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‘I think myself honestly decked’: Attitudes to the Clothing of the Rural Poor in Seventeenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2015

DANAE TANKARD
DANAE TANKARD*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Politics, University of Chichester, College Lane, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6PE [email protected]
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Abstract:

This article explores attitudes to the clothing of the rural poor in seventeenth-century England. It begins with an analysis of the representation of rural clothing in country themed ballads, showing how ‘homely’ country clothing was used to construct an image of a contented and industrious rural population. It then considers how such popular literary representations influenced the way that diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn recorded their encounters with the rural poor. The final part of the article looks at attitudes of the rural poor to their own clothing, drawing on evidence from a range of documentary sources as well as the autobiographical writings of Edward Barlow. In contrast to the stereotypical depiction of the rural poor recorded by ballad writers and elite observers, the article will show that for the actual poor clothing could serve both as an expression of the ‘self’ and as a potent marker of social differences and moral and material inferiority.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , April 2015 , pp. 17 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

Notes

1. Tankard, D., “‘A Pair of Grass-green Woollen Stockings”: The Clothing of the Rural Poor in Seventeenth-century Sussex’, Textile History, 43:1 (2012), 5–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Vincent, S., Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ribeiro, A., Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England (New Haven and London, 2005)Google Scholar; Rublack, U., Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar.

3. Rublack, Dressing Up, p. 25.

4. Vincent, Dressing the Elite, p. 5.

5. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

6. Watt, T., Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp.1–3 Google Scholar; Capp, B., ‘Popular Literature’ in Reay, B., ed., Popular Culture in Early Modern England (London and Sidney, 1985), p. 231 Google Scholar.

7. For a description of the Pepys Collection see http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/Pepys. Accessed 14th November 2013.

8. Ballads are closely related to other forms of popular literature such as so-called chapbooks, which Pepys also collected, and prose romances. Neither of these genres is discussed in any detail in this article. For chapbooks see Spufford, M., Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar; Newcomb, L. H., ‘What is a Chapbook?’ in Dimmock, M. and Hadfield, A., eds, Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England (Farnham, 2009), pp. 57–72 Google Scholar. For prose romances see Salzman, P., English Prose Fiction 1558–1700: A Critical History (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Newcomb, L. H., Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

9. For an explanation of these sources and the way they have been used to examine the clothing of the rural poor see Tankard, ‘Grass-green Woollen Stockings’, 7–8.

10. West Sussex Record Office EpI/11/12, 14; Lubbock, B., ed., Barlow's Journal of his Life at Sea in the King's Ships, East and West Indiamen and other Merchantmen from 1659–1703 (London, 1934)Google Scholar.

11. For a discussion of the development of the ‘language of sorts’ see Wrightson, K., ‘“Sorts of People” in Tudor and Stuart England’, in Barry, J. and Brooks, C., eds, The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 28–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and French, H. R., The Middle Sort of People in Provincial England 1600–1750 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 1–29 Google Scholar.

12. This is my own assessment based on my work on a range of documentary sources but in particular the records of the Sussex courts of quarter sessions. However, it is corroborated by Alexandra Shepard's analysis of ‘statements of worth’ in church court depositions which shows that nearly seventy per cent of husbandmen appearing in the church courts of the diocese of Chichester stated they lived by their labour compared to fifty per cent in the diocese of Salisbury and thirty per cent in the diocese of Canterbury. See Shepard, A., ‘Poverty, Labour and the Language of Social Description in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 201 (2008), 64–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Hindle, S., On the Parish? The Micro-politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c. 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2009), p. 4 Google Scholar.

14. Ballads have been identified in two ways: firstly, from an online search of the English Broadside Ballad Archive at the University of California-Santa Barbara (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/) and secondly through a contents list and index search of the Ballad Society printed edition of the Roxburghe Ballads (nine volumes, London, 1869–1899). They are used in this article as literary rather than pictorial sources. For a discussion of the usefulness of some woodcut images for the study of dress history see McShane, A. and Backhouse, C., ‘Top Knots and Lower Sorts: Print and Promiscuous Consumption in the 1690s’, in Hunter, M., ed., Printed Images in Early Modern Britain (Aldershot, 2010), pp. 337–57Google Scholar.

15. ‘The Complaint of the Shepherd Harpalus’ (Pepys I.369, c.1625).

16. Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, pp.140–50. For a discussion of pastoral literature see McRae, A., God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1600 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 262–99Google Scholar, Marcus, L. S., ‘Politics and Pastoral: Writing the Court on the Countryside’, in Sharpe, K. and Lake, P., eds, Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 139–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Salzman, English Prose Fiction, pp. 59–97, 123–47.

