Masters and Servants in Tudor England E-Book

Alison Sim

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 342

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Beschreibung

Although life in Tudor was ordered in a strict hierarchy, service was common for all classes, and servants were not necessarily the lowest stratum in society. This book looks at the servant life in the Tudor period. It examines relations between servants and their masters, peering into the bedrooms, kitchens and parlours of the ordinary folk.

Leseprobe

MASTERSANDSERVANTSINTUDORENGLAND

ALISON SIM

To Allan, with love

First published in 2006 by Sutton Publishing Limited

The History PressThe Mill, Brimscombe PortStroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Alison Sim, 2006, 2013

The right of Alison Sim to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9566 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Introduction

One

Goldsmiths, Fullers and DyersLearning your Trade in Tudor England

Two

John Blank Comes to CourtBlack Servants in Sixteenth-century England

Three

Housewives, Husbandmen and PloughmenDomestic and Farm Servants

Four

Lords and Ladies, Bishops and PrincesLife in a Great Household

Five

Yeomen, Scullions and ChildrenLiving in a Great Household as a Lower Servant

Six

Henchmen, Honour and HospitalityGentlemen Servants in a Great Household

Seven

Stars in the Presence of the SunPersonal Servants to Royalty

Notes

Select Bibliography

Introduction

The very word ‘servant’ conjures up visions of a private world tucked away behind a discreet green baize door. To modern minds, servants in the past were expected to know their place and never presume to get too familiar with their employers. The concept that your personal servant might also be a close friend whose social life you shared seems odd to us, but was quite normal to the Tudors.

The idea that working as a servant was in itself somehow demeaning simply didn’t exist. Of course you were expected to show respect to your employer, but the simple fact that you were a servant didn’t make you inferior. Sixteenth-century houses were not designed with carefully separated accommodation for servants and masters. Lower down the social scale, where there often wasn’t a great deal of space in most houses, servants could even share accommodation with members of the family. Even at the top level, personal servants always had to be within calling distance of their master or mistress, and so slept close to them. Masters and servants were not strictly segregated.

For many young people being a servant was simply a recognised part of growing up. For many it was a way of learning the skills involved in running a house and a farm while also earning money at the same time. For children born higher up the social scale, working as a personal attendant to a great person in a large household provided a variety of opportunities. For one thing, you would get to know important people who might help your career in the future. You would gain social polish and also practical skills that could lead to the very highest offices if you were talented and lucky. It was because personal service in a great household could lead to better things that working as a servant was not looked down on. Indeed, the role of servants was so closely tied in with the great households that you need some idea of what they were and how they worked in order to understand how the status of servants changed. As the households declined, so too did the whole status of servants.

A great household could consist of incredibly large numbers of people. In Henry VIII’s reign the Earl of Northumberland employed 166 people in his household. The Earl of Derby employed 118 servants in 1587 and William Cecil as Baron Burghley around 120. While many of these servants performed practical work such as cleaning and cooking, others were gentlemen servants who were employed in administration, or even in roles that were more a matter of prestige than of usefulness.

There were several reasons why lords kept so many servants, not all of them connected with mere vanity. One reason was the idea of lordly magnificence. The theory was that great people were expected to have a lifestyle that reflected their status. They had to wear the right sort of clothes, eat lavish foods and entertain the right people in a suitably grand way. Most of all, they were expected to employ large numbers of people as an expression of their wealth and power. Naturally, such living was not cheap, and families could be – and were – ruined by the expense if careful management was lacking. Indeed, the expense of the large household was one of the reasons why it went out of fashion. Even so, while the system lasted, personal service could bring considerable profit.

Part of the idea of magnificence involved raising a great many of the ordinary routines of life surrounding a lord to heights of ceremony. Several books were produced in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries explaining the intricate details of how lords and ladies were to be woken, bathed, dressed, fed and put to bed. Meals, especially dinner, the main meal of the day, were served with a ceremoniousness that seems almost incredible today. In a very hierarchical society, it was also considered fitting that those whose duties brought them into close personal contact with the lord should themselves be at least of the rank of gentleman. This is why there was so much work for gentlemen in noble houses.

