THREE—
FAMILY AND SOCIAL LIFE

7—
Marriage

This chapter concerns courtship and marriage, subjects which have provoked a lively debate amongst historians in recent years. One writer, Lawrence Stone, sees our period as one when a more companionate and affectionate type of marriage developed and he claims that it was the London bourgeoisie who were the innovators in the development of this 'modern' marriage. However, Stone's numerous critics find little change in marriage and plenty of love and affection long before the late seventeenth century.^[1] Our period is far too short for any real contribution to be made here to a debate on long-term changes in the nature of marriage, but some comment on the relations between the sexes will be attempted. The first consideration, however, is just what did constitute a marriage in Augustan London.

i—
The Marriage Ceremony

There were four different ways in which Londoners could get married. The cheapest and most private was simply 'a full, free and mutual consent between parties'. No public ceremony was necessary; all that the couple had to do was to say to each other some such formula as 'I take you Margaret to and for my wedded wife' or 'with this ring I thee wed my dear Peggy'. This elementary but perfectly legal type of marriage required no parental consent, nor indeed were witnesses necessary, though it was politic to make sure that someone else was present in case of future dispute.^[2] Such marriages were common in the middle ages and were probably still fairly common in our period. However, although accepted as a complete marriage by canon law, they were increasingly not thought good by the common lawyers, who held that a marriage must be solemnized

according to the rites of the Church of England if the parties were to be able to have 'any interest or property in the other's lands or goods or to legitimate their issue'.^[3]

Since such matters were important to middling people, it seems probable that most got married in a rather more formal way. There was still plenty of choice. One common, cheap and private method was to undergo a 'clandestine' marriage. These took place in parts of London claiming exemption from ecclesiastical jurisdiction, such as Holy Trinity in the Minories or St James's Duke Place, a parish of 160 households which was celebrating nearly 2000 marriages a year in the second half of the seventeenth century. Clandestine marriages at these two churches were brought to an end in the 1690s but they were replaced by the 'Fleet' marriages, which were held in the area round the Fleet Prison known as the Rules. Such marriages required no publication of banns, no parental consent nor any other formal interference from outsiders.

Fleet marriages were normally celebrated in inns and taverns, and the ceremony took the form of an abridged version of the Anglican marriage service conducted by someone who at least appeared to be a priest of the Church of England. Nearly everything to do with such marriages had a sordid and semicriminal reputation—the 'marriage houses' whose main interest was in selling drink, the 'pliers' who touted for particular houses, the dissolute parsons and the dubious registers which recorded the marriages—yet they remained amazingly popular. A recent study estimates that there were between 3000 and 5000 Fleet marriages a year between 1694 and 1754, when the practice was ended by Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act. These numbers were swelled by people from outside London but they still must represent a large proportion of all marriages in the metropolis, mostly those of artisans and other working people but including a substantial minority of middling people.^[4]

The attractions of Fleet marriages were their cheapness, about 7s.6d. before the drink, and the fact that they could be had 'without loss of time, hindrance of business, and the knowledge of friends'.^[5] However, it was not very respectable to be married in a Fleet tavern and hardly accorded with the genteelness of most of the middle station. Nevertheless, most people in this class still valued a private and fairly secret

marriage and so got married by licence from the diocese of London. Marriage by licence avoided the publicity of having the banns called in church, most people with 'the slightest claims to gentility' objecting to the public theatre involved, the giggling and the nudging, not being 'willing to have their affairs declar'd to all the world in a public place, when for a guinea they may do it snug and without noise'.^[6] Middling people also objected to the expense created by a wedding proclaimed by banns; the publicity led to pressure to invite large numbers of guests; it also advertised the wedding to the poor who had a habit of making a filthy row outside the house in which the couple were consummating their marriage until they were paid off.

A licence required a sworn statement that, if either party was under twenty-one, they had the consent of their parents or guardian, but this was seldom a problem. The marriage itself was held in church, but as quietly as possible according to Misson, who saw such weddings as typical of 'people of a middle condition' in London. The party would consist of bride and groom, their parents, two bridemen and two bridesmaids who 'go early in the morning with a licence in their pocket, and call up Mr Curate and his clerk, tell him their business; are marry'd with a low voice and the doors shut'.They then 'steal softly out' to a tavern or the home of a friend for the wedding dinner and then home for the formal undressing and bedding of the bride and groom, this prima facie proof of consummation being seen as very important.^[7]

The fourth type of marriage, and the commonest, was the normal marriage of the Church of England in which banns were called on three occasions and the ceremony held in open church. This cost more than a Fleet marriage and less than marriage by licence, but was open to the objections mentioned above of greater publicity. In the early seventeenth century, some five out of every six marriages in the diocese of London were celebrated by banns, but this proportion was dominated by the marriages of artisans and the poor.^[8] Marriage by banns remained important during our period, but its proportional significance fell as the number of licences increased and as the trickle of clandestine marriages became a flood in the early eighteenth century.

What significance should one attach to the middle-class predilection for a private and often secret wedding? The actual wedding by licence cost more than a wedding by banns, but the total cost of the celebration would have been less and this was certainly a consideration for young people at an early stage in the accumulation process. A distaste for publicity and a desire to distance themselves from the common people are also apparent and this could well reflect a growing understanding of what was seemly and genteel. A desire for privacy can be seen in other aspects of middle-class life, though it was often thwarted by the fact that much of such lives was acted out before an avidly curious audience of servants, lodgers, customers and neighbours. It should finally be noted that the desire for private weddings may well provide a clue to the grounds on which middling people chose their marriage partners. This will be discussed later, mainly in terms of the relative importance of love and money. Without prejudging the issue, it can merely be noted here that, if marriage was a rather sordid business transaction with little love involved, the partners would probably prefer it celebrated in the stealthy and self-effacing way described by Misson, rather than before the eyes of the whole parish.

ii—
Age at Marriage

It has been drummed into historians in recent years that England belonged to something variously called the 'Western' or 'Malthusian' marriage system, one of whose characteristics was that both sexes got married much later in life than was normal in the rest of the world, where most people married soon after puberty. A recent study has provided some statistical precision for this observation by showing that, in the late seventeenth century, the median age of a sample of English brides was twenty-six at their first marriage and their husbands were two or three years older.^[9] However, this sample was drawn from villages and small country towns. What one needs to know is whether the metropolitan middle class conformed to this general pattern.

In answering this question, it is fortunate that large numbers of middling people got married by licence since the age of the

parties was entered in the licence applications. Vivien Brodsky Elliott has studied the applications for the period 1598 to 1619 and her work shows that the average age of London-born women married by licence was only 20.5, nearly four years younger than women who were immigrants to the metropolis and nearly six years younger than the small town and rural women mentioned above. So, although London women did not marry at puberty, they married much younger than was normal in England, a high proportion marrying in their teens. Another interesting finding of Elliott's analysis is that, generally speaking, the higher the social status of the groom, the younger was the bride and the greater the difference in age between the bride and groom.^[10]

The patterns discovered by Elliott are reflected amongst middling people in our period. Table 7.1 overleaf sets out the ages at first marriage of those members of the sample and their wives for whom there is sufficient information to make this calculation. These figures allow us to say with some confidence that middle-class wives in London married young by contemporary standards, over 80 per cent being under twenty-five and over 40 per cent under twenty-one at their first marriage. There was also a fairly big age difference between bride and groom, five years on average, with the result that middle-class men typically married at a similar age to men in other classes and other parts of the country. When this age difference is broken down, as in Table 7.2 overleaf, the same relationship is found between wealth or status and age difference between bride and groom as Elliott found for London generally. If fortune at death is taken as a proxy for comparative wealth at marriage, then the wealthier the husband the older he was when he got married and, in the case of the richest group, the younger his bride. The same pattern can be found when age at marriage is broken down by various occupational groupings with different social status. Wealthy young men and those of high status tended to marry when they were thirty and chose girls on average ten years younger; poorer men and those of lower status tended to get married at twenty-five to a girl only two or three years younger than themselves.^[11]

Economic considerations normally govern discussion of the ages at which people got married in the past. Men are thought

to have deferred marriage in order to 'save up' to pay for the establishment of a new household and the expense of children. They chose wives in their mid- or late twenties, partly so that their brides would also have had a chance to save up and acquire economic skills and partly in order to limit the number of children they might have in the absence of effective contraception.^[12] Such hypotheses have been developed to explain the

behaviour of the population as a whole, who were on average relatively poor, and one would not expect exactly the same considerations to be relevant for middle-class Londoners.

Middling people certainly shared the view that marriage would be costly. Thomas Tryon, for instance, stated in 1691 what to his contemporaries was obvious when he started his list of the 'cross accidents attending married persons, as encrease of charge, the uncertain gains and the certain expences', his 'uncertain gains' being emotional and not financial ones. For this reason, men were always advised to wait until they could afford to get married without the 'certain expences' dragging them back down the social and economic ladder they had been patiently climbing as a bachelor. The bookseller John Dunton put it rather nicely when he wrote that he decided to postpone the 'experiment' of marriage until he had discovered 'whether my trade wou'd carry two, and then to proceed upon a safe bottom'. Such considerations probably explain why most of the middle class deferred their marriages until at least their mid-twenties and also why richer or potentially richer men married later, since it would take them longer to acquire a 'bottom' safe enough to support their larger and more substantial households.^[13]

So far, middle-class behaviour is little different from that of the population as a whole. Where middling people did differ was in marrying wives much younger than themselves, in their early twenties or late teens. From the man's point of view, the explanation for this is probably that the economic considerations governing the choice of the poor were not particularly relevant to this class. The bride's monetary contribution to the marriage was normally 'saved up' by her father rather than by the girl herself and a dowry was usually no lower if a girl married at nineteen rather than at twenty-five. Nor, as has been seen, was work experience of much relevance, since few wives in this class actually did work. Finally, the cost of young children was not particularly crippling, since middling people would already have servants to look after them and would usually lose no income as a result of their wives' pregnancies and attention to childcare. When children grew older, they were of course an immense expense to the middle class, requiring as they did outlay on education, apprenticeship and portions, but

by then the parents would have expected to have accumulated sufficient to cover such expenses.

In principle, then, there was no very strong economic barrier to middling people marrying young wives and indeed such barriers would be less the richer the husband, since he would have more servants and less reliance on the economic assistance of his wife. If one assumes that what a husband wanted in a wife was some combination of physical attraction and health, good company and conversation, the ability to run a household and a handsome dowry, then such attributes were as likely to be present in a well brought up girl of eighteen or nineteen as in one of twenty-four or twenty-five. There were, in other words, no strong reasons against marrying a young wife.

So far the age at marriage has been discussed from the point of view of the husband, what can realistically be called the demand side of marriage. But what about the supply side? What was the attitude of potential brides and their parents? Here, an imbalance must be noted between the numbers of men and women in London, which Gregory King put at a ratio of 10 to 13, reflected both in a surplus of spinsters to bachelors and of widows to widowers.^[14] This female surplus was aggravated by a lack of enthusiasm on the part of many men to marry in a world where the financial benefits of bachelorhood and the easy availability of alternative sources of sexual gratification and of housekeepers made a single life an attractive option. The result, as Moll Flanders pointed out, was that 'the market is against our sex just now'.^[15]

In such circumstances, young girls found themselves in a rather desperate race to get the best husbands and avoid being left on the shelf, since a single life for women was not regarded in the same light as it was for men. Contemporary writers advised girls and their parents to be extremely careful in their choice of husband but few advised them to let such care delay their marriages for very long. As a result, middle-class girls who could tended to marry young and it is the attitudes of these girls and their mothers, portrayed in literature and particularly plays, which have been remembered and carried down into our own times, despite the fact that the great majority of English girls deliberately delayed both their sexual initiation and their marriages until their middle or late twenties.^[16]

Some reasons have been suggested why middle-class men might marry quite late and middle-class women quite early by the standards of the day. The problem of how men and women chose the particular partner with whom they would have to live 'till death us do part' has not, however, been resolved. Did men choose their brides for love or was Moll Flanders right when she claimed that 'money only made a woman agreeable . . . for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing'?^[17]

iii—
Choice of Partners

Historians have normally addressed the subject of choice of marriage partners with two questions in mind: the degree to which parents and friends influenced or controlled their children's choice, and the degree to which love or affection or some other, usually materialistic, influence affected the choice made by children. Such questions obviously cannot be resolved statistically in the way that age at marriage can and no more than probabilities can be suggested here.

It now seems to be generally agreed that, by the late seventeenth century at least, the ultimate choice was made by the young people but that this choice was normally very much affected by parents and friends, who suggested and actively promoted possible partners and who would go to considerable lengths to try to break off a match which they thought unsuitable.^[18] Most contemporary writers thought that children should follow their parents' advice if they possibly could, though they would normally accept an ultimate right of veto by the children. John Dunton, for instance in the Athenian Mercury, an early example of an 'agony column', thought that children 'ought to endeavour as much as possible to submit to their parents' choice; unless where 'tis a plain case that t'would make 'em miserable'.^[19]

Many factors must have affected the actual significance of parental consent, one of which was the sex of the child. Hardly any men in the middle class married under the age of twenty-one when consent was necessary and those over age seem to have had very considerable freedom to marry whom they wished, subject of course to advice. Middle-class parents had a

much greater proprietory interest in daughters, over 40 per cent of whom married under the age of twenty-one and so would require consent unless they married clandestinely. Licence applications suggest that this parental authority often continued long after the age of majority, since consent was often recorded for daughters well over twenty-one and even for some over thirty. Over age widows also often recorded their parents' consent to their second or subsequent marriages. However, no consent is mentioned for the majority of over age brides, who were normally described as 'at their own disposal'. This was often explained by a note that their parents were dead, an important consideration, since in these days of low expectation of life the chances of even one parent being alive at their children's marriages was not all that high.^[20]

Another important factor would be the whereabouts of parents if they did happen to be alive when their children were courting. Only a minority of middle-class brides and grooms would have had parents living in the metropolis, since so many were immigrants, and this would surely affect the impact of parental consent. Some of the London middle class married girls from their region of origin and such marriages were probably not only consented to but largely arranged by their parents. The majority, however, married girls resident in the metropolis about whom their parents would have little but hearsay knowledge. This would not necessarily stop them taking a great interest but it would certainly affect the possibilities of strong parental control over the courtship process. Indeed, it is more likely that 'friends' rather than parents would be the main advisers in such cases.

There were, then, a number of factors tending to minimize the significance of parental consent to marriages, especially for young men. For girls, consent was more important, since they were younger when they got married. Girls were also thought to be wilful creatures, ignorant in the ways of the world, who, if left to make their own choice, were likely to pick badly. Parental objection to a girl's choice of marriage partner might be based on virtually any grounds but the two commonest were recorded by the merchant George B.oddington in his autobiography. His daughter, Sarah, was at boarding school in Hackney where she fell in love with one Ebenezer Collier, 'whose circumstances

being not correspondent with what I had to give her and an inquiry having had a miserable bad carracter of him I would not consent he should address her'. Things looked bad for Sarah, for she would not marry Ebenezer without her father's consent nor would Ebenezer marry her without such consent 'lest I should give him nothing'.^[21]

This was, of course, the ultimate sanction of the authority of a middle-class father and a powerful sanction it was, for the attitude of Ebenezer was typical of young middling men, who would be extremely reluctant to marry a girl with no portion. Nor was it realistic to defy the father in the expectation that, when he died, the girl would receive her portion by the custom of London, which provided for the equal division of one third of a deceased citizen's estate between his children. The custom was firm on this point: 'If the daughter of a citizen of London marries in his life-time, against his consent, unless the father be reconciled to her before his death, she shall not have her orphanage share of his personal estate.'^[22]

The wrath of the father could therefore extend beyond the grave. Nevertheless, one's impression is that the sanction of disinheritance, although often threatened, was rarely carried out. The mere suggestion that there might be no portion or that a portion might be reduced to a beggarly size was enough to drive away a faint-hearted suitor and bring most recalcitrant girls to heel. Persistence could, however, pay off, as it did in the case of George Boddington, who finally agreed to his daughter's marriage 'with great regret . . . and since to my great trouble' after being besieged by the friends and relations of both parties as well as flooded with the tears of his daughter herself. Some fathers may have been adamant to the end, but not a single example has been found of such adamancy affecting the division of estates by the Common Serjeant, the city official whose task it was to implement the custom of London in this respect.^[23]

Further evidence that fathers were not as harsh in fact as they might be in fiction can be found in wills. The normal, indeed almost universal, provision in middle-class wills was for legacies and orphanage portions to be paid to daughters at marriage or at the age of twenty-one, whichever was earliest. In 181 wills made by the sample, only 14 have any comment at all to make about their daughters' marriages. Three fathers merely

put in writing what most fathers probably felt. The banker Thomas Williams, for instance, wrote that 'my will and desire is that my children do cohabit with my wife and give due obedience to her and to be advised by her in all matters, more particularly in their respective marriages', but there were no penalties for disobedience. Another eight fathers willed that either a separate legacy or an orphanage portion or both would be void if their daughters married under the age of twenty-one without the consent of their mother or guardian, but there were no sanctions against daughters who married over twenty-one without consent. One man made a legacy, but not the orphanage portion, void for ever if the girl married at any time without her mother's consent. Finally, the brazier Robert Sellers left £600 to his only daughter Mary on condition that, if she married without her mother's consent, she was not to be paid till she was twentyfour and, tougher still, the merchant John Cary willed that 'if any of my [three] daughters marry without consent of my wife and my son Thomas Cary before the age of 30', they were to lose a legacy of £500, which would be shared amongst his other children. However, Cary, who left nearly £30,000, also bequeathed an unconditional £1000 to all his children on top of the £500 legacy.^[24] To summarize, the vast majority of fathers provided no sanctions at all against daughters who married without consent, even though they were under age, and hardly any provided sanctions against those who were over age.

It seems reasonable to conclude that, where parents were present, they felt it their duty to advise, warn and cajole their children, particularly their daughters, but only very rarely to the extent of punishing them financially for disobedience. Children certainly seem to have accepted the role of parents and friends as advisers and were unhappy to marry without consent. The need for consent could also be used as a valuable delaying weapon in the process of courtship, giving daughters time to think, providing a handy excuse to get rid of or put off a suitor for whom they had little taste. Sons used the same excuse to avoid or postpone marriage to girls whom they had got pregnant.^[25] It is often convenient to have some shadowy and older outsider who can be blamed for your not doing something that you in fact have no wish to do.

Who did the sons and daughters of the middle class marry

and how did they make their choice? Moralists emphasized that marriage should be based on love, or at least on affection, and warned young people against tying themselves for life to someone in whom they only had a material interest. The ideal of love and the 'home' was a strong one and is attractively recorded in the diary kept by the law student Dudley Ryder, who wrote that he had a strong inclination towards marriage, 'not from any principle of lust or desire to enjoy a woman in bed but from a natural tendency, a prepossession in favour of the married state. It is charming and moving, it ravishes me to think of a pretty creature concerned in me, being my most intimate friend, constant companion and always ready to soothe me, take care of me and caress me.'

It can be seen that Ryder's emphasis was not so much on passion, which most contemporaries regarded as 'the rash intemperance of youth', a dangerous state likely to blind people to reality, as on friendship and companionship. When describing a happy engaged couple, contemporaries sometimes said that they were 'in love', but words like 'kindness' and 'affection' were much commoner. 'They were kind and familiar together', 'he had a great kindness to her' or, alternately, 'she had no kindness for him' are the sort of expressions that appear again and again. One should also note that Ryder has a rather selfish view of marriage in that he assumed that it was to be his future wife who soothed, took care of and was concerned in him rather than that such matters should be truly mutual. This was certainly a common attitude in an unequal society. Men were expected to be kind, but they in turn expected to receive rather more than they gave in emotional terms.^[26]

Although contemporaries emphasized the necessity of affection, very few would have thought that this was sufficient grounds for the choice of partner in the middle station of life. Material interest, character, social position and often religion had to be taken into consideration as well and the real problem was to balance such factors against affection. The ideal was equality of fortune, rank and religion, together with mutual affection, but in a society not blinded by passion, most were realistic enough to assume that such an ideal was not easily reached and that marriage in reality involved a trade-off between affection, material interests and social ambition.^[27]

Most young men of the middle station desperately needed the money which would come as their wife's portion. For some, a dowry was the only way in which they could set up independently in business; for others, it was a very valuable second injection of capital, which would enable them to develop the business already started with capital provided by their parents. In such circumstances, another £100 of capital was a very important consideration and one that had to be carefully weighed against an attractive, affectionate but poorer girl. The same Dudley Ryder, who has just been quoted on the delights of the companionate marriage, was quite clear in his mind on this subject: 'Cousin Billio said for a young man not in business that had 2 or £3000 to marry a woman of perhaps 1 or £2000 it would keep him low all his life. This I must confess gave a great turn to my thoughts with respect to Mrs Marshall. Why should I think of having her when it would expose us both to want?'^[28] Why indeed, and of course Cousin Billio's advice was in fact just as applicable to young men who were 'in business'.

The same considerations applied to girls, most of whom were brought up with a realistic idea of marriage and were discouraged, not always successfully, from filling their heads with romantic ideas derived from playbooks or novels. They knew that their choice of marriage partner would govern not only their future happiness but also their future position in the social and economic hierarchy and, since middle-class girls were bred to believe that to improve oneself was a good idea, they were usually happy enough for parents and friends experienced in the world to vet their suitors. Nonetheless, girls wanted affection too and felt that they themselves were most likely to be the best judges of the possibilities of this, though not all parents agreed with them.

If affection was too much to ask for, then they would at least want to like their husband, as the eldest daughter in Defoe's Religious Courtship said when asked what would be the basis of her choice. 'O! I'll explain it in a few words; a good estate, and a man you like.' Her younger sister had a rather more cynical view. 'Nay; you might have stopt at the first; it's no matter what the man is, if the estate be but good.' Few girls were quite so worldly and the courtship process was one in which conflicts of interest, emotion and duty to parents often gave rise to stress

but, in the end, girls had to make the same trade-offs as men, though, as we have seen, the market was against women and so they more often got the worst of the bargain.^[29]

One is in no position to analyse this internal bargaining process, to weigh the money against the emotion, nor indeed to see how it worked out in practice. One simply has to assume that some people were happy and some were not, that some were satisfied with their bargain and some regretted the calculus of courtship and would rather have had more money or more affection. Contemporaries tended to be cynical about marriage and to assume that most marriages were or would be unhappy; 'the greatest plague of human life', according to Thomas Tryon. The Rev. Richard Baxter was very pessimistic: 'There are scarce any two persons in the world, but there is some unsuitableness between them. . . . Some crossness there will be of opinion, or disposition, or interest, or will, by nature or by custom and education, which will stir up frequent discontents.' People are still cynical about marriage today, with some justification, but they still get married. Perhaps Dudley Ryder best explains why: 'At length we came to talk of matrimony, and I said though I had often upon consideration thought that the miseries and inconveniences that attended that state were much greater than the advantages of it and a man runs a vast hazard in entering upon it, yet at the same time I could not suppose myself capable of being completely happy here without it.'^[30]

One can never really tell just why a particular man married a particular woman in the past. Nevertheless, patterns can be seen and they are those one would expect. Roger Pocock was the son of a yeoman who became a wealthy Hamburg merchant and married the daughter of a knight. When his only child Elizabeth was eighteen, she too was married to a knight. One has no idea whether Elizabeth was or believed that she was in love with Sir Thomas Travel; but it seems a reasonable assumption that the marriage choices were governed by the fact that the Pococks were moving up in the world, translating money into status, a common enough process which aroused the interest, envy or admiration of contemporaries, depending on their view of the world or their place in it.

William Melmoth was the son of another yeoman. In 1655,

he was apprenticed to George Johnson, an apothecary and, in 1662, he paid £4 to be released from his indentures four months early 'because he hopes to be partner to his master'. It is not totally surprising to discover that, shortly afterwards, he married Anne Johnson, his master's daughter, for this too was a common scenario, though not quite as common as the story books would tell us. Again, we do not know if Anne and William loved each other, but they would certainly have known each other very well since they had been living together in the same house for over seven years.^[31]

William presumably had a business as well as an emotional interest in marrying Anne and such interests are obvious in most of the marriages on which there is any information. A merchant marries the daughter of another merchant; a bookseller the daughter of another bookseller; a mason marries the daughter of a plumber.^[32] There is not space here to unravel the details of these relationships, though it would be interesting to do so. Nevertheless, enough hints are given to be sure that the London business world was meshed together by a honeycomb of kinship and particularly marriage relationships, just like the world of the gentry with which it was so closely connected.

