VV” (English, sixteenth century). Mary Rose Museum, accession no. 8A1712. Image © Mary Rose Museum.

of a unified but hierarchically arranged couple. The foodways that developed out of post-plague consumption habits played an important role in creating household hierarchy, piety, and intimacy, attributes that helped generate a merchant and artisan identity around common values and behavior during a time of demographic and economic change. These values aligned with the values promoted by mazers discussed in Chapter 2. These goals fit well with other values to which London’s merchants and artisans aspired, such as order and restraint, which included members behaving in gender appropriate ways to the benefit and credit of a household’s reputation.

Desperate Housewives of the Late Middle Ages Even though men dominated professional cooking, because women received the majority—almost 60 percent—of the kitchenware bequeathed, it still seems likely that for London women living in modest citizen households, provisioning and cooking made up a large part of their housekeeping duties. This gave them a tremendous amount of daily control and influence over their family’s well-being. While they could not address the quality of food sold in the market, they could see

Figure 22a. Pewter spoon with an added engraving of “VV” (ca. 1490). Benson Collection (now disbanded), photo courtesy of David Constable.

Figure 22b. Detail of engraving.

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to what was bought, how it was prepared and served to their families, and what dishes and table linens would decorate the table. Knowledge of what meals made a husband happy or uncomfortable had far-reaching consequences for household dynamics and a couple’s relationship. This knowledge came from intimacy and experience with the physical needs of all those under a wife’s care. In Felicity Riddy’s words, “This kind of embodiedness works against the hierarchical structures that were assumed by urban and national lawmakers. Viewed from the perspective of the everyday body, even the patriarchal home is democratic: after all, one tired and hungry man is much like another.”117 These decisions about eating could confound wives’ subservient roles within the house. The case of Ireby c. Londesdale, a divorce case from York, acknowledges the power that women’s involvement with food preparation gave them. In this instance, decisions about the dinnerware produced terrible consequences. A servant testified that Robert Ireby attacked his wife Joan Londesdale at dinner because she had served his meal on a new pewter dish, rather than his accustomed one.118 In whatever way the two plates differed, Joan reportedly had dishes from which to choose, and she made a decision that had violent repercussions, rooted in late medieval hostility toward women’s independent choices, the symbolic nature of eating together, and the indeterminacy of material culture’s meaning and impact.119 In this lawsuit, we can see that husbands’ and wives’ eating habits did not automatically create a working marriage, nor could the new eating habits necessarily reinforce a husband’s superiority, because they demanded decision-making from those whom society valued for their subservience, but whose household roles gave them knowledge of how to soothe or anger those in charge. As a result, changes in foodways contained the possibility of a new social or family order. They were at a critical juncture in the intersection of patriarchy and intimacy and had not only moral implications for women’s household behavior but consequences for household order and reputation. Two texts in particular explore the anxiety that changes in foodways created in urban households. A fifteenth-century ballad called either “The Gossips Gathering” or “Wives at the Tavern,” and The Gospelles of Dystaves, an early sixteenthcentury English translation of the late fifteenth-century French text Les Evangiles des Quenouilles, both offer narratives of women leaving their houses and husbands, taking food and drink to share with female friends.120 As the Roman story of Lucretia demonstrates, women dining together without men had long been considered problematic. However, the material culture of eating embedded in these two late medieval accounts allows us to situate this concern within rising consumption, the expansion of food-related material culture, the challenges of deciding what items were appropriate

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for women to use, and anxiety around controlling the consequences. While the misogyny of these texts appears quite timeless, it is also historically quite specific. The ballad “Wives at the Tavern” appears in three versions, two from the fifteenth century and the sixteenth-century version found in Richard Hill’s commonplace book.121 In the ballad, an anonymous male narrator follows six women who go off together to eat, drink, and socialize.122 Following satirical conventions that mock and stereotype women’s behavior, the narrator portrays them as sneaky, boozy, and outspoken. Go therefore two by two Carefully that ye be not seen For I must from home come to you Because that is where my husband is. What they most desire is sweet wine: a pot of muscatel; For of all the wines I love it well, Sweet wines keep the body in health. But the narrator does not do all the speaking: when the women do speak, they celebrate the emotional support provided by their friendship. Good gossip mine, where have you been? It is so long since I’ve seen you. The central event of the ballad is a shared meal. Each of them brought forth their dish Some brought flesh and some brought fish.123 After some laughter, bravado, and commiseration, and much eating and drinking, the women go home to bed. The narrator then deplores women’s excessive drinking habits more generally. As a song, we might imagine it being sung by two groups, with the narrator sung by the men, who get the last word. A similar dinner scene appears in The Gospelles of Dystaves (STC 12091). In about 1510, one of Wynkyn de Worde’s apprentices, Henry Watson, translated the well-known French text Les Evangiles des Quenouilles into English.124 With so

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much interaction between London, the Low Countries and France, it is likely that some Londoners already knew this work.125 At its most basic, the piece is a satirical misogynistic work in the tradition of the querelle des femmes.126 It purports to be a transcript by an unnamed clerk of the teachings of six elderly “wise doctouresses” before an assembly of their female friends and neighbors. The women are all old and ugly, with suspect pasts; all have had multiple sexual partners, several are skilled at divination, and one is descended from heretics. Over the course of six evenings, the women take turns revealing their knowledge about marriage, fertility, childbirth, fidelity, infidelity, sexual pleasure, and healing. Following scholastic tradition, the women in the audience gloss their teachings with their own experiences and insights. Like the narrator in the ballad, the clerk narrates the proceedings, offering comments laced with irony, paternalism, and sarcasm.127 At the end of the session on Thursday, the purported day of the Last Supper, one woman proposes “a little Joyous banquet for to refresh our understanding with and our spirits.”128 The women return home to fetch supplies for the feast. One woman brings a dozen eggs, another goes to “fetch flour and butter for to make pancakes,” a third a “great quart of sweet wine,” another says she will “dress the meat.”129 As the women announce what they will bring, they also explain that they will have to bring their fare without their husbands’ knowledge.130 I will go to my house secretly while my husband Ployarde sleeps. . . . . . . I will take upon my conscience that the villain Jokesus my husband shall not eat one morsel. . . . . . . I spared four or five pence of which my evil husband knows nothing.131 In both “Wives at the Tavern” and The Gospelles of Dystaves, a variety of platters, plates, bowls, and jugs used to transport the meat, poultry, pasties, fish, flour, butter, eggs, and sweet wine accompany the women’s socializing. The varied food and dishware that make up these two dinner parties allow us to understand them as much more than a new version of an old story. The behavior of both sets of wives who abandon their husbands for their female friends needs to be read against the meaning behind husbands and wives eating together, the late medieval urban households’ increased consumption and rising standards of living, and the changing gender-coding of common household furnishings. The women put their households’ dishware to use in acting on their own concerns rather than supporting their households and their husbands. The very goods

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that made merchants and artisans who they were also had the potential to confound their identity and values when women used these goods in unintended ways. Both texts offer a vision of what a world changed by new forms of material culture and increased consumption could look like. In stark contrast to the idealized and very hierarchical meal described in the instructions for the pious layman, the women’s meals are loud, egalitarian, and communal, while the women themselves are boisterous, bawdy, and undisciplined. The layman’s wife has no voice, and if other women are sitting at the table, we do not learn of them. By contrast, both women’s dinner parties allow the women to create alternative hierarchies, where men, like the clerk in the Gospelles, serve the women. The meals also take place away from their husbands, and one occurs in a tavern. Taverns and alehouses had suspect reputations and were associated with a host of crimes, including fighting, gambling, fencing stolen goods, secret assignations, and prostitution.132 Even though many taverns were in houses, they were in most ways the opposite of houses. Taverns were open and accessible, while merchant and artisan houses embraced the values of containment, limited access, and security. Blood and employment contracts defined household membership, but tavern relationships were temporary and unconstrained. Even the furnishings imperfectly mimicked household ones. William Hurton, a vintner, ran a tavern somewhere in the late fifteenth-century London. Many of the items the appraisers found in his tavern could also be found in halls, such as wall hangings and cushions and a basin and ewer. The playing tables, dice, and long settle, along with two bread chests, a bread dish, and “other lumber” too insignificant to value, however, made it not quite like a hall.133 There was no table for eating, even though there was food, and in an urban house, bread chests belonged in the buttery. The long settle, which accommodated many people, made seating by status less obvious. The tavern had familiar household furnishings, but Hurton had arranged them for different kinds of interactions. As taverns and alehouses increased in the fifteenth century, moralists denounced them as the “devil’s chapel,” where patrons gave in to their baser natures.134 In the ballad and the Gospelles, the women are similarly equal and uncontrolled. Such behaviors obviously challenged the expectations prescribed by courtesy and religious literature of the period that women should be demure, silent, and passive. Like modern bars, not all taverns were disreputable. Yet even respectable public drinking houses were sites of limited or overturned hierarchies, conviviality, escapism, and good humor. According to any number of drinking songs, one escaped the cares of the world, met with friends, and laughed and commiserated over life’s problems in taverns and alehouses.

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Here I was and here I drank Farewell dame and many thanks. Here I was and had good cheer And here I drank much good beer.135 Because of their own lack of space within their masters’ homes, servants often resorted to taverns without much condemnation or trouble. Married women also visited taverns. Even so, there was some sense that taverns were masculine spaces, inappropriate for respectable women.136 The most upstanding taverns still required women to negotiate a number of issues surrounding behavior, place, and personal reputation. They were, therefore, ideal places for groups of wives to escape their husband’s control, even if only temporarily. Into this place of overturned or minimized hierarchies, the dishes and food for a meal that should have affirmed their husbands’ governance over them instead replaced it with women’s mutual support and friendship. The dangers that the women’s meal posed to patriarchal household order are fully realized in the details of their conversation. In the ballad, much of the women’s discussion focuses on denouncing the domestic violence that they regularly experience. Voicing of women’s unhappiness is another way the ballad upsets expected household order. Would to God that I had listened to your counsel Because my husband is so wrathful He beats me like the devil of hell And the more I cry the less mercy [he gives].137 Instead of replicating the violence of their households, in the ballad, the women act out an alternative social structure. The six women equally share food, expenses, and advice. And each of them will something bring Goose, pig or capons wing Pasty of pigeon or some other thing.138 Some aspects of the meal require leadership, but no one woman leads throughout. One pours the wine, and another divides up the bill.139 When one woman leaves after underpaying, thereby undermining the egalitarianism of their society, the remaining women denounce her, promising to refuse her future fellowship:

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One cast down her coin, and went her way Gossip, said Elinor, what did she pay? Not but a penny. Lo, therefore I say She shall be no more of our group. .... .... .... .... ... Now reckon our coin, and go we hence What cost it is for us but three pence? Pardon, this is but a small expense For such a sort and all but sport.140 Neither taverns nor dinner parties were new to the late Middle Ages, but new foodways and new material culture offered new possible behaviors and relationships that disrupted expected hierarchies and behaviors. Changes in eating and drinking habits meant new movements and new choices, with new kinds of dishware offering different means of physically controlling the food, even if only momentarily. From this perspective, we can see that the accounts of women’s dinner parties acknowledged both changing eating habits and concerns about the consequences of these changes. The dishes that facilitated the women’s all-female dinner parties—platters, dishes, bowls, and ewers—were the very types of dishes that appear so frequently in wills and that testators increasingly gave to women rather than to men. These were intended to facilitate a marriage and the female beneficiary’s subservience to her husband. However, these dishes were just as easily implicated in a world of license, rebellion, and limited hierarchies as they were in notions of patriarchal household order and economic success during a time of tightening gender roles. Choices and control did not combine easily with the value that late medieval society placed on women’s subservience, silence, and passivity. Read against changing bequeathing patterns, these literary pieces allow us to see the indeterminacy of material culture. The new dishware helped create new urban gender roles, but it was difficult to control how women would use that dishware because it was so heavily implicated in the world of housewifery: sometimes a shallow bowl measured grain, sometimes it skimmed milk; sometimes a ewer with virgin martyrs manifested piety and mealtime decorum, sometimes it carried ale out of the house to a gathering of friends. The new eating habits of the late Middle Ages threatened to transform a female task that should have created good household order into one that undermined it. From this perspective, the women’s behavior in the ballad and the Gospelles was not timeless but rooted in the challenges that these economic and material changes posed to a particular kind of

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household and its economic success. Challenges to that order, even when they came as a consequence of that order, needed to be contained, and misogyny was one way of containing it. The all-women’s dinner parties in “The Wives at the Tavern,” and The Gospelles of Dystaves were, then, not simply a late medieval version of Lucretia’s story but a historically specific comment on changing medieval behavior, based on changing material culture and changing consumption practices.

Conclusion Eating together was intended to reproduce social hierarchies between husband and wife, a householder and his household, or a well-to-do merchant and his familiars. With so much moral weight invested in food, changes to cooking, eating, and drinking habits provoked considerable anxiety. John Gower famously lamented in his poem Mirour de l’omme written sometime before 1378 that “The labourers of olden times were not accustomed to eat wheat bread; their bread was made of beans and of other corn, and their drink was water. Then cheese and milk were as a feast to them; rarely had they any other feast than this.”141 With all their religious and social connotations, foodways sit at the nexus of fifteenth-century anxieties about gender and status. They were another area where merchants and artisans garnered criticism for ostensibly imitating elite practices and another area where they tried to distinguish themselves from those above and below them. Yet even as merchants and artisans adapted their eating and drinking habits to engage their own values, changing foodways threatened their own notions of household order, particularly around genders.

chapter 6

When a Woman Labors with a Child

Household Cares Underlying the management and ordering of a household was the need to care for those who lived in the house: the head of the household, babies and children, and servants and other employees. “Care” is a capacious concept that includes soothing worries, feeding, providing physical comfort, medical attention, nurturance, and training. Childbirth and childcare tend to dominate moralists’ understanding of care, because producing and raising children was central to what it meant to be a medieval married woman. The connection between women and care seems natural, especially the care associated with children, but how much control and involvement mothers had over it remains a question. As with other housekeeping tasks, care in all its permutations is historically unstable. All the tasks collectively understood as care—feeding and breastfeeding, healing, bathing, diaper changing, and teaching—have continually moved back and forth between being defined as morally uplifting and socially valuable and dirty, unskilled drudgery in need of outsourcing.1 Medieval elites delegated many of these care tasks to servants or professionals, while the less well-off bundled them together under the charge of the housewife who fit them in among her other duties.2 Whether or not women actually provided all the care a household required, there is still a strong historical and moral presumption that women were primarily responsible for it. This chapter looks at household care, starting with domestic medicine broadly speaking. It then turns to childbirth and childcare. Childbirth was central to women’s identity, and childcare was essential at a time when London’s mortality rate was so high that it could only sustain its population through immigration, and when London families rarely lasted more than three generations through the male line.3 The rise in consumption allowed women to express their own concerns about

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care, both as a broad concept and as it specifically referred to childbirth and childcare in newly visible ways. For London households, childcare in particular was not a new responsibility for women, but new products allowed women to care for their households in new ways and to address childbirth as a crisis and childhood as a specific life stage requiring its own specialized material culture.4 The post-plague rise in consumption gave them the opportunity to define what care meant to them and provided opportunities to connect with other women through the expanding material culture of care and domestic medicine. Before the plague, there is little evidence for child-specific items, and there is little evidence for how households addressed children’s medical needs. Children as beneficiaries are certainly evident in wills, but childbirth and childhood as a stage of life are difficult to see. After the plague, however, increasing consumption made items previously available only to the elites for the nurturance of their households more widely available. London’s merchants and artisans had not only the money to purchase these items but the domestic space for their use and storage. This change was more than just the trickling down of elite goods into the hands of merchants and artisans with money to spend. The London marketplace expressly responded to customers’ interests in caring for their households by making affordable versions of care items widely available. The desire to care for a household and its children was certainly not new after the plague, but the ability to act on it with items specifically targeted at caring for children and the larger household was a change from before the plague, as was the recognition that Londoners would spend their money on these concerns and that women, through their access and use of these goods, would expand their identities as caregivers and create new relationships.5 The items women in post-plague London purchased, bequeathed, and inherited to care for their households demonstrate that, while they feared infertility, miscarriage, a long and painful labor, and the possibility of death for themselves and/or their child, they also valued and promoted their identities as mothers and caregivers. An increase in commercially produced items for women to use in caring for their families created new opportunities for them to influence the process and meaning of their caregiving. They came to save in chests and cupboards the items that had eased them through childbirth and had protected their households. By bequeathing these items to their daughters, other female family members, and friends, women created and perpetuated powerful connections to other women in relationships of care, instruction, and mutual aid. As with other aspects of consumption, moralists particularly accused London’s merchants and artisans of emulating and imitating the elite when they prepared for childbirth and raised their children. Focusing on those descriptions, however,

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undermines our ability to understand what London families cared about, what particularly worried women, and how they understood their caregiving roles. Most London households would not have had access to the same quality of medical care as aristocrats or members of the royal household, but merchants and artisans manufactured, imported, and purchased affordable versions of the products that elite women used to care for their households, and London women adapted these products in ways that made sense for their own lives. The material culture of caregiving itself further challenges these arguments of imitation because, from the perspective of London’s merchants and artisans, mimicking the elite—if indeed “mimicry” is the right word—might well have been seen as a way to incorporate the most effective care practices in their own households. Who but the royal family would have access to optimal chances for the mother and child’s survival? London’s merchants and artisans, like the nobility, used their financial and cultural resources to maximize their chances for a successful outcome and to express what parenthood meant to them. We should identify these concerns not as exclusive to elites but as human responses to parenthood in a world that desired children, valued heirs, and saw more death than birth.

Four Ounces of Jet Beads and Powder for Worms Medieval Europe inherited healing practices from the ancient Greeks and local folk traditions and integrated them with practical herbal remedies and Christian belief.6 Even as physicians and other medical practitioners grew confident that the plague was treatable, medieval explanations for the causes of illness did not change significantly in the two hundred years after the plague.7 Health was seen as a gift from God, and the sick or families with sick members prayed to God and the saints for healing and employed food, medicine, and other practices to restore humoral balance, mend injuries, or address an illness.8 Healing was an important component of housekeeping’s concerns with bodies.9 Post-plague London offered a variety of medical specialists from outright quacks to apothecaries, barber surgeons, midwives, and university-trained physicians.10 Even with a variety of medical professionals available, the household remained a primary source of health care. Most Londoners probably learned their medical knowledge through experience. There is only limited evidence for ownership of medical books by Londoners outside the medical profession. Of the few medical books mentioned in wills, medical practitioners owned and bequeathed the majority, as with physician John Racore’s bequest of “a book called Avicenna” to All

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Souls College or the surgeon Thomas Hert’s “2 books of surgery,” which he left to the Guild of Surgeons.11 These kinds of bequests did not put specialized medical knowledge into the hands of ordinary Londoners, but they do illustrate something of the education of London’s medical professionals and the range of medical care available to Londoners with financial resources. Two rare examples of medieval women owning medical books are Alice Pratte, a silkwoman and the wife of William Pratte, a wealthy mercer; and Elizabeth Wellys. The Prattes were a literary family, who included William Caxton, England’s first printer, among their friends.12 William Pratte had asked Caxton to translate and publish the Livre de bonnes meurs, but he died before Caxton finished the project. In Pratte’s will of 1486, he left his psalter-primer to his daughter.13 The next year, Walter Lempster, a physician, left a bequest of “the book called Petrus de Crescenciis to the wife of William Pratte, mercer, to have as her own book.”14 Petrus de Crescenciis’s Ruralia commoda was a book on rural agriculture and management, written in the early fourteenth century. It is not strictly a medical book, but it does contain information on the medical use of plants and trees.15 The fact that it came from a physician further suggests its medical usefulness. While Alice Pratte’s will, dated 1491, does not list any books, given the literary circle that she and her late husband moved in, her ownership of a book is not surprising.16 That she inherited a book with medical information from a physician implies an interest in plants for healing. Elizabeth Wellys does not leave us much of a trail. In 1520 she left her “French book called an herbal” to London’s Franciscan nuns.17 She had loaned the herbal to one Master Lark, who was to turn it over to the convent once he no longer needed it. Wellys also owned a primer. These two bequests indicate that some London women had access to herbal knowledge. Moreover, inventories from apothecaries and grocers demonstrate that there was a market for healing herbs.18 The saints whose images appear on jewelry, wall hangings, and cups were the frontline of most domestic health care. Many saint’s images had apotropaic (i.e., healing and protective) functions. Individual saints were charged with alleviating specific dangers or illness. St. John the Baptist was commonly believed to cure epilepsy, convulsions, headaches, and melancholy; St. Blaise healed throat problems; St. Lucy attended to eye ailments; and St. Apollonia, toothaches. St. Christopher was an all-purpose protective saint. Many held that a glimpse of him protected one from danger throughout the day.19 Eleanor Kyng, for example, left her mazer with “bond of silver and over gilt with a print of St. Christopher in the bottom weighing 8 ounces and a half ” to William Manningham.20 St. Christopher was also one of

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the most popular devotional images for rings.21 Having his image on a cup or a ring made gaining his protection easy. Because preachers commonly included saints’ lives in their sermons, Londoners would not have needed to own copies of texts to know which saints might heal and protect them.22 In addition to having the saints watch over them in their houses, Londoners increasingly bought items to wear that would protect them or their household. The most obvious such interventions are rings, paternosters, and other jewelry, formed out of healing materials or adorned with saints or other protective and healing images. These items all fall into the category of bodily objects rather than household ones, but they served as amulets, devotional objects, and healing instruments in ser vice of caring for the household.23 They might be worn on the body, but they could also be placed by a bed or cradle. Intertwined with daily prayers of thanksgiving and supplication were prayers and actions to provoke healing and protection. When a member of the household became sick or traveled, these portable objects would have been employed. Testators’ descriptions of brooches, girdles, paternosters, and rings indicate their awareness of their particular qualities. By far the most common of these portable items were paternosters, or prayer beads, originally strings of beads that helped users manage repeated cycles of prayers (Figure 23). They were adaptable objects, easily amenable to new ideas, associations, and behaviors. The materials they were made of, combined with their liturgical function, made them an all-purpose healing and protective device; sleeping with a paternoster purportedly prevented sudden death. Around 1400, the manufacturing process of beads became more efficient and more professional, as bead makers changed their manufacturing techniques. Previously, bead makers had used bow lathes to cut small bones into segments. By 1400, artisans were drilling spheres out of thicker bones and then drilling holes in them so they could be strung. This change used more parts of the animal skeleton. As manufacturing changed, bead makers were increasingly organized into guilds, giving them and their products greater legitimacy and consistency.24 In the fifteenth century, paternosters also became an increasingly common bequest among testators using both the Commissary and Prerogative Courts (Figure 24). While they appear in nearly 10 percent of the wills in my entire sample, 86  percent of these wills are from the 1464–68 sample and after. As paternosters grew in popularity, they also became gendered, becoming a common betrothal gift for women.25 Female beneficiaries received 72  percent of those bequeathed in the late fifteenth century and beyond (Figure 25). Daughters and granddaughters were three times more likely than sons or grandsons to receive them.26 Female testators

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Figure 23. Paternoster of wood and amber beads with a pendant of SS. Katherine and Barbara (Germany, 1475–1500). Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. 517-1903. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum.

also bequeathed them three times more often than male testators. Anne Polhill, who left her daughter her “best pair of coral beads,” is typical of such testators.27 John Estgarstone, an ironmonger, understood the beads he left to his daughter in 1492 as having maternal importance. The beads in question were his first wife’s “best beads,” and they were to be delivered to their daughter Margaret “or to her children” after the death of his current wife, Margaret’s stepmother.28 The chain of recipients ties these beads to family memories and lineage through the mother’s

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Figure 25. Beneficiaries receiving paternosters by sex in London, 1384–1540.

line by memorializing and validating their experiences of using this paternoster. Their surge in popularity also anticipates the introduction of the rosary, a cycle of prayers that celebrated the life, or “joys,” of the Virgin Mary.29 With the Annunciation and the Nativity two of Mary’s joys, it is easy to see how they became tied to women and promoted as specifically helpful in childbirth and childcare.

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Prayer beads could be made of any material, from bone or a simple knotted cord to semiprecious stones. John Skyrwyth’s haberdasher’s shop, for example, sold all manner of beads, including “red and black bone beads,” which and could be mixed and matched to create individualized sets.30 Valued at 4d. for 24,000 beads, they would have been affordable even to those who were not well off, making them an item available to most London women. Those we learn about in wills were made of precious and semiprecious stones. The most common stones used in making the paternosters left in wills were coral, amber, and jet. Medieval lapidaries, books about the properties of gemstones, based upon ancient Greek and Roman texts, touted these particular stones for their healing properties.31 Many believed coral attracted love, dispelled sickness, and rid one of cramps.32 Jet reduced swelling in the skin, and when ground into a powder and mixed with water, it cleaned teeth. It was also effective against gout.33 Amber, such as the incomplete set found in London (Figure 26), helped with tooth pain and warded off the evil eye.34 Jasper, which made up the paternoster that Alice Lord gave her sixth son, William, also stopped bleeding, helped “against all manner [of] worms,” and was an antidote to poison.35 An anonymous apothecary’s inventory included “4 ounces of jet beads,” along with herbs for healing such as dittany, hyssop, and St.  John’s wort, and “powder for worms.”36 Owners often added healing or other protective elements to their beads. Pomanders, hollow porous balls, were filled with aromatic herbs to ward off disease. They could be freestanding or hung on the end of a chain or paternoster. When Henry Atkyn left Joan White, possibly his fiancée, an elaborate paternoster, with “3 pair of coral beads great and small with a pomander of silver hanging by them,” he left her a veritable first-aid kit on a string.37 Another all-purpose protective object was the Agnus Dei, an image of the Lamb of God. The biblical description of Jesus as the Lamb of God “that taketh away the sins of the world” (John 1:29) made the Agnus Dei a popular charm against a range of dangers.38 Londoners did not commonly bequeath them, but it was a popular image for pressed-metal badges and accessories, including an ornate fourteenth- or fifteenth-century woman’s buckle excavated from Baynard’s Castle, in the western end of London (Figure 27). Pressed-metal versions would have been affordable to a wide range of women but not valuable enough to appear regularly in wills or to be itemized in inventories.39 One of the few Agnus Dei mentioned in a will belonged to Isabel Frowik. It was on a pax, adorned with pearls and a sapphire.40 The pax was a plaque kissed during the mass at the kiss of peace, but also kept for private devotions. The stones on Frowik’s pax provided additional protection and healing. According to medieval lapidaries, sapphires reduced fevers and anxiety, while pearls staunched the flow of

Figure 26. Portion of an amber paternoster (ca. 1350–1400), excavated at Baynard House, Queen Victoria Street, London, in 1972. Museum of London, accession no. BC72[79][[1836]] Image © Museum of London Archaeological Ser vices.

Figure 27. Agnus Dei belt buckle (fourteenth or fifteenth century), excavated at Baynard Castle. English Heritage, accession no. 815374. Image © English Heritage.

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Figure 28. Front side of the Middleham Jewel (late fifteenth century). Yorkshire Museum, accession no. YORYM 1991.43. Image © York Museums Trust.

blood and helped “against feebleness of flux.”41 The so-called Middleham Jewel, a fifteenth-century Agnus Dei in the form of a gold locket found near Middleham Castle in Yorkshire, contains the same stones found in Frowik’s pax (Figure 28). On the front of the Middleham Jewel is a mounted sapphire, the verse from John 1:29, an image of the Crucifixion, and healing words that cured epilepsy.42 The similarities between the Middleham Jewel and Frowik’s Agnus Dei imply that hers was also medicinal. As the bearers of stones and healing inscriptions, rings easily turned into amulets, and they, along with paternosters, were probably the most common healing

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items found in households.43 Almost 10  percent of Commissary Court wills leaving goods left rings, and a majority of recipients, 55 percent, were female compared to 34  percent male recipients. (The remaining 11  percent were groups and clerics.) In the Prerogative Court, a different situation prevailed: 53 percent of beneficiaries of rings were men and 44  percent were women. The differences may be related to the other roles that rings played in addition to healing and adornment. They could be seals and signs of official office, something that affected the lives of the generally wealthier men proving their wills in the Prerogative Court. Also, the male testators in the Prerogative Court may have used them and bequeathed them as protective devices, because being a successful merchant required greater travel and therefore greater protection. Among the popular inscriptions on rings were the names of the Magi, also known as the Three Kings of Cologne, which were believed to ward off illnesses, particularly falling sickness.44 According to medical lore, “he that carries the names of the 3 kings with him, he shall be spared through the pity of God from the fall and evil.”45 Robert Otelby had such a ring.46 Many also thought that, like St.  Christopher, they protected travelers.47 The Three Kings appear not only on rings but in a number of other domestic contexts; John Osburn had them on a mazer, and in Thomas Salle’s hall hung a “stained cloth with our lady & [the] 3 kings of Cologne,” a useful image for a man whose business regularly took him to the Low Countries.48 The name of Jesus also served as a charm to ward off sudden illness and appeared on both high-end and affordable dishware.49 William Bounde left a mazer with the Holy Name of Jesus in the boss to his son.50 By the late Middle Ages, a new, specialized ring called a “cramp ring” had appeared (Figure 29). Like the names or images of the Three Kings, many believed cramp rings, such as the one that former mayor Thomas Hill’s widow Elizabeth wore as she dictated her will, to be efficacious against epilepsy and rheumatism, both understood as cramping of muscles.51 Cramp rings are associated with a miracle attributed to Edward the Confessor. According to some versions of the Golden Legend, Edward gave his ring to a beggar who turned out to be St. John the Evangelist. The saint, in turn, gave the ring to two pilgrims lost in Jerusalem, with instructions to return it to Edward. The ring was then reportedly buried with Edward, and when the abbey translated his relics in 1163, the abbot of Westminster removed the ring from his tomb to use it as a relic. By the reign of Edward II (r. 1307–27), the abbey had begun using the ring to bless monetary donations and then turning the coins into cramp rings on Good Friday.52 By the Tudor period they were quite popular. In a letter from 1535, Lady Lisle requested fifty-nine cramp rings to give as tokens to foster political alliances and friendships, but she also

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Figure 29. Cramp ring (English, 1308–1550). Museum of Science, London, accession no. A641034. Image © Museum of Science.

embedded in these gifts the desire for the recipients’ good health.53 While rings are a frequent item in wills and inventories, cramp rings named as such are relatively rare.54 Descriptions of rings with writing may have been cramp rings, rings with the Three Kings’ names, the name of Jesus, or something else entirely.55 Other rings with apotropaic value were those with St.  Anthony, or tau, crosses, which protected against plague, and unicorn horns, whose protective and healing powers purportedly worked against many diseases as well as poison.56 Marona Multon gave a ring, which she claimed was a unicorn horn, to a young female cousin.57 The blending of housekeeping, healing, and women’s relationships come together in the 1489 will of silkwoman Maud Muschampe, the widow of a former mayor and mercer.58 As she made her will on her deathbed, she explained that her daughter-in-law’s “coral beads . . . lie with me” and that next to the bed stood her nut. In another room she had three “cushions embroidered with musk balls,” or pomander cushions. These items were all intended to provide medical benefits. The fact that she borrowed a paternoster from her daughter-in-law implies the women had discussed Maud’s declining health. Made of coral, they were appropriate for someone sick and in pain.59 Medical texts and tradition held that both the coconut’s meat and its shell also had various medical properties. The Middle English version of Guy de Chauliac’s Surgery claimed that coconut “oil comforts the sinews.”60 In the late fifteenth century, some seem to have thought that cups made

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from coconuts could also detect poison.61 The pomander cushions helped generally to purify the air of sickness. While they suggest Maud was in pain, the nut and the cushions were also part of her house’s regular furnishings, demonstrating how Muschampe included protecting her household’s health as part of her housekeeping functions. Specialized medical items or herbal remedies do not appear in wills, but the abundance of amulets and saints’ images throughout London houses and on London bodies demonstrate concern for household health. The production of these items in affordable versions means that they were available to a wide range of households, not just the well-off ones. Interactions with these healing objects were not only part of living in a late medieval house; they were also key to caring for a family. Women received the majority of these items, and bequests between mothers and daughters were especially prominent because care of the household fell to women as part of their evolving housekeeping tasks. By leaving amber, coral, or a St.  Anthony cross in their wills, mothers both continued their caretaking roles after death and passed their abilities on to their daughters.62 Testamentary gifts are only the most visible manifestation of this presumption. They likely reflect wider shared assumptions about women’s responsibilities for caring for the household, whether in a medical crisis or as a daily routine.

