Part II: Early Modern England

P A R T I I :

E A R LY M O D E R N E N G L A N D

C H A P T E R 7

The Consumption Stage: Food And Clothing

BETWEEN 1520 AND 1701, the English population is estimated to have grown by about 111 percent, from around 2.40 million to some 5.06 million.

This last fi gure represents a slight drop (about 4.2 percent) from the peak estimate — 5.28 million — for 1657. 1 Over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this much larger population was enabled to produce increasing quantities of an expanding range of fi nal goods and services, all improving in quality.

Analytically, this change has to be separated into the two distinct components producing this composite outcome: fi rstly, growth in the capacity or potential to achieve ends, and secondly, the actual, specifi c ends for which this capacity was concretely used.

a. When we look at growth in the quality, quantity and range of fi nal outputs, we are looking at only the fi nal stages of production, nearest fi nal use, of some particular capital structures. But production in these last stages of production is possible only because there already exist previous stages of investment with investment goods that link up into “chains” completed down to the fi nal output stage. In other words, production in these last stages is only the fi nal outcome of a lengthier production process involving specifi c investment goods in a chain of investments going back through a number of previous stages of production. Growth diversifi cation and improvement in fi nal outputs

353

can occur only as and if this capacity to produce fi nal outputs — the capital structure — is extended. Building up the production structure (the capacity to produce fi nal outputs) means that more and more investment goods — versatile and specifi c — are now being used in stages of investment further and further removed from fi nal use, while more and new investment goods are produced to help “complete” these lengthier chains of investment down to the stage of fi nal use. Thus there is a “lengthening” in the entire production process — an increase in the number of investment stages intervening — between fi nal use and the stage further removed.

To investigate this requires tracing through and assessing the various specifi c investment that form the “chains” of capital growth involved, to see how much further these “chains” have been extended back from the stage of fi nal use. There is no simple substitute for such an examination of the capital structure and its investment relationships: merely looking to simple increases in the quantities of particular investment goods gives no clue. That is because what needs to be known is how investment goods — of various kinds — formed investment “chains” leading to the fi nal outputs produced.

b. So far as ends are concerned: Had the people of England all been sin— cere and devout Buddhists in the early modern period, I would now be reporting a great increase in leisure time (to be used for meditation and reading the scriptures), accompanied by a moderate increase in a restricted range of material goods and service (since material ends are so much less important to the true Buddhist). But to extend the leisure available to a growing Buddhist population, and to provide the modest increases in material goods and services needed to fulfi l the moderate material requirements of this growing populace, would still require an increase in the capacity to supply both more leisure and modest material necessities, for more and more people. So, for a growing Buddhist population, I would be describing the corresponding kind of capital structure and extensions in it: the kind that made possible this type of increase in fi nal output — in leisure more than in material products. The kinds of concrete investments that would form and extend this type of capital structure would be very diff erent indeed from these that produced and greater growth in material outputs.

Now since the people of England in fact preferred material ends I report instead that the growth in the capacity to provide fi nal output was actually used to produce a substantial growth in the range, qualities and quantities of material goods and services, together with an increase in leisure (which, however, was used to pursue material kinds of leisure activities). This kind of growth in fi nal output — consisting more in material outputs than in leisure — was made possible only because capacity grew: ie the capital structure was extended; Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 355

In short: fi nal outputs — whatever their actual content — can be increased, improved and diversifi ed only as and if the capital structure is extended: its investment “chains” are lengthened further from the fi nal stages of use.

c. A capital structure is thus analogous to a language which serves only as an instrument through which people say what they please. Just so, a capital structure (of interrelated investments) is only instrumental: it provides the means — including leisure — needed to obtain those ends that people do in fact fi nd desirable. As and when this capital structure is extended, greater supplies of means are produced — supplies of whatever means people need in the attainment of whatever — diverse and contradictory — ends they severally seek.

(Again, the means here would include leisure.) It follows — and this must be emphasised — that all “fi nal” outputs are still only instruments: they are still only means toward various ends. In short: the capital structure is an ends independent social formation; its gradual extension — of its investment “chains”, the productive processes involved — is what makes possible the growing provision of an expanding range of specifi c means from its fi nal stages of production;

these means are needed by people to secure those specifi c and concrete ends they wish to obtain. And so we return to the growing and improving range of fi nal outputs turned out in the fi nal production stages of the growing capital structure — the chains of investments — found in early modern England: Here and in the next chapter (ch. 8) I look at consumer goods and services. I then consider the distributive stages (ch. 9) and then the various production stages

(ch. 10).

Diet: Breadstuffs

For the bulk of the population, grain was the main foodstuff , taken chiefl y as barley bread, which even the poor ate.2 Rye remained the staple around

York and in some other areas up to the late seventeenth century. Wheat was still a luxury grain. For all these grains, there was, to the twentieth century historian unaccustomed to a diet high in grain, “a bewildering variety of quantities, types and prices.”3

The very poorest routinely ate as bread, a mix of cheaper foodstuff s, such as oats, peas and beans with acorns or tares and lentils; peas with rye or maslin;

or oats and maslin. When harvests fell, such mixtures were also used by the poor. Thus in Norfolk in 1623, buckwheat and barley were mixed — a hitherto unaccustomed and so unpalatable combination.

Other Items

After bread, for most households, pies, puddings and “porridge” or thick stew were the next major items, followed by cheese and milk or whey; even the poorest had some cheese (except in Cumbria). Otherwise, poorer households in lowland areas ate bacon; pigkeeping spread with potato cultivation in the seventeenth century. Such households used mostly lard, with only a little butter.

In a Suff olk prison of the late sixteenth century, inmates had two main meals, each made up of four ounces of rye bread with cereal or legume “porridge”, beer, and either four ounces of meat or about fi ve ounces of cheese or “a good herring”. In poorhouses and hospitals, peas and beans were included. Eggs are never mentioned in such diets. Clearly the bulk of such a basic diet consisted of grains, including the inferior rye, but the minor part did include meat or fi sh. P.J. Bowden argues that dairy products, eggs and meat may not have bulked large in the landless labourer’s diet and their role may have decreased as his real income fell — i.e. grain rose as a proportion of his diet through the sixteenth and up to the mid-seventeenth century. But in the prison diet just mentioned, the quantity of meat or cheese (by weight) equalled or exceeded that of bread, although grain was also taken in other forms: i.e. non-grain items were quite signifi cant in even the most basic diets.

To the staples of barley bread, other grain preparations, dairy products and bacon, the majority of the population could add eggs and poultry, including ducks and, in many areas, geese. The poor had pigeons. The majority also had beef, veal, mutton, lamb and salt fi sh. Several areas (from Yorkshire to Kent) had rabbit (also eaten by the poor) while the East and South-east had turkey.

Even the poorest in the lowland areas ate root vegetables (radishes, carrots, parsnips), cabbages, lettuce and garden herbs. By the late sixteenth century, villagers from around York went there for seed vegetables. To the roots and greens mentioned, the majority of the population added onions, turnips and potatoes (which even the poorest tried by the late seventeenth century);

caraway, mustard and liquorice were used for fl avouring. By the late sixteenth century, seasonal fruits and vegetables (eg. dessert apples and peas) and root vegetables were sold retail in shops in both London and the provinces. Apples, cherries and pears were the most widely consumed fruits; they were available in scores of varieties by the late seventeenth century. Prunes were also widely consumed by the later sixteenth century. They were widely stocked in shops and sold at fairs, along with imported dried fruit and spices, even in upland areas. Prunes were among the cargoes imported then into Norwich and Weymouth. Between the late sixteenth and late seventeenth century, output rose suffi ciently to reduce the price by 56 percent: In 1580-99, they sold (in Ripon) Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 357

for 3d. a pound. By 1681, the pricing unit was three pounds, and the cost was

4d (in Lancaster; the shop sold a cwt. of prunes per week in summer).4 The poorest in lowland areas had hedge-fruits and wild berries and nuts. Many

(except the very poorest) kept beehives, including townsmen.

For the very poorest in upland Cumbria, oat and barley preparations (oat— cakes, bread, beer etc.) constituted the bulk of their diet. Some meat was taken, but cheese appears to have been a rarity. Only the better-off had bacon, poultry, peas and beans; the wealthier households added wildfowl, deer, fi sh and fruits (apples, pears, cherries, plums). 5 Thus in Cumbria only the most prosperous had items that in lowland areas were consumed by the majority.

Drink

In the West of England, cider was drunk; the better-off also had mead;

the poorest drank perry. The Welsh drank metheglin. Both beer and ale were drunk by the entire population, even the very poorest 6.

Beer replaced ale (except in home-brewing) — more rapidly in the South and the Midlands, but in other areas by the later seventeenth century. This meant that a product of far better quality (including potency) was available at lower prices than an inferior product, which sold at higher prices: Ale was a heavy, thick, low-quality liquid which had to be drunk soon after manufacture.

Beer was far better in quality: it kept longer, it was clearer, lighter, more tasty and eff ective, and transportable. In Boston in 1547 and in Chester in 1561, beer was signifi cantly cheaper than ale: the best ale cost 15 percent more than the best beer; which also had more strength, while the price of ordinary ale was

50 percent highter than that of single beer. In the 1570s, in eastern England, strong beer sold at 2½d.-3d. a gallon, while ale retailed at 3d. a gallon. But beer cost only 1d. a gallon to brew; ale cost 2d. Even stronger beers were also now available, costing three times more than the strongest to date. Otherwise, there were at least three standard types: double, middle, small, progressively weaker in content. Lower income groups drank small beer, which then was quite nutritious, containing 150-200 calories a pint. In Portsmouth, sometime after 1625, the three types sold for 10s., 8s. and 6s. a barrel respectively. London prices were higher, of course, they ranged from 14s. to 8s. Over the sixteenth century, London prices appear to have risen by two-thirds. In Norwich, on the other hand, over the half-century between the 1560’s and the 1610’s, prices rose by 20 percent. In Canterbury over the 80 years between the 1560’s and the 1630’s offi cially-set prices rose by 25 percent.

Consumption certainly increased over these two centuries. Peter Clark attributes this partly to taste and unemployment, and then goes on: “The 358 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

general rise in drinking was also possibly a result of food shortages and the effi - cacy of malt liquor as a nutritional substitute.” 7. Now “food shortages” mean a fall in the barley harvest but a “general rise in drinking” means more beer which means a larger barley crop. Since barley foodstuff s (the staple at the time) and beer were both produced from the same barley harvest, a change in its size would have to aff ect both products in exactly the same way. Thus if the barley crop declined, so there were “food shortages”, the supply of beer must also have fallen, because this same drop in the harvest must also have raised the cost of brewing. The converse also holds, of course: it is an increase in the barley harvest which makes possible an increased supply of beer (via the channel of a lower brewing cost). But with more barley, there cannot be “food shortages”. Thus increased beer consumption means that barley harvests were rising which means barley foodstuff s were also increasing (I discuss the question of dearth below).

Over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, two imported foodstuff s defi nitely went from upper-class luxuries to mass consumption commodities.

These were sugar and tobacco. Imported fresh fruits, dried fruits and spices — especially pepper — also became common consumption items.

Sugar

During the sixteenth century, small quantities of sugar started being imported through Antwerp, from the Portuguese Atlantic islands and Brazil.8

In mid-century, some came direct from Morocco. As the century progresses, there is indirect evidence of a continuing rise in imports. By 1544, a sugar-refi ning industry had started in London. By the later sixteenth century, provincial ports were also involved: thus, Southampton imported sugar for trans-shipment to London, while sugar, molasses and syrup were all being imported into Norwich. In 1568, a Welsh pedlar bought sugar candy (amongst other things) at Hereford fair: which suggests that by now imports were suffi ciently high so that large numbers of the population, even at lower income and social levels, could buy small quantities as a small-scale luxury. In the late 1570s, it was stocked even in Kirkby Lonsdale. At the end of the sixteenth century, both sugar and candy were being retailed in Ripon. With rising imports, sugar refi ning began in Bristol in 1612. By the mid-seventeenth century, the quantity imported was so great and consequently the price had fallen so far, that sugar was used wholesale to sweeten wine.

Brazil remained the main European supplier to the 1640s. Brazilian output expanded suffi ciently to bring prices down by the 1630s to far below the sixteenth-century level: in 1634-35, sugar sold retail at around 1sh. 3d. to Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 359

1sh. 6d. per pound. Although the West Indies were colonised permanently in 1624, sugar production required much investment in buildings, equipment and slaves. So Barbados fi rst grew sugar in 1637. Costs turned out to be lower than in Brazil and continued falling; the rise in production reduced the price to about 9d. per pound, wholesale, in the later 1650s. Jamaica grew sugar from 1655 and West Indian output expanded so greatly that by the 1660s it had replaced Brazilian production in England and northern Europe. Glas— gow opened its fi rst sugar refi nery in 1677. Continued growth in production pushed prices down even further: by 1684-89, the retail price of sugar stood at

6d.-7d. per lb. — 60 percent below its level of the 1630s. Customs duties prevented the price from falling even more.

Over these two centuries, the value of sugar imports rose from an estimated

£25,349 in 1560 — some 3.3 percent of all London imports — to an average of £630,000 p.a. in 1699-1701, or 11 percent of all English imports (on average for these three years). In the 1660s, imports of sugar were estimated to run at 10,000 tons p.a.; by 1700, this fi gure exceeded 24,000 tons p.a. Two thirds was consumed at home; the other third was re-exported 9.

Tobacco

Small quantities of tobacco started coming into England via Spain from the late sixteenth century onwards 10. The ultimate source is given variously:

Central America; Venezuela and Brazil; the Spanish Caribbean. It was an expensive luxury for the wealthy; an import duty was placed in 1604. With the permanent settlement of the American mainland in 1607, cultivation began in Virginia fi ve years later and the fi rst Virginia tobacco reached England in

1614. As cultivation spread on both the mainland and the West Indies, output increased rapidly through the 1620s and 1630s and continued climbing thereafter.

English tobacco imports rose from around 50-60,000 lbs. in 1615 to 38 million lbs. in 1700. Tobacco was a major import into Bristol from the 1630s onwards; into Liverpool from 1670 and into Whitehaven from 1685. The total value of all tobacco imports rose from £55,000 in 1622 (3.5 percent of all London imports) to an average of £249,000 in the three years 1699-1701

(4.3 percent of all English imports). The vast rise in output reduced the price dramatically.

At the end of the sixteenth century, tobacco retailed by the pipeful, at 3d.

per fi ll. Then as imports increased, it sold by the pound, at 20s.-40s. retail, up to 1619. In mid-century, “Spanish” tobacco sold at 7sh. per pound in Ipswich:

17.½-35 percent of its price in the early seventeenth century. By the 1670s, the 360 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

retail price stood at a shilling or less per pound, though the best Virginia cost more than twice as much at 2s. 2d. per pound. In 1681, average tobacco sold retail at 6d. per pound. The range of qualities may have widened — “chew— ing” tobacco retailed at 3s. per pound in the 1690s. Inventory valuations — approximate wholesale prices — fell from 9sh. per pound in Wigan in 1617 to

1sh.8d. per pound in Oxfordshire, 15 years later. By 1681, the wholesale price was as low as 2d. per lb.

In the years 1663-69, import duties (at 2d. per lb.) were well over 100 percent of the plantation cost in Virginia. After 1685, these duties were some three times the Virginia cost.

By the later sixteenth century, tobacco was already being retailed in an Ipswich shop; it was sold in Wigan in 1617. Otherwise, the early retailers were apothecaries and, in London, specialist tobacco-shops. By the early seventeenth century, tobacco was sold by the pipeful at alehouses, and smoked in communal pipes. (Many victuallers’ inventories include pipes and tobacco).