Even when a business interest was not in the forefront of the relationship, sons and daughters were likely to marry the sons and daughters of business friends and acquaintances or at least of people of the same economic status. For these were the people whom they would meet or their parents would arrange that they would meet. London was a big place and one where women were not 'mewed up as in Italy or Spain', so it was easier for young people to play the field than it was in most countries.^[33] Nevertheless, like tended to marry like and the ideal of equality of fortune and status was the one which most often governed the actual choice of partner. Disparities in status make for good stories and good drama, but good drama does not necessarily mirror social reality.

iv—
Courtship and Contract

Women and girls might not be 'mewed up', as they were abroad, but their accessibility to predators, lovers and suitors varied enormously. Many controlled the situation themselves

since they lived on their own, 'at their own hands' in the contemporary phrase. Such women—girls from country families, orphan girls 'at their own disposal' and of course widows—might receive suitors, but they would be wise to find themselves some chaperone, such as a sister, a landlady or a 'friend', for people were always ready to think the worst of single women. It was only too easy to get the reputation of being 'a person of a lewd life and conversation'.^[34] Women also seem to have had considerable freedom to move alone about the city and go to public places where they were likely to meet men. There is ample evidence of such meetings—in the streets, in shops, in the park, at church, in taverns and coffee-houses, at Mr Dawson's Dancing School where John Dunton played truant from his master during his affair with the 'beautiful Rachel Seaton', at a milk-woman's where the apothecary's apprentice Simon Mason drank glasses of syllabub in the company of Miss Weston, whose 'charms were chiefly in her father's long baggs, who was computed to be a twenty-thousand pound man'.^[35]

Women certainly had more freedom than one might expect in a society whose laws and customs seemed designed to hold them down, but this freedom should not be exaggerated. It seems probable that access to most young girls of the middle station, especially those living at home with their parents, would have required rather more formality, though the degree of formality varied from family to family and there seem to have been few strict rules. Some fathers with marriageable daughters were very free and easy, inviting potential suitors to dine, encouraging them to come regularly to the house, allowing them to be alone for long periods with their daughters. Others kept their daughters much more closely 'mewed up' and it might take much ingenuity, time and argument for a suitor even to be given permission to make his addresses.^[36]

Go-betweens and matchmakers might play a part in this courtship process. If you had decided on the girl you wanted to court, on the grounds of her attractions or her father's 'long baggs' or whatever other reason, it was often good policy to find someone to introduce you to the household as a young man 'of estate and of sober conversation'. Thus, in 1677, the courtier John Mazine used his acquaintance with a respected relation to get permission to court Mary Rawlinson, the daughter of a

tavern-keeper 'with whom he intended to give a considerable portion'. Sometimes, there was a price to pay for such an introduction. In 1658, the Londoner Daniel Wright told a Leicestershire country gentleman that he was sure that he could make a match between him and Jane Cheeke, who 'had a considerable portion, . . . by reason of his intimacy' with her widowed mother. However, 'if the said marriage by his meanes did take effect', then he was to receive £200. How common such brokerage fees were one does not know, but given the mercenary nature of much of the London marriage market it seems probable that they were far from unusual. Some people certainly made a business of marriage broking. One went to a scrivener, for instance, not just to borrow money or to draw up a deed but also 'to find out a rich widow'. 'Experienc'd matrons' also played an important role and a young man who 'has not courage enough to trust his own judgment' would be well advised to apply 'to the next matchmaker in the neighbourhood who knows to a tittle the exact rates of the market and the current prices of young women that are fit to marry'.^[37]

Mention of the market brings one to the serious side of courtship, the drawing up of 'a treaty of marriage', a business requiring such preliminary work as the investigation of the young man's claims of character, fortune and expectations. Too many people were like Thomas Burton, who, 'pretending himself to be seized . . . of £170 per annum and a personal estate of £5000 . . . was permitted to have recourse to Hannah Southwood', the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Since this quotation comes from a Chancery case, it is no surprise to learn that young Thomas was worth rather less than he pretended. Once both sides were satisfied with the other's credentials, it was time to get down to the details of the marriage contract, a process of negotiation and haggling like any other bargain, which can be illustrated by the 'communication' between John Austen and Hannah Hastings. John's father asked for £200 as Hannah's portion, in return for which he would settle lands of the value of £16 per annum for her jointure. This was a poor bargain and Hannah's father 'did refuse to give so great a marriage portion', offerring £60 instead. John's father 'did then refuse to accept this as not competent to ye condition and way of trade of him' and they finally settled for £85.^[38]

These were the two main elements of a marriage contract, the portion brought by the girl and a settlement to provide for her maintenance if her husband died before her. A settlement in the form of a jointure, as in the example above, was the usual practice amongst the landed classes and was employed by some, but not very many, people in the London business world. It had the advantage of being fixed and settled in advance, a guarantee that the girl would not starve in widowhood. However, a jointure was far from attractive to a young businessman since it tied up so much capital in land, an asset unlikely to bring in much more than 4 or 5 per cent. For this reason, many men did not actually buy the land during their lifetime, or at least not until they retired, either promising their wives or binding themselves formally to make the purchase of lands of the agreed capital value a first charge on their estates when they died. Thus the Levant merchant Francis March covenanted to lay out £6000 on lands for the jointure of Mary Dunster when he married her in 1680. At his death in 1697, he had still not bought any land and he clearly continued to think that land was a bad investment, for he bequeathed the £6000 to trustees 'to place out at interest upon security'. A debt in his 1699 inventory reads 'To Mary March, relict . . . by her marriage articles for principle and interest from Christmas 1697 to Midsummer 1699—£6540', that is £6000 plus eighteen months' interest at 6 per cent, a sum which amounted to 58 per cent of Francis March's net assets.^[39]

Another way of providing a settlement of a fixed value was to bind oneself before marriage to bequeath a certain sum to one's widow, this being a first charge on the estate. Sir John Fryer, for instance, gave a bond to his future wife's father to leave her worth £1500, a sum three times her original portion of £500, though 'sometime after her father observing my industry and ye increase of my buisness added to it and made it up in all £1000'. There is not enough information available to know if such a ratio between portion and bond was typical but, if the normal ratio was some two or three times the portion, it was a real gamble on the husband's accumulation and life expectancy. Even at a 10 per cent rate of accumulation, it takes nearly eight years to double a fixed sum and nearly twelve years to treble it. Such gambles could leave all members of the family, except the

widow, in a desperate situation. The draper John Ewens, for instance, covenanted to leave his wife Winifred £2000 but, when he died twenty-two years later, his net assets were only valued at £694. By contrast, James Tandin agreed to leave his wife Hester '£1000 and such jewels and wearing apparel as she had before marriage'. However, Tandin 'had a peculiar art as a pewterer' which enabled him to accumulate so rapidly that when he died he was worth somewhere between £6000 and £10,000, depending on whether one believes his widow or his executors, who were in dispute in Chancery as to whether the original bond disbarred the widow from her customary thirds, which would have doubled or trebled her inheritance. Of course, some people got such things exactly right. John Skrine married Esther Crosley when he was twenty-four and agreed to leave her £700. When he died just eight years later, he was worth £2144, making her pre-contracted £700 almost exactly equal to her widow's rights to a third of the estate.^[40]

Only about 15 per cent of our sample made any provision to leave their widow a fixed capital sum, either by jointure or bond. The wives of all the rest had to take their chances that their husbands would prosper so that their customary thirds would provide them with decent security in the event of widowhood. This was one good reason to marry an older man, as Lucinda explained when her niece asked 'why must I be confined to aged people'. 'That reason is plain, because you don't know what the young ones may come to.' A marriage contract with no settlement was a much simpler document since it normally required no more than a statement of the dowry and the terms on which it would be paid. Sometimes there would also be provision for the wife's 'separate estate' if she had property of her own, for the payment to her of a fixed income as 'pin money' or for the wife to be allowed to bequeath a fixed sum from her portion as she wished. However, such provisions were fairly unusual amongst middling people and most marriage contracts were about portions. 'The money', as Moll Flanders said, 'was the thing.'^[41]

There must have been rules and conventions, as well as market pressures, which determined the approximate size of the portion a girl would have to bring to her marriage with men of different fortunes and expectations and so determined in turn

the parameters of the bargaining process. Such patterns have been discovered in aristocratic bridal portions, which increased fairly continuously in value through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.^[42] The data are not sufficient to analyse middleclass marriage contracts, but it seems probable that if aristocratic portions were rising, this would affect the market for gentry and middle-station portions as well. The middle-class ideal was 'equality of fortune', which appears to mean that a girl should bring a portion roughly equal to the fortune of the man she was marrying. This would make good sense, since, under the custom of London, the orphanage portion of a girl was exactly the same as that of her brother and it would be someone of the same status and fortune as her brother that she would be likely to marry.

However it was calculated, the portion was a substantial sum and was a very important factor in the process of accumulation which lay at the heart of middle-class life. The merchant George Boddington, for instance, got £2000 with his first wife Mary Steele, who died two years later in childbirth. 'Her father and mother manifested a great love and kindness to me after her decease and . . . advised me to marry agayne being young', advice which Boddington took seven months later when he married Hannah Cope, who brought him £3000, a process of multiple accretion to his personal fortune which was not unusual in a city which had very high rates of adult and particularly maternal mortality.^[43] Lesser man naturally attracted much smaller portions but, if our interpretation of 'equality of fortune' is correct, nearly everyone could expect to double his original capital by marriage, a fact which might make even the most ardent misogynist a supporter of the institution.

Portions were not always all paid at once; a large sum down and the balance in six months or a year was a common practice. Sometimes, the balance was paid in instalments at the birth of each successive child or on an annual basis. Richard Mackernes, for instance, a London brickmaker, agreed to pay a certain sum down to Mintham Robinson, a carpenter who married his daughter Christian in 1652, and then to pay £13 per annum for the first seven years of the marriage and £3 per annum for the next nine. It was even agreed that some portions

be paid posthumously, such as that of Thomas Robinson, an innkeeper who 'not having ready money' for his daughter's portion, entered a bond to pay his son-in-law £50 after his death.^[44] Many other portions had to be claimed posthumously since fathers-in-law did not always pay up what they had promised. Whatever the particular arrangement, the portion was an essential feature of middle-class marriage and it would be very unusual to find one in which the bride brought nothing into the new household. Such considerations take us a long way away from the love and affection which was supposed to be the basis of marriage, even for middling people in Augustan London. However, the emphasis is not misplaced. Moll Flanders was right; money really was rather important in the marriages of this class.

v—
Relations between the Sexes

What was marriage actually like in Augustan London? Here, one moves into a field which historians have turned into a jousting-ground where they tilt at each other with quotations proving that there was more or less love, companionship and other desirable qualities of matrimony in the relationships of our ancestors.^[45] The lists will not be entered here, for there are no answers to such questions. It would be easy to string together quotations illustrating a close and even passionate relationship between married people. It would also be easy to illustrate relationships in which hate, disgust, despair or total indifference seem to be the main emotions; no wonder, since the records of divorce have been used for much of the evidence. This material will be used in this section to illustrate how contemporaries expected husband and wife to behave towards each other, but first some factors will be set out which suggest that relationships between partners in middle-class marriages of our period would be different, but not necessarily worse, than they are today.

Although no one would claim that there was equality between the sexes in the 1980s, there was certainly much less equality in the 1680s. As has been said, a wife was treated in law as a feme covert, a minor almost totally under the legal subjection of her husband, an upper servant rather than an equal. Law was

mirrored by custom, which supported a 'double standard' of morality in which, for example, adultery by a husband was considered a mere trifle compared with adultery by a wife. Law and custom were supported by even liberal conduct books, which emphasized partnership, love and mutual respect as the basis of marriage, but still made it clear that the husband was the senior partner.^[46]

Law and custom, then, were on the side of male dominance, wifely obedience and paternalism in marriage. All these were surely reinforced by the age differences between husband and wife in middle-class marriages. Most girls in this class were married from homes in which they had been brought up to respect and obey their parents in particular and their elders in general. If they then married a man considerably older than themselves, is it really likely that they would be able to consider themselves his equal in any meaningful way? Conversely, would one expect a merchant of thirty who had spent some ten years travelling abroad and trading on his own to treat a girl of twenty as his equal? He would certainly treat no one else of that age as an equal, the age of his servants, apprentices and youngest siblings. This is not to say that our hypothetical merchant might not be very fond of his young wife, even in love with her, but that he would be unlikely to find her 'a person capable of advising with and consulting upon any difficulty or occurrence', qualifications which Dudley Ryder thought would be 'very good' in a wife.^[47]

The third point distinguishing middle-class marriages of our period from those of today is the question of money. Whatever one may say about the relative significance of love and money in choice of partners, there is absolutely no doubt that money played a very important, if not predominant, part in the process. Marriage has always been a lottery, whatever the basis of the choice of partners, and a choice based on money may well lead to as good a marriage as one based on love or affection. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to argue that the emphasis on money was just one more factor making the likelihood of a happy marriage even less than today, that is if we use today's criterion of what constitutes a happy marriage. Our ancestors seem to have been less optimistic and perhaps more realistic

in their expectations of what one was likely to get from marriage.

The last point to be made is that the state of marriage was even easier to enter in our period than it is today, but was almost impossible to get out of again if the marriage turned out to be unhappy, except through the very common event of one of the partners dying. Divorce, as we know it, with the possibility of remarriage, was virtually unknown. Mutual agreements to separate were quite possible and a complacent husband might make a generous settlement to support a wife with whom he no longer wished to live. Where such collusion was impossible, an injured wife could sue for divorce in the church courts on the grounds of desertion, cruelty or her husband's adultery. These were divorces 'from bed and board', that is, legal separations with no provision for remarriage. Such cases could be difficult to prove and, when the court did find in favour of the wife, the alimony awarded was rarely attractive to a middle-class wife, the normal rates at the end of the seventeenth century being between 5s. and 10s. a week, the wages of a working woman, enough to live on but hardly enough to support the genteelness of the middle station.^[48] A wife who left her husband without sufficient cause or eloped with someone else had no financial claims and was therefore bound either to descend into poverty or be dependent on a lover who had no legal necessity to support her. Better, then, to stay at home, for 'although a wife is very lewd, if she lives with her husband, he is chargeable for all necessaries for her, because he took her for better or worse'.^[49]

Contemporaries knew that marriage was unlikely to be perfect, but they had a fairly clear idea of what was or was not conducive to a reasonable degree of harmony in the household. This can be illustrated from the evidence given in divorce cases. The witnesses were giving evidence for or against one of the parties and it can be assumed that they were often exaggerating, if not downright lying. However, their assumptions about what makes for harmony are still quite clear.

It can be said at the outset that they disapproved of what one might expect. They disapproved of 'the foul crime of adultery', but both men and women witnesses applied the 'double standard' to this and disapproved more of women who committed

adultery than men and especially of convinced and repeated adulteresses, such as the one reported as saying 'I would damn my soul to make my arse merry'. Where men attracted particular opprobrium was when they contracted pox from their infidelity and so infected their wives and unborn children, a state of affairs which seems to have been regrettably common. Witnesses also disapproved of cruelty and none of the condonement of physical chastisement of wives has been found, which one might expect from literary evidence of the period. Defoe, for instance, thought that the beating of wives was on the increase, so much so that their screams did not even bother the neighbours. 'The common answer to one another is only thus; "'tis nothing neighbour, but such a one beating his wife"; "O dear", says the other, "is that all?", and in they go again, compos'd and easie.' However, such scenarios do not appear in the legal records; on the contrary, neighbours came right into the house to stop husbands beating their wives and such behaviour was never implicitly condoned by saying that, in this particular case, the beating was done 'without cause' or some similar expression. It seems that husbands were not expected to beat their wives and wives, of course, were not supposed to beat their husbands or 'fly in their faces and tear their hair'.^[50]

An idea of how wives and husbands were expected to behave can most easily be gained by quoting adjectives and phrases which describe good or bad behaviour.^[51] To start with the bad, or at least not very good, wife: she was likely to be 'very perverse and morose' or perhaps 'proud, ambitious and passionate', to call her husband 'opprobrious names' and use 'undutifull' language. She might well be 'a person of a very turbulent spirit', almost daily disturbing and disquieting the household, perhaps so much so that by her 'disturbance and noise' she drove her husband away from the warm fire in the dining room to find quiet but freezing cold in another room. She was likely to go to taverns and keep lewd company and her 'goings abroad' and 'stayings out late' and 'keeping of loose and strange company' would be 'without the consent, well likeing and contrary to the desires and admonitions' of her husband. Such a wife who 'would not keep at home' would also probably be 'a very extravagant wife' who 'wore more new cloathes than became her condition . . . and hath wasted and mispent a great

deal of money'. Wives like this quite often stole from husbands or took goods from his shop to support their extravagance. Bad wives also damaged the husband's business more obliquely by shouting at him in his shop, being 'perverse' or 'proud' towards the customers or calling the female customers 'whore' when their husband shook their hands to seal a bargain. Some wives might take a perverse pleasure in such destructive activity, glorying in their husband's failing business and swearing before witnesses that 'she would ruin him and make him rot in a jayl'. Finally, a bad wife would not only lose her husband business but would destroy the good name of the family by making herself 'the town talk' or by using such 'horrid oaths and imprecations' that she caused 'a mobb to come about his house to his great disgrace and the disturbance of the neighbourhood'.

The good wife would do none of these things. She would be 'a person of a modest and civil behaviour and demeanour' who 'carried and behaved herself towards the said George her husband as a loving dutifull and observant wife'. She would be 'an honest woman and as vertuous as the Virgin Mary', 'very obedient and loving', 'sober', 'affectionate' and 'obliging'. She would cause no trouble in the family nor amongst her neighbours, who would describe her as 'a person of good creditt and reputation' of whom they had 'never heard any ill'.

These epithets, from men and women, rich and poor, servants and householders, make it clear what the world expected from a wife. She should be obedient, dutiful, affectionate, modest and self-effacing, frugal in her household management, and should be careful to control her temper and not allow herself to be proud, ambitious or passionate. She was, in short, expected to know her place and to behave accordingly. She should give her husband no cause to treat her badly and she should love him or at least be affectionate to him. Nothing much is said about marital sexual relationships in these depositions, but it is clear that the wife was expected to sleep in the same bed with her husband and be available for his embraces, though under some circumstances, such as his catching the pox from his whores, it was accepted that a wife might well want to 'part beds'.

What did a husband have to do to deserve such a paragon of a wife? He should first of all be 'a person of a sober and chaste life and of very civill conversation . . . and of very good

character and esteem amongst his acquaintance'. He should 'behave and demean himself very kindly and affectionately' towards his wife, 'as a kind and loving husband'. 'No angry word or frown', let alone a blow, a kick or the threat of a 'naked sword' should 'proceed from him to his said wife'. 'Mildness and gentleness' were praised, in addition to 'a great deal of affection and respect'. He should 'provide for and furnish . . . all things that were necessary and convenient for her and suitable to his condition and circumstances'. Indeed, he should also think of her 'condition' and would acquire praise if he did 'att all times and upon occasions with great readiness and willingness of mind allow [his wife] all necessaries and conveniences suitable to her quality and estate', though in doing so he should not go 'beyond his circumstances', 'a frugall saveing man' being an object of praise in the accumulative world of the middle station.

Needless to say, the sort of husband who appears in the records of a divorce suit rarely behaved with such generosity, consideration and affection. He tended to be 'an extravagant man in his expenses and much addicted to drinking' or 'a person of a harsh temper and disposition' who would call his wife 'severall opprobrious names as bitch and whore', without cause. He might well treat his wife 'in a very unkind and cruel manner and often quarrell with her . . . without any cause . . . in a violent passion'. He was likely to be described as 'surly', 'morose', 'inhumane' and 'debaucht', but much the commonest epithet used for a bad husband was that he was 'unkind' to his wife, the sort of man about whom a servant might say that she 'seldom or never observed him to be any wayes loving or tender to . . . his wife'.

What do these brief extracts tell us about relations between the sexes? Most of them, in different language, could be found in any manual on how to conduct a marriage. People then, as now, expected couples to try to conduct their relationships in a harmonious manner, giving no pain to each other and offering no disturbance to the rest of the household or the neighbourhood. Couples were also, as one might expect, supposed to be affectionate to each other. However, there are some aspects of marriage in our period which distinguish it from modern marriage. The emphasis on wifely obedience, duty and respect

is an obvious example, but there are other slightly more subtle aspects of the same thing. The wife more often has to have 'cause' if she does anything out of the ordinary, such as the wife who was said never to 'call her husband any opprobrious names or use any undutifull language saving that once upon [her husband] calling her . . . whore, shee did . . . call him pitifull fellow'. The wife has to be much more chaste and in general has less latitude in behaviour. She was more confined, less able to go out and about as she wished, 'without the consent' of her husband, though she was certainly not so much confined as most European wives of the same period. There is also a subtle difference in the quality of the affection expected between the sexes, with the wife being expected to be more 'loving' and the husband more 'kind', an emotion which could be interpreted as slightly patronizing or paternalist.

Nevertheless, despite these rather different expectations of the behaviour of husband and wife, the records do make it clear that the wife is not a downtrodden creature whom a husband can treat as he likes. What is striking in the depositions is the fact that wives so often gave as good as they got, or better. They were independent individuals who would strike and abuse a husband they did not like or who treated them badly. They would say that they would do as they please and then proceed to do as they pleased. Mild and meek they were supposed to be, but in reality the women of the middle station were quite capable of holding their own on the battlefield of marriage.

8—
The Household

It was normal practice in England, as in most regions where the Western marriage system held sway, for each new marriage to create a new household and middling Londoners were no different from their fellow-countrymen in this respect. In the early years of marriage, a couple might share a house but not a household with some other family or families, as lodgers in two or three rooms or as joint-occupiers of a house with a senior partner. But nearly everybody aimed to have a house of their own eventually, once sufficient accumulation had taken place. This chapter will look at the houses of the middle station and at the people who lived in them together with the master and his wife, but first it is necessary to say a few words about where these houses were.

London was not yet a city with the rigid class segregation that was to develop in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There were 'rich' areas, such as the central City and the West End, while most of the rest of the metropolis was relatively 'poor'. However, no area was totally rich or poor, so that 'the parish was more like a microcosm of the city as a whole than a social quarter'.^[1] In an age when what public transport was available was both slow and expensive, it was necessary for the rich to be surrounded by middling and poor people to serve them. Nor were the poor areas all poor, for the densely packed, small, low-quality housing of the 'proletariat' was interspersed with individual houses of high quality in which lived the manufacturers who employed them and the shopkeepers who sold them their necessities.^[2]

It is, then, no surprise to find middle-class people scattered throughout the metropolis, the 375 men in the sample living in no less than 118 different parishes.^[3] However, there was a heavy concentration of the wealthier middle class in the central

parishes of the City, where most of the merchants and wholesalers and many of the richer shopkeepers lived. Other smart shopkeepers and people providing high-class services lived in the West End near to their upper-class customers. Most manufacturers lived either on the borders of the City proper or beyond the City in the so-called 'extramural' parishes, the product of London's first expansion outside its ancient walls, or beyond that in Clerkenwell, Shoreditch, the East End and Southwark. These areas were also the homes of small shopkeepers serving the manufacturing population, whilst such people as builders and the various sorts of caterer and victualler might be found anywhere in the built-up area.

It should finally be noted that some members of the 'London' middle class chose not to live in London at all. There were, for example, fifteen men in the sample who illustrated a developing trend of city life by living in a villa or farm just outside the metropolis, their homes being in such places as Leyton, Tottenham, Islington, Hammersmith and Wandsworth. Nearly all these men were either rentiers or retired or, if they were still active, were merchants, men who reflect the truth of Defoe's remarks on the fine buildings of Tottenham, which generally belonged 'to the middle sort of mankind, grown wealthy by trade, and who still taste of London; some of them live both in the city and in the country at the same time'.^[4]

i—
The Middle-Class House

Londoners have always been famous for 'the agility, the ease and the quickness' with which they climb up and down large numbers of stairs and the people of our period had already adopted that vertical way of living which distinguishes the London living space from that in most other continental capitals.^[5] The typical middle-class house was similar to those which estate agents today call Georgian or Early Victorian, a narrow-fronted tall house with three, four or five storeys with two or sometimes three rooms to each floor. Most houses had a yard at the back, sometimes with access to warehousing or stabling and so through into a narrow back lane, while a few had proper gardens, mostly those in the suburbs but including a few of the grander houses in the centre of the City. Most

houses had a cellar, normally not as high-ceilinged as the modern 'basement', with storage for business purposes or for coal, beer and other things belonging to the household. Nearly all houses also had a garret floor set in the roof, which was used for servants' bedrooms, storage and occasionally for work purposes, the looms of weavers often being set up in garrets with large windows to catch the light.^[6]

Most of the houses in which the middling people lived were comparatively new, either because they were in areas which had only been recently built up or because they were City houses rebuilt after the Great Fire. The Rebuilding Act of 1667 had laid down strict rules of standardization which reflected the best practice already existing and so reinforced the tendency to uniformity of London houses. There were to be four classes of house: those of four storeys (not counting garrets) on the 'high and principal streets', three storeys on 'streets and lanes of note' and two storeys on 'by-lanes', while provision was also made for houses 'of the greatest bigness', 'merchants' houses' of a maximum height of four storeys which generally stood back from the street with courtyards and gardens. The thickness of walls and ceiling heights on different floors were specified and builders were required to use non-inflammable materials such as brick, stone and tiles.^[7] Such provisions meant that most London houses would have looked almost exactly the same had it not been for the individuality of builders, which was reflected in the use of different colours and patterns of brickwork, elaborate cornices and balconies, mean or magnificent doorways and windows and the like.

Not very many middling people owned the freehold of their houses, most freeholds in the City belonging to public bodies, such as the Corporation, parishes, hospitals and Livery Companies, or to ground landlords who tended to be absentee and aristocratic. This latter group also owned most of the land in the West End and the suburbs, which they developed by selling long leases to builders and other speculators or to potential occupiers who wished to build on their land. Owners of City freeholds also sold long leases and over a third of our sample owned a lease of their dwelling-houses for which they paid a quit or ground rent to the landlord. The amount paid ranged from the full commercial rent or rack-rent to a fairly nominal

sum and valuations varied accordingly, the valuation of a lease on a rack-rent normally being zero and of a long lease with a small quit-rent being between eight and twelve times the computed rental income which could have been earned had the property been let out. Such valuations obviously fell as the date approached when a new bargain had to be struck with the ground landlord and a fresh capital sum (known as a fine) laid out to extend the lease.^[8]

Leases tended to be very long. An average of twenty-seven years remained on the leases of dwelling-houses occupied by our sample when they died and, of course, such leases would have been considerably longer when first negotiated. Most corporate bodies had had financial difficulties during the Civil War and Interregnum, and had decided to solve these embarrassments by sacrificing long-term annual rental income in return for selling long leases for as large a fine as they could get. This process was intensified by the Great Fire. Landlords were desperately keen to rebuild but few had the capital to do the job themselves. The easiest solution was to get the occupier or some other person to rebuild at his own expense in return for a further extension of the lease, often to sixty years or more, and a reduction of the ground rent.^[9]

Investment in long leases tied up capital, several hundred pounds in the central City area, which could have been invested in a business.^[10] It is not surprising, then, that the majority of our sample rented their shops and dwelling-houses, either from the owners of long leases or directly from the ground landlords. In 1776, Adam Smith thought that house rent in London was greater than in any other European city, partly 'from those causes which render it dear in all capitals, the dearness of labour, the dearness of all the materials of building . . . the dearness of ground-rent', but also because of 'the peculiar manners and customs of the people which oblige every master of a family to hire a whole house from top to bottom'. Such conditions already existed in our period and rents were high, especially in the major shopping streets. The highest rent that has been found in an inventory was £80 a year paid by a jeweller in Cheapside; typical high rents in the central City area or the Strand were £50 to £60 a year; while off the main streets

in the City or in meaner areas, rents for middle-class houses were about £20 to £30.^[11]

These were major fixed costs to set against a business, the equivalent of the wages of one or even two journeymen for a year or of three or four domestic servants and their keep. One way to make sure that one could pay the rent even when trade was poor was to take in lodgers, particularly high-class lodgers who could pay a good rent, and this was a common practice. Adam Smith thought that competition between shopkeepers in this respect explained the low rates paid by lodgers compared with the high rents paid by shopkeepers for their houses, although in fact the rates paid by lodgers do not seem to have been particularly low. Jonathan Swift was paying 8s. a week or £20 a year for the first floor (a dining-room and bed-chamber) of a house in Bury Street in 1710, a rent which he thought 'plaguy deep' but was about the norm for lodgings suitable for gentryfolk during the reign of Queen Anne. In 1706, Francis Tallents reported to a friend in Derbyshire that 'you can not expect to board at London under £20 a year at least for yourself, and proportionately for your maid'. The poor, few of whom earned £20 in a year, obviously paid very much less and de Saussure said that weekly rates for rooms in London ranged from 'sixpence to half a guinea a head'. However, most lodgers in middle-class houses, who tend to be described by such labels as 'Mister' or 'Captain', were paying nearer half a guinea than sixpence and such payments could be a useful income for a shopkeeper.^[12] It was, however, a considerable nuisance to have your first floor occupied by strangers, as can be seen when the lay-out of houses is considered.

The number of rooms and their distribution within the house obviously varied, depending on the number of storeys, on whether a back extension had been built, and on the idiosyncrasies of particular builders. Nevertheless, the structure of London houses led to some uniformity in the way that they were laid out.^[13] A common arrangement was to have the shop or workshop on the ground floor, with cellar beneath and yard behind, the kitchen and dining-room on the first floor, two bedrooms including the best bedroom on the second floor and then either a third floor with two more bedrooms with garrets above or

straight up to the two garret rooms, which were most commonly used as servants' bedrooms.

Another arrangement was to have the kitchen on the ground floor. This was sometimes because the house was small, such as that of William Justice, a comb-maker in Whitechapel, who had his workshop at the front and his kitchen at the back on the ground floor, a dining-room and one good bedroom on the first floor and two garret bedrooms above. People who needed no shop were also likely to use the ground floor as living space. Joshua Marshall, who built many houses for other people, showed his own preference with a front parlour and kitchen on the ground floor and a large yard behind where he stored building materials. Many merchants and professional people needed only a counting-house at street level and would use the back of the ground floor as a large kitchen which could be extended out into the yard in the form of a buttery or washhouse.^[14] This made access to piped water easier and gave servants plenty of work space, but it also meant that all the food had to be carried up 'one pair of stairs' since most people had their dining-room on the first floor, normally the grandest floor of the London house.

Not everyone occupied a whole house, even in the middle station. Some people only rented one or two floors in somebody else's house. Some managed with even less, such as the Levant merchant William Edwards, who died worth nearly £6000 but was living with his wife and small baby in only two rooms. However, Edwards was only thirty-one and had been married less than a year when he died and he would probably have moved into something more fitting to his status if he had lived longer. Many other people rented or owned the lease of a whole house, but did not fill every room with their family, servants and goods. The other rooms would have been occupied by lodgers, some in furnished rooms, which appear in inventories since the furniture was the property of the deceased citizen, and some in unfurnished rooms, which usually do not. This can lead to some confusion since rooms or whole floors will be missing from the inventory and one can easily get a false impression of the lay-out.^[15]

Thus the number of rooms used for domestic purposes might vary quite considerably. The smallest living space in our

inventories was a single room occupied by Lawrence Pinder, a rather poor widower with one child, who was probably boarded out; the largest, not counting inns and taverns, was nineteen rooms occupied by James Birkin, a wealthy alderman and Levant merchant who lived in Mincing Lane, a property which included gardens, summer-house, stables and warehouses and whose lease was valued at over £5000.^[16] Houses can be found with every number of rooms between these extremes, but for most people there was considerable uniformity in the number of rooms which they occupied, as is seen in Table 8.1 above. Nearly two-thirds of houses had between five and eight rooms, which were typically arranged on three or four floors (including garrets) above the shop, the standard arrangement for the

median seven-room house being five bedrooms, kitchen and dining-room or four bedrooms, kitchen, dining-room and parlour.