When a Woman Labors with a Child While all kinds of maladies routinely presented themselves as medical crises in medieval London, childbirth, while desired, was a medical crisis as well. It is also the medical experience most associated with women. Demographers debate how deadly it was for women and their babies, but mortality rates were high, especially in medieval cities.63 We know relatively little about medieval childbirth, aside from the experiences of a few queens, and we know even less about women’s attitudes toward it. As a result, much about childbirth has been debated by scholars.64 Yet the large number of medieval saints’ cults and relics dedicated to fertility, childbirth, and child-welfare concerns alone demonstrates both how much childbirth concerned families, how much they desired children, and how much they wanted them to survive in an era of high mortality. The expanding market of products to aid in childbirth gave women the means to influence the process. It is difficult to identify changes in medieval childbirth practices, because women did not write about them and men who did write medical books were usually absent from the proceedings.65 When we hear about childbirth, it is often in

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the context of warnings about lavish expenditures on the material culture of lyingin chambers.66 Readers of Christine de Pizan’s early fifteenth-century Book of the Three Virtues learned of a merchant’s wife denounced for creating a lying-in chamber more elaborate than the queen’s.67 The popular advice book Knight of the Tower presented the dire story of the queen of Cyprus, punished by God with the death of her baby for her postpartum displays of lavish furnishings.68 Londoners may well have wanted to imitate their social betters because they had the resources for the best chances for a mother and baby’s survival. They would have had many opportunities to learn how the queen and other aristocrats prepared for birth, because much of the pomp surrounding the birth and baptism of royal children took place in full view of London’s inhabitants.69 In 1453, Henry VI’s son Edward was born in Westminster, just southwest of London (see Map 1 in Chapter 1), as were several of Edward IV’s children, including Elizabeth of York, the future wife of Henry VII, and the ill-fated Edward V.70 Provisioning the royal birth involved local merchants and artisans as well. Those living proximate to any of the several royal residences in and around London would also have likely known servants working in the royal household. All groups could provide descriptions of behind-the-scenes preparations, providing opportunities for the wives of London’s merchants and artisans to learn how royal women addressed the worries associated with childbirth. Mimicry is not the entire story, however. Some of the items that London’s women employed during childbirth, such as birthing girdles and apotropaic gemstones, had been a part of childbirth practices since antiquity, reminding us that some medical practices transcended status and locale.71 More immediately, they were part of the culture surrounding childbirth that crossed over from before the plague and continued to be meaningful to women regardless of status. Their expanded use after the plague reflects both the London marketplace’s response to women’s concerns and women’s growing ability to use meaningful objects to realize their own priorities, which they rooted in a particular kind of post-plague household morality. A variety of amulets in both deluxe and affordable versions addressed fertility concerns.72 For example, during her pregnancy in 1441 Margaret Paston urged her husband John to “wear the ring with the image of St. Margaret that I have sent for you for a remembrance until you come home.”73 In addition to being Margaret Paston’s namesake, St.  Margaret was the patron saint of childbirth. The Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives, declares in its entry for her that “any woman who invoked her aid when faced with a difficult labor would give birth to a healthy child.”74 While most testators who owned copies of the Golden Legend left them to clergy, a few were left to women.75 William Crestewyk, for example, left his copy of a “book called the legend of the saints” to his wife Alice.76 St. Margaret’s

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image also appeared on jewelry, drinking cups, and other items in the house.77 London widow Margery Robynson’s wedding ring had images of the Trinity, the Virgin, and St. Margaret. She left it to her unmarried daughter, Margery, as a gift of affection and familial intimacy. Not only was St. Margaret the girl’s name saint, but likely her mother hoped the ring would help secure her daughter’s future identity as a mother.78 Many of the items used in other medical situations already discussed were thought to be effective for fertility and birthing. For example, in 1395, Pope Benedict XIII blessed an Agnus Dei, stating that it would aid women in childbirth.79 Only eight appear in wills in my entire sample, but four of them went to women. Three of these were also adorned with pearls, which were believed to stem postpartum hemorrhaging.80 For families of means, another possible aid to fertility was pilgrimage to holy objects reputed to help pregnancy and infertility. Some were international cults, while some were quite local. For example, the shrine to St. Anne at Buxton in Derbyshire had an image of St. Anne with a staff, and the abbey of St. Modwen in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire had an image of St. Modwen “with her red cow and her staff,” the latter of which, according to dissolution reports, “women laboring of child in those parts were very desirous to have [it] to lean upon and walk with it.”81 More famous were shrines in both England and on the Continent that held relics of the Virgin Mary, usually her girdle, which devotees believed promoted fertility and help with childbirth.82 According to legend, Mary threw down her decorative belt to St. Thomas as proof of her assumption into heaven. Europe was awash in Mary’s girdles.83 The monastery of Bruton in Somerset claimed to have the Virgin’s girdle. Among the many items confiscated during the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 was “our lady’s girdle [of] red silk, which is a solemn relic sent to women in labor so that they shall not miscarry.”84 More convenient for Londoners, Westminster Abbey also claimed to have “Our Lady’s girdle.” According to John Flete, a fifteenth-century Westminster chronicler, Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–66) had given the girdle to the abbey.85 Relic lists from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries report that the monks kept the precious relic in “a long coffer of crystal . . . with 3 cases.”86 Also among the abbey’s relics was St. Elizabeth’s girdle, which the monks kept in a purse.87 As the alleged girdle of the aging and formerly sterile Elizabeth, it was also likely a fertility relic. And while Westminster went to some effort to promote its relics of Edward the Confessor and its relic of the Holy Blood, surviving pilgrim badges suggest that the girdles also attracted pilgrims to the great abbey.88 The most famous Marian pilgrimage in England was to Walsingham in East Anglia. According to a fifteenth-century

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ballad, in 1061 a Saxon noblewoman named Richeldis de Faverches purportedly had a vision of Mary.89 In her vision, Mary transported her to her home in Nazareth, where the Annunciation happened. Richeldis promised to build a replica of the house in Walsingham. Pilgrim badges excavated from London show that Londoners traveled to many of these shrines. At some point after becoming pregnant, probably with quickening, when the baby started to move and women would know for sure they were pregnant, women began preparing for the birth. Across Europe, people of means carefully prepared the birthing area. Elizabeth L’Estrange, in her study of childbirth scenes in medieval books of hours, argues that beds, their linens, and hangings had pride of place in lying-in preparations.90 In Renaissance Italy, husbands outfitted the birthing chamber with special bedding, clothed their wives, and decorated the ceremonial childbirth trays that carried food to the new mother.91 When Elizabeth of York gave birth to Margaret Tudor in 1489, her room was hung with rich tapestries and her “bed [was] made up of a wool-stuffed mattress, a featherbed, a down-filled bolster and four down pillows, the finest linen sheets and pillow cases, a linen quilt, and a coverlet of ermine and cloth of gold.” A chronicler noted that the wall hangings were of “rich cloth of blue Arras, with fleurs-de-lis of gold.”92 In 1536, when Lady Lisle believed she was pregnant, her London agent, John Hussee, spent six months procuring clothing, room furnishings, and special food for her.93 While London’s citizens had no childbirth trays, people who lived in multiroom houses prepared a birthing room, although where in the house is not clear.94 As we have seen, London bedrooms generally lacked fireplaces and would not have been as warm as halls and parlors, which more often had them. Ulinka Rublack has found that in Germany, expectant mothers commonly moved into the main room by the fireplace for birth.95 Ease of access for a heavily pregnant woman and space for her attendants must have been another consideration. Separate bedrooms were also rare in one- to three-roomed houses, as were fireplaces, at least until the sixteenth century. While some London women in the citizen class could have had a separate childbirth room, if they required extra warmth and no steep and dark stairs for the occasion, their birthing chamber was probably not where they usually slept.96 Furnishing an urban childbirth room also included special bed linens and wall hangings. In 1531, Elizabeth Pomfreitt, the widow of a wealthy Westminster brewer, left to Elizabeth Manstyan, possibly her goddaughter, bed linens and a white cloth canopy “to occupy her when she shall lie with child.”97 The appraisers making a bankruptcy inventory for an unnamed late fifteenth- or early sixteenthcentury widow found “in the chamber over the hall” a large chest containing similar kinds of goods:

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Item a sheet for a woman when she lies in childbed with bone lace of white in the same—8s. Item 3 pillow case with the same bone lace—9s. Item a face cloth of cambric of the child—4s. Item 3 pillow case with pearls—6s. Item a plain sheet for a woman’s bed—5s.98 Their price and adornment reflect investment in both the quality of the linens and in pearls, which promoted the mother’s recovery.99 As we have seen, testators commonly bequeathed bed linens, but they rarely identified linens as white. Those few that were might also be for childbirth.100 Special childbirth linens were more than a London custom. Lisa Liddy has found that York’s sixteenth-century merchants and artisans used them as well.101 Whether or not these items actually eased the process of childbirth and recovery, saving them and bequeathing them memorialized the event. While the bed was at the center of these preparations, by the fourteenth century many women use birthing stools for their deliveries. Birthing stools were stools with U-shaped seats and arms, which allowed a woman to push and to use gravity to help deliver her child. The U-shaped seat allowed someone to catch the baby when it dropped.102 The bed, then, was for the mother’s recovery, rather than the birth itself, but it nevertheless retained its strong association with childbirth as a metaphor for the process and space of women’s knowledge and authority. Women’s interactions with the goods that furnished these birthing chambers were significant, even if it was the superior earning capacity of their husbands that ultimately provided them, or their male servants who picked the furnishings out, as in the case of Lady Lisle. In staging their birth rooms, women both imposed their own understanding of the process and embraced shared cultural practices. When women saved and bequeathed childbirth linens, they were setting up their own and other women’s birthing chambers. Women valued these linens for their apotropaic and practical benefits, but the linens also became “biographical objects,” imbued with the owner’s personal characteristics.103 Bequeathing them to the next generation invoked ties of affection, family, and neighborliness. Roberta Gilchrist argues that such items were “an investment of intergenerational memory in objects connected with life course rituals.”104 In addition to changing the individual, involvement in the event of childbirth also transformed the objects used from a mundane and disposable possession to something worth keeping.105 Saving these items perpetuated memories that drew upon women’s larger roles as keepers of family memories, a role that grew out of their involvement in both the birth

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process and preparation of the dead for burial.106 Childbirth objects, in particular, connected younger women to older, more experienced women and are evidence of the value that women placed on families and their role in continuing them. Joan Kent, as discussed in Chapter 4, articulated this sentiment when she left a wellappointed bed and linens to her daughter so that she might “remember her ancestors.”107 The curation and bestowal of these objects make London childbirth practices more than mere imitation of the royals; the items furthered social and family identity by actively involving women in childbirth in ways that they prized. For married women of all estates, childbirth involved many people; neighbor women, a midwife, and female family members might all attend.108 If the woman had complications during the birth and the family had means, they might call a male surgeon or physician.109 Women attending the laboring mother and men waiting for news outside the birthing space made childbirth a crowded and noisy affair. What actually went on in the birth room is less clear; almost no medieval writers described it. Some moralists railed against the “superstitious practices” that went on in the birthing room, but their descriptions are more of a statement about the power and authority the occasion gave women.110 We should not entirely rule out women’s use of gynecological texts in aiding a woman when she went into labor, although how much knowledge she, the midwife, and her attendants had could vary considerably.111 Several English gynecological texts circulated as separate fascicles, which would have been cheaper and more easily shared, although there is no evidence that women actually owned these specific manuscripts.112 While no doubt some London women had access to such works, there is little evidence that gynecological texts routinely aided them.113 By 1540, however, Thomas Raynalde translated and had printed Eucharius Roesslin’s midwifery book into English as The Birth of Mankind; Otherwise Named, The Woman’s Book, making this particular text more widely available. In the introduction to his second edition in 1545 he claimed that “the midwife and the rest of the women being present . . . hear the book read by some other, or else to read it themselves.”114 It is unlikely that Raynalde documented an entirely new practice among women giving birth. Other medical traditions also promised safe and quick deliveries. Many lapidaries promoted particular gemstones, such as coral, amber, and jet as aids to “women that have conceived and to deliver a child.”115 They are also some of the most common types of beads found by archaeologists.116 Among its many properties, coral was thought to speed up the beginning and end of any business (including labor) and to ease teething pain.117 Jet quelled childbirth pains. According to the so-called “London Lapidary of King Philip,” a Middle English translation of a mid-fourteenth-

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Figure 30. Turned jet bowl (late medieval), excavated at Trig Lane, London, in 1974. Museum of London, accession no. TL74[368]. Image © Museum of London.

century French text, “if a woman labors with a child & drinks of the water [in which jet] has lain in for three days & three nights, soon she shall be delivered [of her child].”118 Archaeologists recovered a late medieval lathe-turned jet bowl in excavations at Trig Lane in London (Figure 30). Given jet’s alleged properties, Roberta Gilchrist proposes that the bowl, which fits in the hand like a drinking cup, came from a well-provisioned midwife.119 Like coral, amber was also thought to help with childbirth and teething, and jasper was believed to help expel the afterbirth.120 The red and black beads that Skyrwyth sold in his shop could well have mimicked coral and jet, spreading the use of paternosters in childbirth to less-wellto-do households. The manufacturing of paternosters out of these kinds of stones is another manifestation of paternosters’ adaptability, as users transformed them from generic healing items into ones that specifically addressed pregnancy and childbirth. Their use in childbirth materially connected prayers and medicine, furthering their overall utility. The amber and jet beads that Margaret Brokecastre left her daughter Katherine would thus have addressed a variety of fertility and childbirth issues in addition to aiding her in her prayers.121 The choice of stones manifests concerns for pain, shortening labor, calming fussy babies, and protecting them from danger.

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Another popular birthing aid was a birthing girdle. Like apotropaic gemstones, birthing girdles predate Christianity.122 Various versions of the gynecological Sickness of Women recommended that the birth girdle be made of hart’s skin.123 Religious reformers periodically condemned them as superstitious. The author of the late fourteenth-century anticlerical poem Pierce the Ploughmans Crede mocks Carmelite friars for promoting “miracles of midwives that make women to believe that the lace of Our Lady’s smock will deliver them of children.”124 Nicholas Shaxton, the sixteenth-century reforming bishop of Salisbury, similarly urged his clergy to discourage midwives from using “any girdles, purses, measures of our Lady, or other superstitious things, to be occupied about the woman while she labors, to make her believe to have the better speed by it.”125 These kinds of criticisms suggest, however, that women routinely used some kind of girdle before or during childbirth. Royal women had access to the Virgin’s girdle from Westminster Abbey to help with their deliveries, and over the course of three centuries several royal women borrowed it. In 1242, the monks sent it to Henry III and his wife Queen Eleanor in Gascony, in preparation for the birth of their daughter Beatrice. In 1338, two of the abbey’s monks spent more than twenty weeks overseas guarding the Virgin’s girdle that had been sent to accompany Queen Philippa during her pregnancy; and sixteen years later, in 1354, the king and queen paid £12 to have it brought to Woodstock, shortly before the birth of the future duke of Gloucester. Finally, in 1502, Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII, “paid 6s. 8d. to a monk [of Westminster] for a girdle of Our Lady” to ensure her safe delivery. She delivered the child, a girl, but both died shortly thereafter.126 As we have seen, Westminster was not alone in claiming this wonderful relic. While the abbey apparently limited direct access to the Virgin’s girdle to the royal family—the abbey’s account rolls contain no evidence that they loaned the relic to local women—medieval Londoners and medieval women in general had access to replicas of the holy girdle in the form of thin strips of parchment inscribed with prayers and charms, which were laid across the woman’s stomach.127 By the late Middle Ages, there were both commercially produced and individually commissioned parchment and paper birthing girdles, which helped situate childbirth within the bounds of Christian theology.128 Nine such birth girdles, also cataloged as prayer rolls by archivists, survive for late medieval England.129 Three of the nine, Wellcome MS 632, British Library Harley Charter 43.A14, and a unique printed one (STC 14547.5) from the workshop of Wynken de Worde, England’s second printer, were produced for commercial purposes (Figures 31a and 31b).130 Calculations based on Christ’s presumed height at death and the length of the nails used at his crucifixion determined the length of some of these girdles, and

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in the process summoned the miraculous body of Christ to provide comfort and aid to the laboring woman.131 Most surviving birthing girdles depict a tau cross and called upon SS. Julitta and Quiricus, the early Christian martyrs, mother and son, a Byzantine devotion brought to England by Crusaders.132 Instructions read that a woman in labor should have the cross “on her when she labors with a child.”133 Wear and tear on Wellcome MS 632 (Figure 31a) suggests it had indeed been placed around a woman’s abdomen.134 Birth girdles’ long history means that users would not necessarily have needed to be literate to find them useful.135 As an interactive object, familiar to women in concept, if not in form, the text and decoration provided protection, whether or not the user could read its prayers. These commercially produced girdles capitalized on popular childbirth practices, making them widely available at affordable prices.136 Although only one still survives (Figure 31b), de Worde would have printed many of these girdles to make setting up the press financially worthwhile, suggesting the commercial viability of such an item. His version must have been relatively common, giving London-area women ready access to this familiar birthing aid, albeit in a new form.137 Girdles were also a dress accessory worn by women. Like paternosters, they were highly adaptable bodily objects, subject to the whims and desires of fashion and the wearer. Their adaptability also meant they crossed the boundary between fashion and medical utility, raising questions of how much users adhered to the formal expectations created by girdles and how much they improvised by applying other experiences and knowledge to these objects.138 There is evidence that women connected the girdles they wore on their waists to the one they used during childbirth. Elizabeth Kyrkby, for example, left her girdle to Our Lady of Walsingham, a gift that implies she was thankful for the Virgin’s intercession in helping her to either conceive or safely deliver a child.139 Girdles were a more frequent bequest than paternosters, appearing in 13  percent of all the wills in my sample, but they too became more common as the fifteenth century progressed, peaking in the late fifteenth century (Figure 32). Initially, most girdles were left to male beneficiaries. Only in the mid-fifteenth century did testators bequeath them as often to women as to men. By the final third of the fifteenth century, they became overwhelmingly a bequest given to women; altogether, women received 65 percent of them (Figure 33). They are unique among the items I tracked in changing their gender coding to this degree. As with paternosters, testators favored daughters over sons as beneficiaries.140 A greater percentage of female testators than male testators also bequeathed them. Margaret Russell left her entire girdle ensemble to her daughter Ellen Bate, and when John Dawbney left to his sister his “wife’s best wedding girdle of red,” he was likely just confirming a gift his late wife had already made.141 Many of these

Figure 31a. Portion of a prayer scroll (fifteenth century). This one was produced for a modest rather than elite clientele. Its wear marks suggest it had been used as a birthing girdle. Wellcome MS 632. Image © Wellcome Library.

Figure 31b. Printed birthing girdle from the workshop of Wynken de Worde (London, 1533–34). British Library MS Harley 5919. Image © British Library.

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girdles were just dress accessories, but their popularity and increasing association with women point to the other cultural work they did. Girdles did not have to be fancy or expensive. Even those too poor to leave a will could have bought either one of the “feeble worsted girdles of London making” valued at only 4½ d. or one of the “coarse” “single girdles of worsted” valued at a halfpenny that John Skyrwyth sold in his haberdasher’s shop along with pater-

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noster beads.142 Women could have added a variety of cheap metal fittings in the shape of crosses, flowers, and birds in the ser vice of decoration, fertility, and childbirth.143 So important were girdles that when the wardens of the girdlers’ company brought William Stikeneye before the mayor and aldermen of London for making leather girdles “harnessed with tin and other false and worthless metals,” the mayor found that making such cheap girdles was “very advantageous for the common people” and instructed the wardens to leave Stikeneye alone to sell his wares.144 London women understood that their girdles projected many meanings associated with women’s sexuality and identity.145 John Freman acknowledged girdles’ moral potential by describing the one he left to his daughter as an “honest girdle such as was her mother’s.”146 With the term “honest” Freman indicated that he expected the girdle to adorn his daughter both visually and morally.147 The detailed description Margaret Russell provided for her very elaborate girdle in her 1487 will shows that she was quite proud of it. On her “narrow girdle of green silk adorned with silver gilt . . . with 13 double bars of silver and gilt,” she hung a set of keys, “a pair of beads of black jet [with] the paternosters of silver & gilt,” and “also a purse of red cloth of gold.”148 The keys on this stylish accessory might have been functional, but they also symbolized housewifery and Russell’s ability to protect her household’s resources. The silver decoration and purse placed her socially and economically as well as broadcasting her fine taste, while her beads demonstrated piety and had medical uses. It was a girdle that displayed Russell’s identity as a pious woman and as a housewife and caregiver. Prescriptive literature reinforced these various meanings. The fourteenth-century prescriptive poem “The Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage” and the fifteenth-century devotional text The Doctrine of the Hert both express concerns about how a woman should properly wear a girdle. The Good Wife admonishes her daughter that girdles worn inappropriately suggest promiscuity. Daughter, in all company upon the holiday, Whether you will dance or sing, or with your fellows play, Hang your belt not too low, but take the knot away, Wear no beads about you, lest they fall from your clothing.149 The author of The Doctrine of the Hert admonished the reader to wear a white girdle to symbolize purity and to make sure it secured the clothing, lest the breast fall out.150 Once the birth was over, women sometimes left the fertility items and childbirth aids to their parish churches, as a gift of thanksgiving.151 The wife of Anthony Goldsmith gave the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, a circlet with a

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blue stone to adorn the church’s image of St.  Margaret. The parish loaned this headpiece to brides at their weddings, and it was, argues Gervase Rosser, a fertility object.152 The wardens also had charge of a silver and coral bead necklace that they adorned the same statue on St. Margaret’s feast day and other special occasions.153 Loaning out these items gave parish women access to fertility and childbirth aids that donors felt had proven track records and taught women how to manage their own childbirth. Gifts to parish churches, therefore, could play an important role in shaping childbirth experiences, with material culture connecting women of varying social statuses through shared objects, concerns, and practices. The Church required that soon after its birth the baby be christened. This ritual, which cleansed the newborn of original sin, ideally happened at the parish church, where the priest performed the sacrament. If the baby was in danger of dying, however, there could be an emergency baptism at home, carried out by the midwife if a priest was unavailable.154 Baptism required blessed water to wash away the baby’s sins. At a church, a font would have held the baptismal water, but at home families would have had to improvise. Items used in an emergency home baptism became sanctified and could not return to household use.155 This stipulation underscores the way objects could assume new identities through use. Agnes Wyngar, the widow of an alderman, addressed these very concerns with her bequest to St. Mary Woolchurch when she left “my basin and ewer of silver parcel-gilt which I have used daily.” She went on to elaborate that “the same basin and ewer to remain within the said church under the rule and custody of the churchwardens . . . to the intent that the same basin and ewer shall be delivered to them to be used and to do ser vice . . . for the christenings of any man’s child of the said parish . . . and that every such person so borrowing the same . . . shall return it again unto the said wardens immediately after such christening is done.”156 Wyngar’s bequest suggests that during her life she had been involved in bringing babies into the world. Yet, whatever her role while alive, her gift of an item associated with housekeeping makes clear that ordinary household items could be turned to sacred use, which implies that home baptisms were not all that rare and that families sometimes supplied their own basin and ewer at a church baptism to personalize the event.157 Giving it to the parish would have helped households that did not have vessels to spare, and Wyngar’s silver and gilt set might have been nicer than those available in poorer households too. Using Wyngar’s bequest also tied her memory to the expansion of her parish community, as families used her basin and ewer at their own babies’ christenings. Supplying a basin and ewer was just one of a variety of voluntary parallel rituals (“pararituals”) that the Church permitted to happen alongside baptism. Families could augment the liturgy in modest ways with items from their own household.

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Typical additions included special clothing for the baby, candles, and material rewards for attendants and the poor, determining the composition of the procession that brought the baby to the church, and designating who carried the baby and the basin and ewer in the procession.158 While pararituals offered an obvious way to imitate one’s betters, the objects that families supplied were often bequests from departed family members or godparents. In addition to the canopy that Elizabeth Pomfreitt left to Elizabeth Manstyan for her childbirth, Pomfreitt also left her “a fine christening sheet.”159 Agnes Swayne also left christening sheets to each of her godchildren.160 A bankruptcy inventory describes the christening sheet that the unnamed householder kept in a clothes press in the parlor as “decorated.”161 Isabel Hart requested that two of the torches used at her funeral at St. James Garlickhythe would be used “when . . . poor men’s children be christened within the same church to bring them home lighted in the honor of the blessed sacrament of baptism.”162 These bequests not only distinguished the baptism; they were another way of connecting the child to deceased family and parish members and are further examples of how women’s curating practices influenced other women’s childbirth experiences. The use of mundane household items also suggests that women thought about the similarities between what they had in their houses and what was in their churches. These associations provided room for women to add value to their housekeeping tasks. After childbirth, women had a period of confinement, sometimes as long as six weeks, which limited their work and outside social interactions. Thus, a mother did not attend her baby’s baptism if it was held in the church. Female neighbors, friends, family members, and servants all helped with household obligations during this period. Wealthier women probably had a longer confinement in more elaborate surroundings than their poorer counterparts.163 The mother’s churching completed the rituals surrounding birth and marked the mother’s transition back to her duties as housewife and sexual partner.164 While churching is an old ritual, with antecedents in Jewish and early Germanic law, the changing nature of housekeeping in London in the fifteenth century would have also changed the meaning of this ritual by circumscribing and then highlighting the tasks the housewife did on a regular basis, and which now needed to be performed by someone else.165 The disruption of household routines as visitors and less skilled or less authoritative household members filled in would have emphasized the housewife’s role through her temporary absence. And while we can only hypothesize about birthrates, this break in household routines could have happened every two years or so.166 Confinement might also have taught women to think about housekeeping in terms of supervision and labor. The concentration and variety of available goods in London gave women the luxury of deciding whether to employ used goods and save them for the future or

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buy new. For London women, saving honored the value of frugality, but it also became a way of making statements about the significance of childbirth to them and their families and of their desire to control aspects of the process. The ability to value and preserve the items associated with childbirth was another by-product of household furnishings becoming more plentiful and influencing women’s housekeeping activities. These goods also influenced women’s networks of friends and were imbued with deep sentiment. Even in the prosperous world of London’s merchants and artisans, not all women wanted their pregnancies, and with such a high infant mortality rate, pregnancy often brought great sorrow, even when a child was desired. The arrival of a daughter likely provoked a different response from parents than the birth of a son, and a mother whose health had already been compromised by repeated pregnancies might also have regretted another one.167 Yet despite fear, pain, and perhaps ambivalence, London couples viewed childbirth as an event toward which they should aspire and for which they could prepare. The material culture of childbirth in postplague London allowed them to shape and memorialize the event in ways that connected them with women from across the generations and from across the street.

The Constant Muddle and Squalor Which Small Children Bring Care for a household was not only medical intervention during a health crisis. Care also included routine nurturance and training. Young children in particular would have received the bulk of this kind of attention. The twelfth-century abbess and scholar Heloise argued that childcare was a contested task that varied according to class. As ventriloquized by her philosopher-husband Peter Abelard in his “History of My Calamities,” Heloise argued: Consider . . . the true conditions for a dignified way of life. What harmony can there be between pupils and serving women, desks and cradles, books or tablets and distaffs, pen or quills and spindles? Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying, nurses soothing them with lullabies, and all the noisy crowd of men and women about the house? Who will put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home? The wealthy can do so, you will say, for their mansions and large houses can provide privacy and, being rich, they do not have to count the cost nor be tormented by daily cares.168

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Heloise put children at the center of household dirt and chaos, which women were expected to manage. As her critique also shows, the wealthy could outsource the worst of it.169 Prior to the plague, there is little material evidence for how parents cared for their children. After the plague, caring for children becomes much more obvious, as the marketplace produced all kinds of products to help care for and train children. Many London children would have used cut-down versions of grown-up things, but fashion-conscious parents could also purchase child-specific goods to reinforce identity, shape values, and inform behavior. Among the goods sold at John Skyrwyth’s haberdasher’s shop were “3 dozen small pouches for children” valued at a little more than a penny apiece, while at his mercer shop, he had a “cradle cloth of verdant tapestry,” priced at 2s.170 Both items speak to a broad market for children’s goods. Babies were particularly vulnerable, and after the plague, Londoners helped compensate for their fragility with special clothes and sometimes with household furnishings. A bankruptcy inventory lists among the contents of a chest a “ little child’s smock” and “a swaddling band of cloth.”171 Someone had saved the swaddling clothes that kept a newborn safe in the first months of life, as well as clothing the child had used when it outgrew its swaddling bands.172 These items preserved memories of a baby, now grown up or deceased, but they were also ready for the next baby who might need them. If surviving late sixteenth-century examples of swaddling bands from Italy are any evidence, they could also be objects on which to display skilled needlework (Figure  34). Saving them preserved not only the memory of the baby but also the labor and care of the needlewoman. The most obvious furnishings for infants are cradles, which appear frequently in illustrations of childbirth.173 Unlike beads and girdles, which seem to be used by much of the childbearing population regardless of wealth, cradles appear to be an elite furnishing in England.174 Among royalty, there would have been two cradles, a day one for display at various occasions, such as baptism, and one for nighttime sleeping.175 The now lost so-called cradle of Henry V from the fifteenth century is a carved oak box suspended from a stand to allow the box to swing (Figure 35). On top of each of the two posts perches a bird, which some scholars have suggested are heraldic devices.176 In the inventories from the second half of the fourteenth century, cradles or cradle cloths were relatively common, appearing in 13 percent of the inventories.177 They become more rare in fifteenth-century inventories, appearing in just two of the thirty-nine.178 Possibly they were more novel for urban households in the fourteenth century, and so families hung on to them longer. The failure to mention cradles suggests that if families used them, they either did not hold on to them, or possibly assessors understood cradle cloths and cradles to be paraphernalia and so

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Figure 34. Swaddling bands with decorative lace and needlework (Italian, fifteenth century). Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. B.878-1993. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum.

ignored them when assessing a man’s possessions. The lack of cradles in inventories means that for most households, it is difficult for us to see how families accommodated infants. Confessors’ manuals routinely admonish women for sleeping with their babies, because they could roll over and suffocate them, but it is likely that despite these ecclesiastical prohibitions, many parents slept in the same beds as their infants until they were old enough to move to a trundle bed.179 Likely the child shared that bed too, either with a sibling or a servant. Babies required spiritual as well as physical protection. The saints that watched over their parents while they slept also kept an eye on babies. William Harlawe and his wife Ellen placed their cradle near their bed, and the popular devotional image of the head of St. John the Baptist overlooked both them and their newborn. In a similar gesture, Margaret Shelley of Hunsdon, Herefordshire, in the diocese of London, had a “cradle cloth with an image of Our Lady” on it.180 The paternosters that provided aid during birth could also be draped over a cradle or the parents’ bed for protection while sleeping. Among their many uses, coral and amber were thought to protect children from the evil eye and fairy abduction, just two of the many dangers that medieval people believed threatened their young children.181

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Figure 35. So-called cradle of Henry V, now lost (English, fifteenth century). The birds on the supports are possibly heraldic devices. Image © Alamy.

As they grew, the marketplace offered new items to help them learn. Among the items now available for children in the fifteenth century was furniture. Assessors making up inventories record “small chairs” and “ little stools.”182 These identifications are not necessarily an indication that they were for a child, but they could be, and some appraisers specifically labeled some furniture as being for children. For example, William Stede, who went bankrupt in 1499 had “a child’s table,” valued at 4d. in his hall.183 An unnamed London skinner, who probably went bankrupt in the late fifteenth century, had “2 children’s chairs” valued as a set for 12d.184 The most elaborate and detailed list of children’s furniture comes from John Elmesley’s 1433 will. The servant of a wax chandler, and likely living in modest surroundings, he shows us what a prosperous or at least devoted family might provide for a child. Elmesley was apparently raising his godson, Robert Sharp, and left him most of the items in his house. Many were designed with the child in mind. Among them were

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a little featherbed & a 2 pair small sheets . . . also a platter of pewter & 2 dishes of pewter & 2 saucers of pewter & marked with R and S, moreover a little mazer cup & 1 white cup & a spoon of silver without [a] mark & a little basin [with a] nob & 3 candlesticks of laten & a little pan of brass eared and a chaffer of brass & a little posnet of brass . . . a little cover for his cup gilt also a white cover with roses & fleur de lices also a little [trestle] table painted also a little joined stool for a child . . . also a primer for to serve god with and a little coffer to put his small things [in].185 As proof that Robert’s furnishings were purpose-built for small bodies, Elmesley also left him “another joined stool large for to sit on when he comes to [a] man’s state.” The detail Elmesley provides likely acknowledges items entrusted to him when he took charge of the boy, but it also suggests his delight in his godson. Before the plague, furniture of any kind had been minimal, rudimentary, and multipurpose even in the houses of the richest merchants. Children’s furniture, in contrast, was very specialized. That parents were willing to purchase such items shows that not only had furniture making developed a great deal since the early thirteenth century; now space and money were available to devote to children’s furniture. Parents must have come to believe it was important for their offspring’s development, socializing, and education. Toys were also part of caring for children. While most examples of medieval toys are unique productions, among the numerous finds from London’s foreshore are quantities of base-metal toys (Figure 36).186 Manufactured in the same massproduced process as pilgrim badges, they followed the stylistic developments of their grown-up counterparts, and even parents of modest means could afford them. Evidence from their design and styling shows that toys became much more abundant and diverse in the mid-sixteenth century, but there are examples from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as well. Both professional and amateur archaeologists have recovered miniature knights, swords, and numerous types of pots and pans and basins and ewers. They have also recovered four lead-alloy hollow heads: one of them perhaps a Man of Sorrows, one a grotesque, and two of them caricatures of a Jewish man’s head, all possibly characters for a puppet morality play.187 Many of the finds are miniature versions of prestige items that were probably beyond the financial reach of many Londoners buying these toys.188 Such items provide another source for accusations of social climbing. Archaeologists have suggested that toys taught gender roles to boys and girls.189 Whether or not they did, they certainly taught children what was available for consumption. In this way, toys inculcated merchant and artisan children with the values of industry

Figure 36. Pressed-metal toys found in the mud of the Thames foreshore. Clockwise from top, toy knight, ewer, and plate. Their styles suggest fifteenth century. Museum of London, accession nos. 98.2/255, 98.2/404, 98.2/150. Images © Museum of London.

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and chivalry. Child-specific consumption taught children the importance that goods played in formulating their identity, social position, and behavior. They also demonstrate Londoners’ investment in this stage of life, recognizing its specific needs and limitations. Their recipients’ behavior was notable enough that in the second half of the fourteenth century, William Langland in his poem Piers Plowman accused merchants of spoiling their children.190 By the sixteenth century, some of the wealthiest merchants and artisans also had nurseries.191 Katherine Staverton, who fled to Westminster’s chartered sanctuary in 1509 with her debt-ridden husband, lived in a grand house with several chambers, including one for the children. Her young niece and nephew over whom she had guardianship presumably slept there.192 Robert Amadas’s nursery in his country house at Barking, Essex, included three beds of various types; bedding, including a well-worn “small coverlet with beasts and birds”; several chests; a cupboard; and an “an old little turned chair.”193 For whatever reason, Amadas did not have a nursery in his London house. Alexander Plymley’s nursery in his London house included several wall hangings and two sets of bed curtains, one in blue and yellow and the other of black buckram.194 Even if inventories only provide the minimal list of furnishings, these nurseries were not minimally furnished rooms. Parents made choices about style, color, and adornment, which reflected their concerns for their babies’ future and their current vulnerability. Colorful wall hangings and bedding entertained the eye and, in some cases, educated their beholders. Chests held clothing and toys. Small furniture accommodated young bodies and started them on the process of learning how to behave like a citizen. A wide range of objects listed in inventories and found by archaeologists means that children were not an afterthought and that caring for them was part of living in a household. London’s marketplace reacted to these desires. Parents invested in items that would help teach them, entertain them, and protect them. Those with more space and more means had more options, and children are more obvious in these inventories, but even those of modest means living in small houses would have had access to the mass-produced toys. Post-plague increases in consumption included providing for children in ways specific to their stage of life and wealth.

Conclusion Health care, childbirth, and childcare were part of the tasks of housekeeping. They included intervention in medical crises, but also meant routine nurturing and education. After the plague, London women in particular offer plenty of evidence that

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they confronted both the ordinary and extraordinary care needed by those they cared for, which they tried to address with amulets, saintly protection, and medicine. They could realize these concerns with both expensive and affordable items. Tracking how testators treated these objects in their wills shows that not only were there more of them after the plague, but also that many of the things connected to medical crises, including childbirth, were passed on by women to women. The increased consumption after the plague gave women the opportunity to express their own concerns in the care of their households. In so doing, they drew upon items with a long history, but which were increasingly adaptable to particular household needs. In a world where death was a frequent and uninvited guest, these objects tell us that women worried about the health of their household, wanted to help keep their family productive and healthy, and understood children to be particularly vulnerable.

chapter 7

Praying upon Beads

Domestic Devotion The Church expected medieval Christians to pray throughout the day: when they woke in the morning, at noon (the purported time of the Crucifixion), before each meal, and before bed. Church bells ringing from London’s more than one hundred parish churches and monasteries would have routinely reminded those within earshot of their obligations.1 Without alternative explanations for all kinds of persistent questions such as why people got sick, why crops failed, and why the English weather was so terrible, medieval Christians also routinely petitioned God and the saints for protection and forgiveness. Expiation, supplication, and praise could not always wait until church on Sunday; these things required constant conversation with God or the saints in an effort to secure their protection and favor. By the late medieval period, the devotional practice of the vita activa saturated domestic activities with religious significance.2 As we have seen, merchants and artisans had learned to connect a clean and organized house with God’s order for the universe and to associate household meals with Jesus’s sacrifice and Christian redemption. Because medieval people did not distinguish between sacred and secular, it is meaningless to declare that a medieval London house was not a religious space. At the same time, a medieval house was not a church, and most Londoners would not have heard mass or made their annual confession in their houses. These acts happened in parish churches. Medievalists working on England still largely identify domestic piety with the gentry and aristocracy.3 For everyone else, the parish is seen as the place for religious observances. In part this is because manor houses and castles routinely had chapels, and many elite individuals had well-documented household worship practices. Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), the mother of King Henry VII

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(r.  1485–1509), for example, had private chapels in all her residences and owned numerous prayer and liturgical books, suggesting a rigorous schedule of daily prayers and ser vices.4 Only with the Reformation do historians argue that houses became a locus of Christian practice for ordinary people.5 The Bible, however, had long taught Christians that houses were appropriate places to pray. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus instructed his followers that “when you will pray, enter into your chamber, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret” (Matt. 6:6).6 Sacraments could also be administered at home. Couples married in halls, parlors, and gardens; newborns in danger of imminent death might be baptized in the birthing rooms, and ideally, the dying received last rites in their bedrooms, surrounded by their family, household, and friends. During the crisis of the plague in 1348, the pope had even permitted lay men and women to hear confessions from the dying because of the lack of priests, although concerns over Lollardy ultimately ended this practice.7 For many reasons and under a variety of circumstances, therefore, liturgical activities, informal prayers, and a myriad of ordinary household activities imbued with pious meaning could all take place within the walls of a medieval London house. As a result, it is often difficult for scholars to distinguish piety from other domestic acts and attitudes. Lack of a designated house chapel should not, therefore, be the criteria for determining a household’s practice of domestic piety. The material culture of domestic piety, while not particularly evident in London houses before the plague, grew abundant afterward, especially by the late fifteenth century. The post-plague marketplace made an increasingly wide range of devotional items available for consumers, and London’s merchants and artisans filled their houses with furnishings adorned with religious imagery and items directed at promoting prayer and contemplation.8 Increased consumption did not necessarily make Londoners more pious and devout, but it did give those who were so inclined new modes of religious expression that they could adapt to their domestic lives, and it made it fashionable to have religious imagery on household furnishings. The well-studied proliferation of prayer books in the late Middle Ages was part of a much larger market of devotional items.9 Consumers could purchase a variety of different types of religious images, holy water stoups, and paternosters, in both deluxe and expensive or mass-produced and affordable renditions.10 Many of these items, whether as raw materials or finished products, came from the Continent. Prayer books came largely from the Low Countries, coral paternoster beads from the Mediterranean, amber beads from the Baltic, and ceramic and wooden figures from Germany. Londoners not only purchased these items; they took up some of the new religious practices that accompanied them as well.11 Whether

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attributable to the rise in popularity of the vita activa or not, devotional items were common household furnishings by the end of the fifteenth century. The changing material culture of household devotions altered household behavior and created new habits of mind that complemented other post-plague changes, such as the desire for privacy. Londoners’ domestic piety did not replace their parish’s religious activities; it complemented them. The Church jealously guarded its prerogatives, and unless parishioners could afford a special license to have mass said in their home, the Church required people to attend their parish church weekly.12 London was divided into more than a hundred parishes, and where one lived determined one’s parish membership. The parish priest had charge of parishioners’ souls, administered the sacraments, taught basic theology, corrected sins, and collected donations and tithes. This chapter argues that the intimacy of the household combined with the availability of and desire for personal devotional items created a scale of practices for domestic piety that differed from those of the parish. Parish life was communal. It was a negotiation between the clergy and the laity, the rich and the poor, men and women, and different parish guilds and city companies. Domestic piety, on the other hand, was more tactile, contemplative, individual, and self-reflective.13 It was driven less by the clergy than by residents’ concerns and needs, shaped by Christian theology and the ecclesiastical calendar. These characterizations, however, should not be understood as definitive; rather, they reflect tendencies, with the behaviors and expectations of one intersecting, mutually supporting, and influencing the other. The themes of intimacy and tactility that became central to domestic piety by the fifteenth century carried over into private-household chapels and the household items that Londoners left to their parishes. As domestic piety increasingly became a part of urban domesticity, it further moralized the housekeeping tasks that were increasingly performed by women. London’s merchants and artisans did not leave the same wealth of evidence for their domestic religious practices as the elite. Nevertheless, over the course of the fifteenth century, as they worried about the impact of their business ventures on their souls, their wills and inventories indicate an increasing ability and/or interest in owning devotional items and household furnishings with the saints or biblical imagery on them. Whether explicitly used for worship or not, these items created a household atmosphere that shaped behavior and routine, provided examples and moral direction, and were sources of comfort in difficult times. Those wealthy enough did create separate household chapels, but the themes of intimacy and personal devotion remained central to using them. Most households simply integrated into their household behavior a variety of portable devotional items that aided

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their pious desires for health, protection, and forgiveness. Such domestic piety became another means of creating gender and status roles within a changing household, including the ability to transform women’s evolving housekeeping tasks into acts of piety themselves.14

Books, Paxes, and St. John’s Head Self-examination and spiritual contemplation are often associated with Protestant engagement with scripture, but these habits of mind became a part of the late medieval devotional vocabulary as well. Sylvia Thrupp found merchants to be invested in spiritual contemplation, even though they rarely joined the ranks of the regular clergy.15 Portable devotional objects, such as books of hours, the most popular book of the time, but also paternosters and portable images of the saints, were part of the larger project of bringing religious discipline to lay households and imbuing daily life with supplication and praise for God and the saints. As discussed below, most London houses would not have had an altar or chapel where a private chaplain could say mass. Instead, domestic religious practice was situational, marked perhaps by a paternoster, a prayer book, or a favored image. Prayer happened in the same spaces where residents ate, slept, and worked. The smudges and wear patterns on Netherlandish books of hours, for example, grow fainter in the middle of vespers, the evening ser vice, because readers fell asleep before finishing their bedtime prayers.16 According to his probate inventory, a tailor in Southwark had a St. John’s head by his bed.17 Alexander Plymley provided his female servants with an image of the Virgin.18 Nor did informality and a lack of a private chaplain prevent a householder from erecting a shrine or a tabernacle with a candle somewhere within the house.19 Such spaces did not require a priest or full liturgy to influence the household’s space and devotional habits. Methodologically it is difficult simply to identify an object depicting a saint or biblical story as a religious item. Some furnishings with religious imagery were promotional of a household’s civic reputation, some were devotional, and some were both. For example, the wall hangings that visitors saw when entering a hall projected an image of the household, but even if they depicted Bible scenes or saints, this did not necessarily make the hall a space for active devotion. Prayers might be said there, and indeed John Skyrwyth kept his prayer book in his hall, but residents still did not typically engage with wall hangings in the same way as with a prayer book.20 For those with large open halls, hangings were enormous and on a very different scale than a prayer book. Moreover, a hall with religious hangings

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would not function in the same way as a dedicated religious space. At the same time, the presence of religious imagery on wall hangings or anywhere else did more than meet aesthetic expectations and promote social conformity. As Caroline Walker Bynum explains, textures, colors, and heft animated belief, making it an embodied experience through movement and tactility and the emotions they generate.21 Hangings thus made saints present in the house. They were a source of religious instruction for young children and a reminder to older residents of the values of the household. Clearly, classifying items as “religious” or not is a somewhat arbitrary process. In order to track the proliferation of religious items in houses after the plague and to identify how householders accommodated both formal and informal religious practices within their houses, I classified items according to their use in the house, not how the testator hoped their beneficiary would use them or the presumed motives for the bequest. I classified paternosters, Agnus Deis, religious books, crucifixes, and all chapel furnishings as religious objects, but not clothes or linens given as charity or to adorn a church. Hangings with religious images are a bit more complicated; if the testator or appraiser described them as a hanging or painted cloth with an image, I did not count them as a religious item unless they were specifically associated with a house shrine or chapel, but if the hanging was described as a “St. John’s cloth,” a recognized devotional object, then I did. Additionally, items described simply as images, such as the “image of our lady” left by Ellen Langwith, count as religious objects.22 While not a perfect reflection of an object’s identity, the description as either a hanging or a saint’s image suggests different relationships to the object in question. I did not count jewelry or dishware with religious images or symbols as religious objects either. This is not to say that hangings did not remind owners that the saints were watching over them, that owners did not expect some sort of divine protection from the plague for wearing a St. Anthony cross, or that using an apostle spoon did not connect a meal to the Eucharist in the user’s mind, but objects such as these also served other aesthetic and promotional purposes in addition to any reverence they may have inspired or protection they granted. Their roles were largely atmospheric or talismanic, rather than primarily ritualistic. The fact that hangings, rings, and spoons were also adorned with nonreligious images underscores this point. In other words, items whose primary function was to promote formal acts of worship I counted as religious objects; items with religious imagery whose function in the house was also decorative, promotional, or functional I did not count as religious. This does not preclude their having spiritual implications for household behavior, however. This classification system allows me to identify how people in-

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teracted with items commonly understood to be devotional and furnishings adorned with images, to distinguish between their formal and informal use by owners. The difficulties in defining what constitutes a domestic religious object are related to the difficulties of defining religion and religious behavior, as opposed to simply a daily task or a “superstitious” practice.23 Ultimately, all these items created a continuum of domestic religious behavior. The quantity of religious items and possessions adorned with devotional images grew after the plague, becoming a dominant theme in London houses by the end of the fifteenth century. Only one of the pre-plague inventories records a religious item, while 44  percent of the 128 post-plague homes do. Broken down by chronology, only 16 percent of the inventories from the second half of the fourteenth century include a religious object, while 62  percent of those from the fifteenth century, and 68 percent from the early sixteenth century do (Figure 37). Wills indicate a similar growth in the ownership of religious items over the same period. None of the Husting wills I looked at before or after the plague left any religious items, but 17  percent of testators in the Commissary Court and 29  percent in the Prerogative Court do. The conclusion should not be that wealthy Londoners who used the Prerogative Court were more pious, but rather that these testators had religious objects of some fiduciary value that they wanted legally tracked. Together, wills and inventories indicate a growth in domestic religious items. Bequests of religious items are more common than weapons and almost as frequent as napery, but they are not evenly distributed across the two centuries studied. Bequests of religious 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

Figure 37. London inventories with religious items.

