Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, is one of the better documented women of the late Middle Ages. The publication of several of her household accounts is thus welcome because they juxtapose her well-known life with the operation of a great household, showing the behind-the scenes efforts to stage royal splendor and ceremony. The accounts in questions are from 1498 to 1509, when she started living away from her third husband Thomas, second baron Stanley. Thus the years in the title refer to Beaufort's life, not the dates of the accounts.
Susan Powell has edited four different types of household accounts. The first is the household account kept by her treasurer from 1506 to 1507. As a general account, it covers the financing of the entire household. Next is her personal book of receipts, which spans the entire period, from 1499 to 1509. It records money received by the treasury and paid out to various household officers for running the household. Powell also edits five accounts from the cofferer or treasurer of the chamber, one of the four main household offices. They date from 1498 to 1509, and detail the reception and expenditure of money having to do with rewards for household personnel, people with whom she interacted, such as the king's keeper of the lion (576), and her almswomen and men, along with other charity, and clothing, books, liturgical items, and supplies she purchased. Finally, there are two chamberlain accounts from 1501 to 1502, largely devoted to expenditures related to the arrival of Katherine of Aragon in London for her marriage to Prince Arthur. The accounts Powell has edited are by no means the sum total of documents left in Beaufort's fulsome archive. Not included are the extensive accounts from her clerk of the works, her inventories, her will, and accounts by her executors when administering her will.
Collectively the accounts provide an intimate portrait of a great household, which can be read against the politics of the first Tudor court. The earliest chamber accounts from the summer of 1498 show a peripatetic household preparing Collyweston to be Beaufort's primary residence upon her separation from her husband. Even with Collyweston established and furnished, the household continued to move about from Collyweston to Croydon to Hatfield, and Westminster and back again. Over the course of the chamber accounts, we can trace the development of relationships between Beaufort's household and various artisans and merchants with whom it dealt. Beaufort was, for example, a patron of both Thomas Pynson and Wynken de Worde—England's second and third printers. Also evident from these accounts is Beaufort's extensive charitable work. She supported numerous almswomen, a few almsmen, and saw to the fostering of several alms children, providing them all with clothing, food, and shoes on a regular basis. The accounts also make clear how the liturgical year regulated household life, with expenses for misrule at Christmas combining with expenses for liturgical books, and devotional items as well as donations to convents, shrines, such as Walsingham on numerous occasions, and churches she intentionally visited or passed on her travels. We also see glimpses of the human lifecycle in the rewards given to midwifes, and for expenses at christenings, marriages, and burials. While Beaufort's household was largely staffed by men, the accounts reveal that Beaufort patronized a number of working women from herb wives and midwives, to female innkeepers, silkwomen, and on a couple of occasions, a gold-wire drawer. The contents of these accounts are fascinating and will provide fodder for much future research.
Powell's introduction and organization of the book are predicated on familiarity with how the nobility organized their great households. After a brief biography of Beaufort, Powell focuses her introduction on the details of the manuscripts, the various hands producing them, household accounting practices, and who were the primary household officers. She pays rather less attention to outlining the structure of great households and how these four different types of household accounts reflect or stray from standard organization. This makes the introduction somewhat of an odd fit for the British Academy's Records of Social and Economic History series. While I can appreciate that Powell did not want to duplicate the biographical studies or the extensive work on great households that others have done, her reticence in drawing attention to the structural and social nature of these records might make the book daunting for the uninitiated. There are three indices: people, places, and general, but there are some mistakes and gaps that challenge readers who might want to trace an individual or a product. For example, Joan Ewerby St John was apparently a midwife and a nurse, but she is not identified as such in the index under her name, although the reader can find her under the listings for midwives and nurses. References in the index refer to folios within each individual account, not pages in the publication, and the individual account is cited by the last number of the old archival number. This makes citations in future research easier, but necessitates flipping back and forth if one does not remember the catalogue number of each account. I do wish Powell had discussed how she chose to organize the accounts. They are neither chronologically nor by archival number, although the five chamber accounts are sequential and chronological. I also wish the press had included modern dates in the page headings. Lacking them, the reader must go to the summary at the beginning of each account, to learn what folios cover what years. While unwieldy in many ways, patience will reward those interested in the wealth of economic and social details provided by these wonderful records.