On the other hand, the work that the lord had to offer those of higher status was not all ceremonial. Lords owned large estates that needed to be managed, and managed well if the family was to thrive. Likewise, great men often held high office in government. Chief government officials have always needed a great deal of administrative support, but in Tudor times crown officials were expected to both put together and pay for their own team. This meant that great households included men who were doing very important administrative work for their employer, but who might also have a ceremonial job that involved such duties as helping to serve dinner, especially on the greatest occasions, such as royal visits.

A young boy entering a great household would be taught all the ceremonial duties necessary for attending a lord but would also be given a good general education. If he did well, he could progress in the service of his lord and perhaps even achieve a place at court. Cecil himself worked in the household of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, before he became Principal Secretary of State in 1550. Opportunities for girls, on the other hand, were virtually non-existent. The great households, even those headed by a woman rather than a man, were staffed almost entirely by men. Usually the only females in grand households were the lord’s wife, his unmarried daughters and the small number of female attendants who looked after them and acted as their companions. The only female lower-class servant that the household was likely to employ would be the laundress.

Even if you were not particularly gifted and destined for great things, many gentlemen jumped at the chance to work in a great household. It was a particularly good option for younger sons who were not going to inherit the family wealth. For them, it was a chance to enjoy a very pleasant lifestyle without having to make enough money to set themselves up independently. There were, of course, drawbacks. In his famous book Utopia, Thomas More complained about the large numbers of ‘idle persons’ that such men kept, and pointed out that if these ‘idle persons’ became sick, they often found themselves thrown out of their cosy little job with nowhere to go. Even so, plenty of young gentlemen seem to have been willing to take such work, not least as it added substantially to your prestige to work in the household of a great man. It could also add considerably to your safety, as many of a lord’s household formed what was in effect his private army.

People generally assume that in the sixteenth century private armies died out and all military power was safely centred in the hands of the monarch. The Tudors did indeed do all they could to limit private armies, but the greatest nobles could still muster considerable numbers of men even in the late sixteenth century. In 1588, at the time of the Armada crisis, the Earl of Pembroke wrote to Queen Elizabeth offering her three hundred cavalry and five hundred foot-soldiers, all armed from his own personal arsenal. Clearly the nobility were still capable of causing trouble if they wanted to. It says a great deal about Elizabeth’s determination to avoid such trouble that she refused the earl’s offer, despite the depth of the crisis.1

Society was a great deal more violent even in Tudor times than many people realise. The opening scene of Romeo and Juliet, where men from the households of the two warring families fight for no real reason, would have been just as recognisable in sixteenth-century London as in Italy. Under the circumstances, it was understandable that gentlemen were happy to enjoy the protection that working for a noble could bring.

Even those who didn’t work in a noble household were often pleased to wear a great man’s livery, or uniform, which was given to various people as a way of showing that that person had their protection. The receiver of the livery would enjoy not only the prestige of wearing it, but also several practical benefits. People might well think twice about taking someone with a great lord’s protection to court, for example. The right to wear such livery was something that people were even prepared to pay for. As late as 1593 Charles Chester told Gelli Myrich, steward to the Earl of Essex, that he would give him £100 if he could obtain the earl’s livery for him. The use of such livery was anything but subtle. In the early years of Elizabeth’s reign there was a power struggle between the Earl of Leicester and William Cecil. At the time it was alleged that in every shire there were justices of the peace who openly wore Leicester’s livery.2

The good news from the monarch’s point of view was that during the course of the sixteenth century the need for private armies faded. One of the reasons that had helped keep them going had been that, whatever the royal misgivings, the crown did sometimes call on the aristocracy to provide men and arms. As a result the tenants of the aristocracy were still often obliged to give military service, as well as rent, to their landlords. As late as 1599 the Earl of Rutland called his tenants to help on his Irish expedition. However, after James I came to the throne in 1603 the crown stopped making these demands. This changed the whole nature of the relationship between landlords and tenants, and also meant there was no longer any need to employ gentlemen in the household to form the core of a bodyguard. Even great men such as the Dukes of Buckingham and Salisbury felt no need for a large bodyguard in the seventeenth century.3

