Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:09:16.002Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Paul Griffiths
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 39 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ENDNOTES

1 See Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the archives: pardon tales and their tellers in sixteenth-century France (Stanford, Calif., 1987).Google Scholar

2 The principal archival sources for this article are the first five courtbooks of the court of London Bridewell [hereafter BCB], Sadly they are not in consecutive series. The dates covered by each volume are as follows: 1, 1559–62; 2, 1574–6; 3, 1576–9; 4, 1597–1604; and 5, 1604–10. I have also consulted a selection of plays and pamphlets which cover the whole period 1560–1760. Material from some other pamphlets has been taken from McMullan, John L., The canting crew: London's criminal underworld 1550–1750 (London, 1984), chap. 7.Google Scholar

3 For some preliminary remarks see Archer, Ian, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), esp. pp. 211–15, 231–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 McMullan, , Canting crew, 119.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 131, 132–3.

6 McMullan, John L., ‘Crime, law and order in early modern England’, The British Journal of Criminology, Delinquency and Deviant Social Behaviour 27 (1987), 252–74.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 264, 259, 267, 270, 268, 259.

8 Berlin, Norman, The base-string: the underworld in Elizabethan Drama (Cranbury, N.J., 1968), 109, 188Google Scholar. Cf. Perry, Mary Elizabeth, Crime and society in early modem Seville (New England, 1980), chap. 10.Google Scholar

9 See Clark, Stuart, ‘Inversion, misrule and the meaning of witchcraft in Stuart England’, Past and Present 87 (1980), 98–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Berlin, , Base-string, 21, 128Google Scholar; Greene, Robert, A disputation between a he-cony – catcher and a she-cony-catcher (London, 1592Google Scholar; reprinted in Judges, A. V. ed., The Elizabethan underworld (London, 1965)), 210Google Scholar; Taylor, John, A bawd, a vertuous bawd, a modest bawd: as shee deserves, reprove or else applaud, in All the works of John Taylor the Water Poet (London, 1630; Scolar Press Facsimile, London, 1973), [hereafter Works], 99, 103.Google Scholar

11 Greene, , Disputation, 210, 213Google Scholar; Berlin, . Base-string, 23Google Scholar. Cf. Andrew, Donna T., Philantrophy and police: London charity in the eighteenth century (Princeton, 1989), 121.Google Scholar

12 Berlin, , Base-string, 88, 128Google Scholar. The title ‘lost women’ is taken from Perry, Crime and society.

13 See Dunton, John, The night-walker: or, evening rambles in search of lewd women (London, 1696Google Scholar; facsimile edn ed. Trumbach, R., in the Garland series, ‘Marriage, Sex and the Family in England 1660–1800’, no. 19 (London, 1985)), November, 5, 6, 26Google Scholar; February, 18; Berlin, , Base-string, 26.Google Scholar

14 Nash, Thomas, Christ's tears over Jerusalem (London, 1593Google Scholar; Scolar Press Facsimile, Menston, 1970), fo. 77v; Taylor, , A bawd, 102Google Scholar; Dekker, Thomas, The honest whore, Part 1, in Thomas, Bowers ed., The dramatic works of Thomas Dekker (4 vols.; Cambridge, 1955–1961), 2:1, 409Google Scholar; Amanda, or the reformed whore [originally published in 1635, hereafter Amanda], ed. Ouvry, F. (London, 1869), 40, 48, 102, 103Google Scholar; Dunton, , Night-walker, February, 15Google Scholar; September, epistle dedicatory.

