medieval women – Medieval York: Eulalia Hath a Blogge

Working Women of York: Was Margareta a Mason?

This is part of a series of posts in which I gleefully speculate about some of the women’s names found in the York Register of Freemen. To read my full research on these women, go here.

When I started my research into women in guilds and trades, I didn’t actually have a clear thesis. I had to start by exploring what was out there already, see the limits of our current knowledge to see what gaps I might be able to fill in. One of the things I explored was occupational bynames given to women. Friday Valentine compiled a database of all medieval English occupational bynames; I read through it and found a lot that intrigued me.

One of the things that made my research complex was my inability to sort out whether occupational bynames actually corresponded to occupations. Some but not all names in the Register have a specified occupation, e.g. “Thomas Chiken, carnifex.” (His byname also seems to match his occupation.) I also came across people with occupational bynames, such as “Rogerus le barber.” In general, I chose to assume that occupational bynames reflected the occupation of their possessor.

But is that really the most accurate approach? Familial last names were not really standardized by this point in time, but were starting to exist. I also was not able to find a definitive answer on the concept of married names; a woman may or may not have had the same last name as her husband. Does it make sense to assume a woman with an occupational byname worked in that field, or was she carrying a husband or father’s last name?

I found evidence that this level of scrutiny and skepticism toward occupational bynames should be applied across genders. There was more than one example of men with occupational bynames and different specified occupations, e.g. “Joh. le carpenter, de Thresk, cordwaner.” Honestly, I still am not sure how to interpret these entries. Although I did not take detailed notes on this phenomenon, my gut sense is that these entries only started to exist as I got later in the Register. That would tend to suggest that familial last names were gaining a hold. I chose to list such persons by their specified occupation (cordwaner, here) rather than their occupational byname.

Given these limitations, I chose to apply the same rule to male names and to female names: if a byname was clearly occupational, and no occupation was specified, I would assign that name to the category corresponding to their name; if an occupation was specified in opposition to the occupational byname, I would assign the name to the specified occupation’s category. I made a deliberate choice to apply sorting rules equally to male names and female names.

This was phenomenally difficult to do, and I doubted myself at every turn. In a couple of cases, I came across women with occupational bynames that would generally correspond to male-dominated (or even male-exclusive?) fields. Were these women married to (or daughters of) men with these occupations, or were they themselves working in them? However one answers that question will be based on one’s own prior assumptions about women as workers, and the interpretation will then skew the data to support the researcher’s bias. I chose to record these women as practicing the occupation that matched their byname, knowing full well that this may be wildly inaccurate.

One such woman was Margareta Mason, fil. R. de Doncastre, entered into the roll of Freemen during the reign of Edward II. There is no evidence for her occupation, and I did not find her father elsewhere in the register. To put it simply: I want to believe. I want to find evidence that medieval women had lives much richer than 19th and 20th century historians imagined for them. I want Margaret to have been a mason, and a master mason with full guild privileges at that. But I cannot know that for sure with the evidence I have, and that infuriates me.

Given the rule I had already set for myself, I counted Margareta as a Mason. I will have to imagine her doing complex geometry, supervising builders, or maybe hastily marrying one of her husband’s journeymen and being given a largely symbolic guild membership. Medieval women’s lives were incredibly complex, just maybe not in the way I like to dream of them being.

Working Women of York: Brewsters

This is part of a series of posts in which I gleefully speculate about some of the women’s names found in the York Register of Freemen. To read my full research on these women, go here.

“Brewing was women’s work.” At least, that’s what they tell us. The reality, as usual, isn’t that simple. Many women supplemented their income by brewing. In the 12th and 13th centuries, ale was brewed on a small scale by a large number of women. The brewing industry during this time was not heavily regulated, and brewing tended not to be a guild occupation.

This changed during the later medieval period. Starting in the 14th century, brewing as an industry became more concentrated; professional brewers emerged, responsible for large quantities of commercially produced ale. The village alewife slowly disappeared. There are a number of explanations for this phenomenon. I know that I cannot do them justice here. If you are interested in learning more about brewing, Judith Bennett (as usual) has the best writing on the subject: Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World and “Misogyny, Popular Culture, and Women’s Work” in History Workshop Journal 31.1 (1991).