The most important of the great households was, of course, the royal court. In royal circles personal service to the monarch was a great prize. It gave you regular access to the private apartments, where you could hear everything that was going on. Such knowledge could be passed on to members of your family, and could even be sold for hard cash. Even relatively small details could be vital. In Elizabeth I’s reign maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting could expect to be paid for a tip-off about the queen’s mood, so that petitioners knew when to approach her to ask for favours. They could also try to persuade the queen to grant private audiences to certain individuals, or simply mention someone’s name in the royal presence at the right time. In 1587 the Earl of Rutland was told that he was ‘much beholden to Mistress Radcliffe (a lady of the privy chamber); she daily doth good offices for you. She is worthy to be presented with something.’4 The pay normally took the form of a gift rather than money, but sometimes the gifts could be very valuable, like a set of tapestries or a pair of horses. You were also well placed to ask favours for yourself or for a member of your family, as you were constantly in the royal presence. The inconveniences of court life, many though they were, paled into insignificance beside the advantages if you were fortunate.

It could still be worth your while to come to court even if you knew that dirty manual work was the best you could expect. Maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting were never given such work to do, but of course the royal apartments had to be kept clean and warm, just like the other rooms. This work was done instead by the chamberers, but even they were gentlemen’s daughters. The potential profits to be gained from working directly in the royal apartments were such that it was well worth doing even the dirty work.

If those at the very top of society were happy to be personal attendants then it is understandable that service was not despised further down society. It is not surprising that there was such a different attitude to servants. When someone in Tudor times referred to their family, they didn’t mean just their relatives but also anyone who lived under their roof, including the servants. Even lowly apprentices became part of their master’s family because they lived with them, so that the relationship between master and apprentice was much more personal than that between a modern employer and employee.

Another factor that affected the way servants were viewed was rich people’s attitude to work. In the sixteenth century even wealthy people were not brought up to a life of elegant idleness. Wealthy women were often responsible for the running of the family estates, not least because the men were away at court. Merchants’ wives were often actively involved in running the family business. This meant that wealthy people didn’t have to disassociate themselves from their servants simply to make the point that they didn’t do practical work themselves.

The whole situation began to change by the end of the century as the great households started to disappear. By the mid-seventeenth century they had gone. The court finally stopped travelling round and became centred on London, so that whether they liked it or not courtiers had to spend a great deal of time in the city. Most of them seem to have liked it very much indeed as the city offered social possibilities that were unimaginable in the country. At the same time coaches also became more common, so that most wealthy families owned one. They lacked springing, but even so they made travel much easier, so that making the journey to London from the country became a great deal simpler. The London season was born, and a fine house in London became a necessity for anyone with ambitions at court.

Great lords both temporal and spiritual had owned London houses for centuries. The king’s business of one kind or another often brought the aristocracy to the city, so a place for you and your household to stay was very useful. London had also long been the best place in the country to buy luxury goods of all kinds, so you or senior members of your household might come on shopping expeditions. You could also mix business with pleasure and do a little entertaining while you were there. In 1421 Elizabeth Berkeley, Countess of Warwick, came to London for a month to pursue her case against the crown for possession of the Berkeley lands and to entertain her friends. She stayed at the Berkeley Inn (large houses were often known as inns). However, the inns of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance town houses were very different buildings.

Inns like Elizabeth Berkeley’s were essentially designed to be a kind of blank stage. The building itself was not particularly impressive when it was empty. It was only when the owner was in residence that everything changed. Lavish hangings decorated the walls and gold and silver plate was put on display, transforming the building into a palace. The post-Renaissance town house was totally different. An impressive exterior, built in the latest style, was considered necessary to demonstrate not only the owner’s wealth but also his excellent taste. The interior was decorated with lavish works of art and fine furniture. Such a house was much more expensive to build and maintain than a medieval inn.5 For one thing, constant rebuilding and redecorating were required to keep the house up to date.

The changes made a big difference to the appearance of the city. By 1560 about half the peers owned houses in London and a row of palaces linked the Strand to Westminster. By the early seventeenth century these palaces were being broken up into smaller premises as the important men no longer needed huge houses to accommodate their households. Instead, they wanted smaller, more fashionable town houses. Covent Garden, Drury Lane and St Martin’s Lane were all built at this time as housing for the aristocracy.