15 00 –4 0

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Figure 38. Distribution of bequests of religious items in London, 1384–1540.

items began to increase in the mid-fifteenth century, and 76  percent of these bequests are from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, indicating an increasing desire to bring prayer into the house as part of daily life (Figure 38). The profusion of religious imagery on wall hangings and the rising number of devotional objects such as paternosters scattered about London houses over the course of the fifteenth century does not mean that all residents treated or used these objects in the same ways. Households and individuals varied in their levels of enthusiasm for domestic (and parish) piety. When present, these things created an atmosphere within the house and a reputation for the household, but how residents interacted with religious images and objects with religious imagery varied according to access, preference, gender, and the type of object. Whether or not a house had an altar or employed a private chaplain, many had a holy water stoup, a small container to hold holy water.24 The presence of holy water in a house consecrated household prayers and connected it to the sacred space of a church, bringing the ritual actions of crossing oneself and genuflecting into the home.25 A holy water stoup helped mark a space for prayer and contemplation. Its presence made blessing oneself as one moved about the house a regular part of household behavior. Stoups were the most common religious item listed in inventories, although testators rarely bequeathed them; only five wills mention them.26 They may also have been built into houses. One registered with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a project that records all finds made by metal detectorists, is quite modest and inexpensive, made of pressed metal, with a cross (Figure 39).27

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Figure 39. Metal holy water stoup (ca. 1066–1600). Found in Sussex. Portable Antiquities Scheme, SUSS-A460D.

Holy water also had less vaunted functions, such as protecting the house from fire and possessions within its dominion from theft, and it was widely used for curing illnesses.28 The most common location for a stoup was the bedroom. John Hanson’s pewter one, assessed at 4d., must have been somewhat noteworthy, as 4d. was a day’s wages for a laborer.29 Given the life-cycle dramas that unfolded in bedrooms, they were certainly a logical place for a holy water stoup.

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Figure 40a. Mass-produced ceramic figurine of the Virgin Mary (Germany). These modest items were mass-produced for export. Museum of London, accession no. 4970. Image © Museum of London.

Many kinds of devotional images for sale in London were within reach of modest London citizens but were not valuable enough to warrant assessing or formal bequeathing (Figures 40a and 40b). Archaeologists have recovered small clay images of the Virgin Mary that are only about four inches tall.30 Mass-produced in Germany for export, they would have been affordable even to a servant. Archaeologists have also found a small pressed-tin stand with incised skirting and four decorative feet of about an inch and a half high and three inches wide, which could have held a clay image of Mary.31 These mass-produced items, along with other pressedmetal images of the saints, reveal an active market for inexpensive religious items.32 Together, the archaeological and textual evidence suggests a broad desire for religious items that could be used in a house or worn on a body. Most domestic religious items were portable things that could be used in different places in the house over the course of a day, worn on the body, or carried to church. By far the most common and earliest religious object to appear in wills and inventories was paternosters. Although not strictly a household item, because they

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Figure 40b. Pressed-metal stand, suitable for holding a small devotional image. Excavated in 1983 from the Billingsgate Lorry Park, London. Museum of London, accession no. BWB83 No 603. Image © Museum of London Archaeological Ser vices.

were usually worn on the body, they were, as we saw in Chapter 6, hung on walls or stationed by beds. Women owned multiple sets, which they kept around their house. Denise Taylor, for example, kept two sets in her hall, which she left to her executor and his cousin.33 The earliest English example of prayer beads comes from the tenth-century Mercian countess Godiva (d. 1067), who strung gems on a cord to help her with her prayers and later left the string to a monastery she had founded. Paternosters’ popularity increased as crusaders brought the practice of using prayer beads home from the Crusades.34 By the late thirteenth century, Paternoster Row was a named London locality, home to makers of paternoster beads who worked in amber, jet, silver gilt, and even white bone for children. Thus, paternosters were a long-familiar devotional item in England, helping users to keep track of cycles and repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer.35 As we saw in Chapter 6, almost 10  percent of testators in both courts bequeathed them, with their frequency as bequests dramatically increasing in the middle of the fifteenth century along with the preference for leaving them to women. Highly personalized objects, paternosters were not only available to a wide range of consumers; they were adaptable to a variety of needs, concerns, and interests, devotional or other wise.36 They facilitated piety, but their variability and owners’ desires to have multiple sets with different colored stones and other adornments such as tassels also made them a fashion accessory that wearers could

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coordinate with their clothing. As already discussed, many of these stones were thought to have desirable medicinal properties. They also had symbolic meaning: coral’s red color, for example, invoked Christ’s blood.37 Today Christians often associate prayer beads with the rosary, a prayer cycle honoring the Virgin. The rosary’s evolution is complicated. Anne Winston-Allen credits German Carthusians and Dominicans with developing and popularizing the practice in the fifteenth century. Around 1470, Alanus de Rupe founded a confraternity dedicated to the rosary in the city of Douai, and in 1475, Jakob Sprenger followed up with a much more popular foundation in Cologne. Sprenger’s foundation was further supported by the Holy Roman emperor and by printed rosary books. By the middle of the next decade, it had more than 100,000 members, and actively sought to include women.38 In its earliest iterations, the rosary did not use prayers beads, but the Carthusians and Dominicans were not operating in a vacuum. Originally paternosters (as their Latin name suggests) were used in saying cycles of the Lord’s Prayer. Mary, prayer cycles, and prayer beads were all elements of late medieval piety. So as the rosary spread, its devotees added the use of beads.39 Users’ ability to graft new behaviors and practices onto paternosters no doubt accounts for their long history and increasing popularity.40 Paternosters do not appear in the sample of pre-plague Husting wills, although in 1317, Richard de Blountesham left sets, described as “paternosters of pearls,” to his daughters.41 Until the spike of paternoster bequests in the 1464–68 sample, testators usually describe them as simply a “paternoster” or a “pair [set] of beads” with or without specifying the kind of material used to make them. In the 1464–68 sample, descriptions become increasingly more common and elaborate. Some had gauds, usually larger beads of a different material. Isabel Rolf’s “best” beads were coral with gauds of silver, while a second set was “long” with jet beads and silver gauds.42 When the user came to a gaud they were to celebrate one of the joys, or happy events, of Mary’s life. Other sets had aves, beads that prompted the user to say the Hail Mary. The joys could range in number from five to fifteen, depending on how the user chose to chronicle Mary’s life.43 The number of aves could vary too. John Barkewey gave his sister “a pair of beads of coral with 5 aves and 7 gauds.”44 William Kylbourus left his cousin Agnes Carpenter “a pair of beads of fine coral with 47 gilt gauds.”45 In his 1518 will, Albert Heyse even calls his bequest a rosary, rather than a paternoster.46 With London merchants frequently traveling to the Continent, and large numbers of German and Low Country merchants living and working in London, it would have been easy for Londoners to learn this new style of Marian devotion and adapt it to their own interests and existing practices.

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Religious books constitute the second most common religious object that Londoners bequeathed. They promoted individual interaction and introspection, even if used by a group, and were yet another object that could easily be moved about the house.47 According his 1485 inventory, John Skyrwth kept a printed copy of the Golden Legend in English in his mercery shop, undoubtedly Caxton’s version, which was printed in 1483.48 Elizabeth Keynes tells us in her will that she kept her “matins book” in her bedchamber, suggesting that upon waking one of her first actions was to read the ser vice.49 While books in general appear in 10 percent of wills in both courts, books identified by testators as religious appear in 4 percent of Commissary Court wills and 7 percent of Prerogative Court wills. The most common type of religious book was a book of hours, also called a primer, a collection of liturgies that paralleled the monastic hours. Of the eighty-four religious books bequeathed by the laity in my sample of wills, thirty-one can be confidently identified as books of hours, but other books simply described as “mass books” were also likely books of hours. Like paternosters, they were highly variable and adaptable to owners’ needs and desires.50 Many owners probably used their books of hours in conjunction with their paternosters. Agnes Whissh, for example, left a “book of St. Mary” along with a coral paternoster in her will.51 Other religious books mentioned in wills and inventories include collections of saints’ lives and books of psalms. Only one was described as “printed,” a mass book that mercer Richard Fyldinge kept in his chamber and left to his parish of St. Lawrence Old Jewry’s Trinity altar in 1519.52 Four of these eighty-four books were described as being in English and one, a Bible, was “written in the French language.”53 Decades after the arrival of England’s first printing press in 1476, Londoners still used, treasured, and bequeathed manuscript books.54 As with paternosters, men and women made different decisions about the disposition of their books (Figure 41). Male testators in both courts were more likely to leave books to men. Of the sixty-six religious books left by men, just over half went to men, nearly a quarter went to a group, usually their parish or parish guild, and only 20 percent went to women. Most of the books these women received were books of hours, although draper Walter Smith, who had an extensive library, gave the widow of a mercer named Mydelmore “The English Legend,” a collection of saints’ lives in English.55 The other three books in English also went to women, while the French Bible was left to a man. Although women left far fewer books, they were more inclined to leave them to other women.56 Of the eighteen religious books left by fifteen female testators, eleven went to women. Most were also books of hours, but, in addition to a book of hours, Agnes Oseney also received from her

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70%

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Men

Women

Books given by male testators n=66

Clergy

Groups

Books given by female testators n=18

Figure 41. Recipients of religious books by sex in London, 1384–1540.

mother “1 English book of the 10 commandments in quires.”57 Women’s next most common beneficiary was a member of the clergy. Owners of religious books did more than simply read them. Surviving examples show that owners annotated them and added meaningful items, such as pilgrim badges or other devotional images. Wear and tear patterns show some images attracting repeated caressing and kissing. These actions were all part of the privatization of the mass and the internalization of devotion.58 William Waltham, an upholsterer, left to his parish of St. Mary Woolnoth “a great book of my own pricking of 9 masses and diverse antiphons.” His “own pricking” meant that he had annotated the music and verse himself.59 Based on the descriptions, the bindings with their color and texture and the decoration inside left a lasting impression. Bindings were of a variety of materials, such as velvet or soft leather in varying colors. William Taylor had a primer covered with blue velvet, while Thomas Crull left his godson his “matins book written on vellum and lined with gold and pictures accustomed to lie upon [his] counter board [accounting table].”60 Owners also customized their mass books by recording familial and personal concerns and events.61 One in the British Library noted the births of two baby girls in 1526 (Figure 42). As with mazers, books connected owners to family memories. With these types of additions, owners blended family events with spiritual concerns into a form of piety that was reflective of their status and urban life.62 A third category of religious item is portable devotional images often mounted on plaques or placed in boxes variously called paxes, tablets, or Agnus Deis (even if

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Figure 42. Sarum Use book of hours (Netherlands, fifteenth century). These books were produced for export to England. Owners frequently added family information to their books of hours. This book records the birth of two baby girls. British Library, Harley MS 2966. Image © British Library.

the image in question was not an Agnus Dei) (Figure 43). Thomas Salle, for example, left an “agnus dei” with St. George on it to a fellow draper.63 Alice Lord’s tablet was “of gold with a vernicle on it.”64 Whatever image was on them, they were apparently a popular collector’s item. In her will, Alice Barne listed two paxes of silver and gilt, two of silver, and two others not described.65 These items were rarer bequests than paternosters, but as with paternosters women gave and received them more regularly than men did. Among the most popular images adorning tablets was St. John the Baptist’s head.66 In 1206, Walo of Sarton purportedly brought the head of St. John the Baptist back from the Fourth Crusade to Amiens, making it a popular pilgrimage site. Whether devotees actually went to Amiens or not, images of John’s head on a platter became a popular focus of veneration. John’s feast, which fell at midsummer, was an occasion for both liturgical and extra-liturgical celebrations, with an image of his head adorning midsummer banners carried during processions and replicas being used as props in mystery plays.67 He promoted

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Figure 43. Painted devotional tablet (English [?], fifteenth century). This elaborately painted tablet contains an alabaster head of St. John the Baptist along with an alabaster carving of the resurrected Christ. The painted doors include invocations to SS. James and Katherine on the left and SS. Anthony and Margaret on the right. Burrell Collection, Glasgow Museum, accession no. 1.34. Image © Glasgow Museum.

chastity, humility, and justice among devotees.68 Deluxe ones were made of alabaster and, as shown in Figure 43, placed in an elaborate box, but they could also be mass-produced from tin or lay metal and be quite inexpensive (Figure 44). Whatever the image, their size meant they were for individual use, either kept in a purse, or sewn on clothing, making them easy to touch for protection and comfort. Frequently these portable devotional aids, whether books or tablets, were kept in boxes, bags, and chests, or had covers. As Figure 43 shows, the containers could be quite elaborate. According to the 1396 inventory for William Charney, a saddler who lived in one or two rooms, he kept a St. John’s head in a coffer by his bed.69 Margaret Russell left to her daughter “a forcer [small metal coffer] of silver & over

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Figure 44. Pressed-metal St. John’s head (late medieval). For those with less money, pressed-metal badges, such as this one, found in the mud of the Thames foreshore, were a way of bringing the saints into the house. Museum of London, accession no. 93.166/1. Image © Museum of London.

gilt standing upon a small lion and enameled with diverse colors and lined within with red velvet & with an image of our lady embroidered within the lid of the same forcer.”70 The covering, boxing, and bagging of religious images tells us something of how owners used them. They were to have a more circumscribed audience than wall hangings. Owners wanted the ability to regulate access to their treasures and use them at their discretion. They could invite chosen friends and family members to view and handle the object. Revealing an object added drama to household religious practices and value to the items or images contained inside.71 Small size, portability, and enclosure all helped to create alternative relationships between the viewer and saint, ones predicated on touch, intimacy, and the feelings generated by being able to determine the time and place of interaction. This relationship stood in contrast to the wide accessibility of a church image or a hall hanging. These practices complemented and advanced the evolving goals of the parlor and the chest discussed in Chapter 3—intimacy, privacy, even secrecy, behaviors that promoted interiority, self-reflection, and personal growth. Whether a costly prayer book or a mass-produced clay image, the portable nature of domestic religious objects promoted individual use by allowing owners to

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keep the saints near them. But their size also suggests the physical actions and behaviors of domestic piety. These objects would have been sought out, touched, held, kissed, and prayed over. These actions also made sounds: the clacking of beads, murmuring of prayers, and the gentle click when opening and closing a box. If there was a pomander on the paternoster, there was smell as the owner moved it about. All these actions made household prayers a sensual experience. Religious reformers in the mid-sixteenth century condemned these very actions as superstitious. Edward VI’s 1547 injunctions expressly forbade “kissing and licking of [relics or images], praying upon beads, or suchlike superstition.”72 Household piety was sensory, mobile, and situational. Household residents incorporated this form of piety into the changing visibility-intimacy scale of household life and the events of their daily lives. Bequeathing religious items, often with detailed descriptions, not only helped identify the object for executors, but also invoked the relationships testators had with these items and the important role they had played in their domestic lives. Religious imagery within London houses was not just confined to objects that actively promoted formal prayer or contemplation. As we have seen, the saints, Jesus, and other religious signs and symbols appeared on household objects that played quotidian roles in a house. Consumers could even buy cakes or sweetmeats in the shape of saints, as evidenced by the terra-cotta mold of St. Katherine excavated in London (Figure  45).73 Other common saints to appear on household furnishings were the Virgin Mary and the virgin martyrs, most commonly, SS. Dorothy, Margaret, Katherine, Lucy, Apollonia, Agnes, Cecilia, and Barbara. Their cults were tremendously popular in late medieval England, and numerous collections of saints’ lives, including the Golden Legend, recounted their stories.74 These saints were presented as demure and passive victims, and by the late Middle Ages their behavior served as models for young women, as moralists tried to match role models to women’s life stages.75 Another popular saint was St. George. He not only symbolized England, but, for young men, he also promoted heroic virtue and served as a model for chivalric behavior.76 Appearing throughout the house on a variety of different kinds of objects, these saints promoted and modeled behavior, especially for children and young people, including those who were working as apprentices and domestic servants. The profusion of saint images on mundane objects served as the first instance of pious contact for household residents. Their presence reminded viewers and owners of God’s and the saints’ omnipresence and the need for piety and supplication to permeate all actions and spaces. The inheritance patterns of devotional items suggest some of the ways in which pious behavior varied among household residents (Figure 46). Women in merchant and artisan families were not as literate as men. Absolute literacy rates

Figure 45. Terra-cotta cake or sweetmeat mold of St. Katherine (1450–1520), Museum of London, accession no. A11480. Image © Museum of London.

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160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

Women

Men Images n=37

Books n=129

Groups

Clergy

Paternosters n=180

Figure 46. Recipients of religious items in London, 1384–1540.

are impossible to calculate; London’s merchants and artisans and their households routinely dealt with documents even if they could not produce them, but evidence for women’s engagement with writing is harder to come by.77 The domestic religious objects they received and bequeathed were less often books and more often images or paternosters. These items particularly promoted tactility, sensuality, and memory practices. Women’s domestic piety was also intimately connected to their housekeeping responsibilities of childcare and health care. The materials that made up their paternosters and the portable devotional images they kept with them or by them not only aided prayer; they also protected the wearer and the owner. When we consider what images actually hung on the walls of a house, adorned the plates, cups, and serving dishes, and were tucked away in corners, chests, and cupboards, then women’s housekeeping becomes a more explicitly religious act. Candles or lamps burning before saint images were sooty, smoky, and often greasy. Images needed cleaning, and the candles and lamps replenishing. Painted clothes gathered dust and attracted moths; periodically they would have needed care. This attention was part of the care of household goods that increasingly fell to women. Both inheritance patterns and the requirement to care for household goods provide us with a glimpse into the ways that these goods and the behaviors they created were gendered. The use of housekeeping metaphors in sermons and didactic literature helped teach women that their household tasks had religious virtue and thus implicitly turned their maintenance activities into religious acts. The tactility

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of domestic piety was thus on a continuum with housekeeping. Inheritance patterns also suggest the ways small portable devotional objects and jewelry with religious imagery aided women in their roles as mothers, housekeepers, and healers. The boundaries between charms and prayers and superstition and devotional practice were porous, and the objects women treasured and passed on to their daughters, female friends, and female relatives speak to this.

House Chapels and Bedroom Altars Tactility, contemplation, and individual concerns remained themes in domestic piety, even for those households wealthy enough to have private chapels in their own homes.78 Few householders were wealthy enough to license a house chapel, and even fewer could afford to have their chapel in its own separate room. Nevertheless, bequests of liturgical vestments, chalices, and altar cloths in wills indicate the existence of domestic chapels, with more mentions in wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury than in those from the Commissary Court. Elizabeth Browne, for example, left her daughter the furnishings of her house chapel, which included five altar cloths: one “with the image of Our Lord,” a second “of stained work,” two more “of white silk with red crosses,” and a fifth one not described. She further left “a corporal case of blue cloth of gold (to hold the host), another of blue satin and russet. . . . 3 stained cloths with images on them to hang in a chapel. . . . 2 curtains with white fringe and red and four curtains, 2 of rayed [striped] sarsenet and two of green.”79 The different altar cloths suggest that Browne observed an extensive devotional schedule that included the liturgical seasons. Chapel furnishings are included only in a minority of wills, however, and likely only a minority of houses had full chapels. In these houses, the daily liturgical calendar had a more direct impact on the household’s schedule, because a private chaplain celebrated the liturgy at regular intervals. Even so, the scale and experience of worship in a household would have still been more personal than that in a parish. Only three inventories, all from the first part of the sixteenth century, include houses with a separate room for their household chapels. These inventories are for goldsmith Robert Amadas and mercers Alexander Plymley and Robert Stodley, the three who owned multiple houses. Probably Matthew Phelips, the former mayor discussed in Chapter 3, had a house chapel in at least one of his houses as well, but his inventory is incomplete. Comparing the contents of their London and country-house chapels shows that these rich merchants did not use their various

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house chapels equivalently. It was yet another way these men and their households lived in their city and country houses differently. Alexander Plymley had chapels in both his London and country houses. The chapel in his London house was furnished in less costly materials than the one at Newington Green. These differences notwithstanding, their furnishings indicate that he heard mass in both chapels. Both had altars, vestments, corporal cases to hold the host, and prayer books: a “small mass book, printed on paper,” and a “book of [the] Virgin” for London, and another mass book printed on paper, a primer also printed on paper, and a second primer written on parchment, for his house in Newington Green. Plymley’s London house chapel also contained images of the Passion and St. Michael on a wooden altar table “fine stained,” along with a “small super altar of free stone.” At Newington Green, however, among the more lavish furnishings was “a small altar table of wood fine stained with imagery with 2 leaves” that could be opened and closed, “an altar hanging of printed leather with gold foil work, old 2 yards long” and “4 small images of wood, gilded.” There was also an altar candlestick of “gilded wood [with] angels,” which the appraisers described as “goodly.”80 These chapel furnishings stood out to the appraisers, and their emphasis on carved and gilded wood suggests they were imports from northern Europe.81 The chapel also had a chalice at the time of inventorying, suggesting it was the chapel that the household had used most recently. The chalice may well have traveled back and forth with the household. Robert Amadas had chapels in all three of his houses, although those in his two rural houses appear to have fallen into disuse. The one in his house in Essex was only noted because there was a chamber above it. The house chapel at “Jenkyns” with its “4 old carpets for the pews,” a spruce chest, four old forms or stools, and a forty-yard painted cloth of the Passion, appears to have been a large space, but there were no liturgical vessels, prayer books, vestments, or altar to suggest that anyone used it for ser vices. The chapel in Amadas’s London house was, however, fully furnished with hangings, “old painted [with] pageants of imagery,” fringed curtains, several altar cloths, two sets of vestments, and two joined stools, along with a printed mass book, a corporal case of red damask, a pair of cruets, and a sacring bell. Its contents were valued at almost £4, while the contents of his chapel at Jenkyns were valued at only 21s. Furthermore, Amadas had a private chaplain, who had his own room, making it likely that the household regularly used the London house’s chapel for ser vices.82 Lastly, of Robert Stodley’s three houses, only his house in Stepney had a cha83 pel. It was furnished with the expected hangings, curtains, “a form to kneel at,”

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an altar cloth, mass book, and sacring bell. Lacking a house chapel in London, Stodley must have attended his parish church of St. Martin Outwich, and his will suggests both familiarity with its furnishings and his regular habit of weekly or daily attendance. He specifically asked to be buried near the parish’s image or Our Lady of Pity.84 Such detailed burial instructions typically grew out of both a personal relationship with the church building and a desire for communal recognition. Burial inside a church cost more, and an inside grave and memorial continually reminded the community of who the deceased was in life.85 These house chapels, like parlors and counting houses, were not easily accessible. In Plymley’s London house, the chapel was the fifth room inventoried, after the kitchen and a bedroom called the “chapel chamber.” The chapel at Newington Green was even less accessible, coming after the “kitchen and the yard,” a chamber at the head of the stairs, and three other chambers, and finally the “chapel chamber.” In both of his houses, the so-called chapel chambers had the costliest furnishings, suggesting these were Plymley’s rooms. Such proximity to the chapel would have easily allowed him to observe the nighttime liturgical offices and start and end his day with a ser vice without engaging much of the rest of his household. Amadas and Stodley also appear to have slept in rooms next to their chapels. Amadas’s chaplain, however, had a room several doors away from the chapel and possibly even in an entirely different building on the tenement. So, if there were nighttime ser vices, the chaplain had to travel a greater distance than Amadas, implying that easy access to the chapel and the spiritual protection that proximity offered were privileges, enjoyed by wealthy homeowners. Like their kitchens, the religious furnishings of these men’s London and country houses differed from one another. Unlike their kitchens, however, the differences were not consistent across the three households. As with his feasting, Amadas saved his more lavish devotional practices and furnishings for his London house, where his behavior aligned him with his royal and aristocratic customers, and where his presence and absence at the parish church would be noted. Plymley had his more sumptuous chapel furnishings in his country house, and Stodley had no chapel in his London house at all. To some degree these differences reflect these men’s aspirations. Amadas was the goldsmith to King Henry VIII and the richest London merchant to leave behind an inventory. Plymley and Stodley were not in his league.86 Bishops did not let house chapels usurp the parish’s sacramental rights, but licenses that allowed households to hear mass meant that these households would probably not have attended mass at their neighborhood parish church with the

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same regularity as the rest of the congregation.87 At their country estates, however, a different dynamic was at play. These merchants would have had to negotiate the influence and power of local gentry families and local clergy. When they did appear at church, whether in London or in the country, they would be noticed. Stodley’s wealth would have given him influence in his parish community, whether or not he ever held parish office. It is telling, however, that all three men requested burial in their London parishes, rather than in a monastery as the aristocracy often did, or in the parish of their country houses like the gentry.88 London was their primary home, and the parish, not their house, was their primary religious affiliation. Most Londoners, however, could not spare an entire room for a chapel. If a domestic chapel next to a bedroom was impossible, then having one in the bedroom was the next best option, because the sleeping householder was most vulnerable there, and because births, deaths, and marriage consummations occurred there as well.89 Although the Church sanctified these events through the administration of sacraments, they usually took place in rooms with beds and were thus as much household moments as religious ones; a chapel in a bedroom thus made a great deal of sense. Given that most wills were drafted just before the testator’s death and most inventories shortly thereafter, bedroom altars and shrines could have been created in anticipation of death and may not necessarily have been a regular part of the room’s furnishings. This seems to be the case at John Porth’s house. He was a royal servant who left the contents of his house in Billingsgate to the parish of St. Mary at Hill in 1531. An inventory of the contents of this house appears in the parish’s churchwardens’ accounts.90 Porth had a counting house, but its contents, which included a printed book of psalms, a primer, an image of the Virgin, and prayer beads, suggest that someone used it as a place of religious retreat. Yet on his deathbed, an altar had been added to his bedroom. Along with an elaborately outfitted bed was a chest of oak “that the altar was on,” along with various altar cloths, liturgical items, and a “crucifix, and an image of Our Lady and a pax.”91 Yet bedroom altars were common in other parts of Europe.92 Moreover, the frequency of births and deaths in a bedroom makes some devotional nook an appropriate part of its furnishings, added to and subtracted from as a consequence of the residents’ evolving religious needs, concerns, and place in the life cycle. Religious spaces in houses, whether a separate chapel or simply an image in a corner of a bedroom, complemented the daily or weekly religious activities held in the parish. Domestic devotions allowed household residents to incorporate prayer and the protection of the saints into ordinary household moments. Devotional spaces

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shaped domestic schedules and household behavior and affirmed the connection between house and church.

From the House to the Parish Londoners understood that their houses were places to pray and that the tasks of daily life could have spiritual meaning, but medieval Christians were also taught that a church was God’s house. In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus drove the merchants and moneychangers out of the Temple, he proclaimed, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you made it a den of thieves” (Matt. 21:13).93 Liturgies and sermons for the anniversary of the dedication of a church extended this metaphor.94 The metaphor of church as house made it acceptable for testators to bequeath their household possessions to their parishes.95 Much of what was given would have been sold to support the parish, but women’s particular bequests to their parishes reveal that they also made connections between their housekeeping and their piety.96 Even very wealthy women still thought about the tasks their parishes needed in ways that were reminiscent of how they ran their houses. Dame Margaret Capell, the widow of a wealthy London knight draper, instructed her executors to turn her and her late husband’s velvet and silk clothes into vestments for poor churches. Recognizing the burden such a bequest made on a parish, she also left additional money for the churchwardens to hire laundresses to care for her legacy.97 Her bequests were not dissimilar to her housekeeping tasks, and while her bequests were lavish and detailed, gifts of cloth to adorn the liturgy were typical of how women thought about bequests to their parishes.98 Testators routinely remembered their residential parishes in their wills. Birth parishes and parishes that testators had lived in at some point in their life were also commonly remembered. Most bequests were monetary, but 10  percent of wills in both courts also left movable goods to a parish or parish guild. More particularly, nearly 50  percent of female testators using the Commissary Court, compared to only 18  percent of female testators using the Prerogative Court, left movables to their parish. Most of these bequests were religious items, such as chapel furnishings or religious books. For example, Alice Tymperley, one of the few married women who made a will in my sample, left a chalice to the parish where she expected to be buried.99 Despite the willingness of female testators in the Commissary Court to give to their parishes at rates nearly equal to men, they were more likely than men to leave household linens, kitchenware, and jewelry, including girdles and paternosters, and less likely to give books, liturgical vestments, and plate

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of any kind, whether from a household altar or the dinner table. Maud Offord, who left a “tablecloth of diaper work” to the high altar of St. Peter’s, Westcheap, is typical of this behavior.100 The numbers for London testators are small, but they conform to the behavior of women outside of London.101 To some degree the difference between what men and women gave is about the lack of wealth available to widows, but it is also about gender roles and women’s equation of the tasks they performed or supervised in their houses with their parish participation, an equation facilitated by the metaphor of church as house. Women gave to their parishes items that identified them as pious housewives, that is, housewives able to keep their houses and their furnishings ordered, sorted, and clean. Women understood that such gifts sacralized the object, which furthered connections between them, their piety, and their domestic skills. They also knew that such gifts could be useful to the parish, either practically or monetarily. Joan Roberts, for example, left a bequest of a four-gallon brass pot to her parish of St.  Alphage, which she instructed the churchwardens to sell.102 Items such as candlesticks that had played practical roles in a house could also adorn an altar. Alice Langshort asked that her “best latten candlestick” be “fixed in the wall before the image of our lady” in the parish of St. Mary Magdalene, Fish Street.103 The candle that lit her house after dark would work equally well in her parish to honor the Virgin. We saw a similar gesture in Chapter 6, when Agnes Wyngar bequeathed a basin and ewer for baptisms. These types of bequests show the degree to which testators connected their parish and domestic behaviors; furnishing a house was not altogether different from furnishing a church. Such bequests were not as common in London as they were in more rural areas, such as the dioceses of Bath and Wells or Lincoln. In the London bequests we have, however, we also find that female testators were more likely to provide explanations for how their household goods were to be adapted to parish or guild use.104 Katherine Bracher requested that her “kerchief of pleasance,” fine gauze, serve as a canopy for the Corpus Christi Day procession.105 Joan Forthe asked that her standing cup of silver be transformed into a chalice “at the discretion of the parson and parishioners” of St. Martin Outwich.106 The instructions accompanying these gifts allowed women to influence parish administration and organization, opportunities officially foreclosed to them because they could not hold public or parish office. These kinds of gifts also reflect a lifetime of housekeeping that included adapting and modifying items and supervising their use, part of the process of learning to live with more stuff. By giving items that they had used and worn in their daily lives, women connected their actions and bodies to the Eucharist in intimate ways, further acknowledging the connections between their bodies and housekeeping.

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The metaphorical connection between house and church shaped the behavior of occupants in both buildings. The relative ease with which household items could be adapted to church use suggests the Church’s success in teaching Londoners that their household behavior was an act of piety. The prominence of women in adapting their household goods to the parish, whether or not explained in their wills, reflects not only skills learned in housekeeping but the increased connection between women’s domestic piety and their relationship with the parish.

Conclusion Domestic piety became dynamic and expansive in the two centuries after the plague. Fueled by both the items sold in the marketplace and Christian ideologies that sought to make the laity’s daily life religiously meaningful, domestic piety became a vehicle for individual expression and household gender roles. New devotional items inspired new religious behaviors. Most of London’s devotional objects, whether deluxe or mass-produced, came from Germany and the Low Countries, and Londoners not only purchased these items but also adopted Continental ways of using them. Changes to London’s domestic piety thus came to reflect Continental practices and aesthetics as Londoners participated in a wider Christian material and spiritual culture. Praying the rosary, for example, transformed a familiar object—the paternoster—into a new devotional item, while a combination of piety and consumer desires made paternosters more widely available. Affordable ceramic statues encouraged people of modest means to develop intimate and affective relationships with the saints, and the flood of books of hours allowed for the creation of a household prayer schedule that overlaid the schedule of provisioning and caring for a house and its residents. Ideally, as the two schedules merged, praying would become a form of housekeeping and vice versa. Whereas the very wealthy might set up house chapels and employ a priest as part of their household staff, and the slightly less well off might have an altar in their bedroom, many other Londoners had only portable images and paternosters. Those of greater means owned devotional items of greater monetary value, but domestic devotional practices were not beyond those of lesser means. Devotional items, whether covered in precious stones or mass-produced from ceramic or cheap metal, increasingly shaped movement and behavior within a London house over the course of the fifteenth century. While sympathetic with parish practices, domestic piety generated its own vocabulary, movements, and concerns that reflected the scale of household life. Domestic piety created actions that scholars associate

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with the privatization of the mass, behaviors and practices that the laity tried to bring to the parish and that sometimes irritated the clergy.107 Holy water stoups allowed for a quick blessing as one entered or exited a room, virgins martyrs reminded serving maids of proper decorum, prayer books were read upon waking and before sleeping, and beads, tablets, and prayer books could be carried room to room to address various needs. Christian devotion became a constant part of living in a medieval London house. This material dynamism of domestic piety overflowed into the parish. Parishioners brought from their homes their paternosters, prayer books, and other devotional objects, and used them during the liturgy. The clergy sometimes complained about the clacking of beads and the murmuring of parishioners as they prayed upon their beads or followed the liturgy along in their personal prayer books.108 Yet these activities, often understood as the privatization of the mass, were part of the growth of lay involvement in the parish. The rise in consumption enabled this growth because it allowed parishioners to spend more on their parish churches, and it allowed them to purchase devotional items for their own personal use. In a world that encouraged them to pray in their homes, think of their household tasks as manifestations of piety, and think of the church as a house, it should not be surprising that parishioners moved their devotional items back and forth from home to church, or that they gave their household items to the church as a sign of devotion.

