'Fly with a duck in thy mouth': Single women as sources of credit in seventeenth-century England

Social History

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 187-207

  Spicksley, Judith M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HULL   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34248506969     PISSN: 03071022     EISSN: 14701200     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03071020701265809     Document Type: Article

References (142)

1. I am indebted to the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain who funded the research on which this article is based. I would also like to thank Nigel Goose for his help and advice. The quote is from G. Chapman, B. Johnson and Marsden, Eastward Ho, ed. by R.W. Van Fossen Manchester, 1979), 96. The phrase 'a duck in the mouth' refers to money out at interest.
2. See C. H. Herford Percy and E. Simpson (eds), Ben Johnson, (Oxford, 1950), ix, 654.
3. C. A. Sneyd (ed.), A relation, or rather a true account, of the Island of England, Camden Society, 37 1847), 23.
4. T. Wilson, A Discourse Upon Usury (1572), ed. by R. H. Tawney (London 1925), 16-31
5. B. A. Holderness, 'Credit in a rural community, 1660-1800', Midland History, III (1975-6), 108.
6. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926; Harmondsworth, 1961), 156
7. F. Heal and Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500-1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), 125-7
8. B. A. Holderness, The clergy as money-lenders in England, 1550-1700' in R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds), Princes and Paupers in the English Church 1500-1800 (New Jersey, 1981)
9. idem, 'Widows in pre-industrial society: An essay upon their economic functions' in M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984)
10. B. Lemire, 'Petty pawns and informal lending: Gender and the transformation of small-scale credit in England, circa 1600-1800' in Bruland and P. K. O'Brien (eds), From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism (Oxford, 1998)
11. Margaret Hunt's work on the role of seamen's wives as brokers of seamen's tickets is cited in B. Lemire, ''Introduction' in the same volume, 5-6.
12. See also M. Bogucka, 'Women and credit operations in Polish towns in early modern times (XVIth-XVIIth centuries)', Journal of European Economic History, XXXII (2003).
13. Other historians have studied credit provision more generally: Holderness, 'Credit in a rural community'; idem, 'Credit in English rural society before the nineteenth century, with special reference to the period 1650-1720', Agricultural History Review, XXIV (1976)
14. P. Spufford, 'Long-term rural credit in sixteenthand seventeenth-century England: The evidence of probate accounts' in T. Arkell, N. Evans and N. Goose (eds), When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000)
15. C. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation (Basingstoke, 1998)
16. M. McIntosh, 'Money-lending on the periphery of London, 1300-1600' Albion, XX (1988).
17. R. G. Griffiths, 'Joyce Jeffreys of Ham Castle', Transactions of the Worcester Archaeological Society, new series, X (1933)
18. B. A Holderness, 'Elizabeth Parkin and her investments, 1733-66: Aspects of the Sheffield money market in the eighteenth century', Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, x (1979).
19. P. Sharpe, 'Dealing with love: The ambiguous independence of the single woman in early modern England', Gender and History, XI (1999)
20. idem, 'A woman's worth: A case study of capital accumulation in early modern England', Parergon, XIX (2002).
21. The diocese of Lincoln included parts of Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire in addition to Lincolnshire, and the diocese of Durham included most of Northumberland along with Co. Durham. The Norfolk Consistory Court also had jurisdiction in Suffolk - about 25 per cent of the testators were from this county. All examples of probate documents identified as belonging to singles were included in the study, but few provincial probate records exist for the period 1640-60, however, as the church courts were temporarily abolished during the Interregnum. I have therefore excluded the decades of the 1640s and 1650s from my calculations.
22. Inventories usually offer more detail than wills, but the probate process did not demand that all the debts owing to the testator be included on the inventory. J. Cox and N. Cox, 'Probate 1500-1800' in Arkell et al. (eds), op. cit., 31.
23. Probate inventories cover around 50 per cent of the population, excluding the richest 10 per cent and the poorest 40 per cent. M. Overton, J. Whittle, Darron Dean and Andrew Hann, Production and the Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London, 2004), 26.
