Neighbours and Networks | Female Servants in Early Modern England | British Academy Scholarship Online (2024)

Charmian Mansell

Marie Robins was no stranger to moving. At the turn of the seventeenth century, she’d lodged in Richard Barry’s house in Ditcheat in Somerset. He was a husbandman and she’d taught his children to knit, staying for three years. She’d briefly returned home to her mother in Shepton Mallett before finding work in Elizabeth and James Pippett’s home in Evercreech for about a year. She packed up her things again and moved just up the road to Stoney Stratton, serving Thomas Clarke for a year and a half. She was no longer the ‘knittester’ that had found work with Richard Barry’s family.

Marie’s was an itinerant life, but her footsteps padded across familiar ground. Her movements were local, allowing her life to become entwined with John Sheppard’s: they went to revels together, he accompanied her in the fields early in the morning and late at night while she milked the cows, and they exchanged gifts. Despite their protestations, Marie even briefly abandoned working in the Pippetts’ home to tend to John’s mother while she lay sick. Her neighbours were certain the pair would marry. But then John disappeared – evading a debt or a marriage to her, Marie wasn’t sure. In his absence, she fell sick for eight weeks and in June 1609 complained to the Bath & Wells church court that he had broken his promise of marriage.1

* * *

Service was just one of several occupations Marie undertook as a young woman. She taught children to knit and may also have spent much of her time knitting in the Pippett’s household. Here, she was a woman of relative independence, able to build and maintain networks and social contacts as she saw fit. When John came to Elizabeth Pippett’s house requesting Marie’s help in tending his mother, she told him ‘they could not spare her’ . But the next morning, she left anyway and stayed away for a month. The freedoms that Marie enjoyed as a knitster were reduced when she entered service. Maintaining the relationships she’d built across place over time now required negotiation with her master, Thomas Clarke.

Over five years, Marie lived in four different houses, embedding herself in close but disparate communities. It was from these communities that she assembled her witnesses. Elizabeth Pippett deposed that she and Marie had knitted John Sheppard a pair of yarn stockings as a token of matrimony. Thomas Clarke described the couple’s courtship: John had regularly come to the house and had asked Thomas’s permission to ‘suffer’ Marie to visit his family and accompany him at feasts and festivities, which Thomas ‘grannted’ . Joanna Pellye, a neighbour to Marie’s mother, recalled Marie giving John ‘a paire of garters & a handkercher, which he tooke verie thankfully of hir, and he gave unto her a musk balle’ .2 She remembered them drinking together in alehouses and agreed that the ‘neighbors of the saide Marie Robins and her mother … tooke notice of their conversing & companyeing togethers to be a couple that meant marriage togethers’ .

The navigation of social relationships that we observe in Marie’s story was familiar to virtually all women in service. As society’s most itinerant, female servants regularly engaged with a scale of community larger than was common. When leaving a household and moving to another parish, they left behind people and communities, as well as intricate networks of friendship, sociability, neighbourliness, and support. Physical departure undoubtedly destabilised connections, but emotional bonds, attachments, and friendships weren’t altogether lost. Andy Wood argued that neighbourliness was predicated on ‘having a sense of place, defined by Christian morality, long residence, common association, credit, trustworthiness and communal entitlement’ .3 Was it possible to be a good neighbour if you were a servant? If belonging was achieved through the status acquired by long residence in a place, how did female servants gain a sense of belonging without such a foothold? The transient, low-status servant appears to be the antithesis of Wood’s definition of a good neighbour. But Marie Robins retained – and could therefore mobilise – connections forged across space and time.

The household looms large in scholarship on service while the servant’s place within community is routinely overlooked. Part of the problem is that ‘community’ is regularly rooted in the parish or village, spaces in which female servants are only seen as a fleeting presence. This mobility, coupled with perceptions of their low status, precluded their inclusion in ‘community’ . These sets of assumptions rest partly on the theory that pre-industrial communities were a web of extremely local ties. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ‘community’ was inward-looking, geographically located in self-supporting settlements, and only gave way to the modern concept ‘society’ when kinship links were broken by industrialisation, urbanisation, and centralisation.4 Early modern villages were ‘isolated’ and assumed to display little evidence of the interconnectivity identified in Chapter 4.5

The problems of the teleological theory of social structure in which we moved from community (Gemeinschaft) to society (Gesellschaft) have been thoroughly laid bare.6 Institutions such as courts, for instance, were part of a national machinery of justice in medieval England, and men and women participated in legal processes and pursued suits outside their localities.7 The rose-tinted depiction of medieval village life, organised around the principles of Gemeinschaft, ignores myriad ways in which people’s lives spilled beyond parish boundaries in pre-modern England.8 Certainly, for many early modern people, the village or the parish was ‘the relevant social system’ .9 But community is not always coterminous with place.10 Community is created through economic ties, emotional bonds, cultural or religious contacts, and shared friendship groups. The social, political, economic, and religious networks that people belonged to could – and did – lie outside their parish of residence. As Alan Macfarlane warned, ‘“community” may be geographically based or it may not … it may be mistaken to demarcate the area of interest on the basis of physical space’ .11 Inclusion wasn’t always geographically defined: not all parishioners were members of a community and not all members of a community lived in the same parish.

Female service is an opportune lens through which to study the ways in which communities intersected and extended over parish boundaries. Picking up the thread from Chapter 4 on servant mobility, this chapter unpicks ideas of belonging and inclusion. Studying the connections that these highly mobile women forged challenges the idea that long-term residence and status were the linchpins of early modern community. Sustained relationships (both good and bad) and evidence of integration – or exclusion – routinely appear and are often discussed at length in church court depositions. The ways in which relationships were articulated varied, allowing multiple points of entry into the nebulous and often slippery concepts of community and belonging. We can look at whom female servants talked about and shared spaces with, but we can also look at how female servants were referred to by others.