In Table 8.2 (p. 211), it can be seen that richer people tended to have more rooms, as would be expected, but the medians do not cover a very wide range, varying only from six for the poorer members of the sample to nine for the richest, despite the fact that the latter were at least ten times as rich as the former. Rooms in the houses of the rich were no doubt larger than those of the poor, but the constraints on London houses meant that there were limits to the ostentation one could display in one's dwelling-house. There was just not enough room in good commercial areas for many urban palaces on the scale of James Birkin's house in Mincing Lane, even though there were many other wealthy men with the £5000 necessary to acquire the lease.

ii—
The Structure of the Household

Who lived in middle-class houses can be discovered by looking at the structure of households. Much the best source for this is the series of assessments produced for the tax on burials, births and marriages which came into force on 1 May 1695. This tax required parishes to produce a complete enumeration of their populations and these are listed in a standard form, which enables one to see not only who was living in a house in 1695, but also the relationship of most of the occupants to the householder.^[17]

These assessments were first analysed by Gregory King, who found an average of six 'heads per house' in the parishes within the walls, five in the extramural parishes and four and threequarters in the remaining parishes of the metropolis, and his first two figures were confirmed in 1935 by Jones and Judges, who found 6.1 and 5.1 persons per house in the intramural and extramural parishes respectively.^[18] One would expect middleclass households to have rather more occupants than the average, so one may hazard a guess that the average middling household had some seven to eight persons living in it, a density of about one person per room, though of course some people

such as the master had exclusive use of much more of this space than others, such as the foot-boy.

The variety which made up this average of seven or eight persons per household can be seen in Table 8.3 overleaf, where the members of thirty-six households are set out. It has been compiled by linking data from the sample with the tax data, a task much simplified by the excellent index to the assessments.^[19] This linking exercise shows that several people must have deceived the assessors and so avoided the surtax paid by those worth more than £600. The most blatant example was Samuel Palmer, a cheesemonger who was also a collector for the tax. He was taxed in 1695 as a man with less than £600 but died in 1701 with a fortune of £3603, a remarkable rate of accumulation.^[20] There were also several people alive in 1695 who were not listed as resident in the family home. The merchant Daniel Wigfall was listed as living with his son and one female servant, but had a wife and no less than seven other children alive in 1695. The assessment for Francis Levett lists his wife, a footman and a maid; none of his six children alive in 1695 is mentioned. Both these men had country houses, one in Woodford and one in Enfield, and, since the assessments were supposed to be made on or before May Day, it seems probable that the missing members of their families were enjoying the spring air.^[21] Since these and other similar cases rather distort the 'families' of our sample, they have been left out of the table.

The table shows that middle-class households took on a variety of forms, as might be expected, but a few general points can be made. First, virtually all the families had servants; indeed, they are so regular a feature that one suspects that a servant or servants have been overlooked in the assessment of John Rouse (No. 11), a wealthy cheesemonger and the only household without a single servant. Only a few assessments distinguish between apprentices and domestic servants, lumping them together under 'servants'. However, it is a reasonable assumption that, in most cases (except Nos 35 and 36), the male servants were either apprentices or, if they were over twenty-five, journeymen, clerks or book-keepers—in other words, the 'service' they performed was connected with the business side of household life. Most of the female servants, who appear in every house but two, would have been true

domestics, though it is probable that some served in the shop as well or in the bars of the two taverns. The next point to note is that lodgers, although not uncommon, were hardly as ubiquitous as Adam Smith suggested, less than a quarter of the families having any lodgers at all.^[22] Finally, it can be noted that resident kinfolk outside the nuclear family were unusual, there being only two brothers, one father and one unspecified 'kinswoman' in the thirty-six families.

It is, then, the number of resident children and servants who determine the size of the household in the majority of cases. Nearly all the small households were those of comparatively young people who had only recently married and so were likely to have no or few children and less need for many servants. It is less easy to generalize about large households since their

composition varied so much. Some resulted from large numbers of children (e.g. No. 33), some from large numbers of children and great wealth, which enabled a staff of six or seven servants to be kept (Nos 35 & 36). Other large households might result from the residence in the family home of an industrial labour force, such as seems to be the case in the home of the tobacco-refiner John Hicks (No. 31), whose two lodgers may also have been workers in his business, while the builder Thomas Lawrence's household (No. 34) is swelled by the presence of four lodgers.^[23]

There were in all 286 people listed in these 36 households, of whom 91 or 32 per cent were children of the householder, 54 or 19 per cent were his male servants and 52 or 18 per cent were his female servants. Children and servants thus made up over two-thirds of the residents in middle-class households, and these two groups will be discussed in the next two sections, concentrating on the female domestics since the male servants were mainly apprentices, who have already been considered.

iii—
Relations with Servants

The employment of domestic servants was virtually universal amongst the middle class and indeed went right down into fairly lowly strata of the artisan population of Augustan London.^[24] Some households employed huge numbers of servants, especially in the West End, but the typical staff was modest, as can be seen in Table 8.4 opposite, where the servants in two wealthy City parishes are analysed. The table shows the dominance of female servants, who represent four out of every five domestics and were the only domestics in over three-quarters of the households. It can also be seen that over half the households had only one servant, nearly always female, and that nearly 80 per cent had only one or two. One or two servants, usually female, was therefore the normal domestic staff, this being all that most households had space for or could afford. A staff of three or more, ideally with at least one man or boy, was, however, something to which most middling people aspired, since a larger staff freed wives from virtually all menial tasks and a male servant gave the household distinction in the neighbourhood. Such aspirations ensured that London's servant

population grew faster than the city as a whole, as more Londoners employed at least one servant and as those who already had one began to think in terms of a staff rather than a single maid. 'I believe nobody will deny', wrote Defoe in 1724, 'that people live more profusely, keep greater equipages and more servants than ever was done before.'^[25]

There was always a steady flow of country boys and girls coming into London to seek a place, but this was not sufficient to satisfy demand and our period sees an increase in servants' wages, Defoe claiming that the wages of female domestics had risen from 30s. or 40s. a year to £6–8 during his lifetime. A few pounds more a year does not seem very much for employers to pay, though they certainly grumbled about it, but there were other ways in which servants could enhance their incomes. Many writers thought that servants could double their wages by what they got as vails, or tips, from guests. It was also claimed that servants took commissions from shopkeepers for the family business and helped themselves to some of the money given them to go shopping. Further income might be earned, with or without the employer's permission, by selling worn-out clothing, left-overs from the table and other things which might

be considered perquisites and not downright thieving, though there was said to be much of that as well.^[26]

Defoe also suggested that domestics were becoming much more sophisticated about job specification and the definition of what might be considered a proper work-load. The main point here was how much work might be expected from a single maid-servant working on her own, 'the useful housewifery servant, commonly called maids of all work', as Sir John Fielding described them. Defoe claimed in the 1720s that it took two servants to do the work done by one in the past. He illustrated the growth of job-specification by describing a girl who, while being interviewed for a job as a house-maid, laid down the law in no uncertain way. 'If you wash at home, you should have a laundry-maid; if you give entertainments, you must have a cook-maid; if you have any needlework, you should have a chamber-maid; for such a house as this is enough for a house-maid in all conscience.'^[27]

It seems then that our period was generally a good one for servants, who were becoming better paid and more independent. Servants made the best of the good times. They dressed well, enjoyed themselves in the myriad ways offered by London and regularly changed jobs to make the best of their excellent bargaining position. It need hardly be said that such behaviour made the employers think that the 'servant problem' was more than usually intractable. They moaned and wrote pamphlets complaining about servants or manuals directed to potential servants which were designed to improve their characters by telling them that they should be pious, faithful, diligent, submissive, humble, honest, modest, early-rising, neat, clean, housewifely and a large number of other things which it seems clear that many girls were not.^[28]

Such didactic literature gives very little idea of just what servants actually did or of the nature of their relations with their employers. For these subjects, one can turn to the diary of Samuel Pepys, which provides a marvellous running commentary on domestic servants in the household of an upwardly mobile public servant.^[29] When he started his diary in 1660, Pepys had just one female servant, but he was soon to learn 'the inconvenience that doth attend the increase of a man's fortune, by being forced to keep more servants, which brings

trouble'. The first addition to his family was a footboy, engaged in June 1660, whose main duties were to wait on him as he went about the city, sometimes lighting him home with a link, go on miscellaneous errands and do odd jobs about the house. In 1661, Pepys took on a second maid, one girl now being cookmaid and the other chambermaid. In 1663, a third maid was engaged as a 'little girl' or under-cookmaid and in the same year his household reached its maximum size during the diary period with the appointment of a waiting-woman or companion for his wife. Although there was sometimes no companion or only two maids, this establishment of four women or girls and a boy was the normal arrangement till 1669, when the diary closes. Pepys was a man in a hurry, with no children to drain his purse, but his pattern of household building was typical of the more successful of middling Londoners.

In order to maintain their household at the requisite level, Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys had to engage at least thirty-eight servants in just over nine years, and the service of thirty-one of these can be analysed. The longest service was given by Jane Birch, 'our old little Jane', the only servant when the diary starts, who stayed in all for seven years in three separate periods. The next longest service was that of Tom Edwards, who doubled as a junior clerk in the Navy Office and a footboy in the household, his wages being paid by the government.^[30] He stayed four and a half years, eventually leaving to marry his fellow-servant Jane Birch, much to the delight of the Pepys, who gave them £40 each as a marriage portion. Long service was also given by Jane's younger brother Wayneman, as footboy, and 'our little girl Susan', under-cookmaid, both of whom stayed nearly three years, and Mary Mercer, the longest lasting of Elizabeth Pepys's five companions, who stayed for two years.

There was much greater turnover among the other twentysix servants. Six stayed between a year and eighteen months, seven between six months and a year, five between three and six months, and eight did not even last a quarter. Such lack of continuity in a household was by no means unusual. Six former servants of a scrivener who gave evidence in 1698 had lived in the household for thirty-six, twenty-one, twelve, ten, six and four months, and their service with other employers showed the

same pattern with periods of from three to eighteen months with each.^[31] Turnover of servants caused continuous disruption in middling households as new girls had to be found, trained and hopefully moulded into becoming members of a happy and well-ordered family. Most of Pepys's servants were acquired through personal recommendation, though agencies already existed, a service to householders which became more important in the eighteenth century. Nell, for instance, who was taken on in October 1661, was chosen from several maids who arrived to be interviewed. She insisted on being hired for six months, though the normal arrangement was for a month's notice by either side, servants who were dismissed or discontented being given time off to find a new place.

Houses were kept to a high standard and the work of servants was accordingly arduous. César de Saussure reported that wellkept houses were washed twice a week 'and that from top to bottom; and even every morning most kitchens, staircases and entrances are scrubbed. All furniture, and especially kitchen utensils, are kept with the greatest cleanliness.' Our sources provide much evidence of the effort that went into such work. Floors and stairs were sprinkled or scrubbed with sand to soak up grease and droppings before sweeping and saucepans and kettles were regularly scoured with sand. Wainscots had to be washed down, walls white-washed, hangings, mats and carpets brushed and beaten, and the house searched regularly for bugs, one of the curses of the age. Then there was the washing of clothes and household linen, a task done once a month 'in good citizens' houses'. Wash-day was a terrible day for servants, who, in Pepys's house, were got up at two in the morning and might still be at it when he returned home late in the evening.^[32]

The work of the kitchen was equally arduous—boiling, baking and spit-roasting on an open coal fire, making pies and pasties, salting and preserving, maybe brewing and baking, and then serving the food 'neatly' to the master and mistress. When there were guests, the work-load was appalling. Hannah, the best cook ever employed by the Pepys, once prepared a feast of nine different dishes, served it to eleven diners and then cleared the whole lot up whilst the Pepys and their guests were taking the air in the park, returning to 'find the house as clean as if nothing had been done there today from top to bottom'. It is

gratifying to learn that Hannah's efforts were appreciated and she was well rewarded, receiving a shilling from 'each of us'.

Nearly all work in middle-class homes was made more difficult and tiring by their lay-out. Fire and water were needed in every room, but the coal and wood were kept in the cellar and water was only piped to the yard. The kitchen was often at ground level but the dining-room on the first floor, so all food had to be carried up one pair of stairs. Close-stools and commodes were kept in bedrooms but the house of office or privy where they had to be emptied was in the yard. And when the privy itself was emptied, it was not only the nightmen who had to work. Pepys got home at eleven one evening to find the nightmen at work and, when he got up the next morning at six, he found 'the people to have just done; and Hannah not gone to bed yet, but was making clean of the yard and kitchen'.^[33]

Such dirty, nasty work was interspersed with work involving cleanliness, neatness and very close and personal attendance on the master and mistress. Much time was spent ironing, mending and altering clothes, making night-caps and shirts, cutting out and hemming sheets, pillow-cases and towels from rolls of linen. Chambermaids had to keep the clothes of the master and mistress in order, help them dress and undress, and be clean enough and sufficiently well dressed themselves to escort their mistress around the town—to shops, to friends, to the theatre, even to her adulterous liaisons, as one can learn from the records of the Consistory Court.^[34] Any servant of Pepys might have to cut or comb her master's hair, search it for lice or wash his feet or ears. Most middle-class households would have one or two, possibly more, small children, who created more work. Sometimes girls were hired specifically as nursemaids but, in most households, minding children, washing and feeding them, making and mending their clothes and similar jobs were part of the duties of the maids or the single maid-of-all-work. On top of all this, many girls had to help out in the shop or other business premises of their employers. The range of duties obviously varied, but there is little doubt that a servant's life was not quite as easy as contemporary commentators often made out.

Samuel Pepys took all this work for granted, as would any member of the middle class. Servants were not hired, paid, fed

and clothed in order for them to be idle. The childless Pepys seems to have been genuinely fond of many, indeed most, of the servants who made up his 'family' over the years, and evidence can be found of kindness and affection from many other employers. Pepys was amused by the antics of his adolescent footboys, enjoyed a chat with servants in the kitchen, took servants on outings, was interested in their problems and normally genuinely upset when they were ill, so long as he was sure that they were not malingering, and was nearly always sorry and often very sad when they left. He was probably not unusual in preferring attractive servants and in grumbling when his wife hired girls like Doll or Luce, both of whom were 'very ugly'. Pepys, of course, is notorious for his loose ways with women and two of his wife's companions and three of the maids had to put up with his groping hands on their 'mamelles', their belly or even their 'thing'. Just how common such behaviour was one cannot tell, but the opportunities were certainly manifold. Judging from the diary, most of the girls seemed to regard Pepys's exploration of their person as just part of the job, though some were certainly more willing than others. And, just for the record, one might perhaps note that Pepys employed twenty-four female servants who do not seem to have been subjected to such indignities and not all of them were ugly.^[35]

Pepys certainly liked a pretty face or a well-shaped bosom, but he also appreciated good service and was generous in his diary and no doubt in person when he thought he was receiving it. Such comments enable us to determine what was expected. The first quality to look for in a servant was that she should 'do what she is bid', be modest, humble, well-meaning and faithful. She should be ready to take criticism without argument and be duly remorseful if she did something wrong, such as the servant who fell on her knees and asked pardon for running away after being struck by Elizabeth Pepys. Willingness to work hard was obviously an important asset and a servant who was 'a drudging, working wench' would receive due praise, as did Susan, who was described as 'a most admirable slut', not at all an opprobrious term, when she did 'more service than both the others' on a wash-day.

Another great bonus in a servant was that she should be good-natured, quiet and not liable to burst into tears, tantrums

or arguments either with her employers or her fellow-servants. In the whole of the diary period, the best time was August 1664: 'Never since I was housekeeper I ever lived so quietly, without any noise or one angry word almost, as I have done since my present maids, Besse, Jane and Susan came and were together.'^[36] Finally, it was of course useful if a servant was particularly skilled at her job. The ability of a chambermaid to dress the mistress's hair really well, of a cook to 'dress meat' and serve meals with some style or, in the case of the companions, to talk, sing and play musical instruments with unusual talent, were all valuable assets. However, a servant was never dismissed for a lack of innate skills and Pepys was always ready to put up with less quality if a servant was willing and well-disposed. Harmony and quiet were the keys to a happy household, just as they were to happy relations between husband and wife.

A bad servant was likely to be proud and would not show that proper humility, respect and gratitude which her employers expected. She would be lazy, sleepy and forgetful, with 'no care nor memory of her business at all'. She might be dirty and was almost certain not to do things 'as they should be'. She would lie, answer back, speak boldly and be 'apt to scold'. She was likely to go out visiting without permission and, worse still, gossip about the household when she was out, a terrible crime in the small world of London. Pepys expected his servants to be silent when they were 'abroad', but to keep their ears open and report back any criticism of his household which they heard. One can understand his paranoia, since the servants of a household knew everything that was going on within it and indeed everything that their employers did elsewhere, as is made abundantly clear from depositions in the Consistory Court. High turnover made such silence impossible, however, and one can appreciate Pepys's annoyance when his maid Sarah left and almost immediately got a place with his bête noire, Sir William Penn, where inevitably 'all our affairs of my family are made known of and discussed of there, and theirs by my people'.^[37]

Just as bad as gossiping abroad was asking people into the house without permission, such visitors being liable to gossip in their turn, steal or provide thieves with useful information.

Susan felt the full weight of Pepys's anger when she let in 'a rogueing Scotch woman . . . to help them to wash and scour'. Pepys made his wife 'beat our little girle, and then we shut her down into the cellar and there she lay all night'. This was a savage punishment and out of character, for the maids were rarely beaten, a cuff or a box on the ear or a serious and angry talking to being the normal method of maintaining discipline. Boys were beaten more, especially the incorrigible Wayneman, who was beaten at least eight times with a cane, a whip or with rods, and sometimes very savagely. A master or mistress could, if necessary, call in the law to punish troublesome servants. In a defamation case of 1697, for instance, we learn that the nursemaid Mary Fawden was taken up by the constable 'for abusing and calling her then mistress . . . ill names'. She was brought before a magistrate who sent her to Bridewell 'and she was there whipt and lashed', her mistress adding insult to injury by kissing her at the whipping-post and saying, 'Mary, God forgive you, I do.' The only time that Pepys sought assistance was in the case of the parish-child Jinny, who arrived in August 1663, was deloused and dressed in 'good new clothes' and then immediately ran away. She was captured by the parish beadle, stripped of Pepys's clothes and then sent away to be whipped. Employers were no doubt glad to have the force of law behind them, but the usual final sanction was dismissal, the eventual fate of the naughty Wayneman.^[38]

Pepys saw his household as a family, but it was a family where nobody was equal to anybody else and Pepys was often troubled lest the strict hierarchy be disturbed. This was most obvious amongst the five female members of his family, a hierarchy headed by his wife Elizabeth and then, in descending order, her waiting-woman or companion, the chambermaid, cookmaid and under-cookmaid. The companions, who were usually poor members of respectable families, were treated as gentlewomen and sat down to table with their employers and spent their evenings with them. They were, however, still expected to show a due respect and this was a difficult relationship to maintain. Pepys's fears that Winifred Gosnell 'hath been bred up with too much liberty for my family' proved to be correct, while the problem with Barker was

exactly the opposite, 'because she will be raised from so mean a condition to so high, all of a sudden'. Mary Ashwell was 'not proud, but will do what she is bid; but for want of being abroad, knows not how to give that respect to her mistress as she will do when she is told it'. On the other hand, she also had to be told 'not to make herself equall with the ordinary servants of the house'. Barker's problem was that she really wanted to be an ordinary servant and 'did always declare that she would rather be put to drudgery and to wash the house than to live as she did, like a gentlewoman', an attitude which Pepys found incomprehensible.^[39]

Chambermaids also gave trouble. They might be upset at the appointment of a waiting-woman above them, thus effectively pushing them down one rank in the domestic hierarchy. They might think that they were too 'high' for the job, like Pepys's sister Pall, whom he introduced into the household as a chambermaid, not thinking her 'worthy of being Elizabeth's waiting-woman'. Pall had to stand in Elizabeth's presence and was not allowed to dine with her brother and sister-in-law and, not surprisingly, turned out to be too proud and idle to retain for long. Pall was Pepys's first chambermaid and she had a bad effect on Jane Birch, who had previously been the only maidservant, but who now became 'lazy and spoiled'. Chambermaids might be proud because they thought themselves of good birth or because they had previously served in a higher class household. However, the very condition could make a girl 'high', since the chambermaid's personal service to her employers was considered superior to service in the kitchen and was rewarded by higher wages. This made promotion a tricky problem since the glory involved might turn a girl's head. Should Bess be raised to chambermaid? 'We have both a mind to it, but know not whether we should venture the makeing her proud and so make a bad chambermaid of a very good-natured and sufficient cook-maid.' Even in the kitchen itself there were problems of hierarchy and status. Pepys was worried about a new cookmaid who had formerly been a chambermaid and 'holds up her head'. He also worried about hiring a new 'little girl' under the longserving Susan. 'I am a little disatisfied that the girl, though young, is taller and bigger then Su, and will not I fear be under her command.'^[40]

Why did servants leave the Pepys's household? Some were dismissed, like the rogue Wayneman, whose crimes included lying, fighting, stealing and dawdling on errands. Two other servants were dismissed for theft, two cooks for drunkenness and one servant for telling stories about the household in the neighbourhood. Most dismissals were, however, for less obvious reasons. What tended to happen was for there to be a honeymoon period in which a new servant received praise or at least was given the benefit of the doubt and then, slowly, the relationship began to deteriorate. Sometimes this was clearly the result of the servant's own personality but, very often, it was the product of Elizabeth Pepys's awkward character, which caused her to turn against her servants and begin to dislike or even hate them. She obviously had some justification for jealousy of her husband, but her contrariness went far beyond this and time after time one finds her picking quarrels with servants and accusing them, usually falsely, of lying and stealing. The end product of such relationships was that the servant was either dismissed, being described as proud, negligent, quarrelsome or some other opprobrious epithet, or she could stand it no longer and handed in her notice.

However, there did not have to be any unpleasantness for a servant to leave. Some girls left to get married or because they were sick. Many left simply because they wanted a change or because they wanted a different sort of job. Mary, a cookmaid, for instance, left after a month's trial because she wanted 'to live in a tradesman's house where there was but one maid', a situation in which she might have to work even harder than in Pepys's household but in which she would be the boss below stairs. Servants who left, even those who were dismissed, do not seem to have borne any grudge. Nor did they necessarily vanish. Many came back to visit, to chat with their fellow-servants or to call upon their former employers. The household had after all been their home, almost their universe, for several months and sometimes for several years.

All these reasons for leaving are, of course, a matter of Pepys's own interpretation of events and do not necessarily reflect how the servants themselves saw the situation. Nevertheless, when servants did give reasons for leaving their places, as

they often did when giving evidence to the Consistory Court, one can see that Pepys's household is not atypical. Nearly all the servants whom he employed had been, or were to be, employed in other London households and they simply reflect the range of servant personalities and experiences which could be found in the metropolis. Even Elizabeth Pepys is by no means unusual as an employer; indeed, she could almost be taken as a prototype of the idle, spoiled and discontented wife of contemporary literature. Give a woman like her a servant or servants and she will quarrel with them for no particularly good reason. Deborah Coleman, for instance, left the service of a scrivener's wife 'because of some difference betwixt this respondent and . . . her mistress', and such a vague reason for leaving was common enough. Another common scenario, likely to be interpreted differently by mistress and servant, is illustrated by a servant in the household of Elizabeth Nowes, the wife of a barrister. She left because her mistress 'and shee could not agree in their bills and reckonings about money laid out', a constant source of disagreement when innumerate but not necessarily dishonest servants went out shopping. Other servants in these depositions left because they were sick or wanted to get married or had found a better place or wanted to visit their relations in the country. Service in London was not exile and many girls spent long periods at home, interspersed by periods of service in London or elsewhere, before eventually getting married.^[41]

Samuel Pepys's diary has been used as the main source for this section because nowhere else can one get the same detail on the relations between master, mistress and servants in a London household. His became a large household by middleclass standards and one must expect that, in the typical single servant household, relations would have been rather different, with the mistress doing far more work in the house, as indeed Elizabeth Pepys did in the early months of the diary. However, the general impression is that Pepys's household was not untypical of his day and it seems legitimate to use examples from his diary to make general points about the life of servants. Where Pepys's diary is of no use is in discussing relations with children, the subject of the next section, for which different sources will have to be found.

iv—
Bringing up Children

One tends to think of the families of the past as teeming with children, and if we go back a mere hundred years this was certainly true. In our period, however, although there were some very large families, most were relatively small. Table 8.5 opposite sets out the numbers of children in the families of the sample who were alive when their fathers died. Nearly half the families had only one or two children, while the average was just over three, a figure which takes no account of families with no children at all. Vivien Brodsky has shown that nearly a quarter of marriages were childless in late Elizabethan London and that there was an average of only two surviving children per family, and one suspects that the figures would have been similar for our period.^[42]

Such numbers seem remarkably small when it is remembered that most middle-class mothers got married in their early twenties or even younger, and one might assume that birth control was providing at least part of the explanation. Contraception certainly existed and was condemned by moralists, who regarded it as murder and normally assumed that women were responsible, such practices being seen as yet another example of the frivolity of the modern woman. 'She would have the pleasure of lying with a man, but would not have the least interruption from her usual company keeping.' There is, however, no evidence that contraception had any effect on the birthrate, fertility being exceptionally high in London and even higher in parishes with a high proportion of middle-class mothers than in poorer parishes. There seems little doubt, then, that the small numbers of children shown in Table 8.5 were predominantly the result of the appallingly high levels of infant and child mortality in the metropolis. Middle-class mothers gave birth to many children, on average one every twenty-three months in the early years of marriage, but comparative wealth, clean homes and plentiful food were no guarantee that these children would live for very long. Infancy was the worst period, but all of childhood was dangerous and Finlay has estimated that only three out of five of those born even in wealthy parishes would survive to the age of 15.^[43]

High rates of infant and child mortality were a sad fact of the

human condition and parents had to learn to live with the loss of many of their children. Since we today would find such repeated grief almost impossible to bear, some historians believe that the parents of the past did not love their children as we do. Lawrence Stone, for example, has suggested that high mortality rates 'made it folly to invest too much emotional capital in such ephemeral things'. He claimed that parents were indifferent to their children or, at best, gave them the same sort of affection as they gave their pets. Such attitudes reduced grief when a child died but also tended to make parents unloving and sometimes extremely harsh in their treatment of children, subjecting them to savage beatings and other forms of cruelty.

This grim form of childhood began to change in the second half of the seventeenth century, at least in 'the middle ranks of the society'. Parents now began to love their children more and beat them less. Kindness and encouragement appeared in

children's lives and a reasoned rebuke replaced the harsh word and the rod as the means of correction. Many parents still regarded their children as pets but they now became pets on whom they were prepared to spend large amounts of money in the form of clothes, toys, expensive outings and a much more thorough education.^[44]

This thesis has proved totally unacceptable to the majority of social historians who claim, with reason, that Stone's views have been developed on the basis of unrepresentative sources and selective quotation. Such critics see childhood as changing very little between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries or indeed today. They accept that there have always been some bad and uncaring parents, but these were very much a minority. Most parents loved their children and the fear of losing them probably made them love them even more and care for them more tenderly than parents do in our safer society.