24. T. Arkell, 'The probate process' in Arkell et al. (eds), op. cit., 8, 11-12.
25. Five classes of persons could not generally make will: 'those wanting discretion' (children, idiots, drunkards); 'those wanting freedom' (bondslaves, villeins, prisoners, women covert); 'those wanting some of their principal senses' (deaf, dumb, blind); those that have committed crimes'; 'thosewith legal impediments'; see H. Swinburne, A Treatise of Testaments and Last Wills, 4th edn (1677), 41-84.
26. For estimates of the proportions of testators see, for example, R. T. Vann, 'Wills and the family in an English town: Banbury, 1550-1800', Journal of Family History, IV (1979)
27. D. O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint. Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000), 166-7
28. N. Goose and N. Evans, 'Wills as an historical source' in Arkell et al. (eds), op. cit., 44-7.
29. The pattern of inventory survival may parallel the age distribution of the population much more closely than had previously been suspected: Overton et al., op. cit., 27.
30. N[orfolk] R[ecord] O[ffice] Houchin 76, 1649, Mary Webster; D[urham] U[niversity] L[ibrary] DPRI/1/1700/C1, Dorothy Chrissop; C[heshire] R[ecord] O[ffice], WS 1662, Elizabeth Jackson.
31. In her will of 1649 Joyce Jeffreys described herself as 'spinster, daughter of Henry Jefferies of Home Castle in the county of Worcester, esquire, deceased', even though she was at the very least in her late sixties by that time, and her father had been dead since 1583. F[amily] R[ecord] C[entre] PROB 11/24, will of Joyce Jefferies [Jeffreys].
32. The inadequacy of the money supply ensured that economic expansion was largely based on credit. C. Muldrew, '"Hard Food for Midas'" cash and its social value in early modern England', Past and Present, CLXX (2001), 87-93.
33. Holderness indicated that on average 40 per cent of testators in the Midlands had debts owing to them; Holderness, 'Credit in English rural society', op. cit., 102. Swain's Lancashire sample was much smaller - 273 as opposed to Holderness's 4650 - and included wills, but revealed that an average of 64 per cent of testators had debts owing to them; 73 per cent were in the supra category (£40 and over), and 54 per cent in the infra (less than £40).
34. See J. Swain, Industry before the Industrial Revolution: North East Lancashire 1500-1640 (Manchester, 1986), 189-90.
35. The very few examples of pawning have been included in the category of informal lending.
36. This may tend to overstate the volume of moneylending, if some of the entries were not cash advances.
37. Bonds functioned as general deeds of contract, 'whereby any man confesseth himselfe by his writing orderly made, sealed and delivered to give any thing unto him with whom he so Contracteth'. Bills or obligations were similar legal documents, relating more specifically but not exclusively to transfers of cash. See W. West, Symbolaeographia. The Art, Description or Image of Instruments (1592), sects 31, 146, 147.
38. References to lending in both wills and inventories have been included. Using the inventory records alone to provide a more accurate comparison raises the average to 71 per cent.
39. CRO WS 1693, Mary Heywood.
40. DUL DPRI/1/1661/T9, Jane Todd alias Wintropp.
41. E. Clark, 'Debt litigation in a late medieval English vill' in J. A. Raftis (ed.), Pathways to Medieval Peasants, 2 (Toronto, 1981), 263
42. McIntosh, 'Money-lending', op. cit., 562.
43. Lemire, 'Petty pawns', op. cit., 117, 122-4
44. Bogucka, 'Women and credit operations', op cit, 485.
45. N. Penney (ed.), The Household Account Book of Sarah Fell of Swarthmoor Hall (Cambridge, 1920), passim. Of nearly 600 entries referencing lending and borrowing, only around 8 per cent were formally secured.
