Daily Life in Elizabethan England (10 page)

At the core of the household was the nuclear family of father, mother, and children, but it also included resident employees in the form of servants and apprentices. The mean household size was about 4 to 5, with higher figures further up the social scale. According to one 17th-century estimate, a lord might typically have some 40 people in his household; a knight, 13; a squire or gentleman, 10; a merchant, 6 to 8; a freeholder, 5 to 7; and a tradesman, craftsman, or cottager, 3 to 4. In addition to the actual household, many houses, particularly in the towns, accommodated a paying lodger or two.

It was unusual for relatives beyond the nuclear family to live within the household—one region that has been studied in detail shows this happen-

40

Daily Life in Elizabethan England

A family, 1563. [
Hymns Ancient and Modern
]

ing in only 6 percent of households, with only 2 percent including more than one married couple in the same household. This was less true in upper-class households, which were more likely to house additional relatives. Due to the high rate of mortality, single-parent families and steppar-ents were common: in one village in 1599, a quarter of the children living at home had lost one parent.

Women and Men

Gender roles within the household were notionally divided along lines that had been determined millennia before with the emergence of agriculture: the man did the labor of farming at a distance from the home, while the woman was responsible for the work inside and around the house.

Even in urban families where the man might actually work at home as a craftsman while the woman left the home daily as a laundress or vendor, the notional distinction between inside and outside the home as the boundary between female and male domains remained powerful. The

idea underlies the description of a woman’s role as articulated by the Elizabethan political theorist Sir Thomas Smith:

Women . . . nature hath made to keep home and to nourish their family and children, and not to meddle with matters abroad, nor to bear office in a city or commonwealth no more than children or infants.1

Households and the Course of Life

41

A DUTCHMAN’S IMPRESSION OF ENGLISH WOMEN, 1575

Wives in England are entirely in the power of their husbands, their lives only excepted . . . yet they are not kept so strictly as they are in Spain or elsewhere. Nor are they shut up, but they have the free management of the house or housekeeping, after the fashion of those of the Netherlands, and others their neighbours. They go to market to buy what they like best to eat.

They are well dressed, fond of taking it easy, and commonly leave the care of household matters and drudgery to their servants. They sit before their doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen by the passersby. In all banquets and feasts they are shown the greatest honour; they are placed at the upper end of the table, where they are the first served; at the lower end, they help the men. All the rest of their time they employ in walking or riding, in playing at cards or otherwise, in visiting their friends and keeping company, conversing with their equals (whom they term gossips) and their neighbours, and making merry with them at childbirths, christenings, churchings, and funerals; and all this with the permission and knowledge of their husbands, as such is the custom.

William Brenchley Rye, ed.,
England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and
James the First
(New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967), 72–73.

It was assumed that a well-run home would be managed by the woman, leaving the man free to serve as the chief breadwinner for the household.

Women’s domestic responsibilities included childrearing, marketing, cooking, cleaning, and basic health care. Yet an Elizabethan housewife also played a significant if secondary role in the economy of the household. She looked after the household garden, which provided vegetables for cooking as well as medicinal herbs. She might also have responsibility for domestic livestock, which were a feature of urban as well as rural households: these might include poultry, pigs, and dairy animals. She was expected to know how to brew ale or beer. All of these activities provided not only food for the table but potentially a surplus for sale.

Women might also take part in men’s work. In rural families, female members of the household assisted in the fields at harvest and haymaking time, since the pressures of the season required as many hands as possible. They could also be involved in winnowing the grain after it was harvested. In the towns, a woman might help her husband in his trade, and if he died, she might carry on the business herself. There were even a few instances of women plying trades in their own right.

Women could also engage in part-time work to supplement the family income. Some worked as petty-school teachers or tutors, others engaged in home industries such as spinning and knitting. In towns, women engaged in a wide variety of work: they were especially likely to be employed as seamstresses, laundresses, servants, and street vendors.

42

Daily Life in Elizabethan England

The secondary yet significant economic role of the woman in the household mirrored her general status in the family. Officially, she was under the governance of a man for most or all of her life. A girl grew up under the rule of her father or guardian; as a young adult she might go into service under the authority of her employer; and when she married, she was subject to her husband. Only in widowhood was a woman legally

recognized as an independent individual. A widow took over as head of her husband’s household; if he left her sufficient means to live on, she might do quite well, perhaps taking over his trade, and she would be free to remarry or not as she chose.

Yet the domestic power equation was not a one-way street. The man

was supposed to have the final say, but a husband who governed arbi-trarily would sooner or later find his home in crisis. A successful family needed the wife’s cooperation, and women had routes of recourse if they found their husbands overbearing or abusive. Informally, women had networks of support among themselves, socializing at church, at the alehouse, while laundering, and on other occasions that brought women together. Perhaps even more important were the social networks of family and community that could bring pressure onto a tyrannical husband: neighbors and ministers were known to intervene if a family was clearly dysfunctional. If informal systems failed, women could turn to the law: Common Law courts were not open to married women, but Equity courts were, as were the church courts, which were the primary legal vehicles for addressing issues relating to marriage and family.