Landed estates continued to be an important source of income, and were also vital for maintaining status. The need for influence in parliament was also growing, and such tenants as did have the right to vote would be expected to do so according to the landlord’s wishes. An impressive country residence was also a necessity for a man who wished to be taken seriously, so country houses too had to be built, or rebuilt, in the latest style and suitably furnished. As a result huge sums of money were spent on building. The Duke of Somerset spent £15,000 on Somerset House and Syon House in three and a half years (1548–51), while the Earl of Salisbury spent £40,000 on Hatfield alone between 1604 and 1608.6 Even aristocratic budgets couldn’t cope with the expense of such building and the maintenance of huge numbers of servants.

Another reason for the decline of great households was the increasing cost of developing and maintaining your position at court. Throughout the sixteenth century it was impossible for a man to thrive without friends at court – ‘like a hop without a pole’, commented Burley. To be a figure of importance, you had to be at court yourself, and you also needed to be in favour with the monarch. There simply weren’t enough jobs to go around and so without the monarch’s favour you could find yourself bearing the considerable expenses involved in coming to court without garnering any of the benefits. This was a great problem as the costs of being at court were truly enormous.

One very important factor was clothing. You, the members of your family and even the servants who attended you all had to be well dressed. Being suitably attired for court became more and more expensive throughout the Elizabethan period and into the time of James I. Fashions became more extravagant and changed more frequently, and the amounts some people spent were extraordinary. Sir Henry Sidney’s account for 1570–1 with Adam Bland, the queen’s skinner, shows that he managed to run up an impressive bill of £66 6s 11d for fur linings alone. The furs included lynx, Spanish fox, black coney (a kind of rabbit) and lamb. In 1589 Bridget Manners, daughter of the Countess of Rutland, was sent from the Countess of Bedford’s household, where she was completing her education, to join the royal household as a maid of honour. Her mother, fearing that her daughter was a little out of touch with fashion, spent no less than £200 updating Bridget’s wardrobe.

Even the cost of accessories could be alarming. In 1583 Arthur Throckmorton, who was trying to build up a career at court, spent £6 on a set of eighteen gold buttons alone. Of course, some of this expense could be ascribed to mere vanity, but there was more to it than that. To be taken seriously at court you simply had to wear the latest fashions.

Then there were all the other incidental expenses of court life to take into consideration. There were presents to be bought for the monarch, and for anyone who could help you try to obtain jobs or favours, like the queen’s ladies described above. The price of everything from food to accommodation was always high near the court, and those who came to court on their own business had to pay their way. Coming to court was a big gamble. If you were among the successful few, your outlay would be more than repaid by the rewards the monarch heaped upon you. If you were not, you could be bankrupted.

All these were reasons why the great lords no longer wanted to employ large numbers of servants, but there was another side to it. By the end of the sixteenth century gentlemen were not as willing as they once had been to join a great household, even if the work was available. One reason young men had been sent to such establishments was to gain an education, although this was by no means always paid for by the head of the household – the Earl of Northumberland’s accounts show that such young men were often there ‘at their friends’ finding’, that is to say, paid for by other people. By the late sixteenth century the introduction of schools like Eton and Westminster, plus a whole host of local grammar schools, meant that a good education could be obtained without access to a great household.

Equally, the need to wear a great man’s livery faded as the private armies died out. Aristocrats remained people of considerable influence for many years to come, but making your allegiance too obvious was not necessarily wise. Anyone who was out of favour with the monarch was not really in a position to help your career too much. It was best to be able to be flexible, subtly changing your allegiance according to the political realities of the moment, than to openly wear someone’s livery.

Another very important factor that contributed to the downfall of the great households was that, whatever the economics of the matter, great lords no longer wanted them. Impersonal grandeur, the mark of the great man in the Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century, was neither very comfortable nor particularly enjoyable. The Renaissance had emphasised the importance of the individual, and the aristocracy now wanted a more personal way of life. They wanted more comfort and privacy so that they could talk and behave as they wanted, instead of being on constant display before their household. If they wanted companionship, they could find it in London with men of their own rank, so that they no longer needed the company of employed gentlemen. The new emphasis on demonstrating wealth through fine architecture and elegant furnishings meant that you could put on a display fine enough to maintain your social position and live in comfort at the same time.