46. McIntosh, 'Money-lending', op. cit., 565. In the Fell accounts, for example, Sarah lent Thomas Wilson £1 10s for six weeks in July 1674, with the understanding that she could 'have it sooner againe if I call for it', and in a further loan of 13s 4d made to John Fell in the October of 1676, Sarah agreed to lend him 'for 2: Weekes, & longer if I cann spare it'.
47. See Penney (ed.), op. cit., 105, 319.
48. L. A. Clarkson, The Pre-Industrial Economy in England 1500-1750 (London, 1971), 146.
49. Penney (ed.), op. cit., 326, 351.
50. R. Cholmeley, The Memorandum Book of Richard Cholmeley of Brandsby 1602-1623, North Yorkshire County Record Office Publications, XLIV (1988), 90.
51. L[incoln] A[rchives] INV 174/278, 1673, Elizabeth Nunwicke; NRO DN/ INV60A/56, 1677, Ursula Hammond.
52. Gold coin had a low velocity of circulation because of its worth as a 'store of value'. Clarkson, op. cit., 144-6. Richard Cholmeley borrowed £20 from John Noulson in 1612, giving him for his security a range of old gold coins; Cholmeley, op. cit., 59. NRO DN/INV 58B/82, 1674, Mrs Bridget Gladdon had £150 in gold, money and silver.
53. Richard also lent money to Alice Crawthorn: Cholmeley, op. cit., 66, 69, 103.
54. Holderness, 'Widows', op. cit., 442.
55. Cholmeley, op. cit., 50. Henry Best recorded the 'use' he paid his brother-in-law Ralph Speck for his step-sister Mary Trott's portion in 1624 and the undergraduate account book of John and Richard Newdigate records an £80 loan to Mistress Mary Trussell that remained outstanding throughout the period of the accounts
56. D. Woodward (ed.), The Farming and Memorandum Books of Henry Best of Elmswell, 1642 (Oxford, 1984), 176
57. V. Larminie (ed.), 'The undergraduate account book of John and Richard Newdigate, 1618-21', Camden Miscellany, XXX, Camden 4th series, XXXIX (1990), 230, 250, 254, 268.
58. B[ritish] L[ibrary] Egerton MS 3054, 'The receipts and disbursements of Joyce Jeffreys, 1638-49', f. 16v.
59. ibid., ff. 60v, 63v, 64v, 66v, 70.
60. Jewish women had been involved in the process of lending for profit here, as in other parts of Europe, before their expulsion in 1290. W. C. Jordan, Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies (Philadelphia, 1993), 59
61. Clark, op. cit., 2628
62. McIntosh, op. cit., 5689.
63. Thomas Hackluit, John Duppa and Humphrey East had borrowed the sum of £80 in 1626. The capital and a considerable amount of interest was still unpaid at Joyce's death in 1650. BL, 'Receipts and disbursements', £73.
64. N[ational] A[rchives] PROB 4/1519, Mrs Lucy Jay, ?1675.
65. DUL DPRI/1/1671/F6, Elizabeth Foulis (-700); DUL DPRI/1/1676/B14, Mary Blackiston (£14); NRO DN/INV 55A/103, 1665, Mrs Elizabeth Love (£ 662).
66. NRO DN/INV 47B/95, 1646, Katherine Hargrave.
67. B. Coward, The Stuart Age England 1603-1714, 2nd edn (London, 1994), 47.
68. See West, op. cit., sects, 151-5.
69. N[ational] A[rchives] LC4 Entries of recognizances (23 H8 c.6). Henry VIII established a central registry for non-mercantile staple recognizances - bonds sealed by the mayor of a town or city with a staple good that allowed creditors recourse to debtors' property in cases of default. Estimating the comparative proportion of recognizances sealed by women between 1599 and 1601 with those between the later dates of 1649 and 1656 suggests that the percentage of women employing such instruments nearly doubled, although the percentage is low (0.8 to 1.4 per cent). Status designations of the women are not generally provided, so the number of single women involved is impossible to extract.
