Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth CenturyClark, Alice
History
Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century
Clark, Alice
Women -- Employment -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; Women -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century
is at any time to put any horse leather into boots or shoes or any
liquored calves leather into boots or shoes, to be sold between the
feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle and the Annunciation of the Virgin
Mary.... No free brother or sister is to keep or set up any standing in
the market place, except in fair times. No brother or sister is to set
open his or her shop, or to do any work, in making or mending of boots
and shoes on the Sabbath day, on pain of twelve pence forfeit.”[382]
Footnote 380:
_Armourers and Brasiers, Charter and Bye laws of Company of._, p. 5.
See also Johnson, _Ordinances of the Drapers of London_, Vol. I., p.
280, 1524).
“(it shall not be lawful unto any brother or sister freed in this
fellyship to take mo. apprentices than may stand in good order for
their degree) ... every brother being in the master’s livery shall pay
6s. 8d. and every sister whose husband has been of the aforesaid
livery shall pay for every apprentice 6s. 8d. and every other brother
or sister not being of the master’s livery shall pay for every
apprentice 3s. 4d.”
Footnote 381:
Hoare, Sir R. C., _Hist. of Modern Wilts_, Vol. VI., p. 340.
Footnote 382:
_Ibid._ Vol. VI., p. 343.
Rules which specifically permit the employment of the master’s wife or
daughter in his trade while excluding other unapprenticed persons, are
in themselves evidence that they were often so employed. Thus the
Glovers allowed “noe brother of this ffraternity” to “take an apprentice
vnder the full end and tearme of seaven years ffuly to be compleat ...
excepting brothers son or daughter....”[383] No leatherseller might “put
man, child or woman to work in the same mistery, if they be not bound
apprentice, and inrolled in the same mistery; excepting their wives and
children.”[384] Similarly the Girdlers in 1344 ordered that “no one of
the trade shall get any woman to work other than his wedded wife or
daughter”[385] while by a rule of the Merchant Taylors, Bristol “no
person ... shall cutt make or sell any kynde of garment, garments, hose
or breeches within ye saide cittie ... unles he be franchised and made
free of the saide crafte (widdowes whose husbandes were free of ye saide
crafte duringe the tyme of their wyddowhedd vsinge ye same with one
Jorneyman and one apprentice only excepted).”[386]
Footnote 383:
Ferguson, _Carlisle_, p. 212, _Glover’s Gild_, 1665.
Footnote 384:
Black, W. H., _Articles of the Leathersellers_, p. 21, 1398.
Footnote 385:
Smythe, W. D., _Hist. of Worshipful Co. of Girdlers, London_, p. 63.
Footnote 386:
Fox, F. F., _Merchant Taylors, Bristol_, pp. 64-65.
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