Conclusion

What Londoners Learned as They Learned to Live with More

The colorful and cluttered rooms of London’s post-plague houses hide the trauma that allowed such bounty. Like the experiences of U.S. soldiers after World War II who went to college on the GI bill and lived lives quite unlike their parents, those who survived the plague also saw an improvement in their standard of living, but at a cost. For every new mazer, wall hanging, or fine sheet a plague survivor purchased, there were lost parents, friends, neighbors, and children. Those who sought better opportunities in London because their villages were untenable faced not only the city’s high mortality rates but also the stress of learning a new place, people, routines, and laws, and losing old connections and behaviors. Be it in a post-plague city or the postwar suburbs, life after social trauma brings alienation from the past and from community and family, which many seek to restore through the possessions with which they surround themselves.1 While modern society expresses the alienation of suburbia with zombie movies, medieval sources make the emotional toll of the plague difficult to see. The city’s administration continued to function, and chroniclers—ever mindful of the immediate—moved on to document the problems of monarchy, war, and city politics. It is in everyday practices that we see the evidence of how different this post-plague world was. In the short term, things did not materially change. Those who survived did not have to rebuild their world from scratch. They inherited objects, behaviors, and routines from those who had died, which were mediated through the same legal system, civic organization, and street grid. Yet as London’s merchants and artisans came to spend a greater portion of their higher wages on bigger houses and more things, and on good food rather than simply food for survival, their behavior, relationships

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and identities changed. Moralists noted some of these changes with outrage. Indeed, their condemnation of people living and acting above their station was a symptom of the seismic jolt that England’s social order received with the loss of so many people. The Rising of 1381 was only the most visible manifestation. More subtle but enduring were the changes to domestic life that came with increased consumption.2 Londoners learned many things as they learned to live with more stuff. Its merchants and artisans learned to value items enough to leave them formally to their children, to their extended family, and to their friends. In describing how to identify an intended bequest, how it was to be used, and who would receive it, testators tried to overcome the limits of the law, which prioritized land and not things. In the process, they revealed other values their possessions had accumulated. Valuing things for their financial worth was not new, but valuing things for the memories they invoked, the pleasure they gave, and the behaviors they created— if not altogether new after the plague—had expanded, because more Londoners were living with more things and having experiences that required more things. In the century after the plague, Londoners learned that their possessions could carry their memories, concerns, and values into the future, a heartening lesson in a world with so much instability and death. Londoners also learned to live in more rooms, and they learned to use these rooms differentially. They filled their expanded space with more furniture and more items to please the eye and comfort the body. These things required organization, which taught preferences, which initiated new forms of order and new manifestations of hierarchy. With more space, occupants escaped the constant surveillance of the hall and experimented with nascent forms of privacy and identity, learning to distinguish between how they behaved before others and how they behaved before God. Because London’s merchants and artisans could now buy cheap versions of expensive household items, they began to learn a common set of domestic behaviors. Debates about the existence of medieval merchant and artisan social identity focus on economic differences, which certainly created antagonisms between those with greater resources and political power and those with less. Economic differences, as I have tried to show, are only one kind of difference, and in post-plague London, they did not preclude developing shared domestic habits around a shared material culture. Even artisans in small houses came to value privacy and order, although facilitated with chests rather than rooms; introduced color and comfort, although with painted cloths rather than tapestries and inexpensive wool cushions; and engaged in pious reflection, but with pressed-metal devotional images rather than those of alabaster or ivory. Consumption changed Londoners’ domestic habits by making

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behavior and routines once limited to those with means more widely available. While inspired by elite possessions, London’s merchants and artisans adapted them to suit their commercial and urban lives, making their choices more than mere mimicry. What Londoners did not immediately learn was to gender many of their new household possessions. It would take nearly a century and another profound economic crisis for them to think that basins and ewers, dishes, napery, and girdles were more appropriate bequests for girls and women than for boys and men. In coming to gender particular things, Londoners tapped into a religious and legal discourse that had long associated women with housekeeping, but that had not matched their lived experiences in pre-plague London. The recession of the midfifteenth century, which again shifted the labor market, provided the impetus to align domestic experiences with these moral ideologies. Yet housework’s parameters and permutations reflect material and economic realities, and housekeeping’s tasks expanded to include cleaning, provisioning, and bodily care. These changes give it a history. The domestic consequences of increased consumption expose this history. Londoners further learned that the deployment of material culture has unintended consequences. More household possessions can create hierarchies, but they can also undermine them, and women used the very items intended to create a patriarchal marriage and household to facilitate their own networks and friendships. Women’s use of material culture, therefore, provides valuable insights into their emotional and domestic lives. London’s bursting markets allowed women to address their own priorities and concerns. These priorities include family, childcare, memory, and piety, which take on poignant resonance when refracted through the trauma of the plague. In learning to live with more, Londoners learned that things can project a version of the past into the future by accruing memories, experiences, and biographies. I leave it to others to decide whether London’s post-plague experiences were unique in England or just better documented than in other places. Increased consumption after the plague was not limited to London, so there is no reason to believe that the patterns I have found for London would not have happened in Norwich, Bristol, or York. Regardless of location, loved ones were still gone, old habits and routines faded, to be replaced by new values and behaviors that were markedly different from what survivors had shared with their families. London’s size, Continental contacts, and proximity to royal government, however, put these patterns on an unprecedented scale for England, and to the degree that London’s material culture was different, its experience with consumption would have created different behaviors and routines. Regardless, the plague was certainly a major historical rupture, and its consequences need to be understood as both long and short term, economic and social, cultural and quotidian.

Appendix S ou rc e s a nd Me t ho d s

Wills What percentage of the London population London’s surviving wills represent is a fraught question. Common law did not allow married women to make a will without their husband’s permission. The law also prohibited children, the mentally handicapped, and felons from making wills. Widows and single women could make a will, but theirs are a minority of surviving wills. Most Londoners probably did not make one, even if they were allowed to by law. Thus, the number of wills that survive for London does not even represent a majority of men. But relative to other sources involving large segments of the population, London’s citizen population is, relatively speaking, well served by its surviving wills. Four ecclesiastical courts—the Commissary Court, the Archdeacon’s Court, the Consistory Court, and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—served testators in the diocese of London.1 The diocese included the City of London as well as surrounding areas in Middlesex and portions of Essex and Hertfordshire. Surviving registers from the Commissary Court, which start in 1374 and continue up into the eighteenth century, contain thousands of wills. The Archdeacon’s Court also proved wills, although only one register, covering 1393–1415, survives from before the sixteenth century.2 There are wills from London’s Consistory Court, but the bulk of them fall between 1520 and 1540. The surviving wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury begin with 1384 and continue into the nineteenth century. A hierarchy existed among these ecclesiastical courts, with each following its own procedures. Theoretically, which of the four ecclesiastical courts an executor used depended on where the testator held property. Testators with property only in the archdeaconry of London had their wills proved there. If they had property in more than one archdeaconry, then executors took the will to the Commissary Court. For testators with property in the diocese of London but beyond the city, the Consistory Court was the appropriate venue. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury was reserved for testators holding property in more than one diocese in the archdiocese of Canterbury, making testators in this court generally wealthier than those in the other three courts.3 There is some debate about how hard and fast these jurisdictions were. Because the Consistory Court conducted a great deal of other business and was much more formal in its proceedings, many executors seem to have turned to the Commissary Court. Certainly it is the court with the majority of surviving wills. In practice, then, convenience rather than jurisdiction seems to have been the guiding principle followed by many executors.4 For those of greater means and social status, by the sixteenth century, the Prerogative Court became the probate court of choice, whether testators had property in more than one diocese or not.5 Not all wills made were proved, and not all wills proved were enrolled. If there was no dispute, few beneficiaries, or not much at stake, executors may have just settled the estate with the interested

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parties and ignored the courts and the cost of probating the will. Enrolling a will—that is, actually having a clerk copy the will into his register—cost extra, and many executors chose to forgo that expense. In these cases, the clerk simply registered the probate. If the executor chose to enroll the will, then the clerk copied the will into the register, theoretically word for word. This provided legal protection for all the bequests made in the will. Thus, the vast majority of wills that survive are those enrolled in court registers; they were not the originals, which would have been returned to the family upon probate. This means there could be differences between the original and what was enrolled.6 London’s own Husting Court also enrolled wills. This series starts in 1258 and continues up into the seventeenth century, making them the oldest series of wills. There are more than four thousand of them, the majority of which date from before 1500.7 As this court was primarily concerned with real property, the clerks who enrolled wills sometimes omitted or summarized the movable goods.8 Barney Sloane estimates that only 4 percent of London men used the Husting Court.9 Testators could have their wills enrolled in both an ecclesiastical court and the Husting Court.10 A calendar of the Husting wills and a faithful transcription of the Consistory Court wills have been published and as a result have been studied more.11 Now also available in a digital and searchable version through British History Online, the calendar of Husting wills has formed the core of many studies of London.12 The Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills have not been published but were an early microfilm project, which is now digitized by the National Archives.13 Searchable through their online (albeit idiosyncratic) cata log, they have also been used a great deal. Neither the archdeaconry nor the Commissary Court wills have been published, although, with their more manageable numbers, the archdeaconry wills have been the subject of a dissertation.14 The Commissary Court contains the largest collection of wills.15 They too have been microfilmed and indexed, but scholars tend to use them individually rather than systematically.16 The large number of wills required me to sample them. Not only did I need a representative number, but I also needed to capture change over time. Because I wanted to sample the same years in both courts, I started in 1384, when the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills start surviving. I then collected all wills in five-year segments every fifteen years, ending in 1540. The Commissary Court register that contained what should have been my seventh sample, wills from 1504 to 1508, is lost, its disappearance predating the numbering of the registers.17 Because these wills were missing from the Commissary Court, I omitted them from my Prerogative Court of Canterbury sampling as well. Ideally, it would have been useful to include wills from the first generation after the plague (1350–80), but they do not survive for these courts. To address the pre-plague period and the first generation after the plague, I sampled the Husting wills, using the same sampling procedure, but I used microfilm of the manuscripts rather than Reginald Sharpe’s calendared version. I wanted to collect all the movable goods that were enrolled, and these were the portions of the will I was afraid Sharpe might have skipped. I did find some things he had omitted, but in general the portions of wills that he omitted were not the movable goods. Within each five-year sample, I only used wills from men who identified themselves as citizens or as merchants or artisans and from women who identified themselves as wives or daughters of citizens, merchants, or artisans. In a modest effort to add to the number of female testators, I included women who identified as “dame” if they said nothing about their husbands. While some of these women were widows of hereditary knights, some might be widows of aldermen. I also included the rare servant’s will if the servant was working in a merchant or artisan household. I did collect wills from London’s parish clergy, but I dealt with them separately, so, unless specified, all wills are by laity. I also limited myself to wills from testators living within the boundaries of London but included those living in parishes with boundaries abutting the city walls; citizens living in villages, such as in

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Enfield or Hackney, however, were not included. To some degree this was an arbitrary decision, but it provided a legally justifiable way of limiting what was already a large sample size. The percentage of Husting wills with movable goods was smaller than in the Commissary Court and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and it remains unclear whether this is a feature of the Husting clerks omitting movables as they enrolled wills, the fewer household goods that testators felt worthy of bequeathing through the instrument of a will, or both. My sampling suggests that up until the end of the fourteenth century, when movable goods almost completely disappear from Husting wills, scribes were at least entering the items left to children and spouses. Notably, the percentage of wills leaving goods in all three courts in the 1384–88 sample is virtually identical. The dramatic decrease in this percentage for Husting wills in the next two samples (1404–8 and 1424–28), while there is no commensurate drop in the ecclesiastical courts (Figure 47), suggests a change in recording practices by the Husting clerks, not a decline in the practice of leaving movables to heirs. My sampling of the three courts yielded 3,009 wills; 291 from the Husting Court, 1,997 from the Commissary Court, and 721 from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. Given the limitations of the Husting wills, they only feature in the first chapter and are not part of my calculations for the majority of the book. The combined number of wills for the Prerogative and Commissary Courts is 2,718 (Figure 48). Estimating what percentage of surviving wills my sample included is difficult to gauge. A search of the the National Archive’s online cata log of Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills from London between 1384 and 1540 yields just under 3,000 wills. This number underestimates the total of London wills, because not all testators who were London citizens identified themselves as such or identified their place of residence as London. Some wills have also escaped cata loging by word searching, making a search by “London” a conservative estimate.18 Based on this total, at the most my sample of Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills represents 24 percent of the London wills from that court. An estimate of the Commissary Court wills is more difficult, since there is no exact 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1344–48

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Percentage of PCC wills w/movable goods

Figure 47. Percentage of post-plague wills leaving movable goods in Husting Wills (HW), Commissary Court (CC), and Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC).

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Figure 48. Number of post-plague wills in the Commissary Court (CC) and Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). count of the London wills in the Commissary Court. A rough count of City of London wills for citizens and their female family members yields almost 9,000 wills, making my sample about 23  percent of the surviving London lay wills in the Commissary Court.19 As Figure 48 shows, the numbers of wills in my samples of both the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and the Commissary Court increases as the wealth of Londoners increased, so there are more wills in the later part of the period, especially in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. Just under half of these wills include movable goods. Of the wills in the Commissary Court, 47  percent (933) included movable goods, and 49 percent (352) of wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury did (Figure 47). Wills are not perfectly representative of the population. Even though widows could make a will, they are still underrepresented. In my sample, only 16  percent of the wills are from women. More specifically, the Commissary Court had a far greater percentage of female testators than the Prerogative Court, 18 percent compared to 9 percent. Some of the widows of men who had their wills proved in the Prerogative Court had their own wills proved in the Commissary Court. Some of this might be convenience, but some of it is the effect of widowhood on women’s wealth.20 Yet if women are underrepresented in the total number of wills, those who did leave a will were more likely to leave movable goods (Figures 49a and 49b.) In part this is because widows were disbanding a household, while most male testators were married and thus strategizing about how to provide for their family after their death. Yet some scholars, including myself, have also argued for women’s greater affiliation with material culture, which contributes to women’s greater willingness to leave movables.21 I used changes in inheritance patterns over the nearly two hundred years after the plague as a way of identifying changing attitudes toward household goods. To track these changes, I entered all the wills that left movable goods in my sample years into a relational database that allowed me to count and sort the wills by sample, the year when the will was written or proved, the first and last name, sex, marital status, occupation, parish of the testator, and age of the testator’s household.22 I then entered all the movable goods bequeathed in each will and linked this information to the information about the testator. In order to track the movable goods, I categorized each item in three different ways. The first and broadest category was type of movable good. My categories were furnishings, kitchenware, bed-

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Figure 49b. Percentage of wills in Prerogative Court of Canterbury leaving movable goods by sex. ding, plate, napery, books, tools, weapons, jewelry, clothing, and miscellaneous. While these categories were suggested by the wills, categorizing an item required some decision-making. Bedsteads were usually given along with bedding, but I listed the bed frame, if it was mentioned, with furnishings, while sheets, blankets, pillows were listed under bedding. Though medieval testators tended to include sheets under napery, I did not, and napery in my database was primarily table linens and towels. While London houses had glassware, it was rarely specified, and when it was, I included glass in the plate category, because it was used in much the same way as other plate. Kitchenware included items for cooking, not serving. I included serving items in plate, because those that were bequeathed were typically made of pewter, silver, or latten. The second tier was the name of the object, which also required some decisions to make it an effective search category. For example, there were many kinds of cups: goblets, drinking horns, mazers, nuts, standing cups, standing pieces, and bell cups, to name but seven. Moreover, wills were in both English and Latin, making many, many ways to name a cup. I gave every item an English name

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and made the name of the object as uniform as possible to enable meaningful searches. So regardless of how a testator named the drinking vessel, I entered it as a cup. The exceptions to this practice were mazers and nuts, because from the very beginning testators seemed to treat them differently, so I counted them separately from “cups,” but included them under the broader category of plate. If a testator gave multiple versions of the same item, such as eight plates, I did not enter each of the eight plates individually but separately recorded the number given. As some wills did not specify quantity, but rather gave “all” to a beneficiary, it means that my database cannot definitively count the number of items left. Some items were also given in sets, such as basins and ewers, or platters, dishes, and saucers, or sheets, blankets, feather beds, mattresses, pillows, and other items for a bed. However, testators did not always give away a full set; for example, they might only have given a mattress and sheets, no feather bed, blankets, or pillow. This adds to the complication of counting items. However complete or incomplete a set, I kept them together and entered it as one bequest. This required learning what constituted a set rather than simply many items given to a single testator. The final form of categorization was the description of the object as it appeared in the will, in the language the clerk used. This is not a particularly effective search tool but did allow me to quote from the will and to consider the different ways in which testators described their bequests. I had additional fields for where in the house the bequest was located, if specified; whether it was a religious object or child-related; and whether there was an image or style attributed to the item. For example, I noted the kind of weave of table linens and whether furniture was joined or turned, when specified. Finally, I included the demographic information available on beneficiaries and their relationship to the testator, if explained. In the end, this database allows me to see the rise or decline of particu lar kinds of items bequeathed in wills, changes in style or material of items, and—by looking at the sex of the beneficiary— changes to the gender coding of different types of goods. While my database does have a final number of bequests, this is a meaningless number in many ways. First, there is the problem of sets, which I did not break up. But, second, some beneficiaries received more than one item, so counting beneficiaries double and triple counts some individuals. It is certainly possible to create a database that would address this issue, but I did not, although I can search individually named beneficiaries. For this reason, when I counted individual servants, the numbers were suggestive of a rise in female servants, but not statistically significant. Counting all named servants in wills might yield a statistically significant number, but that is a task for someone else. Far and away the most common kind of item to be bequeathed was clothing, with 98 percent of Commissary Court wills and 68 percent of Prerogative Court wills that left a movable good leaving at least one item of clothing. As clothing was a bodily object, not a household one, I tracked clothing for the sake of completing the database, but it does not figure in much of my analysis in this book. While by no means listing all the items in a house, my data show an identifiable lag in the appearance of some goods on the market and their appearance as bequests, showing the effects of learning to live and value particu lar household furnishings.

Inventories While probate inventories are common for the Continent and for the early modern period, they are rare for England before 1540, although evidence from wills suggests it was a common enough practice in the Middle Ages to make an inventory.23 I found only eighteen pre-plague ones for London, fourteen of which are from felons, whose chattels were assessed and then confiscated.24 The eco-

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nomic circumstances of the felons were broader than in the debt and probate inventories, making it difficult to compare them with those from after the plague. Given the the rarity of pre-plague inventories, I have supplemented them with thirty-one inventories from King’s Lynn dating to 1290, which were created as a preliminary step in leveling a royal tax.25 Using them helps contextualize the evidence provided by the London inventories. Debt inventories were made when a debtor was unable to pay his creditors. Upon default, the sheriff was served with a writ to imprison the debtor and seize and make an extent or assessment of his lands and chattels.26 The creditor was then given the debtor’s goods up to the value of the debt. This process expanded with the creation of the Statute of the Staple in 1353. While there are hundreds of notices of default and extents of debt, only a minority are accompanied by an inventory. Martha Carlin created a handlist of extents for debts for London and Southwark housed at the National Archives in Kew, noting those with accompanying inventories; it was invaluable for identifying surviving inventories.27 A few other debt inventories survive in London’s own civic records, mostly in the Plea and Memoranda Rolls. With the Statute of the Staple, bankruptcy inventories become more common and continue unevenly up into the seventeenth century. I have identified sixty-three debt inventories for London, most of which are from extents for debt. The majority of those before 1540, 64  percent, fall between 1360 and 1409 (Figure  50).28 They wax and wane with the economy, although perhaps counterintuitively, their abundance is a sign of available credit and thus a growing economy. They diminish as the economy seized up and credit disappeared.29 The other common type of inventory is the probate inventory. After a will had been proved, but before an estate could be distributed, all outstanding debts had to be paid.30 This process often involved inventorying the testator’s goods.31 In 1529, a parliamentary act required inventories, but this act (21 Hen. 8, c. 5) seems to summarize standard probate practices rather than creating new ones.32 30 25

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Figure 50. Chronological distribution of post-plague London inventories from extents for debts (bankruptcy), probate (PCC), probate (Consistory Court), and civic records.

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While there are more surviving inventories after 1529, they are still not common until the registering process changed. Even before 1529, some testators required that an inventory be made to assure the proper distribution of their movable goods. In his 1485 will, John Skyrwyth explained that he expected the appraisal process to employ “two indifferent persons” who are charged with “indentur[ing], valu[ing] and apprais[ing]” “all my goods chattels, and debts.”33 His wife offers similar instructions in her will.34 When disposing of his estate, Thomas Mower referred to the now-missing inventory of his wife’s first husband, which he had seen. “I bequeath unto Agnes my wife, late the wife of William Loke, all the plate and jewels of silver and silver and over-gilt and parcel-gilt, what so ever they be, the which I had with her or by her when I married her, the which are more plainly expressed in the inventory of the goods and chattels late of the said William Loke.”35 Collectively, the process of inventorying an estate shows Londoners valuing goods for their monetary value and wanting to secure them from beyond the grave. To the degree that we can discern the appraising process at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, we see that it generally did employ two men to work each estate. Many of the pairings are long term, and multiple pairs worked at the same time. In 1498, William Maryner and Robert Gough assessed Richard Bromer’s estate, while the same year Robert Hartshorn and John Bray assessed Christopher Kichyn’s possessions.36 Of the forty-seven London and London area inventories with assessors listed and legible, Maryner assessed twenty-seven of these households, sixteen with Richard Gough, seven with Simon Houghton, two with William Mere, and two by himself.37 These men are described in the inventories as London citizens. Maryner a salter, was active in the west London ward of Farringdon Within. He died in 1512 and was buried in Grey Friars’ church in London.38 Most surviving medieval probate inventories are from estates proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. There are only 365 surviving for the archdiocese of Canterbury from before 1540 and about 100 for the diocese of York from before 1500; most of those are from the Exchequer court and the Dean and Chapter court.39 Of those surviving for the archdiocese of Canterbury, only fifty-seven (16  percent) are from London; a further eleven are from Southwark or Westminster.40 The earliest dates to 1468.41 To increase the number of inventories, I used those for Westminster and Southwark, which would have had a similar urban material culture, even if some of the households inventoried did not claim London citizenship. There are a further eleven probate inventories in the Consistory Court, enrolled with the wills and falling between the years 1542 and 1544.42 Even though they postdate my cutoff year of 1540, I have used them because the social profile of these testators is much less wealthy and about half are from women (see Figure 50). Debt inventories list goods, but not the rooms where they were located. The order of goods listed, however, suggests that in most cases it was the order in which the assessors found the goods, and thus a careful reading of the order gives a sense of the arrangement of rooms and items within a room.43 Each item received a value, and often there was a statement about the color, size, and condition of the goods. We should, however, be wary of assuming that these inventories list every thing in a house. Appraisers worked with a threshold of value, so generally items worth less than a penny are omitted. This means that ceramic and wooden items rarely appear. Sometimes the goods are individually valued; sometimes there is just a total at the end. Some debt inventories only include shop goods and not household goods. When they do list household goods, they generally only list those household items valuable enough to be sold. If the value of individual items was given, and often it was not, the lowest value of a good assessed varied from inventory to inventory but was always between 1d. and 4d., so we can assume that anything costing less than a penny was routinely omitted.44 While the exact value of ceramic and wooden dishware is uncertain, these items, which survive in abundance in the archaeological record, are rarely if ever listed in debt inventories.45

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229

Probate inventories start out with a heading that lists the name of the testator, where they lived, and, in the case of a man, often his occupation, or, in the case of a woman (only a few), her marital status, and then the names of the assessors and the date of the assessment. Where the will also survives, the inventory date usually confirms that it was made after the will was proved. Typically, London’s probate inventories are arranged by room, starting with the contents of the aula, the hall, followed by the contents of other rooms and outside buildings if there were any. Next were separate categories for clothing, napery, plate, and jewelry, so we do not know where these items were kept in the house. At the end is a list of the testator’s debts and the debts owed to the testator, classified by the likelihood of collecting payment, and the cost of the funeral and probate. While not stated explicitly, it seems that these assessors also did not assess goods worth less than a penny. Once the goods were inventoried and valued, all debts could be settled, first with ready cash and then by selling off household goods. Then the beneficiaries received their legacies, if there was anything left. Finally, the assessors had to provide a copy of the inventory to the probate court. This copy was on loose rolls rather than being copied into a register, the way wills were. This process probably helps explain their poor survival rate and generally poor condition. A register ensured a greater chance of survival than loose documents.46 We do not know why we have the ones we do, while others were either not created or were lost. The lack of consistency in format and the poor quality of the probate inventories makes counting them less precise than counting wills. Since many lack room labels and many are incomplete, it is difficult to count how many houses had par ticu lar rooms or compare them because we often do not know the size of the entire estate. While there is an absolute number of inventories that I have used from either the archives or published sources, they are not all equally useful. In trying to determine how many houses had par ticu lar kinds of rooms, I could not use those that had no room labels. Shop inventories tell us little about how the owner lived, although they do tell us what was available for purchase. Ultimately, for the post-plague period, I derived my statistics from 123 inventories for 128 houses, weighted chronologically toward the beginning and end of my study (Table 7). While neither kind of inventory is proof positive of all that a house was or all that it contained, they do show those items of enough value to warrant the assessors’ attention, how they were grouped, and sometimes where they were situated in the house when the inventory was taken. They show us, therefore, a range of possibilities mediated through the inventorying process, which must have

Table 7. Numbers of Post-Plague Inventories Used Inventory type

1350–1399

1400–1499

1500–1544

Total

From extent for debts

39

9

9

57

From civic records

4

2

1

7

From Prerogative Court

0

28

20*

48

From Consistory Court

0

0

11

11

Total

43

39

41

123

*Three of these inventories include more than one house.

230

A p p en d i x

become somewhat standardized as assessors gained experience. Yet since the assessors were also citizens of comparable wealth and status to those whose goods they were assessing, there is an unclear but certain relationship between routines of assessment and routines of living. Common patterns of furnishing, therefore, suggest more than the assessor’s writ; they suggest shared habits and assumptions of decor, room use, and household interaction. Using both extent for debts and probate inventories in the aggregate thus illustrates some claims about change over time in merchant and artisan houses.

notes

The following abbreviations appear in the notes. BL—British Library Coroners Rolls—Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the City of London Husting Wills—Calendar of Wills Proved in the Court of Hustings, London LMA—London Metropolitan Archives Mayors’ Court Rolls—Calendar of Early Mayors’ Court Rolls TNA—The National Archives, Kew WAC—Westminster Archives Centre WAM—Westminster Abbey Muniments

introduction 1. For more on consumption in the Soviet and post-Soviet era, see Bren and Neuburger, Communism Unwrapped; Scarboro, Mincyte, and Gille, Socialist Good Life; Crowley and Reid, Pleasures in Socialism. 2. Bourdieu, Outline, 76–87; Miller, Stuff, 42–78; Hodder, Entangled, 15–39. 3. De Vries, Industrious Revolution, 37–39. 4. No note can do justice to the bibliography; some basic works are Thrupp, Merchant Class; Williams, Medieval London; Brooke and Keir, London, 800–1216; Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages; Rexroth, Deviance and Power. 5. Peter Spufford, Power and Profit, 134; Ormrod, Lambert, and Mackman, Immigrant England, 1300–1550. 6. Britnell, Commercialisation, 155–78; Hatcher, “Great Fifteenth-Century Slump,” 237–72; Kaminsky, “From Lateness,” 105–20; Goddard, Credit and Trade, 97–100; Bruce Campbell, Great Transition, 332–94. 7. Pennell, “Material Culture.” 8. Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena, argued for such an impact, but in the 1970s scholars pushed back on this position. For analysis of the long life and influence of Meiss’s thesis on art history, see Earenfight, review of Sienese Painting. Scholars are reluctant to credit the plague with much beyond disrupting patronage networks. See, e.g., Cohn, Cult of Remembrance. Scholars who downplay it in recent works are Appleford, Learning to Die, 10–11, who argues that the plague is a diversionary subject even though it did probably change lay-clerical relations, and that given the paucity of literary sources for merchants prior to the plague, comparisons are difficult to make; Einbinder, After the Black Death, 5, who focuses on literary forms for commemorating Jewish victims of the Black

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Death and sees no change from literary forms used earlier; and Smail, Legal Plunder, 178–80, who argues that the legal practice of predation declined after the plague because labor, and not goods, had value during that time. From this vantage point, Smail does not see much impact from the plague. Older works include Thrupp, Merchant Class, which covers the period but does not give the plague much attention as a driver of the change it discusses. The same can be said of Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, 30–35, an excellent study of urban public health, which argues that there was no change in how towns addressed public health after the Black Death. See also Britnell, “Black Death in English Towns,” 195–210. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 3, says that there was more construction after the plague but little hard evidence for how this changed houses as a consequence. 9. Bolton, Medieval English Economy; Ziegler, Black Death; Huppert, After the Black Death; Cohn, “Black Death: End of a Paradigm,” 705. 10. Dyer, “Changes in Diet,” 21–37; Dyer, Making a Living, 265–362; Dyer, Age of Transition?, 31; Mark Bailey, Decline of Serfdom; Hatcher, “England in the Aftermath of the Black Death,” 3–35. For older works crediting social change to the plague, see Ziegler, Black Death, 259–80, who tied it to the Reformation; Kaminsky, “From Lateness,” 105–20. See also Cohn, “Black Death: End of a Paradigm,” 704 n. 3, for studies that emphasize the growing violence after the plague. 11. Benedictow, Black Death, 35–54; Bruce Campbell, Great Transition. 12. See, for example, the “Bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975); or the T-shirt that advertises the Black Death’s world tour like a rock-concert T-shirt, www .northernsun.com/Black-Death-Tour-TShirt-%281618%29.html, accessed 4 December 2019. 13. Little, “Plague Historians in Lab Coats,” 267–90. Monica Green posits a possible higher mortality rate; see Green, “On Learning How to Teach the Black Death,” 14–17. 14. Bruce Campbell, Great Transition, 351. 15. Poos, Rural Society, 121–29; Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, 204–32; Dyer, Making a Living, 276–77. For debates on Britain’s ability to feed itself, see Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, 41–52; for debates about this interpretation, see 52–65; Benedictow, Black Death, 245–56. 16. Mark Bailey, Decline of Serfdom, 285–337; Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 60, 258–61, 311–13, 320–22; Dyer, Age of Transition?, 126–241. 17. Dyer, Age of Transition?, 126–28; Kowaleski, “Consumer Economy,” 238–59; Sear and Sneath, Origins, 4–21. 18. Medieval economic texts are generally difficult to use to measure demand, so production and supply have been the focus of most early work. Kowaleski, “Consumer Society,” 238. I am intentionally using the word “stuff,” a word found in Middle English that means among other things movable property and household goods and utensils. In modern English, it is a more general term than “possessions.” “Possessions” connotes a legal relationship and does not necessarily have the sense of abundance and clutter that “stuff” now has. OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online, s.v. “stuff” and “possessions,” www.oed.com, accessed 15 December 2019. 19. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism. 20. De Vries, Industrious Revolution. 21. Bruce Campbell, Great Transition, 332–94. 22. Cohn, “Black Death: End of a Paradigm,” 707–10. 23. Bourdieu, Outline, 89–91; Allison, “Introduction,” 1; Miller, Stuff, 81–99. 24. Bourdieu, Outline, 82; see also Gosden, “What Do Objects Want?,” 202. 25. Hodder, Entangled, 21–30, quote on 28. 26. Harvey, “Introduction,” 5; Miller, Stuff, 81–99; Appadurai, “Introduction,” 3–63; Miller, Comfort of Things.

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27. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 291–94; Miller, Stuff, 78–91; Hodder, Entangled, 15–39. 28. McSheffrey, Marriage. The flexibility of the nuclear family and its role in northern Europe’s economic development is a major topic of discussion. For a summary, see Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities; Hartman, Household; de Vries, Industrious Revolution, 9–19. Much of this discussion focuses on the early modern family. See also Cohen and Cohen, “Open and Shut,” 61–84. 29. For more on changing expectations of women’s behavior, see McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior; Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, 112–46; Bardsley, Venomous Tongues; Phillips, Medieval Maidens. 30. Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 212–28. 31. Sánchez-Romero and Aranda, “Changing Foodways,” 75; Cahn, Industry of Devotion; Roberts, “Spiritual and Menial Housework,” 51–80; Burke, “Housewifery in Working-Class England,” 332–58. 32. Bennett, History Matters, 54–81; Whittle, “Critique of Approaches to ‘Domestic Work,’ ” 35–70. 33. Riddy coined this term in her article “Mother Knows Best,” 67; she develops this idea further in Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 212–28; Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 14–36. 34. For more on artisan identity, see Swanson, Medieval Artisans, 1–4, 100–171; Rice and Pappano, Civic Cycles, 3–18. 35. Barron, “Ralph Holland,” 160–83; Barron, “Political Culture,” 111–33; Watts, “The Pressure of the Public,” 159–80; Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 18–20; McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity,” 243–78; Malcolm Richardson, Middle-Class Writing; Harry, Constructing a Civic Community, 2, 23–39. 36. Caroline Barron anticipates this argument, but with an emphasis on emulation. See Barron, “Chivalry,” 219–41; Harry, Constructing a Civic Community, 27. 37. French, Good Women, 125; Rosser, Art of Solidarity, 56–57; Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 202–20. 38. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 208–60. England’s earliest sumptuary legislation, passed in 1336, attempted to undermine France economically by prohibiting everyone but the royal family from wearing clothing made of foreign cloth. After the plague, Parliament redirected its sumptuary legislation to link particu lar kinds of clothing to specific social statuses or positions. Although these rules were never really enforced in England, their passage reflects Parliament’s anxiety over the issue. Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation, 32; Sponsler, “Narrating the Social Order,” 270–76; Laurel Wilson, “Common Threads.” 39. I am drawing upon Anderson, Imagined Communities; and Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” 18; see also French, People of the Parish; Hanawalt, Ceremony and Civility; Harry, Constructing a Civic Community. 40. This is a major issue in Jewish history after the Holocaust. See Veidlinger, Shadow of the Shtetl, for an attempt to gauge the impact of trauma on identity. For the Middle Ages, see Stone, “Black Death and Its Immediate Aftermath,” 213–44. 41. Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” 1; Harry, Constructing a Civic Community, 1–6. 42. Sztompka, “Trauma of Social Change,” 156–57; Rexroth, Deviance and Power, 25–187, although he prioritizes the Hundred Years’ War rather than the plague. 43. Megson, “Mortality,” 125–33. 44. For the geographic origins of London’s merchants and artisans, see Hovland, “Apprenticeship,” 60–71. 45. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 27. 46. Camp, Wills and Their Whereabouts, x–xi; Arkell, “Probate Process,” 7. 47. Gross, “Medieval Law of Intestacy,” 129–30; Beattie, “Married Women’s Wills,” 29–60.

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48. Goose and Evans, “Wills as an Historical Source,” 38–71; Barron and Sutton, Medieval London Widows, xiii–xxxiv; French, “Loving Friends,” 21–37; Beattie, “Married Women’s Wills,” 30–43. 49. There is an extensive bibliography on wills. Here are some of the works that most influenced my thinking: Zell, “Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Wills as Historical Sources,” 67–74; Burgess, “ ‘By Quick and by Dead,’ ” 837–58; Burgess, “Late Medieval Wills,” 14–33; Archer and Ferme, “Testamentary Procedure,” 3–34; Helmholz, “Married Women’s Wills,” 165–82; Barron and Sutton, Medieval London Widows; Katherine Lewis, “ Women, Testamentary Discourse,” 57–76; Loengard, “ ‘Which May Be Said to Be Her Own,’ ” 162–76; Beattie, “Married Women’s Wills,” 29–60. 50. Baker, Introduction to English Legal History, 296–360, 427–54; Baker writes, “Every piece of land was geographically a parcel of the realm, the subject of tenure, a source of authority, immovable, indestructible, and recoverable in specie by real action. Chattels, in contrast, could be passed around by hand, damaged, consumed, lost. The live chattel was mortal, provisions were perishable, and many commodities such as grain and wool were fungibles with no individual characteristics; recovery in specie was never guaranteed, and rarely important, since money would usually do as well” (427). See also Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 49–92. 51. French, Good Women, 37–48. 52. Hanawalt, Wealth of Wives, 61–68. 53. Helmholz, “Legitim in English Legal History,” 659–74; Barron, “ ‘Golden Age,’ ” 35–36. 54. Barron, “ ‘Golden Age,’ ” 41. 55. Beattie, “Married Women’s Wills,” 29–60. 56. Katherine Lewis, “Women, Testamentary Discourse,” 57–76; Salter, Cultural Creativity, 20–49; Susan James, Women’s Voices, 60–149. 57. Husting Wills, 1:xxiv–xxvi. 58. Wunderli, London Church Courts, 7–19. 59. Kesselring, “Felony Forfeiture,” 201–26. 60. For more on the lack of marriage inventories, see Loengard, “ ‘Which May Be Said to Be Her Own,’ ” 171–72. 61. TNA, Prob2/182, Dame Elizabeth Wayte; Prob2/517, Anne Taverner, stationers’ widow. The other two widows are Anne Mower, widow of currier Thomas Mower, Prob2/56, who died soon after her husband and did not take over his shop, and Elizabeth Dalamer, widow of a knight, Prob2/73. 62. John Aubry, a mercer inventoried in 1379, served as an alderman from 1370–77; TNA, C131/27/13; Thrupp, Merchant Class, 322. This is not to say that aldermen and mayors escaped financial difficulty. Draper Lawrence Aylmer served as alderman and was mayor in 1507. He ended his life as an almsman for the drapers’ company. Beaven, Aldermen of London; A. H. Johnson, History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers, 2:27, 33, 55. 63. Matthew Phelips and Thomas Cowper served as aldermen and then as mayors, 1463–64 and 1472–73, respectively. Henry Warley and Robert Amadas were aldermen; William Edward, grocer, was warden of the grocers’ guild; Henry Cantelow and Alexander Plymley served in the mercers’ company; and Robert Amadas and John Clement served in the goldsmiths’ company. Reddaway and Walker, Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company, app. 4; Glanville, “Robert Amadas, Goldsmith,” 110; Glanville “Cardinal Wolsey and the Goldsmiths,” 145; Sutton, Mercery of London, 558; Grantham, List of the Wardens of the Grocers’ Company, 10; Beaven, Aldermen of London.