Despite the gulf between these two schools of historians, they both agree that a decline in religious sensibility in our period led to less emphasis on the salvation of children and a greater concern with secular ambitions for their futures as adults. In particular, the decline in belief in original sin and a growing acceptance of the innocence of children had an important influence on their treatment. Even the kindest parent might accept the epigram of Cotton Mather—'better whipt than damn'd'—if they genuinely believed that the death of an unrepentant child might take him straight to hell. In fact, as a recent study of diaries by Linda Pollock has shown, such beliefs often led to unbearable conflict in the minds of parents, torn between love for their children and acceptance that it was their duty to punish them for their own good. However, affection usually overcame duty, with the result that diary entries are often heavily laden with guilt. Even Cotton Mather was far more terrible in print than he ever was in reality.^[45]

Diaries have been the main source used by these revisionist historians, Linda Pollock's work being based on 496 British and American diaries and autobiographies, a huge body of material which might be expected to silence all critics.^[46] However, the number of diaries for any period before the second half of the eighteenth century is small and the number written by mothers even smaller, while the diaries which do exist often throw little

light on childhood. Most diarists were much more interested in their own activities than in those of their children and simply did not mention the things that interest historians of childhood, such as methods of childcare and discipline, children's games and the early learning process.

All historians must be grateful for the efforts of Linda Pollock; her work is much more systematic and far more convincing than that of Lawrence Stone but, because of the nature of the evidence used, one should perhaps be cautious of some of her conclusions. The case that parents generally loved their children and grieved when they died certainly seems proven, especially for those children who survived infancy. There also seems little doubt that parents were interested in the development and education of a child and had hopes and fears about its future. However, it is much harder to generalize on such subjects as discipline in the home. Only a third of Pollock's diaries for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have any information at all on this subject and one wonders just how thorough this information is.^[47] She wishes to minimize the physical chastisement of children in the past, as a counter to the habitual brutality claimed by other writers, and the fact is that not very much evidence of chastisement and very little of brutality appears in the diaries that she has read. But does such silence mean that children were only very rarely beaten? Would people necessarily comment on this subject?

Everything else that is known about the society of Augustan London would suggest that young people, and especially boys, were likely to be beaten quite a lot. Conduct books nearly always mention beating as a final sanction; one can hardly read about a school without being told of the savage beating of boys, not just for naughtiness but for what seem to us trivial lapses of memory; the normal punishment for erring apprentices and servants, for unmarried mothers and for a host of other young and not so young people was a beating in Bridewell or in some other place of correction, if their master had not already provided the punishment. In other words, this was a culture where beating was quite common. Can parents in our period really have loved their children so much that they spared the rod? It does seem rather unlikely, despite the evidence from silence in the majority of Linda Pollock's diaries.

The fact is that silence surrounds every aspect of childhood. The only people with much to say about the subject, and not much even then, were those who wrote books of advice for parents. Most of these concentrate on moral issues, on the need to instil in the child a fear of God and a respect for the authority of parents. Other books discuss the practicalities of pregnancy, childbirth and infant and child care, somewhat in the manner of a modern baby book. One can learn, for instance, that 'experts' disapproved of wet-nursing throughout our period, that swaddling was approved of in the seventeenth and not in the eighteenth, and so on. All of which is interesting, but does not tell us whether parents took any notice of such books, which are generally written in a depressingly pious manner or in obscure medical jargon. Recent research has shown that twentieth-century mothers do not follow baby books, a fact which makes it unlikely that their seventeenth-century ancestors did, making any conclusions from such literature of little value except for those interested in the history of baby books.^[48]

When other types of source material are looked at, one moves into areas of even greater darkness. Several hundred depositions from divorce cases have been studied for this book. Most relate either to the cruelty of husbands and thus a considerable degree of violence in the home or to the adultery of wives, which usually involved absence from home. In no case does one learn that the husband's brutality frightened or might have frightened the children or that the mother was neglecting her maternal duties by gallivanting about the town. Indeed, in very few cases would one know that there were any children of these broken marriages. Children are simply not mentioned and no attention is paid to their welfare, upbringing and maintenance. Does this mean that nobody cared about children or does it simply mean that a divorce required evidence of a husband's cruelty or a wife's adultery and nothing more, facts which could be proven without reference to the children?^[49]

When inventories are looked at, it can sometimes be sensed that children lived in these middle-class houses, as it is known they did from other sources. Some houses had a room called the nursery or the 'children's room'. Others had rooms which were described by the name of a teenage child, such as 'Mrs Phoebe's room' or 'Master Gabriel's room'. Lists of furniture sometimes

contain evidence of children, too. There is the occasional 'child's chair' or 'child's table', lots of clouts and child bed linen and quite a few cradles and child's baskets. However, not many inventories mention purpose-built children's furniture at all. Many list 'toys', but these were ornaments rather than what we understand by toys; others list the equipment for games such as draughts, chess and backgammon, but these were just as likely to be played by adults as by children. In short, inventories show that children often lived in comfortable quarters, but do not give any support to a hypothesis that children were a pampered breed on whom a great deal of money was spent. They may have been, but the evidence will not be found in this source.^[50]

Wills are another source which might be expected to throw light on attitudes to children, though in fact most are disappointing in this respect. One thing which comes through clearly in nearly all middle-class wills is the father's desire that his children should be treated equally and equitably, older and younger, boys and girls all normally getting exactly the same amount of his personal estate. This seems to have been a fundamental difference between middle-class attitudes and those of the gentry and aristocracy, who treated their children very unevenly. However, wills provide little evidence that fathers actually loved their children, either equally or at all, adjectives such as 'loving' or 'dear' being used rarely and in fact less frequently for children than for the father's adult friends.

A frequent theme in wills is the mention of duty and obedience that the children either have not observed towards their father or should observe towards their mother in the future. Three fathers in our sample disinherited their eldest son and all mentioned disobedience, unfaithfulness and lack of duty as a reason for this, Daniel Darnelly, for instance, being described as 'a very undutifull and disobedient sonne unto mee and his mother'. Other men bequeathed property to their wife to give to such of their children 'as shall be the most dutifull to her'. The wealthy merchant John Brookes left £3000 to be distributed by his widow amongst his eight children, 'as she shall in motherly prudence see fitt thereby to engage their love and obedience . . . and also that they are most pious, dutifull

and diligent may be most encouraged'. Finally, it should be noted that many wills showed much concern about the education and future careers of the children. These wills, then, present a picture of middle-class fathers behaving almost exactly as they were told to behave in conduct-books. There is little evidence here of the new-look fathers who pampered and spoiled their children or would put up readily with disobedience, a model which Lawrence Stone thinks was common amongst the members of the London bourgeoisie.^[51]

Childhood is one of the few subjects covered in this book on which it has been difficult to find good sources and it is important to realize just how fragile is the evidence from which large books have been written on the subject. Despite this, I, like others, will say what I think were typical attitudes to the upbringing of children. But, first, it should be noted that children were not necessarily brought up by both of their own parents, since adult as well as child mortality was very high. A quarter of our sample, for example, had lost their fathers before they were apprenticed. Widows and widowers often continued to raise their families single-handed or with the assistance of a housekeeper, but remarriage was also common. Many families, then, were very complex, with step-parents, natural parents and children from two or more unions all living in the same house, a situation similar to that created today by high divorce rates. Such arrangements could often lead to family tensions. Some people might refuse to allow the children of their spouse's previous marriage into the house; many husbands worried that if they died their widows might not treat the children of a previous marriage fairly. No evidence of really wicked stepmothers has been found, but presumably the stereotype had some basis in reality.^[52]

The care of young children was therefore distributed amongst a number of persons, of whom parents, step-parents, servants and wet-nurses were the most important, though older siblings probably played their part as well. A middle-class baby's first few months might well be spent with a wet-nurse, either at home or in the villages on the outskirts of London whose air was supposed to be good for babies. Linda Pollock has demonstrated the care with which parents chose and supervised wetnurses, and there seems little reason to suppose that the practice

illustrates indifference to the baby, as some writers have suggested, but it would presumably have reduced the strength of maternal bonding. Contemporary writers tended to criticise wet-nursing, on the grounds that it was due to idleness and vanity on the part of mothers and also because babies were supposed to absorb plebeian instincts with their nurses' milk. How common wet-nursing actually was, nobody knows, but contemporary comment suggests that it was widespread among those who could afford it.^[53]

Once the baby was weaned, it seems probable that much of the everyday care of small children was left to servants, who would produce them from time to time, nicely cleaned up, for the amusement and gratification of their parents. Misson thought that the English found young children too amusing and were over-affectionate and too tolerant of them, 'always flattering, always caressing, always applauding what they do; at least it seems so to us French folks who correct our children as soon as they are capable of reason; being of opinion, that to keep them in awe is the best way to give them a good turn in their youth'.^[54] The truth of Misson's comment cannot be proved but it agrees with what Linda Pollock has found in her diaries. How parents were supposed to behave, according to the conduct books, was much more in the French manner, though correction was always supposed to be tempered with affection.

In practice, it seems to have been the mother who provided most of the instruction and correction, as can be seen from two middle-class autobiographers, both of whom praised their mothers in almost identical terms for taking 'all oppertunityes to instruct and instill good principles of religion and moralls into us her children'. One also gets a hint of attitudes to mothers, a very shadowy subject, from the fact that the commonest adjective describing a mother in a will is not 'dear' or 'loving', which were used for many other people, but 'honoured'. This may simply be a convention, but it is important to remember that however much affection, however many caresses, there were in a family, children were still expected to honour, obey and respect their parents. There was always a distance, symbolized by such customs as bowing, kneeling or at least standing in the presence of parents. One also gets the impression that these middle-class houses were not places where

children raced up and down stairs, screaming and shouting and constantly vying for their parents' attention. They seem rather to have been quiet, almost sombre, places where children were seen but not heard and were whisked away by servants if they began to be a nuisance.^[55]

Our evidence suggests that parents took their duties towards children seriously and were chided by relations, friends and neighbours if they did not. Such duties took many forms besides the instilling of good principles of religion and morals, though this came first. Accumulation itself was one such duty, its object being not the gratification of the accumulator but the advancement of the next generation. Middle-class stock, like upper-class land, was something received on trust from parents to be improved and then handed on to children, an attitude symbolized by the frequent reference to stewardship in wills: 'And as concerning such worldly estate as God in his goodness hath made me steward of in this life, I give and bequeath the same as followeth.' Fear that one might be a poor steward, that there might not be enough money to advance one's children, was a common middle-class phobia.^[56]

If accumulation was a duty, so was the education of children so that they would be able to make good use of the money when it came to them. Education was also, of course, a vehicle for social advancement, the dream of 'the meanest tradesman [who] affects to raise his family out of its original obscurity by fixing his children some degrees higher than the vulgar occupation in which he has worked himself'. Parents certainly took great trouble over the choice of schools, a choice made more taxing by the expansion of different sorts of school, which was discussed in Chapter 2.^[57] Most children in this class went to school for eight to ten years, starting around the age of six and continuing till their early or mid-teens. Schoolmasters and mistresses were therefore another group playing an important part in the moulding of young members of the middle station, a group who emphasized religion, hard work, attention, obedience and duty, and thus reinforced what children were supposed to have already learned from their parents. School removed children from home all day and so reduced their contacts with parents and servants; boarding school, to which many children went, removed them for months at a time, though contact was

retained through visits and the rather stilted letters that parents and children tend to write to each other.^[58]

Both boys and particularly girls often stayed at home for some years after they had finished school. Many sons were apprenticed in their late rather than early teens and some were formally apprenticed to their fathers, while others, like George Boddington, learned their father's business in a more informal way. When he was fifteen, his father 'set me to his business in the packing trade and wrighting his letters and keeping his cash'. That this was quite common is indicated by the number of families in Table 8.3 (p. 214) who had sons in their late teens still at home. Sir John Hedges, for example, had his nineteen-year-old son William living at home, while John Cary had a twenty-eight-year-old son by his first marriage and an eighteen-year-old from his second marriage living with him. Both these men also had girls in their late teens living at home and it seems probable that most daughters in this class got married from home. The influence of parents on the children of the middle class might be broken to a certain extent by the long period of formal schooling that most children went through, but it was an influence which lasted much longer and was almost certainly more pervasive than in the working classes, where children tended to leave home in their early teens or even earlier. What exactly this influence amounted to is difficult to say given the paucity of the sources, but the impression is that parents' desire for respect and obedience from their children created a rather more formal relationship than is suggested by some historians.^[59]

9—
Civic Life

Middling people had interests and duties which stretched well beyond their business life and the narrow vertical world of the household. They were, as has been seen, part of a network of 'friends' to whom they could look for help and advice in matters of importance, such as apprenticeship or marriage, and who might well turn to them as they grew older and more experienced in the world. They were also very much part of the neighbourhood in which they lived and it is to this aspect of their lives that attention is now turned.

i—
Neighbourhood and Parish

Augustan London shared the anonymity of all great cities and it could be a lonely place to live in. Nevertheless, despite this and perhaps because of it, there was also a village atmosphere about the parishes within the city. This neighbourhood ambience meant that in the heart of the metropolis one could find some of both the best and worst aspects of the villages and small towns from which so many Londoners had originally sprung, a combination of the mutuality which saw it as a duty to look after 'our poor' with the moral determinism which saw it as another duty to tell one's neighbours how to live.

Once they had married and acquired a house, most middling people seem to have stayed in the same house and so had most of the same neighbours for a fairly long time. This cannot be proved conclusively, since there are no records of actual addresses, but some idea of continuity of residence within the same parish can be obtained from evidence provided by witnesses in the Consistory Court and figures relating to this are presented in Table 9. opposite. It can be seen that at all ages there must have been a considerable turnover of people living

for less than five years in the same parish. However, the length of continuous residence of the older householders is quite striking, with over 40 per cent of those in their forties and nearly half of those over fifty having spent at least fifteen years in the same parish.

Such continuity of residence meant that most middling people must have been very well known by their neighbours, whom they would meet regularly in their homes and shops, on the street or in such institutions of good neighbourhood as the local tavern or coffee-house. Such relationships could take on a certain formality, as is indicated in a Spectator of 1711: 'There are at present in several parts of this city what they call Street-Clubs, in which the chief inhabitants of the street converse together every night.' Clubs were indeed very common in early eighteenth-century London, there being some 2000 in all according to one recent study, such purely neighbourhood clubs as the street-clubs being well outnumbered by those catering

for people with something other than propinquity in common, from bird-fancying to politics and from gardening to being Irish.^[1]

The implications of neighbourhood were wide-ranging. A neighbour was, for instance, the person most likely to be asked for information on one's character and business competence, either formally in a court of law or informally in the course of casual conversation. His loose tongue and assumed knowledge of your affairs could dry up your credit and set you on the road to the debtors' prison. On the other hand, a well cultivated neighbour could be expected to show solidarity in times of trouble, by giving evidence of one's probity, business ability, generosity or virtue as the case might be. Neighbours were also often chosen as peacemakers or arbitrators, an important function in a society which usually preferred to avoid the publicity and expense of the law. It was William Hillyard, for instance, 'a near neighbour of the master', who agreed to act as arbitrator between a Holborn tallow-chandler and his apprentice, who had run away after being accused of theft.^[2]

Neighbours took a great interest in each other's sexual and marital as well as business affairs. In England, it was said in 1602, 'every citizen is bound by oath to keep a sharp eye at his neighbour's house as to whether the married people live in harmony.' Such busybody interference in other people's lives had once been one of the main tasks of the ward inquest, a lowly component of the complex City government whose questmen eagerly presented their neighbours for moral and personal failings. By our period, however, the inquest normally confined itself to presenting people for such mundane failings as not maintaining their pavements or keeping shop without attaining the freedom of the City. However, this change in emphasis did not mean that the citizens had lost their previous interest in the sexual lives of those who lived around them. Case after case in the Consistory Court depended on the evidence of neighbours, who claimed to have seen a surprising amount of intimate behaviour through windows or doorways or by peeping through 'a hole or crevize' in a coffee-house.^[3]

Moral vigilance often went much further than mere peeping. The outrageous behaviour of Lavinia, wife of the parish clerk of St Peter's Cornhill, 'caused a mobb to come about his house to

his great disgrace and the disturbance of the neighbourhood.' Such a mob might simply abuse the offending person or they might play out the crude rural theatre of the 'skimmington ride', a ludicrous procession designed to ridicule the offender and provide a moral lesson to the bystanders. Matters often got out of hand and such sanctimonious mobs were a common focus for riots and brawls.^[4]

Augustan London was a fairly lawless place, teeming with thieves and pickpockets whose main victims were likely to be the prosperous members of the middle station. The official protection provided by the small numbers of constables, beadles and watchmen in each ward or parish was strictly limited and the citizen needed to watch out for himself and his neighbours. With no police and no public prosecutor, it was the victim of crime himself who was expected to detect, catch and prosecute the criminal who had robbed or attacked him, and often did so. The opportunist nature of much crime helped in this respect, many thieves being former servants or close neighbours of their victims who could be recognized as they jumped out of windows or climbed over walls. Apprehension was also not quite the problem one might expect, for, in the circumstances of the period, honest neighbours and bystanders were not so ready to turn a blind eye to roguery as they are today and were quite prepared to join in a hue and cry, as indeed it was their duty to do. Self-reliance also meant that many citizens kept arms and some kept small armouries, such as Edward Kingsley, carpenter of Crutched Friars, who had two pikes, two swords, a halberd and three muskets in his kitchen when he died in 1679. Some of this weaponry was no doubt left over from the Civil War or was used in the periodic musters of the trained bands, London's militia, but much was also kept for the protection of the citizen and his neighbours.^[5]

A neighbourhood might be a street, a few streets or, in the City, it might be contiguous with the precinct and the parish. In medieval times, these small areas of a few hundred houses had been the setting for a vibrant community culture. Much of this vanished with the Reformation and, although such institutions as the Ascension Day procession round the parish and the Ward Inquest dinner survived, the local life of Augustan London had little of the colour and pageantry of other European

cities.^[6] Nevertheless, the parish church continued to provide a focus for neighbourhood life and pride and many local dramas were played out within its walls. The church, or rather the vestry, was also where the meetings of local government were held, meetings which one finds with little surprise were dominated by members of the middle station. Local office and attendance at meetings were time-consuming but they were a necessary condition of earning the respect of one's neighbours and moving up in the world. Many men paid a fine or hired a substitute to avoid some bothersome local duties, but few of the middle station, even those who were nonconformists, opted out of parish government altogether.

This can be illustrated by looking at Allhallows Bread Street, a prosperous central City parish which contained about eighty houses and five hundred people in the late seventeenth century. The business of the parish and its two precincts was supervised by a vestry open to all householders which met about ten or twelve times a year in the 1690s and normally attracted between fifteen and twenty men or nearly a quarter of the householders. The main business was to make appointments to local offices; to make recommendations relating to the parish poor, such as who should be on the pension list, how much they should be paid and whether they should suffer the indignity of wearing a pauper's badge; and to supervise the fabric and decoration of the church. Allhallows was burned down in the Great Fire and for many years the parishioners shared temporary accommodation with their neighbours from St John the Evangelist. However, in 1680, the vestry finally decided to rebuild and by 1684 a fine new church had been erected, which was improved and embellished in the 1690s.^[7]

The vestry also appointed various sub-committees, some on an ad hoc basis, such as the eight men chosen in April 1698 'to wait on his Grace of Canterbury to desire him to recommend a new curate'; some set up every year, such as those which audited the churchwardens' accounts and assessed the poor rates. For the social historian, the most interesting is the committee of'seators', who were appointed every three or four years to seat the parishioners in the various rows in the church, this important social duty even being carried out in the long interval between the burning of the old church and the building

of the new one. As in many churches of the day, Allhallows seated men and women separately, 'to avoid thereby all appearance of evil', according to Sir George Wheler, though in fact this arrangement facilitated the ogling of such itinerant church attenders as Samuel Pepys.^[8]

The seating arrangements provide a series of snap-shots of social hierarchy and social mobility within the parish. In 1701, for instance, the first name in 'No. 1 South Side' was Sir Owen Buckingham, a prominent presbyterian alderman but nevertheless a stalwart of his Anglican parish church. Next to him were the two common councillors, while the row as a whole paid an average of 22s. to the poor rate, compared with 13s. in rows two and three, while, at the back, those who paid averaged only 9s. and most were exempt.^[9] Wealth was not the only determinant of one's place in church and so, very visibly, Sunday after Sunday, in the parish. Many merchants, wholesalers and rich shopkeepers are of course found near the front and such lowly creatures as Stephen Champion, hemp-porter, at the back. However, other poor men can be found well up the church, such as the glazier Richard Joynor, who paid only 1s. in the Poll Tax of 1692 but was a regular attender of vestry meetings and clearly deserved his place in the second row, while no less than seven men paying surtax in 1695 were seated as far back as Row Five. At least five of these men were young bachelors and this helps the analysis of the seating arrangements to be refined a little further. The fact is that these reflected seniority in the parish and the holding of office, as well as wealth and occupation, so that a poor glazier could get up to the second row if he lived long enough, but would be unlikely to attain the dignity of the front row, while a rich young man had to start near the back and work his way up the church over the years.^[10]

Such social progress is illustrated in the bottom half of Table 9.2 overleaf, which shows the seats given in successive years to the twelve top men in 1701. As far back as 1673, the front row was already occupied by Richard Bristow, who was born in 1630 and was to be elected common councillor eighteen times between 1672 and 1701. For the others, progress up the church was slow but steady and usually required lengthy residence in the parish to get to the top. In fact, all twelve men except Buckingham and Keeling were already resident in the parish at

the time of the 1678 Poll Tax, twenty-three years earlier; Gough as a child living with his father, Hulbert and Leppington as apprentices, and the rest as householders paying the surtax rate of 10s. Owen Buckingham lived in St Mildred, the other Bread Street parish, during the 1670s and 1680s, and Ralph Keeling came into the parish in the early 1680s, a senior man who had already served as common councillor for Langborn Ward.^[11]

In the top half of the table, the office-holding of the same men is shown and it can be seen that it would be difficult to get to the top without serving all or nearly all the major offices and putting in time on committees such as that which audited the churchwardens' accounts. The vestry nearly always allowed men to be excused from office on payment of a fine, Keeling and Oley for instance paying £15 and £12 respectively after being appointed churchwardens. However, the others all served this important office, though some paid fines of £4 to avoid being questman and nearly everyone paid £1 or £2 to avoid the second year as constable. Indeed, hardly anyone served even the first year of this tiresome chore, paying a substitute instead of fining, and for much of the period the two constables were in fact Job Makepeace and Samuel Landon, paid substitutes of no social significance in the parish.

It would be foolish to pretend that Allhallows Bread Street was a typical London parish. It was small and wealthy and it was the only parish in which the arrangements for seating discussed above have been found.^[12] Nevertheless, Allhallows probably illustrates in a formal way what was generally true of other parishes. It is probable that most middling people went to church at least once on Sunday and many went twice. Even many of London's middle-class dissenters went to church as well as meeting, because they wanted to see and be seen by their neighbours or hear the sermon or because occasional attendance at church and the holding of posts such as churchwarden was a necessary condition both of being elected to higher offices and of being allowed by the law to hold such offices. It is unlikely that once in church people sat where they liked, a freedom which would have been contrary to the minutely observed social hierarchy of the age. Other parishes may not have had a committee which pondered these nice problems every few years, but there seems little doubt that

subtle nods and hints would have ensured that the seating reflected those factors such as age, wealth, occupation and the holding of parish office which determined one's position in Alhallows Bread Street. The parish church would thus reflect the social hierarchy of its neighbourhood, however formal or informal the particular arrangements.

It would be laborious to prove, but it certainly seems very probable that nearly every middle-class householder would have had either to fine or serve at least some of the various parish offices, such chores or expenses being virtually a precondition of social progress, a rite of passage by which you were elected constable in your early or mid-thirties and sidesman or churchwarden a few years later. Naturally, the details and the willingness to undertake chores would vary from person to person and parish to parish. The Webbs pointed out many years ago that people were most keen to avoid office in the crowded parishes where there was most to do, and this seems very likely, jobs such as churchwarden or constable being a very different matter in a parish such as St Giles in the Fields, with nearly 1000 poor people supported by the rates, than in Allhallows Bread Street, which had just a handful of poor old people and orphan children.^[13] On the other hand, social progress for middling people might well be faster in a poor parish where there was less competition, an acceleration of dignity which might enable them to get to the front row of the church in rather less time than the fifteen, twenty or twenty-five years that it took in Allhallows Bread Street.

The highest office chosen at parish or precinct level was common councillor and it can be seen from Table 9.2 that this was a dignity quite often achieved by the cocks of the parish, eight of our twelve men being elected to that office at least once and many of them several times. This may seem surprising since there is a tendency to see this 'lower house' of the City government as composed mainly of lowly people from the very bottom of the middle station or even below it. The Webbs, for instance, wrote that 'the common councillor would find his couple of hundred colleagues made up, almost entirely, of the retail shopkeepers of the narrow streets and lanes converging on the Guildhall; or of the old-fashioned master-craftsmen whose workrooms and sales counters still lingered within the

City boundaries; together with a dozen or two of the apothecaries, surgeons and petty attorneys who dwelt among them'.^[14]

This comment sounds as though it is based on West End prejudice and it was certainly not true in our period or, at least, it was not true of our sample. Altogether, forty-six men were common councillors and another three were aldermen but not common councillors, a total of forty-nine men chosen for high City office. In Table 9.3 above, the wealth of those who did and did not get chosen is compared. The figures completely deny the Webbs' assertion that common councillors were selected from retail shopkeepers, artisans and other lowly groups, people who would be extremely unlikely to accumulate the £2000 or more which was left by forty-five out of the forty-nine common councilmen and aldermen in the sample. There were, of course, exceptions to the general rule, the four 'poor' men being a carman, a grocer, a 'dealer in turnery ware' and an insolvent linen-draper who, if he had run his business properly, would certainly have been in the £5000-plus group.^[15]

It can be concluded, then, that neighbourhood and parish played an important part in the lives of those of the middle station. Not all achieved or aspired to the dignity of common councillor; several tried to avoid many lesser dignities as well. Nevertheless, it seems probable that most were happy enough to accept the fact that, as one got older and richer, one acquired added responsibilities and duties as well as the respect of one's neighbours and a seat at the front of the church. This was as it

should be in a hierarchical society, but it did mean that one had to concentrate very hard on the serious and difficult business of maintaining one's reputation. Life was played out before an audience made up not just of one's equals and superiors but also of the poor and unsuccessful who waited avidly for the fall of the great.

ii—
Livery Companies

All members of the middle station belonged by necessity to a parish or a precinct, but most also belonged to parallel organizations which could offer similar social and political opportunities. These were the livery companies, some ancient, some of comparatively recent vintage, which in theory combined many of the functions of both a trade association and a trade union, as well as providing a clubbish ambience of fraternity in which the members of a craft or trade could express their appreciation of each other. Our period, however, sees the virtual demise of the livery companies as effective controllers of the City economy. They had once controlled entry to the various trades, the numbers of apprentices, the conditions and quality of work and a host of other matters relating to the social and moral as well as the economic behaviour of their members. Many were still doing some of these things in 1700 but all of them were moving, some slowly, some fairly rapidly, towards becoming the wealthy dining clubs with important charitable functions which most of them are today.^[16]

The conservative and corporate nature of the livery companies was contrary to the individualist spirit of the age, a spirit which was reflected in the law courts, where those who challenged the companies found that they could often gain a favourable decision. As a result, many of the powers granted or taken for granted in Elizabethan times were to be lost in the next century. The most important power was the right of search, essential if companies were to control their trades and maintain their monopolies. The growth of the metropolis had long made such a right difficult to enforce in Westminster and the suburbs. By the end of the seventeenth century, doubts about the legality of searches meant that, even in the City, companies were increasingly reluctant to act for fear of prosecution for trespass.^[17]

The loss of ancient rights was compounded for most companies by serious financial problems. They had been weakened by demands made on them by both King and Parliament ever since the 1620s, but it was the Great Fire of 1666 which dealt the hammer blow. This not only destroyed their ancient halls, which had to be rebuilt at great cost, but also much of the property on which they relied for their income and the support of their charitable obligations. The property was rebuilt, but at the cost of lowering annual rents and extending leases, with the result that for most of our period the companies had diminished incomes, which made prosecution of offenders even less attractive in the face of doubts of success in the courts. It also had a serious effect on the morale of members, who looked to their companies for extravagant pageantry and bountiful dinners. The Fire also made it necessary to relax or abandon restrictions on unfreemen, in the building trades to encourage provincial workmen to come to London to rebuild the city, in the shopkeeping and craft trades to encourage people to take up the new-built property as fast as possible. Such decisions were not easily reversed and the Fire was very much a turning point in the fortunes of the companies.