15 Berlin, , Base-string, 97.Google Scholar

16 Amanda, 102Google Scholar; Greene, , Disputation, 246.Google Scholar

17 Dunton, Night-walker, January, 7, 9; December, 23; Greene, Disputation, 223Google Scholar; [Gwillim, John], The London bawd with her character and life (London, 4th ed, 1711Google Scholar; facsimile edn, ed. Trumbach, R., in the Garland series, ‘Marriage, Sex and the Family in England 1660–1800’, no. 17 (London, 1986)), 37, and 37–51.Google Scholar

18 Welch, Saunders, A proposal to render effectual a plan to remove the nuisance of common prostitutes from the streets of the Metropolis (London, 1758Google Scholar; facsimile edn in Trumbach, R. ed., Prostitution reform: four documents, in the Garland Series, ‘Marriage, Sex and the Family in England 1660–1800’, no. 22 (London, 1985)), 14Google Scholar. See also Nash, Christ's tears, fos. 77–77v; Dunton, Night-walker, February, epistle dedicatory; Greene, , Disputation, 223, 224–5Google Scholar; Amanda, 74.Google Scholar

19 Berlin, Base-string, 55ff.

20 Welch, , Proposal, 15.Google Scholar

21 Greene, , Disputation, 232Google Scholar. Cf. the closing remarks of Goodcole, Henry, Heaven's speedie hue and cry sent after lust and murther… (London, 1635).Google Scholar

22 Dunton, Night-walker, January, 3–4; Amanda, 42, 89, 43–4.Google Scholar

23 Guildhall Library, London [hereafter GL] MS 6, ‘Memoires Historical Relating to the 5 Principal Hospitals in London’, fo. 6. For some remarks on the function and foundation of Bridewell, see Archer, , Pursuit of stability, esp. pp. 251–4Google Scholar; Beier, A. L., Masterless men: the vagrancy problem in England 1560–1640 (London, 1984), 164ff.Google Scholar; O'Donoghue, E. G., Bridewell Hospital… from the earliest times to the end of the reign of Elizabeth (London, 1923), chaps. 14, 15, 17, 18Google Scholar. For Bridewells more generally, see Innes, Joanna, ‘Prisons for the poor: English Bridewells 1555–1800’, in Francis, Snyder and Douglas, Hey eds., Labour, law and crime: an historical perspective (London, 1987), 42–122. I have greatly benefited from discussing Bridewell with Ian Archer, who offered both ideas and a number of references.Google Scholar

24 Bishop Ridley was an important figure in the foundation of Bridewell. Another, Richard Grafton, was a committed protestant. Archer has identified a substantial godly presence among the Bridewell governors (Pursuit of stability, 253–4).

25 Ridley is quoted in O'Donoghue, , Bridewell Hospital, 143, 144Google Scholar. The descriptions of the governors are in the Bridewell ordinances of 1557, and the declaration by the citizens of London, both of which can be found in The thirty-second report of the Charity Commissioners of England and Wales, Per Acts 38 Geo. 3 c. 91, and Geo. 3 c. 81, Part VI, 1840 [219], xix, Part 1, [hereafter Charity commissioners], 390, 389.

26 GL MS 6, fo. 6v; Charity commissioners, 394–5Google Scholar; the quotation from Bridewell's charter is in John Howes MS. 1582, ed. William Lempriere [hereafter Howes MS] (London, 1904), 58–60; O'Donoghue, , Bridewell Hospital, 150Google Scholar; Howes MS, 56–7Google Scholar; Bacon, Francis, A brief discourse upon the Commission of Bridewell, in Spedding, J. et al. eds., The works of Francis Bacon (14 vols.; London 1857–1874), vol. 7, 512.Google Scholar

27 Quoted in full in Charity commissioners.

28 The journals of all the Parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth collected by Sir Simonds D'Ewes, revised and published by Bowes, P. (London, 1682; facsimile edn, Irish University Press, Shannon, 1973), 648Google Scholar; Corporation of London Record Office, Repertories of the Court of Aldermen, 25, fos. 312, 324; BCB 4, 6 December 1600 [in BCB references the date of the case is given in the absence of pagination here and below]. Ian Archer believes that there was also a separate bill introduced into the same Parliament for Bridewell (personal communication).

29 Bacon, , Discourse, 512, 514.Google Scholar

30 Charity commissioners, 400.Google Scholar

31 Quotation from The supplication by assent of Governors of Poor to King's Majesty for obtaininge Bridewell (1552), is in Charity commissioners, 387Google Scholar; Howes MS, 47, 15–16Google Scholar; Declaration in Charity commissioners, 388, 390; GL MS 6, fos. 3v–4; O'Donoghue, , Bridewell Hospital, 146.Google Scholar

32 Charity commissioners, 400Google Scholar; the quotation from the Common Council Act of 1579 is in Ibid., 397; Howes MS, 61, 62, 71; GL MS 6, fo. 7v.