It was this new emphasis on privacy that led to a distance developing between a master and his servant. Once a personal servant stopped being a companion and became instead a person employed for purely practical reasons, the whole relationship changed. The link between personal service and opportunities in administration and the like was broken. There was no point in a gentleman being a lord’s attendant if he could neither rise in his career nor be considered the lord’s personal friend. In the same way employing lower-class personal attendants now made sense to the lord. He wouldn’t have to pay them as well as a gentleman, and they wouldn’t expect to be included in his private life.

The change can even be seen in architecture. In sixteenth-century houses separate staircases for servants’ use did not exist. By the end of the seventeenth century they were becoming more common, and by the eighteenth century bells for summoning servants had been developed. A bell-pull in your private rooms rang a bell in the servants’ quarters, so there was no longer any need to have a servant always within calling distance. At last you could have a private conversation without your servants overhearing. By this time masters and servants were truly living separate lives.

ONE

Goldsmiths, Fullers and Dyers

Learning your Trade in Tudor England

Tudor apprentices occupied a position somewhere between servant and family member. They lived in their master’s house during their training in his craft and their master was, in effect, their parent for the duration of their apprenticeship. On the other hand, apprentices were expected to show a great deal of deference to their masters, even more than a child was expected to show to its parents at the time.

Apprentices varied considerably. At the top end were the children of the wealthy, apprenticed to prestigious trades such as that of goldsmith or mercer.1 At the bottom end were orphaned paupers or those taken from poor families ‘over burthened with children’,2 whose apprenticeships were organised by the parish and who were likely to be apprenticed to husbandry or housework. Their lot in life was generally to end up as farm labourers or menial domestic servants. It is unlikely that the parish children could expect to be treated like their masters’ own.

The problem today is that many of the records of these apprentices no longer exist. Large numbers of records do survive, from indentures of individual apprentices to the rules of assorted guilds, but no complete record exists for any one area. For this reason we have a good idea of the lives of apprentices in general terms, but many specific details are lost. Part of the problem is that the same rules did not always apply across the whole country. Certain rules that were relevant to apprentices living in Carlisle or York cannot be assumed to have also applied to apprentices in London or Bristol. The Statute of Artificers (1562) went some way towards creating a national system but local customs still continued in most areas.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the English apprenticeship system was not something that had been carefully planned from the beginning. It had grown up gradually, in accordance with the needs of the craft guilds.

A sixteenth-century guild was not just a trade organisation; it provided an important social club, a friendly society (members’ widows and orphans could often expect help from the guild if necessary) and a bridge into politics, since the guilds often played a large part in running the town in which they worked. The social network provided by the guild offered you a busy social life and could also significantly improve your chances of success in business. Before the Reformation, guild members, or the guild priest if there was one, could even be relied on to pray for your soul after you died. Even after the religious upheavals the guild brethren would attend your funeral in force. There were often items such as a guild pall to add further magnificence to the event, at a time when a good funeral set a seal upon the achievements of your life. The guild, in short, was the centre of a businessman’s life and it was no wonder that so many guild members left bequests of one kind or another to their guilds when they died, ranging from money to pay for feasts to embroidered cushions to beautify the guild’s hall.

Guild membership was such an asset that people who didn’t even follow the trade represented, or indeed any trade at all, were still keen to join, particularly the most important London guilds. The Masters of the guilds were smart businessmen who exploited this to the full, making a tidy profit from allowing wealthy men who did not follow the craft to join the guild all the same. The London Goldsmiths are a good example of this. In 1513 a Salisbury merchant who was not a goldsmith applied for membership, and the Wardens of the Goldsmiths’ Company cheerfully stated in the minutes of their meeting that as he was not a goldsmith, they would ‘take him for all they can get, and then admit him’. He ended up paying 40s entrance fee.3 The Goldsmiths’ Company also admitted a number of gentlemen members during the Tudor period. Contacts in the city, with their ability to raise money, were always useful to the gentlemen. Equally, contacts at court were necessary to the Goldsmiths in the days when the royal signature was vital for getting things done. Sir John Daunce (Thomas More’s son-in-law) and Sir Francis Bryan (courtier and personal friend of Henry VIII) are just two examples of the Goldsmiths’ gentlemen members.4