Many retail purchases were made at the alehouse from victualler or tapster or from itinerant dealers selling wholesale to the alehouse-keeper. By the 1630s, tobacco was smoked across the nation: retailing licenses — instituted to raise revenue — were spread throughout all regions. There were concentrations in

London and Middlesex, of course, and in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. In

1657, Salisbury held 8 licenses, with a total of 58 in other towns and villages in Wiltshire. The rest of England and Wales had a total of 1,997. The range of sellers continued to widen: mercers, chandlers, ironmongers, barbers and pedlars added tobacco to all the other goods they carried.

Other Food Imports

Imported fruit, both fresh (oranges, lemons) and dried (fi gs, currants, raisins) as well as spices (pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg) — all became commonly consumed in this period.11 At the aggregate level, the evidence is not as clear-cut as with sugar and tobacco; but the other evidence is of exactly the same character. The total value of London imports of currants and raisins in 1560 was £16,557; for all of England, this fi gure averaged £174,000 in the three years 1699-1701, and it included other dried fruits. Over the same period, the value of spice imports (not including pepper) went from £6,714 to

£27,000. (The spices are nutmeg, cloves, mace, cinnamon). Pepper imports rose from £16,474 to £103,000. For all these commodities, the greatest apparent increases came between 1560 and 1622; thereafter growth decelerated or levelled off .

By the later 1560s, oranges and lemons were being imported into provincial ports (such as Weymouth), and also carried into Cumbria: in February

1569, 100 oranges were sent from London to Newcastle and then to Keswick at a cost of less than a farthing each. Six artichokes were included — at 4d.

each, they were several times as expensive as the imported fruit. The buyers were German copper miners. In 1581, some 20,000 oranges and 1,000 lemons were shipped into Norwich.

Raisins and fi gs had reached even Kendal well before the 1540s. By the later sixteenth century, imported dried fruit (raisins, currants, fi gs) was sent regularly from London to the provincial ports, with further trans-shipments.

All were sold widely in shops and fairs, in lowland and upland areas. By the early seventeenth century, some merchants were predominantly wholesalers — i.e. the quantities involved had defi nitely risen. Even in the 1580s, imported dried fruit was not much more expensive than locally-produced prunes: raisins sold at 4d. a pound, currants at 4d.-6d. a pound, prunes at 3d. a pound in

Ripon between 1580-99.

By the late 1570s, spices were widely stocked in shops in lowland and upland areas; they were also sold at fairs. Pepper was the most widely used

— it was carried even by pedlars in most areas, including Wales, from the late

1560s. Pedlars also carried ginger (about the same price as pepper); and some had saff ron (more expensive). At least one Lincolnshire chapman in the early seventeenth century was a walking spice-shop: he could supply the entire range (including mace, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg). One shop in Lincolnshire had turmeric by 1619. Thus a wide range of spices was used regularly by the mass of the population by the early seventeenth century.

The Upper Classes

The diet of the wealthy was distinguished by its composition, quality, quantity and variety.12 Grain was the smaller percentage and that consisted of the luxury food, wheat: the major part was made up of various kinds of meat, fi sh and poultry, according to season. Harrison lists beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, cony, capon. The Star Chamber dinner accounts are much grander, of course: listing 18 diff erent sorts of bird, including domestic poultry, wildfowl, gamebirds and waterfowl. Besides oysters, salmon and three sorts of eel, there are 18 kinds of fi sh, both salt and freshwater, and fi ve varieties of shellfi sh.

The range of vegetables was also much wider. Harrison complained that men now ate what had been hitherto considered suitable only for hogs or wild animals. He reported that both merchant and gentry tables now had such unseemly victuals as gourds, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, two sorts 362 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

of parsnips, carrots, cabbages, salad greens and even — mushrooms and auber— gines. The Star Chamber accounts mention artichokes, caulifl owers and peas;

two sorts of vinegar and olive oil were used in salad dressings. In addition, watercress, leeks, sorrel and endive were consumed by the wealthy. By the late seventeenth century, some vegetables were diff erentiated yet further: there were eight varieties of lettuce, four of watercress, three types of cucumbers and fi ve kinds of onions.

Luxury consumption included a far wider range of fruits. Harrison’s list of upper-class novelties included melons; others in this category were apricots, plums, goose-berries, cherries. Again, by the late seventeenth century, there was a huge range of varieties of all types of fruits — those listed, plus apples and pears. Imports — oranges and lemons — were also eaten, of course.

Large quantities of beer and ale were drunk, but wine was, of course, the upper-class drink. Between 1563-65 and 1620, the value of wine imports rose about 5.4 times. There was a shift towards cheaper wines from Spain: they rose from 40 to 50 percent of the total. Between 1622 and the three years

1699-1701, wine imports almost doubled again, but signifi cantly, they fell as a proportion of total imports from just under 18 to somewhat over 9 percent: ie, non13-luxury imports rose much faster .

Looking now at more specifi c data for upper–class food and drink consumption: From the Lisle letters it is clear that in the 1530’s, such items as venison, partridge, quail, heron, crane, stork, salmon, sturgeon, carp and capon pasties were given as gifts amongst the very wealthy, ie those forming part of court circles 14. This means that even at this very high level, these foodstuff s were luxuries, not ordinary item of daily consumption. Even quince marmalade and other conserves were still luxuries here, sent round as gifts, because of the quantities of expensive sugar required. (Henry VIII was quite fond of

Lady Lisle’s marmalade and damson preserves, as were other recipients.) Artichokes, melons, cherries, pomegranates, grapes, oranges, lemons, fresh peas-in-the-pod and cherry and other conserves were also sent as gifts, as were barrels of herring, cod, sardines and of course, wine together with entire cheeses.

The artichokes from the gardens of Lord Lisle’s offi cial Calais residence were reserved for Henry VIII. On another occasion, he was given a basket of fresh peas-in-the-pod. Parmesan cheese was another luxury gift (or bribe) for high offi cials.

The supplies purchased for Lord Lisle’s family and household — ie for the routine consumption of his family members, personal staff and servants

— included 60 beef carcases; 300 mutton; 60 lamb; 20 pork; 40 fl itches of bacon; 100 “couple” of ling (the most expensive saltfi sh); 200 “couple” of Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 363

“haberdine” (salted cod — cheaper by more than 60 percent); 100 “couple”

of stockfi sh; 6 barrels of butter, nearly 900 lbs of cheese and “1000–weight” of tallow. The items bought specifi cally for Lord and Lady Lisle (by John Husee, their man of business) included: white salt (ie, the most expensive kind); ling;

sprats; capons; a gammon of bacon; fi ne marmalade (at 9d. a lb — the coarse type, at 6d a lb, was not worth it, he said); comfi ts (8d. a lb); cherries (4d. the lb); “the best grapes”; conger eels (at 5s each); 30 in a fi rkin (they cost 14s.

10 d. including the barrel and carriage to Calais); wax candles; and 188 sweet oranges (these were actually a gift from Hussee — he couldn’t get 200). A wide range of spices, other tropical products and fl avourings were also sent to Lady

Lisle, together with barrels of quinces and bushels of barberries (to be made into preserves). The quinces were clearly a luxury — small ones could cost up to 8sh. per hundred (which Hussee considered too dear); the barberries cost

3sh. 4d. the basket plus 1d. for shipping to Calais.

The tropical products and fl avourings were obtained in wholesale quantities; they included sugar, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, currants, two sorts of raisins, fi gs (fresh and dried), almonds, two kinds of rice, sandalwood, licorice and aniseed. Isinglass and prunes were also sent.

The total amounts spent on each occasion ranged from £8-17-0 to £12-12-0.

Fine sugar cost between 6½d. to 8d. a lb; coarse or middle sugar cost 5 d. Rice could be had for 1d. or 1½d. a lb. Almonds cost 1½d. a lb., while raisins were

3d. or 7d. the lb. Pepper was bought at 1sh. 10d. the lb. The other spices were far more expensive; they ranged from 2¼d. to 5d. the ounce. At the lower end of this scale were ginger, mace, nutmeg (which however, cost 6d. on one occasion) and cinnamon (which was also purchased at 2½d. the ounce); cloves cost between 3¾d. and 4½d per ounce; currants were 3d., fi gs came from 2s. 4d. to

4s. per basket (or 30 lbs). Wine was purchased in Calais itself; certainly barrels were sent across to England as gifts, and were also received by the Lisles.

In 1655, a book of recipes was published, said to have been taken from those used for Queen Henrietta Maria 15. It had recipes for a variety of fi sh:

pike, mullet, carp, salmon, sole, plaice, fl ounders, anchovies; and also for potted pigeons and potted venison. Other dishes involved shoulder of mutton, capon, fat beef, calves’ meat, oysters, etc. Practically all dishes required lengthy preparation and long cooking, with many spices, wine, much butter, many eggs, and quantities of items such as artichokes, lemons, oranges, almonds, currants, raisins, dates, etc. A “Turkish dish” combined beef or mutton with rice, pepper and onions. There were many recipes for keeping food over long periods

(up to six months or a year): for preserving meats, and pickling cucumbers, lemons, walnuts, quinces, etc. Substantial quantities were involved, eg one recipe was for preserving “baked buttocks”. Sweet dishes were now established 364 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

as routine: sugar was no longer a special delicacy; there were many diff erent sorts of cakes, and other sweet preparations, such as candied fruits, syrups, etc. Large quantities of sugar were used, both in these dishes and for preserving foods. Salads were also now an established item of diet. “The fi nest olive oil” is set down as an ingredient, so other sorts were also available. Silver utensils are mentioned throughout the book: for preparation, cooking, serving and eating.

A printed recipe book means that the items mentioned in it are consumed by a far wider range of people (and far larger numbers) than the handfuls making up county society or court circles: the continued growth of output had made it possible for more and more families and households to increase and diversify their diet.

Andrew Appleby compares the vast range of luxury items consumed at a feast given by the Duke of Buckingham in 1508 with the food consumed daily by the very poorest segment of the population. 16 This procedure is not very helpful in identifying either the normal daily consumption of the wealthy, or the diet of the 95 per cent (or so) of the population who fell into neither category. It is rather like examining the vast range of sumptuous fare provided at some really wealthy family’s wedding feast in twentieth-century India, with the meagre daily consumption of beggars at the very bottom of the scale. This tells us nothing about either the actual everyday consumption of the very wealthy, or the daily diet of the hundreds of millions in between. The point here is not to minimize these diff erences but rather to get a wider-ranging and more realistic picture.

D. M. Palliser says, “The eff ect of the increasing trade and commercial farming was refl ected in a richer diet for the well-to-do. They enjoyed plenti— ful meat, fi sh, dairy produce, wheaten bread, beer and wine.” 17 In other words,

“the increasing trade and commercial farming” consisted of an expansion in luxury foodstuff s: the wealthy were producing and trading upper-class foods amongst themselves (according to Palliser), while the mass of the population lived by subsistence farming, with some employed in the production of luxury foods. In fact, of course, the bulk of grain output consisted of mass-consump-tion grains: barley, rye, oats; only the smaller part consisted of wheat (itself relatively delicate in its farming requirements). Similarly, in agricultural marketing, malt and barley “formed the staples of the domestic cereal trade”, not wheat. Of those disputes in Chancery involving grain, only 13 percent concerned wheat; the bulk were over barley.18 The livestock trade overwhelmingly dealt in cattle, sheep and bacon, not the quail, plover, woodcock, pheasant, partridge, heron, crane, peacock, etc, etc. itemised in the Star Chamber accounts quoted by Appleby. Equally for fi sh: the bulk of the trade was in saltfi sh for Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 365

mass consumption, not in the salmon, trout, oysters, crayfi sh, crabs, etc. etc.

which Appleby quotes. The bulk of the drink trade consisted of mass-consumption ale and beer, not upper-class wine. In short, “the expansion in trade and commercial farming” was an expansion in mass-consumption foodstuff s, not the items consumed by the well-to-do (contra Palliser).

Dearth

Historians have engaged in extensive discussions of the recurrence of

“dearth” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: its causes, how (or whether) the very poorest obtained grain, the impact on death rates. To put this into perspective, let us look at the developments made possible because food output had already reached and maintained the required level: The total

English population grew by about 70 percent between 1520 and 1600, from around 2.4 million to perhaps 4.1 million. The non-agricultural segment rose somewhat faster, by 79 percent, from a little over 25, to a little under 27 percent of the total. The bulk of this non-agricultural segment was rural, not urban; its rural percentage declined from 74 to 69 percent, its urban percentage rose correspondingly. The entire urban population more than doubled, from 161,000 to 335,000; its proportion to the total rose somewhat from 6.7 to 8.2 percent. 19

In short, non-food agricultural output (wool, industrial crops) had risen to the extent needed for this sustained expansion of non-agricultural employment and output. This expansion was in both range and quantity, and in both by-employments and full-time specialisations.

For the majority of the population, grain (i.e. barley) formed the bulk of their diet. So when grain output dipped temporarily, how did the majority do, at this lower level? Now when barley production fell below normal, JPs complained that brewers and maltsters bought supplies, keeping out the poor.20

Clearly, these brewers were not producing for their own households; they sold beer (via innkeepers) to the vast majority of the populace (beer is not a luxury good). What happened, then, to this mass-consumption item? In making beer, cheaper grains are not readily substituted for barley (unlike ale), 21 so when barley production fell to a lower level, beer production did likewise. Now for the same majority who consumed beer, breadstuff s were the main item of diet

— i.e. they came fi rst. But brewers, maltsters and others did not complain that farmers, grain and meal merchants had withheld barley supplies: — i.e., at this lower level of barley output, supplies of breadcorn continued for the majority of the population. But they had less beer.

Even at a lower level of grain output, those payments and transfers normally made in grain continued as usual. 22 Journeymen were still fed by their 366 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

masters, as were urban and farm servants who lived in (although some smaller farmers did dismiss servants when grain harvests dipped). Farm servants living out continued to be paid partly in grain, as did carpenters and builders;

day-labourers were still paid partly in food and drink. But there might be some more theft prosecutions when farm workers took grain illegally. Farmers continued to sell grain to labourers at farm-gate prices, (although these increased when the harvest dipped) and to advance grain to some labourers on credit, against future work. The informal credit market — involving neighbours, kin and retailers — continued its functioning.

With a reduced barley harvest, the poor ate inferior grains or ate less, as they did when all grain crops dipped. But even at this lower level of output, there was enough grain so farmers could continue supplying cottagers, widows etc. with corn as part gift, part sale. Gleaning continued (though in some areas landlord and farmers tried to limit numbers). Beggars still got a share when corn was sown or winnowed.

Some transfers and payments in kind were instituted only when grain output fell to a lower level. Share croppers received grain from their landlords to make up for the decline in output. Landowners, large and small; farmers;

urban and rural merchants; the urban gentry — all provided more grains to both the rural and urban poor as part gift, part sale. Sometimes farm tenants received grain the same way. Farmers also provided grain on credit to the poor of their locality. The clergy, landowners and farmers spent much on charity; urban trade guilds supplied relief; and grain was distributed charitably in urban areas.

Town officials in both London and the provinces, imported Baltic rye for the poor as part gifts; some grain was given away. Some JPs in rural areas required merchants and farmers to give grain to the poor in addition to the amounts sold. The very poorest migrated to other regions that had a smaller decline in their grain harvest, or to urban areas. Theft also increased.23 So far as actual starvation goes, there was no change in local (parish) death rates in many years when the grain harvest fell.24 Only in some years did local death rates increase after a fall in grain output. These pockets of starvation were more pronounced in the north-west and far north, during the harvest declines of

1557-59, 1586-88, 1597-98 and 1622-23. During the fi rst three periods, mortality also rose — though not to Cumbrian levels — in particular parts of the midlands and the south-west. The parishes aff ected were in remote, upland or moorland areas or in valleys in less specialized farming regions. The harvest declines of 1622-23 produced starvation only in particular parishes in the north-west and far north.