Gender relations were heavily constrained by custom, but this was not necessarily an impediment to domestic harmony. Affectionate relations between husbands and wives are attested in correspondence and diaries of the time, and in the day-to-day expressions used by married couples—

married couples commonly addressed each other by such pet names as
sweetheart,
duck,
and
chuck.
Nicholas Breton offered advice on how a husband should treat a wife:

Cherish all good humors in her: let her lack no silk, crewel, thread, nor flax, to work on at her pleasure, force her to nothing, rather prettily chide her from her labor, but in any wise commend what she doeth: if she be learned and studious, persuade her to translation—it will keep her from idleness, and it is a cunning kind task: if she be unlearned, commend her to housewifery, and make much of her carefulness, and bid her servants take example at their mistress. . . . At table be merry to her, abroad be kind to her, always be loving to her, and never be bitter to her, for patient Griselda is dead long ago, and women are flesh and blood.2

In short, women were subordinate but not powerless, and they appear to have enjoyed an unusual measure of freedom compared to other parts of Europe. According to a proverb that was current in Elizabeth’s day, England was “the Hell of Horses, the Purgatory of Servants, and the Para-dise of Women.” The phrase is highly revealing. On the one hand, it sup-Households and the Course of Life

43

ports the observations of contemporary visitors from the Continent who remarked that English women had more power in the home and more

freedom abroad compared to women in most other European countries.

At the same time, it reminds us that women, like horses and servants, were expected to be in a position of subordination.

Children and Servants

More fully subordinate to the householder were the children and servants. England’s rapid population growth meant that a large part of the population at any time were young people: it has been estimated that roughly a third were under the age of 15, a half under age 25. These figures were balanced by a high rate of child mortality: a woman might give birth to a half-dozen children over the course of her childbearing years, but only half of these were likely to see adulthood.

The final component in the household was the servants, who were a

ubiquitous feature of Elizabethan society. Both rural and urban families hired servants: a quarter of the population may have been servants at any given time, and a third or more of households may have had servants.

The relationship of servants to their employers in many ways resembled that of children to their parents. They were not just paid employees, but subordinate members of their employer’s household who actually lived with the family and were subject to the householder’s authority much like his own children.

Servants were hired on annual contracts, living within the home of the employer and receiving food, clothing (especially shoes and hose, which wore out quickly), and quarterly wages. In large households they might have specialized functions, such as cooks, chambermaids, or footmen, but in most cases they were generalized hired hands, helping the man and woman of the house in their daily tasks.

THE LIFE CYCLE

Birth and Baptism

Childbirth in the 16th century normally happened at home. There were hospitals in Elizabethan England, but these served primarily to provide long-term care for those in need, rather than short-term treatment of acute medical problems. Nor was a physician likely to be involved in the birth-ing process. The delivery of babies was primarily the domain of the mid-wife. Indeed, a number of women might be present—childbirth was often a major social occasion for women.

Childbirth carried a significant level of risk to the mother, although less so than is commonly supposed today. The rate of maternal mortality in childbirth may have been in the region of 1 percent. This would still be quite high by modern standards, very close to the estimated figure for
44

Daily Life in Elizabethan England

sub-Saharan Africa in 2005. With a 1 percent chance of dying every time she gave birth, a woman who gave birth to five children over the course of her childbearing years would have roughly a 1 in 20 chance of dying in childbed. Given these odds, virtually every woman in Elizabethan England would have known someone who had died in childbirth.

Soon after birth, the baby would be taken to the parish church for baptism, also called christening: this was supposed to happen on a Sunday or holy day within a week or two of the birth. Christenings at home or by anyone but a clergyman were against church law. The only exception was if the child was in imminent danger of death, in which case it was considered more important to ensure that the child did not die unchristened.

The ritual of baptism involved dipping the baby in a font of holy water in the parish church. At the ceremony the child was sponsored by three godparents, two of the same sex and one of the opposite. These godparents became relatives of the child in a very real sense; children would ask their godparents’ blessing whenever meeting them, much as they did of their parents every morning and evening.

A christening was a major social occasion and might be followed by a feast. It was customary for people to give presents for the newborn—

THE TROUBLES OF AN EXPECTING FATHER, 1603

There is another humor incident to a woman, when her husband sees her belly to grow big (though peradventure by the help of some other friend), yet he persuades himself it is a work of his own framing; and this breeds him new cares and troubles, for then must he trot up and down day and night, far and near, to get with great cost that his wife longs for; if she let fall but a pin, he is diligent to take it up, lest she by stooping should hurt herself. She on the other side is so hard to please, that it is a great hap when he fits her humor in bringing home that which likes her, though he spare no pains nor cost to get it. And oft times through ease and plenty she grows so queasy stomached, that she can brook no common meats, but longs for strange and rare things, which whether they be to be had or no, yet she must have them. . . . When the time draws near of her lying down, then must he trudge to get gossips, such as she will appoint, or else all the fat is in the fire. Consider then what cost and trouble it will be to him, to have things fine against the Christening day: what store of sugar, biscuits, comfets and carroways, marmalade and marzipan, with all kinds of sweet suckets and superflous banqueting stuff. . . . Every day after her lying down will sundry dames visit her, which are her neighbors, her kinswomen, and other her special acquaintance, whom the goodman must welcome with all cheerful-ness, and be sure there be some dainties in store to set before them; where they about some three or four hours (or possibly half a day) will sit chatting with the child-wife.