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64. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 139; Harry, Constructing Civic Community, 24. 65. TNA, Prob2/486; Dyer, Standards of Living, 193. 66. TNA, Prob11/467. 67. TNA, Prob2/12; Prob2/15. 68. TNA, Prob2/44. 69. Weatherill, Consumer Behavior; Erickson, Women and Property. 70. Scholars tend to use them to discuss individuals, see Thrupp, Merchant Class, 140–45; see also Sutton, “John Skirwith,” 54–93. 71. Burgess, “Late Medieval Wills.” 72. Orlin, “Fictions,” 51–83. 73. Margaret Spufford, “Limitations of the Probate Inventory,” 160–65. 74. Riello, “ ‘ Things Seen,’ ” 125–50.

1. living in london before the plague 1. Barron, “London, 1300–1540,” 389–400; Keene, “Medieval London and Its Region,” 107; Nightingale, “Some New Evidence,” 44; Dyer, Making a Living, 304. 2. Kaminsky, “From Lateness,” 116, makes the same point but in terms of what this meant for post-plague economics. 3. Dyer, Age of Transition?, 14–15; Langdon, Mills, 63–64, 297–305. 4. Langdon, Mills, 297. 5. See Keene, “Medieval London and Its Region,” 101, where he put it between 80,000 and 100,000; in Keene, “London from the Post-Roman Period to 1300,” 195, he more cautiously argues for 80,000. For a critique of this number, see Nightingale, “Growth of London,” 89–106. 6. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 206–10; Hanawalt, Growing Up, 144–46; Barron, “Centres of Conspicuous Consumption,” 1–16; Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 39; Dempsey, “Italian Community in London,” 14–22; Ormrod, Lambert, and Mackman, Immigrant England; Hovland, “Apprenticeship,” 60–71. 7. For more on urban citizenship, see Christian Liddy, Contesting the City, 20–50. Caroline Barron estimates that in the fifteenth century, citizens composed only a quarter to a third of the adult male population; see Barron, “London and the Crown,” 88. 8. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 7–10; Christian Liddy, Contesting the City, 21–25. 9. This divide between merchants and artisans is key to Rodney Hilton’s analysis of urban society; Hilton, English and French Towns. See also Swanson, Medieval Artisans, 107–26, who argues that citizenship became an increasingly necessary qualification for practicing a trade in cities. 10. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 4–27; Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 38–42, 204–6. 11. McIntosh, Working Women, 210–49; Hanawalt, Wealth of Wives, 160–84; Sutton, “Women of the Mercery,” 69–87; Sutton, “Two Dozen and More Silkwomen,” 88–100; Goldberg, “Home Work,” 124–43. 12. Liddy argues that most merchants and artisans would in fact have been citizens. Christian Liddy, Contesting the City, 35, 44–48. 13. Christian Liddy, Contesting the City, 21. 14. Keene, “English Urban Guilds,” 3–26; Rosser, Art of Solidarity, 149–66. 15. Little, “Pride Goes Before Avarice,” 11–17. 16. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 266.

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17. Drawing on Marxist concerns with alienation from production, Thorstein Veblen critiqued conspicuous consumption and leisure as manifestations of wealth; see Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class. For critiques, see Hodge, “Widow Pratt’s World of Goods,” 217–34; Hodder, Entangled, 123. 18. Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence, 201–3; Harding, “Space, Property, and Propriety,” 549–69. 19. Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence,” 203. 20. Goodburn, “Woods and Woodland,” 106–29; Matthew Johnson, English Houses, 30–41. 21. Liber Albus, 276–89. 22. Some merchants also lived in stone houses. In 1234, the rich fishmonger Hamo de Chigwell rented out the stone mansion of the bishop of Hereford located in the London parish of St. Mary Mounthaw. The terms of Chigwell’s lease allowed him to live in the house and store his wine there, but not to sublet it. Barron, “Centres of Conspicuous Consumption, 4; Sloane, Black Death in London, 19; Dyer, Making a Living, 198. 23. Milne, “Lessons from the London Waterfront,” 135–36. 24. London Assize of Nuisance, p. 44, no. 212. 25. Coroners Rolls, 147–48. 26. Milne, “Lessons from the London Waterfront,” 136; Keene, “London from the Post-Roman Period,” 194. 27. Mayors’ Court Rolls, 177–78. 28. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/068/110 (Husting Wills, 1:450). 29. London Assize of Nuisance, p. 46, no. 219. 30. Schofield and Vince, Medieval Towns, 86–91. 31. John Schofield, “Urban Housing in England,” 130–32. 32. Leech, “Symbolic Hall,” 1–10. Leech is only discussing hall and shop houses, houses used by merchants, but the existence of rents implicitly expands his classification scheme to one additional kind of house. 33. Salzman, Building in England, 417. 34. For a summary of this debate see Grenville, “Urban and Rural Houses, 92–123; Pearson, “Rural and Urban Houses, 43–64; see also Rees Jones, “Building Domesticity,” 68–72, esp. note 13. 35. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/075/174 (Husting Wills, 1:511). 36. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 66. 37. Schofield and Vince, Medieval Towns, 90. 38. London Assize of Nuisance, pp. 50–51, no. 234. 39. Coroners Rolls, 142. 40. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 66. 41. Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence,” 190–211. 42. Often built on street frontages, they leave little evidence in the archaeological record because the Victorians widened streets and built cellars at the expense of these earlier structures. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 53; Schofield and Vince, Medieval Towns, 90. Some survive for York: see Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence.” 43. Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence,” 202. 44. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 74–76. 45. London Assize of Nuisance, pp. 78–79, no. 323. 46. London Assize of Nuisance, p. 1, no. 2. 47. London Assize of Nuisance, p. 100, no. 406. 48. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 69–71.

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49. Fairclough, “Meaningful Constructions,” 348–66; Alcock, “Physical Space and Social Space,” 206–30; John Schofield, “Social Perceptions of Space,” 188–206; Amanda Richardson, “Corridors of Power,” 373–84. 50. Coroners Rolls, 4–5. 51. Coroners Rolls, 51. 52. Mayors’ Court Rolls, 249. 53. Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 30; Thompson, Medieval Hall, 116; Woolgar, Great Household, 59–69. 54. Coroners Rolls, 147–48; Kesselring, “Felony Forfeiture,” 201–26. 55. Memorials, 44–45, 50, 123–26. 56. Baudry, Documentary Archaeology. 57. Making of King’s Lynn, 235–50. 58. Dyer, Making a Living, 190; Making of King’s Lynn, 39–63. 59. Making of King’s Lynn, 247–48, 242–43. 60. Dyer, Age of Transition?, 52; Blair, “Hall and Chamber,” 1–21. 61. Memorials, 199–200; TNA, E154/1/12; John le Tirteyner’s inventory was made by his executors, but given that it was filed with the Exchequer, he probably had significant debts that needed to be paid. His total worth at his death is probably not representative of his professional life. 62. See Baudry, Documentary Archaeology, which deals with New World archaeology. For a critique of this approach, although not directed at colonial American archaeologists per se, see Ago, Gusto for Things, 2. 63. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 113. 64. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 53–103. 65. TNA E154/1/12. 66. Farmer, Silk Industries, 23. 67. Coroners Rolls, 62. 68. He failed at this task miserably, as Johanna was left alone, and a pig wandered in and mauled her to death. Coroners Rolls, 56–57. 69. Coroners Rolls, 75. 70. Making of King’s Lynn, 235–36. 71. Making of King’s Lynn, 235–36, 238–40, 247–48. 72. Loengard, “ ‘Which May Be Said to Be Her Own,’ ” 164–65. 73. Mayors’ Court Rolls, 149, 209, 213. Swinburne, Treatise of Testaments and Last Wills, writes “a devise of an house with the appurtenances; the conduits and waterpipes, though at a great distance, will pass” (409). Further he writes that the legatee of immovable goods “hath right to the leases which did belong to the deceased, and also to all the natural fruits thereof, as grass growing on the ground, and fruit on the trees, and likewise to the fishes in the pond, and pigeons in the dovecote, as appurtenant to the grounds demised, or as parcel of the fruits of the tenement, which (if it were out of lease) should belong to the heir, and not to the executor” (503). 74. Mayors’ Court Rolls, 209. 75. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/069/96 (Husting Wills, 1:461). 76. Riello, “ ‘ Things Seen,’ ” 125–27. 77. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/036/27 (Husting Wills, 1:192). 78. Coroners Rolls, 10. 79. Dyer, Standards of Living, 49–85, 151–210.

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80. For thirty wills enrolled in both the Commissary and Husting Courts, see Kim, “Tailors, Drapers, and Mercers,” 19 n. 61–64, 20 n. 65. 81. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/064/90 (Husting Wills, 1:418–19). 82. The dramatic decrease in the percentage of Husting wills listing movables from the 1384–88 sample to the 1404–8 sample, however, while there is no commensurate drop in the ecclesiastical courts’ samples of the same years, indicates a change in recording practices by the Husting clerks. For more on the sampling of wills, see the Appendix. 83. OED Online, s.v. “carpet,” www.oed.com, accessed 16 April 2011. 84. Making of King’s Lynn, 238. 85. Coroners Rolls, 88, 163. 86. Memorials, 123–26. 87. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/073/84 (Husting Wills, 1:487–88). 88. Bynum, Holy Feast, 31–69; Rosser, Art of Solidarity, 119; Hanawalt, Ceremony and Civility, 121–22. 89. Coroners Rolls, 148. 90. Drinking bowls were apparently introduced to England from the Continent in the aftermath of the Norman invasion. There is evidence of mazers at least as far back as the twelfth century. Wood and Hather, “Turned Woodware,” 483; Old English Homilies, 3–15 (items 1–3), 25–145 (items 5–24), 159–85 (items 27–29), 193–201 (item 31), 209–19 (items 33–34); Select Pleas, Starrs, and Other Records, 116. 91. St.  John Hope, “On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls,” 129–93; Rackham, Woodlands, 5–12. 92. Making of King’s Lynn, 242–43. 93. St. John Hope, “On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls,” 130; Pinto, Craftsman in Wood, 74; Pinto, Treen, 10–29. 94. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/076/226 (Husting Wills, 1:557.) 95. Bollock knives, or kidney daggers, with their phallic and testicle-shaped hilts, were a popular possession and sign of masculinity. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 101. 96. St. John Hope, “On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls,” 130. 97. “Ciphus Thome de Sellyng sine pede cum scuto in funo circulo et castone”; cited in Sweetinburgh, “Remembering the Dead, 260. 98. Sweetinburgh, “Remembering the Dead,” 257–66. 99. Sweetinburgh, “Remembering the Dead,” 258. 100. Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 141. 101. Wolfthal, In and Out of the Marital Bed; Burger, “In the Merchant’s Bedchamber,” 239–59; French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 71–80; Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 146–56, 191–201. 102. Memorials, 44–45; Blund’s will was enrolled in the Husting Court, but it does not record any of the movables he left Joan. They are only recorded when she married, and the goods were turned over to her husband. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/020/49 (Husting Wills, 1:98–99). 103. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/076/112 (Husting Wills, 1:532). 104. Memorials, 44 n. 6. 105. Oliver Kent warns of the problem of discerning function from names, as the names of pots and pans could be highly local and change over time. Kent, “Pots and Texts,” 367–99. 106. Sykes, “From Cu and Sceap,” 70; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, 303; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 27. 107. Buxton, Domestic Culture, 120–21.

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108. Egan, Medieval Household, 152–82. 109. Dyer, “Social and Economic Changes,” 33–42; Cherry, “Pottery and Tile,” 207; Blackmore, “Pottery, the Port and the Populace,” 29–44; Gaimster, “Supply of Rhenish Stoneware,” 339–47. 110. TNA, E154/1/12. 111. Mercer, Furniture, 19; Eames, Medieval Furniture, xix; Woolgar, Great Household, 50. 112. Making of King’s Lynn, 248; see also Radulphus de Bretham’s inventory on the same page. 113. Coroners Rolls, 71. 114. Pickvance, “Medieval Domed Chests,” 105–8. 115. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 108–9. 116. Coroners Rolls, 47. 117. LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/079/39 (Husting Wills, 1:502–3). 118. Coroners Rolls, 76, 88; Memorials, 123–26. 119. Bruce Campbell, Great Transition, 134–266; Benedictow, Black Death, 35–54; Jordan, Great Famine; for more on the bovine epizootic, see Slavin, “Great Bovine Pestilence,” 1239–66. 120. Nightingale, “Some New Evidence,” 44. 121. Jordan, Great Famine, 101. 122. “Plague Spreads to London,” in Horrox, Black Death, 64–65. 123. From Higden’s Polychronicon, in Horrox, Black Death, 63. 124. Benedictow, Black Death, 245–384; Sloane, Black Death in London, 85–90; Carenza Lewis, “Disaster Recovery,” 777–97. 125. Barron, “London, 1300–1540,” 389–400; Keene, “Medieval London and Its Region,” 107 (Keene thinks 50,000 is too low and suggests 60,000); Nightingale, “Some New Evidence,” 44; Dyer, Making a Living, 304. 126. Sloane, Black Death in London, 109; Megson, “Mortality,” 125–33; see also Nightingale, Medieval Mercantile Community, 196. 127. Benedictow, Black Death, 245–384; Sloane, Black Death in London, 103–9. 128. Lock, “Black Death in Walsham-le-Willows,” 316–37; DeWitte and Kowaleski, “Black Death Bodies,” 1–37. 129. The 1348 outbreak and repeated epidemics make up what is now called the second pandemic. (The first began with the so-called Justinian Plague of the sixth century.) 130. Moote and Moote, Great Plague. Plague would remain an issue for the Continent and the Middle East until the eighteenth century. 131. Keene, “Shops and Shopping,” 32–33, 42. 132. Letter-Book H, 84, 155; see also Goddard, Credit and Trade, 216. 133. Sloane, Black Death in London, 112. 134. Nightingale, Medieval Mercantile Community, 194–227, esp. 208; Nightingale, “Growth of London,” 101–6. 135. Letter-Book H, 162. 136. Rigby, “Urban ‘Oligarchy,’ ” 71. 137. Goldthwaite, Economy of Renaissance Florence, 546–57, makes the same point for Florence. 138. Edward was not the only ruler to do this. So too did the kings of Aragon and France, as well as some Italian city-states. 139. Letter-Book F, 197; Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls, 235. 140. Quoted in Sloane, Black Death in London, 115; see also Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls, 238–40.

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141. Keene, “Medieval London and Its Region,” 107; Nightingale, “Growth of London,” 105; Goddard, Credit and Trade, 100–109, 215–19. 142. Bolton, “ ‘World Upside Down,’ ” 64; Dyer, “Work Ethics,” 26; Rigby, Medieval Grimsby, 131; Nightingale, “Growth of London,” 101. 143. Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 60, 258–61, 311–13, 320–22; Goddard, Credit and Trade, 107. 144. Allen and Weisdorf, “Was There an ‘Industrious Revolution,’ ” 717. 145. Dyer, Making a Living, 304–5. 146. Hovland, “Apprenticeship,” 60–71. 147. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 266. 148. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, 98–99; Bardsley, “Women’s Work Reconsidered,” 3–29. 149. Dyer, Making a Living, 316–20; Dale, “London Silkwomen,” 324–35. 150. Dyer, Standards of Living, 199–205. 151. Dyer, Age of Transition?, 132–39. 152. Maddern, “Social Mobility,” 113–33.

2. valuing house hold goods 1. Staples, “Fripperers,” 151–71. 2. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 1–13. 3. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 16. 4. Dyer, “Luxury Goods, 217–19; Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 208–60. 5. Britnell, Commercialisation, 179; Bolton, Money, 232–51. 6. Britnell, Commercialisation, 181. 7. Blackstone uses the same examples to define heirloom as Swinburne used to define appurtenances: Swinburne, Treatise of Testaments and Last Wills, 409, 503; Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 2:325–26. See Gilchrist, “Materiality of Medieval Heirlooms,” 170–82, who defines heirlooms as valued things handed down from one generation to the next or, in an archaeological context, as items saved and deposited in a chronological stratum different from their own; see also Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 239; and Woolgar, “Heirlooms,” 432–55, who argues that elites used entails to turn movable goods into heirlooms. 8. Borough Customs, 2:138–44. 9. Baker, Introduction to English Legal History, 427–37; Woolgar, “Heirlooms,” 443. 10. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 237–51. 11. Shils, “Charisma, Order, and Status,” 209–11, expanding on Max Weber’s definition; for a more recent application of the concept to things, see Smail, Legal Plunder, 36; Binski, “Charisma and Material Culture,” 128–54. 12. As Daniel Miller points out, some things matter more than others. Miller, Material Cultures, 10–14. 13. A Relation, or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England, 42–43. 14. Britnell, Commercialisation, 180. 15. Alexandra Shepard states that in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries money could not be seized for debt. There seems to be no prohibition against this in the fourteenth and fifteenth

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centuries, although in reality it was a rare occurrence due to the lack of coinage in circulation. Shepard, Accounting for Oneself, 44; see also Goddard, Credit and Trade, 31–34. 16. Shepard, Accounting for Oneself, 46. 17. Bolton, Money, 68–71; 232–33. 18. Bolton, Money, 268, 274–84; for a discussion of available credit in the fifteenth century, see Goddard, Credit and Trade, 97–146. 19. Bolton, Money, 243. 20. In 1489, Henry VII struck a pound coin for the first time, and probably also a shilling coin, thus sinking accounting values and coins in circulation. Bolton, Money, 52; Shepard, Accounting for Oneself, 37–47. 21. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 1–13; Britnell, Commercialisation, 16–71, 179–203; Dyer, Standards of Living, 151–87, 193–210, 222–33; Kowaleski “Consumer Economy,” 238–59; Hatcher, “Great Fifteenth-Century Slump,” 237–72; Nightingale, “Growth of London,” 89–106; Bolton, Medieval English Economy, 292–305; Bolton, Money, 232–33; Bruce Campbell, Great Transition, 355–63. 22. Goddard estimates that debts constituted about 50 percent of their worth; Goddard Credit and Trade, 79. See also Odland, “Allocation of Merchant Capital,” 1058–80. 23. TNA, Prob2/44; Prob2/450. 24. Goddard, Credit and Trade, 142. Another complicating factor in the relationship that Londoners had with coinage is that the units of money they used in their wills, inventories, and other records—pounds, shillings, and pence—were not the actual denominations of coins in circulation. These were accounting values, designed to make accounting easier. The coins in circulation varied over time, but at the heart of medieval English money was the silver penny, which dated back to Offa’s reign (757–96). Two hundred and forty silver pennies could be struck from a Tower pound, the basic unit of minting. A second silver coin was the groat, worth 4d. When Edward III introduced gold coins in 1344, he had struck a noble worth 6s. 8d., which King Edward IV (1461–83) replaced with the angel, worth the same amount in 1465. There were also coins in half and quarter values, such as the halfpenny and farthing or half angel and quarter noble. The relationship between accounting and coins in circulation is evident in the sheer numbers of items valued at 6s. 8d. or some fraction or multiple of it. Bolton, Money, 50–52. 25. For the use of credit in business, see the rare business ledger of Gilbert Maghfeld discussed in Margery James, “A London Merchant,” 364–74. 26. TNA, Prob2/44. 27. TNA, Prob2/450. 28. TNA, Prob11/7/61. 29. TNA, Prob11/9/146; for other examples, see Prob11/7/316 and Prob11/27/268. 30. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, fol. 335v. 31. TNA, C1/333/7; for other cases, see C1/333/7 and C1/211/65. 32. Margery James, “A London Merchant”; Malcolm Richardson, Middle-Class Writing, 21–54. 33. Dyer, “Luxury Goods, 217–19. 34. TNA, Prob11/20/231. 35. Arkell, “Probate Process,” 3–13. 36. TNA, Prob2/8; Prob2/28. 37. TNA, Prob2/12. 38. TNA, Prob2/8; Prob2/28; Prob2/12. 39. TNA, Prob2/450.

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40. TNA, Prob2/93. 41. Smail, Legal Plunder, 36; for more on hangings’ charisma, see Olson, Arras Hanging, 1–18; Binski, “Charisma and Material Culture,” 133–35. 42. In her study of Renaissance clothing, Ulinka Rublack argues that “the greater relevance of commodified items provided new dimension to the emotional life of children, couples, and kin— from manipulation to moral anxiety or mutual pleasure in possessions.” A similar process is evident in comparing how testators and appraisers treat the same items. Rublack, Dressing Up, 213. 43. Lisa Liddy, “Affective Bequests,” 275. 44. TNA, Prob11/9/140. 45. Not all probate inventories for London are from citizens. There are also clerics, knights, and widows of knights. 46. TNA, Prob2/56; Prob11/9/140. 47. Hodder, Entangled, 24–27. 48. Lisa Liddy, “Affective Bequests,” 280. 49. TNA, Prob2/73. 50. TNA, Prob2/8; Prob11/6/27. 51. Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries, 64–71; McKendrick, “Tapestries from the Low Countries,” 43–60. 52. Beatrice was the widow of William Lemyng, a grocer whose will was proved in 1470. Phelips and Beatrice had only been married for about five years. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 360. 53. TNA, Prob11/6/388. 54. TNA, Prob11/10/116. 55. Appadurai, “Introduction,” 3–63; Kopytoff, “Cultural Biography,” 64–91; Gilchrist, “Materiality of Medieval Heirlooms,” 170–82. 56. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 369v. 57. TNA, Prob11/6/28. 58. TNA, Prob11/6/28. 59. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 45v–46. 60. The wills of his brothers Richard, William, and John all survive. Richard’s will (LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fols. 238v–239) lists no movables; William’s will (TNA, Prob11/9/308) mentions movables, but not in the detail that Thomas’s does. All make their eldest brother John their executor. When he died in 1506, his will (TNA, Prob11/15/347) bequeathed no movables. 61. Lisa Liddy, “Affective Bequests,” 281–82. 62. Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 1–26. 63. Fritz, Gefässe aus Kokosnuss im Mitteleuropa, 10. One of the inventories from King’s Lynn, drawn up in 1290, listed a nut; see Making of King’s Lynn, 245–46. The earliest one bequeathed in the Husting wills is from 1308; see LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/036/74 (Husting Wills, 1:196). 64. TNA, Prob2/22; Prob2/98. 65. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 22–22v. 66. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 5–5v. 67. TNA, Prob11/7/149. 68. The inscription is a common blessing that appears in many liturgical contexts. The will and the inscription are in Latin, while individual words for some items, such as a feather bed, are in English, suggesting the actual inscription on the mazer was in Latin. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 39. 69. “Hold ȝowre tunge and sey þe best / and let ȝowre neyȝbore sitte in rest / hoe so lustyye god to plese / let hys neyȝbore lyve in ese.” Victoria and Albert Museum, M. 165-1914.

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70. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 2v–3. 71. TNA, Prob11/11/337. 72. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 224–26. 73. For the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, cups of all kinds appear in 44  percent of wills leaving movable goods; and for the Commissary Court, cups of all kinds appear in 31 percent of the wills leaving movable goods. Christopher Woolgar makes the same observation; Woolgar, “Heirlooms,” 441. 74. Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 7–9. 75. Quoted in Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 423. See also Alexander Barclay, Eclogues, 75. 76. Sweetinburgh, “Remembering the Dead,” 257–66; see also St. John Hope, “On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls,” 130. 77. St. John Hope, “On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls,” 130. 78. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 32v–33. 79. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 37–37v. 80. Gaimster and Nenk, “English Households in Transition,” 171–72. 81. TNA, Prob11/7/60; Barron and Davies, “Ellen Langwith.” 82. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 23v–24. 83. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 17–17v. 84. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 40v–41. 85. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fol. 129. 86. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fol. 170v. 87. Boffey, “ ‘Many Grete Myraclys,’ ” 39; Olsan, “Charms and Prayers,” 357, 360; Rider, Magic and Religion, 57; Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 79–80. 88. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 65v. 89. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 6v–7. 90. For a discussion of how things connect people, see Hodder, Entangled, 42–48; for a discussion of cooperation and technology in workshops, see Sennett, Together, 109–16. 91. Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 31; Memorials, 39, 71, 72, 90, 119, 108, 241–44 passim. 92. Keys, “Wooden Vessels,” 196–216. Utilitarian wooden objects rarely survive among archaeological finds; as easily produced and inexpensive objects, they were discarded once they broke, burned, or rotted away. The excavations of the sunken Tudor warship Mary Rose produced the largest collection of late medieval “domestic cooking, serving, and table wear” ever recovered, including nearly 250 wooden vessels used to prepare meals or feed the crew. Weinstein et al., “Feeding the Crew,” 422. 93. Weinstein et al., “Feeding the Crew,” 446, 489–96. 94. Robin Wood, a woodworker who has both made and studied wooden bowls and mazers, explains that when he makes a mazer, he fits the bowl to metal fittings, but it is not clear that this was how medieval artisans worked. Wood, “Silver-Rimmed Bowls and Mary Rose Bowl,” 8 May 2008, http://www.robin-wood .co.uk /wood-craft-blog /2008/05/08/silver-rimmed-bowls-and-mary-rose -bowl, accessed 11 November 2011. In 1376, Peter Randolfe, a lattener, was charged with interfering with the goldsmiths’ trade. He had sold “two circlets for mazers, which were of mixed silver, equal to sterling silver, in deceit of the people.” Memorials, 398–99. He too was fitting metal bands to existing bowls, but as he was also interfering with the goldsmiths’ trade, he might not have been following standard manufacturing practices. 95. Manufacturing a nut required fitting metal rims and feet to the shell, sized by nature. This suggests a process for making mazers. Appraisers found among the scraps and unfinished projects in

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Robert Amadas’s workshop “old broken mazer trees [burls] small and great, old nut shells black & painted.” TNA, Prob2/486. London’s goldsmiths played a leading role in regulating the manufacturing and quality control of both types of vessels. Leach, “The Turners of Medieval London,” 4. Exactly how various artisans organized their collaboration is unclear. Some goldsmiths seem to have specialized in making mazers. In 1351 Simon le Mazerer, a citizen goldsmith, began taking apprentices, while John Maserer entered the Goldsmiths’ Company in 1385. Other metalsmiths may also have made mazers. See, for example, the will of John Sage, pewterer, LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 11–11v. He leaves to his apprentices many “prints,” an alternative name for the boss that was at the bottom of mazers. See also Marian Campbell, “Gold, Silver and Precious Stones,” 151 n. 225; Munby, “Wood,” 386–89; Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 11–13; Reddaway and Walker, Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company, 257. 96. Prown, “Truth of Material Culture,” 1–19; Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 228– 32; Sennett, Together, 112. 97. Rackham, History of the Countryside, 56–57. 98. Reddaway and Walker, Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company, 246. 99. TNA, Prob2/56. 100. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/1, fols. 127–28. 101. Dioscorides, De materia medica 5.162; Pliny, Natural History 36.11. 102. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 75. 103. The authors of the Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunsgeschichte claim that maple burls were efficacious against poison, but cite no authority. Schmitt et al., Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunsgeschichte, 163. Neither Dioscorides and Pliny nor their medieval successors claimed this for maple either. H. J. Oterdoom observes that “the genus Acer has occupied a very modest place through the ages in herbals and chemistry books.” Van Gelderen, de Jong, and Oterdoom, Maples of the World, 21. 104. Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 17–18; Polo, Travels, bk. 3, ch. 13, p. 342; see also Ibn Battúta, Travels, 1:114–15. 105. Fritz, Gefässe aus Kokosnuss, 20. 106. Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry, 196. 107. Fritz, Gefässe aus Kokosnuss, 10–12, 22. 108. See Elias, Civilizing Process, 99–108. 109. A. H. Johnson, History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers, 2:256. 110. Hellman, “Furniture, Sociability,” 422. 111. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 92, 223. 112. Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 7. 113. Portions of this section appeared in French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 61–95. 114. Wolfthal, In and Out of the Marital Bed; French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 71–80; Gowing, “The Twinkling of a Bedstaff,” 275–304; Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 146–56; 191–201. 115. McSheffrey, Marriage, 17–47. 116. Burger, “In the Merchant’s Bedchamber,” 239–59. 117. French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 74–83. 118. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 35. 119. Lisa Liddy, “Affective Bequests,” 281. 120. French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 61–63. 121. Carruthers, Experience of Beauty, 118; see also Peter Marshall’s discussion of “honest” in Catholic Priesthood, 51–53. 122. Carruthers, Experience of Beauty, 113.

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123. Doyle, “ ‘Lectulus noster floridus,’ ” 179–90; and see the discussion in Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 45–46. 124. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/3, fol. 134; see also TNA, Prob11/20/299; Prob11/27/352; Prob11/3/184; Prob11/7/308; Prob11/27/459. 125. TNA, Prob2/23. 126. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 129–54; 173–98; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 128. 127. Eames, “Making of a Hung Celour,” 35–42. 128. TNA, C131/189/19. 129. TNA, Prob11/11/489. 130. Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 20–39 131. Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 29. 132. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09070/7, fols. 60–62. 133. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fols. 24–v. 134. TNA, Prob11/1/114; Prob11/1/2943. 135. Foyle, “A Bed of Roses”; Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 7, 97–98. 136. TNA, Prob11/5/2. 137. TNA, Prob2/12. “Bastard” may refer to a coarse cloth of inferior quality or unusual make or size; see OED Online, s.v. “bastard” († 5.a), www.oed.com, accessed 15 March 2015. While the term “buckram” in its medieval variants sometimes designated a fine, expensive, typically linen or cotton cloth, it also described a coarser cloth “impregnate[d]” with stiffeners; see Elizabeth Coatsworth and Mark Chambers, “Buckram,” in Owen-Crocker, Coatsworth, and Hayward, Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles, 102. 138. TNA, Prob2/500. 139. TNA, Prob2/15. This does not include the value of goods in his shop, which contemporaries counted as part of his household’s and estate’s worth. 140. TNA, Prob2/487. 141. TNA, Prob2/500. 142. TNA, Prob2/98.

3. interior decor ating after the plague 1. London Possessory Assizes; London Assize of Nuisance, 100–183. 2. Dyer, Standards of Living, 151–87, 193–210, 222–33; Kowaleski, “Consumer Economy,” 238–59. 3. Barron, “Centres of Conspicuous Consumption,” 1–16. 4. Lisa Liddy found a similar expansion of rooms in York’s houses; see Lisa Liddy, “Domestic Objects in York,” 63–64. 5. Fleisher and LaViolette, “Changing Power of Swahili Houses,” 175–97. Fleisher and La Violette are working from Foucault’s concept of “technologies of the self . . . which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves” (179). See Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” 18. 6. McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity,” 243–78; McSheffrey, Marriage, 121–34; Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 212–13; Burger, Conduct Becoming. 7. “The burgeis hopeth to wynne and to gadre and chaffaren, and the ende of his entencion is al to be riche and noble in his life holden and moche honoured.” Quoted in Riddy, “‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,”

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19. See also Book of Vices and Virtues, 161. For further discussion of moral condemnation of consumption, see Dyer, Age of Transition?, 132–35. 8. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 208–60. 9. See, for example, Westminster Chronicle, 225; also quoted in Riddy, “‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 26. 10. Dyer, “Luxury Goods,” 234–35; see also Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, 26–27. 11. Innovation is part of the argument for the rise of fashion. Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince; Piponnier and Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages; Stuard, Gilding the Market; Heller, Fashion in Medieval France. 12. Thrupp, “Problem of Conservatism,” 363–68; Thrupp, Merchant Class, 234–87; Hughes, “Regulating Women’s Fashion,” 139; see also Thompson, Medieval Hall, 132–43; as applied to houses, see King, “Interpretation of Urban Buildings,” 471–88. 13. Dyer, Age of Transition?, 126–57; Hodge, “Widow Pratt’s World of Goods,” 220. 14. Riddy, “Mother Knows Best,” 67; Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity”; Sponsler, “Eating Lessons,” 1–22; Hanna, London Literature, 104–47; Malcolm Richardson, Middle-Class Writing, 9–14, 18–20; 15. Robert Marshall tried to tie his son’s inheritance to his behavior by leaving him fine clothing but demanding he abandon “riot and vice.” Thrupp, Merchant Class, 283; McSheffrey, Marriage, 181. 16. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 276. 17. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 3, 66–67. 18. For more on inventories, see the Appendix. 19. For more on the different probate courts and my sampling technique, see the Appendix. 20. TNA, C131/206/32; Prob2/500. According to the Bank of England’s inflation converter, £100  in 1389 was equivalent to £169  in 1536. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy /inflation/inflation-calculator, accessed 2 February 2018. 21. TNA, C131/206/32. 22. TNA, Prob2/487. 23. Bourdieu, Outline, 89. 24. Dyer, Age of Transition?, 136; Leech, “Symbolic Hall,” 3; John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 66–67. 25. TNA, Prob2/28. 26. TNA, Prob2/486. For more on Robert Amadas, see Glanville, “Cardinal Wolsey and the Goldsmiths,” 131–48; Glanville, “Robert Amadas, Goldsmith,” 106–14. 27. Stanbury, “ ‘Quy la?,’ ” 39, 45; Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence,” 195–96. Some aristocrats had exchequers, which might be analogous to a counting house, but the different terms suggest slightly different functions and that merchants came to the “counting house” via the Continent. 28. Stanbury, “ ‘Quy la?,’ ” 38; LMA, CLA/024/01/02/34, m. 2b. 29. LMA, CLA/024/01/02/34, m. 2b; see also Stanbury, “ ‘Quy la?,’ ” 44. Rees Jones, “Women’s Influence,” 195–96, argues that the presence of weaponry genders the counting room as masculine, but armor was also significantly present in halls too. As we will see, there is little indication that urban halls were gendered male even if in castles and elite homes they were. 30. TNA, Prob2/487. 31. TNA, Prob2/487; see also Prob2/137; Prob2/50; Prob2/201; Prob2/486. 32. TNA, Prob2/15. 33. Alcock, “Physical Space and Social Space,” 207–28; Quiney, “Hall or Chamber?,” 24–46; Leech, “Symbolic Hall,” 1–10; King, “Interpretation of Urban Buildings,” 471–88; McSheffrey, Marriage, 124; Gardiner, “Conceptions of Domestic Space,” 313–33. 34. Carlin, “Senses in the Marketplace,” 84–87. See, for example, TNA, Prob2/91. 35. TNA, Prob2/20; Prob2/182.

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36. TNA, Prob2/512; see also Goldberg, “Making the House a Home,” 168. 37. Salzman, Building in England, 443–44; Carlin, “Senses in the Marketplace,” 84–85. 38. McSheffrey, “Place, Space, and Situation,” 960–90. 39. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 229; Dyer, Standards of Living, 170–71; Power, Wool Trade, 91–95. 40. Matthew Johnson, English Houses, 84. Janet Carsten argues that “connections between the house and the political processes of the state make it clear that the meanings with which houses are invested are not simply a source of stability. These meanings are themselves enmeshed in historical processes. They can be used as a resource to represent the unchanging past and resist a ‘modernizing’ state project, or they may be harnessed as a vehicle for change.” Carsten, After Kinship, 53. For more on the conservatism of medieval English society, see Thrupp, “Problem of Conservatism,” 363–68. 41. Matthew Johnson, English Houses, 57. 42. Goldberg, “Fashioning of Bourgeois Identity,” 124–44. See also Thrupp, Merchant Class, 143. 43. The earliest post-plague inventory is from 1358, and the earliest appearance of a spoon in a London inventory is from 1366. Despite occasional appearances, they remain rare in bankruptcy inventories. 44. Among the fourteenth-century extents for debts, cushions are in eight of the fourteen single-room inventories and in twenty of the twenty-four multiroom inventories. Among the latter group, three inventories are unclear. 45. Roesdahl and Verhaeghe, “Material Culture,” 191–92. 46. Kightly, “ ‘Hangings About the Hall,’ ” 3. 47. TNA, C131/31/19. The inventory for Stephen le Northerne, written in 1356, is the first postplague inventory to survive. He had two painted cloths, but this is an exception. Memorials, 282–84. 48. Kirby, “Trade and Import of Painted Cloths,” 60–61. 49. See John Barbour’s bankruptcy inventory in 1389/90 (TNA, C131/206/32). 50. Costaras, “Ownership of Painted Cloths,” 16–23. 51. Twelve out of forty-three bankruptcy inventories from the last half of the fourteenth century include wall hangings; seven out of ten of the fifteenth-century inventories and nine out of ten of the inventories from the first half of the sixteenth century include them. 52. They only appear in about 4 percent of the wills I sampled. 53. TNA, Prob2/468; Prob2/98. 54. Olson, Arras Hanging, 6. 55. Huizinga, Waning of the Middle Ages, 60–61; TNA, Prob 11/6/202; Prob2/8/502. 56. TNA, E154/2/23; my thanks to Cathy Sanok for these suggestions. Another possibility is Ferdinand II of Aragon, father to Catherine of Aragon, but by 1546 this would have been a political liability. 57. TNA, Prob11/6/114 58. TNA, Prob2/137. 59. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 53–103. See also Karras, From Boys to Men, 109. Karras argues that the lines of tension for urban craft workers were age and professional recognition, rather than gender. Masters were “not-boys,” rather than “not-women.” The ability to be a full-fledged member of the guild, with a shop, required not only maturity but resources. Even journeymen could argue they were male, but they were not yet fully men, lacking a shop and master status. 60. Neal, The Masculine Self, 20–30; Karras, From Boys to Men, 99. 61. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 298. See also Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, 126–27. 62. The Crown had routinely mustered military resources from London in the fourteenth century, but ceased in the fifteenth. See Moffett, “London at War,” 23–33; McEwan, “London’s Militia,” 89–102; see also Barron, “Chivalry,” 219–41.