33 Amanda, 58Google Scholar. See also Dekker, , Reformed whore, Part 2, 5:2, 44.Google Scholar

34 In fact the pace of prosecution diminishes still further in the 1610s and 1620s, and in my continuing research I have discovered no campaign to match that of the winter of 1576–7.

35 Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 253–4.Google Scholar

36 The fullest account of prostitution in medieval England is Karras, Ruth Mazo, ‘The regulation of brothels in later medieval England’, Signs 14 (1989), 399–433CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rosser, Gervase, Medieval Westminster 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1898), 143–4Google Scholar; Post, J., ‘A fifteenth-century customary of the Southwark Stews’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 5 (1974–1977), 418–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a comparative perspective, see Rossiaud, J., Medieval prostitution, trans. Cochrane, L. G. (Oxford, 1988), esp. pp. 7–8, 22, 56, 59–60Google Scholar; Otis, L. T., Prostitution in medieval society: the history of an urban institution in Languedoc (London, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geremek, Bronislaw, The margins of society in late medieval Paris, trans. Jean, Birrell (Cambridge, 1987), 214ffGoogle Scholar. See also The wandering whore, in six parts (London, 1660Google Scholar; facsimile edn ed. Trumbach, R., in the Garland series, ‘Marriage, Sex and the Family in England, 1660–1800’, no. 17 (London, 1986)), part 1, 5.Google Scholar

37 I do not intend to discuss the impact of the Reformation at present. Archer has established the main contours of the debate in his Pursuit of stability, 249–54. Cf. Roper, Lyndal, The holy household: women and morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1988), chap. 3.Google Scholar

38 Taylor, John, A common whore with all these graces grac'd, in his Works, 110Google Scholar. On male prostitution, see Bray, Alan, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982), 53, 85.Google Scholar

39 McMullan, , Canting crew, esp. 120–5.Google Scholar

40 BCB 3, fo. 103v; BCB 4, 14 March 1598; BCB 5, fo. 384; BCB 4, fo. 221. See also BCB 3, fos. 100v, 109v, 110v, 118v, 121; BCB 4, fos. 73v, 81v, 220v.

41 For Shaw, see BCB 3, fos. 103–4, 109–11, 115, 116, 118, 120–4, 127v, 134; and for Jane Fuller, who kept a similar establishment, see Ibid., fos. 100–102v, 115v, 118, 125v, 128–129v, 6 January 1577.

42 This distinction is neatly presented by Greene, Robert, in The second part of cony-catching, in Judges, ed., Elizabethan underworld, 165.Google Scholar

43 The quotation from Johnson's Bartholomew Fair is in Salgado, Gamini, The Elizabethan underworld (London, 1977), 59.Google Scholar

44 BCB 4, fos. 385, 429v–31, 440v; BCB 3, 20 June 1579. See also BCB 3, fo. 328v; BCB 4, 27 September 1598, fo. 73; BCB 5, fo. 257.

45 GL MS 12, 806/2, fo. 134v; BCB 3, fos. 99v, 100, 266; BCB 4, fos. 228, 248v, 251–52, 258v, 429v, 434.

46 Dunton, Night-walker, December, 15. See also BCB 3, fo. 121; BCB 4, fos. 228, 252; Taylor, , A whore, 111.Google Scholar

47 Dunton, Night-walker, October, 27. See also Ibid., 28; BCB 3, fos. 102, 127, 277–81; BCB 4,4 October 1598; BCB 5, fo. 275; GL MS 12, 806/2, fo. 134v, and below, n. 52.

48 BCB 3, fos. 133v, 111; BCB 4, fos. 228,434. See also BCB 3, fos. 66, 67v, 114, 121, 161, 169, 170v, 188, 298. Cf. Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 213.Google Scholar

49 BCB 3, fos. 128, 109, 220v–221; Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77v; Greene, , Disputation, 216Google Scholar. See also BCB 3, fos. 161v–162, 221, 266, 274v–276, 20 August 1579; 4, fos. 270, 248v, 429v–431.

