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Life-cycle service and the family unit in early modern Rye

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Graham Mayhew
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Continuity and Change , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , August 1991 , pp. 201 - 226
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

ENDNOTES

1 See for example Clark, Peter, ‘The migrant in Kentish towns 1580–1640’, in Clark, P. and Slack, P., eds., Crisis and order in English towns 1500–1700 (1972)Google Scholar; , P. and Clark, J., ‘The social economy of the Canterbury suburbs: the evidence of the census of 1563’, in Detsicas, A. and Yates, N., eds., Studies in modern Kentish history (Maidstone, 1983)Google Scholar; Goose, N., ‘Household size and structure in early-Stuart Cambridge’, Social History 5 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldberg, P. J. P., ‘Marriage, migration, servanthood and life-cycle in Yorkshire towns of the later Middle Ages’, Continuity and Change 1, 2 (1986), 141–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kitch, M. J., ‘Capital and kingdom: migration to later Stuart London’, in Beier, A. L. and Finlay, Roger, eds., London 1500–1700. The making of the metropolis (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Laslett, P., ‘Mean household size in England since the sixteenth century’, in Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard, eds., Household and family in past time (Cambridge 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Laslett, , ‘Mean household size’, 152.Google Scholar

3 Phythian-Adams, Charles, Desolation of a city. Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (1979), 204Google Scholar; Laslett, Peter, Family life and illicit love in earlier generations (Cambridge 1977), 32, 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , P. and Clark, J., ‘The social economy of the Canterbury suburbs’, 73.Google Scholar

4 Based on Table 6 of Schwarz, L., ‘London apprentices in the seventeenth century: some problems’, Local Population Studies 38 (1987)Google Scholar. In the light of Schwarz's criticisms, the figures of 15 per cent in 1600 and 4.5 per cent in 1700 given by Finlay, R., Population and metropolis. The demography of London 1580–1650 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 67, appear to be rather too high.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Laslett, , Family life and illicit love, 93.Google Scholar

6 Phythian-Adams, , Desolation of a city, 204Google Scholar; Goose, N., ‘Household size and structure’, 374:Google Scholar, P. and Clark, J., ‘The social economy of the Canterbury suburbs’, 73Google Scholar; Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and society. A London suburb in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1987), 135.Google Scholar

7 Boulton, Jeremy, Neighbourhood and society, 113.Google Scholar

8 Houlbrooke, Ralph A., The English family 1450–1700 (1984), 171–8Google Scholar; Laslett, Peter, The world we have lost further explored (1983), 12–13Google Scholar; Macfarlane, A., The family life of Ralph Josselin, a seventeenth century clergyman (Oxford, 1970), 205–7Google Scholar; Phythian-Adams, , Desolation of a city, 83.Google Scholar

9 Clark, Peter, ‘The migrant in Kentish towns’. 58.Google Scholar

10 Macfarlane, A., The family life of Ralph Josselin, 209–10.Google Scholar

11 Laslett, , Family life and illicit love, 44.Google Scholar

12 Wall, R., ‘The age of leaving home’, Journal of Family History 3 (1978), 181–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, R., ‘Household formation in pre-industrial England’, Continuity and Change 2, 1, 77–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Wall, R., ‘The age at leaving home’, 194–5.Google Scholar

14 Mayhew, Graham, Tudor Rye (Brighton, 1988), 23–4, 192, ESRO RYE 83/1–5Google Scholar. These figures are derived from a comparison between an aggregative analysis of the Rye parish registers, assuming crude baptism and burial rates of 25 per thousand and 40 per thousand respectively and household reconstitutions for 1596 and 1626, together with an analysis of the 1660 poll tax, assuming that the 671 adults listed represented 60 per cent of the total population, giving a figure of 1,118 which agrees well with that obtained from an average of the 1662–1664 hearth taxes (1,166 in 284.3 households) using a multiplier of 4.1 derived from the 1596 reconstitution.

15 Ibid., 245–7, 255–69.

16 Ibid., 194; Mayhew, G. J., ‘Epidemic mortality in 16th century Rye’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 124 (1986), 159, 173Google Scholar; Dyer, A. D., Thecity ofWorcester in the sixteenth century (Leicester, 1973), 40–3Google Scholar; Palliser, D. M., Tudor York (1979), 119Google Scholar. The infant mortality figures for Rye are derived from the family reconstitutions of ratepayers 1554–1604, ensuring that only those families who remained in observation for the requisite period and who can be identified as having done so independently of the burials being studied were included. The burials of those identified as plague victims in 1596–1597 and 1625 are indicated by a ‘p’ in the Rye burial register. East Sussex Record Office (hereafter ESRO) PAR 467/1/1/2.

17 Mayhew, Graham, Tudor Rye, 197–9Google Scholar. The figures for mean age at death are based on the admittedly relatively small number of 143 adult males and 75 females born in Rye, whose baptisms and burials have been traced through the reconstitutions of 1,595 families whose heads were listed among Rye's ratepayers between 1554 and 1604. They can be compared with the findings of Dyer, A. D., The city of Worcester in the sixteenth century, p. 43Google Scholar, who calculated the respective mean ages at death of those reaching the age of 20 as being 46 years for men and 49 years for women. The mean ages at marriage derive from 127 males and 176 females baptized in Rye from ratepayers' households whose marriages have been traced. The mean length of first marriages has been calculated from 287 families whose first marriage has been traced and who remained in observation until the death of one or other spouse and, in the case of the death of the wife, through subsequent remarriages until the burial of the original male partner. The calculations of the ages of surviving children at the death of their father are based on 187 of the original 287 families where there were surviving children at his death. Even allowing for the fact that the earlier in life a person dies the greater the chance of tracing the death, these results still seem to differ substantially from those obtained by Smith, James E. ‘The computer simulation of kin sets and kin counts’, in Bongaarts, J., Burch, T. K. and Wachter, K. W., eds., Family demography methods and their application (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar, who calculated that 64.3 per cent of 33 year-olds in pre-industrial societies had at least one surviving parent. However, Smith uses figures for late eighteenth-century England as the basis for his model. Demographic conditions in later sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Rye, with its recurrent major epidemics, were considerably harsher. I owe the reference to Smith's work to Richard Wall.