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63. Karras, From Boys to Men, 144–50. 64. John Schofield, “Urban Housing,” 136. Eleanor John describes a similar transition with parlors when owners built drawing rooms and dining rooms. John, “Drawing Rooms,” 141–55. 65. London Assize of Nuisance, 73, no. 311; LMA, CLA/024/01/02/009, m. 6. 66. TNA, Prob2/56; Prob2/15. William Caxton, England’s first printer, printed the Polychronicon in 1482. The Skyrwyths were apparently patrons of Caxton; they also owned a copy of his Golden Legend, printed in 1483. The two works were possibly sold together. Higden would have provided Skyrwyth with knowledge of the plague. See also Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, 11; Harry, Constructing a Civic Community, 166. 67. This would remain the identity of the parlor for many centuries. See John, “Drawing Rooms,” 141–55; Halttunen, Confidence Men, 60. 68. Burger, Conduct Becoming, 33–74. 69. See Pantin, “Instructions,” 399; Algazi, “At the Study,” 14–22; Burger, Conduct Becoming, 75–104. 70. Stanbury, “ ‘Quy la?,’ ” 39–42. Lena Orlin, Locating Privacy, 10, argues that nascent ideas of privacy involved distrust and trust. 71. Ariès, “Introduction,” 1–11; McSheffrey, “Place, Space, and Situation,” 960–90; Vickery, “An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle?,” 147–73; Orlin, Locating Privacy. See, for example, the cases in London Assize of Nuisance; Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 31–36; Shaw, “Construction of the Private,” 447–66. Christian Liddy, Contesting the City, 63, argues with reference to houses encroaching on streets and blocking lanes that enclosure was “both a symbol and a means of detachment from the civic obligations to which all citizens were liable.” 72. McSheffrey, “Space, Place, and Situation,” 988–90; Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 34. Since the publication of sociologist Norbert Elias’s Civilizing Process, historians have debated how, when, and why Europeans began to change their behavior from “brutish” and violent to chivalric, courtly, and restrained. 73. This is in contrast to Amanda Vickery’s definition for the Georgian period, which equates privacy with autonomy and independence; see Vickery, “An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle?,” 152. See also Howell’s discussion of the rise of the individual and the contest over material culture’s ability to manifest identity (Commerce Before Capitalism, 243–57). 74. Of the sixty-five houses inventoried by room, thirty-three, or 51 percent, either had or likely had parlors. Broken down by century, 52  percent of the sixteenth-century houses compared to 42 percent of those inventoried before 1500 had parlors. 75. For more on his career, see Goddard, Credit and Trade, 91–95. 76. TNA, C131/47/25; see also TNA, C131/213/33. 77. TNA, Prob2/518. 78. Lucas, “Industrial Milling,” 1–30. For more on changes to furniture in the sixteenth century, see Forman, “Continental Furniture Craftsmen in London,” 94–120. 79. TNA, Prob2/500. 80. TNA, Prob2/500. 81. French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 61–95. 82. TNA, Prob2/56; Prob2/50; Prob2/486; Prob2/487; Ormrod, “The Royal Nursery,” 398–415; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 142. 83. Hamling and Richardson, A Day at Home, 28–41. 84. French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 63. 85. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, 158–202.

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86. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 135. For more on the difference between servants and laborers, see Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, 3–10. 87. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 173–91; McIntosh, Working Women, 46–61 88. TNA, Prob2/500. 89. TNA, Prob2/89; Prob2/450; Prob2/487. 90. TNA, Prob2/487. 91. TNA, Prob2/450; Prob2/500; see also Prob2/28. 92. TNA, Prob2/89. 93. TNA, Prob2/89; see also Prob2/28 and Prob2/518. 94. Klapisch-Zuber, “Women Servants,” 60–62. 95. Mertes, English Noble Household, 57–59; Woolgar, Great Household, 34–36, 96; Hovland, “Apprenticeship,” 44–46. 96. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 179. 97. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, 200–201; Hulton, Coventry and Its People in the 1520s. By the early modern period, women dominated domestic ser vice in London. See Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 17–20; Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, 218. Earle argues that by 1700, 80 percent of domestic servants were female. 98. TNA, Prob2/450. 99. McSheffrey, Marriage, 145–50. 100. TNA, Prob2/11; Prob2/89. 101. Orlin argues that this, rather than privacy, drove the building of more rooms. Orlin, Locating Privacy, 11. 102. In contrast, monasteries, which had a mandate to provide hospitality, organized their hospitality around the hosteler, who welcomed guests, and the cellarer and kitchener, who were in charge of food and drink. Kerr, Monastic Hospitality, 50–93, 103. Gardiner, “Buttery and Pantry,” 37–65. 104. Sarah Pearson did not find butteries to be common in Kentish town houses. Pearson, “Provision of Ser vice,” 44. 105. Salzman, Building in England, 417. Latham gives all of these definitions as well as “bursary” as possible meanings. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, 150–51. 106. LMA, CLA/024/01/02/34, m. 2b. 107. TNA, C131/45/21. 108. TNA, Prob2/487. 109. LMA, DL/C/A/001/MS09065B, fol. 3rv, consistory.cohds.ca/obj.php?object​= ​deposition &action​= ​view&id​= ​90&expand​= ​depositions, accessed 29 May 2018. 110. TNA, Prob2/487. 111. TNA, Prob2/486. 112. TNA, Prob2/15; Prob2/18; Prob2/20; Prob2/23; Prob2/487. 113. Hodge, “Consumerism and Control,” 54–74, at 55; Orlin, Locating Privacy, 89 n. 24. 114. Medieval kitchens have not been closely studied. Hannele Klemettilä’s book on the medieval kitchen is largely a cookbook. Klemettilä, Medieval Kitchen. Five of the nine houses without a kitchen date to before 1500. 115. Pennell, Birth of the English Kitchen, 37–55. See also Martin and Martin, “Detached Kitchens in Eastern Sussex,” 85–91; J. T. Smith, “Detached Kitchens or Adjoining Houses?,” 16–19; Martin and Martin, “Detached Kitchens or Adjoining Houses?—A Response,” 20–33. 116. Salzman, Building in England, 483–85.

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117. TNA, Prob2/12; see also John Barnys’s inventory, Prob2/28, for a similar situation. 118. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 69. 119. Miller, Stuff, 79–109. 120. For a deterministic view of the development of domestic architecture, see W. G. Hoskins, “The Rebuilding,” 44–59; Hoskins argues that the desire for privacy spawned the building of multiroom houses, and he locates this as a response to the so-called “Great Rebuilding” after the Dissolution, when the Crown sold off property it had confiscated to developers. See also Orlin, Locating Privacy, 9–10, 66–78, who argues it was consumption. For the possibilities of expressing individuality through houses, see Miller, Stuff, 79–109. 121. Hodge, “Widow Pratt’s World of Goods,” 219. 122. Another contemporaneous inventory, TNA, Prob2/450, from Richard Everly, a mercer, is in terrible shape and undatable because of its condition. His will, however, puts his death at 1473, just three years earlier than Phelips’s inventory, but given its condition it is less useful for the following comparison. 123. TNA, Prob2/5. He was enrolled as an apprentice in 1428. See Boyd, Roll of the Drapers’ Company, 160; see also A. H. Johnson, History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London, 1:318. 124. TNA, Prob2/8; for his trade and ward, see Beaven, Aldermen of London. 125. He also had two female servants from the Continent. For the location of his house and his two servants, see England’s Immigrants, 1330–1550, http://www.englandsimmigrants.com/person /7779, accessed 7 September 2018. 126. TNA, Prob2/8. 127. TNA, Prob2/5. 128. A turned chair is one where the frame is turned on a lathe, giving it a decorative profile. 129. TNA, Prob2/8. 130. TNA, Prob2/5. 131. See TNA, Prob11/6/388, for information on his wives. 132. TNA, Prob2/8. 133. Despite its gendered attribute, the mirror is listed as Phelips’s possession, possibly because it had belonged to Phelips’s first wife, rather than Beatrice, his second wife. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 77; Egan and Pritchard, Dress Accessories, 358. For more on medieval mirrors, see Ezell, “Looking Glass Histories,” 317–38; Schechner, “Between Knowing and Doing,” 144–49. 134. TNA, Prob11/5/396. 135. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 360; Chronicles of London, 178. 136. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 139. 137. TNA, Prob11/6/388. 138. Liddy hypothesizes that mayoral homes may have been larger than the houses of citizens and more devoted to display. Liddy, Contesting the City, 34. During his mayoralty, according to a London chronical, he was upstaged by the Earl of Worcester at a dinner. Phelips left with his entourage and staged his own spontaneous elaborate feast complete with cygnets on the menu. This dinner would also imply a large and well-provisioned kitchen. Harry, Constructing a Civic Community, 27. 139. TNA, Prob11/5/396. 140. Woolgar, Great Household, 34–36, 96; Mertes, English Noble Household, 57–59; Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 171–213. Burger suggests a connection between women and the parlor and bedchamber, although he does not see it as a complete connection; see Burger, Conduct Becoming, 8–14, 108–19. 141. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 360; TNA, Prob11/6/388.

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142. For an unusually well-preserved set of archaeological finds from small houses in Norwich that show how full of goods they could be, see Evans and Carter, “Excavations on 31–51 Pottergate,” 8–85. 143. Rees Jones, “Building Domesticity,” 71–72; Karras, From Boys to Men, 129–37. 144. London Consistory Court Wills, no. 158. 145. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 5. 146. TNA, C131/11/2. 147. TNA, C131/15/24; C131/40/17; C131/46/22; C131/212/40; C131/48/21. 148. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 121. The building contracts for luxurious shops with fireplaces suggest that after the plague some landlords added them to a building to attract tenants. Carlin, “Senses in the Marketplace,” 84. 149. Egan, Medieval Household, 122. Keene, “Material London,” 68. Giving coals to poor people was a form of charity, showing that a heat source was a marker of some status. For example, see TNA, Prob11/5/107 (1464); Prob11/5/56 (1463). 150. Carsten, After Kinship, 37–43. This would also seem to justify Grenville’s argument that the small house or rent was an urban innovation, and the hall house an adaptation of rural precedents. Grenville, “Urban and Rural Houses,” 118–19. See also Thompson, Medieval Hall, 101–3, 144–46, 176–77. 151. McSheffrey, “Place, Space, and Situation,” 984. 152. Hanawalt, “Reading the Lives of the Illiterate,” 1071; Carlin, “Fast Food,” 27–52. 153. TNA, Prob2/44. What remains of the name is (a portion of?) the surname “Sent.” Martha Carlin mentions a tailor named John Sent who received charity from the Assumption Guild of St. Margaret, Southwark, in 1495–96, but the dates do not work out. Carlin, Medieval Southwark, 92. 154. Janet Carsten points to the metaphorical link between baking bread and producing children. Carsten, After Kinship, 41; Rees Jones, “Building Domesticity,” 71–72. 155. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 115; Pennell, Birth of the English Kitchen, 12. 156. London Consistory Court Wills, nos. 158, 169, 174, and 209. 157. Rees Jones, “Building Domesticity,” 70. 158. Salzman, Building in England, 484. 159. TNA, Prob2/12; John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 81. 160. Lisa Liddy, “Domestic Objects in York,” 67. 161. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 108–9. 162. TNA, C131/11/15. William Randall’s inventory is similarly arranged; see TNA, C131/206/49. 163. TNA, Prob11/28/316. 164. Brenan, “Furnishings,” 65–87. 165. Brenan, “Furnishings,” 66. 166. Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 21. 167. This is a concept developed by Scitovsky, Joyless Economy. He argues that pleasure and comfort can be achieved with consumption but, while comfort can be achieved, pleasure is much more fleeting. See also de Vries, Industrious Revolution, 21.

4. good house keeping in post-plague london 1. Hodder, Entangled, 68–87. 2. Sánchez-Romero and Aranda, “Changing Foodways,” 75.

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3. Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 212–28. 4. Many of these innovations were intended as labor-saving devices. The classic study of housewives and technology is Vanek, “Household Technology and Social Status,” 361–75. See also Thomas and Zmroczek, “Household Technology,” 101–28; Bowden and Offer, “The Technological Revolution That Never Was,” 244–74. Infant formula is a bit more complicated, as it was not timesaving, but still often sought after by mothers for health reasons. See Wolf, “Don’t Kill Your Baby.” 5. Cahn, Industry of Devotion; Roberts, “Spiritual and Menial Housework,” 51–80; Burke, “Housewifery in Working-Class England,” 332–58. 6. As a historical and historiographical topic, housekeeping is largely the background noise for studies of either women’s paid work or men’s more important work. In the Victorian period, the ideology of the “Angel in the Household” helped justify a belief in separate spheres for bourgeois men and women; women tended to the home and children, and men did productive work in the world. In the 1960s and 1970s second-wave feminists identified housekeeping as a drudgery at the core of women’s oppression. Friedan, Feminine Mystique; Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres?,” 383–414; Charles and Duffin, Women and Work; Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, 141–56; Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle; Simonton, History of European Women’s Work, 89–92; McIntosh, Working Women. 7. Woolgar, Great Household, 34–36, 96; Mertes, English Noble Household, 57–59. 8. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, 60–61, 209–24; Orme, Medieval Children, 58–80. 9. Sánchez-Romero and Aranda, “Changing Foodways,” 75; see also Eichler and Albanese, “What Is Household Work?,” 227–58; Salih, “At Home,” 128. 10. Roberts, “Spiritual and Menial Housework,” 51–80. Susan Cahn argues that urban housewives in fact did little actual housework by the end of the sixteenth century. She attributes this to the proliferation of urban markets, which ended a housewife’s need to make such things as ale. While attentive to issues of location and status, she does not analyze who is doing the actual labor of cleaning and cooking in urban homes and does not consider supervision of servants as part of housekeeping. Cahn, Industry of Devotion. 11. Quoted in Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 221; see also Bracton, 2:250–51. 12. Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 222. 13. Corbellini and Hoogvliet, “Artisans and Religious Reading,” 524; Burger Conduct Becoming. See, for example, French texts cited in Burger, “Labouring to Make the Good Wife Good,” 27– 31; Salih, “At Home,” 125–26; Morgan, Beds and Chambers, 173–74. I make a similar argument in my book Good Women of the Parish with respect to the “churchkeeping” that women did in their parishes, which, I argue, was a form of religious participation. 14. Burger, Conduct Becoming, 31. 15. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, 112–46; Phillips, Medieval Maidens. 16. Appleford, Learning to Die, 1–9; Malcolm Richardson, Middle-Class Writing, 158–70; Sutton, “Merchants,” 127–33; Scott, “Past Ownership,” 150–77. 17. “How the Good Wife,” 36–52; Riddy, “Mother Knows Best,” 69. 18. Riddy argues that, although the poem is set up as a mother instructing her daughter, the real focus is other women’s daughters, who have moved to the city to work as domestic servants; Riddy, “Mother Knows Best,” 66–86. See also French, Good Women, 192; Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education,” 138–39. P. J. P. Goldberg includes it in his section on adolescence in his collection of primary sources Women in England, 97–103. 19. “How the Good Wife,” lines 7, 102, 109, 116, 153. 20. Riddy, “Mother Knows Best,” 67. 21. Secular Lyrics, 24–25.

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22. Middle English Sermons, 261–85, 306–13. 23. Batt, Renevey, and Whitehead, “Domesticity and Medieval Devotional Literature,” 231–32; Rawcliffe, “Marginal Occupation?,” 147–69; French, Good Women, 29–33; McIntosh, Working Women, 72–73. 24. Middle English Sermons, 274. 25. Renevey, “Household Chores,” 167–68. The Doctrine of the Hert is a thirteenth-century devotional text translated into Middle English in the fifteenth century. It survives in numerous manuscripts in Latin and various vernaculars. Doctrine of the Hert, xi–ixx. 26. Middle English Sermons, 279. 27. Campion, “Shopping,” 171–84. 28. Book of the Knight of the Tower, 11; see also Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education,” 144. 29. The literature on medieval mystery plays is vast. For London, see Records of Early English Drama: Ecclesiastical London; Records of Early English Drama: Civic London. 30. Cahn, Industry of Devotion, 87. For the plays, see English Mystery Plays, 97–117, 265–94. 31. Krueger, “Identity Begins at Home,” 21–26. American legal scholar Dorothy E. Roberts’s search for understanding how some aspects of housework became racialized in the antebellum South also distinguishes between supervisory tasks, housework she defines as “spiritual,” understood as morally uplifting for the housewife, and “menial,” which was difficult, dirty, tedious, and smelly and outsourced whenever possible. Roberts, “Spiritual and Menial Housework,” 51–80. 32. London politics were especially fraught in the early years of the fifteenth century. Barron, “Ralph Holland,” 162–83. 33. Riddy, “Mother Knows Best,” 2. Astrid Van Oyen asks similar questions about the relationship between ideal and practice in her article “Moral Architecture of Villa Storage,” 99; see also Cahn, Industry of Devotion, 86–125. 34. See Appendix. 35. Hodder, Entangled, 86. 36. Memorials, 44–45. 37. TNA, C131/12/10. 38. TNA, C131/49/17. Given the small number of surviving fifteenth-century inventories, this should be taken as impressionistic. Christopher Dyer, however, argues that linen consumption went up in the fifteenth century. Dyer, Making a Living, 322. 39. TNA, Prob2/21. 40. Mitchell, “ ‘By Your Leave,’ ” 56–59. 41. Diaper first appears in late fourteenth century wills but is not common. See, for example, William Hawed’s will of 1384, LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/1, fols. 127–28. 42. Collins and Ollerenshaw, European Linen Industry, xxi. For more on London’s linen industry, see Sutton, “Some Aspects of the Linen Trade,” 155–75. 43. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fols. 207–v. 44. Mitchell, “ ‘By Your Leave,’ ” 51. 45. TNA, Prob2/12; Prob2/89; Prob2/487. 46. TNA, Prob2/182. 47. Quoted in W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder, 2. 48. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354, p. 15. 49. Rublack, Dressing Up, 6. 50. TNA, C131/207/35; Prob2/11. 51. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 381v. 52. TNA, C131/207/35; Prob2/11

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53. Keene, “Issues of Water,” 161–79; LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7 fols. 120–21, 126–v. 54. TNA, Prob11/25/571. 55. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS0/9, fols. 24–v. Ceramic ones do not appear in inventories but are abundant in the archaeological record. 56. TNA, Prob2/15. See also Prob2/487 for another example. 57. TNA, Prob2/23; Prob2/93; LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 45v–46. 58. TNA, Prob2/56; Prob2/89. 59. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 121–24; see also fols. 128–29; TNA, Prob2/5 and Prob2/450 for other examples. 60. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 88–89. 61. See https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/search/#!/results?pageSize​=​35&page​​ =​1&search​=​A ND%3BidNumber%3B6583, accessed 31 March 2020. 62. TNA, Prob2/11; Prob2/23; Prob2/56; Prob2/167. 63. The Annunciation scene on Van Eyck’s Ghent altarpiece also has a towel rack next to a basin and ewer. This rack has a shield at the end, with no legible attributes. 64. “Henry VIII: June 1527, 16–30,” in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. 4, 1524–1530, ed. J.  S. Brewer (London, 1875), 1447–65, British History Online, http://www .british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol4/pp1447-1465, accessed 4 May 2018. 65. There are two other surviving towel racks: one now in the Städtisches Museum Haus  Koekkoek at Kleve depicts lovers embracing. The man also wears a fool’s cap. A second is at the Museum für Kunst und Gwerbe in Hamburg, which depicts the Virgin with Christ Child and  St.  Joseph. http://collections.vam.ac.uk /item/O122830/towel-holder-unknown/, accessed 5 May 2018. 66. Mitchell, “ ‘By Your Leave,’ ” 56. 67. TNA, Prob2/44. Parishes also routinely hired someone to wash the vestments and altar linens. French, Good Women, 28–37. 68. TNA, Prob2/8. 69. TNA, Prob2/15. 70. See TNA, Prob2/487, for example; Carlin, “Fast Food,” 27–52. 71. TNA, Prob2/11. 72. TNA, Prob2/11; see also Prob2/8 and Prob2/23 for other examples. 73. TNA, Prob11/25/529. 74. There is no inventory for Phelips’s house in Kent, but there is for Plymley, Amadas, and Stodley: TNA, Prob2/486; Prob2/487; Prob2/500. 75. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 129v–130v. 76. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 60–62. 77. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 77v–78v, 121–24. 78. TNA, C131/206/32. 79. See, for example, LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, fols. 265v–66; TNA, Prob2/27/229; Prob2/500. 80. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 108–80. 81. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/3, fols. 431v–432. See also Hanawalt, Growing Up, 66. 82. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/11, fols. 14v, 43v–44; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/3, fol. 154; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 140–140v; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 145v–146v. 83. TNA, Prob2/486. 84. TNA, Prob2/517. 85. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fol. 215v.

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86. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 124v–125. 87. TNA, Prob2/177. 88. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fols. 24–v. 89. Dunn, “ ‘If There Be Any Goodly Young Woman,’ ” 317–18. 90. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, 180–81; Hanawalt, Growing Up, 173–95. 91. Margery James, “A London Merchant,” 365. 92. “John Russell’s Book of Nurture,” 51, 67. 93. TNA, C1/19/33, cited in Hovland, “Apprenticeship,” 117. 94. I tested the significance of these findings with Corey Proctor of the office of CSCAR at the University of Michigan. We modeled the percentage of “gifts,” in this instance defined as girdles, dishes, napery and bedding, chests, basins and ewers, and candlesticks, given to women in terms of the function of time (before and after the 1460s sample). The resulting model was a linear mixed model with a random intercept for court (Commissary Court or Prerogative Court), constructed using LMER function from the R package LME4. The R package lmerTEST gave P values for the model. This model found a significant difference in the percentage of gifts given to women during and after the 1460 sample as opposed to before. The estimated difference was 19.5  percent increase with a 95 percent confidence interval with a P value of 0.015. 95. Britnell, Commercialisation, 179–203; Hatcher, “Great Fifteenth-Century Slump,” 237–72; Nightingale, “Growth of London,” 89–106; Bolton, Medieval English Economy, 292–305; Bruce Campbell, Great Transition, 355–63. Richard Goddard points out that while this period is usually referred to as a recession, it does not meet the criteria for a modern recession, which is defined by the two or more successive quarters of a decline in the GDP. They are marked by high unemployment, low sales, and stagnant wages. Goddard sees the fifteenth century as matching the modern conditions of a depression: loss of purchasing power, mass unemployment, declining wages, declining demand for products, and falling prices. The lack of data samples for the Middle Ages means that historians have generally called this period a recession, although as noted above, Hatcher called it a “great slump.” Goddard, Credit and Trade, 98–99. 96. Goddard, Credit and Trade, 133–34. 97. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, 200–201. 98. Hulton, Coventry and Its People. By the early modern period, women dominated domestic ser vice in London. Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 17–20; Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, 218; Earle argues that by 1700, 80 percent of domestic servants were female. 99. Rawcliffe, “Marginal Occupation?” 100. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 381v. 101. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, fol. 303. 102. Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Family, 159–89. 103. For the decline of chests, see Roche, History of Everyday Things, 186. 104. TNA, Prob11/7/313; LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, fol. 311. 105. For more on the growing regulation of women, see Bardsley, Venomous Tongues; Karras, Common Women, 84–101; Riddy, “Mother Knows Best.” 106. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside, 194–96; Stevens, “London Women, the Courts,” 71–82; McSheffrey, Marriage, 9–11, 137–63; Goddard, “Female Merchants?,” 501. 107. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, 141–55. 108. This is not an argument for a post-plague “golden age” for women: patriarchy was still the norm, women still had fewer legal rights than men, and the church still assumed women were inherently more prone to sin than men. Bennett, History Matters, 54–81; Hanawalt, Wealth of Wives, 183. 109. Erickson, Women and Property, 53–55.

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110. Goldberg, “Home Work,” 124–43. 111. Katherine Lewis, “Women, Testamentary Discourse,” 57–76; Salter, Cultural Creativity, 20–49; Susan James, Women’s Voices, 60–149. 112. Richmond, “Halesworth Church, Suffolk,” 259–60; Howell, “Fixing Movables,” 28; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art, 87–91; Beadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 825; French, Good Women, 37–49; Susan James, Women’s Voices, 60–91. 113. Katherine Lewis, “Testamentary Discourse”; Loengard, “‘Plate, Good Stuff, and Household Things,’” 334; Loengard “‘Which May Be Said to Be Her Own,’” 169–71; Susan James, Women’s Voices. 114. In the Commissary Court, 29 of 263 female testators, or 11  percent, specify a room, compared to 29 of 677 men, or 4 percent. 115. Barron and Sutton, Medieval London Widows, xxxii. French, “Loving Friends,” 25–26; see also Howell, “Fixing Movables,” 3–45. 116. Archer and Ferme, “Testamentary Procedure,” 3–34; French, “Loving Friends,” 21–37. 117. TNA, Prob11/25/258. 118. Catherine Richardson, “Household Objects and Domestic Ties,” 433–47. 119. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 96v–98v. 120. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 97v–98. 121. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 98. 122. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 98. 123. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 23–52; Reinburg, French Books of Hour, 53–83. 124. TNA, Prob11/11/489. 125. French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,” 75–83. 126. TNA, Prob11/7/60. For more on Langwith, see Barron and Davies, “Ellen Langwith,” 39–47. 127. Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 21. 128. TNA, Prob11/22/77. 129. TNA, Prob11/22/77. 130. TNA, Prob11/22/77. 131. Riddy, “ ‘Burgeis’ Domesticity,” 18–20. 132. TNA, Prob11/27/252. 133. TNA, Prob11/27/252. 134. TNA, Prob11/27/252. 135. For George Lord’s will, see TNA, Prob11/25/9–9v. 136. For more on the meaning of St. George, see Good, Cult of St. George; see also Barclay, Life of St. George, “Apostrophe ad anglos,” chap. 2. 137. Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 212–28. 138. Riddy, “Mother Knows Best,” 66–86; McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity,” 243–78.

5. some brought flesh and some brought fish Portions of this chapter were published in French, “Nouveaux Arts de la table.” 1. Woolgar, “Food in the Middle Ages,” 1–19; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England; Flandrin and Montanari, Food; Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine; Woolgar, Culture of Food. 2. Tomask and Vitullo, “Introduction,” xiii. 3. Quoted in McSheffrey, Marriage, 45.

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4. For more on divorce, see McSheffrey, Marriage, 23–25; Butler, Divorce; Donahue, Law, Marriage, and Society, 521–57. 5. Quoted in Butler, Divorce, 134. 6. “And ȝif a womman haue trespasid in avowtrie [adultery] and dare noȝt faste for hure housbonde schuld noȝt holde hure suspecte, it is oure counsel that sche resryve the fastyng that is worthy for a-vowtrie, but ȝit hure ete in the dates that ben enioyned that sche be noȝt in no suspect of here housbonde.” Speculum Sacerdotale, 77. See also Barr, “Three’s a Crowd,” 232. 7. Bynum, Holy Feast, 31–69. 8. Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 220–22. 9. “How the Wise Man,” 50–51: “serviþ þee weel and pleasauntly . . . with reste and pees, a melis meete of hoomeli fare . . . þan for to have an hundrid mees [dishes] with grucchinge [grumblings] & wiþ myche care.” This is a paraphrase of Proverbs 17:1. 10. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354, p. 316; Parker, Commonplace Book, 48–49. Margery Kempe’s famously determined negotiation for a celibate marriage involved her dinnertime eating habits with her husband; The Book of Margery Kempe, 24–25. 11. Love and Marriage in Late Medieval London, 37; see also http://consistory.cohds.ca/obj.php ?object​= ​deposition&action​= ​view&id​=​50&expand​=​subj, accessed 14 August  2008. For other examples, see York Borthwick Institute, CP.E.248/55, cited in Butler, Language of Abuse, 154. 12. Wright, “Broken Cups,” 241–51. 13. Dyer, Standards of Living, 196–202. London had regulations against unpenned pigs; see Memorials, 20, 29, 35, 83. Westminster had a problem with pigs in the streets; see French, “WellBehaved Women,” 249. 14. TNA, C131/24/20; C131/39/9; C131/31/19; Prob2/500. 15. Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters, 14–36. 16. TNA, Prob2/500; see also Prob2/98, the 1495 inventory of Richard Leman, a tailor who had a bakehouse. 17. Coronors Rolls, 71; Making of King’s Lynn, 235–50. 18. TNA, C131/193/30; C131/45/21; Prob2/450; Prob2/56; Prob2/518. 19. Galloway, “Driven by Drink?,” 87–100; Galloway, “Metropolitan Market Networks,” 91– 97; Murphy, “Fuel Supply of Medieval London,” 85–96; Kowaleski, “Consumer Economy,” 242–43; Dyer, “Changes in Diet,” 21–37; Lakin, “Medieval Diet,” 65–72. 20. Stone, “Consumption of Field Crops,” 11–12, 22–25; Dyer, Standards of Living, 199. 21. Giorgi, “Diet in Late Medieval and Early Modern London,” 197–213; Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters, 43–59; Unger, Beer, 89–107. Seigneurial gardens and orchards in the London suburbs of Lambeth, Stepney, and Westminster supplied Londoners with fresh fruits and vegetables; see Dyer, “Gardens and Orchards,” 113–32. 22. Dyer, Standards of Living, 202. 23. Sykes, “From Cu and Sceap,” 59–60. 24. Sykes, “From Cu and Sceap,” 59–60. 25. Serjeantson and Woolgar, “Fish Consumption,” 108–17. 26. Giorgi, “Diet in Late Medieval and Early Modern London,” 202–3. 27. See, for example, TNA, Prob2/15; Prob2/56; Prob2/11; Prob2/67; Prob2/137. 28. Dyer, “Gardens and Orchards,” 113–132; Girogi, “Diet in Late Medieval and Early Modern London,” 202–4. 29. Woolgar, Culture of Food, 206–10. 30. “How the Good Wife,” 36–47.

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31. “How the Good Wife,” lines 45–100. 32. Bynum, Holy Feast, 73–112. 33. Woolgar, “Food in the Middle Ages,” 12–16; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 233–40. 34. TNA, Prob11/3/161. 35. Henisch, Medieval Cook, 19–20. 36. Hamling and Richardson, Day at Home, 77–93. 37. John Schofield, Medieval London Houses, 113–15; Lisa Liddy, “Domestic Objects in York,” 65–66, has similar findings for York. 38. TNA, C131/214/14. 39. TNA, C131/193/30. 40. For one rare example of pottery in wills, see London Consistory Court Wills, p. 86, no. 156 (“2 earthen pots”). See also Lisa Liddy, “Domestic Objects in York,” 37. 41. Gaimster and Nenk, “English Households in Transition,” 171–79. 42. London Consistory Court Wills, 97–98. Excavations of the small houses in Norwich show that residents did cook in these buildings; see Evans and Carter, “Excavations on 31–51 Pottergate,” 81–84. 43. TNA, Prob2/44. 44. For inventories with possible separate kitchens, see TNA, C131/206/42; C131/207/35; C131/39/9. 45. London Assize of Nuisance, pp. 132–34, no. 528; see also nos. 406 and 416. 46. For inventories with possible cooking in the hall, see, for example, TNA, C131/24/20; C131/40/17; C131/11/15. 47. TNA, C131/12/10; for another example, see C131/115/8. 48. For peasant houses, see Dyer, Standard of Living, 162; Dyer, “Living in Peasant Houses,” 21–22. 49. TNA, Prob2/467. 50. Brown, “Pottery and Manners,” 94–97; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 200–204. 51. Oliver Kent warns of the problem of discerning function from names, as the names of pots and pans could be highly local and change over time. Kent, “Pots and Texts,” 367–99. 52. Tripods could only hold small pots. Cox, “ ‘A Flesh Pott,’ ” 145. 53. TNA, C131/214/14. 54. As with much post-plague furnishings, the copper generally came from the Continent. See Egan, Medieval Household, 161. 55. Egan, Medieval Household, 152–82. 56. TNA, C131/47/25. For more on Norwich’s life and career, see Goddard, Credit and Trade, 91–95. 57. TNA, Prob2/450. 58. Buxton, Domestic Culture, 120. 59. TNA, C239/6/11; C131/115/8; London Consistory Court Wills, nos. 156, 178; TNA, Prob2/486; C131/247/28; C131/47/25. 60. Egan, Medieval Household, 155–57; see also Willmott, “Cooking, Dining, and Drinking.” 61. Egan, Medieval Household, 155–56. 62. Sykes, “From Cu and Sceap,” 70; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, 303; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 327. 63. TNA, Prob2/487. 64. Hamling and Richardson, Day at Home, 77–78. 65. Harry, Constructing a Civic Community, 27. 66. TNA, C131/207/35; Prob2/182; see also Egan, Medieval Household, 152.

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67. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 233–43. 68. Hamling and Richardson, Day at Home, 77–78. 69. Egan, Medieval Household, 154. 70. Woolgar, Culture of Food, 199–203. 71. TNA, Prob2/487. Plymley’s inventory also describes his house at Newington Green as having a kitchen with a yard. 72. TNA, Prob2/486. 73. Woolgar, Culture of Food, 123–48. 74. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354, pp. 211–12. 75. Woolgar, Culture of Food, 18–22. 76. Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 30. 77. So important was this practice that when they began to eat in chambers off the hall with a few intimates, they opened themselves up for criticism. Thompson, Medieval Hall, 116; Woolgar, Great Household, 59–69. 78. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 389; Hamling and Richardson, Day at Home, 98–99; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 12–16. 79. See, for example, TNA, C131/11/15; C131/12/10; C131/189/19. 80. Dining rooms were a late innovation. Royal palaces started building them in the 1510s and 1520s. Woolgar, Culture of Food, 21. 81. TNA, Prob2/20. 82. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 180–209. 83. “John Russell’s Book of Nurture,” 52–54; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 455; Woolgar, Culture of Food, 192–94. 84. Homer, “Tin, Lead, and Pewter,” 78; Egan, Material Culture in London, 97–121; Robin Wood, “What Did Medieval People Eat From?,” 19; Brown, “Social Significance of Imported Medieval Pottery,” 97–103; Dyer, Standards of Living, 205–7; Bryant, “Death and Desire,” 119–20; Cherry, “Pottery and Tile,” 189–210; Gaimster, “Cross-Channel Ceramic Trade,” 251–60; Gaimster and Nenk, “English Households in Transition,” 171. 85. Cherry, “Pottery and Tile,” 207; Gaimster, “Cross-Channel Ceramic Trade”; Gaimster, “Supply of Rhenish Stoneware,” 339–47; Astill, “Economic Change in Later Medieval England,” 217–30; Blackmore, “Pottery, the Port and the Populace,” 29–44; Brown, “Social Significance of Imported Medieval Pottery,” 101–3; Homer, “Tin, Lead, and Pewter,” 73–79. 86. Dyer, “The Consumer and the Market,” 305–27. 87. TNA, Prob2/486. 88. For more on increasing popularity of medieval pewter, see Hatcher and Barker, History of British Pewter; Swanson, Medieval Artisans, 76–77. 89. A Relation, or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England, 29. 90. TNA, Prob2/23. 91. Weinstein, “Archaeology of Pewter Vessels,” 75–78; Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 433–37. 92. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 483. 93. Gaimster, “Supply of Rhenish Stoneware,” 339–47; Gaimster, “Cross-Channel Ceramic Trade,” 253–55; see also Dyer, Standards of Living, 158–60, 198–202; Dyer, Age of Transition?, 131–32; Robin Wood, “What Did Medieval People Eat From?,” 20. 94. Robin Wood, “What Did Medieval People Eat From?,” 20; Weinstein et al., “Feeding the Crew,” 445. 95. Egan, Medieval Household, 194–203.