The chapter first focuses on the range of people with whom female servants came into contact and how their relationships with others were represented in depositions. I show the embeddedness of female servants in communities: the connections they described were as long-standing as those of other witnesses. The chapter also shows that servants nurtured friendships (taken to mean both support networks and companionship and sociability). In particular, I shine light on the support others, especially women, offered servants both within and beyond the home. Female servants retained connections after leaving a parish, demonstrating that community extended beyond the geographical and administrative boundaries of settlement. They might leverage support from former masters and mistresses, but the lingering spectre of obligation and gratitude of service could also entrench them in unwanted relationships. The final section traces the idea of reputation across parish boundaries. Maintaining a good reputation is seen as key to a successful adult life, and service was to function as a regulating institution. For those whose reputation was less than wholesome, anonymity was surely to be strived for. The chapter shows that in rural society, rumours travelled and severing connections proved difficult. Taken as a whole, the chapter addresses the absence of female servants in histories of early modern community and establishes their place within it.

Familiarity and acquaintance

With whom did female servants interact? Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos observed that those with the most ‘direct effect’ on young people weren’t other young people, their parents, or masters, but

We’ve traced the footsteps of many women in service already and seen their mobility within and beyond the parish. But they didn’t have to leave home to encounter people. Networks of economic and social exchange brought people to even the most isolated farmsteads. But how well did servants know the people they shared spaces with and vice versa? In some houses, turnover was regular, and even servants could change on a weekly basis. One way to test how well female servants were known by those around them is to look at how they were referred to. What was in a name? Maryanne Kowaleski found medieval servants listed only by their first name and their master’s name in the Exeter mayor’s court rolls, taking this as indicative of their low status.13 Jeremy Goldberg argued that an unrecorded surname denoted youth rather than low status.14 Laura Gowing noted that ‘the goodness of a woman’s name was contingent on not being spoken of at all – a good name meant no name’ .15 But being referred to by name was a marker of inclusion.

Acquaintances

Some female servants were referred to only as ‘maid’ or ‘servant’ . In 1582, witness Roger Over of Blisland (Cornwall) deposed that upon ‘Easter Eave last past there came a woeman servant to the parsonadge house of Blisland and enquired for Mr parson of Blisland’ .16 Others recalled the servant’s first name but gave no surname. Juliana Ware of Driffield (Gloucestershire) deposed in 1587 ‘that William Hawkins … begot his servant with child whose name was Jane aboute fower yeres agoe’ .17 Often, a missing surname was indicative of it not being known; after all, the overwhelming majority of men and women mentioned by deponents were given full names. But it wasn’t always the case that the name wasn’t known. Elizabeth Savory of Brilley (Herefordshire) pointed out in 1599 that Sybil Bevor (alias Bowen) ‘did browe [borrow] of this examinates maid servant divers tymes a gowen and a hatt’ .18 It seems unlikely that Elizabeth didn’t know the name of her own servant.

Some servants were given no name but a collective identity. Individual servants became anonymous when referred to as part of a group. George Parlor of Newent (Gloucestershire) deposed in 1603 that he heard Anne Harrys call Dorothy Wylson ‘a druncken sott, a druncken sockett, and druncken pissepott’ in the presence of ‘Mrs Suckliffes three maides’ .19 Arthur Rowe of Lamerton (Devon) heard defamatory remarks made in 1618 by Robert Wills against Elizabeth Drake, ‘present also then and there two maydes of … Peter Russells house’ .20 Children were often treated similarly and were rarely referred to by their full names: in 1593, servant Bridget Verne of Churcham (Gloucestershire) noted that ‘two little children under eyghte yeares of age’ were present when Richard Hammons defamed Eleanor Everett.21 Alice Combe of Chudleigh (Devon) deposed in 1598 that ‘it was reported that Pentecoste Balls mayde had beaten Jane Everies children’ .22 Youth – and the dependency that came with it – could determine how groups of servants were perceived and consequently referred to. As a group, female servants could therefore be infantilised, sometimes losing the identity that a name could give them.

Routinely, female servants who were given only first names were talked about in the context of premarital sex or pregnancy. Sexual misdemeanours and subsequent pregnancies were discussed by witnesses in relation to three otherwise unidentified servants named Abigail, Jane, and Eleanor.23 Reducing a female servant to her first name – or sometimes even no name – subtly conveyed contemporary judgements of sexually deviant women. In 1591, witness Walter Bicklesse of Cirencester (Gloucestershire) believed that ‘John Havland had a bastard by his servant and that the same was conveyed by him into Oxfordshyre or Barkshire’ .24 Others may have deliberately referred to a female servant only by her first name either to protect her identity or to protect themselves from being accused of defamation. Accusations of illegitimate pregnancy frequently resulted in church court litigation. The unknown name of the servant also delimited the witness’s relationship to her, bereft of any emotional attachment, or social or economic connection. An otherwise inconspicuous female servant could feature as a topic of news or gossip if she fell pregnant outside wedlock. Yeoman John Goodwyne of Berkeley (Gloucestershire) deposed in 1613 that Robert Lawford’s servant ‘Jone’ was pregnant before she was married, although, he added, ‘by whome this respondent knoweth not nor never heard’ .25 Yeoman’s wife Mary Gearinge, of Lechlade in the same county, deposed in 1628 that William Phippes’s servant Abigail

Although Abigail was referred to only by her first name, this was a story Mary had clearly been following. As Adam Fox noted, ‘behind any tale told to the authorities of church and state was this undercurrent and atmosphere of public gossip’ .27 News of behaviour that conflicted with the norms of an ordered society thrived in the early modern village or town and, as we’ll see, was transmitted from place to place. Here, the communities in which the servant and witness lived overlapped slightly, but they weren’t one and the same. It is important to remember, however, that these unnamed or partially named women were the exception. Of 1,871 witnesses that referred to one or more female servants, only 143 (slightly under 8 per cent) didn’t provide their full names. Most female servants were known by both first name and surname. They became familiar faces within the communities in which they lived and beyond.