In all these periods of reduced grain output, all other regions experienced their normal death rates. Thus, following the smaller harvests of 1535 and

1556, the proportion of observed parishes with crisis mortality reached a peak of 20.5 percent in November 1557. This maximum fi gure was only 8.9 percent in 1597-98 and 6.8 percent in 1622-23. In other words, even when grain output dropped most sharply (in the mid-sixteenth century) for nearly 80 percent of the parishes for which there are data, there was suffi cient food: their death rates remained normal. This was true for nearly 91 percent of observed parishes in 1597-98 and for over 93 percent in 1622-23. The areas suff ering starvation were less densely-settled; so the proportions of the population for whom there was suffi cient grain even when output fell, would have been higher still.

R.B. Outhwaite argues that “[s]ubsistence crises were likely to occur” in certain other areas also: pastoral, grain-importing regions, those with “lots of small farmers, labourers and artisans”, and “communities struggling with industrial change and depression.”25 Outhwaite off ers no estimates of death rates in these areas; their characteristics are not those of the grain-crisis parishes in the Wrigley-Schofi eld data (above).

At the aggregate level, mortality data confi rm that grain crises were localised. When grain prices rose, national death rates followed over the next two to three years, but then fell below average, so that over a fi ve-year period there was no impact on overall mortality. In other words, high grain prices appear to have changed the timing rather than the long-term level of aggregate mortality.

Finally, when fatal epidemics occurred (e.g. plague) the geographical pattern of crisis mortality was reversed: the grain-crisis parishes were barely aff ected;

mortality was highest in urban areas and in the densely-settled, more productive agricultural regions. 26

Grain crises ended even in the upland areas after 1623. For further perspective: in the seventeenth century, total population rose by 23 percent, the non-agricultural segment more than doubled, rising from about 27 to 45 percent of the total; the rural proportion of this segment fell from 69 to 63 percent. The urban population increased by over 2½ times, from 337,000 to

850,000, more than doubling as a proportion of the total, from 8.2 to 17.0 percent.27 Non-agricultural output and employment increased and diversifi ed even more.

Historians on Dearth

Against these continuing long term developments, we may examine some historians’ views of the causes of and cures for, dearth. This overview should 368 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

help to underline certain of the agricultural and economic developments of the period. John Walter interprets the continued use of grain payments and transfers in two ways. Firstly, as “valuable protection” against “harvest failure” and

“market prices”.28 This, however, is to assume that grain output in fact continued undiminished — it was just that prices rose. Only on this assumption can transfers and payments in grain be seen as channels for circumventing high prices to get at the unabated fl ow of grain continuing behind. Secondly, Walter — in eff ect — sees the volume of grain barter and grain transfers together with social diff erentiation, as reasons why grain harvests were prevented from falling. Upland areas (says Walter) did have poor natural conditions but they also lacked resident gentry and magistrates to distribute grain or organise its import. So as these areas had a far smaller number of transfers and payments in grain, their harvests fell further than in those regions that were more socially diff erentiated (he says in eff ect). Walter also argues that upland areas had the worst of both worlds: they had sacrifi ced self-suffi ciency so they combined a higher natural risk with economic risk — the grain market mechanism was too undeveloped to transfer grain during dearth.29

These arguments get the cart before the horse. When grain output drops, payments and transfers in grain can continue only because suffi cient grain is still produced at this lower level to continue with such transactions in kind. Nor can social diff erentiation produce grain; there has to be an independent explanation. Again, grain self-suffi ciency can disappear only if abundant and therefore cheap transport facilities exist to bring in this high-bulk, low-value good.

If there are few and therefore expensive transport services, there is no capacity to carry bulky grain, in addition to higher-value, lower-bulk goods. But if grain cannot be brought in, it must continue to be grown locally, and hence there has to be self suffi ciency. By the same token, only limited exchange is possible outside the region.

Other historians also feel that because the poor purchased grain, therefore harvests fell. Thus Outhwaite argues that as a rising population moved out of agriculture into other occupations, “decreasing proportions... were able to provide food for themselves; increasing proportions became dependent on the market for grain.” As grain prices rose relative to the nominal wage-index (compiled by Phelps-Brown and Hopkins), “increasing numbers were becoming harvest-sensitive, with this sensitivity becoming rawly— exposed when... the harvest failed.”30 Everitt likewise argues: “In consequence of this increased dependence on local markets, periods of dearth stuck the labouring population with growing severity.” 31 Wrigley and Schofi eld fi rst state that with a severe harvest defi ciency, many subsistence farmers would be forced to buy food. Then, forgetting this, they say on the same Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 369

page: where agricultural labourers and craftsmen did not have “direct access to food from their own plots”, their standard of living fell further than indicated by falls in the real wage-index (compiled by Phelps-Brown and Hopkins).

They conclude: “... both the increasing prevalence of wage labour in agriculture and the growth of the non-agricultural sector... between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries will have meant that a rising proportion of the population was adversely aff ected by high food prices as consumers and as producers.” 32

There are two implicit assumptions behind all these arguments: fi rstly, in subsistence farming, grain output never falls below subsistence level — production is always maintained at or above this level. Secondly, grain output remained constant behind any rise in grain prices. But as we have just seen, starvation deaths occurred in just those peripheral areas with a high degree of subsistence production. There were no subsistence crises in the overwhelming majority of parishes where the mass of the population obtained grain through exchange — whether barter or purchase. Exchange meant that areas best suited to grain production could specialise and so increase overall output, while other areas concentrated on other agricultural and industrial products. Only as barley output continued rising would any temporary decline in its production still leave suffi cient food supplies, for the vast majority of the population. And only with such an assured food supply would it be possible for a growing proportion of the population to specialise increasingly, on a permanent basis, in the production of non-food output. As both grain and non-food output expanded, the latter grew faster, gradually becoming the larger proportion of total output.

Now barley was purchased routinely at all times for both consumption and production purposes (as by brewers, maltsters, bakers). This marketing network remained unchanged during dearth as at other times. No one says, however, that because grain was purchased, therefore harvests were abundant: it is obvious that the larger quantity of grain has reduced its price. The opposite is not as obvious, however: that a decline in grain output must lead to a price increase. Here, the fact that grain is purchased is seen by many historians as the cause of the rise in price. But the marketing network simply provided the channels through which grain fl owed: the quantities/prices were determined ultimately by the harvest. Both these general considerations and the historical context need to be fi rmly grasped if discussions of the causes and ending of grain crises are to be meaningful.

Outhwaite concurs with Appleby that grain crises ended in Cumbria as people left the remoter areas to concentrate in the more accessible portions and as they increased their exchanges with areas outside. More broadly, he underlines the signifi cance of overall population change. During the seventeenth century (he points out), population growth decelerated; population then fell. 370 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

It recovered only gradually, remaining stagnant from 1640 to 1740. This reduced the demand for grain, which then led to agricultural diversifi cation and higher yields; marketing improved. But “the number of grain consumers rose also” and the price of grain remained volatile. So Outhwaite argues grain crises disappeared not so much because of “supply changes” as because per capita incomes rose. This occurred as employment shifted towards trade and industry and both population and unemployment fell. Also more people now had modest items (clothing, household goods) to pawn or sell as needed.33

This last line of argument says in eff ect that grain crises occurred because non-food output was low; grain crises disappeared as non-food output increased. But a larger volume of industrial production can exchange for more grain (than before) only if grain production rises. Moreover, it is somewhat misleading to say population stagnated between 1640 and 1740. Population kept rising to 1657, when it was 2.2 times its size in 1520. It then fell by just under

8 percent to its trough in 1686, but this was still more than double its level in

1520. Then between 1686 and 1741, population rose by almost 15 percent.

(By contrast, between 1621, when population began decelerating, and 1676 — also an interval of 55 years — population rose by only 6.6 percent or only 45 percent as fast). In 1741, the English population was 2.3 times greater than in

1520. Thus grain crises occurred when population (in 1556 and 1596) was about 25 to 40 percent below its peak of 1656. Subsistence crises ended (in the early 1620s) when it was about double its 1520 level and still growing. Only after34 grain crises had ceased, did population decelerate.

Dearth and Subsistence Production

Finally, to sharpen the perspective, I turn to the eff ects of a fall in grain output when this output is only just above subsistence level. This means that subsistence grain production constitutes the bulk of agricultural output and so there is a large volume of barter. In such circumstances, the famines that occurred were widespread and long-lasting in their impact. Thus in sixteenth and seventeenth-century India, “the usual scenes of horror marking a serious famine” included: large numbers of unburied corpses; cannibalism; “choked”

slave markets; the sale of children by their parents. The leading historian of

Mughal India, Irfan Habib, assesses one episode of scarcity thus: it had only a limited impact (he says) because the Mughal emperor, Shahjahan, ordered that children sold by their parents should be repurchased and restored by Mughal offi cials — which meant the numbers could not have been large — i.e. it was only a moderate scarcity. 35 Not only villages, but entire towns and cities were emptied during famine, as those remaining fl ed from the areas of crop failure.

Cattle, of course, also perished wholesale. Neighbouring regions experienced Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 371

signifi cant looting. After a famine, large areas remained uncultivated and were re-farmed only very slowly. Cloth and handicraft output declined in quantity and quality, as many skilled workers died and as cotton production fell, raising costs. 36

In comparing the Indian census data for the period 1871-1911, when famine still occurred, with the English population estimates for 1520-1600, we fi nd that the Indian population grew at a much slower pace than the English

— i.e., the latter grew much faster. Thus total population in England grew at a rate some 88 percent higher than in India; the growth rate of the English agricultural population was some 96 percent greater; and England’s urban population grew at a rate some 70 percent higher than in India (for the two diff erent periods compared).37

During famines in tropical Africa, lineage heads used to sell some members

— including children — into slavery, to raise food for the rest. This appears to have been a signifi cant source, on occasion, for the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the later eighteenth century.38 Thus in sixteenth and seventeenth-century

India, and in parts of Africa in the eighteenth century, grain output was normally so close to subsistence that a decline often meant famine: i.e., mass starvation, mass death, de-population, slavery. For England, these comparisons further clarify the substantial height above subsistence that grain output had achieved even by the sixteenth century.

Prof Tapan Raychaudhuri says, “When one reads … European accounts of India and other major Asian civilisations from the early modern age, one often has the impression of reading descriptions of a fi rst world … written by people from less fortunate climes”. 39 But the mass famines and de-population, especially of urban areas, described by Mughal offi cials and European merchants alike, are scarcely characteristic of a “fi rst world”; and such famines and loss of population are found nowhere in the “less fortunate climes” of the period. Furthermore, amongst the weavers and others who died in such numbers were those who produced textiles for the English East India Company.

That is, they produced mass-consumption cotton goods ultimately purchased by working-class buyers in England: even chapmen carried Indian calicoes in their packs [see below]. But these ordinary English workmen and women (in the seventeenth and eighteenth century) most defi nitely did not face the periodic mass famines that their Indian counterparts did. Prof Raychaudhuri goes on, “Clive compared Murshidabad, a provincial city in Bengal, in some ways favourably with London”. But Murshidabad then was the capital of the (nominally) Mughal Subah [province] of Bengal. (One might as well try to describe

York as a provincial city located in the north of England.) In any case, a slightly later account of Murshidabad is much less fl attering. But whatever the case, 372 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

Raychaudhuri’s assessment in eff ect looks only to the luxury goods and services purchased by middle and high-ranking Mughal offi cials and extremely wealthy merchants (two of whom were bankers to the rulers of Bengal). To look only to such small upper-income groups, is to be oblivious to the mass of the Indian population, who in all areas then, lived so close to the margin of subsistence as to periodically face the grim reality of famine 40.

Now to the other fi nal goods and services produced in early modern England. First, however, to give a context for the money values to be mentioned:

the “standard” male wage rose from 4d. a day in the 1580s and earlier to 8d.

a day in the 1620s; in 1650 it stood at 1s 41. Family incomes were, of course, higher; and almost everyone followed more than one occupation — ie, specialisation was as yet incomplete. Most agricultural labourers followed non-agricultural by-employments for most of the year; craftsmen in towns usually kept some animals or otherwise had some toehold in rural production. Many townsmen followed more than one (labour) occupation. We now return to the fi nal outputs found in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.

Clothing

D.M. Palliser contrasts the value of certain items from the Earl of Leicester’s wardrobe in 1588 (£545) with the value of a barber’s clothing in 1584

(£1) and the cost of a shoemaker’s stock in 1594 (£1-11-8), both in Worcester.42 The comparison is dramatic but uninformative: it tells us nothing about the millions of people in between — i.e., such a contrast says nothing about the total output of mass-consumption clothing and footwear, in relation to the luxury varieties.

Clothing rose substantially in quantity, quality and variety in these two centuries. The value of a rural labourer’s clothing, as a proportion of his assets, varied from 5 per cent (south Midlands) to 12 per cent (the North-West). In the early seventeenth century: it was worth about 8sh. in the North and the

West Midlands; about 10sh. in Cumberland; around 13sh. 4d. in East Anglia.

In Hertfordshire, Warwickshire and Somerset, the labourer’s clothing was valued at about £1, sometimes £2. Some of his wages were paid annually in clothing; a smock or shirt, shoes and stockings, gloves at harvest-time.43

In Norwich, between 1584 and 1675, in inventories of up to £10-15, clothing came to a maximum of 20 per cent of the total. Its average value rose a little, from about 15s. at the end of the sixteenth century to around £1 in 1675; thus the clothing of the urban poor was worth distinctly more than that of the agricultural labourer. There were wide variations, of course: one man left clothing worth 5s. in 1595, while a clerk had a gown worth £1:6s. 8d., together with Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 373

other clothing worth as much again; his clothes were some 40 per cent of his total assets. A “lame, nearly blind” man left 6sh. 8d. worth of clothing; a draper had clothing worth only 10sh. in an estate of 44£ 8.10s.8d.

In those chapmen’s inventories where clothing is valued separately, there are very wide variations.45 In 1588, a stallkeeping chapman in Winslow,

Bucks., left clothing worth 6s.8d., or somewhat under 8 per cent of his personal goods ( £4.4s.4d.) In 1595 in Linge, Norfolk, another stallkeeping chapman had clothes worth a substantial sum: £4.5s.9d., or a huge 78 per cent of his personal inventory. A century later, a chapman in Brampton, Cumberland, left clothes worth £3 and a watch valued at £2, but he had only his stockin— trade beside: he travelled on foot. And in 1707, a Canterbury chapman and shopkeeper also left apparel valued at £3, but this was just over 6 per cent of his goods and chattels, worth a considerably larger £48.10s.8d.

Between the periods 1530-69 and 1610-49 in the Forest of Arden, the average value of apparel left by small to middling farmers and a few craftsmen and labourers went from 21sh. to £1.18sh. As a proportion of all goods and chattels, it fell from just under 13 to just under 11 per cent. 46 Rural and urban testators in late sixteenth-century Oxfordshire left apparel with an average value of £1-4-0 (at current prices) or just under 13 per cent of all their consumer goods. A century later in south Worcestershire, the value of clothing in urban and rural inventories stood at £2-16-0 or just over 9½ per cent of the total value of consumer goods left. In four dockside parishes in the East End of

London, during the years 1661-64, the average value of clothing left was somewhat higher: £3-12-0, just under 15 percent of all consumer goods assessed. 47

During this period the prices of many outputs undoubtedly rose, but there is no adequate price index. There is, however, a range of indirect evidence, which when taken together, does point to a defi nite increase in both the quantity and quality of clothing. Now with the Oxfordshire and Worcestershire inventories just mentioned, the average value of clothing increased about 2£ times in absolute terms between the late sixteenth and the late seventeenth century, though the proportion declined, relative to other consumer goods.