There was one last problem facing the companies. Much of their logic depended on their members having in common some particular trade or occupation; the Mercers were supposed to be mercers and the Fishmongers fishmongers. However, from quite an early date, this uniformity of occupation began to be undermined as people changed their trades or as sons acquired the freedom through patrimony but did not practise their father's trade. Attempts to regularize this situation were not very successful and were seriously undermined by a legal decision of 1614 which in essence said that anyone free of any London company could practise any trade that they wished. The result, by our period, was that a livery company label was by no means a good indication of a man's occupation, especially for members of the older, larger and more prestigious companies. Some idea of the confusion can be seen in Table 9.4 overleaf, which lists the occupations of members of the sample belonging to companies with at least ten representatives. A few companies, such as the Apothecaries, Distillers and Vintners, could still be said to represent a trade but most were so

heterogeneous in their membership that little loyalty to craft or occupation can have remained.^[18]

Given all these problems, it seems amazing that the livery companies survived at all, but survive they did and most of the

London business community belonged to one, though some people opted out. Many merchants and wholesalers who required no shop premises in the City never bothered to acquire the freedom or join a livery company. Neither did an increasing number of shopkeepers in Westminster and the suburbs. Nevertheless, the number of freemen bore up quite well, declining only slowly from a peak figure of over 2000 new freemen every year in the late 1670s, when entry restrictions were temporarily relaxed, to 1250 a year in the 1740s. Relative decline was more serious, as population grew, but the decline was probably greater amongst those destined to be journeymen than in the business community itself. Prospective masters, even those in Westminster and the suburbs, continued to be apprenticed to a freeman and to become free of their companies as a matter of course, because it was the normal thing to do or because it saved trouble or the possibility of trouble.^[19]

For many people, the acquisition of the freedom was the last active interest that they took in their companies. They were indifferent to company business and felt, quite rightly in most cases, that the activities of the Court of Assistants who ruled their company had no significance for them as individuals. However, indifferent or not, many of the apathetic had no choice but to move up to the next stratum of their companies by joining the 'clothing' or livery. This was because most companies had found that the easiest way to raise much-needed cash was to increase the numbers of the livery and to charge high fines, from £10 to £30, for the privilege of joining it, threatening to prosecute those who refused to comply. Many men begged to be excused, as can be seen from the Committee Book of the Grocers' Company, the most prominent committee being that which raised the livery fines and listened to the petitions of those who tried to wriggle out of them. Some got away with it on such grounds as 'inability', 'age', 'small trade and must repair his house which will cost £100'. Most did not; not even Joseph Stone whose plea that 'he has but half a trade being concerned with his mother who has losses and troubles' had no effect on the hard-hearted committee.^[20]

Liverymen had no actual duties, though they had the right to vote in parliamentary elections and could attend certain dinners and processions, as well as being entitled to wear a

handsome livery gown. They were, however, liable to be appointed to such posts as Steward or Gentleman Usher, which could be a heavy strain on their holder's purse, since they often involved the obligation to pay for a dinner for the liverymen and it was a nice point whether the dinner or the fine exacted for refusing the office would be cheaper. As time went on a minority of liverymen would find themselves called to the ruling body of their company, the Court of Assistants. Most companies had some twenty to thirty assistants and, although they included a few keen or politically active men in their thirties and forties, the great majority were elderly men, the 'antientest' of their company.^[21]

What did these elderly members of the middle station talk about at their meetings, and what indeed was the business of the livery companies in our period? A partial answer to this question may be provided by examining the accounts and court minutes of a few companies in which our sample were well represented, concentrating on the 1690s and I 700s. A start can be made with the Society of Apothecaries, whose membership consisted almost entirely of apothecaries and whose society was the best run and most actively interested in the promotion of the trade of those whose records have been examined.^[22] The apothecaries were very much on the crest of a wave in the late seventeenth century, just about to win their long running battle with the physicians and attracting new freemen at the rate of twenty-five a year. The society had only been founded in 1617 and had none of the accumulation of property which was a feature of the older livery companies, so that most of its income came from fees for apprenticeship and freedom, fines and from the two shillings a year that its members paid as quarterage. Outgoings included interest on loans and legal expenses but were concentrated on basic housekeeping—the maintenance of the hall, salaries for beadle, clerk and bargemaster, and on 'feasts and other entertainments and refreshments', such as the Midsummer's Day and Election Day dinners. A few widows and elderly members of the society were supported by pensions but there was none of the heavy involvement in charity which is to be found in other companies.

As a new company, the Apothecaries were very conscious of their dignity, very upset when not accorded what they thought

was their proper order of precedence on great public occasions, keen to acquire all the paraphernalia of the older companies, such as a handsome hall, a barge and plenty of silverware. Such matters attracted considerable attention at Court meetings, as did the business of admitting members, electing officers and fining those who refused office, business which was done by all companies. However, what is striking about the records of the Apothecaries, when compared with other companies, is the impression that this was a real professional association, interested in promoting the business of its members and the education of its apprentices. In the early 1690s, the society was actively engaged in defending its members' interests against both the surgeons and the physicians, and was still using the powers given by its charter to enter premises and search for defective drugs and medicines. The search of 1695, for instance, resulted in five apothecaries being summoned before the Court for having bad medicines on their premises. However, these men were discharged without fine, which suggests that, even in this active society, the search was not the important part of its activities which it had been in the past.

Much more important in the minds of the Court were the six annual 'herbarizing' or botanical excursions, which were laid on in the summer months for the education of apprentices. These expeditions combined the attractions of a fraternal picnic with a genuine zeal in botanical matters. The party often set off to a riverside destination in the society barge, wandered through the fields identifying herbs for the benefit of the apprentices and then ended up with a dinner. Two other activities specific to the Apothecaries also engaged much of the time of the Court and its sub-committees. In 1672, the society had established an 'elaboratory' for making chemical medicines, a successful experiment run on a joint-stock basis for its subscribers, who received a dividend and were also able to buy stock for their shops at low prices. In the following year, the energetic society inaugurated the Physic Garden on its land at Chelsea, which by the 1690s had become an important botanical collection, 'very necessary for the honour and dignity of its members and the education of its apprentices', though its management was giving the Court so many headaches that some members were

in favour of giving it up and letting the land to a professional gardener.

The Distillers' Company was also very active in the early 1690s in promoting the trading interests of its members, for example, by lobbying parliament for or against any legislation which might affect the trade. This company was even newer than the Apothecaries, first chartered in 1638 but not enrolled by the City government until 1658. They had no hall and, although like all companies they had plenty of dinners, one feels that business rather than ceremonial was what really interested the Court. Here, the search was still an active business, the metropolis being covered by seven search parties. Defaulters were regularly summoned before the Court, where many were fined, and the company were quite prepared to take matters further if necessary. Mr Walsingham Heathfield, for instance, was summoned 'for abusing the Master and Warden Henning upon a search and giveing them very bad language'. He was fined £3 for contempt and, when he refused to pay, was sued in the Court of Common Pleas, an action which led Heathfield to submit and declare 'himself to be very sorry for his offence', as well he might be since now he had to pay £13. 10s. to cover the company's costs.^[23]

The company was also prepared to prosecute those who refused to pay livery fines or fines for avoiding such offices as steward, but it was most active in defence of its monopoly of distilling. In the early 1690s, person after person was summoned 'to show his right to the trade'. Charles Loving, summoned in April 1694, was just one of many who 'confesses he does distill fruit and molasses but hath noe right'. He was ordered to desist by midsummer or be indicted and, when he called the company's bluff, he was in fact sued in the following year. However, just a few years later, the company was beginning to have doubts about its legal position and, in 1704, a committee was set up 'to advise with Councell touching prosecuting interlopers'. Meanwhile, a profitable trade was being conducted in selling the freedom of the company to interlopers rather than sueing them, the normal price being £25.

By the reign of George I, one fears that the company was fighting a losing battle as the Gin Age encouraged the multiplication of back-street distilleries and the smuggling of French

brandy became a major English industry. In 1715, the company still showed an interest in defending the monopoly, but there are few further signs of activity in succeeding years. The Court was now showing more interest in its investments in South Sea stock, the list of pensioners supported by the company was growing and it was beginning to look more and more like any other livery company, with few interests outside its property, its dinners and its charities. Early in 1723, there was a debate in the Court on 'whether the searches be continued for the future' and, although this was not resolved immediately, there do not seem to have been any more searches after that date. In the following year, the changing nature of the company is nicely symbolized by the Court's decision to invest £4000, the accumulated balance of many years of livery fines and selling the freedom, 'in the purchase of freehold lands or houses in the City of London'. The company still acted as a lobby for the spirits trade, but had abandoned most of the other activities and powers for which it had fought when it first acquired its charter in the 1630s.

A rather similar story can be told of the Vintners' Company, which as can be seen from Table 9.4 (p. 252) was largely composed of tavern-keepers. The company was of medieval foundation and its members had many important privileges, including that of selling wine without licence in the City and liberties.^[24] Past members had left property which the company administered as trustee, and rents comprised 56 per cent of the company's income in the early 1690s. However, nearly all this rental income was specifically tied to charitable purposes and the Vintners shared the problems of all the ancient property-owning companies of honouring their charitable commitments in the difficult half-century following the Fire. Livery fines, very high at £31 each, were the backbone of the company's non-property income, while the tavern-keepers seem to have been better payers of quarterage than the members of most companies.

The company still carried out searches in the early years of the reign of Queen Anne. In May 1704, for instance, some wine found in the cellar of William Lewellin of Pudding Lane was 'tasted and tryed by severall members and found to be defective and not fit for the body of man to be drunk'. However, the

Vintners, like the Distillers, were doubtful about the legality of their searches and sought legal opinion in 1704 and again in the winter of 1706 on the subject. It is not known what advice was given by 'eminent Councell', but matters seem to have come to a head in 1708 when the Master was faced with a mutiny, the majority of those summoned for the search failing to turn up. Eventually, most of the mutineers appeared before the Court to purge their contempt at a cost of 3s.4d. a head in the poor box (or 5s. for late-comers) but, from this date onwards, searches were few and far between and seem to have been give up altogether by the reign of George 1. The company continued to lobby on behalf of its members but its main business was property management, charity and more than usually good dinners.

The last two companies which will be considered had reached this position much earlier. These were the Grocers and the Fishmongers, second and fourth in the order of precedence of the 'Twelve Great Livery Companies', both companies having a heterogeneous membership, as was seen in Table 9.4. In the early 1690s, one can still find a faint flicker of the control of the London fish trade which the Fishmongers had acquired in the middle ages.^[25] The first Monday in Lent was traditionally the 'view day for this Company's land and the search for corrupt fish' and this was still being carried out, some traders being fined for 'exposing to sale unseasonable salmon', but cases were rare and the main attraction of the search day was the 'moderate dinner' laid on by the renter warden. The Court is also found occasionally establishing a committee of 'all the Assistants being traders in fish and others as they shall thinke fitt' to hear the grievances of 'severall traders in fish of this company', but this was a very pale reflection of the famous fishmongers' hallmoot which sat once a week to settle disputes in the fourteenth century.

References to fish are in fact hard to find in the indexes of the court minutes and are totally overwhelmed by the company's main business, which was managing its extensive property and administering several important charities and trusts, such as the free grammar school at Holt in Norfolk and St Peter's Hospital at Newington in Surrey, which housed forty-two poor men and women free of the company, petitions for places

forming a recurrent theme in the minutes. Every year, just before Christmas, a party of assistants went down to St Peter's to distribute doles to the almsfolk, first admonishing them 'to live in the feare of God and to avoid drunkennesse and to be helpefull one to another'.

Managing property and carrying out the testamentary wishes of former Fishmongers meant that the wardens, clerk and beadles were busy men, collecting rents (often in arrears), repairing property and paying out over a hundred separate legacies and doles to the poor of this or that parish, to hospitals and to particular individuals, many of these doles requiring a selection process to decide which particular worthy, poor and ancient man or woman should be the lucky recipient. Some idea of the problem can be seen from a typical entry in the renter warden's accounts: 'paid for coles and faggotts distributed to poore and needy fishmongers in St Michael Crooked Lane and elsewhere according to Mr Pendlebury's last will, 20s.' Collectively, the charities administered by the older livery companies must have handed out amounts of money, coal and bread which compared in total with the parallel system of poor relief provided by parishes, but it was all scattered around in bits and pieces and must have been a tiresome burden to administer.

There was still a faint odour of fish in the deliberations of the Fishmongers, but one would never know that the Grocers had any connection with sugar and spice if the company had not borne that name, despite the insistence of the historian of the company that 'the excellence and purity of foodstuffs' was still one of its primary concerns in the 1690s.^[26] This statement is based on the revised bye-laws of 1690, which still provided for an inspection of grocers' shops 'once or oftner in every year . . . to search view and essay all raisins, currants, prunes, figs, almonds, sugar, pepper etc.' and included a scale of fines for 'rotten, false or counterfeit wares'. However, it is clear from the court minutes and accounts that these searches were not carried out and there is virtually no reference to business relating to the grocery trade in the excellent index to the minutes.

What interested the Grocers was their appalling financial position, they probably being the worst hit of the big companies by accumulated indebtedness before the Fire and the effects of

the Fire itself. This did not stop them splashing out on two pageants for the Grocer Sir John Fleete's 'Triumph' as Lord Mayor in 1692, the money on this occasion as on others being raised by appointing a large number of new liverymen. A couple of years later, the company's financial problems were solved by Sir John Houblon, the first governor of the Bank of England and himself a Grocer, who rented Grocers' Hall for the use of the Bank in return for a fine of £5000 and a loan of the same amount. Otherwise, the Grocers' records show that their activities were very similar to those of the Fishmongers: dinners and ceremony, property management and the administration of charities and gifts, including Oundle and other schools, almshouses, scholarships and exhibitions at Oxford and Cambridge and the normal profusion of doles in kind and money.

The Grocers were already in the 1690s what all the other companies would be by the end of our period, 'a Nursery of Charity and Seminary of good Citizens', as their clerk put it in 1689.^[27] Most of their income was spent on charity, though some was used 'for defraying the charge of sober anniversary festivals in moderate entertainment of the members, to maintain and increase mutual friendship and Christian conversation in the fraternity as well in ease as for encouragement of the members'. George Ravenhill's words nicely sum up the meaning of the livery companies to those of their members who actively supported and enjoyed what they did. One suspects that by our period this would only have been a minority of those of the middle station, though occasional attendance at such fraternal festivities remained an important part of civic life.

iii—
Tory and Whig

What one reads in court or vestry minutes was no doubt only the bare bones of what had been discussed by the worthies of parish or livery company, who would hardly have come together so many times a year for such dry business alone. One subject which would almost certainly have been aired was politics, for this was an intensely political age and nowhere more so than in what had once been described as 'the proud, unthankful, schismatical, rebellious, bloody City of London'.^[28]

Political activity took many forms, but the one most likely to

pay dividends was lobbying. The practice of addressing grievances in person or in writing to parliament, the privy council or the City government was an ancient one but it reached new levels of intensity in our period, especially from the 1690s onwards. Annual sessions of parliament, and sessions long enough to ensure that bills had a fair chance of being enacted, meant that much more legislation relating to economic affairs could now get into the statute book. The process of initiating and supporting such legislation, or of opposing it, was one that might engage any Londoner, rich or poor, at some time in his life. This might involve nothing more than waiting, cap in hand, on one of the members of parliament for the City or it might involve a fully orchestrated campaign with signatures collected for petitions, a printed statement of grievances and perhaps a well-organized procession of petitioners. Such campaigns were normally conducted in a polite enough way, with emphasis on the respectability and good standing of the petitioners. Sometimes, they were far from polite, frustration leading to violence, as in the weavers' riots of 1675 or the calico riots of 1719–21 in which women wearing cotton had the clothes ripped off their backs by embittered silk-weavers.^[29]

The weavers of Spitalfields and the East End had a notorious reputation for crowd violence and they were to make a threatening appearance on a number of occasions in our period, either in pursuit of an industrial grievance or as a force manipulated by politicians for their own ends, such as the crowd of weavers with whom the Whigs flooded Guildhall during the General Election of 1710, who 'caused much fighting and quarrelling in the street'.^[30] However, weavers had no monopoly of political or industrial violence and the threat of the crowd was a major factor in London political life.

No one could forget the pressure that had been imposed by a well-articulated London crowd on the eve of the Civil War, pressure which took the form of 'monster' petitions or the physical presence of hundreds or thousands shouting slogans or waiting menacingly outside parliament to ensure that the members voted correctly. The London crowd was never again to play quite such an important political role but the fear that it might was always a factor in the political calculus, as the respectable were to be reminded on several other occasions

during the Civil War and its aftermath—in the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–81, during the Revolution of 1688, in the Sacheverell riots of 1710 and again in the anti-Hanoverian riots of 1715 and 1716. Historians love riots and the social make-up of those arrested or indicted on these occasions has been carefully analysed. In nearly all cases, one finds that the crowd was not composed of the totally dispossessed, but was drawn mainly from artisans and from the lowest section of the middle station, who used these occasions not as an opportunity for looting and mayhem but as a means of demonstrating on some specific political or religious issue. Sometimes the crowd would generate its own leaders, but often it was orchestrated by people of higher status, most obviously in the Exclusion Crisis and in the Sacheverell riots of 1710.^[31]

Political activity by large numbers did not necessarily involve riot. London had a long tradition of pageantry and processions, a form of street theatre which might be used for patriotic purposes or to reinforce the social hierarchy but which was often used as political propaganda, in much the same way as the marching days of modern Ulster. Processions were meticulously organized and could be stirring spectacles, but they were often full of menace and none more so than the savage popeburning processions of 1673–80. Normally held on Guy Fawkes night and on the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth on 17 November, these processions became more and more elaborate and often involved several hundreds of people, a host of whistlers, bellmen and torch-bearers escorting their fellows dressed as Catholic priests, Jesuits, cardinals and, of course, 'a most costly Pope, carried by four persons in divers habits, and the effigies of two devils whispering in his ears, his belly filled full of live cats who squawled most hideously as soon as they felt the fire'. The size and importance of such processions ebbed and flowed with the intensity of political activity, but they were to reach a new crescendo in the last years of the reign of Queen Anne and the period of the Hanoverian succession, when popeburnings, fireworks, ox-roastings and free beer laid on by the Whigs were matched by the rival displays of the Tory Jacobites, who celebrated such occasions as the anniversary of the martyrdom of Charles I or the Pretender's birthday with equal panache.^[32]

Riots and processions were the noisy and sometimes exciting manifestations of street politics but, for most people most of the time, politics was a quieter business, an intermittent process of complaining about this and that, and particularly about the government. Seditious words spoken by drunks in taverns form a recurring theme in the revelations of the numerous spies employed by the secretaries of state, but the democracy and sobriety of the coffee-house was often seen as a greater danger. 'These sober clubs produce nothing but scandalous and censorious discourses and at these nobody is spared,' wrote the City Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Player.^[33]

The grumbling of political discussion reached its peak, then as now, at the times of elections, democratic processes which involved virtually all the middle station and a surprising number of lesser people in this period over a hundred years before the first Reform Act. Democracy at the local level varied from parish to parish, depending on such matters as whether the vestry was open or closed, but in many parts of London all rate-paying householders had the right to vote in local government elections. Most of these were not very exciting or well attended, but a particularly fraught political situation could induce a strongly contested election for such offices as common councilman, while for many people a local election was a matter of bread and butter on whose result depended local power, office and its perquisites and lucrative contracts which could be distributed to the friends of the elected man.

Local elections happened every year, but most middling people were also able to vote from time to time in parliamentary by-elections and in general elections, the latter occurring on an unprecedented number of occasions during the middle years of our period. There were three general elections during the exciting years of the Exclusion Crisis and then a lull during the period of absolutist backlash, which was ended by the Revolution of 1688. Then came a period of electoral excitement such as the English public had never experienced before, the Triennial Act of 1694 being followed by ten general elections in twenty years, a record never since beaten. Not only were there more elections, but more seats were contested during this period than at any other time before the nineteenth century, and each

contest was magnified and made more exciting by the increasingly partisan coverage provided by the newspapers. If many people had been able to ignore politics in the past, few were able to forget that they lived in an intensely partisan and divided city by the end of the reign of Queen Anne, when the two general elections of 1710 and 1713 produced the highest polls of the period, some 92 per cent of the liverymen of London voting in the 1713 election.^[34]

Londoners voted for only ten members of parliament, four for the City and two each for Westminster, Southwark and the county of Middlesex. This was a minute proportion of the House of Commons relative to the population of the metropolis but the London members, especially those for the City, played a much more important role than is suggested by their numbers, for example, as key committee members on legislation relating to economic affairs. The results of London elections were eagerly awaited because the electorate was large enough to reflect public opinion rather than just the largesse handed out by the candidates. Londoners were notorious for their independence and the large floating vote reflected and indeed led the national trend in all but one of the seven general elections between 1701 and 1715. 'The countrys always take the rule from hence', observed Lord Halifax of London in 1705, 'and the true pulse of a nation is always felt at the heart.'^[35]

What sort of politics was this heart interested in? This is not the place to attempt to write a political history of London, but it is possible to observe a continuity in the political structure of the metropolis which reflected the social structure and survived right through from the hectic days of the early 1640s to the comparatively quiet years of 'stability' at the end of our period and indeed much later in the eighteenth century.^[36] In this scheme, one can identify five levels of political activity. The first, and usually the most active, comprised the gentry and aristocracy, who played out on a London stage the struggles of national politics, a continuing and often intense political debate which took place in their West End houses, in taverns, coffee-houses and clubs, in the street and in the theatre and, of course, in the forum of parliament itself. The nature of this debate naturally varied with time, but it was usually as much about

jobs and power as about ideology, and it often reflected longstanding divisions between the great families of the counties far more than any metropolitan or even national political issues.

The fact that the seat of government and parliament was in the metropolis meant that such people, the real political nation, were always aware that what they said or did was observed and discussed, welcomed or execrated by their neighbours, the citizens and people of London. This audience at the doors of Westminster and the West End necessarily had its effect on national politics as politicians of all hues courted the electorate and placated or enflamed the London crowd, while governments kept close contacts with their natural allies in the City élite. It was the latter, the very rich, who formed the second stratum in metropolitan politics. This élite, which came to be known as the monied interest, was made up of wealthy merchants, directors of the trading companies, bankers and other financiers. Such people were usually able to control the Court of Aldermen, the effective rulers of the City, and they benefited handsomely from their close links with successive governments. These provided them with potentially lucrative positions as customs farmers or in the revenue service, with beneficial access to the subscription lists for public loans and with commercial contracts which, especially in wartime, could quickly enhance a man's fortune as supplier of victuals, naval stores or clothing or as the organizer of remittances for the support of troops abroad. Such men were natural supporters of any government in power, mainly for practical reasons, and were often quick to trim their ideology to suit the times.

Below this élite came the majority of the people considered in this book, the wealthy and fairly wealthy traders, shopkeepers and manufacturers. Such people were usually conservative supporters of the status quo, active to lobby government but not normally hostile to government, whom they expected to protect them and forward their interests. However, they were not blind supporters of the establishment and it was the antagonism of this group which ensured that London would be a parliamentary city in the Civil War, though it was also the same people who as the 'Presbyterians' eventually ensured that the revolution of the 1640s would not go too far, closing ranks

to resist the radicals and welcoming the return of monarchical government in 1660.

These radicals, the 'Independents' of the 1640s, were drawn from the largest stratum of the London political world, small shopkeepers, petty industrialists, artisans and journeymen, who form a continuum in the political life of the metropolis. We are told that the 'agitation of small London master craftsmen against their growing subjection to capitalist middlemen is one of the most prominent themes of London history under the early Stuarts', but this theme is a continuous one which runs right through our period and beyond.^[37] Hostile to or critical of the wealthy and almost always against the government, members of this section of the population crop up time after time under various names in the political history of London. Whenever there is a riot, one can be sure that it will be people from this group who will be prominent. However, their activities went beyond mere rioting and their politics ranged from the radical and populist to the frankly revolutionary and republican.

They were the Independents and Levellers who tried to convert an argument between gentlemen into a truly radical revolution in the 1640s and 1650s. They were the populist Whigs of the 1670s and 1680s who revelled in the great popeburning processions. By the reign of Queen Anne, after a remarkable political sea-change,^[38] they have turned into populist and radical Tories but they are still the same people, still hostile to the rich, still against the government. They are still there in the 1720s and 1730s, still mouthing the same levelling and radical maxims which they had first learned in the 1640s, and they are still there in the 1760s and the 1790s. They never enjoyed power except for a few years in the middle of the seventeenth century, but their numbers were sufficient in the outer wards of the City to ensure that the Court of Common Council, the lower house of the City government, was normally opposed politically to the Court of Aldermen and that the history of City politics would be an intermittent battle between those wanting to enlarge the populist element in local government and those who wanted to restrain it, the latter group normally but not always winning the day.

There was finally a much larger group of the dispossessed—

women, children, servants and the poor—who were considered beneath political consideration even by the Levellers. If one wanted to insult one's opponents, one described them as members of this despised breed, as the Whig newspapers did in 1715 when they depicted the Tory rioters as 'Black Guard Boys, Clean Your Shoes Your Honour, Parish Boys, Wheelbarrowmen, Butchers, Porters, Basket-women, Ballad singers, Bawds, Whores and Thieves'. But, as has been said, most rioters were not in fact drawn from such lowly people but from the next group up in London's political hierarchy, the 'petty tradesmen and craftsmen of the industrial suburbs'.^[39]

London's politics can thus be depicted as class politics, with rich, middling and comparatively poor people distinguished from each other and each striving to protect or promote their interests. Needless to say, politics has never really been as simple as that; nor was it in our period, when political opportunism, ideology and particularly religion combined to confuse the politics of wealth and so create the 'fractured society' which has been analysed in a recent book.^[40] In particular, a man who was a dissenter or was sympathetic to dissenters would nearly always be a Whig, the party which favoured toleration and which after the Toleration Act of 1689 was normally prepared to defend it, while a man who was an ardent Anglican would nearly always be a Tory. Dissenters could be found in all levels of London society, from very rich Presbyterian aldermen to poor Baptist craftsmen, and so religious lines cut right across the politics of wealth and status.^[41]

How much politics actually affected the lives of middling people is difficult to say. They certainly voted Whig or Tory, depending on their wealth, their religion or their inclination, and it seems certain that political debate and the reading of the mass of ephemeral political literature must have absorbed quite a lot of their time. Indeed, according to Defoe, all this politics could have serious effects on the efficient running of a business. 'Never was the gazette so full of the advertisements of commissions of bankruptcy as since our shop-keepers are so much engaged in parties, form'd into clubs to hear news and read journals and politicks.' However, one does not necessarily have to believe Defoe. There is no doubt that the men, and indeed

the women, of the middle station thought that politics was interesting and important and that it could sometimes be profitable, but it seems unlikely that even the excitement of the 1710 general election would have so turned their heads that they forgot that 'the main affair of life' was getting money.^[42]

It can be seen that an active civic life was open to and indeed to a certain extent mandatory for the middle station. They needed to be good neighbours, both for friendship and for the sake of business, reputation and the safety of their property. They had an important role to play in local government and might be expected to play some part in the running of their livery company. They were likely to be involved in a considerable amount of political activity and discussion in their lives and, if they lived through hectic periods such as the 1640s, the late 1670s or the first half of the 1710s, they might find that the contemporary obsession with politics threatened to interfere with business. There were also many other civic or corporate activities in which they might get involved, such as active membership of a society for the reformation of manners, the management of a charity school or a directorship of a trading company. All this required time and attention, but it was unlikely to have played such a regular part in their lives as the subject of the next chapter, the spending of their money.