Familiars

Familiarity between servants and the wider community can be studied by another measure. When deposing in court, witnesses were routinely asked how well and for how long they had known the litigant parties. Their responses were recorded in the biographical preambles to their depositions. Responses to this question have received little attention, yet systematic analysis of these responses illuminates the connections that existed between litigants and female servant witnesses.28 Some witnesses were specific, stating the length of time they had known the litigant. In church court depositions, this was routinely given in years rather than from a certain age. John Hopkins, 33, of Wedmore (Somerset), for example, testified in a defamation dispute between Agnes Russe and Robert Hole in 1626. He told the court that he had known Agnes and Robert for five and three years respectively.29

Others reported they had known a litigant since childhood or birth; indicating lifelong familiarity. As witnesses varied in age, comparison of the length of time they had known a litigant is meaningless unless expressed as a proportion of their age (and therefore lifetime); these calculations are shown in Table 8.1. The phrase ‘knows the parties well’ was sometimes recorded as a response, which is not possible to quantify as what constituted ‘knowing someone well’ is subjective. But by stating familiarity with a plaintiff or defendant, female servants signified a sense of inclusion within a community. Elizabeth Owyn of Gloucester deposed in 1573 that she knew the parties Elizabeth Mason and John Perkins well. She was the servant of William Braford, a shop-owner in the city, and she had worked there for a year and a half, having previously lived and worked nearby in the Crypt School in Gloucester. She perceived herself sufficiently integrated within the community to comment on Elizabeth’s reputation, deposing that the words spoken by John were ‘not of suche credit that they have hurte hir good name but … words of slander may deminishe & take awey hir good name which shee hayth not deservyd’ .30

Witnesses rarely stated that they didn’t know the defending parties at all. Less than 5 per cent of men and women didn’t know the plaintiff or defendant, and this figure was only slightly higher for female servants (8 per cent). The similarity between female servants and male and female witnesses in their familiarity with litigants is striking. Somewhere between 40 and 50 per cent of men and women had known the plaintiff or defendant for less than a quarter of their lives. Although 80 per cent of female servants had moved in their lifetimes compared with 63 per cent of all witnesses, their itineracy did not significantly affect their familiarity with litigants. Fifty per cent had known plaintiffs and 56 per cent had known defendants for this same proportion of their lives. The average age of these female servants was 26, meaning that this group had typically known the parties for six or seven years. Female servants are seen as highly mobile, spending one year in service at a time. Yet roughly 40 per cent had known the litigants for more than a quarter of their lives, and almost 20 per cent of them for over half their lives. This is surprisingly high and shows a connectedness to people and communities that we might not expect.

Mobility, age, and the type of dispute work together to offer a partial explanation for the length of time witnesses had known litigants. Tithe and testamentary disputes which relied on knowledge of parish customs, or a will made many years earlier, also brought in witnesses that had long-established connections with the plaintiff or defendant. Migration patterns also account for long-resident witnesses being called to testify. Alice Blackaller of Dartington (Devon) deposed in 1582 that she had lived in the parish for just one year and knew the parties (her master and mistress, Lord and Lady Champernowne) for the same amount of time. Alice’s short-term residence in Dartington alongside the couple’s elevated social status meant that Alice, a servant whose work repertoire included washing laundry, was unlikely to have crossed paths with them before she joined the household.31 But connections between female servants and others sometimes pre-dated their co-residence in a parish. This was partly because they had connections beyond their parish of residence. But it was also because they weren’t the only moving parts. Servant Honor Drynford was a lifelong resident of Sheepwash (Devon). In 1583, she had known Anne Hayne since infancy and Mary Scam for twelve years. At the age of 22, her familiarity with Mary for twelve years indicates her earliest memory of her was at the age of 10. It’s likely that Mary, a married woman, had moved to the parish herself twelve years earlier (perhaps when she married).32

Networks were sometimes complex. Servant Alice Rowland of Shebbear (Devon) brought a defamation suit against Jane Paddon in 1575. Three witnesses testified on her behalf that Jane had called her ‘an arrante whor* and a copper nosed drak[e]‌’ . Alice’s fellow servant Joanne Edwardes had lived in Shebbear her whole life but had known Alice for just one year, indicating Alice had only recently moved to the parish. Meanwhile, Joanne had known Jane since infancy. The other two witnesses, Richard Norryce and Henry Rackclief, had known Alice for longer. Richard was the master of Henry, Joanne, and Alice. He deposed that Alice ‘hathe dwelte in [his] house this xii [12] monethes’ . Alice’s relationships with Joanne and Richard were clearly created through co-residence in the same household. Henry, however, had lived in Shebbear for just six months but had known Alice for seven years, suggesting an existing connection between them across parishes. Her position in Richard’s service commenced six months before Henry’s. Perhaps Alice had even helped him secure work within the household.33