50 BCB 3, 20 August 1579, fos. HOv, 120; BCB 4, fos. 207, 221v, 22 October 1598.

51 For example, Dekker, , Reformed whore, Part 2, 5:2, 245–9.Google Scholar

52 Wandering whore, part 1,9; Dekker, , Honest whore, Part 1, 3:1, 45Google Scholar. See also BCB 3, fo. 110. For some good examples of pimps ‘fetching’ prostitutes across London, see BCB 3, fos. 32, 33, 102, 103v–104, 116v, 122v, 129, 135, 213; BCB 4, fo. 77. cf. Geremek, , Margins of society, 229–30Google Scholar. Pimps did not always have such a pivotal role, and in some operations they had no role at all. See White, L., ‘Vice and vagrants: prostitution, housing and casual labour in Nairobi in the mid-1930s’, in Snyder, and Hay, eds., Labour, law and crime, 202–27, esp. 203.Google Scholar

53 For example, BCB 3, fos. 109v, 110.

54 For example, Ibid., fos. 27, 126.

55 See Griffiths, Paul, ‘Some aspects of the social history of youth in early modern England, with particular reference to the period 1560–1640’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1992), 312.Google Scholar

56 BCB 3, fos. 102, 106v, 110v, 111–lllv, 240v–241.

57 Pimps also maintained regular contact with individual keepers, Boyer with Shaw, for example, and Wattwood with Wise.

58 Dekker, , Honest whore, Part 1, 3:1, 30–3; 2:1, 370–2Google Scholar; Westward ho, in Bowers, ed., Works, 2:2, 152–3Google Scholar; [Gwillim], London bawd, 8.; The arraignement and burning of Margaret Ferne-Seede for the murder of her late husband (London, 1608), 2Google Scholar. For comparative perspectives on attitudes towards, and treatment of, the bawd/procurer, see Geremek, , Margins of society, 234–9Google Scholar; Roper, , Holy household, 117–23.Google Scholar

59 See below, pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

60 Lyndal Roper discovered a very similar trend in Reformation Augsburg, where the majority of keepers and procurers were married females. Of the 41 individuals convicted of procuring in the period 1528–1548 35 were women (Holy household, 121, and 117–23). Cf. Rossiaud, , Medieval prostitution, 30Google Scholar: ‘Procuration… was a specifically female activity.’ Of the 83 ‘private bordellos’ discovered by Rossiaud 75 were kept by women.

61 BCB 3, fos. 153–153v; Dunton, Night-walker, October, 28. See also Welch, , Proposal, 12Google Scholar. The Elizabethan Bridewell courtbooks contain no evidence of bawds keeping prostitutes in a state of indebtedness to maintain their control; cf. McMullan, , Canting crew, 132Google Scholar; Roper, , Holy household, 94–5.Google Scholar

62 For example, BCB 5, 372.

63 For example, BCB 4, fos. 429v–431, 434.

64 BCB 3, fos. 156v–157. See also BCB 5, fos. 26v, 372, 421.

65 BCB 3, fo. 193v–196, 213.

66 For Breame, see BCB 3, fos. 298–298v; Jones, Ibid., fos. 100–1, 129. See also BCB 4, fo. 434.

67 BCB 5, fo. 378.

68 BCB 4, fos. 395–395v. See also BCB 3, fos. 112, 375v; Wandering whore, part 1, 11; [Gwillim], London bawd, 4, 121, 141, 145; Dunton, Night-walker, October, 28, December, 17.

69 Greene, , Disputation, 216Google Scholar; Taylor, , A whore, 106.Google Scholar

70 BCB 3, fo. 127v.

71 [Gwillim], London bawd, 71; Dunton, Night-walker, October, 15–16.