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96. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 440–45; Weinstein, “Archaeology of Pewter Vessels,” 70–71. 97. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 441. 98. LMA, CLA/024/01/02/34, m. 2b. 99. TNA, Prob2/487. 100. Consistory Court Wills, p. 115, no. 190. 101. Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 445–46. 102. Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 203–7; Weatherhill, Consumer Behavior, 26–30; Yentsch, “Minimum Vessel Lists,” 25–31; Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten, 68–88; Sarti, Europe at Home, 153–66. 103. Archaeologists call the nearly endless possibilities for use and action presented by an object “affordances.” See Hodder, Entangled, 48–50. The concept comes from Gibson, Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. 104. Blinkhorn, “Trials of Being a Utensil,” 37–46. 105. Yentsch, “Minimum Vessel Lists,” 36. 106. TNA, Prob2/500. 107. TNA, Prob2/487. 108. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354, pp. 3–4. 109. Sponsler, “Eating Lessons,” 1–22; Parker, Commonplace Book, 97. 110. Lydgate, “Dietary,” lines 49–50, 65–68. Suffer no surfytys in thy hous at nyght; Were of rere-sopers and of grete excese; ................................. Drynke not at morow befor thyn apetyte; Clere ayre and walkyng makys gode degestyon. Betwyx mele drynke not for no delyte, Bot thyrst or traveyll gyfe thee occasyon. 111. Pantin, “Instructions,” 402–3. 112. Pantin, “Instructions,” 399–400. 113. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fol. 137v. 114. For more on virgin martyrs as role models, see Winstead, Virgin Martyrs; Phillips, Medieval Maidens, 43–51. 115. Weinstein et  al., “Feeding the Crew,” 446, 489–96. These marks are not unique to the Mary Rose’s supplies. Owner marks also appear on the bowls found on land in London. Keys, “Wooden Vessels,” 197. See also Gilchrist’s discussion of naming versus marking objects (Medieval Life, 226). 116. Constable, Benson Collection, 77. The Benson Collection was created by Mrs. G. E. P. How (née Benson), and upon her death, exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum and then sold by Christie’s in 2013; https://www.christies.com/about-us/press-archive/details?PressReleaseID​= ​6282&lid​=​1&mob -is-app​= ​false, accessed 15 January 2020. See also Egan, Medieval Household, p. 252, fig. 197. 117. Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 222. 118. York Borthwick Institute, CP.G.35/1, quoted in Butler, Language of Abuse, 161, 164. 119. Wright, “Broken Cups.” 120. Huntington Library, The Gospelles of Dystaves, A2r (STC 12091); for published editions, see Early English Carols, pp. 280–84, no. 419Aa, 419b, 419B; “Wives at the Tavern,” ballad no. 74 in Songs and Carols, 91–95; for a modern English version, see “Wives at the Tavern,” in Kowaleski, Medieval Towns, 196–99. All quotes are taken from Kowaleski’s edition, but I have modified them in a

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few instances. Compare also Lydgate’s poem “A Mumming at Hertford,” as discussed by Rompato, “ ‘Stuckin Chichevache’s Maw,’ ” 73–92. 121. BL, MS Cotton Titus A.xxvi; Bodley MS Eng. poet e. I. Both the Cotton Titus and Bodley manuscripts are fifteenth century. Bodley MS Eng. poet e. I is from a manuscript with seventy-six other songs and carols probably owned by an Augustinian canon, maybe from East Anglia. For a discussion of their differences in the versions, see Neufeld, Avid Ears, 7–11. See also Taylor, “Myth of the Minstrel Manuscript,” 62. For the sixteenth-century version, Oxford, Balliol College, MS 432–34. 122. Bodley MS Eng. poet e. I (sum. Cat. No. 29734) dates from ca. 1480. It contains seventy-six songs and carols. For information about the manuscript, see Secular Lyrics, xxvii. 123. Kowaleski, Medieval Towns, 196–99. 124. Les Evangiles des Quenouilles appeared first in two French manuscript versions. Once in print, it enjoyed wide popularity on both sides of the English Channel. For more on the manuscript and print history of this text, see the new duel language edition: Distaff Gospels, ed. and trans. Madeleine Jeay and Kathleen Garay, 23; see also Angelo, “Author and Authority in the Evangiles des quenouilles,” 21–41; Jeay, Savoir faire; Gates, “Distaff and Pen,” 13–20. Watson translated other works for de Worde; see Duff, Century of the English Book Trade, 166–67. Little is known about de Worde’s edition, including the size of the print run. The only known surviving copy is held by the Huntington Library. There was also a surviving fragment at least as late as 1910, according to Davies, Catalogue of the Collection, 997–99. All quotes are taken from de Worde’s edition. 125. In addition to the English translations, three different printers printed the work in French, and there is also an Occitan translation, as well as three Dutch translations and a German one. See Distaff Gospels, 23; see also Angelo, “Author and Authority,” 21–41. 126. Angelo, “Author and Authority,” 23. 127. Gates, “Distaff and Pen,” 14. In parodying scholastic form, the work positions men’s rationality, knowledge, and writing over women’s irrationality, superstitiousness, and oral traditions. Jeay, “La popularité des ‘Evangiles des quenouilles,’ ” 166. 128. Huntington Library, Gospelles of Dystaves, D1v–D1r. Here the two French manuscripts differ from each other. The earlier version, the Chantilly manuscript, has no dinner party. The later version, the Paris manuscript, is the source for subsequent printed versions. 129. Huntington Library, Gospelles of Dystaves, D1v. 130. Huntington Library, Gospelles of Dystaves, D1v. 131. Huntington Library, Gospelles of Dystaves, D1v. I wyll goo to my house secretely whyles that my husbande Ployarde slepeth. . . . . . . I take upon my conscyence that ye vyllayne Jokesus my husbande shall not ete one morsell. . . . . . . I spared foure or fyve pence whereof my husbande euyl redy knoweth nothynge. 132. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior, 74–75, 96–97. 133. TNA, Prob2/31. 134. Peter Clark, English Alehouse, 21, 46; The Mirroure of the Worlde, 191. 135. “Good Cheer,” in Secular Lyrics, 9. Her I was and her I drank; far-wyll dam, and mykyll thank. her I was and had gud cher, and her I drank wyll gud ber.

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136. Hanawalt, “At the Margins of Women’s Space,” 70–87; Karras, Common Women, 15–16, 71–74; McSheffrey, Marriage, 121–34; Kane, Popular Memory and Gender, 60. 137. Kowaleski, Medieval Towns, 198. 138. Kowaleski, Medieval Towns, 197. 139. In the tenth stanza Margaret wishes Anne were with them, but in the twelfth stanza “Anne” pours the wine, possibly a scribal error for “Alice.” Kowaleski, Medieval Towns, 197–98. 140. Kowaleski, Medieval Towns, 198. 141. Quoted in Hatcher, “England in the Aftermath of the Black Death,” 16.

6. when a woman labors with a child Some of this material appeared in French, “Material Culture of Childbirth,” 126–48. 1. See, for example, Roberts, “Spiritual and Menial Housework,” 51–80. 2. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages; Hanawalt, Growing Up; Orme, Medieval Children. 3. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 222–32. 4. Ariès questioned whether medieval parents understood childhood as a distinct period in life, arguing that they saw children more as little adults. Several generations of research by medievalists have effectively challenged this narrative. See Ariès, Centuries of Childhood; Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages; Hanawalt, Growing Up; Orme, Medieval Children. 5. Gosden, “What Do Objects Want?,” 208, argues that “those who embraced new forms found themselves over time created as social beings with new sensibilities and forms of relatedness.” 6. For more on the history of medieval medical traditions, see Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 1–16. 7. Cohn, “Black Death: End of a Paradigm,” 707–10; Chase, “Fevers, Poisons, and Apostemes,” 153–69. 8. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 17–47. 9. Horden, “Household Care and Informal Networks,” 21–67; Cabré, “Women or Healers?,” 18–51. For medieval times, see Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society; Riddy, “Looking Closely,” 212–28; Barwell, “Healing Arts,” 137–59; for early modern, see Lisa Smith, “Relative Duties of a Man,” 237–56; Leong, “Making Medicines,” 145–68; Laroche, Medical Authority; Stobart, Household Medicine; see also Renaissance Studies 28 (2014), a special issue on domestic health care edited by Sharon Strocchia. 10. Talbot, Medicine in Medieval England; Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society; Colson and Ralley, “Medical Practice,” 1102–31. 11. Green, “Documenting Medieval Women’s Medical Practice,” 322–52; LMA, DL/C/B/004/ MS09171/7, fols. 91v–92; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fol. 11. 12. Sutton, Mercery of London, 168–69; Barron, “Alice Claver,” 134. 13. This psalter would go on to have its own rather lengthy history as a bequest; see Sutton, Mercery of London, 168. 14. TNA, Prob11/8/40. 15. Calkins, “Piero de’ Crescenzi and the Medieval Garden,” 155–73. 16. TNA, Prob11/8/565. 17. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fol. 176; see also Green, “Books as a Source of Medical Education,” 331 n. 69, 361, 368. 18. In London apothecaries were part of the grocers’ guild, coming from the grocers’ origins as pepperers. See Nightingale, Medieval Mercantile Company. Among the unsorted extents for debt

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materials is an anonymous apothecary’s inventory (TNA, C131/247/4–7), which may or may not be from London. William and John Chelmsford, father and son grocers, went bankrupt in 1397 and many of the items they sold in their shop appear to be for medical purposes; see TNA, C131/47/22 and C131/213/54. 19. Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings, 70. 20. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 22–22v. 21. See, for example, LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/03, fols. 163–163v; DL/C/B/004/ MS09171/4, fols. 192–192v; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 27–28. 22. H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching, 163–88; Barr, Pastoral Care of Women; Ford, John Mirk’s “Festial.” 23. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 305–9; Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 1–2, 116. 24. Gottschall, “Prayer Bead Production,” 2–3. 25. McSheffrey, Marriage, 62. 26. In the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 53 beneficiaries received paternosters. Of these 53, testators explained their relationship to them in 43 cases. Of these 43, daughters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters received 18 (42  percent) compared to 3 sons and 2 grandsons (1  percent). In the Commissary Court there were 127 bequests of paternosters, with 95 instances of the testators explaining their relationship to the beneficiary. Of these 95, 32 (34 percent) were daughters, daughtersin-law, and granddaughters, compared to 10  percent of sons and grandsons. Sisters were also more likely than brothers to receive paternosters. 27. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fols. 29v–30. The term “pair” here is used in the medieval sense of “set.” 28. TNA, Prob11/9/121. 29. Gottschall, “Prayer Bead Production,” 2–3. 30. TNA, Prob2/15. 31. For more on lapidaries and medicine, see Harris, “Idea of Lapidary Medicine,” 32. “Peterborough Lapidary,” 77. 33. “London Lapidary,” 32. 34. Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, 121. 35. “London Lapidary,” 23; TNA, Prob11/27/252. 36. TNA, C131/247/4–7. 37. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 154v–155. 38. Rider, Magic and Religion, 104. 39. Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 80–81. 40. TNA, Prob11/5/113. 41. Rider, Magic and Religion, 104–5; “Peterborough Lapidary,” 108; see also Golden Legend, vol.1, 370 for a discussion of pearls in St. Margaret’s life. 42. Rider, Magic and Religion, 104–5; Cherry, “Healing Through Faith,” 157; Kightly, “Magic, Medicine and the Middleham Jewel.” 43. Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 4–5. 44. Boffey, “ ‘Many Grete Myraclys,’ ” 39; Olsan, “Charms and Prayers,” 357, 360; Rider, Magic and Religion, 57; Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 79–80 45. Boffey, “ ‘Many Grete Myraclys,’ ” 39, quoting The “Liber de Diversis Medicinis” in the Thornton Manuscript (MS Lincoln Cathedral A. 5.2.), ed. M. S. Ogden, EETS, o.s., 207 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), 42. 46. TNA, Prob11/1/2943.

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47. Volf, “A ‘Medicyne of Wordes,’ ” 21, citing BL, Add MS 27948 and Bodley MS Gough liturgy, 9. 48. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fol. 58v; TNA, Prob2/5. 49. Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 80; Barber, Thomas, and Watson, Religion in Medieval London, 43. 50. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fols. 238–v; see also DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 52v, for another example. 51. TNA, Prob11/12/279. 52. Crawfurd, “Blessing of Cramp Rings,” 165–67. 53. Crawfurd, “Blessing of Cramp Rings,” 175–76. 54. See LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 134–v; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fols. 207–v; TNA, Prob11/28/94; and the inventory of Robert Amadas, TNA, Prob2/486. 55. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fols. 207–v; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 134–134v; TNA, Prob2/486. 56. Lightbrown, Mediaeval European Jewellery, 204. 57. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fols. 192–192v. Probably the material was a piece of a narwhale horn. For another example, see DL/C/B/004/MS09171/3, fols. 164v–166. 58. TNA, Prob11/11/372. For more on Maud Muschampe, see Sutton, “Two Dozen and More of Silkwomen,” 95–96. 59. “Peterborough Lapidary,” 77. 60. Guy de Chauliac, Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac, 626; see also Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 17–18. 61. Kennedy, “Gripping It by the Husk,” 17–18. 62. Cabré, “Women or Healers?,” 25–31. 63. For debates on rates of premodern childbirth mortality for mothers, see Roger Schofield, “Did the Mothers Really Die?,” 360; Rublack, “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Female Body,” 97– 98; Bardsley, “Missing Women,” 301. 64. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born; Gélis, History of Childbirth; Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth; Rawcliffe, “Women, Childbirth, and Religion,” 91–117; Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine; and L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 79–81. Early modernists have debated whether pregnancy was an occasion for fear, license, or pride and in what ways a woman’s marital status influenced these attitudes. See Roger Schofield, “Did the Mothers Really Die?,” 230–60; Adrian Wilson, “Perils of Early Modern Procreation,” 1–19; Rublack, “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Female Body,” 84–110; Gowing, “Secret Births and Infanticide,” 87–115; and see also Pollack, “Embarking on a Rough Passage,” 39–67, at 53. 65. Adrian Wilson, Making of Man-Midwifery; Sukhera, Inithan, and Haider, “Birth of Forceps,” 1–4. 66. Staniland, “Royal Entry,” 297–313; Mann, “Clothing Bodies,” 137–57; and L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood. 67. L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 82. 68. L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 106 n. 33. 69. Staniland, “Royal Entry,” 304. 70. The birth information on all these royal children can be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. 71. Hanson, “Uterine Amulets,” 281–99; Hanson, “A Long-Lived ‘Quick-Birther,’ ” 265–80; Faraone, Transformation of Greek Amulets; Dasen, Le sourire.

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72. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 134–39; and Jones and Olsan, “Performative Rituals for Conception and Childbirth,” 406–33. For Italian fertility practices, see Haas, “Women and Childbearing in Medieval Florence,” 89–91. 73. Paston Letters, 1:217, quoted in Rawcliffe, “Women, Childbirth, and Religion,” 101; and Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 138. 74. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 1:370; Larson, “Who Is the Master of This Narrative?,” 94–104. 75. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/3, fol. 182; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fol. 27v; DL/ C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 47v–48; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 101v; DL/C/B/004/ MS09171/7, fol. 78; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 140. 76. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/2, fols. 88–93; see also DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 387; and TNA, Prob11/26/125. 77. See, for example, TNA, Prob11/28/322; LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 6v–7. 78. TNA, Prob11/9/21. 79. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 136–38; Foscati, “Healing with the Body of Christ,” 221–25. 80. “Peterborough Lapidary,” 108. 81. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. 13, pt. 2, p. 101, no. 256; see also Bernard, Late Medieval English Church, 137. 82. Beyond England, Chartres, with its relic of the Virgin’s cloak, and Puy-Notre-Dame, with another girdle of the Virgin, also attracted women. Charlotte of Savoy went to Puy-Notre-Dame on pilgrimage after years of infertility in her marriage to Louis XI. L’Strange, Holy Motherhood, 44. For a list of other churches with girdles, see Orme, Medieval Children, 16. 83. Stories of Mary’s girdle appear in the York Corpus Christi plays, Mirk’s Festial, and a popu lar sermon collection, as well as appearing in art in churches and manuscripts. Morse, “ ‘Girde Hyr Wythe Thys Mesure,’ ” 136. Contact relics, especially from Jesus and Mary, who left no physical bodies to supply relics, grew increasingly popu lar in the High Middle Ages. Bynum, Christian Materiality, 127–45. 84. Three Chapters of Letters, 58–59; Morse, “Alongside St Margaret,” 193. 85. Flete, History of Westminster Abbey, 70. 86. WAM, 9477, 9478, 9485. For more on these lists, see Luxford, “Recording and Curating Relics,” 204–30. 87. WAM, 9477, 9478. 88. Rawcliffe, “Women, Childbirth, and Religion,” 107 n. 84; and Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 149. 89. Waller, Walsingham and the English Imagination, 1. 90. L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 82–86. 91. Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 38–48. 92. L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 85–86. 93. Mann, “Clothing Bodies,” 140; see also Woolgar, “Heirlooms,” 449. 94. A witness in a marriage case explained that the promise of marriage happened while she was in her birthing chamber (“in camera [una cum] dicta Alicia Martyn adtunc jacenti in puerpera”); “Testimony of Anges Agar,” Robert Walsh, Mark Patenson c. Margaret Flemmyng—Witness for Competitor Suit, 1491-03-01, Consistory Database, accessed 17 March 2020. 95. Rublack, “Pregnancy,” 99. 96. For a York example, see Liddy, “Domestic Objects in York,” 74; see also Donohoe, “ ‘Unbynd Her Anoone,” 139–56.

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97. WAC, Bracy, fols. 20–23. 98. TNA, C131/247. 99. “Peterborough Lapidary,” 108. 100. See, for example, LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 39v, white linen sheets that Thomas Fosset left his sister. 101. Lisa Liddy, “Affective Bequests,” 283–84. 102. Green, “Sources of Eucharius Rösslin’s ‘Rosegarden,’ ” 184–87. 103. Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects, 1–24. 104. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 19. 105. Gilchrist, “Materiality of Medieval Heirlooms,” 178. 106. Van Houts, Memory and Gender, 65–120. 107. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 96v–98v. 108. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 42–45; and Gowing, “Secret Births,” 98–108. 109. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine, x, 119, 135. 110. Davis, “Women on Top,” 124–51; L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 79–81. See also Pollack, “Embarking on a Rough Passage,” 53. For one rare account of a medieval birth, see “Public Record of the Labour,” 15–19. 111. Actual literacy rates are debatable. J. B. Trapp, “Literacy, Books and Readers,” 39, argues that by the fifteenth century, 50  percent of London’s laymen could read English, an estimate that would be lower for women. Sylvia Thrupp thought it was 50 percent for aldermen and guild masters; see Thrupp, Merchant Class, 159. Whatever the rate, some women were literate; see McSheffrey, “Literacy,” 157–70. 112. See Green, “Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts,” 53–88, esp. 58–59. 113. Green, “Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts,” 66. See, for example, Sex, Aging, and Death and Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health. Note Green and Mooney show that this latter text is not the first English gynecological text (Sex, Aging, and Death, 457 n.1). 114. I. Gadd, “Raynald [Raynalde], Thomas ( fl. 1539–1552?),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/23209, accessed 15 November 2011. 115. “Peterborough Lapidary,” 117; this lapidary also lists alistore or a cock stone (pp. 67–68), cleridonius (pp.  81–82), diamond (p.  83), etite (p.  87), egestes (p.  88), epetites (p.  89), galactida (pp. 91–92), macedone (p. 93), and jasper (p. 93) as all aiding women during pregnancy or during childbirth; see also Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 86. 116. Egan and Pritchard, Dress Accessories, 305–17. 117. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 143; Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, 81; “North Midland Lapidary,” 53; “Peterborough Lapidary,” 77–78; and “Sloan Lapidary,” 125. 118. “London Lapidary,” 32. 119. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 141. 120. Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, 93, 121; “London Lapidary,” 32; Medieval Woman’s Guide, 139. 121. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 134–134v; and Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 143. 122. Pliny, Natural History 28.42. 123. Sex, Aging, and Death, 2:532 (lines 1326–27); Medieval Woman’s Guide, 138–39. 124. Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, p. 4, lines 78–79. See also Medieval Woman’s Guide, 33. 125. Visitation Articles and Injunctions, 2:59. 126. Customary of the Benedictine Monasteries, vol. 2, pp. xviii, 73 (original manuscript misdated 1246); Peers and Tanner, “On Some Recent Discoveries,” 151–52; WAM, 19621, 19623. See also Vincent, Holy Blood, 169–70; Rawcliffe, “Women, Childbirth, and Religion,” 107 n. 84.

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127. Skemer, “Amulet Rolls,” 197–227; Skemer, Binding Words, 235–78; Gwara and Morse, “A Birth Girdle,” 33–62; and Morse, “ ‘Thys Moche More,’ ” 199–219. 128. Morse, “ ‘Girde Hyr,” 135. 129. Morse, “ ‘Girde Hyr,” 140. 130. The STC dates it to ca. 1520, but Gwara and Morse argue that the font makes it later; see Gwara and Morse, “A Birth Girdle,” 49–50; Morse, “ ‘Girde Hyr,’ ” 154 131. Sources for the History of Medicine, 91, 94. For more on childbirth charms, see Hunt, Popular Medicine, 126. 132. Morse, “ ‘Girde Hyr,’ ” 138. 133. Gwara and Morse, “A Birth Girdle,” 39; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 140–41. 134. Morse, “Alongside St. Margaret,” 187, 194. 135. For more on oral practices during childbirth, see Elsakkers, “In Pain You Shall Bear Children,” 181–82. 136. Gwara and Morse, “A Birth Girdle,” 56–58. 137. Kuskin, Symbolic Caxton, 18. 138. Gosden, “What Do Objects Want?,” 208. 139. TNA, Prob11/8/129. 140. Of the 245 beneficiaries receiving girdles, testators specified their relationship to the beneficiary in 190 instances. Of these instances, daughters received girdles 22  percent of the time compared to sons at 16 percent of the time. 141. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 30–30v. 142. TNA, Prob2/15. 143. Egan and Pritchard, Dress Accessories, 162–243. 144. Memorials, 656. 145. Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 74–76. 146. TNA, Prob11/7/313. 147. See discussion of the term “honest” in Chapter 2. 148. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 121–24. 149. “Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage,” 173. 150. Doctrine of the Hert, 40. 151. French, Good Women, 47–48. 152. WAC, E2, 1510–11, 1514, and E3, 1532–33 (no folio numbers); Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 200. 153. WAC, E1, fol. 386. 154. French, Good Women, 57–58; Taglia, “Delivering a Christian Identity,” 77–90. 155. Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests, 4; and Gilchrist, “Materiality of Medieval Heirlooms,” 178. 156. TNA, Prob11/21/5. 157. French, Good Women, 60. 158. French, Good Women, 59–61. 159. WAC, Bracy, fols. 20–23. 160. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09197/9, fol. 160v. 161. TNA, E154/5/2 (unsorted inventories); see also Prob2/12 for another example. 162. TNA, Prob11/22/77. 163. Staniland, “Royal Entry,” 297–313; Coster, “Purity, Profanity, and Puritanism,” 381; Adrian Wilson, “Ceremony of Childbirth,” 75–77; Lee, “ ‘Women Ben Purifyid’ ”; Rieder, On the Purification of Women. 164. For more on churching in London, see French, “Material Culture of Childbirth,” 139–40; Harris-Stoertz, “Lying-In,” 227–48.

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165. Rieder, On the Purification, 13–39. 166. Orme, Medieval Children, 52–55. 167. Bardsley, “Missing Women,” 273–309. 168. Abelard, “Letter 1: Historia Calamitatum,” 37–39. For a discussion of the problems in translating this text, see Newman, “Astonishing Heloise,” 5–7; Algazi, “At the Study,” 17–18. 169. This critique is adapted from Jerome’s instructions for Eustochium. For mother’s involvement with their children, see Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, 55–76, 112–17, 209–24. See also Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity, 98–105, esp. 99. 170. TNA, Prob2/15. 171. TNA, E154/5/2 (unsorted inventories). 172. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, 83–89. 173. See, for example, “The Birth of the Virgin,” Châtillon Hours, fol. 122r, cited in L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, 14; “Birth of Alexander,” Bodleian, MS 264 fol. 2v, cited in Orme, Medieval Children, 31. 174. Daniel Smail comments on their frequency in inventories for Lucca and Marseille. Smail, Legal Plunder, 77–78. 175. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 95–5. 176. Eames, Medieval Furniture, 104–5. The Museum of London has no record of owning this item and has no images either (personal communication). 177. TNA, C131/31/19; C131/201/7; C131/12/10; C131/193/30; C131/47/25; C131/213/33; C131/214/14. 178. TNA, C131/55/2; Prob2/23; see also Prob2/706, an inventory in the diocese of London, but not the city. 179. See, for example, the Confessors’ Manual of John Gysborn of Coverham, BL, Sloane 1584, fol. 8; Mirk, Instructions, 54; Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, 90–91. 180. TNA, C131/193/30; Prob2/706. 181. Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, 81, 93, 121; “London Lapidary,” 32; “North Midland Lapidary,” 53; “Peterborough Lapidary,” 77–78; and “Sloan Lapidary,” 125; Medieval Woman’s Guide, 139; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 143. 182. For an archaeological discussion, see Crawford, “Archaeology of Play Things,” 65–66; Forsyth and Eagan, Toys, Trifles, and Trinkets. 183. TNA, E154/2/7. 184. TNA, C131/274/26. 185. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 66. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/3, fols. 431v–432. 186. Forsyth and Eagan, Toys. 187. Forsyth and Eagan, Toys, 64. 188. For the whole discussion of medieval toys, see Forsyth and Eagan, Toys, 7–64. 189. Forsyth and Eagan, Toys, 60–61. 190. This line appears in all versions of the poem. See Langland, Piers, 178–79 (Passus V, Z: lines 60–61; A: lines 32–33; B: lines 40–41; C: lines 136–39). 191. TNA, Prob2/50, Prob2/486, Prob2/487, Prob2/500. A separate household for royal children goes back at least as far as Edward I. See Ormrod, “Royal Nursery,” 398–415. 192. French, “Sanctuary Lives,” 223–37. 193. TNA, Prob2/486. 194. TNA, Prob2/487.

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7. pr aying upon beads 1. Brooke and Keir, London, 122–48; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 90. 2. Burger, Conduct Becoming, 33–74. 3. Armstrong, “Piety of Cicely, Duchess of York,” 135–56; Underwood, “Politics and Piety,” 39–52; Mertes, “Household as a Religious Community,” 123–39; Hicks, “Piety of Margaret, Lady Hungerford,” 19–38; Richmond, “Religion and the Fifteenth-Century English Gentleman,” 193– 208; Richmond, “English Gentry and Religion,” 121–50; Pritchard, “Religion and the Paston Family,” 65–82: Rosenthal, Margaret Paston’s Piety; Saul, Lordship and Faith. For more on the debate about the gentry and the parish, see Fleming, “Charity, Faith and the Gentry of Kent,” 36–58; Catto, “Religion and the English Nobility,” 43–55; Carpenter, “Religion of the Gentry,” 53–74; French People of the Parish, 92–95. 4. Powell, “Lady Margaret Beaufort and Her Books,” 201–9. 5. Ozment, When Fathers Ruled; Roper, Holy Household; Martin and Ryrie, Private Domestic Devotion. 6. Deane, “Pious Domesticities,” 263. I am using a modernized version of the Douay-Rheims Bible, an English translation of the Vulgate. 7. French, Good Women, 51; McSheffrey, “Place, Space, and Situation,” 971–86; Megson, “Mortality,” 129, referencing the chronicle of Henry Knighton. 8. Goldberg, “Fashioning of Bourgeois Domesticity,” 133. For a different situation in the Mediterranean, see Smail, Legal Plunder, 79–83. 9. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 180–90; Saul, Lordship and Faith, 108; Parker, Commonplace Book; Meale, “ ‘. . . Alle the Bokes That I Haue,’ ” 128–58; Appleford, Learning to Die; Scott, “Past Ownership,” 150–77; Reinburg, French Books of Hours. 10. Kowaleski, “Consumer Economy,” 255–56; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 119–26. 11. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 20; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 130; Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 64–68. 12. French, People of the Parish, 92–93; Saul, Lordship and Faith, 105–34. 13. Duffy, Marking the Hours; Reinburg, French Books of Hours; Appleford, Learning to Die; Burger, Conduct Becoming, 33–74; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 82–112; French, People of the Parish; Gibbs, Five Parishes. 14. For a similar argument for Italy, see Frugoni, “Female Mystics,” 136. 15. Thrupp, Merchant Class, 180–81. 16. Rudy, “Dirty Books,” 1–26. 17. TNA, Prob2/44. 18. TNA, Prob2/487. 19. For Italy, see Cooper, “Devotion,” 201. 20. TNA, Prob2/15. 21. Bynum, Christian Materiality, 125. 22. TNA, Prob11/7/60. 23. Theologians had their definitions of superstition, but the laity who mixed natural science with the cult of the saints and other gestures and practices were not always as clear. See Michael Bailey, Fearful Spirits. 24. TNA, Prob2/15; Prob2/89; Prob2/5; Prob2/8; Prob11/22/168; E154/2/7. 25. Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 76.

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26. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 362v; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 60–62; DL/ C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 14–15; DL/C/B/004/MS09171/11, fol. 33v; TNA, Prob11/8/210. 27. Item SUSS-A460D, https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/216107, accessed 3 March 2019. Similar vessels have been identified as bird feeders for caged birds. Some might be holy water stoops instead. Egan, Material Culture, 128–29. 28. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 30 45. 29. TNA, Prob2/89. 30. Barber, Thomas, and Watson, Religion in Medieval London, 58. 31. Original dimensions are 78 ×58mm and 43mm high. Egan, Medieval Household, 297–98. 32. Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs. 33. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, fol. 297v. 34. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 14; Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 306. 35. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 112; Gottschall, “Prayer Bead Production, 4. 36. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 111–32; Egan and Pritchard, Dress Accessories, 305–17. 37. Gottschall, “Prayer Bead Production,” 5–6. 38. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 4, 24–25. 39. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 4, 13–15. 40. For more on the use and popularity of paternosters in London, see Barron, “Medieval Pilgrim Badges,” 95; Gottschall, “Prayer Bead Production,” 1–14. 41. Memorials, 123–26. 42. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 65v–66. 43. Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 38–39. 44. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 16. 45. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/6, fols. 382v–383. 46. TNA, Prob11/19/75. 47. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 53–64. 48. TNA, Prob2/15; Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, 11. It and the Polychronicon that Skyrwyth kept in his parlor are the earliest printed books in my sources. 49. TNA, Prob11/8/502. 50. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 8–10. 51. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 378. 52. TNA, Prob11/19/426. 53. TNA, Prob11/26/125; Prob11/25/603; LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 400; DL/ C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 29–29v. A fifth book in English was a copy of Mirk’s Festial left by Harry Overdo, rector of St. Thomas the Apostle, to the parish of St. Lawrence in Appleby, Westmorland, probably his birth parish. Philip Morfell left the French bible to his nephew in 1427 (LMA, DL/C/B/004/ MS09171/3, fol. 195v). Thomas Wyteacres, a priest affiliated with St. Michael Cornhill, did have a “bible book imprinted,” which he left to another priest (LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 72). 54. Kuskin, Symbolic Caxton. 55. TNA, Prob11/26/125. Also in Smith’s library was a copy of Chaucer and Boccaccio, “an English chronicle,” and “my book of Bartholomew de [illegible].” 56. Mary Erler found a similar situation when she traced the female ownership of books among lay women. Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 48–133. 57. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/5, fol. 400. 58. Rudy, “Dirty Books,” 5; Duffy, Marking the Hours, 23–52. See also Duffy, Stripping, 121–23, where he argues this is not antithetical to parish participation. 59. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fols. 165–v.

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60. TNA, Prob11/7/95; Prob11/28/158. 61. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 34–52. 62. Duffy, Marking the Hours, 47. 63. TNA, Prob2/500; Prob 2/182; C131/103/1; E154/2/3; Prob11/5/396. 64. TNA, Prob11/27/252. A “vernicle,” or veronica, is an image of Christ’s face said to have been imprinted on the sweat cloth offered to him by St. Veronica as he went to be crucified. 65. TNA, Prob11/4/3. 66. TNA, C131/15/24; C131/38/16; C131/46/22; C131/193/30; C131/206/42; C11/39/9; Prob2/201; Prob2/44; Prob2/67; Prob2/130; Prob2/486; Prob2/137; Prob2/177. 67. Baert, “Johannesschüssel as Andachtsbilt,” 120; for surviving examples, see Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs, 218–21; Object of Devotion, 110–11; 178–79. 68. Baert, “The Johannesschüssel as Andachtsbild,” 123; Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 2:134; Kathryn Smith, “ ‘A Lanterne of Lyght to the People,’ ” forthcoming. 69. TNA, C131/46/22. 70. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 121–24. 71. Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 69; see also Bachelard, Poetics of Space, 85–89: 211–31. 72. Visitation Articles and Injunctions, 2:37, 116; see also Duffy, Stripping, 450; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 39. 73. Barber, Thomas, and Watson, Religion in Medieval London, 43. 74. Duffy, “Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes,” 175–96; Winstead, Virgin Martyrs; Katherine Lewis, Cult of St. Katherine; Sanok, Her Life Historical. 75. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs; Phillips, Medieval Maidens, 77–83; Sanok, Her Life Historical, 24–49. 76. Good, Cult of St. George. 77. Malcolm Richardson, Middle-Class Writing, 9–10, 143. Richardson estimates that we can only ascribe 10 percent of nonadministrative and secular documents to women. 78. Domestic chapels are much more extensively studied for Italy than England. See Cooper, “Devotion,” 190–203; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home. 79. TNA, Prob11/8/210; for another example of a household chapel, see Prob11/25/529. 80. TNA, Prob2/487. 81. Baxandall, Limewood Sculptors, 27–49, 219–21. 82. TNA, Prob2/486. 83. TNA, Prob2/500. 84. TNA, Prob11/25/538. 85. Dinn, “Monuments,” 237–55; Harding, Dead and the Living, 46–84; French, Good Women, 68–83. 86. Glanville, “Cardinal Wolsey and the Goldsmiths,” 131–48; Sutton, Mercery of London, 335; Stodley warrants no mention in Sutton’s index. 87. French, People of the Parish, 92–93. 88. TNA, Prob11/25/95; Prob11/25/85; Saul, Lordship and Faith, 171–83. 89. French, Smith, and Stanbury, “Honest Bed,’ ” 74–83; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 156. 90. Medieval Records of a London City Church, 36–50. 91. Medieval Records of a London City Church, 39–40. 92. The same is true for Italy. See Cooper, “Devotion,” 192; Brundin, Howard, and Laven, Sacred Home, 64–65. 93. See also Jeremiah 7:11.

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94. The Sarum Missal, 202; Sarum Missal in English, pt. 1, 414, 418, 423; see also the sermon for the anniversary of the dedication of a church (Speculum Sacerdotale, 163). 95. For a discussion of the parish church as the house of God, see French, Good Women, 19–49. 96. For more on parish finances, see French, People of the Parish, 99–141. 97. TNA, Prob11/19/456, pts. 1 and 2. 98. French, Good Women, 28–37. 99. TNA, Prob11/8/87. 100. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 103. 101. French, Good Women, 42. 102. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fol. 91v. 103. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 35 104. French, Good Women, 37–48. 105. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 24. 106. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fols. 70v–71v. 107. Duffy, Stripping, 121–23. 108. French, Good Women, 87–93.

conclusion 1. A point Veidlinger makes for post-Holocaust Jews. Veidligner, Shadow of the Shtetl, 250–54. 2. This is currently a debate for how house construction and use could and should change once the COVID-19 pandemic ends. Marlin, “How Covid-19 Will Change the Way We Design our Homes”; Bechtle “Post-Pandemic Architecture Needs to Be Healthier.”

appendix 1. For more on the ecclesiastical courts of London, see Wunderli, London Church Courts, 7–19. 2. Barron and Sutton, Medieval London Widows, xvi. 3. Register of Henry Chichele, 2:ix–xix; Camp, Wills and Their Whereabouts, xxvi–xxviii, 85; for doubts about the consistency of this policy, see Helmholz, Oxford History of the Laws of England, 1:427–29. 4. Camp argues for a more specific assignment of court by parish. For example, the Consistory Court did not have jurisdiction over residents living in the London parish of St. Peter Westcheap, but wills of parishioners living there still had their wills proved in that court. LMA, DL/C/B/004/ MS09171/3, fol. 187v, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/4, fol. 30v, and DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fol. 103, are just three examples. Camp, Wills and Their Whereabouts, 82–89; Barron and Sutton, Medieval London Widows, xvi n. 11. 5. Takahashi, “Number of Wills Proved,” 188, 207. 6. Arkell, “Probate Process,” 3–13; Sheehan, “English Wills,” 199–210. 7. Barron and Sutton, Medieval London Widows, xvi. 8. Kim, “Tailors, Drapers, and Mercers,” 18–21. 9. Sloane, Black Death, 15. 10. See, for example, the will of William Hobbys, physician, which is enrolled in both the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Husting: TNA, Prob11/8/254; and Husting Wills, 2:591. See also

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McSheffrey, Marriage, 252 n. 20; for thirty wills enrolled in both the Commissary and Husting Courts, see Kim, “Tailors, Drapers, and Mercers,” 19 nn. 61–64, 20 n. 65. 11. Husting Wills; London Consistory Court Wills. 12. Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting: Part 1, 1258–1358, https:// www.british-history.ac.uk/court-husting-wills/vol1; and Part 2, 1358–1688, https://www.british -history.ac.uk/court-husting-wills/vol2. See, for example, Staples, Daughters of London. 13. TNA, Prob11 series. 14. Robert Wood, “Life and Death.” 15. LMA, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/1–80. For printed index, see Fitch, Testamentary Records, 3 vols. 16. For one study, see Kim, “Tailors, Drapers, and Mercers.” 17. While Fitch notes registers with missing pages, he makes no comment about the gap in years between 1502 and 1516, which comes between registers 8 and 9. Fitch, Testamentary Records, 2:v–vii. 18. The exact number is 3,019. Separate searches among these London wills for London clergy produces 48 wills, which can be subtracted from the 3,019, and separate searches for “esquire,” “lord,” and “dame” produce a further 22 wills, which can then also be subtracted for a total of 2,949 wills. The elimination of testators described as “dame” probably eliminates some widows of aldermen, however. A search for “knight” under either occupation or keyword produces no London wills. http://discovery.nationalarchives .gov.uk /results/r?_ fn​= ​& _ ln​= ​& _occ​= ​& _ pl​=​L ondon& _ q​= ​& _ sd​ =​1384&_ed​=​1540&discoveryCustomSearch​= ​true&_cr1​=​PROB+11&_col​=​200&_ hb​= ​tna, accessed 29 December 2018. 19. My count was enabled by an Excel spreadsheet of both indexes provided by Justin Colson. Using this, I was able to eliminate wills by clergy, gentry, other noncitizens, and non-London residents. The final count I arrived at was 8,818. This should not be taken as a precise figure, as the addresses and status of many testators are not clear. Caroline Barron’s estimate is similar, but for the period 1374–1488. Barron, London in the Later Middle, 66–67 n. 5. 20. Dyer, “Experience of Being Poor,” 19–40; Maddern, “ ‘Oppressed by Utter Poverty,’ ” 41–62. 21. French, Good Women, 37–48; see also Beadusi, “Investing the Riches of the Poor,” 825; Howell, “Fixing Movables,” 28; Richmond, “Halesworth Church, Suffolk,” 259–60. 22. I based the age of the testator’s household on the age of the children: child in utero, underage children, married children, and grandchildren. Not all wills included this information. Sometimes I was able to substitute ages of nieces and nephews. This is not a perfect system, as many families had children spanning a number of categories, but it provides a rough guide for the age of the testator. 23. Medieval Continental historians and early modern historians for both the Continent and Britain have used them to great effect. Weatherill, Consumer Behavior; Sarti, Europe at Home; Ago, Gusto for Things; Smail, Legal Plunder. 24. Coroners Rolls, xiv; Kesselring, “Felony Forfeiture,” 201–26. 25. Making of King’s Lynn, 235–50. 26. For more on this process, see http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C3689, accessed 13 July 2013; Carlin, London and Southwark Inventories, xii–xiii; Goddard, Credit and Trade. 27. Carlin, London and Southwark Inventories; TNA, C131s, C239s, C241s, and E154s. 28. There is a peak in the 1380s–90s and a decline in the first decade of the fifteenth century. There is another peak in the second decade of the fifteenth century. Carlin, London and Southwark Inventories, xi–xii. 29. Goddard, Credit and Trade, 108–19. 30. Arkell, “Probate Process,” 11.