70. E. Kerridge, Trade and Banking in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1988), 39.
71. This includes debts that were renegotiated the following year if the amount had changed. I have estimated the length of the loans from the entries for interest payments, including those that were overdue, and the debts outstanding at Joyce's death.
72. DUL DPRI/1/1633/W5, Alice White.
73. NA C5/164/65, Katherine Harris c. Seth Powell and Joan his wife.
74. N. R. Shipley, 'Thomas Sutton: Tudor-Stuart moneylender', Business History Review, L (1976), 467.
75. NRO Wills, Cally 124, 1646, Anne Utber.
76. NA C5/482/80, Jane Ford and others c. Joseph Sayer and others.
77. NA C5/13/62, Elizabeth Howard c. Sir Thomas Liddell and others.
78. A. L. Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1993), 81.
79. A. M. Froide, 'Single women, work and community in Southampton, 1550-1750' (Ph.D., Duke University, 1996), 338.
80. J. Ellis, 'Risk, capital and credit on Tyneside circa 1690-1780' in Bruland and O'Brien (eds), op. cit., 101.
81. F. Bacon, The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall (1626), Number 41 'Of Usurie', 246.
82. Only 10 per cent or fewer testators gave information on the residence of their debtors, except in Durham, where the figure reached 34 per cent. In Joyce's case 75 per cent of debtors could be linked to their place of residence. All distances are approximate and have been calculated as the crow flies.
83. Ellis has noted that early eighteenth-century Tyneside entrepreneurs still 'depended heavily on the financial resources of their kinship group', with 'traditional' sources of capital - loans, marriage, savings and especially inheritance - being the most important. Ellis, op. cit, 93.
84. Holderness, 'Widows', op. cit., 441
85. K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in English Village: Terling, 1525-1700 (1979; Oxford edn, 1995), 100.
86. Sharpe, 'Dealing with love', op. cit., 218, 222.
87. R. Tittler, Townspeople and Nation: English Urban Experiences 1540-1640 (Stanford, 2001), 187.
88. DUL DPRI/1/1632/S5, Margaret Simpson; NRO DN/INV 23/79, 1609, Joan Morley.
89. In Durham Jane Eshton's inventory made it clear that the bond she had in her possession to the value of £40 had originally been the sum of her portion; DUL DPRI/1/1699/E5, Jane Eshton. See also NRO DN/INV 27A/196, 1616, Judith [?].
90. J. M. Spicksley, 'Usury legislation, cash and credit: The development of the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods', Economic History Review, forthcoming. Other historians, too, have referenced a move towards cash bequests.
91. See Erickson, op. cit., 85
92. C. Howell, Land, Family and Inheritance in Transition: Kibworth Harcourt 1280-1700 (Cambridge, 1983), 265-6
93. M. Griffiths, Kirtlington: An Oxfordshire Community, 1500-1750 (D.Phil, Oxford, 1979), 361.
94. Nor was the shift to cash bequests confined to those of a broadly middling status represented in the diocesan records. Large landowners moved towards a system of bequests in cash for younger sons and daughters from the late sixteenth century, with the transition towards cash gifts occurring first in the case of daughters;
95. J. Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System: English Landownership 1650-1900 (Oxford, 1994), 3, 117. Cooper argued that the cash portion began to replace the maritagium after 1300
96. J. P. Cooper, 'Patterns of inheritance and settlement by great landowners from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries' in J. Goody, J. Thirsk. and E. P. Thompson (eds), Family and Inheritance. Rural Society in Western Europe 1200-1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 212.
97. Erickson, op. cit., 93.
98. E. A. Wrigley, R. S. Davies, J. E. Oeppen and R. S. Schofield, English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837 (Cambridge, 1997), Table 6.21, 295; Table 5.3, 134. From a high point of 41.7 in 1581, expectation of life at birth experienced overall decline during the seventeenth century, falling to its lowest point of 28.5 in 1681.