But there is some evidence from cloth prices that quantities of clothing did increase. Carole Shammas has also calculated the average prices of some six diff erent types of woollen fabrics found in shopkeepers’ inventories over this period in a number of widely dispersed regions, ranging from Devon to Essex to Yorkshire. The current prices of three fabric groups (baize, heavy broadcloths and kerseys) declined by 13.9, 30.2 and 34.4 percent, respectively. The prices of two fabrics (serge and fl annel) remained virtually unchanged (rising by only 0.8 and 1.0 percent respectively). The price of the last type of fabric (friezes) rose very steeply — by 122 percent. Finally, a new type of textile 374 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

(stuff s) appeared in inventories in the early seventeenth century; its price fell by

24 percent over the century 48. These seven textile groups are, of course, only a fraction of the vast number of varieties produced and imported during these two centuries (see below). But given the geographical spread of these price quotations, it is a fair inference that there was a decline in the prices of at least some textiles widely used to make garments. Thus the further inference is that the quantities made would have increased. Furthermore, in the inventories here referred to, where the information is available, there is a decided jump in the proportion devoted to furniture and a clear rise in the quantity and range of household linen (see below). The inference then is that real outputs, not just money values, were rising; thus some improvement in clothing would also have occurred.

As to quality, work clothes were generally of sack cloth, canvas, skins or the cheapest woollens49. But above this level there was an almost mind-bog— gling array of textiles: woollen, linen, hemp and mixed fabrics. Silk was gradually added to this range, which was itself continuously modifi ed (see below).

By way of comparison, the range of handwoven products in twentieth-century

India is similarly extensive, with much the same huge scale of variety. But these products are ready-to-use lengths of cloth: diff erent sorts of saris, certain types of men’s garments, towels, tablecloths, etc.

In 16th century England, sumptuary legislation demonstrates that the quality of clothing certainly rose. Acts of Apparel were passed in 1510, 1515

(twice), 1533 and 1554; they were broadened by Proclamations made in 1562,

1566, 1574, 1580, 1588 and 1597: the pace rose as the century progressed50.

These legislative acts and decrees attempted to restrict the use of fur and the better fabrics to certain specifi ed groups, based partly on rank and partly on income. Smaller and smaller quantities of the superior fabrics (silks, velvets, etc), of specifi ed colours, could be used on particular items only, as one went down the social and income scale: rank and income were to be revealed in dress51. The clear inference is that the more expensive fabrics were in fact being used further and further down the socioeconomic scale: which implies also a wider use of the better qualities of the more basic fabrics.

There is little direct evidence on clothing quantities; most inventories lump clothing in with “purse” or “ready money”. Also, it is defi nitely possible that legatees removed clothing before the inventory was made; chapmen’s wills contains bequests of clothing up to nearly the end of the seventeenth century 52.

Where apparel is separately valued, rural labourers’ inventories very rarely list individual items. In Norwich, by contrast, clothing is itemised. In the chapmen’s inventories already mentioned, two late sixteenth-century inventories list the individual items of clothing, but two inventories of the late seventeenth Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 375

and early eighteenth century simply give a total value. In 349 Suff olk inventories of the years 1570-79, shirts are mentioned 37 times; shifts are not referred to. In 397 such inventories from the period 1680-1700, there are 13 references to shirts and 3 to shifts. In the Forest of Arden inventories mentioned above, where clothing was specifi ed, an average of 6.4 garments was listed during the years 1530-69; this average rose to 11.4 during the period 1570-1609. But in the next forty years, to 1649, clothes are only very rarely listed individually 53.

It is possible to infer from all the above that as the quantity and value of clothing rise initially, it is itemised; then, as the total value of clothing continues rising, but the quantity and value of other consumer goods rise even faster, the individual items of dress are no longer listed, and even the total value is not given separately. Thus this body of evidence argues indirectly for an increase in the quantity of clothing: garments were itemised when only small quantities were produced; as the quantity increased, they ceased to be listed individually.

There is other indirect evidence which also points to a growth in the volume of clothing.

By 1688, Gregory King was estimating that some 10 million shirts and smocks would be consumed annually, or more than seven such items per family. He also put fi gures of 4 million on bands and cravats (plain and fancy) and

2 million on neckershiefs and tuckers (plain and laced), in addition to skirts, breeches, doublets, coats and shirts on the same mass scale. He estimated annual expenditure on accessories — bands, cravats, neckerchiefs, tuckers, as also hats, caps, gloves, mittens, stockings, shoestrings and buckles, at 10sh.

per head or about £2.3 million yearly. At the other end of the spectrum, parish children in Suff olk in the 1630s were already provided with two shifts or shirts each, confi rming that the mass of the population routinely possessed larger quantities of such basic items 54.

Purchase of Cloth

Garments were produced partly within the household, partly outside.

Now John Patten assumes that cloth sent to the tailor for making up was woven at home and the yarn too was homespun 55. Alan Everitt reports a farm labourer from Shenley (Herts.) with a respectable store of household linen; Everitt assumes the housewife had spun the fl ax and hemp herself. In this case, the labourer had several by-employments, including the spinning of fl ex and hemp

56; so here it seems more likely that the yarn was indeed exchanged directly for cloth with the weaver. In the late seventeenth century, some gentry households did on occasion have yarn spun to order; they also had cloth woven, fi nished, dyed or bleached to order 57. But otherwise, chapmen carried a huge variety 376 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

of linen and cotton textiles from the early seventeenth century onwards — i.e., cloth was purchased at even the lowest income-levels. Shops had an even larger range of textiles, since they included the immense variety of woollens. Further, the textile industry was the largest non-agricultural occupation throughout

England at the time. The luxury sector is clearly demarcated and is only the minor part of total production — i.e. the bulk of the output was for mass consumption — as indeed is indicated by sumptuary legislation: the upper classes wore a wide range of silk fabrics. Patten himself goes on to stress the ubiquity of local weavers in Norfolk, Suff olk and even Lincolnshire, producing a range of fabrics for local demand; some to be converted into clothes by the local tailor, others to be used for household purposes (eg as bed-hangings) 58.

As people purchased cloth directly, they were knowledgeable about the diff erent varieties and their suitability for diff erent uses. There is some direct evidence for this, at both higher and lower income-levels. The household account of one gentry family show that in May 1573 a servant was sent from

Ludlow to Lancashire on two separate occasions to purchase three diff erent qualities of linen at local markets 59. In 1641, Henry Best gave a detailed listing of the various types of linen then available and their various uses, both in particular items of clothing and for household purposes 60. At the end of the seventeenth century, the same type of information, only far more detailed, was available in a cheap handbook addressed to sempstresses, drapers, chapmen and their customers. This short work gave an extensive and apparently exhaustive guide to the vast variety of cottons and linens and their best uses, whether as shirts, smocks, shifts, babies’ nappies, kerchiefs, cravats, head-cloths; or as bed-hangings, sheets, tablecloths, napkins, window-curtains, wall-hangings 61.

Some twenty fi ve diff erent sorts of cotton and linen were discussed for making shifts and shirts alone. All the huge range of cottons came from India of course;

the bulk of the linens were also imported, from the Low Countries and parts of

Germany. Thus a signifi cant proportion of the textiles used for both personal and household purposes was imported.

Carole Shammas sees in Best’s account the technical knowledge which a head of household then possessed, of the materials used in manufacturing consumer goods — i.e., she sees Best as being knowledgeable about manufacturing methods 62. Margaret Spuff ord, on the other hand, is puzzled as to how people obtained the heavier and more complicated woollen garments which the housewife could not produce at home. Tailors carried no materials

(and, in fact, they left only their own equipment, unlike other craftsmen). So she believes that the tailor, in village or market-town, fi rst obtained cloth from the mercer or draper in a larger town and then made up this heavy clothing

63. Both these reactions come from an environment in which there is so much Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 377

industrial and distributive capital that all garments, from underwear to out— erwear, are produced readymade in a vast range, in huge quantities, and then sold through an extensive retail network. But where the capital structure is far shorter, then labour services are more prominent in producing most outputs.

In such a context, clothing is produced individually to order at all income-levels, by tailors using simple equipment, and many items are home-produced.

This is the case in mid-twentieth-century India (as in other LDCs): tailors use simple treadle or — hand-operated sewing machines — not electrically-operated industrial types, set in a factory or workshop. Because cloth is purchased to requirement and taste by the customer and then handed to the tailor for making up, a knowledge of the diff erent types of textiles being sold and their diff erent uses, has to be, and is, commonplace. The tailor cannot fi rst obtain the cloth, as Spuff ord suggests, because it is his customers who have to select the cloth according to their own circumstances. It is this type of circumstantial knowledge which is found in Best and other sources from seventeenth-century

England: not technical information about the structure and components of consumer goods, pace Shammas, but consumer information about the relative usefulness of diff erent kinds of textiles for diff erent consumption purposes.

Textile Types

At a very rough count, Kerridge discusses some 170 odd varieties of cloth produced in the early modern period, for clothing and household purposes.

Most of these varieties were woollen, but there were also hemp, linen and (later)

silk textiles, together with an enormous range of mixed fabrics: linen and wool, hemp and wool, hemp and linen; and later, wool and silk, linen and silk. In some types one of the two yarns was itself a mixture. Goat’s hair was used in some fabrics, very often mixed with linen. wool or silk. The range of products changed considerable over the period: many older types died out, a large number of new types were developed. Some of the latter also disappeared, rapidly or after some time; but most survived. A substantial part of the growth occurred from the later sixteenth century onwards. And fabrics (both old and new) were frequently modifi ed and altered 64.

Textiles varied substantially: in weight, width, length, colour, fi nish, pattern. The latter could be woven in — and these could be very intricate — or else the pattern was the result of the various ways in which diff erent coloured yarns were combined in the weave. Fabrics were produced for specifi c purposes: to be turned into clothing or for household use (some types could be used for both purposes). Clothing fabrics in turn were further specialised for particular uses: for women’s coats, dresses, kirtles, diff erent items of underclothing, scarves, head-dresses, boot and shoe uppers; and for men’s coats, 378 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

vests, jerkins, doublets and breeches. A range of textiles was produced for lining diff erent garments. There were diff erent fabrics for winter, spring and summer coats; for cloaks, gowns, cassocks, jackets, aprons and drawers. Water— proof cloth was available as also tough and washable types for children’s clothing and caps. Flannel was fi rst produced in the sixteenth century and used for shirts, trousers, underwear and washcloths.

As mentioned working clothes were made of canvas, sack cloth, skins or very cheap woollens. The fi rst three generally provided work garments for rural labourers. Ipswich and surrounding towns produced a mixed linen— hemp fabric specifically for smocks and other work-clothes. In 1522, in a landowning household, four yards of frieze were purchased at 6d. the yard,

“for a coat for the kitchen boy”. In August 1538, John Husee sent Lady Lisle three ells of a “good” canvas, at just over 5d. the ell — “[it] will serve for the boys of the kitchen”. A pedlar in 1590 was described (contemporaneously)

as dressed in a leather jerkin and canvas breeches — but the former was of good quality Spanish leather and fashionably slashed, while his breeches were

“venetians”: again, well in fashion: wide and reaching to the knee. A petition in 1593 objected to a tax on leather clothing because the poorest wore mostly leather breeches and jerkins. A late sixteenth century leather worker in Gates— head was described as a “jerkin-maker”; he had both jerkins and footwear in stock. In 1618, in a noble household, 1s. 6d. was paid for “[s]heepskins for the stable boy’s britches” 65.

Coming now to woollen fabrics: there was (as seen already) a huge array of qualities and types. The very cheapest kinds were not very salubrious: their fi bres were stuck together with nameless substances (so they had a distinctive pungency). Other cheap varieties were made from hairy wools (very low quality) and often left undyed. But this was only at the lowest end of an immense selection, varying in weight, fi nish, colour and pattern.

The rural labourer’s good suit was woollen. Poorer women used wool where those with higher income used good-quality linen. Thus in 1563, in a rural area in Essex, a woollen “rail” was stolen — this was a kerchief tied around the shoulders. It was valued at 1s.; — further up the scale, it would have been of cambric or lawn. At the upper end of the mass-consumption scale, came the liveries provided in noble households. In the later 1530’s, in the Lisle household, 36 yards of woollen cloth [type unspecifi ed] were bought for the grooms at 4s. the yard. Cloth for yeomen’s liveries was slightly more expensive at 4s. 8d. and 5s. the yard (a total of 57 yards was bought, in two lots, at the fi rst price; 132¼ yards were purchased at the higher price). Husee advised

Lady Lisle that, at this level, 2½ yards was the maximum needed for a livery;

2¼ yards would do for some. But on another occasion, 3 yards of cloth was Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 379

bought for a personal servant’s livery at 5s. the yard. Nearly a century later, in

1632, in another noble household, 4½ yards of cloth was purchased at only 2s.

2d. a yard, “to make the foole a coat”. A footman’s suit took 3½ yards of kersey at 4s. 6d. a yard, while broadcloth for a groom’s coat was twice as expensive at

9s. the yard (2½ yards were bought) 66.

By the second half of the sixteenth century, the quantities of linen and calico had increased to the point where even the poorer groups had some items in these fabrics. Thus an Exeter widow of this period left 16 holland kerchiefs valued at 1sh. 3d. each and 10 calico kerchiefs valued at 6d. each 67. By the later sixteenth century, shops and chapmen carried an extensive selection of mass-consumption fabrics, both imported and domestic, woollen, linen and various mixtures. In the next century, this range expanded to even more varieties and it now included various Indian cottons and even silks.

Many of the textiles described by Kerridge were produced specifi cally as furnishing fabrics, or as bedding or for other household use. I discuss this further below; but the point needs to be borne in mind because the selection of fabrics carried by shopkeepers and chapmen — which we now turn to — included not just the varieties suitable for clothing but also those intended for household purposes. Some varieties were, of course, suitable for both kinds of use.

In 1578, in so remote a spot as Kirkby Lonsdale, a shop carried some sixteen diff erent varieties of cloth — various kinds of woollens, linens and mixed fabrics, all in a wide variety of colours 68. In the 1580s and 1590s, a mercer in

Ripon, Yorks. carried some twenty varieties of cloth — linen, woollen, silk and mixed fabrics, with further diff erences in quality, colour and width. These textiles were all imported from other parts of England or from abroad, including

Milan, Genoa and Ulm; he carried no locally-made textiles. Harden sold at

4.½d. to 7d. a yard, canvas, at 1s.4d. to 3s.10d. a yard, and taff eta (silk or linen)

at 2s.-6s. He also had (from cheapest to most expensive) buffi n (coarse cloth for gowns), sacking (used for dresses), durance (a hard-wearing woollen), silk rash, and fustian (a mixed linen-cotton fabric imported from northern Italy and

Germany). Their wholesale prices ranged from 16sh.-18sh. a piece (buffi n), to 20s.-24s. (sacking), 27s.-33s. (durance) and 40s.-82s. (fustian). In Durham in 1597, a mercer had (amongst other things) “French coloured velvet” at

13s. a yard. Thus by the later sixteenth century, consumers were already purchasing cloth produced over widely-dispersed regions across England and the continent.

Margaret Spufford has examined the inventories of chapmen who had shops and stalls, besides those who travelled on foot. Those with cloth in their inventories, from the late sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, came 380 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

from Kent, Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Hereford, Lancashire,

Cumberland and Newcastle. Thus we are looking here at changes in the range of cloth purchased at lower income-levels, at widely-dispersed points. In 1588, a shopkeeper in Winslow, Bucks., had three kinds each of “middle” cloth and holland, two sorts of “Lancashire” cloth and eight other types of linen. He also carried a cheap woollen fabric called “black cotton” (to confuse historians).