17. Roxburghe II 205.

18. Pepys II 56.

19. See for example: ‘A Pleasant New Dialogue; Or, the Discourse between the Serving Man and the Husbandman’ (Roxburghe, I, 98,99, c.1640); ‘God Speed the Plough and Bless the Corn-Mow: A Dialogue between the Husbandman and the Serving Man’ (Pepys IV 272, 1684–1686); ‘Downright Dick of the West; or the Ploughman's Ramble to London, to See my Lord Mayor and the Rest of the Fine Folk of the City’ (Roxburghe II 117; Pepys IV 279, 1685–1688); ‘The Innocent Country Maid's Delight or, a Description of the Lives of the Lasses of London’ (Roxburghe II 230, 1685–1688); ‘The Contention between a Countryman and a Citizen for a Beauteous London Lass, who at Length is Married to the Countryman’ (Pepys III 255, 1685–1688).

20. Roxburghe II 117; Pepys IV 279.

21. Pepys IV 272.

22. Pepys III 255.

23. Roxburghe I 160, 161.

24. Roxburghe I 352, 353.

25. Roxburghe I 52, 53.

26. ‘The Innocent Country Maid's Delight’, 1685–8 (Roxburghe II 230). See also ‘The Milkmaid's Life’, c.1633–1669 (Roxburghe I 244, 245).

27. Roxburghe II 117; Pepys IV 279, 1685–1688.

28. ‘The Country Lass’, c.1628 (Roxburge I 52, 53).

29. ‘The Map of Mock-Beggar's Hall’, c.1640 (Roxburghe I 252, 253).

30. ‘The Countryman's Delight’, 1681–1684 (Pepys IV 349)

31. Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press, 2013. http://www.oed.com/view/entry/87905. Accessed 5th April 2013.

32. For a discussion of concerns about elite fashion see Ribeiro, A., Dress and Morality (London, 1986), pp. 74–94 Google Scholar and Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, pp. 159–213. For a discussion of the repeal of sumptuary legislation in 1604 and attempts to revive it see Harte, N. B., ‘State Control of Dress and Social Change in Pre-industrial England’ in Coleman, D. C. and John, A. H., eds, Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-industrial England (London, 1976), pp. 148–9Google Scholar and Hunt, A., Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (Basingstoke 1996), pp. 321–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Hentschell, R., ‘A Question of Nation: Foreign Clothes on the English Subject’ in Richardson, C., ed., Clothing Culture, 1350–1650 (Aldershot, 2004), p. 55 Google Scholar. However, as Rublack has shown, this was also a ‘stock emblem’ across Europe during the same period: Rublack, Dressing Up, p. 145.

34. Hentschell, ‘A Question of Nation’, pp. 49–62; see also Hentschell, , The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity (Aldershot, 2008)Google Scholar.

35. An Act for the Reformation of Apparel to be Worn by Apprentices and Maid Servants within the City of London and the Liberties thereof (London, 1611). See Reinke-Williams, T., ‘Women's Clothes and Female Honour in Early Modern London’, Continuity and Change, 26: 1 (2011), 69–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a discussion of this legislation in relation to concerns about female clothing.

36. For pastoral romances see Salzman, English Prose Fiction, pp. 59–97, 123–47. Examples of debate literature are Robert Greene's A Quip for an Upstart Courtier: Or, a Quaint Dispute between Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches (first published in 1592, with subsequent editions in 1606, 1620, 1622 and 1635) and Nicholas Breton's The Court and Country, or a Brief Discourse Dialogue-wise Set Down between a Courtier and a Country Man (1618). Both Greene and Breton wrote pastoral romances which were adapted into ballads. For Greene see L. H. Newcomb, ‘Greene, Robert (bap. 1558, d.1592), writer and playwright’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; for Breton see M. G. Brennan, ‘Breton [Britton], Nicholas (1554/5-c.1626), poet’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

37. Hindle, S., ‘Civility, Honesty and the Identification of the Deserving Poor in Seventeenth-Century England’, in French, H. and Barry, J., Identity and Agency in England, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 38–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Muldrew, C., Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness: Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 298–318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Pepys II 56.

39. Latham, R. and Matthews, W., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, volume 8, 1667 (London, 1974), pp. 338–9Google Scholar.

40. Henry, second earl of Clarendon, had been appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland: W. A. Speck, ‘Hyde, Henry, Second Earl of Clarendon (1638–1709)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

41. Bray, W., ed., Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence (London, c.1870), p. 491 Google Scholar.

42. Evelyn's comments about the rural poor were not always positive, however. In 1654 he described the inhabitants of Rutland as ‘idle and sluttish’ and those of Lincolnshire as ‘a poor and very lazy sort of people’: Evelyn's Diary, pp. 235, 239.

43. For a discussion of Pepys’ attitude to clothing see Nevinson, J. L., ‘Dress and Personal Appearance’ in Latham and Matthews, Diary of Samuel Pepys, volume 10, pp. 98–104 Google Scholar and Vincent, Dressing the Elite, pp. 1–4; 80–1; 92–4.

44. Evelyn's Diary, pp. 281, 284, 353–4. Although intended as a satire, Tyrannus, had a serious intent in calling for the reintroduction of sumptuary laws to regulate what Evelyn describes as ‘this slavish deference of ours’ to the fashions of other nations.

45. Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, pp. 175–6. Evelyn describes visiting the private rooms of the King's mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, of whom he disapproved, in 1683 and seeing her in her ‘morning loose garment’: Evelyn's Diary, p. 450.