Guild membership of some kind was also a necessity for a businessman. You had to be a guild member – or be ‘free of’ the guild as the expression was – if you wanted to set up business in a particular town. The guilds had a long history of trying to limit competition. The difficult economic circumstances of the sixteenth century made them even more anxious to control trade in their area. Many of the guilds forbade ‘foreigners’, but their definition of the word was very narrow and might even include people from neighbouring districts. The Newcastle Adventurers’ rules of 1575 refused to allow anyone from ‘Tyndale, Riddesdale and Eskdale, or Levyn’, all of which are in England and, by modern terms at least, not all that far from Newcastle, to become an apprentice.5 Under such circumstances guild membership was vital if your career was to get off the ground at all, let alone thrive.

The guilds were keen on the apprenticeship system for a number of reasons. At first it was simply an effective way of allowing for the training of young people, and merely one way of several of becoming a member of a guild. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries you could join a guild whether or not you had served a formal apprenticeship, if you could prove yourself sufficiently skilled in your craft before competent judges. The London Fullers decreed in 1363 that they would allow any skilful workman to work at fulling, but if he were declared incompetent by the masters of the mystery, then he had either to become an apprentice and learn his business anew, or leave the trade. The Bristol Dyers and the Glovers of Hull were still doing this even at the end of the fifteenth century.6 The only difference was that the entrance fee to the guild was higher than that paid by those who served their apprenticeship. In 1444 the Northampton Tailors charged ‘strangers’ an entry fee of 3s 4d, while those who had served their apprenticeships paid just 20d.

Gradually the guilds realised that by restricting entry they could do a great deal to control competition. Various barriers began to be put in the way of those who wanted to join the guilds by methods other than apprenticeship. In the 1460s the Exeter Merchant Tailors followed the general trend by raising the entrance fee for ‘strangers’ from 8 to a massive 20s. They could also be placed under other disadvantages. In the 1520s the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers forbade such guild members from taking apprentices, which, as we shall see, was a huge disadvantage.7

The guilds also became far more restrictive as to who could become an apprentice and the rules surrounding the whole matter became very complicated. Apprenticeship had started as an informal affair. Fathers and master craftsmen made their own arrangements as to how the details of the agreement between them should work. But by the sixteenth century it was a public affair involving the whole guild and it became standard for the official enrolment of the boy’s indentures to take place before the full court of the guild, where he could be presented to the masters and wardens. In the same way, when he finished his time, his formal acceptance into the guild also took place in public.

By the sixteenth century organising an apprenticeship for your child must have been every bit as fraught as finding the right school today. The first thing you had to consider was whether or not your child was eligible, as there were a number of qualifications to be met. Again, the information that has survived comes from different areas of the country and not all of the rules may have been applicable everywhere. Still, the extant information gives a good idea of the kind of regulations that had to be met. Some of the higher-status guilds required educational qualifications. The Goldsmiths refused apprenticeship to those who couldn’t read or write, and in 1483 one master was fined for taking an illiterate apprentice.8 In 1487 there was a strange case, when a goldsmith took on an apprentice who had already learnt the craft at Banbury. The boy was skilled in engraving all kinds of letters so the master, not unreasonably, assumed that he could read and write. It was only later that he realised that the apprentice was illiterate.9

Many of the guilds refused to take foreigners and this does seem to have been a common restriction. Certainly in Henry VIII’s reign an act was passed stating that strangers born outside England were only permitted to take English apprentices, thus excluding their own countrymen who might by this means set up trade in England. Age was another restriction. The Newcastle Merchant Adventurers wouldn’t take boys under sixteen and the Norwich Weavers forbade apprentices under the age of fourteen.10 The Newcastle Merchant Adventurers refused to take illegitimate children, their rules of 1513 stating that ‘No bastard shall be free of this Feloship, though he have served and bene vii yer apprentyce’. Several companies also refused to take any apprentices who were deformed in any way. The London Skinners and Mercers both refused entry to such boys, while the Leathersellers’ rules of 1467 insisted that boys were to be presented to the company before being accepted to see if they were ‘of clenly feture and not deformed in his visage nor in noe other parts of limbs of his body’. Marriage was also a bar to apprenticeship – at Norwich this stipulation was frequently made by the guilds long before the Statute of Artificers made it law for the whole country in 1562.