Thus he already sold both imported and domestic cloth; the price range went from 3d. an ell for the cheapest variety of “middle” cloth to 2s.2d. an ell for the better kind of holland. In 1595, in Linge, Norfolk, a shopkeeper carried two kinds of holland and twelve other varieties of cloth. The cheapest was “white cloth” at 7d. an ell; the most expensive, lawn at 5s.6d. an ell.

A shopkeeper at Great Yarmouth in 1628 sold a much more extensive range of fabrics: six kinds of Scotch cloth [a sort of very cheap linen]; three kinds each of holland, twill and fustian; two sorts each of calico, canvas, say, and “osnabridge” linen; and nine other types of fabrics, including mixed varieties such as linsey-woolsey. Indian cottons, it will be noted, had already reached lower-income groups; the calicoes, at 11d. and 1s.3d. a yard, were in the middle of the price range. The latter went from 5d. a yard (“Inderlyn” cloth) to

3s.4d. a yard for the best sort of holland. By 1642, in a Newcastle shop, the stock included eleven types of linen, ranging from 10d. to 2s.6d. a yard; nine kinds of “cloath” (unspecifi ed), from 9d. to 2sh.3d. a yard; four sorts of “Scottish” cloth; three types of say; two kinds each of fustian and of “falden” cloth;

plus dimity, ticking, holland, cambric and lawn. The price range went from 9d.

per yard for the cheapest “cloath”, to 5s.6d. for lawn. A stallkeeper in Monk— land, Hereford, in 1665 had a very restricted range: fi ve types of the cheapest cloth, ranging from apron cloth at 9d. a yard to fl axen cloth for 1s.8d. an ell, and including both hempen cloth and “harden” cloth — the toughest sort of linen for sheets. But even at this level, cloth was now being produced for specifi c purposes.

In 1690, a stallkeeper in Great Chart, Kent, carried six types of holland, three kinds of muslin and thirteen other varieties of cloth. For fabrics priced by the yard, the range went from 9d. (narrow muslin, “white striped dimity”) to 1s.4d. (“kenting”). Priced by the ell, the fabrics cost from 4d. (“white hamells”) to 2s.8d. (the best holland). Calico, at 9d. a yard, and the muslins, at 9d., 10d., and 1s.2d. a yard, were still in the middle of the price range, overall; but now there were more varieties of such Indian cottons being stocked. In

1691, a shopkeeper in Randwick, Glos., had twelve kinds of holland, including two superior varieties, at nine diff erent prices, ranging from 1sh.3d. to 5s. an ell. He also carried fi ve kinds of Osenbridge cloth (in diff erent colours); four kinds of dowlas; three kinds each of French canvas, “white cloth”, “linsey”, Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 381

fustian and “slease cloth” (Silesian linen); two sorts of fl axen cloth and “inderling” (this last was amongst the cheapest fabric). Serge came in two colours, and he had ten further kinds of cloth, including one specially woven for tablecloths. The prices ranged from 4d. an ell for “coarse cloth” and the cheapest sort of inderling to 5s. an ell for the better of the two superior varieties of holland. Calico, at 6d. a yard, was near the lower end of the scale. In 1692 a

(female) stallkeeper in Donington, Lancashire, carried seven kinds of holland;

four types of Scotch cloth; three kinds each of coarse cloth and blue woolsey;

two kinds of blue linen and six other varieties. “Pickling”, at 5d. a yard was the cheapest sort of cloth; the most expensive was the holland at 2s.9d. an ell. A chapman in Brampton, Cumberland, who travelled on foot, carried a variety of small consumer items, but he also had fi ve types of Scotch cloth, at prices ranging from 10.½d. to 1s.3d. a yard. Finally, to illustrate the varieties of imported and domestic fabrics available in even the remoter areas, at the lowest income-levels, we have the stock carried by a chapman on foot in Penrith, Cumberland, in 1683; holland and cambric from the Low Countries; domestically-fi nished linen; Scotch cloth; Bengals, muslins and calicoes from the range of Indian cottons; and silks.

Thus over these two centuries in England, a widening range and variety of cloth of all types, imported and domestic, was purchased at even low income levels. The variety of fabrics and range of prices is not unlike the situation found in mid-twentieth-century India: there too customers select from a huge range of mill-made textiles at retail level, picking out various types and lengths of cloth to be made up at home and by the tailor, into various garments and household items 69. In short, in both early modern England and in LDCs in the twentieth century, a similar knowledge of fabrics and their best uses is necessary, because in both cases the production of clothing (and of household textiles) is still partly within the sphere of household production for household use, and has only partly moved out 70. In “developed” countries, on the other hand, where the capital structure is far more extended, several stages of production intervene between the output of cloth from textile mills and the clothing and household textiles found in households. The mill cloth goes into factories and workshops, where industrial machines working with labour and other inputs, convert the mill cloth into garments, household linens, etc. In the next stage, there are warehouses, transport and distributive investments, to bring the clothing and household linen down to the stage of fi nal consumption by individuals and within the household.

Making Clothing

In early modern England, the simpler items of clothing were home-sewn:

shirts, shifts, petticoats, aprons, smocks, waistcoats. By the late seventeenth century, specially-woven cloth was produced which could be used for infants’

nappies; these too would have been made up at home 71. There is indirect evidence for the extent of home sewing (not just of clothing — see below) in the range of thread varieties already being sold retail: some eleven or twelve varieties by the later sixteenth century 72. A draper in Kirkby Lonsdale in 1578 stocked four diff erent kinds of ordinary sewing thread, ranging from 10d. to 6s.

a pound; and three types of silk thread: the London variety cost 10d. or 10.½d.

an ounce, while Spanish silk cost either 18d. or 20d. (thus silk cost between 4 and 32 times as much as linen or woollen thread). The point is not so much the wide gap in prices, as that in even so remote a location there was a demand for superior varieties of thread. The diff erent prices otherwise refl ected differences in strength and weight and therefore the diff erent uses to which the various items being made would be put. A gentry household account for the same year from Kent, shows that three diff erent sorts of thread were bought for household purposes, at prices of 2s., 3s. and 7s. a pound; silk thread was also purchased, for personal sewing, at 12d. an ounce (between 5 and 16 times as much again). These prices, from near London, hardly diff er from those in remote Cumbria, which says something about the distribution network. In the 1580s and 90s, in Ripon, Yorks., a mercer’s accounts show that he usually bought thread at 1s.6d. a pound. But he also bought Coventry thread at 3s. to

6s. 4d. a pound and “sister’s” thread at £1. He sold silk at 2s. 6d. an ounce.

From the late sixteenth century onwards, if not earlier, chapmen carried various sorts of thread, ranging from “coarse” to silk, both in their packs and in their shops and stalls, in widely-dispersed areas.

That thread was sold by the pound gives an indication of the amount of home sewing being undertaken, of simple clothing and household linen. Other items needed for home sewing were also widely available from at least the middle of the sixteenth century onwards. Needles were imported into London from Spain in 1549; such imports were valued at £471-1- in 1559. By 1578, they were sold even in Cumbria. In the late sixteenth century, needles began to be manufactured in England in imitation of the Spanish originals; by at least the early seventeenth century, thimbles and scissors had been added. Chapmen carried needles and needle cases, thimbles and scissors and these items were sold in shops and stalls in many regions scattered through the country73.

The expansion of tailoring services is an indirect indicator of growth in the volume of clothing. There is information on the geographical spread of these services in east Anglia, i.e., the number of locations where tailors were found. Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 383

Between 1500-99 and 1659-99, the number of rural parishes in Norfolk and

Suff olk in which tailors were recorded went from 172 to 300, an increase of just over 74 per cent. Tailors were then the most widespread non-agricultural occupational group (previously, they came second) 74. Over the same period, the number of towns in the same region with tailors rose from 34 to 39 (out of

47); in both cases they were the second most widely reported occupation 75.

Again over the same period, but in Norfolk market towns alone, the number with tailors rose from 12 to 15 (out of 19); they were again the second most widespread occupation 76. The above fi gures only tell us the number of places from which tailors were reported; they do not, of course, tell us how many tailors there were. This last information is available for Norwich. Between

1525 and 1571, the numbers of freemen in the broad occupational grouping of “clothing” went from 54 to 165, an increase of just over three times. Tailors, as a proportion of this grouping, fell from 89 to 76 per cent. Between 1501-25 and 1651-75, admissions of freemen into the clothing group (ie the fl ow into this group) rose from 69 to 266, an increase of just under 3.9 times. The proportion of tailors fell from 97 to 72 per cent. The population of Norwich is estimated to have risen from 11,000 in 1591-1600 to about 30,000 in 1693, a growth of 2.7 times 77. The inferences from the above are that, fi rst, all suppliers of clothing, i.e. the volume, rose faster than population and, second, that the relative decline in tailors amongst these suppliers implies that supplies of other items of clothing (hats, caps, bodices, stockings, etc) rose relative to tailored garments. The range was increasing along with the quantity.

Accessories

Further indirect evidence for the increase in clothing is found in the range of complementary items sold by chapmen to lower-income groups from the late sixteenth century onwards. In the utilitarian category, these items included laces, points, inkle, tape, hooks and eyes, pins and band strings [bands were fl at collars]. Buttons were utilitarian but could also be decorative (and expensive), while ribbons, lace and fringe were plain frippery. There was a wide variety in all these items, at a wide range of prices 78. Besides being produced in England, inkle and thread points were also imported. In 1559, imports of thread points were valued at £234; imported inkle came to £8,812 (it fell to £1,816 in 1565).

In 1588, a shopkeeper in Winslow, Bucks., sold points, coloured tape, inkle, coarse inkle and coarse black inkle. In 1595, in Linge, Norfolk, a stallkeeper sold coarse inkle and points. In Ripon, Yorks., during the 1580s and 90s, a mercer bought silk points at 7s.-8s. the gross; thread points were far cheaper;

they could be had wholesale at 1sh.4d.-1s.8d. a gross. He also sold a variety of inkle and gartering at various prices. In 1613, in Sutton St. James, Lancs., 384 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

a shopkeeper had fi ne inkle, coloured inkle, points, leather laces, thread laces, lace binding and crewel binding on sale. In Great Yarmouth in 1628, a shopkeeper sold white inkle, thread points and bandstrings. A shopkeeper in Newcastle in 1642 sold points at 1s.4d. per gross, short and long leather points, white and silk points, sleeve points, thread laces, inkle, cotton tape at 1.¼d. a yard, “steadle belting” at 4d. a yard, and three kinds of band strings at 6d., 8d., and 1s.6d. a dozen. In 1680, in Bury, Lancs., leather laces cost 1.½d. a dozen and thread laces, 2.½d. per dozen, while silk laces were 2d. each. Per dozen, leather points were 3d., thread points, 1d., and silk points 8d. Knee-points cost 1sh.4d. a dozen. Green and blue inkle cost 3d. a yard, while coarse inkle came at 4d. per yard. For 1d. you could buy 9 yards of linen tape, 2 yards of woollen tape, or 1½ yards of the cotton variety. In Donington, Lancs., a female stallkeeper sold “loome laces” in 1692.

Pins were used to fasten garments and in sewing, lace-and hat-making.

Their use is therefore an indirect indicator of the increased volume and variety of clothing being worn, and also of sewing being done at home and by the tailor and sempstress 79. Up to the mid-sixteenth century, the bulk of the pins used were imported from Holland. Then, sometime between the 1560s and

1570s, a domestic industry developed, using wire imported from Germany and Sweden. But 80 per cent of the demand — the very cheapest pins — was still supplied by imports. Dutch pins were two-thirds the cost of English pins and sometimes half; they were also better for the fi ner fabrics. Medium-quality pins were, however, supplied by the English industries. In 1559, pin imports were valued at £3,279; in 1565; at £4,274; the estimate for 1597 is £40,000. In

1609, it was estimated that £60,000 worth of pins were used annually. There were some 13 or 19 diff erent types, according to metal (brass or iron) and weight, but they also diff ered in size, shape and style. Diff erent-sized packets were also available. In 1574 a draper’s ship in Kirkby Lonsdale carried three kinds of pin, priced at 9¼d., 1s.1d., and 1sh.6d. per thousand. In 1588, pins were sold at 7d. per thousand at a shop in Winslow, Bucks.; at 6d. per thousand in St. Albans in 1607; at 6d. a gross in Newcastle in 1642; and they cost

4sh. a dozen at a shop in Randwick, Glos., in 1691. They were, of course, carried widely by chapmen. In a gentry household in Kent in 1574, the children were each allowed 3s. worth of pins every six months. Metal hooks and eyes were used by the poorer classes by the end of the sixteenth century; they cost

1s. per thousand.

Silk, silver and brass buttons were already being imported before the mid-sixteenth century; in 1559, they were worth 80£ 108-10 . Imported metal buttons were available in Kirkby Lonsdale in 1578. Shops also stocked thread, hair, “gimp” and “haringe” buttons. In the 1580s and 90s a Ripon mercer Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 385

carried silk, hair, thread, corded and tufted buttons. He bought hair and thread buttons at 6d. the gross wholesale, but for silk and gold “long buttons” he paid

12s. a dozen. Silk buttons cost 2d. a dozen (retail) in Winslow, Bucks. in 1588.

They cost 1s. 4d. per gross in Great Yarmouth in 1628; “gimp” buttons sold for 6d. a gross. In Radnorshire in 1675 the same prices prevailed for the same two varieties. In 1642, in Newcastle, a shopkeeper stocked a range of buttons, including hair buttons, at prices ranging from 5d. a gross to 2s.6d. for ten. He also sold “clasps” and “great clasps”; the Yarmouth shopkeeper (above) also had “clasps” in 1628. Buttons were carried widely by chapmen, of course.

Ribbons and lace were also widely sold 81. Lace was imported into London before 1549. In 1559 imports of “laces of all sorts” were valued at £775-6-8.

By the early seventeenth century, lace and ribbons were made in Norwich; in

1608 it was claimed English supplies had ousted imports of ribbons, silk laces, points, silk garters, girdles, etc. In 1688, Gregory King estimated that some

£ 400,000 was spent annually on thread, ribbons, fringe, embroidery, and gold, silver and worsted lace. In Kirkby Lonsdale in 1578, a draper’s shop carried several diff erent sorts of lace including Norwich and Scottish varieties; it also sold fringes. In 1588, a shopkeeper in Winslow, Bucks., sold “coloured fringe”, he also had silk lace at 1s.4d. an ounce, together with four other kinds of lace:

“statute”, “narrow statute”, crewel and “parchment”. In 1595, in Linge, Norfolk, a stallkeeper had silk lace in various colours, at 1s.2d. an ounce. A Ripon mercer, in the 1580s and 90s, carried a range of diff erent types of ribbon at a range of prices. He bought fringe wholesale at 3s.-4s. a pound, and also sold it retail. A shopkeeper in Great Yarmouth in 1628 carried silk and “oramy” lace;

ribbon (unspecifi ed); “mixed”, black, and cotton ribbon; and “tinsel”. A Newcastle shopkeeper in 1642 sold ribbon at 2s.4d. and 3s.6d. per dozen; “ferit”

ribbon at 3s. per dozen, and silk ribbons at 4s.4d. per dozen. He also carried lace at 3d. and 5d. a yard; bone lace at 1½d and 2¼d a yard; then at penny increments from 3d. to 11d; and then at nine diff erent prices ranging from 1s.2d. to

3s.8d. a yard. A chapman in Grantham, Lincs., carried “ribonds and cotton”

together with broad, narrow, fi ne and coarse lace amongst his stock in 1679.