10—
Expenditure and Consumption

Accumulation has been stressed throughout this book as a major feature of middle-class life, a thirst for greater wealth which ideally required thrift, economy and miserliness. However, although the miser is the classic image of the capitalist, one suspects that there were not very many amongst the middling people of Augustan London. For, paradoxically, this accumulating class were also great consumers whose collective expenditure was a major part of the effective demand which kept them all in business. In this chapter, the patterns of expenditure on the three main items of consumption, food, dress and domestic goods, will be examined but first the scene will be set by trying to estimate roughly how much the middle class spent altogether.

i—
Disposal of Income

How much did middling people spend a year? Such a question is difficult to answer, but a first approximation can be got from Gregory King's famous table of 'income and expense'. Here he estimated that the greater merchants and traders by sea had an income of £400 a year and an expenditure of £320, the lesser merchants £200 and £168, and the shopkeepers and tradesmen £45 and £42 15s. respectively. These figures, especially those for shopkeepers and tradesmen, seem far too low for London, and for more realistic data one needs to look at the estimates made by Joseph Massie in the middle of the eighteenth century. He subdivided merchants into three classes, spending £600, £400 and £200 a year; nearly all London merchants would have fallen within the two top groups. He provided for six categories of tradesmen, three of Londoners spending £300, £200 and £100 a year, and three in the country spending £100, £70 and £40 a

year. He also had four classes of master manufacturers, the top two spending £200 and £100 a year. This gives a range of expenditure from £600 a year for the big merchants and from £400 down to £100 a year for the bulk of the London middle class.^[1]

In another paper, Massie challenged the contemporary view held by gentlemen that merchants and tradesmen made exorbitant profits. His argument was based on the commonsense observation that, if tradesmen had really been making very large profits, they would have left much more money to their children than they actually did. He suggested that a profit of 15 per cent was as much as the average tradesman could expect and then calculated their accumulation over thirty years, first assuming that they spent two-thirds of their profits and then assuming that they spent only a third. The results suggested that the 15 per cent might have been too high and that most tradesmen spent about two-thirds of their income.^[2]

If Massie's formula is applied to our sample, the results suggest that his calculations were sensible enough. The median fortune of the merchants was £9000, which at 15 per cent gives an income of £1350 and an expenditure of £900 if two-thirds of income were spent. However, as has been seen, 15 per cent is probably too high for merchants.^[3] At 10 per cent, one gets an expenditure of £600 a year, which agrees with Massie's highest figure for merchants. The median fortune of the whole sample was about £2000, which at 15 per cent gives an income of £300 and an expenditure of £200 a year, in the middle of Massie's estimates for London tradesmen. The typical capital of a relatively small shopkeeper or tavern-keeper was about £1000 which, using the same formula, gives an expenditure of £100, again in line with Massie. There were of course many men worth less than £1000—the young, the unsuccessful, small shopkeepers and artisans. Most of these people would probably have spent between £50 and £100 a year, though there must have been some whose middling existence was so mean that they could spend only the £42 15s. suggested by King as an average figure for all English shopkeepers and tradesmen.^[4]

What was all this money spent on? Amongst his many other calculations, Gregory King produced a table of the 'Expence of the People of England in Dyet, Apparel and Incident Charges'.

He divided the population into twelve groups of differing total expenditure per head and then broke this down into his three main categories of spending. The figures for the middling groups, together with the poorest group, are set out in Table 10.1 above. King's breakdown is similar to that of Jacob Vanderlint, who produced in 1734 'an estimate of the necessary charge of a family in the middling station of life', which is analysed in Table 10.2 above. Vanderlint's figures relate to a London family consisting of a man and his wife, four children and one maid and, if one ignores expenditure on rent, which King omits, he estimated that they would spend £232 a year. This puts Vanderlint's family between King's two groups spending £27 and £42 a head per year, both of which have

similar percentages for each of the three categories of expenditure, the main difference being that Vanderlint allowed more for 'other' expenses.^[5]

This may be a happy accident or it may reflect reality. There is not really enough other information available to be sure, though most early modern historians would be prepared to believe almost anything if they discovered similar information in two independent sources. Assuming, then, that King and Vanderlint got it about right, it can be said that middling people spent between a third and a half of their disposable income on food and drink and about a quarter on clothes, a concentration of spending which justifies exploring 'diet' and 'apparel' in some detail in the next two sections.

ii—
Diet

If Gregory King was right, middling families spent between £5 and £20 per head a year on food and drink, while Vanderlint's figures work out at £11 per head. It was suggested earlier that there might be some 20,000 or 25,000 middling families in London, with about seven or eight members each. If, say, £10 per head were spent on all these people, the total demand would have been between £1 1/2 and £2 million a year, a concentration of consumption which explains why farmers thought it worthwhile to specialize in the production of good-quality food for the London market. London demand was well satisfied by this supply and middle-class Londoners ate well for their four or five shillings a week.^[6]

Most people had three meals a day—breakfast, dinner and supper—but nearly all the eating was done at dinner. Breakfast might consist of beer or boiled milk, some bread, perhaps a bowl of porridge, although there were changes from the 1690s with the introduction of hot drinks into the home. Chocolate was an early favourite as a nourishing breakfast drink, and coffee had its devotees, but it was tea which was to conquer from Queen Anne's reign onwards. By the end of our period, the breakfast of toast and rolls and tea which James Boswell used to have in the 1760s would have been normal for a middling family.^[7] Supper, too, was usually a light meal made up of such items as bread and cheese, cake, apple pie or jelly,

but it could be much more substantial. Supper parties were quite popular and, although rarely as massive in content as dinner parties, their menus covered the whole range of foodstuffs which will be considered later. Supper was also a meal where one might have something fairly unusual or expensive, such as pheasant and woodcock, chicken with the first asparagus or lobster. However this was party fare, not everyday diet, and it was on their family dinners that middling householders laid out most of that one-third or more of their total expenditure which went on food and drink. Dinner had once been a meal eaten by all classes at noon, but our period sees the beginnings of those class distinctions in meal-times which have survived to confuse the unwary to this day. Workmen continued to dine at noon, but middling people began to eat an hour or so later and the upper class later still, perhaps as late as three or four o'clock, a change in habit which tended to make supper an even lighter meal but encouraged investment in a rather heavier breakfast.^[8]

Misson provides a good description of what middling Londoners ate at dinner. 'Among the middling sort of people they have ten or twelve sorts of common meats, which infallibly take their turns at their tables, and two dishes are their dinners: a pudding, for instance, and a piece of roast beef; another time they will have a piece of boil'd beef, and then they salt it some days before hand, and besiege it with five or six heaps of cabbage, carrots, turnips, or some other herbs or roots, well pepper'd and salted, and swimming in butter: a leg of roast or boil'd mutton dish'd up with the same dainties, fowls, pigs, ox tripes, and tongues, rabbits, pidgeons, all well moisten'd with butter, without larding: Two of these dishes, always serv'd up one after the other, make the usual dinner of a substantial gentleman or wealthy citizen.'^[9]

A few comments can be made on this interesting description. First and most obvious is the emphasis on meat, a fact of English life which impressed most foreign observers. The number of days on which one ate meat was an index of one's status in the world and about four or five days a week was probably about average for the middle station.^[10] What is perhaps more surprising is Misson's comment on the quantity of vegetables served with the meat, since some historians believe that vegetables were only rarely eaten.^[11] There was certainly a

medical prejudice against them and, except when people mention the first peas, beans or asparagus of the season, one finds few references to vegetables in casual comments on food. Circumstantial evidence, however, suggests that Misson was right. Contemporary cookery books provide for a wide variety of vegetables, as a separate dish, as a salad, dished up with meat or used in a soup or stew. Even more suggestive are the data on market gardening in the London area, one estimate being that the area of garden ground expanded more than tenfold between 1660 and 1720.^[12] Virtually the whole range of modern northern European fruit and vegetables was grown, though two vegetables which are the mainstay of modern cookery had no place in Augustan cuisine. The tomato was widely used in the Mediterranean but, in England, the knowledge that it belonged to the same family as the deadly nightshade was sufficient to damn it and it was hardly eaten at all. The potato, too, faced almost total prejudice in southern England till late in the eighteenth century and bread still provided the bulk in middle-class meals, though not very much of it according to Misson. 'I have known several people in England that never eat any bread, and universally they eat very little: they nibble a few crumbs, while they chew the meat by whole mouthfuls.'^[13]

Medical prejudice also seems to have had little effect on the consumption of uncooked fruit. The quality, quantity and variety of domestic fruit were all much improved in the seventeenth century, many exotic varieties being grown under glass, and people were quite prepared to defy the doctors and sample the treats available. Jonathan Swift reflects both the English ambivalence to fruit and the variety available in a letter to Stella: 'The grapes are sad things; but the peaches are pretty good, and there are some figs. I sometimes venture to eat one, but always repent it.' However, such worries seem to have lessened with time. Dudley Ryder treated his brother and sister at one of the fruit shops in Stocks Market—'it cost me 2s.'—while Vanderlint allowed 2S. a week each to the mistress of his middling household and her four children to 'buy fruit and toys'. Growing seasons were short and much fruit was preserved, to be eaten candied or to find its way into the many sweet-sour recipes which were so popular, while dried fruit was imported from the

Mediterranean—prunes and figs and astonishing quantities of currants and raisins, which arrived in whole fleets to catch the Christmas demand for puddings and pies. This was also the time for the arrival of oranges and lemons, nearly eleven million a year by the late seventeenth century, expensive luxuries which were confined to the middle and upper classes.^[14]

One striking feature of English cuisine was the very liberal use of butter in cooking. Misson noted that the vegetables were 'swimming in butter' and that the meat dishes were 'well moisten'd with butter', while Constance Wilson writes that our period was 'the golden age of butter in English cookery'. This would have been very salt butter, which was rarely eaten with bread by the wealthy, who preferred cheese or cream. However, what was really idiosyncratic about English cookery were the puddings, which became a central element in the English diet in the course of the seventeenth century. Puddings came in all guises, packed with different combinations of meat and vegetables and especially dried fruit; this is the description by Misson, who positively drools over the English national dish:

'The Pudding is a dish very difficult to be describ'd, because of the several sorts there are of it; flower, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, suet, marrow, raisins, etc., etc., are the most common ingredients of a pudding. They bake them in an oven, they boil them with meat, they make them fifty several ways: Blessed be he that invented pudding, for it is a manna that hits the palates of all sorts of people: a manna better than that of the wilderness, because the people are never weary of it. Ah, what an excellent thing is an English Pudding! To come in Pudding time, is as much as to say, to come in the most lucky moment in the world.'^[15]

As has been seen, the usual dinner of the middling family was two dishes, 'serv'd up one after the other'. The normal practice when giving a dinner party would be still to have just the two courses but to serve up several dishes at each course. A cookery book of 1729 suggests the following menu for a winter dinner party: for the first course, gravy soup later replaced by a dish of chicken and bacon, also 'Scotch collops, giblet pie, a fine boil'd pudding, roast beef with horse-radish and pickles round'; for the second course,'a turkey roasted, three woodcocks with toasts, a tansey and garnish with orange,

a hare with a savary pudding, a butter'd apple pie hot'. This huge feast is not merely cookery-book fantasy, as can be seen from Samuel Pepys's Diary. On 26 January 1660, for instance, when he was in his mid-twenties, employed only one maid and was worth only a few hundred pounds, his wife produced the following 'very fine dinner' for a company of twelve: 'A dish of marrow-bones. A leg of mutton. A loin of veal. A dish of fowl, three pullets and two dozen of larks all in a dish. A great tart. A neat's tongue. A dish of anchoves. A dish of prawns; and cheese.'^[16]

Pepys has a number of interesting references to food, but he did not record what he ate every day and one can easily get the wrong impression about eating habits from his diary since it was the unusual that was likely to catch his attention. Very few diarists had such an interest in their stomachs as to allow it to be determined what they ate on a regular basis. One exception was William Byrd the Younger, who wrote down almost every day the main dish that he had for his dinner and also noted what he ate for supper, if anything. One can hardly pretend that Byrd is a typical middle-class Londoner, for, although he was the grandson of a London goldsmith, he was a gentleman from Virginia and lived the life of a gentleman while in London. Nevertheless, what he ate at dinner, as shown in Tables 10.3 and 10.4 (pp. 277 and 278), demonstrates what was available for those with few worries about the cost of their food.

As one would expect, Byrd ate a lot of meat, this providing his main dinner dish on almost exactly half the days in 1718, while he ate various types of fowl on another fifty-four days. However, what is striking is the wide variety of meat and fowl available and the fact that it seems to have been available most of the time. For example, Byrd was able to eat fresh roast beef or beef-steak in every month of the year, indicating that the farmers had largely solved the winter feeding problem, though one can still see a peak of beef eating in the traditional killing months at the end of the year and of mutton in January and February. One should note, too, that Byrd usually ate his meat dressed in the plain English fashion. French cuisine and, to a lesser extent, Spanish were becoming quite popular and one finds constant references to fricassees, ragouts, olios and other

dishes with rich sauces, but few Londoners would have eaten these on a regular basis.

When not eating meat, Byrd ate an astonishing amount of battered (i.e. scrambled) eggs, which provided his dinner on no less than eighty days, nearly always in his lodgings; a quick and nourishing meal for a gentleman, who often only ate at home when everyone on whom he called was out. This emphasis on eggs is not found in any other source, though they were certainly eaten widely and in many forms, various types of tansy (omelette not necessarily flavoured with tansy) being particularly popular.

Byrd also ate fish nearly once a week, probably more than most Londoners, since fish was 'dearer than any other belly-timber'. However, for those who could afford it, there was a wide variety available and, although Byrd rarely specifies his fish, there are several traditional fish meals in his diet sheet. Londoners tended to turn up their noses at the salt cod of Catholic days, which, as bacalhau or baccalà, was and is a staple of diet in southern Europe, but salt-cod boats still used to arrive during Lent and it was in March and April that

Byrd ate his salt fish. The next excitement in the fish calendar would be the arrival of the mackerel shoals, the first mackerel in late April or May often being noted by contemporary writers. Herrings provided another delicacy in September, to be eaten fresh or pickled in brine. This was also the time when 'damsels first renew their oyster cries', our forefathers like us only eating oysters when there was an R in the month, though Pepys once jumped the gun and had some on the last day of August, 'some pretty good oysters, which is very soon, and the soonest I think I ever eat any'. Oysters were cheap and vast amounts were consumed by both rich and poor, sold by the wheelbarrowmen or delivered in barrels to the homes of the middle station in barrels—'Colchester Oysters may be supplied for this season with the largest pick't fat and green for 3s. a barrel.'^[17]

The four or five shillings per head spent on food and drink by middling Londoners includes money spent on servants and apprentices as well as on the master and mistress and their children. Servants would not of course have enjoyed the magnificent spreads described above. Nevertheless, it seems probable that they ate very well in middling households, much better than they would ever have eaten with their families before going into service. It is striking that, amongst the large number of complaints about masters in the records of the Mayor's Court, complaints about poor-quality or insufficient food are surprisingly few and far between.

All the same, there were complaints and one of them is quoted here at some length since it throws some light on what was expected. 'The defendant [a merchant] and his wife . . . did usually feed very high of ye best sorts of food but as to his servants he kept an extraordinary bad house, for ye servants did very rarely eat of any of the meat which the defendant and his wife feed on but what was left at their table above stares was generally locked up and very seldom (only some few scraps) brought downe to the servants. And the food wherewith the servants were generally fed was very coarse stale mouldy bread and ranck salt butter together with some porrage made of the meat that the defendant and his wife eat abovestares and scraps of fish and sometimes dumplings very dry and with very little of any suet or other ingredients in them. And if it chanced the

servants had any of the meat it was often stale and corrupt and soe stinking that they could scarcely eat it but yet were forced to eate it for mere necessity. . . . And ye bread and butter and also if there were at any time any chees (which was very seldom and but ordinary) it was imediately so soon as they had dyned constantly locked up so that the servants could not come at it. The said servants very seldome had any breakfasts or suppers allowed them and, if they had, it was of such ill food as they were not able to eate to any content . . . All the victuals were constantly lockd up and the beere kept above stares.' Whether it was true or not, one can see from this evidence that servants ate separately from the master, but expected very much the same food sent down to them. They expected, too, to get three meals a day and plenty of it, and, on top of this, they felt that bread and cheese should be kept unlocked in the kitchen and beer in the cellar, not above stairs, so that they could help themselves whenever they pleased.^[18]

Beer was the main drink and houses frequently did their own brewing, many inventories listing 'beere stillings' and 'beere stands' as well as the occasional parcel of malt. Wine was also drunk quite often at home, but nothing has been found like the huge personal wine cellar which Pepys had accumulated by July 1665: 'at this time I have two tierces of claret—two quarter-cask of canary, and a smaller vessel of sack—a vessel of tint, another of Malaga, and another of white wine, all in my wine-cellar together—which I believe none of my friends now alive ever had of his own at one time.' Hardly any of our inventories list any stocks of wine at all, though many houses had large quantities of glass bottles which may well have been taken to the tavern to be filled up.^[19]

It seems reasonable to conclude that, despite occasional complaints and meanness, the men and women of the middle station and their servants ate and drank well. Just how well can be seen by comparing Vanderlint's breakdown of expenditure on food and drink 'of a labouring man and his family in London' with his estimate 'of the necessary charge of a family in the middling station of life'. This is shown in Table 10.5 opposite, where Vanderlint's figures for 1734 are also compared with Gregory King's estimate of English expenditure in the

TABLE 10.5: The Diet of Middling and Labouring Families in London Compared (Cost in pence per head per week) Type of Food Vanderlint King   Middling Labouring All England Bread 5.25 5.25 3.50 Meat and fish 17.50 7.00 4.25 Butter 5.25 1.75   Cheese 1.75 0.87 Milk 0.75 0.87 Beer 9.50 5.25 4.75 Tea and sugar 7.00 0.00 0.00 Others 3.50 1.75 2.00   50.50 22.75 16.50 Source: Vanderlint (1734) pp. 75, 141; King (1936) p. 56. 'Others' is 'roots and herbs, salt, vinegar, mustard, pickles, spices and grocery, except tea and sugar' for the middling; 'roots, herbs, flower, oatmeal, salt, vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar' for the labouring; 'fruit, roots, garden stuff, salt, oyl, pickles, grocery etc' for King.

1690s. The results give some idea of what it meant to belong to the meat and butter eating and tea drinking classes.

iii—
Dress

'The people in general are well cloathed,' wrote de Muralt of the English, 'which is a certain proof of their living at ease; for in England the Belly always takes place of the Back.'^[20] The latter point was necessarily true of the mass of the people, who needed to devote half or more of their income to their bellies, but for middling people the back ran the belly fairly close, contemporary experts suggesting that about a quarter of their income went on apparel. This section will try to determine how this money was spent.

The first two decades of our period were ones of experimentation, which resulted in an almost revolutionary change in the type of clothes worn by both sexes.^[21] For men, the new clothing was the three-piece suit of coat, waistcoat and knee-breeches, worn with a shirt and drawers, stockings to the knee and

usually buckled shoes rather than boots. Both coat and waist-coat were usually so long that they almost concealed the breeches, with a long line of narrowly spaced buttons right down to the hem. Further embellishment was provided by trimmings and embroidery to the main garments, lace ruffles at the wrist, bands and later cravats or neckcloths round the neck and on the head a wig topped by a beaver or a felt hat. Men doing dirty work and many shopkeepers wore an apron to protect themselves or as a mark of status, while the cloak was increasingly challenged as protective outerwear by the campaign coat, derived from the military greatcoat.^[22]

Most middling women wore smocks and sometimes drawers next to the skin, but their shape was determined by their laced and boned stays, usually called 'a pair of bodies'. These were worn from under the armpits to below the waist and were often laced very tightly. However, from the 1670s and 1680s, women were to lead a rather more relaxed existence with the development of looser fitting outer garments in the form of the mantua and the gown. These were both one-piece garments, fastened at the waist with a sash or girdle, normally trailing to the ground at the back and open below the waist to reveal the petticoat. Long-sleeved waistcoats, buttoning up the front and often padded for warmth, were sometimes worn over the gown or directly over the petticoat. The rest of the ensemble would consist of shoes and stockings, perhaps an under-petticoat, gloves, various items to cover a low décolletage such as pinners, an ever-changing variety of hair-styles, caps and hats, and, for the women of our class, an apron or safeguard to protect their clothes. Decoration and embellishment were even more important than in men's dress and even quite poor women did not like to be seen without a considerable amount of ribbons, braid and cheap lace to brighten up their clothes.

Most fashion was derived from Paris and rapidly adopted in London by the fashionable of the West End. New fashions would then be taken up by middling people, but how quickly is difficult to say. One can find references to deliberate rejection of West End fashion and the loose behaviour that went with it by citizen's wives who laced themselves even tighter and disdained the bare-breasted fashions of Charles II's reign. Such

women might continue to wear the high-crowned and broad-rimmed hats of the Puritan 1640s and 1650s 'as a conscious statement of middle class virtues against the whims of the fashionable world', while their shopkeeper husbands wore their own hair short à la Roundhead and sneered at the courtly foolishness of the wig.^[23] However, such bourgeois rectitude seems to have withered as fashion changes speeded up and, by the reign of Queen Anne, middling people are regularly criticized for their reckless pursuit of the trivia determined each Easter by the haut monde of the West End. Mandeville noted that ladies of fashion were constantly sending for their mantuamakers, 'so that they may have always some new modes ready to take up, as soon as those sawcy cits shall begin to imitate those in being', and other comment on social competition in dress is rife in the first half of the eighteenth century.^[24]

Such competition was made easy in England by the fact that there were no fundamental distinctions in types of dress by class or between town and country. Anne Buck has shown that, as early as the 1640s, class distinctions in dress were matters of detail, no form of dress being so different from those of lower classes 'that it shows a completely unrelated, independent style'. An indication of the depth of fashion can be found in the 1675 inventory of a Limehouse pawnbroker, whose customers were hardly likely to have been upper-class. The goods pawned included three very dressy bundles; the first contained 'two petticoats, a piece of gimp lace, a pair of silk stockings, a silver laced waistcoat and a pair of bodies', the next a 'lutestring [silk] gowne and pettycoat laced, a satin petticoat, a red pettycoat laced with gold and silver lace', and the third 'a red cloth mantle, a tabby [silk] petticoat, a black silk mohaire petticoat and a pair of laced slippers'. Not only are these the same sorts of clothing as were being worn by the fashionable in 1675; they are also made of expensive materials such as silk, 'cloth', which meant good woollen cloth, and gold and silver lace.^[25]

Social distinctions were even less in the eighteenth century when differences were ones of fashion, fabric and the quality of the embellishments, rather than of type, so that it was well worth paying for the skills of high-class tailors, staymakers and mantua-makers in order to rise above the tolerable imitations

made for the ready-made market. The initiated always knew, of course, and many a laugh and a sneer could be had at the expense of those aping their betters, but, for all that, the homogeneity of English dress provided wonderful opportunities for both the makers of clothes and their wearers and was a major factor in ushering in that mass market for cheap textiles whose demand fuelled the Industrial Revolution.

How many clothes did middling people own? A preliminary answer can be found in an unlikely source, the evidence given in disputes between master and apprentice. It was normal practice for parents or friends to supply the apprentice with a satisfactory wardrobe 'at his entrance' and for the master to maintain and replace these clothes at his own charge as became necessary. Since the quality or quantity of the clothes originally supplied was often in dispute, it is quite common to find them listed by witnesses in the Mayor's Court. Such wardrobes obviously varied in value and quantity, but one can still see what were the basic requirements of a young man starting service and these can reasonably be taken as the minimum wardrobe of middling men.

A typical wardrobe would be valued between £10 and £20, and would consist of three complete outfits and accessories. John Hicks, for instance, a gentleman's son apprenticed in the early 1650s, brought into service two new suits and a new cloak, a good large cloth coat and a good old suit, a frieze short coat, two felt hats, two pairs of new worsted stockings, a pair of new waxed boots, two pairs of shoes, four shirts (two new), six new bands and eight old bands, four handkerchiefs and six caps, all of which were said to be worth at least £15. Thirty years later, John Parker, apprentice to an upholsterer, had two new cloth suits and a new serge suit, together with a campaign coat, one new caster and a felt, three pairs each of new hose and new stockings, eight shirts, a dozen and a half of bands, six handkerchiefs and other necessaries, valued at £13 'or rather more'.^[26]

Not many inventories list clothing but, when they do, one can see that the basic male wardrobe of three suits and accessories was maintained into adult life, though many people accumulated much more, such as the merchant William Kersteman, who had seventeen shirts, nineteen neckclothes and five complete suits when he died in 1711. The clothing of men in

this class was normally woollen or worsted for the outer garments and linen for shirts, bands, drawers and sometimes waistcoats, but most men also had some silk in their wardrobe, some silk stockings perhaps, several silk handkerchiefs, one best silk suit and very often a silk 'nightgown', a loose dressing gown worn as much in the day as at night. Many men wore a turban to cover their shaved heads when wearing their nightgowns, a piece of oriental exoticism which was reflected in the furnishing tastes of the middle classes.^[27]

There is less information on the clothing of middle-class women, but what there is suggests that they, too, maintained a minimum of three complete outfits and accessories (and often much more) and that a high proportion of their outer clothing was made of silk or silk mixtures. One can take as an example Frances Gardner, the widow of a grocer, whose clothing was listed in 1665. Frances was only twenty-seven and her husband worth only £642, but her wardrobe shows why the Spitalfields silk industry was to flourish. She had one suit of mixed tabby and one of black lustring, seven petticoats, two unspecified and the others made of sky colour tabby, white dimity, crimson silk mohair, turkey mohair and cloth with gold lace, the most expensive item. She also had a riding suit, a damask cloak with silver hooks, a satin mantle with bonelace, three tufted and three smocked waistcoats, an old black gown and a grogram gown, two fans, two pairs of gloves, an old apron and a parcel of small linen, the whole lot being valued at £17 10s. Susanna Hardy, the widow of an apothecary who died in 1676 worth £652, had a similar wardrobe—'a sute of mourning, two gowns, eight petty coats, one pair of bodyes, a silke petty coat laced with silver and gold lace, a red mantle laced with silver lace, three women's mantles and two pairs of silk stockings', valued at £16. 7s.^[28]

It is difficult to generalize about the cost of clothes because so much depended on the fabric and embellishments. Table 10.6 overleaf gives some idea of the range of prices for a few common types of textile. These are drawn from stock-lists in inventories and would be wholesale prices. One could argue for ever about just what a 'yard' was or what exactly mohair, camlet or drugget were, but it can at least be seen that there was a very wide variation in price for textiles bearing the same

name. It can also be noted that woollen broadcloth was more expensive than all but the most expensive silks and that there was a wide range of cheap silks which overlaps all but the cheapest woollens, worsteds and mixtures. These prices make it clear why the wearing of silk could go so far down the social hierarchy.^[29]

In Table 10.7 opposite, these fabrics are turned in to ready-

made clothes and valuations of some types of men's and women's clothes are listed, again from stock-lists. On the righthand side of the table are Gregory King's valuations for these articles from his table of 'Annual Consumption of Apparell, 1688'. Once again, there was a wide range of prices, depending on the textile used and the quality of the finish. These prices are, of course, the absolute minimum for new clothes, since the stock-list prices are wholesale and King's estimates were supposed to be an average for all classes. In any case, it is unlikely that many middle-class men and women bought their outer garments ready-made, though they would quite often buy shirts, smocks, bands, handkerchiefs, drawers etc. from haberdashers and milliners. Such things might also of course be made up at home by the women of the household.