72 BCB 4, fo. 261v.

73 BCB 3, fo. 120; BCB 5, fo. 17.

74 BCB 3, fos. 328v, 104, 266.

75 BCB 3, fos. lOOv, 101, 109, 120, 127v, 131v, 149–149v, 221, 274, 275v–276, 368, 20 June 1579; BCB 4, fos. 69v, 221v, 380, 429v–431, 434; Dekker, Honest whore, Part 2, 5:2, 379–80.

76 BCB 3, fos. 328v, 104, 266.

77 Ibid., fos. 128v, 101v, 10v, 130v; Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 214; BCB 4, fos. 385, 431.Google Scholar

78 Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 215; Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 78; BCB 4, fo. 257.Google Scholar

79 We can also add Stephen French, Joanne Bonner, Zachary Marshall, Thomas Wise, Gilbert East and Richard Wattwood. See also BCB 3, fos. 27, 103, 33.

80 BCB 3, fo. 102.

81 Ibid., fo. 102v.

82 Ibid., fos. 111v, 375v.

83 Ibid., fos. 103v, 107, 213; Dekker, Honest whore, Part 1, 3:1, 49–50.

84 Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77vGoogle Scholar; Amanda, 74Google Scholar; Dunton, Night-walker, October, 27; February, epistle dedicatory; Welch, , Proposal, 13Google Scholar; Wandering whore, part 3, 7–8. Cf. Andrew, , Philantrophy and police, 187.Google Scholar

85 BCB 3, fo. 33; BCB 4, fos. 101 v, 389. Cf. Dunton, Night-walker September, 4; December, 25; January, 22; Wandering whore, part 3, 7; Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77.

86 BCB 3, fo. 107; BCB 4, fos. 395–395v; 3, fos. 103, 107, 224v, 365v, 367v, 158v. See also BCB 4, fo. 439.

87 For example, Fielding, John, An account of the origin and effects of a police set on foot by His Grace the Duke of Newcastle in the year 1753 (London, 1758), 45Google Scholar; An account of the rise, progress and present state of the Magadalen Hospital (fifth edn, London, 1776)Google Scholar [hereafter Account of Magdalen Hospital], 6, 84. Both are reprinted in Trumbach ed., Prostitution reform. Cf. Rossiaud, , Medieval prostitution, 32.Google Scholar

88 For example, Dunton, Night-walker, September, 2, 3, 17; October, 23, 25; November, 2; December, 15; January, 4, 5, 30; February, 16; March, 15, 23–4.

89 For example, Amanda, 41, 48, 99Google Scholar; Taylor, , A bawd, 95, 99Google Scholar; Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77v.

90 BCB 4, 1 April 1598; BCB 3, fo. 128. Cf. the ordinances of the Southwark Stews, which refer to women who ‘live by their body’, quoted by Mazo Karras, ‘Regulation of brothels’, appendix.

91 BCB 3, fo. 102v. See also Ibid., fos. 105v, 111v, 112.

92 BCB 1, fos. 4–5, 5v, 16.

93 For some other examples, see BCB 1, fo. 10v; BCB 2, fo. 188; BCB 3, fos. 70v, 277, 364v–365, 20 August 1579; BCB 4, fos. 139, 248v, 22 November 1598; GL MS 12, 806/2, fo. 134v.

94 For example, BCB l, fos. 187v, 188; BCB 3, fos. 117v, 130v(twice), 136, 148, 153–153v, 162, 366; BCB 4, fos. 385–385v.

95 For example, BCB 2, fo. 107; BCB 3, fos. 156v–157, 161v–162, 228v, 299v, 20 June 1579; BCB 4, fos. 49, 64, 66v, 69v, 139, 389, 4 March 1598, 27 September 1598, 4 October 1598; BCB 5, fos. 26v, 158v, 161v, 397v.