The following year, in Bury, Lancs., a chapman carried bone lace at 1d. and 3d.

a yard, and white bone lace at 1sh.6d. for a dozen yards. A female stallkeeper in

Dorington, Lancs., in 1692 had “ferrit” ribbon, lace at 6d. or 1s.2d. a yard, and bone lace at 2d. per yard, with a cheaper variety at 1s.4d. for a dozen yards. At the gentry level, a Kent household purchased in 1578, gold and silver bone lace at 6s.8d. and 8s. a yard; fi ne white lace at 8s.8d. a yard, white and black lace at

2s.4d. and 2s. a yard, white and black lace at 2s.4d. and 2s. a yard, and yellow crown lace at 1s.4d. a yard. In Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, at the end 386 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

of the seventeenth century, the lace then produced sold at 30s. a yard, where the variety previously made had sold at 8s. a yard.

Readymade Items

By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, a variety of accessories and small items of dress were already available readymade in chapmen’s wares, i.e. at the lower end of the income and price scale 82. “Oxford” (i.e.

Woodstock) gloves were sold in Kirkby Lonsdale in 1578. A shopkeeper in

Winslow, Bucks., was already selling girdles in 1588, while in 1615, a chapman sold gloves from his pack in Rickmansworth. In 1628, a shopkeeper in

Great Yarmouth sold “bodies” at 2s. a pair, “wrought” sleeves at 4½d a pair,

“wrought” coifs at 7¾d each, “garterings” at 1s.4d. a dozen, and garters at 4½d a fair. Bands [fl at collars] for men cost 3d. each, children’s laced bands were

5d. each, plain bands, 7d. and laced falling bands, 8d. each. He also had in stock, silk garters, silk girdles, silk “masks”, forehead cloths, “sundry sorts”

of gloves, “small purses”, silk purses and children’s bags. A Newcastle shopkeeper in 1642 carried neckcloths at 1s. each, garters at 2¼d., 3d. and 5d. a pair, “masks” at 7d. each, belts at 1d. each, blue coifs at 3d. each, coifs at 4d.

each, and “largest blue coifs” at 4½d. each. Children’s gloves cost 2½d. a pair, men’s gloves, 4d. Gloves (unspecifi ed) were available at 5d., 6d., 8d., 10d. and

2s. 6d. a pair. He also had purses at 1/6 each, other neckcloths and handkerchiefs, and a “Wakefi eld cap” at 6d.

In 1663, a Tweedmouth chapman had stockings, including “little coarse”

pairs, and “blue capes” in his pack. In 1679 a chapman in Grantham, Lincs., carried calico caps for children in his pack; while in 1680, another chapman, in Bury, Lancs., carried children’s calico hoods at 2d. each, black serge coifs at

8d. each, silk capes at 6d. each and stuff and calico capes at 2d. a pair. Children’s gloves could be had for 1½d. per pair, women’s gloves for 3½d., men’s gloves for 4d., and coarse men’s gloves for 2d. a pair. A Penrith chapman had gloves and muff s for sale in 1683. In Great Chart, Kent, a stallkeeper had muslin neckcloths for 9d. each, in 1690. The next year, a shopkeeper in Randwick,

Glos., had stockings, cravats, capes, linen sleeves, silk hoods, scarfs, stomach— ers, “whisks” and “small things” in stock. In 1692 in Donington, Lancs., a female stallkeeper carried cadis [to hold up garters] at 6d. and 8d. a dozen,

“Bungall” [?Bengal] caps at 3d. each, other caps and coifs at 4d., silk scarves at 1s.5d. each, gloves at 5d. and 9d. a pair, and stockings at 3d., 6d., 10d and

1s. a pair. And in 1695, in Brampton, Cumberland, a chapman had silk handkerchiefs at 1sh. 5d. each, with half-silk handkerchiefs in two sizes at 7d. and

10½d. in his pack. The inventories used here do not indicate whether any of the gloves mentioned were knitted. Gloves were certainly knitted, of course (a Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 387

pair have even survived from late seventeenth century Shetland), but only knitted stockings were subject to aulnage (see further); this suggests that knitted gloves were for home consumption or only local sale. I discuss the distribution and production of leather gloves below. By the mid-seventeenth century, thin, supple, washable — non-shrink — leather gloves were available; “washed leather” riding gloves were sold by pedlars in the Northeast in the 1690s.

Caps were already being imported before 1549. In 1559, imported hats and hatbands were valued at £8,025-3-4; imported gloves, at £2,636-10-0; and girdles, at £998-10-0. Hats were already being sold in a shop in Richmond,

Yorks., in 1578, while silk, felt and linen hats were available in Kirkby Lonsdale.

Hats were sold in 1588 in a shop in Winslow, Bucks., at 6d., 8d., 1s., 1s. 6d.,

1s. 8d., and 2s. each. An Exeter hatter’s inventory of 1589 included “cypress”:

a thin transparent textile, silk or mixed silk and linen. It was relatively cheap:

the smooth variety cost 7d. a yard, the crimped variety came to 1sh. the yard.

A century later, Gregory King estimated that the annual consumption of hats and caps came to 4.9 million (just under one per head), together with 8 million pairs of gloves and mittens and 6 million shoestrings and buckles 83.

Stockings

Up to the early sixteenth century, in rural areas, knitted stockings were produced within the household for household use and for purely local sale;

children also generally wore them. Otherwise, especially in upper-class dress, hose (for both sexes) were made from cloth, attached to breeches or pants and held up by garters above the knee. But home knitting developed into a by-employment in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century, and this expansion and its continuation is confi rmed by a petition of 1655 which by then distinguished between “public” and “private” knitting. Thus by the mid-sixteenth century, knitted stockings were commonly worn at all social levels, but the poor continued to wear stockings that were half-cloth and half-knitted, up to a century later 84.

Stockings were produced for interregional, national and international distribution. This means more stockings were purchased and more came from other regions. During the last thirty years of the sixteenth century, the (part-time) knitting of stockings for wider sale developed as a regional specialism in Wales and at least ten English counties in the Midlands and the West and

North of England; the districts involved increased during the seventeenth century. By the 1590s, it was a substantial industry, with knitters of both sexes and with steadily growing exports to Ireland and the Continent. Aulnage began to be charged on stockings in 1578. In the 1630s and 1640s, framework knitting 388 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

of worsted stockings spread fi rst through Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, then other areas in the Midlands. Gregory King estimated that in 1688 two pairs of knitted stockings were bought per head — i.e. 10 million pairs annually. Joan Thirsk feels this total could be more than doubled to an upper estimate of 22 million pairs, assuming a maximum population of 5½million purchasing 4 pairs per head every year. Some 1¾million pairs were also exported annually by the end of the seventeenth century. By 1615, it was estimated that one-third of long wool output went into stockings, two-thirds into the New

Draperies.

Knitted stockings were far superior in quality to cloth hose: stockings could be washed oftener (if desired); they were better fi tting, stayed in shape longer, and they came in a variety of designs and colours 85. Ordinary woollen and worsted stockings were produced in all regions; in 1614 a Boston testator left one of his sons “the stockings now at knitting”. The northern counties supplied the cheapest and toughest stockings. Made from coarse, hairy wool, they were warm and hard-wearing. Next up were worsted stockings in diff erent qualities (made from the same combed long Midland wool used for worsted cloth). Jersey stockings came at the top of the scale; they were made from the very fi ne yarn spun on the small wheels developed in Guernsey and Jersey. This method was taken up in Norfolk and the knitting of jersey stockings spread quickly in Norwich and Yarmouth. By the 1570s there were already wide regional variations in types of yarn, weight, pattern, colours, decoration.

Stockings were available in eight or nine diff erent colours, in various shades, in a mixture of colours, and in stripes, also in diff erent colours. For the best quality stockings, embroidery, e.g. with quirks and clocks, was added after knitting. Length and size also varied (for adults and children); the range of varieties increased as output expanded. In the late sixteenth century, commentators denounced these “Frenchifi ed” and “Babilonian” fashions, with their “light wanton colours.” In the 1670s, one Guernsey merchant alone ordered some

33 diff erent kinds of good-quality stockings, varying by size, design and colour.

A range of further types were knitted for ordinary use.

In Nottingham in 1519, a pair of knitted woollen stockings were priced at 5d 86. In 1578, stockings from the northern counties cost between 1s. and

1s.6d. In Kirkby Lonsdale in the same year, the cheapest variety cost 7d.; thereafter stocking prices rose at 2d. increments from 1s. to 1s.10d. In 1580, Customs valuations of short woollen hose were set at 8d., of long hose, at 3s.4d.

This means retail prices were about double — i.e. 1s. 4d. and 6s. 8d. respectively. The best worsted stockings sold in 1590 at 8s.-9s. A 1600 customs valuation put coarse jersey stockings at 2sh.8d. and plain jersey at 4s., again presumably half their actual retail value (perhaps 5sh.4d. and 8sh. respectively). Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 389

In the seventeenth century, the price of northern stockings fell below a shilling. A shopkeeper in Bury, Lancs., had 59 pairs of stockings on hand in 1668, at prices ranging from 3d. to 1s.6d. a pair. Guernsey worsted stockings sold wholesale in the 1670s at 2s.6d. to 10s. 10d. a pair; again, retail prices were perhaps twice as much, at 5s. to £1-1-8 a pair. A northern hosier in the 1680s carried boys’ and childrens’ woollen hose at 8d. and 10d. a pair; in Leicester in the 1690s, worsted stockings cost from 1s.6d. to 2s.6d. a pair. A (female)

stallkeeper in Donington, Lancs., had 31 pairs of stockings in 1692, at 3d., 6d.,

10d., 1s. and 1s.1d. a pair. And a shopkeeper in Grantham, Lincs., carried 192 pairs of women’s stockings in 1696 at around 6d. each. Such impressionistic evidence is all we can hope for but it seems safe to say that stockings were available in a wide price range. Nor do prices appear to have risen very much if at all; and since money prices generally rose over the period, it would seem stocking prices may have fallen behind other prices.

Footwear

Shoemakers generally produced to order, i.e., they both produced the good and sold direct to customers: there was no separate distributive stage 87.

But many also kept stock on hand. In Chelmsford in 1560, 57 pairs of shoes were stolen from a shoemaker’s shop; their total value was £2-13-4. In 1571, a Banbury shoemaker had 96 pairs of shoes plus 2 pairs of boots on hand at a total value of £11-3-4. In 1574, in the same town, a shoemaker carried 163 pairs of shoes at about 2sh.3d. a pair; he had 2 pairs of boots at 4sh. A Devon shoemaker in 1590 had 42 pairs of shoes “great and small” and a pair of boots in stock, all worth some £4-11-4. In 1594, a Worcester shoemaker carried 14 pairs of men’s shoes at about 2s.3½d a pair, 14 pairs of women’s shoes at 1s., and 8 pairs of children’s shoes at 6d. He also had 2 pairs of boots at 4s. each.

Another shoemaker there had the same stock of women’s and children’s shoes at the same prices, but he had 20 pairs of men’s shoes at 1s.7d. a pair. In 1623, in Chester, a shoemaker had 117 pairs of shoes on hand: some were children’s shoes, others were for adults, from “size 3 to size 12”. In 1633 in Petworth, a shoemaker carried 63 pairs of shoes at 9½d a pair. In 1663, a shoemaker’s stock of boots and shoes was valued at £9-19-6. Thus footwear appears to have been relatively cheap in relation to the other items of dress mentioned above. But before the mid-sixteenth century, even ordinary shoes displayed fashion features. Of black cattle hide they may be, but their toes varied in shape

(exactly as with upper-class footwear) and they were slashed to reveal the coloured stockings beneath.

Better quality shoes were made by cordwainers, who also made leather clothing and fastenings 88. But pointmakers were already organised separately 390 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

in Tewkesbury in 1579, as were glovers and pouchmakers. All these light leather workers made other leather personal goods as well: belts, bags and purses. Shoemakers were found in only 27 rural parishes in Norfolk and Suf— folk in 1500-99; in 1650-99, this figure was 32. But those involved in the leather trades — including cordwainers, tanners and others engaged in manufacturing — were reported in 71 rural parishes in 1500-99, and in 241 parishes in 1650-99. In towns, the coverage was far higher: the number in which cordwainers/shoemakers were found went from 35 to 43 (over the same area and time periods). Glovers were already found in 20 such towns during the sixteenth century; by 1650-99, this fi gure had risen marginally to 22. In 1500-99, the fi ve largest towns had specialist cobbler — “translators”: who both repaired shoes and altered them in size. This occupation was found in only two towns in 1650-99: suggesting that as output rose, it was not necessary to re-use shoes thus; the labour and other resources could be used for other purposes. Out of 19 Norfolk market towns in 1500-99, cordwainers were found in

10; by 1650-99, they were available in 18 such towns. Norwich had 44 cordwainer/shoemakers in 1525; they formed 56 percent of the leatherworkers in the city. By 1671, there were 90 cordwainers — more than twice the number in 1525; they constituted 62½ per cent of all leatherworkers. During the years

1501-25, 34 cordwainers and shoemakers were admitted to the freedom, some

45 per cent of all leatherwork admissions. In 1651-75, this number rose to

115, or just over two-thirds of the leatherworker group. Taken in conjunction with the expansion of leather manufacturing in rural parishes, this suggests that in the supply of shoes and light leather goods, the fi nal stages of manufacturing

-cum-distribution, nearer the fi nal consumption stage, became more concentrated in towns, while the stages of manufacturing further removed, became more concentrated in rural areas. The implication is that transport facilities also expanded (as we shall see).

How to Keep Trim

Besides the items dealt with above, a number of other personal goods also became available at the lowest income-levels during the early modern period

— i.e. they were now mass consumption goods 89. Combs were certainly on sale in 1588 because a shop in Winslow, Bucks., had comb boxes at less than a penny. each. In 1642, a shopkeeper in Newcastle carried large horn combs;

other horn combs at 1d. and 2d. other combs at 3d.; and bone combs at 6¾d.

each. He also had comb cases at 1½d. In 1680 a chapman travelling on foot in Bury, Lancs. had white bone combs in his pack at ¾d. each, as also horn combs at 1½d. and “ivory” combs at 2d., together with comb cases at three for a penny. Other chapmen who carried their own packs also had combs in stock Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 391

in Grantham, Lincs., in 1679; in Penrith in 1683, and in Brampton in 1695.

Mrs. Spuff ord gives an illustration of a small double-sided seventeenth-century bone comb; it is identical with the wooden combs produced by rural and small urban craftsmen in twentieth-century India. “Berde” (?beard) brushes and “robyn” (?robing — i.e. clothes) brushes were sold in 1588 by a shopkeeper in Winslow Bucks; four of the fi rst kind and two of the second were valued together at only 4d. the lot. He also had two other brushes (unspecifi ed) at 4d. each. Two brushes (unspecifi ed) were also available at 8d. each in a shop in Great Yarmouth in 1628, while a Newcastle shop carried two “beard brushes” in 1642. A “great” looking glass was available for 1sh. in a Winslow shop in 1588. In 1628 in Great Yarmouth, small looking-glasses were available at about 1¾d. each; the shopkeeper also had a single “great gilt” glass at the princely sum of £1-4-0. In 1642 in Newcastle, a shopkeeper had “great glasses” at 8d. in total, he also had one glass at 5d. In 1661 a Bristol shop could supply what was clearly an exceptional looking-glass: it was “corded in red leather” and cost 5s. In 1677, a Newcastle warehouse carried glasses at 2¾d.

each; they were also stocked in shops in Bury, Lancs., in 1668 and in Randwick, Glos., in 1691. Chapmen generally carried pocket looking-glasses during the seventeenth century. In 1588, a shopkeeper in Winslow, Bucks., sold knives at ¾d. each [knives were used then where nail scissors are used now]. In

1642, a Newcastle shop stocked a wide range of such knives: at 1½d., 4d., 6d., and 3s. each. The cheapest were “jackaleg” knives at ½ a dozen, while a quantity of “elfi n-blades” were valued at 2s. The implication of all the above is that, even at the lowest income-levels, a wider range of material means were being produced to enable people to achieve a neater, trimmer appearance. (Hygiene also improved, with a larger supply of combs and brushes and more resources to trim nails properly.)