Drawing on the prices in Tables 10.6 and 10.7 and other prices, it seems probable that it would cost a minimum of £6 or £7 to provide a complete ready-made outfit for a man of any quality at all.^[30] Such a price would soon shoot up if one bespoke the clothes from a tailor or bought anything of even moderately high quality. Pepys, for instance, who was a snappy and ambitious dresser, laid out £17 in 1664 on 'my fine coloured cloth suit, with my cloak lined with plush' and £24 in the following year on 'my new silk camelott sute, the best that ever I wore in my life'.^[31] Pepys did rather tend to overdo the luxury of his dress and was told in 1669 that his gold-lace sleeves were inappropriate to his position, but many merchants and wealthy shopkeepers would probably have spent this sort of money on their clothes, mercers in particular being renowned for their luxurious dress. However, the average man of the middle station would have been much more modest, though he would probably have paid more than the prices listed in Table 10.7 since he would have had many of his clothes made by a tailor.

One can get some idea of making prices from a tailor's account-book of the late 1690s and early 1700s. Most of his customers provided their own fabrics and his bills are for making up the material and the cost of the accessories. Coats cost between 7s. and 9s. to make up, waistcoats and breeches about 5s. or 6s., giving some idea of the labour involved since journeymen tailors got about 10s. a week wages. Accessories, such as buttons, shalloon for lining and pockets, silk thread and

twist, might well cost as much again and all this takes no account of the cost of the cloth. Tailors also did maintenance and repair work on clothes: 2s. for scouring a suit, 1s. for taking spots out of a coat, similar prices for pressing, spongeing, napping and other services. Dressmakers got lower pay than journeymen tailors and costs were normally so modest that few middle-class women would have bothered to make their own clothes at home. And even a mantua-maker was paid better then the sempstress who made up shirts and smocks. Stephen Monteage, for instance, paid £3 6s.6d. for Holland linen to make six shirts in October 1733 and, in November, he paid Mrs Tomlins gs. for making them.^[32]

In order to estimate the total demand for clothes, one also needs to know something about annual turnover. How much did people need to buy each year to keep up with fashion and to replace worn articles? This would obviously vary considerably with the individual and is also something on which there is no real evidence. However, a very rough approximation can be provided by looking at Gregory King's estimates of'annual consumption of apparell'. For instance, he thought that a million 'coats for men' would be consumed every year or rather less than one coat per man per year, assuming that men were a quarter of the population. Since he also put down a million men's waistcoats and breeches and a million each of women's 'petticoats and wastcoats' and 'bodyes and stays', he seems to have believed that most adults would buy on average a complete outfit every year, and presumably middling people would buy rather more than the average. King also allows for roughly two pairs of stockings, shoes and gloves and two shirts per head of the population every year, not to mention a huge range of other items only likely to be purchased by the middling and upper classes, such as perukes, swords, muffs, masks, fans etc.^[33]

If these figures are even roughly right, one can begin to see how Jacob Vanderlint could estimate in 1734 that a middling man would spend £16 a year on his own clothes, £7 each on his four children and £16 for his wife, 'who can't wear much', a total of £60 or just over a quarter of his expenditure. By coincidence, the attorney William Moses, whose personal accounts have survived for the year 1679–80, spent exactly £60 on clothes in the year, of which just over £40 was in seven

separate tailors' bills. Miss Goreing, a young lady living on her own with two servants, spent £31 on clothes in 1697–8, including tailors' bills, fabrics and accessories such as hoods, gloves and shoes, and she spent over £52 in 1703–4.^[34] So, although one cannot really tell if Vanderlint's estimate was accurate, it was certainly not outrageous. People did spend a lot on clothes and it is no wonder that such a high proportion of the population was engaged in making them.

The clothes that were replaced each year still had a long life in them. Some provided the raw materials with which the tailor produced a 'new' suit; others were cut down for children, refashioned for apprentices or given to maid-servants, the fashionable embellishments being carefully removed. Others would end up in the huge second-hand market, to be worn by the poor and then to be cut down to be worn by the children of the poor. Such recycling was much greater in our period than it is today but nevertheless the regularly recurring demand for new clothes, especially by the men and women of the middle station, was one of the major factors keeping the economy going. So was the recurrent demand for furniture and furnishing materials, which is now considered.

iv—
Domestic Comfort

'True comfort, as we understand it, was invented by the French in the seventeenth century,' writes Peter Thornton, who singled out the 1630s as the key decade in this development and showed how the new comfort was quite quickly transferred to the homes of aristocratic Englishmen in the early Restoration period.^[35] This section will look at how the homes of middling Londoners were also transformed in the course of our period.

This is much easier to document then diet or apparel, since most inventories list furniture, often in considerable detail. One can start by looking at valuations of domestic goods, though it should be noted that these are 'clearance sale' and not replacement values, and people actually spent much more than the figures listed by the valuers. Table 10.8 opposite provides average valuations broken down into five wealth groups and distinguishing between two sub-periods, before and after 1690. The table shows that there was little change over time, a rather

surprising result since, as will be seen, there was considerable qualitative change in domestic goods. As one might expect, richer people spent more than poorer people, though it is clear that demand for such goods was relatively inelastic.^[36] It seems, too, that richer people were spending rather less and poorer people rather more as time went on.^[37]

It was seen in Chapter 8 that the typical middle-class house had about seven rooms, comprising four or five bedrooms, one or two living rooms, the best one normally being called the dining-room and and the second best the parlour, and a kitchen. In Table 10.9 above, the average value of the contents of the main rooms is listed and it can be seen that the most valuable

room was normally the best bedroom, a room which was used for entertaining as well as sleeping, as is clear from contemporary prints and descriptions as well as from the inventories. Five of the sample, all merchants, had magnificent best bedrooms valued at over £100. Another merchant, who died in 1701, had a dining-room valued at £100, and there was a tendency for this room to be upgraded as our period continues to provide an increasingly important second focus of display.^[38]

What one might call class as well as wealth affected the level of domestic consumption. For example, 38 of the 162 people worth more then £2000 had best bedrooms valued at less than £15. Since these people could clearly have afforded bedrooms valued at the £20, £30 or more which was normal in this wealth group, it is interesting to see if they shared any characteristics. When one looks at their occupations, it is clear that they did, since, with few exceptions, they made their money in ways not considered very genteel by their contemporaries. There were only two merchants amongst them, for instance, and virtually none of the fashionable sort of shopkeeper. The fact is that most merchants, mercers and drapers made very sure that they would not be found dead in a bedroom worth less then £15, a fear not shared by such ungenteel tradesmen as builders, wine coopers, cheesemongers, coalmongers, soapmakers, distillers, printers and cloth finishers. Such men, although wealthy, saw no reason to lay out money on unnecessary display in their bedrooms or in any other part of their homes, a fact which helps to explain why they often managed to accumulate as much as mercers and merchants, since they were not subject to the same haemorrhage of their capital on domestic display.

One can now look at the qualitative changes in the contents of houses. These were considerable and, for the most part, followed with some delay the changes discovered by furniture historians in their studies of the court and aristocracy.^[39] One striking feature was the increasing emphasis on lightness, both in terms of visibility and in the materials used for hangings, curtains, bed furniture and upholstery. The replacement of small paned windows by sash windows from the late 1680s and a much greater provision of sconces and standing candle-sticks, often backed with mirrors, did much to dispel the gloom of interiors. From the 1690s, many wealthy people were using the

much larger mirror plates now available as chimney glasses above their fireplaces and pier-glasses between the windows, while, in general, one finds a much wider use of looking-glasses and their introduction to nearly every room. In 1691, Guy Miège noted the light and airiness of the London house, the 'lightsom stair-cases, fine sash-windows and lofty ceilings', the latter usually plastered, which 'make by their whiteness the rooms so much lightsomer.'^[40]

The use of lighter textiles was equally marked, heavier draperies such as broadcloth and serge being replaced by lighter mixtures such as mohairs and camlets, and, increasingly, by silks and cottons. These changes in taste are especially marked in the furnishing of beds, which were normally adorned with a huge yardage of textiles in the form of curtains, valances, headcloths and testers, quite apart from the quilts, blankets, rugs and sheets which lay on top of the nearly ubiquitous and expensive feather-beds. By the reign of Queen Anne, the hangings of the best bed in the house were nearly always camlet, mohair, damask or silk and many were also lined with silk or cotton, a development which can be seen throughout the house as camlet and mohair gradually replaced serge in the second and third bedrooms too and as similar textiles were used as hangings and furniture coverings generally.^[41]

The furniture itself was becoming more comfortable, curves which fitted the human body replacing the upright, angular furniture of earlier days, while improvements in upholstery led to better padded seats and a much wider use of cushions and squabs, usually stuffed with down or feathers. Sitting comfortably was now very much the thing to do and the ability to do so is indicated by the increasing appearance of couches, sofas and settees and by the 'easy chair', the high-backed, winged and well-upholstered armchair described by John Gloag as 'a national symbol of ease and comfort'. He dates the easy chair from the 1670s, but it is not common in our inventories before the reign of Queen Anne.^[42] Another innovation was the replacement of the 'turkeywork' chair by the cane chair as the normal form of upright chair for sitting at table and, in general, the much wider use of light, elegant and resilient canework in other types of furniture. Cane chairs are found in aristocratic inventories of the 1660s and John Gloag has suggested that the

demand for the new chairs 'was suddenly and dramatically expanded' by the Great Fire in 1666. This attractive thesis is not supported by our inventories, which show that the key decade for the adoption of the new chair was the 1680s, some twenty years after its first introduction, and it is in the same decade that anguished petitions from the turkeywork makers are found in a bid to ban the products of their competitors.^[43]

The decline of serge as a furnishing material and the rise of the cane chair are just two examples of the influence of fashion on domestic interiors. There were many others, such as the introduction of the 'oval table' from the 1670s, and it is clear that fashion, often derived from French or aristocratic models and followed with a delay of a decade or two, was an imperative influence forcing Londoners to change their furniture and furnishings long before they were worn out. This was good news for manufacturers and traders in general, although there were of course losers, such as the serge-makers of Exeter and the turkeywork makers of Bradford, who had good cause to bemoan their fate, while the cane-chair makers of London were basking in the sun.

Cane-work was first introduced from the Far East from where the rattans were imported and is an example of a wide range of innovations which bore a Far Eastern, Indian or Levantine influence. Japanning was another oriental import, a technique imitated by English craftsmen from at least the 1670s. Japan work begins to appear in middling homes in the 1690s, the banker Thomas Williams, for example, having Japan boxes, a chest of drawers, a table with matching candle stands and a Japan cribbage board in 1697, while after 1700 references to Japan work become commonplace. Japan and other lacquer-work was usually associated with high-quality cabinet-making and one sees increasing examples of this, much of it imported by the East India Company. The merchant John Barkstead, for instance, who died in 1694, had an 'Indian trunke and frame', 'a pair of India cabinets' and an 'India cabinet and frame'.^[44]

Another oriental product domesticated by the English was china, examples of which can be found in the earliest of our inventories but which did not become really common until the 1690s and the reign of Queen Anne. By this time, collecting china had become a craze for many people, such as John

Sherwood, a drysalter who died in 1703 with some 200 pieces of china and 'tonquin' in his house. Following in the wake of the china boom came the dual invasion of coffee and tea-making equipment into London homes. This was rare before the 1690s but, as with so many other innovations, what was rare or unknown in the 1680s becomes commonplace in the reign of Queen Anne, when inventory after inventory has its coffee-pot and coffee-mill or the standard set of tea-kettle, lamp and stand usually kept in the dining-room.^[45]

Another feature of middling homes was the huge increase in pictures, ornaments and bits and pieces as the period goes on. One finds pictures right from the beginning, but not very many of them. By the 1690s and the early eighteenth century, many people had huge collections of pictures and prints, the latter often being imported by the East India Company and thus giving a further oriental flavour to the houses. The haberdasher, Robert Fotherby, for instance, had forty-four Indian pictures in his dining-room when he died in 1709. Pictures could be found all over the house, often replacing the tapestries and wall hangings which were much commoner in the early part of the period. One is rarely told what was represented, but 'landskips', 'sea peices' and paintings of the King and Queen were quite often mentioned. Portraits of members of the family were also becoming increasingly popular, Daniel Thomas having six 'family pictures' in his hall, an indication of a growing bourgeois self-awareness which must have given a lot of work to portrait-painters from the 1690s onwards.^[46]

Halls were also a common place to find a clock, as indeed was the head of the staircase, Tristram Shandy's father being unusual in 1715 neither in the ownership of a clock needing to be wound only once a month nor in the place where he chose to keep it. Clocks can be found from the beginning of our period and they had become very common, though not ubiquitous, by the reign of Queen Anne. By this date, there were often several clocks scattered through the rooms of houses, the dining-room being the commonest place to keep one, apart from halls and passages. Perhaps surprisingly, there were very few clocks in servants' rooms and workshops, despite E. P. Thompson's insistence on the connection between the development of the clock and labour discipline, the only two examples being Adrian

Vanderpost, sugar-refiner of Vauxhall, who had an 'old' clock in the men's garret and Richard Walford, a metalworker, who kept a clock in his workshop and only an hourglass in his dining-room.^[47]

Bric-à-brac and ornaments, such as 'images' made of alabaster and marble, stags' heads, bird-cages, chess, draughts and backgammon tables and pieces and anything else which might be captured by the catchall word 'toys', all became increasingly prominent and must, together with too much furniture, have made a terrible clutter in many homes. The impact of the collecting fever can perhaps best be seen in the inventory of Daniel Thomas, a mercer who died in 1704. In his closet, he had, amongst other things, 740 books, two models of churches, three telescopes, a globe, several maps, two hourglasses, a sailing compass, a draughts board and some fishing tackle. In other rooms, he had another 150 books and atlases, some 200 pieces of china, getting on for 100 pictures, more maps, a Noah's ark and a small organ, as well as a collection of weapons which included 18 hand-guns.^[48]

Pepys's observation that one in three families in the City had a pair of virginals amongst their goods when they fled from the Fire, and the emphasis on music-making at home in his diary, has led music historians to believe that middling Londoners were a very musical lot indeed, constantly engaged in entertaining each other in impromptu domestic concerts. This, however, is not borne out by our inventories, in which one finds only thirty-three men, less than a tenth of the sample, with any musical instruments in their house and six of these had only an instrument described as 'old' stored in the garret, suggesting that if their household had once been musical it was so no longer. The data give some substance to the view that growing access to professional music in concert rooms from the 1680s had a dampening effect on domestic music, the proportion of men with musical instruments falling from one in seven to one in seventeen before and after 1680.^[49]

The room which saw the least change was the kitchen, with its extensions into buttery and pantry, most of the change that there was consisting of an improvement of amenities in the kitchens of the less wealthy. This development meant that, by the late seventeenth century, the kitchen was the room with the

narrowest range of valuations, the great majority being valued at between £10 and £20, whatever the wealth of the householder. Kitchens were used not just for the preparation, cooking and serving of food but also for washing dishes and for making, mending, washing and ironing clothes, and their contents reflect these various functions. They were also the place where servants, apprentices and younger children ate their meals and relaxed, so that all kitchens contained one or more tables and several chairs and stools, the furnishings becoming increasingly attractive over time, with better quality chairs, curtains, perhaps a canary or a parrot in a cage, a clock, some pictures and a screen to protect the occupants from the heat of the fire.^[50]

Heat was provided by an open fire, either in a grate or a range, the latter presumably being what we understand by a range, with side ovens heated from the fire. Ovens, in fact, are rarely mentioned, possibly because they were landlords' fittings but quite probably because few houses did their own baking, the Londoner being well served by professional bakers, who baked three times a day and delivered to the door as well as being prepared to bake the housewife's pies and pasties in their large ovens. Most cooking involved spit-roasting, frying, simmering and boiling, and a formidable array of equipment for this can be found in all kitchens.

Nearly everyone had at least two or three spits turned by a weight-driven jack, the grease being caught in a large drippingpan. The battery of kettles, pots and pans, which were increasingly made of brass or copper and were becoming more specialized into saucepans, stewpans, fish-kettles, tea-kettles etc., were suspended from hooks over the fire or, from about 1700, from a swinging chimney crane, or they could be placed on the 'cheeks' of the range. All households also had frying-pans, grid-irons for grilling or broiling, long-handled skillets for boiling or stewing, each with their own little legs, and chafing dishes whose base held burning charcoal to keep food hot. Food preparation is represented by cleavers, chopping and shredding knives, flesh forks, skewers, ladles and scummers, a vast array of metalware which helps one to understand why London had so many smiths and metalworkers, the jacksmith for instance being an important and independent trade.^[51]

Very few houses had less then 100 pounds weight of pewter

as well as brass, copper, iron and tinware. This was normally valued by weight but was occasionally itemized. The cheesemonger Samuel Palmer, for instance, had twenty pewter dishes including a basin, a cheese plate and a pie plate, thirty-nine plates, a dish frame, two saucers and a salt.^[52] Pewter was gaining at the expense of the wooden trencher, in common use at the beginning of our period, but losing out to glass, china, copper, brass and tinware. Silver was not in common use as table-ware by the middle class but almost everyone had some 'plate', which might range from the silver cup and two silver spoons of the salesman Richard Stock, valued at £4 12s., to several hundreds of pounds worth for the richer men, objects of pride and display which would only be seen in the kitchen for cleaning. The quantity of cutlery, sometimes silver but usually steel, also grew; forks, in particular, which were hardly used at all for eating in the 1660s, had become a common item by the early eighteenth century.^[53]

Most kitchens had a cistern or sink, with water pumped from the companies' mains, and most had a copper and numerous tubs for washing clothes. Ironing was done with smoothingirons heated on the fire or with box-irons filled with charcoal, and what had to be ironed can be seen by looking into the linen cupboards, whose contents were usually listed separately, their average value being greater than that of the entire contents of the kitchen but with a similar range from about £10 to £25. These valuations represented an amazing number of separate items, an average of thirty-six sheets, eighty-nine napkins and fifteen table-cloths; linen chests also held pillow-beeres (i.e. cases), towels, childbed linen, window curtains (mainly of cotton or muslin) and yards and yards of Holland, diaper, huckaback, damask etc. which had not yet been made up.^[54]

Peter Thornton writes that faces and hands were wiped after meals with a hot, damp napkin, which would help to explain the large numbers. He also claims that many people in the seventeenth century 'were a good deal less dirty than is now generally supposed'.^[55] He makes a good case but it is difficult to be totally convinced. Houses, clothes, bed linen, cooking equipment and furniture certainly seem to have been kept scrupulously clean—but were people? There is not a single bath-tub, let alone a bathroom, in the 375 inventories that have

been studied, though both the vessel and the name existed. Thornton says that many of the numerous tubs kept in kitchens and cellars may well have been used for personal washing, which seems a reasonable hypothesis but no more. Many houses also list ewers and bowls in bedrooms and, of course, materials for washing such as soap and perfumed washballs were easily available, though pretty expensive. Nonetheless, one must still be slightly suspicious of the personal hygiene of our period. Pepys often complained about dirtiness in other people and seems to have washed regularly every morning but whether this normally went beyond hands and face seems doubtful. Washing his feet seems to have been sufficiently rare to merit the occasional diary entry, as it does in the diary of Stephen Monteage seventy years later, whose feet were washed about once a month, normally by his maid. Whether either of them were in the habit of washing those parts of their bodies which lay between face and feet one cannot tell since they never tell one, which in the circumstances would suggest that they rarely did.^[56]

Innovations in the kitchen may have been rare, except for the multiplication of relatively minor gadgets,^[57] but they were widespread elsewhere in the house and even the kitchen saw the introduction of the equipment for making hot drinks. Who were the innovators? Who were the people who had already abandoned serge bed curtains before 1680, who already had cane chairs in the 1670s, china before 1690 or tea-making equipment before 1700? None of these innovations was particularly expensive; all of them were within the purchasing power of all the sample and indeed virtually everyone had adopted them by the end of the period. Nevertheless, with the exception of china, whose acquisition seems to follow no particular pattern, those who innovated were by no means a random group. They were nearly all either very wealthy men who might well have the entrée to West End houses or they were tradesmen with an aristocratic business who would see the new fashions when they delivered goods to their clients' houses and who might well think that being fashionable themselves could only enhance their business reputation.

These new fashions represent the 'true comfort', which was mentioned at the beginning of this section, and which, by the

reign of Queen Anne, had been introduced to a very considerable extent into the homes of middle-class Londoners. They now lived in houses which were better lit, were hung with more attractive textiles and were furnished in a way which would have made both sitting and sleeping more of a pleasure than they had been in the 1660s. Furniture was more sophisticated, walls were decorated with pictures instead of just hangings and tapestry, and surfaces were covered, perhaps littered would be a better word, with china, glass and ornaments instead of just with table carpets. Overall, there was little difference in the total valuation of domestic possessions at the beginning and the end of the period. However, it does seem clear that the poorer members of the middle station had definitely upgraded their domestic interiors. One might take as an example Thomas Toms, a barber-surgeon of Stocks Market, who died in 1719 aged only thirty. His total assets were valued at £484, of which £49 consisted of the value of his domestic possessions, which were kept in just four rooms. Lack of space forced him to keep a press bed in his dining-room, but the rest of the furniture was very fashionable: a chimney glass, two pier glasses, a pair of glass sconces, nine cane chairs with cushions, eleven pictures and two prints, a glass case, a tea table and forty-one pieces of china. Such a room would have seemed amazingly luxurious to a similar barber-surgeon in the 1660s but, by the 1710s, it was simply in^[58] fashion and Thomas Toms was doing nothing extraordinary in furnishing his room in this manner.^[59]

Such changes made houses much more comfortable, but they also have a wider significance. When one finds that men worth less than £500 were making a fairly successful attempt to furnish their homes in a way similar to those of great merchants, one can be sure that the economy as a whole was benefiting. Thomas Toms' mirrors and his forty-one pieces of china were good news for the expanding English glass and pottery industries. This deepening of the market also encouraged manufacturers and suppliers to cut costs and prices, by innovations, imitations and a successful search for cheaper sources of supply, and this could well be why what seem to be much better domestic interiors were valued in the early eighteenth century at little more or even less then those of the 1660s and 1670s.^[60]

This section has concentrated on those personal possessions

which were accumulated in the house and for most people these were all the possessions that they had, apart from their investments and the tools and stock in trade connected with their business. However, some members of the middle class owned their own transport, the greatest status symbol of the age being one's own coach or carriage. This was no light matter, as readers of Pepys's diary will remember, months of planning, worry and discussion finally ending with the arrival of his coach and horses in November 1668, an acquisition which 'doth put me into the greatest condition of outward state that I ever was in, or hoped ever to be, or desired'.^[61] Such glory was an immense expense, not just for the £50–£100 or more that the coach would cost, but for the very high maintenance costs and such ongoing expenses as rent of a coach house, the wages of the coachman and the cost of feeding the horses, a horse's food being about 5s. a week, very much the same as that of any other member of the household. It is not surprising, then, that only sixteen men in our sample owned a coach, nearly all of them merchants with a median fortune of £15,000.^[62]

Lesser men had to content themselves with their own riding horse, though this too posed problems in the more densely populated areas and horsekeeping was likely to cost considerably more each year than the value of the horse. Nevertheless, one in five men had his own horse, this being virtually essential for some occupations, such as the apothecaries who had to be able to visit their patients. The remainder had to content themselves with hiring a coach or a horse when they needed one, while on most occasions they would have walked, this being much the commonest way of getting round London. Contemporary diaries leave us in no doubt that early modern men and women were much more active pedestrians than we are today.^[63] It is clear, too, that they positively enjoyed walking for the fresh air and exercise and also for their health, though, as will be seen in the next chapter, it might take more than walking to keep a person alive in Augustan London.

11—
Sickness and Death

It was seen in the last chapter that middling Londoners were living more comfortable lives in the early eighteenth century than they had been in the 1660s. They were also living rather longer lives, a fact which helped them to become richer and so better afford the comforts that have been described. However, life still remained precarious, and sickness and death, the morbid subjects of this chapter, were an ever-present reminder of the fragility of existence in Augustan London. The great plague of 1665 may have been the last outbreak of this terrible disease, but no one living in London during our period was to know this and there were in any case a host of other diseases which could strike down anyone of whatever age or class with alarming speed.

i—
Disease and Mortality

'Dear Brother, I was very sorry to hear of your being so bad: but rejoysed very much in your next to hear of your being like to do well again. . . . I was so bad my self that I thought I should have deighed; I was took with a violent chollick in my stomach which held me from Satterday to Thursday.' 'I have had the misfortune of losing my deare child Johney he deyd last week of a feaver and breeding his teeth which I believe was the cause of his feaver . . . it tis a great trouble to me but these misfortunes we must submit two.'^[1]

These extracts are from just two of many letters written by Sarah Smyter to her brother, the tea dealer Henry Gambier, few of which have no reference at all to sickness or death. Such preoccupation was normal in a world where any cold might be the forerunner of a terminal fever and where the simplest cut could lead to a fatal infection, and it was small wonder that

people constantly worried about their coughs and colds and the state of their bowels. Despite the high quality of their diet and their comparative cleanliness, middling households were far from exempt from the general unhealthiness of the age and few can have known a year pass by without at least one member suffering a serious illness. Few people were under any illusions as to where such illnesses might lead. They sent for the apothecary or physician; they submitted to the gruesome medical attention of the day, to bleeding and vomits, purges and enemas; but they also provided for the all too likely event that these would be of no avail. 'Being at present sicke and weake in body but of sound and perfect mind' was a common introductory phrase in wills and it meant exactly what it said. Four out of five of the wills left by the men in our sample were made on their deathbeds, a fact which suggests that they made a fresh will every time they were seriously sick since it is unlikely that they all succumbed the first time they were laid low. Many did, however, and it is no wonder that the survivors should acquire the habit of resignation expressed by Sarah Smyter or accept the judgment of the distinguished physician Gideon Harvey that 'diseases and death are marks of the divine justice in the punishment of sin'.^[2]

Resignation and submission in the face of death did not mean that no attempt was made to avert it. The medical profession has been discussed in Chapter 2, but an interest in medicine and disease was no monopoly of the professionals. Every Man his own Doctor was the title of a book published by John Archer in 1673 and this seems indeed what every man was trying to be.^[3] Correspondence, commonplace books, cookery books, diaries, every form of personal writing which has survived, attest to the fascination with disease. Such writing teems with the platitudes and jargon of Galenist medicine, with humours and constitutions, and above all with the discussion of possible cures, the ancient country lore of herbs and cordials handed down from mother to daughter being interspersed with the latest panacea recommended by neighbours, doctors, apothecaries and purveyors of patent medicines.^[4]

Such panaceas provide an indication of just how much medical fashion has changed. The main object of John Archer's book is made clear by a large advertisement inserted as

frontispiece. This proclaimed the virtues of his own particular brand of tobacco which, amongst other things, 'purifies the air from infectious malignancy by its fragrancy, sweetens the breath, strengthens the brain and memory, cures pains in the head, teeth etc . . . cures the worst of gouts, all pains in the limbs; also dropsies, scurvy, coughs, distillations, consumptions'. Dudley Ryder, whose diary is punctuated by self-diagnosis, was a great believer in purging waters but placed his main hopes in his regular visits to the cold bath, which he believed would 'strengthen my body, purge it of ill humours, fence me against cold, prevent convulsions . . . cure me these rheumatic pains . . . secure me against the gout'. Jumping into a cold bath was not everybody's taste, however, and most people stuck to various sorts of medicine to cure their ills or prevent them.^[5]

Some of these seem harmless enough and the alcohol content would have made the sufferer feel better if nothing else; for example, the Queen of Hungary's water, a rosemary-flavoured brandy, was a great favourite—'a spoonful when feeling run down, night or day, ad libitum'. Another popular tonic was Daffy's Elixir, which was invented by a clergyman in the Restoration period and was still being sold in this century. What it tasted like one can no longer tell, but it was probably pretty good since it contained brandy, canary wine, oranges, lemons, rhubarb and a certain amount of borax, perhaps to convince customers that it really was a medicine and not just a rather expensive sort of gin. Medicines also drew heavily on a massive increase in the import of oriental drugs. The growth in the import of opiates was particularly striking, a development owing much to the enthusiastic support of Dr Sydenham. 'Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium,' he wrote, and Sydenham's laudanum—2 oz strained opium, 1 oz saffron, 1 drachm each of cinnamon and cloves in a pint of canary wine—became a very popular prescription, very much the aspirin of the period.