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31. Nancy Cox and Jeff Cox, “Probate Inventories,” 133–36. 32. Jeff Cox and Nancy Cox, “Probate, 1500–1800,” 26. 33. TNA, Prob11/7/307. 34. TNA, Prob11/9/36. 35. TNA, Prob11/9/309. 36. TNA, Prob2/137, Prob2/143. 37. Maryner worked at assessing from 1488 to 1500 and Gough from 1492 to 1501. 38. Maryner died in 1512, and his will shows that he held property in London and Tottenham, Haringay, Staines, and Ashford. He was to be buried in a tomb already prepared (and already housing his late wife Agnes) in the Grey Friars’ church at Newgate. TNA, Prob11/17/188. During his life, Maryner was active in the civic life of west London (ward of Farringdon Within), and was a member of the salters’ guild. He shows up in Letter-Book L as, among other things, one of the citizens of London elected by the Common Council to attend upon the chief butler of England in a banquet for the newly crowned King Richard III, July 1483 (Letter-Book L, 208; see also 59, 148, 176, 279). Gough died in 1525. His inventory, which survives, describes him as underchamberlain of London. His will does not survive. TNA, Prob2/201. 39. Probate Inventories of the York Diocese, 487. 40. See http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_cr​=​Prob2& _dss​=​range& _ sd​ =​1350& _ed​=​1540& _ro​=​any& _ st​=​adv, accessed 30 June 2009. 41. TNA, Prob2/5 (Thomas Salle, draper). 42. London Consistory Court Wills. 43. Baudry, Documentary Archaeology. For a critique of this approach, although not directed at colonial American archaeologists per se, see Ago, Gusto for Things, 2. 44. For example, the lowest valued for John Blankney’s goods, assessed in 1359 was 2d. (TNA, C131/11/15), for Henry Burton in 1360, it was 1d. (TNA, C131/12/10), and for Richard Patteslee in 1399 it was 12d. (TNA, C131/49/6). See also Jervis, Briggs, and Tompkins, “Exploring Text and Objects,” 168–92. 45. Blackmore, “Pottery, the Port and the Populace,” 29–44; Gaimster, “Supply of Rhenish Stoneware,” 339–47. 46. Jeff Cox and Nancy Cox, “Probate, 1500–1800,” 26.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures; page numbers followed by t indicate tables. Abelard, Peter, “History of My Calamities,” 182–83 Access, 25, 30, 76, 84–85, 88–89, 95, 119, 151, 205, 211; right of free entry, 22, 133 Adam and Eve, 68 Adaptation, 31, 74–76, 91, 97–98, 138–39, 142–44, 154, 157, 172, 173, 189, 200–201, 218–19 Albertus Magnus, 61 Aldermen, 11, 13, 39, 93–94, 138, 179, 180, 222, 234nn62–63, 266n111, 273n18 Altars, 123–24, 193, 201, 210, 212, 214; altar cloths, 123–24, 209–12, 214; vestments, 113, 123, 209–10, 213–14 Amadas, Robert (goldsmith), 13, 78, 110, 188, 209–11, 234n63, cooking and eating habits of, 90, 111, 131, 135, 138, 140, 142–43; house chapel of, 209–11, 243–44n95 Amber, 125, 160, 162, 163, 167, 172–73, 184, 191, 199 Amulets, 189; cramp rings, 165–66; gems, 50, 162–64, 168–69, 171–73, 193–96, 205–6, 215–16; paternosters, 51, 113, 125, 159–64, 166, 173, 175, 179, 184, 191, 194, 198–201, 206–8, 215–16; paxes, 87, 123–24, 162–64, 202–24, 212, 216; rings, 159, 164–66, 169, 194; St. Anthony/tau crosses, 166, 167, 175, 194; unicorn horns, 166. See also Jewelry Apothecaries, 157, 158, 162, 262–63n18 Apprentices, 19, 40, 60, 88, 115–16, 120, 250n123; as beneficiaries, 70, 244n95; as members of households, 65–66, 79, 84, 87, 96, 100, 206 Aristocracy, 41, 75, 78, 83, 89–90, 97, 111, 139, 143, 190–91, 211–12, 246n27; as models, 20, 41, 73–74, 86, 138; servants of, 88, 100. See also Adaptation Aristotle, Poetics, 74 Arras, France, 51, 92, 122, 170

Artisans, 1–2, 40, 95, 217–18; accused of social climbing, 41, 43, 74–75, 154, 156–57, 218; bourgeois ethos of, 6–8, 62–63, 75, 91, 97, 104–5, 111, 124–25, 129–30, 143–46, 186–88, 218–19; and display, 5, 32, 79–83, 85–86, 95, 218; and foodways, 133, 138–39, 140–46, 154; piety of, 83, 143–46, 179, 190–216. See also Adaptation Assize of Nuisance, 21–22, 24, 83, 133 Bakers, 11, 12t, 47, 88, 89 Baptism, 168, 180–81, 183, 214 Barbers, 12t, 26, 28, 29 Barber surgeons, 157 Barclay, Alexander, “The Miseryes of Courtiers,” 58 Barking (Essex), 78, 188, 210 Basins and ewers, 84, 90, 96, 106, 113, 140–41, 186, 226, 254n63; bequeathed to churches, 180–1, 214; as gendered bequests, 115–17, 153, 219; imagery on, 106, 127 Bath and Wells, 214 Battúta, Ibn, 61–62 Beads, 49, 123, 159–60, 162, 172–73, 179, 199–200, 212. See also Amber; Amulets; Coral; Jet Beaufort, Lady Margaret, 190–91 Bedding, 26–28, 31–32, 65–67, 69, 92–93, 104–5, 109–14, 123–25, 188; and childbirth, 170–72; as gendered bequests, 52–53; second hand, 42; symbolism of, 35, 49–50, 52–53 Beds, 27–28, 45, 53, 63–71, 77, 88, 92–93, 95, 109–10, 123–24, 188; “honest,” 65, 70; symbolism of, 35, 52–53, 63–65, 67, 122, 171; trundle, 65–66, 69, 77, 87, 93, 109, 123–24, 184 Bells, 84, 190; sacring, 210–11

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Benches, 36, 48, 77, 86, 92, 95, 124; bench coverings, 27, 29, 36, 51, 80, 95 Benedict XIII (Pope), 169 Beneficiaries, 15, 44, 56, 70–71, 115–17, 124, 159–61, 165, 175–78, 201–2, 226 Bevere, Hugh le (skinner), 26–29, 32, 33, 36 Black Death. See Plague Blacksmiths, 47 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 270n55 Bohemia, 46 Bonum Lectum, 65 Book of the Knight of the Tower, The, 103, 168 Book of Vices and Virtues, The, 74 Books, 84–85, 92, 113, 191; Bibles, 201; books of hours/primers, 122, 158, 170, 186, 193, 201–2, 203, 210, 212; customized, 202; gynecological, 172, 174; herbals, 158; lapidaries, 162–64, 172–73; medical, 157–58, 172, 174; as possessions, 84–85, 92, 113, 122, 157–58, 168, 172, 186, 191, 193, 201, 208, 210, 212, 213; psalters, 113, 158, 212; saints’ lives, 113, 168, 201. See also Commonplace books Bourdieu, Pierre, 5 Bracton, 101 Brewers and brewsters, 12t, 22, 29–30, 47, 56, 124–25, 170 Brewing (household), 29, 130 Bridget of Sweden, Liber Celestis, 102–3 Bruges, 93 Bullion, 45–47, 116 Butchers, 12t, 47, 48, 89, 130–31 Buttery, 77, 89–90, 91–92, 106, 125, 141–43, 151 Cambridge, 40 Candelabra, candlesticks, and candles, 28–29, 89–90, 92, 113, 141, 143, 181, 186, 208, 210; bequeathed to churches, 214; as gendered bequests, 115–16 Canterbury monastery, 33–34 Carpenters, 11, 12t, 21–23, 95, 103 Castles, 74, 133, 190, 246n29 Caxton, William: Golden Legend, 201, 248n66; Livre de bonnes meurs, 158; Order of Chivalry, 83; Polychronicon, 84, 270n48 Cellar, 21, 24, 26, 79, 86, 89 Ceramic, 8, 35–36, 74, 191, 198, 215, 228. See also Dining and dinnerware, ceramic Chairs, 26, 36, 48, 86–88, 92–95, 123–24, 133, 139–40; barbering, 28; children’s, 185, 188 Chamber, 21, 23–24, 27, 83, 191, 211; bedchambers, 30, 65–66, 86–87, 91–96, 106, 123–24,

170, 191, 197, 201, 211–12; chapel, 123–24, 125, 211–12; maidens’, 69, 77, 87–89, 125; men’s, 77, 88–89. See also Childbirth, chamber; Nursery Chandlers, 12t, 47, 185 Chapel (house), 190–1, 192, 209–12 Chaplains, 124, 193, 196, 209, 210–11 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 78, 270n55 Chauliac, Guy de, Surgery, 166 Chests and coffers, 29, 32, 36–37, 88, 92–93, 96–97, 110–19, 123, 125, 212, 218; moral aspects of, 111–14, 127; marriage, 117, 118, 127 Childbirth, 35, 60, 99, 150, 155–57, 161, 167–82, 183, 188–89, 191, 202, 212; birthing stools, 171; chamber 168, 170–72, 191; linens 170–71, 181. See also Girdles Childcare, 15, 100, 127, 155–57, 182–89, 208, 219 Children, 52, 59, 65–66, 70, 100, 155–57, 179–89, 194, 206; toys, 186–88 Chivalry, 81, 83, 126, 186–88, 206, 248n72 Christ. See Jesus Chroniclers and chronicles, 4, 38, 81, 84, 92, 94, 169, 217, 270n55 Churching of women, 181 Citizenship, 7, 19, 21, 26–27, 39, 53, 83, 103–4, 130, 188, 248n71 Cleaning and cleanliness, 15, 102, 105–6, 117, 127, 140, 208; moral aspects of, 99, 103, 107–8 Climate change, 3–4, 37–38 Clothing, 41, 49–50, 52, 104–5, 111, 113, 204, 225, 226, 229; bequeathed to churches, 213; children’s, 181, 183; second hand, 42. See also Sumptuary legislation Coconuts, 52, 54–55, 60, 61–62, 166–67. See also Nuts Coin, 43, 45–47, 105, 241n24; bimetallic coinage, 46 Color, 29, 32, 37, 44, 49, 79–80, 94–95, 97–98, 218; in children’s rooms, 188; in religious imagery, 194; in servants’ rooms, 87 Colyn, John (merchant), 143 Comfort, 29–30, 32, 37, 67, 80, 86, 94, 97–98, 106, 218; hierarchies of, 67, 114, 124 Commissary Court, 10–13, 59, 70, 104, 106, 120, 137, 159, 195, 201, 209, 221–26; gendered bequests in, 70, 115–17, 165, 213 Commonplace books, 105, 129, 138, 143, 149 Conduct literature. See Prescriptive literature Confessors’ manuals, 184 Consistory Court, 1–13, 96, 221–22, 227, 228, 229t, 272n4

I n d ex Cooking and eating, 24, 28, 90, 105–6, 128–54; meat, 41, 90, 130–31, 135–38; moral aspects of, 139–40, 143–54. See also Dinner parties; Feasting; Marriage Cookware, 26, 31, 35–36, 95, 96, 125, 132–38; brass, 31, 36, 110, 123, 134–35, 137–38, 214; ceramic, 35, 36, 133, 134; iron, 36, 134–35; labeling of, 110–11; pots and pans 26–27, 35–36, 110–11, 116, 123, 125, 134–35, 137–38, 186, 214, 238n105, 258n51; roasting equipment, 35–36, 125, 134–38; specialized, 138; toy, 186; wood, 137. See also Fireplaces, Hearths Cordwainers, 25 Coral, 47, 49, 125, 160, 180, 191, 200, 201; amuletic and medicinal properties of, 162, 166–67, 172–73, 184 Cornelius Agrippa, 61 Coroners’ rolls, 25, 27–28 Counting house, 78, 84–85, 89, 96–97, 212, 246n27 Country house, 78, 110, 138, 142–43, 188, 209–12 Court of Chancery, 48, 115–16 Court of Husting, 10, 31–37, 195, 200, 222–23 Coventry, 88, 116 Cradles, 28, 65, 159, 182–84; cradle cloths 183–84 Credit, 20, 46–48, 116 Crescenciis, Petrus de, Ruralia commoda, 158 Cromwell, Thomas, 107 Crusades, 175, 199, 203 Cups, 31–33, 52, 56–58, 60, 121–22, 166–67, 214. See also Drinking vessels Cupboards, 32, 77, 84, 86, 89–90, 92, 111, 125, 188 Cushions, 26–27, 29, 32, 35, 49, 51, 80–84, 86, 92–95, 116, 218 Daniel (Biblical figure), 81–83 Death and dying, 64, 156–57, 189; burial, 69, 171–72, 211, 212; last rites, 27, 64, 191 Debt, 25, 47–48, 59, 80, 108, 229. See also Inventories, Debt Desks, 84, 86, 182 Devotional objects, 191–92, 218; Agnus Dei, 162–64, 169; containers for, 204–5; crucifixes, 194, 212; holy water stoups, 92–93, 123, 191, 196–97, 216; images, 92, 123–24, 158–59, 180, 184, 193, 198, 208, 210, 212; paternosters, 51, 113, 125, 159–64, 166, 173, 175, 179, 184, 191,

309

194, 198–201, 206–8, 215–16; paxes, 87, 123–24, 162–64, 202–4, 212, 216; St John’s heads, 184, 193, 203–4, 205; shrines, 193–94, 212; tabernacles, 193. See also Amulets; Girdles; Middleham Jewel Dining and dinnerware, 17, 36, 42, 46, 51–53, 115–16, 125, 131, 137, 141–42, 150–51, 153, 213–14; ceramic, 54, 62, 64, 106, 107, 133–134, 140, 142, 144, 228; imagery on, 49–50, 52–53, 56, 59–60, 106, 125, 144–45, 146, 165; pewter, 31–33, 106, 123, 138, 140–41, 145, 147, 186, 225; silver, 26, 31–33, 45–46, 48–49, 52, 80, 103, 106, 111, 122, 140–41, 145, 180, 186, 214, 225, 228; specialized, 131, 140, 142; spoons, 26, 32, 49–50, 52–53, 80, 117, 125, 144–45, 147, 186, 194, 247n43; trenchers, 141; wood, 33, 54, 58, 141, 228, 243n92. See also Basins and ewers; Cups; Drinking vessels; Mazers; Nuts Dinner parties, women’s, 148–154 Dioscorides, 61, 244n103 Disease, 59, 61–62, 162–67. See also Plague Doctrine of the Hert, The, 103, 179 Domestic animals: birds, 85, 92; livestock, 80, 88, 130–31 Domestic piety, 15–16, 190–216 Domestic violence, 148 Dower, 9–10, 110, 117, 119 Drapers, 12t, 13, 52–53, 66–67, 80, 89, 91–94, 201, 203, 213; guild, 234n62 Drinking, 25, 84; ceremonial, 33–35; and sociability, 31, 54, 56, 58, 61–63, 124–25, 149–53. See also Taverns; Wine Drinking vessels, 31–35, 37, 45, 52–63, 121–23, 125–26, 140–41, 144–46, 166–67, 186, 225–26; bequeathed to churches, 214 Durham Priory, 34 Edward III, 40, 46, 241n24 Edward IV, 168, 241n24 Edward V, 168 Edward VI, 206 Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, 168 Edward the Confessor, 165, 169 Eleanor, queen of England, 174 Elizabeth of York, queen of England, 69, 168, 170, 174 Elyot, Thomas, The Boke Named the Governour, 81 Erasmus, Desiderius, 105 Les Evangiles des Quenouilles, 148, 149–50, 261n124

310

I n d ex

Family, 5, 47–48, 50–53, 56, 159–61, 171–72, 202, 218–19; and lineage, 52–53, 59–60, 70–71, 122, 160–61 Feasting, 32–33, 90, 106, 136, 138–141, 143, 211 Ferdinand of Castile, 81 Ferdinand of Portugal, 81 Fireplaces, 26–28, 36, 77, 84, 86, 91–96, 132–37, 170 Fishmongers, 12t, 83–84, 89, 133, 141, 236n22 Fletchers, 11 Flete, John, 169 Florence, Italy, 117, 239n137 Fortescue, John, 101 Free bench. See Dower Freedom of the city. See Citizenship Froissart, Jean, 81 Fungibility, 20, 43–45 Furniture and furnishings: children’s, 185–86; gender–coded, 115–20, 127; soft, 29–30, 48–49, 79–80, 92, 139. See also Altar cloths; Bedding; Beds; Benches; Candelabra, candlesticks, and candles, Chairs; Chests and coffers; Cradles; Cushions; Desks; Dining and dinnerware; Napery; Stools; Tables; Wall hangings Furriers, 26 Gama, Vasco da, 57–58 Gentry, 19–20, 41, 73–76, 78, 94, 98, 129, 138–39, 190, 211–12 Germany, 170, 191, 198, 200, 215 Girdles, 47, 49–50, 113, 122–23, 125, 213, 219, 255n94; birthing, 168, 174–79; St. Elizabeth’s, 169; Virgin’s, 169, 174, 265n82, 265n83 Godiva, 199 Golden Legend, 113, 165, 168, 201, 206, 248n66, 263n41 Goldsmiths, 12t, 13, 22, 45, 78, 92–93, 111, 131, 135, 209, 211; guild, 61, 243n94, 244n95 “Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage, The,” 179 Gospelles of Dystaves, The, 148–51, 153–54 “Gossips Gathering, The” / “Wives at the Tavern,” 148–54 Gower, John, Mirour de l’omme, 154 Gratian, 128 Great Famine, 37–38 “Great Slump.” See Recession Grocers, 12t, 78, 79, 85, 89, 131, 158, 242n52, 262–3n18; guild, 39, 234n63, 262n18 Grosseteste, Robert (Bishop), 139

Guilds, 6–7, 11, 12, 21, 33, 39–41, 70, 75, 138, 159; masters, 8, 19, 39; parish, 6–7, 113, 192, 201, 213; regulations, 6–7, 20, 60–61, 74, 95, 104; women’s membership in 19, 40, 116 Haberdashers, 12t, 47, 78–9, 134, 162, 178–79, 183 Habitus, 5–6 Hall, 23–29, 76–79, 81–86, 89, 92, 106, 124–25, 133, 170, 193–94; feudal, 79, 139; and hierarchy, 80; as place of business, 30, 79–80, 86, 92 Hanseatic League, 2 Health care, 157–67, 189, 208 Hearths, 23, 25, 26–28, 30, 31, 95, 132–34 Heirlooms, 43–44, 121–26, 240n7 Heloise, 182–3 Henry III, 174 Henry V, 183, 185 Henry VI, 168–9 Henry VII, 67–9, 174, 241n20 Henry VIII, 81 Higden, Ranulphus, Polychronicon, 38, 84 Hill, Richard (grocer), 105, 138, 143, 149 Holofernes (Biblical figure), 81 Hosiers, 12t, 79, 137 Hospitality, 90, 93–94, 96–97, 106, 124–25 Households, 19; hierarchies within, 15, 65–66, 89, 102–4, 113–14, 119, 126–29, 138, 139–43, 148, 151–52, 154, 218; as moral unit, 74, 114, 131, 143–46, 154 Housekeeping: as act of devotion, 101, 102–3, 208–9, 213–15; gendering of, 6, 15, 99–104, 119–20, 126–27, 131–32; hierarchy of tasks in, 102, 104, 119, 127; moral aspects of, 5–6, 100–104, 106–8, 120–27, 219; in prescriptive literature, 101–4, 119, 127. See also Cleaning and cleanliness Houses: courtyard, 22, 23, 77; hall, 22–30, 76–94, 132–33, 137; peasant, 23, 95, 97, 133; rent, 22, 24; row, 22; shop, 22–24, 26–28, 30, 76, 78–79, 95, 132–33, 137; small, 22, 94–97, 218; as sources of revenue, 21, 23, 78; stone, 19, 236n22; timber-framed 21–22, 23, 29, 85. See also Counting house; Country house Housewives, 15, 100–104, 119–27, 146–54, 155, 179, 181–82, 214 “How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter,” 101–2, 119, 127, 131, 252n18 “How the Wise Man Taught His Son,” 129 Huizinga, Jan, 2

I n d ex Immigration, 2, 19, 21, 24, 38, 39–40, 73, 116–19, 155, 217 Inheritance patterns, 10–12, 31–32, 56–58, 104–106, 118, 136–37, 195–96, 223–26; gendered bequests, 69–71, 115–16, 117–19, 121, 126–27, 139, 146, 153, 159–61, 165, 175–78, 201–3, 206–9, 213–15, 225 Injunctions of 1547, 206 “Instructions for a Pious Layman,” 143–44, 151 Intimacy, 44, 58, 121–22, 126, 144, 148, 169, 192, 205–6; and beds, 53, 64–65, 111; and chambers, 87; and parlors, 84, 86, 140 Inventories, 8–9, 44, 53–54, 104–7, 117, 126, 130, 132–37, 141–42, 183–84, 195–96, 198, 201, 226–30; debt, 12–14, 25, 45–46, 76, 111, 227–28, 230, 247n51; felon, 12, 25, 226–27; probate, 12–13, 25, 29, 46–47, 50, 76, 80, 83, 88, 91, 96, 111, 137–38, 226–30 Ironmongers, 12t, 26, 69, 114, 160 Italy, 2, 32, 117, 170, 183, 269n14, 271n78, 271n92 Jesus, 162, 166, 174–75, 190–91, 213, 265n83; image on dinnerware, 33, 56, 125, 145, 165 Jet, 162, 172–73, 179, 199, 200 Jewelry, 28, 42, 46, 48–50, 121, 159, 164–66, 168–69, 194, 213. See also Amulets, rings Joiners, 11, 12t, 86 Journeymen, 19, 40, 78, 88, 247n59 Kempe, Margery, 257n10 Kings of Cologne. See Magi King’s Lynn (Norfolk), 25–30, 32–36, 227, 242n63 Kitchens, 24–28, 30, 36, 77–78, 84, 90–91, 95, 96, 110, 125, 130–39 Knights, 12, 47, 94, 103, 168, 186, 213, 222, 242n45, 273n18 Labor: piecework, 24, 40, 87, 88; wages, 3, 40–41, 46–47, 71, 73, 217–18, 255n95. See also Housekeeping; Women, labor of Lamps, 90, 208 Land, 3, 9, 20–21, 38, 41, 43–44, 80, 218 Langland, William, Piers Plowman 188 Larder, 23, 83–84, 89–90 Latten. See Dining and dinnerware Latteners, 243n94 Laundresses, 47, 102–3, 108, 110, 213 Law: borough/town, 7, 9, 43–44, 73, 93, 117; canon, 128, 145–46; common, 9–10, 101, 119, 221; land, 43–44. See also Bracton; Liber Albus; Sumptuary legislation

311

Lazarus (Biblical figure), 81 Leather sellers, 12t, 13, 179 Liber Albus, 44 Lisle, Lady, 165–66, 170, 171 Lincoln, 214 Lineage, 35, 52–53, 59, 67–71, 122, 126, 160–61 Linen. See Napery Literacy and numeracy, 7, 108; women’s, 125, 144, 175, 206–208 Liturgy, 180–81, 201, 203, 209–13, 216; Sarum rite, 128, 203. See also Rosary Livre de bonnes meurs, 158 London, Diocese of, 184, 221 “London Lapidary of King Philip,” 172–73 London parishes and wards: Aldersgate, 22, 93; Billingsgate, 212; Cheapside 24, 39, 92; Farringdon Within 228, 274n38; Paternoster Row 199; St. Bride 113; St. Giles, Cripplegate 26; St. James, Garlickhythe 29–30, 124, 181; St. Lawrence Jewry, 79, 201; St. Martin Orger, 52; St. Martin Outwich, 211, 214; St. Mary at Hill, 212; St. Mary Magdalene, Fish Street, 214; St. Mary Woolnoth, 202; St. Michael Wood Street, 22; St. Peter’s Westcheap, 214; Smithfield, 38; Walbrook, 27 Low Countries, 150, 165, 200; goods imported from, 93, 105, 131, 140, 191, 215 Lucretia (Roman figure), 148, 154 Lull, Raymond, Order of Chivalry, 83 Luxury goods, 1–2, 3, 19, 20, 35, 37, 67, 71, 74, 80, 85–86 Lydgate, John, 261n120; “Dietary” poem, 143 Magi, 59, 92, 165–66 Markets and marketing, 130–31 Marriage, 5, 51, 63–64, 67–69, 94, 191; divorce, 128, 148; and eating together, 128–29, 144, 148, 150, 152–54 Mary Rose (ship), 60, 144–45, 243n92 Matthew (gospel), 191, 213 Mayors, 13, 51, 93–94, 103, 136, 138, 179, 209, 234n62, 250n138 Mayor’s wives, 165, 166 Mazers, 33, 35, 45, 54–63, 123, 125–26, 146, 186, 225–26, 243n94, 243–44n95; imagery on, 54, 56, 58–60, 125–26, 158, 165; owned by monastic communities, 33–35, 58 Memory, 14, 37, 42, 44–45, 50, 52–53, 56, 71, 160–61, 171, 183, 202, 218–19 Mercers, 12t, 47, 76–79, 86, 131, 133, 137, 158, 166, 183, 201, 209–12, 234n62–63, 250n122

312

I n d ex

Merchants, 1–2, 40–41, 142, 217–18; accused of social climbing, 41, 43, 74–75, 154, 156–57, 168, 218; bourgeois ethos of, 6–8, 62–63, 75, 91, 97, 104–5, 111, 124–25, 129–30, 143–46, 186–88, 218–19; and display, 5, 29, 32, 79–83, 85–86, 93–94, 138, 218; and foodways, 133, 138–39, 140–46, 154; piety of, 83, 143–46, 179, 190–216. See also Adaptation Merode Altarpiece, 107, 108 Metalsmiths, 60, 243–44n95 Middleham Jewel, 164 Midwives, 157, 172–74, 180 Mills, 18, 77; hand, 36, 137; sawmills, 18, 37, 86 Mirk, John, Festial, 265n83, 270n53 Mirrors, 93, 94, 250n133 Mockyng, Thomas (fishmonger), 83–85, 89 Monks and monasteries, 33–35, 58, 84 Musical instruments, 84, 86, 88 Napery, 104–105, 108–14, 140, 181, 195; bequeathed to churches, 213; labeling of, 108–11; second hand, 42 Newgate Prison, 123–24 Newington Green (village), 138, 143, 210, 211, 259 Nine Worthies, 81 North Africa, 46 Nuns and nunneries, 103, 158 Nursery, 86, 188 Nuts (drinking vessel), 52–58, 60–63, 166–67, 225–26, 243–44n95 Ordinance of Labourers, 40 Oxford, 40 Paraphernalia, 29, 37, 117, 119, 121, 183–84 Parish churches, 7, 75, 190, 192, 211–12; lay involvement in, 179–80, 201, 202, 213–16 Parlor, 83–86, 89, 91–92, 124, 139–40, 170 Paston, Margaret 168 Patriarchy, 5–6, 119, 143–44, 146–48, 152–54 Peasants, 7, 19, 36, 41, 80, 119, 131; houses, 23, 95, 97, 133 Phelips, Matthew (goldsmith, mayor), 49, 51–52, 92–94, 109–10, 234n65, 250n133; cooking and eating habits of, 136; house chapel of, 209 Philippa, queen of England 174 Physicians, 157–58, 172, 272n10 Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, 174 Pilgrims and pilgrimage, 169–70, 203, 265n82; pilgrim badges, 169, 170, 186, 202

Pizan, Christine de, The Book of the Three Virtues, 168 Plague, 1–4, 37–39, 106; and demographic change, 3–4, 16, 17–19, 21, 38–39, 45, 46–47, 73, 91, 191; and guilds, 8, 39; and labor shortage, 31, 40–41; and trauma, 7–8, 217–19 Plays, 203, 265n83; The Second Shepherd’s Play, 103–4; Wakefield Noah, 103–4 Pliny, 61, 244n103 Plumbers, 12t, 48 Plymley, Alexander (mercer), 78, 95, 107, 188; cooking and eating habits of, 90, 131, 138, 141–43, 259n71; furnishing servants’ rooms, 69, 87–88, 193; house chapel of, 209–11 Poison, 61–62, 162, 166–67, 244n103 Polo, Marco, 61–62 Pomanders, 162, 166–67, 206 Poor and poverty, 3, 19–20, 37, 117, 142, 181, 251n149 Portable Antiquities Scheme, 196, 197 Possessory Assizes, 39 Poulterers, 48 Pratte, William and Alice (mercer and silkwoman) 158 Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 10–13, 59, 104, 106, 120, 137, 159, 195, 201, 209, 221–26, 228, 229t7; gendered bequests in, 70, 159, 165, 213, 224, 225 Prescriptive literature, 75, 101–4, 119, 127, 129, 143–44, 168, 179 Privacy, 75, 85, 88–89, 91, 94, 96–98, 119, 182, 192, 205, 218. See also Access Privy, 24 Prodigal Son (Biblical figure), 81 Proverbs (Book of), 100–101, 257n9 Recession, 2, 43, 46–47, 88, 116, 219, 255n95 Rising of 1381, 218 Roesslin, Eucharius, The Birth of Mankind; Otherwise Named, The Woman’s Book, 172 Rosary 161, 200, 215 Royalty, 19, 27, 67–69, 190–91, 233n38; children and childbirth, 168, 170, 174, 183; as models, 157, 168 Russell, John, The Book of Nurture 115, 140 St. Ambrose, 122 St. Anne, 169 St. Apollonia, 158, 206 St. Blaise 158 St. Christopher, 158–59, 165

I n d ex St. Isadore, 122 St. Katherine, 206, 207 St. Lawrence, 56, 81 St. Lucy, 158, 206 St. John Baptist, 60, 78, 158, 184, 193, 203–4 St. John the Evangelist, 81, 165 St. Margaret, 168–69, 180, 206 St. Modwen, 169 St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, 79 St. Thomas, 169 Saints, 106, 122–24, 167, 168, 184, 190, 198, 205–6, 212, 215; images on drinking vessels, 58–60, 126, 144; images on jewelry, 158–59, 168–69; images on soft furnishings, 67, 81, 83, 193–94; as models, 126, 144, 206 SS. Julitta and Quiricus, 175 Salle, Thomas (draper), 91–94, 165, 203 Sarum rite. See Liturgy Security, 28, 30, 77, 93, 95, 96–97, 112, 151 Sermons, 102–3, 128, 159, 208, 213, 265n83 Servants, 30, 104, 114–16, 119, 127, 131–32, 137–38, 142, 144, 168, 198, 206, 212; as beneficiaries, 58, 70, 111; butlers, 114; cooks, 29–30, 100, 114, 131–32, 135–39, 146; exploitation of, 87; hierarchies among, 87–89, 114–16; and life cycle, 65–66, 87; maids, 69, 77, 87–89, 102, 105, 114, 119, 125, 216; nannies; 100; sex ratio of, 15, 88–89, 100, 116–17, 140; sleeping arrangements of, 30, 49, 67, 79, 86–89, 96, 105, 111, 113, 184; tutors, 100; wet nurses, 100 “Serving Maid’s Holiday, The,” 102, 119 Seven works of mercy, 124 Shaxton, Nicholas (Bishop of Salisbury), 174 Shoemakers, 12t, 47 Shops, 39, 45, 201, 245n139, 247n59; in houses, 23–24, 26–28, 78–79, 86, 95–96, 133 Sickness of Women, The, 174 Silkwomen, 58, 123, 158, 166–67 Skinners, 12t, 13, 23, 26, 185 Skyrwyth, John (leather seller), 13, 69, 78–79, 84, 106, 110, 193, 201, 228, 248n66; haberdasher’s shop, 79, 162, 173, 178–79, 183, 201 Social identity and status, 5–8, 16, 43, 48, 70–71, 74, 91, 93–98, 138–39, 179, 186–88, 217–18 Solar, 23–25 Song of Songs, 65 Southwark, 12, 13, 47, 95–96, 108, 133, 193, 227, 228 Spurriers, 48 Statute of Labourers, 40 Stepney, 77, 142–43, 210–11, 257n21

313

Stodley, Robert (mercer), 69, 76–77, 86–87; cooking and eating habits of, 130, 131, 138, 142–43; furnishing servants’ rooms, 87–88; house chapel of, 209–12 Stools, 36, 48, 92, 93, 123, 124, 139, 171, 210; children’s, 185–86 Storage, 23, 36–37, 77–79, 88–89, 102, 111–14, 130. See also Buttery; Cellar; Chests and coffers; Cupboards; Larder; Pantry Sugar, 111, 138 Sumptuary legislation, 7, 41, 74, 233n38 Tables, 36–37, 77–79, 86–87, 88, 91, 95, 107, 112, 123–24, 133; children’s, 185–86; counting, 26–27, 30, 79, 86, 139, 202; dining, 80, 139–40, 151; folding and trestle, 26–27, 36, 92, 95, 139; gaming, 84, 151 Tailors, 12t, 13, 47, 54, 59, 95–96, 108, 133, 193, 257n16 Taverners, 26 Taverns, 64, 124, 131, 149–53 Testators, 10–11, 44, 46, 49–60, 63–65, 71–72, 105, 111, 120–21, 141, 189, 218, 221, 225–26; bequeathing religious items, 159–60, 195, 206, 213–14; gendered bequests of, 69–70, 115–17, 159–60, 165, 175–78, 201–2 Thatchers, 47 Three Kings. See Magi Tilers, 11 Tirteyner, John le (merchant), 26, 27–29, 33, 36 Towel racks, 107–8, 109, 254n65 Toys. See Children Trade, 2, 18, 20, 43, 45–46, 57–58, 78, 116; cloth, 40, 80, 93; wool, 40 Tudor, Margaret, 170 Upholsterers, 202 Value, affective and financial, 14–15, 42–54, 58–60, 63, 71–72, 121, 218 Vienna, 1 Virgin Martyrs, 106, 144, 153, 206 Virgin Mary 78, 86, 127, 169, 174–75, 193, 198, 200, 212; Annunciation, 81, 106, 161, 170; image on dinnerware, 145, 206; Nativity, 161 Vita activa, 15–16, 84, 97, 101, 104, 190, 192 Wainscoting, 67, 86, 90, 111, 112, 123–24 Wall hangings, 32, 49, 77, 80–86, 90, 92–93, 95, 123–24, 170, 188, 218; imagery, 49, 81, 84,

314

I n d ex

Wall hangings (continued) 122, 158, 193–94, 196, 210; painted cloths, 67, 80–81, 87–88, 92, 125, 165, 208, 218; tapestries, 51, 67, 80–81, 122, 170, 218 Walsingham (shrine), 169–70, 175 Weaponry, 29–30, 77–78, 85, 86, 88, 92, 95, 115, 195, 225; as status symbol, 26–27, 29, 53, 83 Weddings, 33, 180 Wells, 22 Westminster, 12, 88, 89, 125–26, 131, 168, 170, 179–80, 228, 257n13, 257n21 Westminster Abbey, 58, 165, 169, 174, 188 Widowers and widows, 9–10, 12, 24, 43, 119, 120–21, 214, 221–22 Wills, 8–12, 31–37, 44–61, 69–72, 76, 104–6, 110–11, 159, 166–67, 195–201, 209, 221–29; bequests to parishes, 61, 13, 113, 179–80, 201, 202, 213–15; and caretaking, 159–167, 188–89; gendered bequests in, 15, 69–71, 115–21, 126, 139, 141, 146, 153, 156, 158–60, 165, 168–69, 171–72, 175–78, 189, 199, 201–3, 208–9,

213–15, 219, 224–25; as memorializing documents, 121–25, 171–72. See also Beneficiaries; Testators Wine, 24, 26, 79, 89, 130, 149, 150, 236n22 Women, 29, 219, 224; behav ior of, 5–6, 15, 100–104, 131, 148–54, 206, 208; as beneficiaries, 15, 115–17, 141, 159–61, 171, 175–78, 199, 201–2, 208; and gendered labor, 6, 15–16, 40–41, 99–104, 114–120, 126–27, 131–32, 139, 146–48, 155; as testators, 9–11, 69–71, 120–26, 159–61, 167, 171, 188–89, 201–2, 213–15 Wood, 8, 36, 37, 60–61, 134, 137, 141, 210, 228 Woodmen, 47 Woolwich, Kent, 122 Worde, Wynkyn de, 149, 174–75, 261n124 Workshop, 27–28, 78, 84, 92, 95 Wotton, Henry, Elements of Architecture, 90 York, 88, 116, 148, 171, 228, 236n42, 245n4, 258n37, 265n96