Readymade Clothing

Finally, the range of readymade garments expanded greatly from the late seventeenth century onwards. Readymade shirts were available in one merchants shop in Exeter as early as 1564. By the 1670s an Oxford “salesman”

had not only shirts, but a range of other linen garments as well: coats, trousers, frocks, morning-gowns, petticoats, bodices, drawers, and children’s coats. In

Dover in the 1680s, shirts, breeches, men’s and boys’ suits, women’s petticoats, children’s coats, vests and “undercloths” could all be bought readymade, as well as canvas frocks, “close” coats and camlet coats. In Great Chart, Kent, in

1690, a shopkeeper had shirts in stock. In Randwick Glos., in 1692, a shopkeeper sold shirts at 3s. each. In Canterbury in 1703, the range had grown much further, with garments priced according to size and fabric; stocks were 392 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

also larger. Women’s and girls’ gowns cost from 3s. (for “small girls’ gowns”)

to 7s.; petticoats went from 3s. to 5s.6d. Damask mantuas cost 8sh. For men’s and boys’ breeches, the range was 2s.6d. (for “small boys”) to 7s. Waistcoats went from 2s. to 10s. (for “large boys” the cost was 4s.) A child’s coat cost 4s.

or 5s.6d. A “little boy’s coat” was priced at 3s.6d. Boys’ coats ranged from

4s.6. to 7s. A “large boy’s coat” cost 10s. Men’s coats (lined) went from 14s.

to 20s. In 1705 in Sittingbourne, it was possible to buy boys’ dimity frocks, men’s frocks, canvas frocks and canvas drawers. Thus in some urban areas by the beginning of the eighteenth century, a growing range of readymade clothing was available. And by the late seventeenth century, “bodies” and children’s waistcoats were being sold in Cambridgeshire 90.

The Better-off

We come now to items above the mass-consumption range. As we have seen, the majority of the population dressed in wool and linen. An Essex tradesman in 1609 wore a black stuff doublet, a white frieze jerkin, a pair of pleated fustian “hose” [breeches], ash-coloured knitted stockings and a banded black hat 91. As we also saw above, silk was added to the mass-consumption range only from the late sixteenth century onwards mainly for such small items as buttons, laces, points, ribbons, kerchiefs, capes, hoods, garters, girdles and purses. Silk hats were also available. But above this level, although clothing was still mostly woollen, the cloth was of superior quality and greater use was made of luxury silk fabrics. Fur was also now used. By the mid-sixteenth century, many middle income urban wardrobes contained at least one or two larger items of clothing made from silk. Country gentlemen and urban merchants during most of his period dressed in both wool and silk, but from the early seventeenth century onwards, wool started growing in prominence. Leather was still used in the sixteenth century for luxury garments, but not later.

Throughout most of this period, tailoring was rudimentary — that is, by the standards achieved later: “many… garments do not appear to have been made to fi t the wearer”. What distinguished middle and upper income clothing from the mass-consumption level, was fabric quality, decoration and ornament. Tailoring skills and therefore standards rose only from the late seventeenth century onwards: ie the quality of clothing was now defi ned increasingly by the quality of its tailoring. Thus investment rose in tailors’ equipment, training and workshops. together with improvements in their quality. That is, more goods and services, of better quality were now produced for, and invested in, the production stage just preceding fi nal consumption. Hence the quality of the fi nal good — clothing — improved so conspicuously. But items of Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 393

clothing were also more diff erentiated: some were used purely for fashion and eff ect, and, of course, quantities were far greater 92.

In the later 1530’s, 42 yards of woollen cloth costing 5s. 4d. a yard were purchased for the gentlemen of the offi cial Lisle household. On another occasion, 22½ yards of “a very good cloth” called “marble” was purchased at the slightly higher price of 5s. 8d. a yard for their liveries. Even at this level, Hussee still considered 2½ yards as the maximum, “except for the very greatest” 93. In

1559, a sarcenet tippet worth 20s. was reported stolen at Essex Quarter Sessions. In 1570, an Exeter cordwainer had two gowns trimmed all round with fur, besides two doublets, three cloaks, two caps and a hat. An Exeter widow in 1587 left a taff eta apron, eight other aprons, four petticoats, four clothgowns, three hats, 26 kerchiefs “and other trumpery” (the exasperated executor was evidently male.). A merchant in the same city had, in 1589, two doublets, two pairs of “hose” [breeches], three gowns, a coat and two cloaks, all woollen, besides a leather jerkin, a cap and a hat 94.

In the early seventeenth century, a gentleman from a landowning family bought 7 yards of ash-coloured satin for a doublet and hose at 14s. a yard, plus

5s. 4d. worth of taff eta for the lining and facings. For his cloak, however, he bought woollen cloth: 3¼ yards at 11s. a yard, together with 36 buttons to decorate both doublet and cloak. Another landowner (in 1612) bought 3¾ yards of velvet to make “venetians” (fashionable wide knee-breeches). In 1620, an Exeter alderman possessed a substantial wardrobe: three satin suits, eight gowns, twelve cloaks, two tippets and a muff [a luxury item, made of satin on velvet, decorated and embroidered]; he also had a head-brush 95.

In the mid-seventeenth century, James Master, a country gentleman of Kent, bought brown cloth for a suit at 15s. a yard and “Spanish” cloth for a cloak at

23s. a yard. A short cloak took 3¼ yards but he also had made a long stuff cloak which took 8¼ yards of the material. He purchased 3 yards of “watchet”

[light blue-green] satin for a waistcoat at 11s. a yard. On other occasions, he bought 2¾ yards of scarlet mohair at 6s. a yard, and 3¾ yards of shalloon serge

[double twilled worsted] at the same price. A Hereford merchant bought 10 yards of black silk mohair at 5s. 6d. a yard in 1642. In 1675, a gentry family’s account-book recorded the purchase of 5 yards of Lyon mantua at 4s. a yard, while in 1696, another country gentleman paid 36s. for 4.1/8yards of silk mantua to line his waistcoat. Holland for his shirts cost James Master 3s. a yard, but the holland for his kerchiefs cost more than twice as much: 7s. an ell and 9s. for

1¼ ells (each length made 6 kerchiefs) 96.

Buttons to decorate the kerchief cost 2d. each [a button was attached by a string to one corner] — His footboy, however, got the very cheap domestic linen 394 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

— scotch cloth — for his six kerchiefs, which took 1¼ yards. — Master also bought 18 “rich gold and silver fl at buttons for my scarlet cloake”, paying 25s.

6d. for the lot, and he paid 3s. 6d for “21 yards of ribbon to trim my sute”. The tailoring of a greatcoat and a satin waistcoat cost him 35sh., while the making of a “gray riding cloak” and a “sad colour[dark] cloath sute” came to £3-15-0.

In the 1650’s, Sir Miles Stapleton owned a satin suit and cloak trimmed with

36 yards of silver ribbon. He paid 3s. for buttons to decorate Lady Stapleton’s kerchiefs, while “two fi ne large new-fashioned holland aprons” set him back

38s 97.

Beaver hats were available from the beginning of the seventeenth century;

they cost around £3-£4. A country gentleman around this time owned a black beaver hat with a gold band, for which he paid 64sh. Such hats were known as castors. Demi-castors were also available, made of a mixture of beaver and rabbit fur. James Master of Kent owned a “French castor with band” which cost a suspiciously low £1-12-6 in 1648. A demi-castor which was reported stolen at

Essex Quarter Sessions in 1645 was valued at only 1sh. Felt hats, in the early part of the century, could range from 4sh. (for a “Dutch” felt) to 16s. Hats were also made of “shag” — usually a coarse, hairy worsted but coarse hair or silk on occasion. In the later 1640’s, James Master paid 6s. for a shag hat and band, but a “Shagge French hat with ribbons”, (!!) cost twice as much. A “fi ne straw hat” with a lined brim was priced at 34s. by a Sussex haberdasher in 1632.

Hats were also made of silk or velvet, lined with taff eta or velvet, and they had buckeram stiff ening. They were trimmed in a variety of ways: with crewel, silk or ribbon bands or cords; ribbon loops; feathers or rows of decorative buttons.

Hatbands could be of copper, silver or gold. To “new-dye” a hat cost 1s. Caps, including night caps, were embroidered and made from fi ne cloth, linen, silk, velvet or brocade. Gloves were mostly leather, but worsted and silk gloves are also mentioned. James Master paid 3s. 3d. each for two pairs of “cordovan

[Spanish leather] double seamed” gloves (in 1646) 98.

Although knitted stockings were used increasingly from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, cloth or half-knitted stockings were still made for rough wear, from various fabrics: canvas, buckram, linen, kersey, worsted, serge, jersey. Pepys, in 1661, wore a pair of half-cloth black stockings. Silk stockings remained an opulent luxury to the early seventeenth century; their output then increased suffi ciently to bring them into middle-income wardrobes. In 1589, an Exeter merchant left two pairs of woollen stockings. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a landowning gentleman paid 25s. for a pair of silk stockings. In 1620, an Exeter alderman owned six pairs of silk stockings, “both good and bad”, besides silk garters. James Master of Kent paid 6s. 6d. for a pair of worsted stockings, 9s. 6d. for a half-silk pair and 19sh. for a pair made Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 395

of “greene silk” in 1647. Garters to hold up the stockings were decorative and expensive and could often cost £1 or more a pair. They were made of ribbon or net, taff eta, silk, cloth or silver or gold and often had spangles or gold fringes or braid. Cheaper varieties were also available: a Sussex haberdasher in 1632 had gold and silver garters at 2s. a pair but worsted garters cost 7s. 11d. the pair 99.

“Stirrup hose” or “boot hose” and socks were worn over stockings when riding, for protection. James Master bought two pairs of “ancle worsted socks”

for 1s. 7d. each in 1646. In 1661, Sir Miles Stapleton paid 15s. for a pair of new woollen riding stockings and a further 2s. 6d. for a girdle and six points to tie them up. Boot-hose “tops” were visible over the boots and so were attached separately to the hose. These “tops” were decorative and usually cost more than the hose themselves. James Master paid at various times in the late 1640’s and 1650’s: 3s. 6d. for a pair of black “topps” with gold and silver fringe; 4s.

for scarlet serge tops; 5s. for “white riding tops” and 6s. for the red serge variety. He bought two “great” pairs of plain tops for 5s. 6d. each; two “little” pairs cost 3s. each. Two yards of lace for tops cost 5s. 6d. a yard on one occasion but

11s. 6d. a yard on another. Sir Miles Stapleton paid on 1s. for a pair of thread boot-hose but their tops were made of “new silk” and cost 7s. 6d 100.

A variety of shoes, boots and overshoes were worn in the seventeenth century. An Oxford undergraduate, in his three years there between 1619 and

1622, bought three pairs of boots at 7s to 8s. 6d. a pair; four pairs of shoes at

1sh. each, and fi fteen pairs at between 2s. 4d. to 2s. 8d. He also bought a pair of “pantofl es”. Various items were repaired on nine occasions. In comparison, his garters cost him 7s.-8s. and his stockings, 6s. 6d.-7s. Again, his shoes appear to have been relatively inexpensive in comparison to other clothing items. James Master (in the later 1640’s) paid 12s. for a pair of “dark-coloured boots”, 15s for white Spanish leather boots and 16s. for a pair of boots with

“golosches” [overshoes]. Sir Miles Stapleton bought Spanish leather shoes with “gallotives” [overshoes] on two occasions, at a cost of 7s. and then 8s. 2d.

(in the later seventeenth century) 101.

F O O T N O T E S C H A P T E R 7

1. E.A. Wrigley, “Urban growth and agricultural change: England and the Continent in the early modern period”, in R.I. Rotberg and T.K. Rabb (eds.) Population and

Economy: From the Traditional to the Modern Worlds (Cambridge University Press,

1986), Tables 3, 4; E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofi eld, The Population History of Eng-land, 1541-1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, paperback ed, 1989)

Table A3.3.

2. This paragraph and those following, on foodstuff s, are based on: Alan Everitt, “Farm

Labourers”, Ch.VII in Joan Thirsk (ed) Agrarian History of England and Wales,Vol IV: 1500-1640 (Cambridge University Press 1967) pp.416, 417, 450-53; Joan

Thirsk, “Farming Techniques”, Ch.III in ibid., pp.175, 177, 185-88, 192-197; J.A.

Chartres, Internal Trade in England, 1500-1700 (Macmillan 1977) pp.20-23, 25-27,35-36; J.A. Sharpe, Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550-1760 (EdwardArnold, corr. ed., 1988) p.50; Carole Shammas, “Food expenditures and economic well-being in early modern England,” J. Econ. Hist. 43(1983) pp.97-99; D.M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth, 1547-1603 (Longman, 2nd ed. 1992) pp.7, 133; idem,“Civic mentality and the environment in Tudor York”, in Jonathan Barry (ed) The

Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader, 1530-1688 (Longman 1990) pp.216-218; John

Patten, “Urban occupations in pre-industrial England”, Trans.Inst. Brit: Geogra-phers new ser.2 (1977) pp.304, 305; idem, English Towns, 1500-1700 (Folkestone:Dawson Books 1978) p.186.

3. J.A. Chartres, Internal Trade in England, p.18.4. T.S. Willan, The Inland Trade (Manchester University Press 1976) pp.52, 61, 66, 81,93; J.F. Pound, Tudor and Stuart Norwich (Chichester: Phillimore 1988) pp.56-57;Margaret Spuff ord, The Great Reclothing of Rural England (Hambledon Press 1984)p.66.

5. Andrew Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Stanford University Press1978) pp. 43-47; J. Thirsk, AHEW, IV: 1500-1640, p.192.

6. This, and the following two paragraphs are based on: Peter Clark, The English Ale-house: A Social History 1200-1830 (Longman 1983), pp.95-104, 106, 111; J. Thirsk,

AHEW, IV: 1500-1640, p.196; Alan Everitt, ibid., p.453.7. Clark, p.111.

8. This paragraph and those following, on sugar, are based on: C.G.A. Clay, Economic

Expansion and Social Change: England, 1500-1700 (Cambridge University Press

1984) II, 111, 122, 128, 168-69; D.A. Farnie, “The commercial empire of the Atlantic, 1607-1783”, Econ.Hist.Rev. sec.ser. 15(1962) pp.209, 210; Ralph Davis, A Com-mercial Revolution: English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centu-ries (Historical Association, 1967)p.11; idem, “English foreign trade, 1660-1700”

in W.E. Minchinton (ed) The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Methuen 1969) pp.81-82; idem,English Overseas Trade,

1500-1700 (Macmillan 1973) pp.35-36; J.F. Pound, Tudor and Stuart Norwich,pp.56-57; T.S. Willan, Inland Trade, pp.35, 55, 61, 143.9. C. Clay, Economic Expansion..., II, 124, 169; R. Davis, “English foreign trade, 1660-1700”, p.96.