99. E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541-1871 (Cambridge, 1981; paperback edn with new introduction, Cambridge, 1989), Table 7.15, 230.
100. L. Bonfield, 'Normative rules and property transmission: Reflections on the link between marriage and inheritance in early modern England' in L. Bonfield, R. M. Smith and K. Wrightson (eds), The World We Have Gained. Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford, 1986), 173
101. A. Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenth Century Clergyman (Cambridge, 1970), 64-7.
102. C[entre for] K[entish] S[tudies] PRC 17/68, 1631-3, Daniel Nicols.
103. DUL DPRI/1/1619/C2, Ann Calverley.
104. Erickson, op. cit., 72. At least eight men left their eldest daughter 12d, all no later than 1661: LA LCC Wills 1604/i/44, Thomas Babe; LCC 1630-258, Christopher Muncaster; LCC 1631/306, Robert Howe; LCC 1631/345, Caleb Gresswell; LCC 1631/351, Thomas Kilpack; LCC 1631/ 354, James Fodie; LCC 1661/i/258, Thomas Woode; LCC 1661/ii/744, George Whiteinge.
105. Nicholas Burton, a yeoman from West Torrington, who had initially instructed that his daughter Winifred receive the sum of £10 in cash one year after his death, later reduced the legacy to a mere 5s in six months' time. LA LCC Wills, 1661/i/121, Nicholas Burton.
106. Since age cannot be held constant, it is impossible to determine whether this trend was real or a function of the sample - a higher percentage of daughters in the 1570s could simply have been minors.
107. E. Kerridge, Usury, Interest and the Reformation (Aldershot, 2002), 5, 56.
108. 13 Eliz. 1. c.8.
109. In 1597, for example, John Mayes of Ringsfield, Suffolk, noted among the 'good and sober' inhabitants of his parish as a usurer, denied the allegation on the grounds that he 'received no sum illegally beyond £10 in £100'; his case was dismissed. P. Hair (ed.), Before the Bawdy Court Selections from church court and other records relating to the correction of moral offences in England, Scotland and New England, 1300-1800 (London, 1972), 47-8.
110. 21 Jac. I. c.17; 12 Car. II. c.13. The 1571 Act remained on the statute books until 1854, although charges of usurious dealings increasingly came to rest only on those charging excessive interest, as determined by reference to statutory legal rates. However, the legislation was repealed for loans over £10 in 1839. M. Tebbutt, Making Ends Meet: Pawnbroking and Working-class Credit (Leicester, 1983), 101.
111. N. Jones, God and the Moneylenders. Usury and the Law in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1989), 29.
112. 13 Eliz I, c. 8.
113. Kerridge, Usury, op. cit., 63
114. C. H. Firth, 'The Ballad History of the Reign of James I', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd series, V (1911), 59.
115. 'The Complaining Bridegroom or Roger's Repentance', in W. G. Day (ed.), The Pepys Ballads, V (Cambridge, 1987), 237.
116. Holderness, 'Widows', op. cit., 440. The county averages were as follows: Chester 68%; Chichester 79%; Durham 76%; Lincolnshire 66%; Norfolk 70%. These figures reflect the relatively small value of single women's personal property aside from their capital, which made them especially vulnerable in economic crises.
117. Examination of marital designations in a selection of Tudor and Stuart probate material suggested that on average only 19 per cent of single men were designated as such, in comparison with the much higher figure of 64 per cent in the case of women.
118. See J. M. Spicksley, 'The Early Modern Demographic Dynamic: Celibates and Celibacy in Seventeenth Century England' (Ph.D, University of Hull, 2001), Appendix 1, Table A1.4, 268.
119. A total of 379 probate documents belonging to men identified as single were found in Lincolnshire; in Norfolk the figure was considerably lower at 129.