Familiarity transcended neighbourhood and parish boundaries. Barbara Tyll of Tewkesbury (Gloucestershire) deposed in 1573 that she had known Joanne Rydge and Griffin ap Thomas (opposing parties in a defamation dispute) for five and six years respectively. Barbara was born in Tewkesbury but hadn’t been stationary: she had served William Cotterell of Tewkesbury for three years, and had previously been a servant to gentleman Mr Reede of Mitton, just outside the town, for four years. Barbara had met both Joanne and Griffin before her stint in service with William Cotterell; in fact, she had met them while still a servant in Mitton. Even migrant servants who left communities retained connections.34

The assumption that their mobility prevented servants from staying in one place long enough to become integrated is problematic. Some servants knew members of a neighbourhood for longer than they had resided together in a parish. Other women in service had lived in the parish for longer than they had known the parties. Servants weren’t the only migrants in early modern England and in some instances were fixed features of a community. They, too, witnessed others entering and leaving the parish. Spheres of contact weren’t always coterminous with the geographical unit of the parish.

Friendship

In Chapter 7, we found that only around a third of the people with whom female servants shared spaces were members of the same household. A female servant wasn’t only part of her master’s household but was also a member of the wider community. These links to the wider community often allowed female servants to challenge (or push the boundaries of) patriarchal control. Outside the household, a master’s or mistress’s power over his or her servant was lessened. This enriched women’s experience of service, offering outlets for gossip, leisure, and courtship.

What was the nature of these social interactions and relationships? What did it mean to be someone’s ‘friend’ in early modern England? Who could be counted as a friend and what were the markers of friendship? The term is rarely defined with any precision in church court depositions despite being regularly used. Macfarlane suggested that ‘friend’ was virtually synonymous with ‘kin’ , describing both related and non-related individuals.35 Diana O’Hara noted that many intermediaries in brokering marriages – including biological family, masters and mistresses, fellow servants, and other ‘fictive kin’ – were termed ‘friend’ .36 Amanda Herbert noted that early modern women used the word ‘friend’ to ‘describe some of their hom*osocial bonds’ , denoting ‘positive social relationships between women’ .37 The definition doesn’t differentiate between formal alliances of patronage and kin and the informal relationships that developed through proximity, sociability, and other lived experiences. As Naomi Tadmor argued for the eighteenth century, the word ‘friend’ could encompass a spectrum of interpersonal relationships.38 Today, the terms ‘friend’ and ‘friendship’ aren’t usually used to describe such formal alliances. But friendships were nonetheless wide-ranging, based on patronage and economic support, as well as companionship and sociability. It is therefore difficult to disentangle the word’s various meanings. This section explores evidence of friendships appearing in church court depositions that female servants relied upon in different ways.

Friendships and alliances

Gowing noted that amity – friendship that went arm in arm with mutual dependability and support – was seen by early modern writers as ‘simply unavailable to women’ . But this wasn’t true.39 Women’s friendships, Gowing and others found, were politically important. Female servants’ formal friendships are laid bare within the context of marriage formation. O’Hara identified these ‘friends’ as typically male, older than the couple, and of gentle or yeoman status. They had known at least one of the parties for a minimum of two to three years.40 Female servants also used the word ‘friend’ to characterise relationships with those upon whom their futures depended economically. Joanna Dowell of Bristol (Gloucestershire) deposed in 1630 that ‘as yet shee is but a servant; what her frends will doe for her shee knoweth not, but hopeth well’ .41 In 1552, servant Margaret Fydler of Abson (Gloucestershire) claimed that she and William Hyll had agreed to marry. But William argued that he would ‘not tak[e]‌ her with nothyng’ . Testifying on her behalf, her master William Harding responded ‘she is not so offered unto the[e] for thow hast had money offered with her of her frendes and she shall be made worth xx [20] nobles’ . William Hyll, however, claimed that he ‘thynck her frendes will not stand to theire word seeing the chance’ .42 Whether they were reliable or not, Margaret’s friends were – at least to her – economically key to securing her marriage. Her master was also an important mediator between the couple and was probably included within this formal friendship group.

The precise nature of the relationships between Joanna Dowell and her friends, and Margaret and hers, wasn’t specified. In marriage litigation, it’s difficult to tease out precisely the basis or degree of friendships. O’Hara suggested that a hierarchy of intervention operated among the ‘go-betweens’ in arranging courtship and marriage, with intermediaries ranging from ‘the aged and respectable, to the marginal characters at the other end of the spectrum’ .43 But these friendships were tied to social status and appear more like bonds of patronage, support, or socio-economic backing than anything like ‘a meeting of equals’ .44

Masters’ and mistresses’ endorsem*nt of a female servant could be integral if she was pursuing a suit of her own. In 1576, Catherine Bennett of Cirencester (Gloucestershire) brought a defamation suit against a married woman named Jane Winston, who had allegedly called her a whor* on several occasions. Innkeeper John Gurney, Catherine’s master, testified on her behalf. But she also secured the support of a gentleman named Thomas Monoxe, who told the court that the defamation had damaged Catherine’s reputation as it ‘is much talked of’ , though he knew Catherine to be ‘an honest mayden’ . Thomas wasn’t simply a bystander to Jane Winston’s defamatory words. He was John Gurney’s friend: two years later, Thomas was one of the witnesses to the compilation of John’s will. Female servants could therefore draw on support beyond the household through their positions within it.45