18 ESRO W/A19/77.

19 ESRO RYE 47/70. He was, apparently, born c. 1553, being described as aged 40 years in an earlier deposition in June 1593 (RYE 47/48/2). He married in August 1588 and was rated from 1598 to 1610, he and his wife dying childless within a matter of weeks of each other in 1613. ESRO PAR 467/1/1/2, RYE 77/6–7, RYE 1/7/535–43.

20 ESRO RYE 77/6–7, W/B3/150, RYE 47/63/24, RYE 47/68, RYE 85/16.

21 ESRO PAR 467/1/1/2, records the burial of Robert Rogers ‘ferryman’, 2 July 1630, although he is described as a fisherman in his will (W/A21/73).

22 A similar point is made as to the status of building workers in early nineteenth-century Malmo by Edgren, Lars, ‘Crafts in transformation?: masters, journeymen and apprentices in a Swedish town, 1800–1850’, Continuity and Change I (1986), 373–5Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Richard Wall. Brewers' and innkeepers' households in early seventeenth-century Southwark are also singled out as the largest employers of servants by Boulton, Jeremy, Neighbourhood and society, 135–7Google Scholar. A further indication of their lowly status in Rye is the transient nature of employment in the brewing industry. Of 43 brewers' servants listed in the musters over half (22), none of whom had any known previous connection with Rye, disappeared without trace after appearing only once and only two were listed more than twice. Of the 11 who settled in Rye and married, only five paid rates, all but two at the minimum assessment.

23 ESRO RYE 47/119, RYE 47/89, RYE 47/124 (Michael Bourne, 1637, by 1660 he was describing himself, like his late master, as a ‘musitianer’), RYE 82/82.

24 ESRO RYE 82/22. In Rye the term yeoman generally signified a social status equivalent to a gentleman. Among individuals described as ‘yeoman’ were John Yonge the waterbailiff (1572) and his deputy John Convers, a future town clerk (1574), merchants such as Nicholas Purvage, a Frenchman (1571) and Jheram Nashe (1565) and several jurats' sons, for example John Byspin (1568) and William Tolkin junior (1591). Individuals have been included under their actual occupation where it is known. RYE 1/5/233; RYE 35/19–28.

25 ESRO RYE 1/14–17.

26 ESRO RYE 1/11/136, RYE 77/7.

27 Although only Robert is listed in the Rye baptismal registers, it is clear that Joseph must have been the son of Nicholas Barnecastle, who was the only Rye householder with that surname and the only lighterman at that date.

28 ESRO RYE l/6/37v. Although I have been unable to establish the exact family relationship, this is also an unusual Rye surname, confined entirely to a handful of wealthy householders.

29 ESRO W/A 11/35.

30 ESRO RYE 82/82.

31 The only exception which I have found to this rule was in the case of Christopher Homewood, son of Francis, a miller (d. 1614). Christopher was baptized in September 1594 and is listed with his mother in the 1615–1616 musters. He was described as an upholsterer in 1620 (RYE 35/65).

32 ESRO RYE 77/6–7, RYE l/IO/78v, RYE 82/82.

33 ESRO Rye 147/1/149, 182; RYE 60/7/294.

34 ESRO 29/54. This is one of only a handful of instances in which it can be clearly established that a second son was given the same name as a surviving elder brother.

35 There were five households of Harrises, all butchers, in 1624 and (including a widow) in 1634. Between 1610 and 1628 and again in 1660 there were four such families listed in four assessments. From 1596 to 1665 the number of Rye householders called Harris who were also butchers only once fell below three. Among their offspring were sons who became fishermen, a feter, a turner and a tailor, who likewise had children in their turn, further complicating matters.

36 Mayhew, Graham, Tudor Rye, 211Google Scholar; Tolkin, John, feter, is recorded as having been buried 12 June 1625Google Scholar. ESRO PAR 467/1/1/2.

37 Mayhew, Graham, Tudor Rye, 134–5.Google Scholar

38 For a more detailed discussion of naming of children see Scott-Smith, Daniel, ‘Child-naming practices as cultural and familial indicators’, Local Population Studies 32 (1984), 17–27.Google Scholar

39 I.e., excluding those described as ‘singleman’ and those for whom there is no information available.

40 For a discussion of Rye's links with its rural hinterland, see Mayhew, Graham, Tudor Rye, 237–44.Google Scholar

41 The ages of 78 local and 65 immigrant apprentices are given in the indentures. Where these have been able to be compared with the relevant baptismal entries they have usually proved consistent with the dates of baptism.

42 ESRO PAR 467/1/1/2; RYE 1/4/361.

43 RYE 47/124/3. There is no record of this case in the Assembly Books.

44 RYE 1/10/104, RYE 29/138.

45 Examples from a range of occupations include Thomas Anderson, whose first son was named Ralph after his former master, Ralph Bell, feter; Richard Clement, cooper, (son of Laurence) whose first son was called Peter after his master, Peter Cooper; and Nicholas Arthur, a former servant of Anthony Bryant, mariner, who named his first son Anthony.

46 In a slightly different example, William Mitchell had placed his son Joseph as a servant with Emanuel Dugard, mariner, in 1617. Earlier, in 1607–1608, Emanuel Bugard had been William Mitchell's servant.