120. Lincolnshire men held on average 56 per cent of their wealth in credits, compared to 66 per cent of women; in Norfolk the figures were 68.5 per cent and 70 per cent respectively. The figures for mean debt are as follows: Norfolk males 1601-10 £24, 1681-90 £15; Lincoln males 1601-10 £15, 1691-1700 £38; Norfolk females 1601-10 £20, 1681-90 £138; Lincoln females 1601-10 £8, 1691-1700 £77. This may in part explain the slight overall decline in levels of participation by single women in some areas mentioned earlier: Fewer women, it seems, were holding greater amounts of debt.
121. I have calculated the total amount of credit that each group may have been able to offer by multiplying the number of individuals in each group listed in the census by the mean average amount of credit they were holding. I have used the figures for mean credit held by married men £30) and widows (£30) from those given for the gentry, clergy, agricultural households, tradesmen and widows between 1688 and 1709 in Holderness's 'Credit in a rural community', op. cit., 98. Figures for single women (£98) and single men £38) have been extracted from the Lincoln and Norfolk material and applied to those over the age twenty-one in the census. As 40 per cent of the population according to Overton et al. were likely be too poor to make an inventory, I have reduced the numbers in each group by this amount.
122. See Overton et al., op. cit., 26. The results indicate that in Lichfield, in 1695, 266 married men could have been offering a total of £1980 in credit; 99 widows £2970; 68 single men £2584; and 133 single women £13,034, almost as much as the other three groups put together, and with a relative purchasing price in 2006 of £1,353,827.
123. See L. H. Officer, 'Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1264 to 2006', measuringWorth. com, 2007, URL: http://www.measuringworth.com/ calculators/ppoweruk/# [accessed 13 March 2007].
124. Mean inventory values (less debts) for single male lenders in Lincolnshire rose from £14 in the 1600s to £47 in the 1690s. The mean values of the Norfolk male lenders fluctuated considerably. They also experienced a general upward trend but only until the 1660s, after which the average fell back to a figure of £27 in the 1680s. 88 Wrigley and Schofield argued that the proportion of men and women who had not married by the ages of 40-44 rose significantly from the end of the sixteenth century to peak at 27 per cent between 1686 and
125. Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, op. cit., Table 7.28, 260. Celibacy rates, particularly in the later seventeenth century, may have been lower than these original estimates, but later work confirms the high levels of celibacy during the seventeenth century.
126. D. R. Weir, 'Rather never than late: Celibacy and age at marriage in English cohort fertility', Journal of Family History, IX (1984), 340-54
127. R. Schofield, 'English marriage patterns revisited', Journal of Family History, X (1985), 2-20.
128. D. Woodward, Men at Work. Labourers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England, 1450-1750 (Cambridge, 1995), 216.
129. H. B. Wheatley (ed.), Stow's Survey of London (London, 1912), 360-2.
130. CKS, PRC 17/68, 1631-3, Edward Stevens.
131. Day (ed.), Pepys Ballads, IV, 142
132. J. W. Ebsworth (ed.), The Roxburghe Ballads, VIII (1895), 204.
133. J. Spicksley, 'A dynamic model of social relations: Celibacy, credit and the identity of the 'spinster' in seventeenth-century England' in H. French and J. Barry (eds), Identity and Agency in Early Modern England (Palgrave 2004), 124-8.
134. Cited in Ellis, op. cit., 86.
135. Accounts provide evidence of debts paid from the deceased's estate. P. Spufford, M. Brett and A. L. Erickson (eds), Probate Accounts of England and Wales, British Record Society, 112, 113 (1999).
136. M. S. Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past (Cambridge, 2004).
137. A. L. Erickson, 'Coverture and capitalism', History Workshop Journal LIX (2005), 8.
138. Hartman, op. cit., 5.
139. Ellis, op. cit., 84-5. Domestic trades needed a relatively small initial outlay - between £20 and £100, for instance
140. R. Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1995), 83. Much of the capital continued to be accumulated through personal connections during the eighteenth century
141. M. Hunt, The Middling Sort. Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England 1680-1780 (Berkeley, 1996), 22-3.
142. J. O. Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in 17th Century England (New Jersey, 978), 65.