Friends were usually more than marriage brokers. They were companions, business acquaintances, members of a shared household and style of life, with the same social, economic, political, and religious experiences, practices, and values.46 Other moments of crisis for women in service laid the parameters of networks of support bare. Although distressing, cases pivoting around allegations of attempted rape are particularly enlightening. Rape charges were rare in early modern England. There were several very real obstacles to a woman prosecuting for rape, not least the fact that she was male property and therefore not the ‘wronged part[y]‌’ .47 Cases were supposed to be tried in secular courts, but they were seldom recorded.48 Occasionally, allegations of rape were made in church courts and traces of non-consensual sex are littered throughout the pages of depositions.49

Sampson Rawlyn of St Stephens near Saltash (Cornwall) litigated against servant Elizabeth Kneebone in 1583. The charge was defamation as Elizabeth had apparently told others in the parish that he had attempted to rape her on her return home from milking. Witnesses rallied in Elizabeth’s defence. In testifying – itself sometimes an act of friendship – they pointed to the importance of her friends in providing support. Ebbot Langmead and Alice Kneebone both deposed that Elizabeth had struggled with Sampson during his attack and had cried out ‘that if he did abuse her so she would … go home to her frendes’ . He let her go upon the promise ‘that she should not tell anye of her frindes of it’ . William Kneebone added that afterwards, ‘Elizabeth … made complaint to her frendes against Rawlyn for that he attempted to have carnall knowledge of her bodye’ . Elizabeth invoked her anonymous ‘frendes’ at a time of particular vulnerability and danger. She wielded her integration within a community of friends as a weapon, warning Sampson that his actions would have consequences. Women who brought sexual assault to the attention of others (particularly authorities) were women who belonged, Miranda Chaytor has argued. They were useful women who demonstrated their importance in economic and household structures.50 Elizabeth, who was returning home from milking (important household labour) at the time of the attack, didn’t just signify her integration and labour within a household. She mobilised her belonging within an established group of friends, forewarning Sampson of her loyal and steadfast network of supporters.

In referring to her ‘frendes’ , Elizabeth likely counted on Sampson knowing exactly who they were without needing to name them. Her networks were visible. Twenty-four-year-old Alice Kneebone deposed that Elizabeth came to her directly after the attack ‘weeping verie bitterlye’ , and ‘she made the like complaint to this deponent and Elizabeth Kneebone this deponentes brothers wife’ . Elizabeth’s friendship network was largely familial: Alice shared the defendant’s surname (and was probably her sister), but she had also told the story to Alice’s (who was also probably her own) sister-in-law. Only Elizabeth’s fellow servant, 36-year-old Ebbot Langmead, wasn’t a member of her biological family, deposing that Elizabeth came directly to her and ‘all the tyme she tould this deponent of the abuse of the sayd Rawlyn wept verie bitterlye and often tymes verie sorrowfully wronge her handes’ . Shared working patterns and labour created bonds. The language used in Ebbot’s deposition was particularly evocative. She described Sampson’s ‘filthie attempt’ to ‘defloure her’ , and we can hear this woman’s outrage at the abuse of her friend. We should, as Frances Dolan has warned, be wary of ascribing too much meaning to ‘the appearance of a vivid adjective’ as it ‘might not necessarily signal authenticity’ .51 But comparison of Ebbots deposition to the other two in this same case reveals this crucial difference in tone and language, suggesting a particularly close bond between these two servants.

Two of the three women that Elizabeth told of the assault and leveraged against Sampson as her ‘frendes’ – Ebbot, who was a servant, and Alice, another young woman, likely to have been her sister – were of similar status to her. The third woman was Elizabeth’s sister-in-law, but she didn’t testify. Instead, the final witness was William Kneebone, who deposed that ‘he heard a reporte that Elizabeth Kneebone made a complaint to her frendes against Rawlyn’ . Age 25 with the same family name, William was almost certainly related to Elizabeth and was probably the husband of the missing sister-in-law in this suit. His words as a married man reflect a legal agenda to bolster Elizabeth’s defence with the addition of male testimony to what would otherwise be an exclusively female set of depositions. Contemporary ideas of credibility, as we’ve seen, were gendered. But the depositions nonetheless reveal that the physical support group that Elizabeth turned to – Alice Kneebone and her sister-in-law, as well as servant Ebbot Langmead – was one of female alliances.52

In 1603, gentleman Thomas Raynolds was cited for adultery in the Bath & Wells court. Witnesses testified that he was the father of the illegitimate child of servant Marian Feare (alias Igar) who lived in Burnham-on-Sea (Somerset). Among the surviving records of this case is a partial, incomplete testimony given by a female witness. We don’t know her name, age, or place of residence because the biographical heading to the deposition doesn’t survive. She was probably Marian’s sister (Marian referred to her as ‘good sister’ and asked her not to tell her brother of her pregnancy). Despite it being incomplete, this deposition nonetheless tells us a lot about relationships: between unequal parties as well as friendship between servants and their sisters, other servants, masters, mistresses, and others. One day, sitting on a stool milking a cow with Marian by her side, the witness asked

Marian confided that she was pregnant and that it was Thomas Raynolds’ child but that he had given her a hat, paid for a new waistcoat, and had also paid for a coat that Marian’s mistress had sold her. The female witness saw some consolation in this news, deposing that ‘it is all the better, it weare better to be his then [than] a poorer mans, and he is able to keepe the childe and doe somwhat for thee too’ . Again, this moment of crisis lays bare Marian’s predicament, but also her reliance upon and trust in this woman. She didn’t, however, get on with everyone. Thomas had apparently advised Marian to go to Gilbert Tutton’s house in South Brent for money, but Marian replied ‘I will not goe thither because his wife & I be not frends’ . Nonetheless, the genuine care for Marian’s welfare in the anonymous woman’s testimony shines through and in this same case, Marian’s master and mistress also deposed, again demonstrating a support network that she could draw upon.53