Having discovered that your son was eligible to be apprenticed, you then had to check that the master you had chosen for him was officially entitled to take apprentices. If a boy was bound apprentice to a man who was not qualified to be a master of his craft, then the guilds might not sanction the agreement and the boy would have to search for a new master. The worst situation of all arose when a boy only discovered that his master was not qualified at the end of his indentures, in which case the apprentice might find himself refused entry to the guild.

The most obvious qualification was that the master had to be a freeman of the guild and of the town or city in which he lived. In many cases he also had to own property worth a certain amount of money. The Mercers, for example, stated in 1504 that a master must own £100 worth of stock or other goods.11 This must have been a practical rule to some extent, ensuring that the boy was being bound to a secure business that would last out his time. The Skinners too stated that men who wished to take apprentices must prove themselves able to teach, employ and maintain them. At Coventry a master had to be quit of any money owing to the guild before taking on an apprentice, while in Carlisle he had to be married.

The right to take apprentices was vital to most masters as they provided a cheap workforce. The master was usually expected to feed, clothe and house his apprentices, but he didn’t have to pay them. It was usual to give them some kind of lump sum at the end of their apprenticeship to help set them up in business and sometimes apprentices were given small amounts of what was, in practical terms, pocket money but that was all. The idea was that the apprentice gave his labour in return for the time invested in him by his master in teaching him his trade.

Apprentices were so useful to their masters that the right to their services was a saleable commodity. Some masters sold their apprentices on to other masters (known as ‘custom of sale’ or ‘turnover’) or even sold a portion of their term back to the apprentice himself. The latter practice in particular was not encouraged, as it could lead to apprentices finishing their training before they were fully qualified. As early as 1368 the London Goldsmiths had rules on the matter: ‘If any apprentice buys his term or part thereof or if his master pardons him his term or releases him, he shall not hold shop during his term nor be enfranchised, nor do work in private places but be bound freeman of the mystrey unless by assent of the Wardens and with a voluntary contribution.’12

Turnover was a different matter. The guilds were very strict in limiting the number of apprentices that a master was allowed to take, partly because a master with too many apprentices would not be able to teach any of them satisfactorily, and partly because the guilds were keen to limit their membership and therefore reduce competition. Thus they kept a close eye on the number of apprentices in training generally. For this reason men who had the right to take apprentices but chose not to do so could take on their allocated number of boys and then ‘turn them over’ to another master who wanted more apprentices than he was officially allowed. The whole matter was carefully regulated. The Goldsmiths’ rules of 1384 state that: ‘No one shall sell an apprentice the remainder of his term or to any other person of any other trade, but only to a freeman of the same trade and of the same city, and that the seller shall pay half of what he receives to the alms.’13

It certainly could be a profitable business. The London Merchant Tailors’ accounts show a fine levied in 1547 on Harry Whytehorne, a master who sold his apprentice without leave. The fine was for 8s 10d, which is stated as being a third part of the profit he gained from the deal, thus making a fine profit of 17s 8d. When you consider that the Johnson family (see below) were paying their cook 21s a year in 1550, this was no small sum.

There were obviously occasions when masters were forced to give up their apprentices whether they liked it or not. If they went bankrupt, or if they became unable to employ the apprentice because of illness or death, then the apprentice would either serve out his time with the master’s widow or heir, or be transferred to some other suitable master. This again was supervised by the guild and a small sum was charged for the process.

To make matters more confusing, the number of apprentices a master was allowed to take varied from city to city and from trade to trade. The Exeter Tailors did not grant more than one apprentice per master without special permission. The Newcastle Merchant Adventurers were also allowed only one, although they were permitted to take a new apprentice a year or two before the old one came to the end of his term, to ensure continuity of support in their work. The Skinners permitted an old master to have four apprentices over seven years, a warden could have three and an ordinary master two over the same period.14