46. Pepys I.369, c.1625.

47. Evelyn's Diary, p. 259.

48. Ibid., p. 233.

49. Lubbock, Barlow's Journal, pp. 15–16.

50. Fumerton, P., Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England (Chicago, 2006), pp. 66–8Google Scholar. Barlow was going to Manchester as a trial apprentice to a ‘whitester’ or bleacher.

51. Lubbock, Barlow's Journal, p. 16.

52. This paragraph summarises my previously published research. See Tankard, ‘Grass-green Woollen Stockings’, 9–10.

53. See West Sussex Record Office Ep/I/11/15, fo. 275r (Bachelor versus Strudwick, 1634): A sawyer, Thomas Tribe, wore the suit (doublet and breeches) he bought from the possessions of his deceased neighbour, as a ‘holy day suit’ for seven years. See also East Sussex Record Office QR/E168, fos. 63, 66: Dorothy Burgess claimed that the petticoat she was accused of stealing in 1671 had been given to her by her mother ‘13 years since’.

54. ‘Cotton’ was a type of woollen cloth that had been ‘cottoned’, i.e. the nap raised up and then shorn.

55. Tankard, ‘Grass-green Woollen Stockings’, 10.

56. Ibid., 9.

57. See, for example, the wills of Agnes Slatter (West Sussex Record Office STC I/15/238, 1606): ‘one holidays neckerchief and one other for the working days’; Margaret Jelley (West Sussex Record Office STC I/22B/81, 1661): ‘one of my working days petticoats’; and Nicholas Stevens (West Sussex Record Office STC I/26/48,1675): ‘one suit of my ordinary wearing apparel’.

58. See for example the wills of Joanne Forbench (West Sussex Record Office STC I/15/224, 1605): ‘my best gown and my second best petticoat’; Dorothy Overington (West Sussex Record Office STC I/15/232, 1605): ‘my best gown save one’; Agnes Blackman (West Sussex Record Office STC I/15/337, 1609): ‘my best gown’, ‘my worst gown’, ‘my best red petticoat’, ‘one old red petticoat’, ‘my best hat’; John Turges (West Sussex Record Office STC I/26/35, 1675): ‘my best wearing coat’, ‘my lesser coat’.

59. Lubbock, Barlow's Journal, pp. 20–1.

60. This paragraph draws on my previously published research, Tankard, ‘Grass-green Woollen Stockings’, 10–11.

61. In the case of the stolen petticoat referred to in note 51 above, Mary West claimed that she knew it was hers ‘by the strings and the gathering of it’ and that ‘there was a red bordering to the petticoat which is pulled off since she lost it’. She explained the fact that the petticoat was a different colour from the one she had lost by stating that the alleged thief, Dorothy Burgess, had ‘new dyed it’ (East Sussex Record Office QR/E168, fos. 63, 66).

62. Pepys IV 272; Roxburghe I 352, 353.

63. East Sussex Record Office QR/E132, fo. 52. See Jones, P. D., ‘“I cannot keep my place without being deascent”: Pauper Letters, Parish Clothing and Pragmatism in the South of England, 1750–1830’, Rural History, 20:1 (2009), 33–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of the use of the word ‘nakedness’ as a rhetorical device rather than a literal condition.

64. West Sussex Record Office Ep I/11/12, fos. 141r-v (Lock v Grevett).

65. West Sussex Record Office Ep I/11/12, fos. 73v-74r.

66. West Sussex Record Office Ep I/11/12, fo. 72r.

67. West Sussex Record Office Ep I/11/12, fos. 75r-v.

68. West Sussex Record Office Ep I/11/12, fos. 72v-75v.

69. Shepard, ‘Poverty, Labour and the Language of Social Description’, 66–8.

70. Ibid., 52, 58.

71. There are no surviving overseers’ accounts for the parish of Easebourne where Alice Hayward lived which would allow us to check whether she was receiving poor relief.

72. West Sussex Record Office Ep I/11/14, fos. 199r-v (Johnson v Newland).

73. West Sussex Record Office QR/EW35, fo. 86. See Tankard, ‘Grass-green Woollen Stockings’, 19.

74. Cynthia Herrup has calculated that approximately thirteen per cent of indictments of stolen property presented to the court of quarter sessions for eastern Sussex between 1625 and 1640 were for cloth, clothing or shoes: Herrup, C., The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), p. 124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This figure excludes thefts for which benefit of clergy was not available, i.e. breaking and entering, horse theft, cutpursing.

75. For example, in 1639 Elizabeth Joab stole three napkins and two aprons which she sold to a beggar woman for a penny and a piece of bread and cheese (East Sussex Record Office QR/E44, fo. 58) and in 1679 Edward Stacy admitted that he had stolen a pair of woollen stockings that were hanging on a tree outside John Agate's house and that he had ‘afterwards put them on his legs’ (East Sussex Record Office QR/EW202, fo. 55).

76. See for example East Sussex Record Office QR/E67, fos. 67–70 (1645).

77. Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London and New York, 1985), pp. 123–45Google Scholar.