10. This paragraph and those following, on tobacco, are based on: C. Clay, Economic

Expansion..., II, 137-38, Tables XVII, XIX, 168; R. Davis, A Commercial Revolu-tion..., p.10; idem, “English foreign trade, 1660-1700”, pp.80-81, 87-88; idem,English Overseas Trade, pp.34-35; D.A. Farnie, “Commercial empire....”, p.208; P.

Clark, English Alehouse pp.85, 125, 134-35, 138; T.S. Willan, Inland Trade, pp.78,81, 82-83, 93, 137; J. Paten, “Urban occupations...”, p.305.

11. This paragraph and those following, on fruit and spice imports, are based on: C.

Clay, Economic Expansion..., II, 124, Table XVII; T.S. Willan, Inland Trade pp.20,30, 36-39, 52, 55, 61, 66, 80, 81; Andrew Appleby, “Diet in sixteenth-century England” in Charles Webster (ed) Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Cen-tury (Cambridge University Press 1979), p.100; J.F. Pound, Tudor and Stuart Nor-wich, pp.56-57; W.G. Hoskins, “The Elizabethan merchants of Exeter” in P. Clark

(ed) The Early Modern Town (Longman 1976) pp.153-54; Joyce Youings, Sixteenth Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy 397

Century England (Penguin 1984), p.96; M. Spuff ord, Great Reclothing, pp.62, 64,66, 178, 179; J. Patten, “Urban occupations...”, p.305.12. This paragraph and those following, on upper-class food consumption, is basedon: D.M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth, p.133; idem, “Civic mentality...”, p.217;A. Appleby, “Diet in sixteenth century England”, pp.98-100; J. Thirsk, AHEWIV:

1500-1660, p.196; idem, Economic Policy and Projects (Oxford: Clarendon Press1978) pp.106-107.

13. This paragraph is based on Clay, II, p.124 and Tables XVI, XVII.

14. Information taken from: Muriel St. Clair Byrne (ed) The Lisle Letters, 6 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), Index, S.V. “Food and householdsupplies”.

15. Verity Isitt, Take A Buttock of Beefe (Southampton: Ashford Press 1987).16. A. Appleby, “Diet in sixteenth-century England”, p.98.

17. D.M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth, p.7.18. J.A. Chartres, Internal Trade in England, p.19 (quote); p.18 (Chancery suits).19. Calculated from E.A. Wrigley, “Urban growth and agricultural change...”, Tables 3,4.

20. A. Everitt, AHEW, IV: 1500-1660, pp.451, 583, 584.21. P. Clark, English Alehouse, pp.100, 101.22. This paragraph and those following, on the continuance of payments and transfersin kind, and on specifi c responses to a fall in grain production, are based on: John

Walter, “The social economy of dearth in early modern England”, in John Walter and

Roger Schofi eld (eds) Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society

(Cambridge University Press 1989) pp. 77-78, 91-92, 96-106, 114, 116, 118-120,

127n.

23. J. Walter, “The social economy of dearth....’, pp. 77-78, 123-124.24. The information in this and the following paragraph is based on: E.A. Wrigley andR.S. Schofi eld, The Population History of England, 1541-1871 (Cambridge University Press, paperback ed, 1989) pp.664-667, 670-679, Table A10.5.

25. R.B. Outhwaite, Dearth, Public Policy and Social Disturbance in England, 1550-

1800 (Macmillan 1991) p.30.

26. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofi eld, Population History of England, pp.399,. 672-678.27. Calculated from E.A. Wrigley, “Urban growth and agricultural change....”, Tables 3,4.

28. J. Walter, “The social economy of dearth....”: Walter uses these phrases a number of times on pp.96-98, 101, 103.

29. J. Walter, “The social economy of dearth....”, p.123.

30. R.B. Outhwaite, Dearth, Public Policy ......pp. 24-25.31. A. Everitt, AHEW, IV: 1500-1640, p.451.32. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofi eld, Population History of England, p.313.33. R.B. Outhwaite, Dearth, Public Policy...., pp.32-34, Quotes from p.33.34. Calculated from: E.A. Wrigley, “Urban growth and agricultural change...”, Tables 3,4; Wrigley and Schofi eld, Population History, Table A3.3.35. Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (London and Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963) pp. 100-110. Quote from p.107. For the “moderate scarcity”,see p.105fn.35.

36. I. Habib, Agrarian System, pp.100-110; W.H. Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb:

A Study in Indian Economic History (Macmillan 1921; repr. Delhi: Oriental Books, 398 Early Modern England | Sudha Shenoy

1972), Ch.7. Both Habib and Moreland rely on contemporaneous reports by European merchants resident in India, as well as by Mughal offi cials.

37. Calculated from: E.A. Wrigley, “Urban growth....”, Tables 3, 4: Kingsley Davis, The

Population of India and Pakistan (1951; reiss. New York: Russell and Russell 1968), p.15, Table 17.

38. Philip D. Curtin, “Nutrition in African History”, in T.K. Rabb and R.I. Rotberg (ed)

Hunger and History (Cambridge University Press 1983) pp.181-183.

39. Tapan Raychaudhuri, “British Rule in India: an Assessment”, ch.15 in P.J. Marshall

(ed) Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (London: Book Club Associates, 1996) p.361.

40. Quotation from Raychaudhuri, loc.cit. For Murshidabad, see Mark Bence-Jones,

Clive of India (London: Book Club Associates, 1974) pp.88-89 and esp. pp.102—

103. The full quotation from Clive reads: “The city of Murshidabad is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of London, with this diff erence, that there are individuals in the fi rst possessing infi nitely greater property than any in the last city”. (As quoted in Bench-Jones, p.145.) The alternative descriptions of Murshidabad, for

1759, refers to narrow streets and huts, but also to palaces, temples and mosques on the riverside. (Bence-Jones, loc.cit.) For the eff ect of periodic famines on the cost andavailability of cloth in seventeenth and eighteenth century India, see K.N. Chaudhuri,

The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760 (Cambridge University Press 1978) pp.252, 265-70.

41. Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 79n.

42. D.M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth, 1547-1603 (London: Longman, 2nd ed., 1992), p.

134.

43. Alan Everitt, “Farm Labourers”, Ch. VII in Joan Thirsk (ed) The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. IV: 1500-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1967) pp. 437,

449-50.

44. J.F. Pound, Tudor and Stuart Norwich (Chichester: Phillimore, 1988) pp. 134, 137-38.

45. This paragraph is based on: Margaret Spuff ord, The Great Reclothing of Rural Eng-land (London: Hambledon Press 1984) pp. 154-55, 158-59, 167-68, 172-76.46. Victor Skipp, “Economic and Social Change in the Forest of Arden, 1530-1649” inJoan Thirsk (ed) Land, Church and People (Reading: British Agricultural HistorySociety 1970) Table X. There is an unfortunate error in this table. The average value of gold and silver in all inventories for 1610-49 should be 5 shillings, not £5. All theother average values are consistent with the fi gures given.

47. Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford:Clarendon Press 1990) Tables 4.5, 4.6.

48. Shammas, Table 4.8.

49. Everitt, p. 450; also see below (for woollens).

50. The information on sumptuary legislation comes from: N.B. Harte, “State control of dress and social change in pre-industrial England” in D.C. Coleman and A.H. John

(eds) Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-industrial England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976). For the statutes and proclamations mentioned, see p. 135.

51. Harte, pp. 142-43; also p. 137.

52. Spuff ord, pp. 125-126 and inventories; and pp. 128-29, 182, 151, 154, 164.

53. Everitt, p. 450; Pound, p. 138; Spuff ord, pp. 158, 176, 155, 168, 125-26; Victor

Skipp, Crisis and Development: An Ecological Case Study of the Forest of Arden, 1570-

1674 (C.U.P. 1978) p. 70.

54. Spuff ord, p. 136; Thirsk, p. 176.

55. John Patten, “Changing occupational structures in the East Anglian countryside,

1500-1700”, in H.S.A. Fox and R.A. Butlin (eds) Change in the Countryside (London: Institute of British Geographers, 1979) p. 111.

56. Everitt, p. 448.

57. Shammas, p. 270.

58. Patten, p. 113.

59. Thirsk, p. 119fn.

60. Shammas, pp. 200-201.

61. Spuff ord, pp. 107-109, 110-113, 118-122.

62. Shammas, p. 201.

63. Spuff ord, pp. 122-123. For equipment left by tailors (but no goods) see T.S. Willan,

The Inland Trade (Manchester University Press 1976), p. 56.64. This and the following paragraph, on textile types and uses, are based on: Eric Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester University Press1986), chaps. 1-9. Some specifi c points only: disappearance of old types: ppp.

28-33, 39, 42-43; new types that failed: pp. 26, 28-29, 57-58, 72-83. A new type which did badly: p. 50. Mixed yarns: pp. 67, 76.

65. Rural labourers: Everitt, p. 450; special fabric for smocks: Kerridge, p. 23; frieze:

C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth

Century (London: Faber and Faber, 2nd ed 1970) p. 31; Husee: Muriel St. Clair

Byrne (ed), The Lisle Letters, 6 vols (University of Chicago Press 1981), no. 1206;fashionable pedlar: C.W. Cunnington, “Costume” in Ralph Edwards et al., The Tudo

Period, 1500-1603 (London: The Connoisseur, 1956) p. 123. Leather clothing:

Palliser, p. 134; John Waterer, “Leather” in Ewards et al., The Tudor Period, p. 154;Willan, p. 57. Stable boy: C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English

Costume in the Seventeenth Century (London: Faber, 3rd ed, 1972) p. 54.66. Rural Labourers: Everitt, p. 450; woollen “rail”: Cunningtons, Handbook… Six-teenth Century, pp. 67-68; Husee: Byrne, Lisle Letters, nos. 389, 497, 1205, 1206;noble household of 1632: C.W. Cunnington, “Costume” in Ralph Edwards et al.,

The Stuart Period, 1603-1714 (London: The Connoisseur, 1957) p. 138.67. Cunningtons, Handbook…Sixteenth Century, p. 185.68. The and the following paragraphs on varieties of cloth carried by shops and chapmen, are based on: Willan, pp. 61, 65; Spuff ord, pp. 172-75, 158-59, 182-84, 186—

90, 161-62, 163, 190-93, 165-66, 21.

69. For example, longcloth was usually used for petticoats: it was thickish, rough in fi nish and only came in a dull white. To make petticoats out of poplin was considered somewhat luxurious; it was a lighter, more expensive type of cotton fabric, with a smooth, shiny fi nish. It came in several colours and could also be used for shirts.70. Quite separate and distinct form all this, is the knowledge of traditional handwovenfabrics, which is inseparable from the kinds of traditional garments worn in India.

Saris are now mill-woven, but the majority are handwoven, in cotton or silk, in a vast range of weaves, patterns and colours, distinctive to each region. Similarly, certain kinds of traditional garments for men, which consist of a length of fabric wrapped differently (from the waist down) according to region, are still handwoven [dhoti, lungi, mundu].

71. Thirsk, p. 48; Spuff ord, pp. 104, 113, 118, 121, 122.

72. Information on thread from Thirsk, pp. 106, 121, 114; also Spuff ord, pp. 52, 58, 66,

92, 152, 158, 166, 174, 175, 179, 185, 189, 193; and Willan, p. 66.

73. Thirsk, pp. 13-14, 183, 121, 50; Spuff ord, Ch. 6., passim, esp. p. 92 and pp. 21, 64,

66, 153, 185, 189.

74. Patten, Table II.

75. J.F. Patten, English Towns, 1500-1700 (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1978) pp. 254,283.

76. Pound, Tables 1.1, 1.3

77. Pound, Tables 5.6, 5.17, 5.12, 5.16 (clothing group and percentage of tailors in group); Table 3.1 and p. 30 (Norwich population).

78. The following information is from: Spuff ord, pp. 94, 152-53, 185, 184-85, 187, 188,

189, 166; Willan, p. 66. Information on imports from Thirsk, pp. 183, 184 (inkle, thread points).

79. Information on pins is collated from: Thirsk, pp. 78-81, 182; Spuff ord, pp. 21, 92,

94, 98, 175, 193.

80. Information on buttons from Thirsk, pp. 14, 182, 121; Spuff ord, pp. 185, 189, 98,

174, 92, 83; Willan, p. 66. For hooks and eyes see Cunningtons, Handbook Sixteenth

Century, p. 90.

81. The following paragraph is based on: Thirsk, pp. 14, 183, 44, 136, 176, 121, 113-114, 131-32; Spuff ord, pp. 175, 158, 184, 186-188, 152, 153, 166; Willan, p. 66.82. The following is based on: Spuff ord, pp. 21, 52, 70, 133, (Shetland gloves), 152-53,154, 163, 165, 175, 184-85, 188-89, 193; Thirsk, pp. 120, 121; Waterer, p. 155,

Willan, p. 78.

83. Spuff ord, p. 174 (hats); Thirsk, pp. 14, 121 (silk hats), 176 (Gregory King), 183

(import fi gures); Willan, p. 61 (hats) Exeter hatters Cunningtons, Handbook…Six-teenth Century p.

84. This paragraph is based on: Thirsk, pp. 5-6, 44-45, 113, 126, 167-68; idem, “The fantastical folly of fashion: the English stocking-knitting industry, 1500-1700”, in

N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting (eds) Textile History and Economic History (Manchester University Press 1973). Also see Cunnington, Handbook, seventeenth cen-tury, p. 61; also pp. 51-56, 58-60, 62-66, 71.

85. This paragraph is based on: Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects, pp. 106, 104, 113,

125; idem, “Fantastical folly…”, pp. 52, 57-59; Spuff ord, pp. 110, 102.86. Price Information from: Thirsk, “Fantastical Folly…”, pp. 56-57, 59, 66; idem, Eco-nomic Policy and Projects, p. 113; Spuff ord, pp. 102, 166.87. This paragraph is based on: Willan, pp. 56-57, 78-79; Palliser, p. 34; Waterer, pp.

154-55; L.A. Clarkson, “The organisation of the English leather industry in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”, Econ. Hist. Rev., 13 (1960-61) p. 252.88. This paragraph is based on: Patten, “Changing occupational structures…,” TablesII, III and p. 112; idem, English Towns, 1500-1700, pp. 153-54, 252, 254, 258-59,283; Clarkson, pp. 521, 253; Waterer, p. 152; Pound, Tables 1.1, 1.3, 5.5, 5.6, 5.12,

5.17, 5.18 and p. 180.

89. This paragraph is based on: Spuff ord, pp. 21, 66, 92, 98, 152-54, 174, 184, 185,

188, 189.

90. Spuff ord, pp. 123-25, 163, 193.

91. Cunnington, “Costume” in Edwards et al, The Stuart Period, p. 138.92. Ibid, pp. 135 (quote), 139.

93. Lisle Letters, nos. 387, 389, 1205, 1206.94. Cunnington, “Costume” in Edwards et al., The Tudor Period…, pp. 122-23.95. Cunnington, Handbook…Seventeenth Century, pp. 18, 47; idem, “Costume” inEdwards et al. The Stuart Period, p. 138.96. Cunnington, loc, cit.; idem, Handbook…Seventeenth Century, pp. 145, 24, 203, 205,77, 167.

97. Cunnington, Handbook…Seventeenth Century, pp. 77. 29, 52, 152, 191.98. Cunnington, “Costume” in Edwards et al, The Stuart Period…, p. 138, idem, Hand-book…Seventeenth Century, pp. 67, 69, 70, 76.99. Cunnington, “Costume” in Edwards et cal, The Tudor Period…, p. 122, idem, “Costume” in Edwards et al, The Stuart Period…, p. 138, idem, Handbook… Seventeenth

Century, pp. 61, 63, 64, 160 (Pepys).100. , pp. 160, 161, 64, 65.

101. Ibid, pp. 56, 59, 60, 156, 158, Willan, Inland Trade, pp. 56-57.