Opium and alcohol might be the most effective ingredients but most medicines contained at least one distinctly odd ingredient and many were very weird indeed. Treacle water, 'a universal remedy against every possible disease', contained in

its simplified form thirty-two ingredients, including the horn of a stag, while one of the favourite ingredients in Dr Thomas Willis's Pharmaceutice Rationalis of 1679 was 'water of earthworms . . . no matter what the disease'. Others put their faith in millipedes. James Chase, apothecary to the court of William III, recommended their use in cases of difficult breathing, sixty bruised in white wine, which was then strained and flavoured with saffron and spirit of maidenhair. Nicholas Culpeper, whose pharmaceutical works were very influential, thought millipedes should be boiled in oil to 'help pain in the ears, a drop being put into them'. Then there were Goddard's Drops, which were made from powdered human bones amongst other things. Dr William Salmon tells us that if they were distilled from the bones of the skull they would be good 'for apoplexy and vertigo and megrims [migraines] etc. But if you want it for gout of any particular limb it is better to make it from the bones of that limb'. Twenty to sixty drops in a glass of canary were recommended for these drops, which were 'famed through the whole kingdom' and so admired by Charles II that he was said to have offered £5000 for the formula.^[6]

Such were just a handful of the 1190 ingredients which appeared in the London Pharmacopoeia, the standard reference book on pharmacy, which was fully approved by the College of Physicians and included amongst 193 animals, animal parts or excrements, 'horn of a unicorn or rhinoceros, the bone from the heart of a stag, elephant tusk, bezoar stone . . . frog spawn, crayfish eyes, penis of a bull, flesh of vipers, nest of swallows, oil of foxes'. By the end of our period, this work had got into its fourth edition and Sir Hans Sloane, who presided over its publication in 1721, claimed in the preface that all remedies owing their use to superstition and false philosophy had been thrown out. There was indeed a greater simplicity 'and puppies, hedgehogs, wagtails, bread-crust plaster, lapis lazuli pills and Galen's unguentum refrigerans' had been dismissed, but many old and apparently superstitious formulas were retained. This may well have been the age of reason and Sloane, amongst many others, was certainly a reasonable man but medicine was still a fairly desperate science in thrall to desperate, dangerous and usually disgusting cures.^[7]

Given the apparent absurdity of much of what was offered by

the medical establishment, and its continued dependence on a considerable amount of magical and astrological belief, it is hardly surprising that many Londoners turned to magic and astrology themselves. Charms and amulets were sold and treasured; almanacks published information to guide their readers as to the most propitious times for medical treatment. The wise doctor accepted the superstition of the layman, as John Webster pointed out in 1677 when discussing how he dealt with those who believed they were 'bewitched, forespoken, blasted, fairy-taken, or haunted with some evil spirit and the like'. 'If you indulge their fancy, and seem to concur in opinion with them, and hang any insignificant thing about their necks, assuring them that it is a most efficacious charm, you may then easily settle their imaginations, and then give them that which is proper to eradicate the cause of their disease, and so you may cure them.'^[8] One cannot but applaud such a sensible approach; the only problem is that, the more one reads about contemporary medicine, the more one thinks that the charm might well be more efficacious than the physician.

The literate Londoner may have left abundant evidence that he belonged to a race of hypochondriacs but he certainly had adequate grounds for his continuous worries about his health. The sad truth was that, for the most part, the medicine of the day did not work and the numerous illnesses of middling people only too often led to their deaths at what would seem to us very unsuitable ages. The appalling mortality of infants and children has been discussed in an earlier chapter and this is a fact of the period which is well known. What is less well known is the vulnerability of young and middle-aged adults. This is illustrated in Figure 11.1, which compares the age at death of London adults between 1730 and 1749 with the situation today. The difference is quite staggering; at just those ages when we can feel most safe, our ancestors were most likely to die, in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties, when they would be actively engaged in running a business and bringing up a family. The death of the breadwinner in his prime was thus the norm in this society, a daily disaster which left behind children and wives who had been supported in the majority of cases by earnings which required the dead man's own individual application and knowledge.^[9]

Figure 11.1
Proportional Distribution of Adult Deaths in London 1730–49 and England
& Wales 1976
Source : London 1730–49 calculated from Bills of Mortality in Guildhall Library;
England and Wales 1976 from United Nations,  Demographic Yearbook
(New York, 1979) pp. 758–9. In 1730–49, 51.9% of all deaths
were of people under 20 and, in 1976, only 2.4%.

The period 1730–49 was chosen for this analysis because it was only from 1728 that age at death was recorded in the London Bills of Mortality. Before that date there is no direct evidence on which calculations can be based.^[10] However, what evidence there is suggests that by the 1730s there had been a distinct improvement on the past and that the period directly covered by this book, particularly the first thirty years of it, was considerably worse in terms of the mortality of adults from the London middle station. This can be illustrated from two

Figure 11.2
'Middle-Class' Mortality in London, 1675–1804
Source : See text and note 11.

sources, neither particularly reliable but together giving one some confidence that one is observing reality. Figure 11.2 is again based on the Bills of Mortality. The method used was to calculate deaths per thousand for two groups of 'middle-class' parishes clustered round the Guildhall and the northern approaches to London Bridge.^[11] The analysis would hardly satisfy a historical demographer but the results are still very striking, showing as they do a virtually continuous decline in mortality in both groups of parishes from the late 1680s to the early 1780s, with the exception of a serious hiccup in the two decades 1715–34, a period which includes the well-known time of general high mortality in the late 1720s.

It is of course possible that the decline in deaths per thousand illustrated in Figure 11.2 was entirely accounted for by a fall in infant and child mortality and that there was no improvement in adult mortality, which is our main interest

Figure 11.3
Age at Death of London Citizens, 1620–1739
Source : See text and note 12.

here. That this is probably not the case is indicated by Figure 11.3 above, which is based on the genealogical material collected in Boyd's Index of London Citizens and shows the proportion of citizens dying under the age of fifty at decadal intervals between 1620 and 1739. This indicates that there was a considerable increase in adult mortality at early ages in the third quarter of the seventeenth century but that, after 1689, there was a continuous decline until 1739 when the data run out.^[12] There is no sign here of the high mortality of the 1720s, possibly as a result of a quirk in the data but quite probably reflecting a change in the social incidence of disease. Charles Creighton explained the contemporary obsession with the high mortality of the 1670s and 1680s by the fact that it was particularly serious for adults and 'that a good many of them had been among the well-to-do', a hypothesis which is certainly illustrated in Figure 11.3. However, from 1715 onwards, there was a change. 'Our history henceforth has little to record of malignant typhus fevers, or of smallpox, in those snug

houses of the middle class, although not only the middle class, but also the highest class had a considerable share of those troubles all through the seventeenth century.'^[13]

There certainly do seem to have been social and occupational differences in mortality rates even amongst the members of the middle station. For example, the median age at death for the whole sample was 44 1/2 but for merchants it was 52 and for haberdashers 43, while for apothecaries it was only 40, suggesting that attendance at the bedside of the sick, though profitable, was also dangerous.^[14] These figures are based on only small numbers of cases, but it would seem reasonable that there should be environmental factors affecting mortality which would favour the wealthy and also that those whose business required them to spend time in the company of the poor or the sick would be more vulnerable to disease than, say, a merchant who had little need to mix with such people.

Such factors were likely to affect the accumulation of wealth. Apothecaries were thought to make extremely high profits but these were unlikely to lead to enormous fortunes if hardly any of them reached the age of fifty. On the other hand, those already favoured by fortune were more likely to live longer and so accumulate even more. What was true of individuals and of separate occupations was true of the middle station as a whole. Those who succumbed to the very high mortality of the early part of our period were not in a position to accumulate as much as those who survived it or who were born after it was over, a fact which is reflected in our sample, those dying before 1690 leaving a median fortune of £1353 and those dying afterwards £2076. There were other reasons for this 50 per cent increase in accumulation, but an improvement in life chances is clearly one important factor to take into account when considering why middling Londoners were able to grow richer in the reign of Queen Anne and richer still later in the eighteenth century.^[15]

Richer and longer lived they may have been, but they still died appallingly young by the standards of today. This was a fact of life in Augustan London and one with which middling people had to learn to live. The sad and often sordid scene of the death-bed was soon obliterated by the pomp of the funeral, while the money so eagerly accumulated during the lifetime of

the deceased was quickly distributed amongst his heirs, subjects which are discussed in the next section.

ii—
Funerals and the Transmission of Wealth

'I must have you to know', wrote a merchant in 1703 to his factor in Danzig, 'that I did not spare for any thing that is in fashion at funerals but had all to the height of the mode and soe as he made a good exit.' In fact he spent £125, quite a modest sum for a merchant's funeral, making a good exit being just about the most expensive single item in the affairs of the middle station. It was an expense which humbler people could ill afford at such a difficult time, but both respect for the dead and the need to maintain status in the eyes of the neighbourhood ensured that there was normally 'a very good company along with the Corps'.^[16]

There was a standard form for a middling funeral which could be expanded or contracted to allow virtually any expenditure to be made, the funerals of our sample ranging in cost from £3 to £728. Generally speaking, the richer the deceased the more extravagant and lavish was the funeral, as can be seen in Table 11.1 overleaf, though there were many exceptions. The puritans had campaigned against the expense and secular pomp of funerals, and such attitudes are sometimes reflected in instructions given in wills. James Blatt, for instance, willed that he be 'decently buried but as frugally as may be'. The noncomformist threadman William Ambler, who was buried in Bunhill Fields, was more specific both as to cost and motive: 'My will is that not exceeding twelve persons be invited to my buriall because the most of what I have is in other men's handes and therefore I would not have the whole charge of my funerall exceeding tenn pounds', and that was exactly what was spent. However, modesty and frugality clearly meant different things to different people. Philip Scarth, a druggist, willed that his funeral be 'as private as conveniently may be'; the surgeon Richard Blundell wanted 'decently to be buryed without pomp and with as little charge as is consistent with that decency'; their funerals cost £200 and £176 respectively.^[17]

Really lavish funerals to which hundreds of people had been invited normally started in the hall of the deceased man's livery

company, from which a huge procession, sometimes with scores of coaches, would proceed to the church. Alderman James Birkin, for instance, a former master of the Clothworkers' Company, willed that his corpse be carried from the company hall to the church of St Dunstan's in the East, where he was to be buried in the chancel under the tombstone where his wife already lay. The master, wardens and assistants of the company were to be invited and 'also a considerable number of the Artillery Company of which I am a member', the poor children of Christ's Hospital and 'so many poor old men as I shall be years old . . . I being about the middle of April last at the age of fiftie and three years'.^[18]

Such funerals cost £400 or £500 or more. A typical middling funeral was more modest but still expensive, as can be seen from the table. Most would begin and end at home. After the corpse had been laid out and dressed in its burial clothes, it was normally left on view in an open coffin for several days 'to give the dead man an opportunity of coming to life again if his soul had not quite left his body' and to allow time for the executors to make arrangements. Invitations were sent out, often on printed tickets, black cloth, gloves, hatbands and rings were purchased for the mourners, refreshments bought, the church and preacher booked and the grave bespoke. On the

day, the mourners came to the house and 'sat down in the room where the coffin was, looking as grave and as sad as we could'. Such gravity did not prevent the consumption of a glass or two of wine before the coffin was nailed up and the company marshalled for the procession, each with a sprig of rosemary to throw into the grave.^[19]

The procession through the streets to the church was a man's last opportunity to impress his neighbours and even modest funerals would have coaches for the chief mourners and scores of people on foot following the hearse. These arrangements did not cost very much compared with the total expenditure on the funeral. There is, for instance, an undertaker's bill for the 1731 funeral of John Hatfield, a Westminster tobacconist. The total cost was £47, about average for the poorer members of the middle station. Just under £18 was spent on a very handsome gilt-handled elm coffin, upholstered in silk, and on fine linen funeral clothes, the latter costing an additional £2 10s. for an exemption from the law requiring people to be buried in woollen cloth. Another £16 went on gloves, cloaks, hatbands and rings for the mourners and nearly £8 on expenses at the church and the gravedigger's fees. Compared with this, the pomp in the street to ensure a good exit in the eyes of the world was cheap. 'A neat hears and paire of horsis' was only 10s., three coaches and pairs 7s.6d. each and then there were fairly small expenses for cloaks, gloves and scarves for coachmen, porters and the parish bearers.^[20]

More coaches or coaches with four or six horses cost more money, but the real expense of funerals was laid out on cloth for mourning, broadcloth for men and silk for ladies, and on such customary presents as rings. Dudley Ryder bought 5 1/4 yards of black cloth at 18s. per yard for his grandmother's funeral in 1716 and many people provided mourning cloth for twenty or thirty people, the price per yard often being specified in the will to suit the dignity of the recipient. Rings might add up to even more. The merchant John Barkstead willed that 'every of my kindred and relations and those also of my wife who shall be invited to my funeral' should be given a ring worth £1. Most people gave rings to friends and neighbours as well and this could soon mount up. William Paggen's executors, for instance, paid the banker Thomas Williams for 143 gold rings.

They also paid £11 15s. to a herald for painting escutcheons—armorial shields which were hung over the windows and later fixed on the hearse—and these claims to gentility seem to have been quite commonly used in the middle station, sufficiently so for some people to make a point of saying in their wills that they did not want them, such as the skinner William Sawyer, who wanted 'noe heraldry att my funeral'.^[21]

After the burial, the procession made its way back to the deceased man's house and here there would be a second 'drinking'. These usually seem to have been fairly modest affairs. The 20 guests at the funeral of Pepys's brother Tom, a tailor, were served with 'six biscuits a-piece and what they pleased of burnt [i.e. mulled] claret'. Some people provided even less. Samuel Chambers, another tailor, willed that his widow 'shall give only a glasse of wine', while William Mackley wanted 'only gloves and rosemary but not a drop of wine' to be given at his funeral, a dry farewell for a man who had been a brewer.^[22]

The drinking was often the occasion for the reading of the will to assembled relatives and friends, and so can fittingly lead into a discussion of the ways in which the fortunes of middling people were distributed after their deaths. In the majority of cases, this was governed by the Custom of London, which provided detailed rules for the division of the personal estates of freemen and could override the provisions of a will. The first charges on the estate after it had been inventoried and valued were the deceased man's debts and the cost of his funeral. Then a deduction was made for the 'widow's chamber', which usually worked out at some £20 to £30 and represented the value of her clothing, jewellery and the furniture of her bed-chamber. What remained, if anything, was then available for division.^[23]

The rules for this were simple enough. One-third of the net estate went to the widow; one-third was divided equally between the children and one-third, 'the dead man's share', could be bequeathed by will. If the man died intestate, as 40 per cent of our sample did, then this residual share was divided half to the widow and half equally between the children.^[24] A complicated formula, known as 'hotchpotch', was used to calculate a fair division between the children when one or more

of them had been 'advanced' by the payment of a portion or dowry during their father's lifetime.^[25]

This equitable system, fair to widow and children alike, also governed the wishes of the majority of those who died testate, being either reflected in the distribution of the 'dead man's share' or of the whole personal estate in those cases where the will did not follow the Custom of London. Widows had sometimes been provided for by jointure or other prior contract but, where this was not the case, over 40 per cent received half or more of the dead man's share and another 20 per cent received a third.^[26] The children, too, were normally treated as equally by will as they were by custom. If one ignores only children and the small number of testators who left nothing from their dead man's share to the children (mostly those with very young children who left it all to the widow), then two-thirds of the remainder divided the estate equally amongst all the children. In the distribution of real estate, on the other hand, one can see a tendency to discriminate both by age and sex. Where there were both sons and daughters, in three-quarters of the cases the daughters got nothing and in nearly 40 per cent of cases all the real estate eventually went to the eldest son, often as a reversion from the widow. Middling people therefore believed in partible inheritance for their personal estate but had a strong tendency towards the gentry preference for primogeniture in the disposition of their real estate.^[27]

Wills also provide an opportunity for insights into the ways in which testators viewed their friends and relations. One can start by looking at who was appointed as executor, as is set out in Table 11.2 overleaf. Here it can be seen that, even if wives did not play a very important role in their husbands' businesses, they were sufficiently trusted to be appointed as executrix in the majority of cases, less then a quarter of testators who left a widow not naming her at all. However, nearly three-quarters who named their widows did so as either one of two or more joint-executors or provided for overseers to assist her, suggesting that most middling people did not believe their wives capable of handling the business on their own.^[28]

The table also shows the importance of brothers, brothers-in-law and 'friends' in the lives of the middle station and these relationships are well reflected in Table 11.3 (p. 317) which

analyses the recipients of legacies, most of which appear as deductions from the dead man's third of the estate before the main division between widow and children.^[29] This analysis throws some interesting light on middling society and makes clear the effects of the high mortality of the period. The very small percentage of wills which mention parents, parents-in-law, uncles, aunts or grandchildren clearly reflects the fact that such relations were rarely alive at the time of the death of adults. The middle-class world was thus largely a two-generation one, consisting of young and middle-aged adults and their children. Such conditions highlighted the importance of other young and middle-aged adults on whom one had some claim, such as brothers and sisters, cousins, brothers-in-law and, perhaps most important of all, 'friends'. Such people were remembered with gratitude and affection in wills, though they rarely received so valuable a legacy as those bequeathed to those felt to be more in need, such as nephews, grandchildren and close female relations.

One surprise in this analysis of wills was the relatively small

amount left by this class to charity, since historians have been led to believe from the work of W. K. Jordan that middling Londoners were very charitable indeed.^[30] In fact, less than a third of testators made any charitable bequests at all and the majority of these were fairly trivial relative to the value of their estates, as can be seen from Table 11.4 (p. 317). Nearly half the charitable left £10 or less, the £5 left by James Blatt to the poor of his London parish and £5 to the poor of Sudbury in Suffolk, where he did much of his business, being typical bequests.^[31] On the other hand, twenty people left over £100 and a handful of these left very large sums indeed.

Alderman Sir Jonathan Dawes left £500 'towards the relief of the poor children in Christ's Hospital' and £1000 to set up a trust to provide £50 per annum 'to be distributed amongst the poor people of Wootton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he was borne', large sums but still worth less than 4 per cent of his personal estate. Such a contribution pales beside the bequests of the former sugar refiner and alderman John Hobby, who died in 1675 aged sixty-three. He left £3000 to set up a charitable trust to provide £40 per annum towards apprenticing four 'blew coat boys', £20 per annum towards setting them up when they had finished their time, £60 per annum to provide clothing for 'thirty poor ancient persons' and £50 per annum 'to be used for the discharge of 25 poor prisoners for debt'. He also left £500 'to be distributed amongst such of my poorest and nearest kindred to be chosen by my executors' and willed that the residue of his estate 'be paid by my executors to such pious and charitable acts as to them shall seem most meete and just'. In a codicil made shortly before his death, he thought of a mass of other people whom he could help, 'to the blind woman in Coleman Street—£3', 'to the filecutter's wife with five children—40s.' and so on.^[32]

However, as has been seen, Alderman Hobby was very much an exception. The wills of our sample do not reflect the charity discovered by Jordan for the period before 1660. Several reasons can be suggested for this. Our sample by definition were men who died with children under the age of twenty-one and it seems certain that it was the childless or those who had already advanced all their children who would be most likely to be charitable on a really large scale, a hypothesis supported by the fact that several men willed that legacies should go to charity at the discretion of executors if all their children died before

they were of age. Our period is also one when the nature of charity was changing. Now that the poor law was well established and was operating fairly efficiently in London, there must have seemed less need for testamentary charity towards the poor. Meanwhile, charity for educational purposes, which had been an important feature of the period before the Civil War, took on a new form with the establishment of charity schools which were largely financed by subscription inter vivos rather than by charitable bequest. These were often said to have been supported mainly by middling people and many of our apparently non-caring sample may well have given considerable sums in this way during their lifetimes. Nevertheless, one does have to consider one last possibility, that the London middle class of our period was simply less charitable than their ancestors, a view certainly held by many.^[33]

Wills are sometimes seen as windows on the soul of the past, providing an insight into the nature and strength of the religious belief of the testator, but this is in fact rarely the case. Some wills certainly do contain a statement of faith, sometimes at great length, as in that of the Huguenot merchant John Dubois. Most wills, however, merely reflect the scrivener's formula book, with a short stylized spiritual introduction before getting down to business, 'and as to my worldly goods', while a surprisingly large number are totally secular in character. Wills sometimes give other hints as to piety or belief, such as bequests to a minister, specification of the text for the funeral sermon, bequests of bibles and other religious works, sometimes with manuscript annotations made by the deceased, and quite often admonitions to widows and particularly to children as to how to live in future, such as that of William Mackley who prayed 'his deare children to observe and follow the directions given them in a paper some time ago'. Such last wishes can be a guide to attitudes but, since the great majority of wills do not contain such material, a serious analysis would have to conclude that on the evidence of this source most middling people were neither pious nor particularly interested in religion, which is almost certainly not true.^[34]

One would have to come to a similar conclusion with regard to much other interesting information that one finds in wills, since one of the penalties of the quantitative bias of recent

scholarship has been to force historians to appreciate that they cannot generalize about a class on the basis of two or three literary references, however striking they may be. The dying wish of the jeweller Nathaniel Ragdale 'that no Jew or Papist shall inheritt or enjoy any part of my estate whatsoever' is not sufficient evidence to state that middling Londoners were an extremely prejudiced and intolerant lot, though there is in fact much other evidence which could be adduced to support such a statement. Similarly, the fact that William Waldron left all his Hebrew, Greek and Latin books to his son William does not allow one to make general statements about the education and scholarship of cheesemongers, let alone of middling people as a whole. Neither does his desire to be buried 'soe neare my late deceased wife as conveniently can be' mean that he had preferred his first wife Mary to his current wife Judith, though it might do, and one can find plenty of other evidence in wills hinting at the stresses caused by the early deaths of spouses and subsequent remarriages of middling men and women.^[35]

Wills are certainly interesting and useful sources in this respect, reflecting as they often do the multiple dangers, problems and anxieties of the lives of the middle station and their fears of what might happen to their loved ones in a world in which they were no longer present. The physical danger of the otherwise comfortable life of the merchant can be seen in the will of Samuel Tomlins, who left £100 towards the redemption from the corsairs of Algiers of his brother-in-law John Coleborn, 'a slave beyond sea'. Its commercial dangers are reflected in the will of the goldsmith-banker Thomas Williams, whose trade obliged him 'to great dealings with merchants and others, men of trade and adventure, some of which have or may meet with losses and misfortunes' and who instructed his executor and overseers 'to make such reasonable composition with such debtors as to them shall seem meet'. The collection of postmortem debts was never an easy task and several testators made arrangements to assist the widow in this respect, such as Richard Darnelly, who appointed Mr Reynolds, a merchant, as debt-collector at £10 a quarter, 'hee being a fitt man to that purpose', or Edward Treherne, looking-glass manufacturer to the Queen and two of the King's mistresses, who provided £10 for getting in debts incurred by Nell Gwynne.^[36]

Wills also provided an opportunity for reward and punishment. Only about one in six or seven testators left legacies to servants, a reflection no doubt of the high turnover, which was discussed in an earlier chapter. However, long service was noted and sometimes generously rewarded. The apothecary Peter Cully left his 'truly honest and faithful servant' Thomas Aungier 'my case of instruments that I use to carry in my pocket and also my other case of instruments in the drawer in the shoppe', together with all his medical and pharmaceutical books and manuscripts, his wearing apparel, a legacy of £10 and £5 to buy mourning. The merchant John Brookes left £30 to his nursemaid Frances Fairfield 'as an acknowledgement of her care and love to my children'. However, it has to be admitted that such generosity was very unusual. The majority of testators, as has been seen, left their servants nothing, while some of those who did remember servants and apprentices used the legacy as a means of ensuring that they would not immediately desert the widow. The builder John Wildgos, for instance, left his apprentice Thomas Thornton £10 on condition that he serve out the remainder of his time with his wife Elizabeth or if he left that it should be with her consent.^[37]

Conditions were also sometimes tied to family legacies in an attempt to control the future. Some legacies to widows were to be reduced or made void if they remarried, though this was unusual, and in most cases the testator was mainly interested in protecting his children rather than punishing their mother for doing what was normal in this class. Widows who remarried might be required to give good security for the payment of legacies to the children or to deposit those legacies in the hands of overseers or trustees.^[38] Attempts were also made to control the children through threats or promises in a will. In three cases, as has been mentioned earlier, this went as far as disinheriting the eldest son, a very sad breakdown in family relations, as can be seen from the words of Richard Darnelly whose son Daniel 'doth still continue his exorbitant and evil courses and wicked company . . . with griefe of heart I speake it and I beseech the Lord to forgive him'.

Most fathers did not go so far but several had serious doubts about their sons. George Carew had his portion docked by £200 because of his 'extravagant expenses' while up at Wadham

College, Oxford. George Phinnes was left some property but only 'on condition . . . he doe peaceably and quietly permitt and suffer his sister my daughter Sarah to have and enjoy her legacies', a question here of sibling rivalry between the children of two different mothers. Joseph How was only to inherit his father's distillery in White Cross Street at the age of twenty-three 'if he behaves himself', while Edward Osborne's ten-year-old son was made joint residual legatee with his mother but only 'if he be dutyfull and obedient to his mother and doe take virtuous and good courses. But if he shall happen to be disobedient to his said mother and grow idle and extravagant then I will and devise his parte . . . unto my said wife.'^[39]

Once again, such comments and conditions in wills are unusual. They catch the eye, but they are not typical and it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that the men of the middle station were engaged in some generation-gap struggle with their children or that they disapproved of their wives remarrying. The fact is that most wills reflect a world of harmony in which everybody is 'deare and loving' and there seem to be no doubts in the testator's mind about the rationality, good sense and equity of the various members of his family. Some wills are so full of names and descriptions that one can get a real picture of the people who made up this harmonious middling world. The widowed apothecary, Peter Cully, for instance, mentioned over 150 people in his will, ranging out from his two 'deare' sons John and Abraham to his brothers and sisters and other relations in London and his native Berkshire, to the ministers, lecturers, clerks and sextons of the churches he attended, to thirty-three 'very loveing friends and neighbours', all named, to the eleven other 'loveing brethren' in an apothecaries' club, to herbarists and medical colleagues, to the masters of the physic gardens in Westminster and Oxford. He was quick to note the social eminence of some of his relatives, 'my much esteemed cousin the Lady Cullen', but he did not forget or despise the humble, the poor of Wantage where he was born or of St Andrew Undershaft where he plied his trade, 'my man Theophilus Davis', 'my man George Ward', his maids, his butcher, 'the porters that ply at my dore', 'Jane the herbwoman', 'my new cookmaid', 'old Henry Knox', 'Gammer Bess, Gammer Alice and Nurse Blake'.^[40]

Cully's world was the world which this book has tried to describe, the world of middle-class Londoners. The method of analysis and description employed has allowed some fairly concrete statements to be made about their social and economic behaviour and to give some idea of their material existence. However, there are large areas of human behaviour where the sources available do not enable one to speak with confidence, such as was found in the discussion of relations between the sexes or between parents and children. Religion is another problem area. One could make a pretty good prima facie case that this class was very religious and that this would have been likely to affect their attitude to everything else, including the making of money. However, this would be virtually impossible to prove conclusively. It is easy enough to find evidence that this person or that was pious or religious, whatever such adjectives may mean, but how does one establish the intensity of religious belief of a whole class? On the other hand, there is no doubt that middle-class people were materialistic and acquisitive and that, for the most part, they behaved with the economic rationality which theorists assume, rather optimistically, to be typical of the human race. However, let us be charitable and assume that their outward piety and respectability reflected an inner faith and that they lived, as the merchant Mun Browne hoped that his family would live after his death, 'in love, peace and charity and in the feare of the Lord, Amen'.^[41]