Witnessing after service

In their migration and everyday ‘micro’ mobilities, female servants zigzagged the English landscape. Migration and mobility create new communities, but migrant people are also integrated into existing social groups. When they left these communities, sometimes they lost touch with people. But they also maintained nebulous networks across distance. Depositions offer significant evidence of the connections early modern people held and maintained outside their parish of residence. Across the depositions, we find former servants everywhere testifying on behalf of their past masters, mistresses, and neighbours. Plaintiffs and defendants didn’t always draw their witnesses from their immediate neighbourhoods nor from within their households. Witnesses were selected from outside, reflecting the extended networks of friends and acquaintances that early modern people constructed. Former female servants were part of these networks. Their testimonies demonstrate the longevity of relationships forged in service. But in the first place, the plaintiff or defendant had to know how to get hold of them: the very act of their testimony being taken signifies that the litigating party had an address for them. A total of 159 female witnesses were identified as former servants who had since left the parish in which the plaintiff or defendant lived. Proximity of these witnesses to the plaintiff or defendant varied greatly. As Table 8.2 shows, while 50 per cent had moved less than 10 kilometres away, the same proportion had travelled further, with examples of women testifying in cases pursued by past acquaintances and friends as far as 67 kilometres away.

When former servants were called by their past neighbours, masters, or mistresses to testify, how had they stayed in touch? Some female servants had only moved to the next parish and connections over short distances were easier to maintain. Eight years before testifying in the Exeter church court in 1578, Christian Collen of Totnes (Devon) had served the defendant John Sparcks of the adjacent parish of Harberton for nine years. She fell pregnant in his service, which may have caused a rift in their relationship: Christian noted that they had ‘bene enemyes, but nowe for her parte she beareth him no yll will’ . Although opposing witnesses testified that her illegitimate pregnancy was ‘notorious within the parishe of Harberton’ , Christian was nonetheless requested as a witness by the plaintiff John Morris. Christian deposed ‘that Morrys … did talke with this deponent to understand what she could saye in this matter’ , indicating that her former neighbour of eight years ago still knew where to find her. She had known him for fourteen years and the defendant, John Sparcks, for thirteen. The short distance from Harberton to Totnes permitted Christian’s continued involvement in Harberton community life, even if she had left the parish to escape the shame of her pregnancy. Her deposition details an intricate knowledge of the countersuit witnesses as well as the litigants, who were all resident in the parish. In turn, the opposing witnesses all knew her well; despite their hostility towards her, Christian’s connection to the community in which she had previously lived and worked clearly wasn’t altogether broken.54

In some cases, there’s no direct evidence that the plaintiff had directly approached a former female servant. Cases were probably discussed with witnesses prior to their examination in court to ensure that their testimony would uphold the suit. Payment of travel costs and expenses must have also been established prior to the witness’s attendance at court. These practicalities of testifying may have been discussed with distant witnesses by a proctor rather than the plaintiffs themselves. But in most cases, female servants made it clear that they had physically spoken with the litigant party. Servant Mary Shorte of Slimbridge (Gloucestershire), testifying on behalf of Nicholas Davis of Longney in 1625, deposed that ‘she cometh to testify in this cause at the request & procurement of the said Nicholas’ .55 In the same year, Marie Collins of Bath (Somerset) directly asked her former servant, Elizabeth Prior, to testify for her in a defamation suit. Elizabeth had only been gone for a month but had moved around 12 kilometres over the county border to Trowbridge (Wiltshire), where she was born. Her stay in Bath had been for only a year. Elizabeth told the court that she ‘came to testifie in this cause att the request of the partie her producing [Marie] without anie citation, and that the said Marie Collins is to paie her necessarie charges’ .56 Evidently, they had been in touch.

In theory, it was possible to turn up to court, testify, and return home without any further involvement in the suit or with those pursuing it. Regular contact between plaintiffs and distant witnesses wasn’t necessarily expected. But, as we’ve seen, being a witness was usually more meaningful than simply reporting something you had seen or heard. Most witnesses were involved not only in the case but also in the life of the litigating party, even at a distance. Men and women made quotidian or everyday journeys – to market, to visit friends and family, to work – that took them outside the parishes in which they lived. We see evidence of the connections with people and places that former servants retained even when they had moved away and moved on from service. In 1557, Juliana Burges, a married woman of Tavistock (Devon), returned to Whitchurch where she had previously served William Gooding. The journey wasn’t far – perhaps only a couple of kilometres – but it was made deliberately. Juliana’s purpose was to ‘vysyt a seke [sick] childe’ of William’s next-door neighbour. She maintained her friendship with the family who lived next door to her former master after she left service, continuing to visit and support her Whitchurch friends. Overnight, Juliana stayed in William’s house. She was still in touch with her former master, though their connection was controversial as he stood accused of an earlier extramarital relationship with her.57

Relationships were more permanent than the itineracy of service suggests. In 1605, Marie Edwards of Chew Stoke (Somerset) testified on behalf of her former master, John Webb of Backwell. She had left his service nine months earlier but indicated her continued presence in the parish. Her testimony was required in a tithe dispute pursued against John and she recounted not only what she recalled of tithing while she lived for a year in his service, but also what she had observed since, deposing that she

Twenty-four-year-old Marie had lived a particularly mobile life. She had lived in Chew Stoke for nine months, before that in Backwell for one year, and before that for nine years in Chew Stoke again. She was originally born in Littledean (Gloucestershire), at least 51 kilometres from her latest Somerset home. This mobility and her one year in Backwell, however, disguise an otherwise long-term relationship with her master, whom she had known for eleven years. Presumably she had met him when she first moved to Chew Stoke, although Backwell was still almost 9 kilometres away. The question of coercion bubbles underneath the surface of servant testimonies on behalf of masters, but there is sometimes more to the relationship than meets the eye. Her initial connection with John had not been as his servant – this came later. Living in a mobile society, early modern people travelled to visit friends and former neighbours who lived outside their parish of residence.

