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
A similar pack made into stockings would provide work for 82 men and
102 spinners and if made up for the Spanish trade, a pack of wool
would employ 52 men and 250 women.
(Haynes (John) _Great Britain’s Glory_, p. 6, p. 8. 1715.)
For the student of social organization it is noteworthy that in the two
textile trades through which capitalism made in England its most
striking advances—the woollen trade, and in later years, the cotton
trade, the labour of women predominated,—a fact which suggests obscure
actions and reactions between capitalism and the economic position of
women, worthy of more careful investigation than they have as yet
received.
The woollen trade passed through a period of rapid progress and
development in the sixteenth century. It was then that the Clothiers of
Wiltshire and Somerset acquired wealth and fame, building as a memorial
for posterity the Tudor houses and churches which still adorn these
counties. Leland, writing of a typical clothier and his successful
enterprises and ambitions, describes at Malmesbury, Wiltshire “a litle
chirch joining to the South side of the _Transeptum_ of thabby chirch,
... Wevers hath now lomes in this litle chirch, but it stondith ... the
hole logginges of thabbay be now longging to one Stumpe, an exceding
riche clothiar that boute them of the king. This Stumpes sunne hath
maried Sir Edward Baynton’s doughter. This Stumpe was the chef causer
and contributer to have thabbay chirch made a paroch chirch. At this
present tyme every corner of the vaste houses of office that belongid to
thabbay be fulle of lumbes to weve clooth yn, and this Stumpe entendith
to make a stret or 2 for clothier in the bak vacant ground of the abbay
that is withyn the toune waulles.”[187]
Footnote 187:
Leland (John), _Itinerary_, 1535-1543; Part II, pp. 131-2.
There must have been a marked tendency at this time to bring the
wage-earners of the woollen industry under factory control, for a
description which is given of John Winchcombe’s household says that
“Within one room being large and long
There stood two hundred Looms full strong,
Two hundred men the truth is so
Wrought in these looms all in a row,
By evry one a pretty boy
Sate making quills with mickle joy.
And in another place hard by,
An hundred women merrily,
Were carding hard with joyful cheer
Who singing sate with voices clear.
And in a chamber close beside,
Two hundred maidens did abide,
In petticoats of Stammell red,
And milk-white kerchers on their head.”[188]
Footnote 188:
Lipson, _Econ. Hist. of England_, p. 420.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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