96 BCB 3, fos. 193v–196. See also Ibid., fos. 274v–276.

97 For example, Account of Magdalen Hospital, 36Google Scholar; Fielding, , Account, 46Google Scholar; Dunton, Night-walker, September, 13; November, 2; December, 17; January, 4; Welch, , Proposal, 4–5.Google Scholar

98 Account of Magdalen Hospital, 33–4, 45, 53, 205Google Scholar; Dunton, Night-walker, September, 2–3; Welch, , Proposal, 25.Google Scholar

99 For example, Dunton, Night-walker, October, 25; January, 5; March, 15.

100 Ibid., September, 3; February, 14–16. Cf. Rossiaud, , Medieval prostitution, 32Google Scholar: ‘half [of the women in the sample] had been constrained by force… and nearly a quarter had been prostituted by their family or pushed into prostitution by an intolerable family environment. Only 15 per cent of prostitutes seem to have offered their bodies on their own initiative and without constraint.’ Cf. Andrew, , Philanthropy and police, 117.Google Scholar

101 BCB 4, fos. 261v, 453.

102 Dingley, Robert, Proposals for Establishing a public place of reception for penitent prostitutes (London, 1758)Google Scholar, reprinted in Trumbach, ed., Prostitution reform, 4Google Scholar; Welch, , Proposal, 25Google Scholar; BCB 4, fos. 202, 258v. Cf. Beier, , Masterless men, 52–3Google Scholar; Earle, Peter, ‘The female labour market in London in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries’, Economic History Review second series, 42 (1989), 328–53, esp. 331, 342–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Andrew, , Philanthropy and police, 117Google Scholar. White has noted the participation of young immigrant women in prostitution in Nairobi in the mid-1930s (‘Vice and vagrants’, 204).

103 For example, [Gwillim], London bawd, 141–2Google Scholar; Welch, , Proposal, 11Google Scholar; Dekker, Honest whore, Part 2, 3:3, 6–7; 5:2, 381–2; Dekker, Northward ho, in Bowers ed., Works, 4:3, 95; Dekker, Westward ho, 1:1, 19–21; Taylor, , A bawd, 95Google Scholar; Dunton, Night-walker, October, 23; March, 23–4; Arraignement and burning of Margaret Ferne-Seede.

104 For example, BCB 4, fos. 220v, 13 May 1598.

105 See Griffiths, ‘Some aspects’, esp. chap. 6.

106 BCB 4, 1 04 1598, 4 10 1598Google Scholar. See also BCB 3, 15 04 1579Google Scholar; BCB 4, fo. 260; BCB 5, fo. 362v.

107 BCB 4, fo. 342v; [Gwillim], London bawd, 11.

108 Some preliminary findings will be presented in a future article, ‘The outsider in early Stuart London’, which I hope to publish in a forthcoming collection edited by Fox, Adam, Griffiths, Paul and Hindle, Steven, entitled The experience of authority in England 1500–1800.Google Scholar

109 BCB 3, fos. 100, 157; BCB 4, fo. 258v, 1 April 1598.

110 Stone, Lawrence, The family, sex and marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977), 617–18.Google Scholar

111 For example, BCB 3, fo. 99v.

112 Ibid., fo. 126v.

113 BCB 4, fo. 228.

114 BCB 3, fo. 129v.

115 Dekker, , Honest whore. Part 1, 2:1, 421–2Google Scholar; Amanda, 48; Taylor, , A bawd, 95Google Scholar; [Gwillim], London bawd, 3; Dunton, Night-walker, December, 14. Cf. Rossiaud, , Medieval prostitution, 36Google Scholar; Geremek, , Margins of society, 239.Google Scholar

116 Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77v; Dunton, Night-walker, September, 16; February, epistle dedicatory.

117 This is an important theme in my continuing research into marginality in London c. 1598–1660 (see n. 108, above).

118 Cf. Sharpe, J. A., Crime in early modern England 1550–1750 (London, 1984), 8–9.Google Scholar

119 An excellent account of the limitations of what we find in the archives as a basis for the reconstruction of early modern crime is given in Macfarlane, Alan, The justice and the mare's ale (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar

120 Ingram, Martin, Church courts, sex and marriage in England 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987), 282Google Scholar; Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 211.Google Scholar

121 McMullan, , ‘Crime, law and order’, 259.Google Scholar

122 This theme is further explored in my present research into marginality in London c. 1598–1660 (see n. 108, above).

123 Cf. McMullan, , ‘Crime, law and order’, 265Google Scholar: ‘Bridewell court records in London show no organized crime.’