A handful of female servants had connections to places and people that are unexplained by their migration. Dorothea Lawrence of Rode (Somerset) was a witness in a 1620 defamation case. She had lived there for five years and before that in Wellow in the same county. She had never lived in Combe Hay where the plaintiff, the defendant, and every single one of the other witnesses lived. However, she had known the plaintiff, Joanne Kelston, since infancy.59 As we saw earlier, servants weren’t the only moving parts, and the movements of others they had encountered brought them into networks outside the places they lived. Perhaps their paths had crossed because Joanne Kelston had moved around.

Many female servants retained links with their masters and mistresses after they had left service, especially if they stayed in the same parish. Goodwill was retained between Alice Brent and her former mistress Emma Jones, a grover’s wife of Wells (Somerset), six full years after Alice had departed her service. In 1621, Emma deposed that during Alice’s year in service

Not all masters and mistresses kept memories of past servants warm in their hearts. John Williams, the vicar of Awre (Gloucestershire), and his wife Johanna deposed in 1573 against their former servant Elizabeth Thromer, who had worked for them two years earlier and was now being charged with defamation in the church court by Elizabeth Mychell. Elizabeth Thromer had apparently accused Elizabeth Mychell of having a child out of wedlock, a claim that had impaired her reputation and prevented her from marrying. The couple were probably around the same ages as both litigants; John was 27 years old and Johanna just 22. Recently married, they were perhaps particularly sensitive to the impact of their former servant’s words on Elizabeth Mychell and keen to help make amends on her behalf.61

As we saw in Chapter 1, female servants’ own reputations could be at stake by association. We often assume that a servant’s actions had consequences for the repute of the household in which she served – after all, we regularly read of pregnant servants being turned out of their masters’ homes. But female servants could be inadvertent vehicles for insults directed at their masters and mistresses. In 1572, Juliana Hewe of Fordingbridge (Hampshire) testified that while milking cows belonging to her master Mr Scot, who was the parish vicar, Francis Fetispase (who was shooting in the same field) approached her and ‘sunge unto hir certayne abhominable & filthy bawdye songs & sayde to [her] these songes are scripture tell thy mr that he must studye such scriptures’ .62 A servant’s identity and status were closely tied to the household in which she served, but this wasn’t always a good thing. Juliana was the target of Francis’s malice by virtue of her association with the vicar. A master’s or mistress’s ill repute could equally be injurious to a female servant whose socio-economic position was more precarious, especially in a community she had only recently joined. In 1594, Anna Smith defended her mistress, Mrs Morrell of Southampton (Hampshire), who was defamed as an ‘old bawde’ , which Anna considered ‘the most vile word’ .63 If Mrs Morrell was a bawd (a woman keeping a house of prostitution), then by extension (as her servant) Anna’s own sexual morality and reputation would be called into question.

A defamation case heard in the Winchester court in 1577 brings to light how a servant could face unfounded questions about her reputation by serving a master who had had several affairs. Anthony Snow had been suspected of illicit liaisons with his servants in the past and people were talking about it. To protect his reputation, Anthony litigated against one defamer, John Wekes. Questioned about Anthony Snow’s behaviour, husbandman William Ball of Twyford (Hampshire) deposed

According to William, Joan was an honest servant; however, her position in Anthony’s household gave rise to allegations of improper master–servant relations.

For others, ending service gave women the opportunity to testify against former masters and mistresses, a point I return to from Chapter 1. We have met Edith Scull of Barrow Gurney (Somerset) at other points in this book. In 1617, she was finally free from long-term service as a pauper apprentice to Richard Lewis, who on several occasions was summoned to court. One witness noted in 1617 that she had ‘depend[ed] on him for her meat and drink and mayntaynance’ but once she was ‘free from [his] service’ she didn’t hold back from revealing some home truths. Firstly, she impaired the testimony his defence relied upon, revealing that she knew of a loan agreement between him and one of his appointed witnesses, thereby rendering the latter unfree of obligation to the former. The description she gave of attempted rape three years later was the ultimate nail in the coffin; she was sufficiently free of this man to use the power of the court to bring justice against him.65

Leaving service, however, didn’t immediately pave the way for servants to set out how they felt about former masters. A dispute in the Winchester court illustrates the power that they continued to hold. On 6 June 1573, witnesses testified in two disputes: one pursued by Marmaduke Blake against his former servant Agnes Harvy and the second by Agnes against Marmaduke. Marmaduke brought witnesses who testified that a year earlier, Agnes had told them her master ‘would have forced her divers tymes to have had to doe with her’ . These stories, Marmaduke claimed, were untrue and defamatory. But Agnes had evidently poked the bear as her suit against him was also for defamation: in the hundred court held at Christmas, Marmaduke had apparently called her ‘a strompett and a harlott, for John Gyle had her at his comandement where he would’ . Not only was this ruinous to Agnes’s reputation, one witness also testified it was economically damaging: he deposed that ‘the mayde is like [likely] to lose xx [20] markes which was given to her by the ould parson of Over Wallop to be distributed amongst his kindred which were of good name and fame’ .66 When a female servant left a parish or her master, the relationship between them could continue to be coercive and sometimes acrimonious. Connections were not easily severed permanently at the end of service, reminding us of its longer legacy.