124 Salgado, Elizabethan underworld, chap. 2; Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77; Dekker, Thomas, Lantern and candlelight (1608; reprinted in Judges, ed., Elizabethan underworld, 347–50)Google Scholar; Dekker, The reformed whore, Part 2,4:2, 90–3.

125 Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77; Dekker, Westward ho, 5:4, 246–53; Salgado, , Elizabethan underworld, 57–8Google Scholar; cf. Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 211.Google Scholar

126 For example, Lupton, Donald, London and the countrey carbonadoed (London, 1632Google Scholar; facsimile edn in the series ‘The English experience’, no. 879 (Amsterdam, 1977; Norwood, N.J.), 50–5; Amanda, 63–4; [Gwillim], London bawd, 61–3; Wandering whore, Part 1, 10; Part 2, 9–10.

127 BCB 3, fos. 317v–318, 320–320v. Ian Archer has claimed that there were at least 100 brothels in later Elizabethan London (‘Governors and governed in late sixteenth-century London c. 1560–1603: studies in the achievement of stability’, (unpublished D. Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1988), 311.Google Scholar

128 BCB 3, fos. 318, 147; BCB 4, fo. 261v; BCB 3, 20 June 1579.

129 BCB 3, fo. 107; BCB 4, fos. 395–395v; BCB 3, fos. 103, 107, 224v, 365v, 367v, 158v. See also BCB 4, fo. 439.

130 Welch, , Proposal, 5, 15Google Scholar; Dunton, Night-walker, October, 28; November, 5, 26; December, 9; February, 18; Arraignement and burning of Margaret Ferne-Seede, 4–5. See also BCB 3, fos. 102v, 118v; Rossiaud, , Medieval prostitution, 147–8Google Scholar; White, , ‘Vice and vagrants’, 211.Google Scholar

131 This is also a feature of the period 1603–42.

132 Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 231–2.Google Scholar

133 Nash, Christ's tears, fo. 77; Dekker, , Lantern and candlelight, 347–8Google Scholar. Salgado, , Elizabethan underworld, 53, 64Google Scholar; McMullan, , Canting crew, 140.Google Scholar

134 Amanda, 35; Dekker, Northward ho, 4:3, 74–5; Dekker, Westward ho 2:2, 236; 4:1, 10; Honest whore, Part 2, 2:2, 5–9; Dunton, Night-walker, February, 11, 19.

135 Cf. Archer, , Pursuit of stability, 232.Google Scholar

136 The sample has the problem of identifying groups of clients as one individual: i.e. ‘divers stillyard men’ or ‘divers prentises’ are reduced to a single entry, in these cases ‘foreign merchant’ and ‘apprentice’.

137 For the sake of clarity this group unfortunately includes a range of trades, from a goldsmith to a bricklayer.

138 Other major groups in the sample include servants and the sons of civic officials, members of the aristocracy and the military (2.3 per cent each), and attornies and pimps (1.4 percent each).

139 Dekker, Northward Ho 4:3, 84, 86 (but cf. 4:3, 74–5). See also Dekker's Honest whore, Part 2, 2:2, 5–9; 4:3, 75; Amanda, 37; Nash, Christ's Tears, fo. 77.

140 Stone, , Family, sex and marriage, 616, and 615–17Google Scholar. Cf. Roper, , Holy household, 92–3Google Scholar; Rossiaud, , Medieval prostitution, 38–9.Google Scholar

141 Geremek, , Margins of society, 213Google Scholar; Dekker, Reformed whore, Part 2, 4:2, 106.

142 Archer identifies this trend in the business of the late Elizabethan court (Pursuit of stability, table 6.1, 239). I am currently quantifying all prosecuted crime at Bridewell c. 1617–60 and the proportion of cases of vagrancy in weekly business continues to increase in the Jacobean period.

143 Cf. Geremek, , Margins of society, 239–41.Google Scholar

144 I have in mind recent publications by Valarie Pearl, M. J. Power, Steve Rappaport and Jeremy Boulton.