Reputation

Regular interactions and residency within the same parish partly determined belonging. But we’ve seen that personal networks were maintained over distance. By the same token, a person’s reputation travelled too.

For some female servants, movement to another parish offered a fresh start: perhaps a chance to escape oppressive, corrupt, or abusive masters and mistresses, or their own pasts. London – a city full of anonymous people – presented itself as a possible destination for runaway servants seeking both work and concealment.67 Some privacy must have been possible in smaller urban settlements, too, but it was harder to find and maintain in rural areas. While the parish was an important delineator of individual identity, collective identity regularly extended beyond parochial boundaries. Witnesses frequently referred to their ‘country’: in 1567 John Stowford of Dolton (Devon) deposed that the ‘rumour of the contrye is that they [servant Alice Pawe and her intended husband, John Brennelcombe] shulld marry to gather’ .68 In reality, ‘country’ had no fixed geographical boundary and its definition shifted from place to place and person to person. David Rollison nonetheless defined it as approximately 8 or 10 kilometres in area, ‘having more or less definite limits in relation to human occupation e.g. owned by the same lord or proprietor, or inhabited by people of the same race, dialect, occupation, etc.’69 Rumours and gossip could spread to other parishes and beyond.70 Knowledge – of local customs and people – had a geography, and some witnesses were even aware of how far gossip and news travelled: Martin Tresteyne of Ruan Langham (Cornwall) testified in 1584 that

Early modern society was reliant on oral transmission of rumour and news. Market crosses, inns, and taverns in provincial centres must have been sites of exchange of news and gossip, much like London’s Exchange and St Paul’s Walk.72 Reputations of rural female servants were carried over parish boundaries by masters, mistresses, and other parishioners who criss-crossed back and forth between their homes and these centres of exchange. Ann Kussmaul suggested that eighteenth and nineteenth-century hiring fairs were forums in which servants and masters met as complete strangers and gained knowledge of one another before agreeing a contract of service.73 In the absence of these hiring fairs, markets and other sites of sociability were more likely venues for strangers to be accredited or denounced.

It could be difficult to shake off gossip or a scandalous past. In 1637, Elizabeth Bab of Bradninch (Devon) testified in a defamation dispute on behalf of her former mistress Alice Stephens. Elizabeth gave a brief history of her service: she currently worked for Alice Stephens’s father, Clement Rudley, but had previously served Alice and her husband William. But opposing witness Elizen Cooke, who was the vicar of Dawlish, rewound the clock a few more years in his deposition, testifying that

The spectre of Elizabeth’s past didn’t just emerge in court. It had taken root in Elizabeth’s new home in Bradninch: another witness deposed that she ‘had a bastard & so ran away from her owne country’ . At 25 kilometres apart, Dawlish or Kenton and Bradninch lay much more distant from one another than Rollison’s parameters of ‘country’ .75 Tracing the paths these rumours took is virtually impossible: Elizen Cooke had heard of Elizabeth’s pregnancy simply by ‘credible report’ and witnesses seldom revealed the source of their knowledge, remaining deliberately vague to avoid implicating others in defamation.

Like Elizabeth Bab, others sought escape. William Stidman of Ashwick (Somerset) was cited to appear in court in 1632, charged with adultery with his servant Grace Jones. In October that year, Grace had died being ‘greate with childe’ . Witnesses testifying against William deposed of his desire to leave his wife. On a fair day in Wells that year, gentleman Thomas Hippislie had seen William and Grace together in an inn and noticed them ‘to weepe each to the other & she wiped each others eyes’ . The cause of their tears was not recorded, but William told Thomas that he ‘wished his wiffe deade’ and he ‘would forsake the countrie & goe into Ireland with the said Grace & there live with her’ .76 Early modern journeys to Ireland were often made in the pursuit of anonymity. William (and presumably Grace) wanted escape from hiding their relationship; they already had to travell to Wells from Ashwick to pursue their relationship in secret. The distinction between right and wrong connections – those that were socially sanctioned versus those that were denounced – was critical. Here, Ireland offered the possibility of anonymity that the couple were not able to achieve within the county – or even country.

Conclusion

Communities were not simply defined by geography. Female servants retained connections and relationships across time and space. While proximity could determine whom people knew, and a neighbourhood was delineated by the physical closeness of a group of inhabitants at a particular time, the boundaries of this community could be stretched when individuals left. Proximity to a neighbourhood or community facilitated connections, but physical separation was not an insurmountable barrier and relationships endured across considerable distances. Female servants established a range of connections, both temporary and enduring, positive and negative.

Even when servants were transient, appearing one year in the parish and disappearing the next, this doesn’t mean they didn’t lay down roots. Some connections were maintained through the tenacity and resolve of both parties to retain contact. Early modern society was mobile and opportunities to encounter one another – at markets, fairs, and other spaces of contact – were abundant. Other relationships were reignited by the processes of ecclesiastical law and litigation, which inadvertently reconstructed communities within the walls of the church courts and in the pages of depositions. Of course, these connections were being leveraged at critical moments when it served the interests of litigant parties. This doesn’t negate those connections – knowing where to find distant acquaintances indicates that ties were rarely severed permanently at the end of service. Even where direct interaction does not appear to have occurred regularly between former servants and litigant parties, shared recollections and memories nonetheless situated the female servant within a community that might reform itself in court.

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