What does the evidence from York show? Because I only studied the 13th and 14th centuries, I can’t give a full account of the possible rise of male brewers through the 15th and 16th centuries, and because my source material only gives evidence for guild members I can’t really speak to the many women who may have worked as brewsters without having the social and legal protection of a guild. But here is what I do know.

During the reign of Edward I, I found no recorded brewers of either gender, however two men appear to have brewing related surnames, the del Brouhous brothers. During the reign of Edward II, two female brewsters appear: Alicia de Wetwong and Isabella Brewer. There were no male brewers during this time period. During the reign of Edward III, there were no female brewers entered into the Register, yet six male brewers. Incidentally, all the male brewers are noted as breuster or brewster; although I have always read that the -ster suffix denotes that the occupation is female (webster = weaver, baxter = baker), I actually did not find evidence of this in the Register, instead, men seem to have been given -ster occupations too.

While these data are very sketchy, they do seem to suggest a trend of a rise in professional male brewers in the late medieval period. Did this trend continue? That should be a relatively simple set of data to pull from later volumes of the Register of Freemen if one is interested. I might explore this more, and in the meantime I think one of you reading this should try to track down an answer!

Here are the stories I tell myself about Alicia and Isabella: they are friends, sharing trade knowledge freely with one another (although Alicia things Isabella’s ale is too sour). Plenty of other women brew, but only Isabella and Alicia do it as their only occupation. Some of the bakers use barm from both brewers to make expensive bread for the richer citizens to enjoy. Isabella likes to use stale beer when she boils bacon. Alicia is a tanner’s widow; she misses her husband, but mostly she misses the income from his business. Isabella has never been married and is thankful she doesn’t have to take in laundry anymore. Alicia worries about her daughter, who should be married already but hasn’t shown an interest. Neither woman has any sense they’ll pass their business on when they die.

Working Women of York: Queneld

This is the first in a series of posts in which I gleefully speculate about some of the women’s names found in the York Register of Freemen. To read my full research on these women, go here.

We shall start with the earliest female name I found in the Register:

Queneld, reign of Edward I. Occupation: serviens (apprentice). Note: serviens Roberti de Hedon; name cannot be definitively gendered.

Queneld… Oh, Queneld. I really want you to be a woman. Let’s start there. I looked up all the information I could readily find on medieval English naming conventions. I talked to every names herald I know (and perhaps surprisingly I think I know some pretty serious heralds). Some sources and people said Queneld was a female name. Some said Queneld was a male name. Some were certain. Some uncertain. I’m sure people will weigh in in the comments.

The way we choose to interpret this name has deep implications. If Queneld was a woman, she was the only woman in the Register who gained her freedom through apprenticeship. She would provide evidence that women could at least sometimes be apprentices, and that they could in some remote realm of possibility rise from apprentice to Mistress.

Of course, there’s another way to look at it: I think it’s easy to say that there being no other evidence of women as apprentices supports the claim that Queneld is a male name.

I think this is the problem with researching medieval women.

The information is so sparse and requires so much conjecture that whatever set of assumptions you start from will determine the conclusions you draw. This frustrated me so much in my research. I kept second-guessing myself — “Is that just my bias? Am I reading too much into it? What’s real, anyway?” It turned the research into a slog. Eventually, I came to a decision: I’ll be honest about where I made leaps and why, but when I have a chance to believe that women did things, I will; too many people do the opposite, and so I’m okay with evening the score a bit.

So back to Queneld. If she was a woman, she was unique, and thus is noteworthy. I can’t find Robertus de Hedon elsewhere in the Register, so we have no indication of what his occupation was. Another mystery to tack onto Queneld.

Here’s the story I’ve made up about her in my head, though: She was a hard worker. Her parents arranged her apprenticeship; maybe Robertus was a relative. She impressed him with her quick wit, and he was proud to stand up and speak for her before the Guild. She paid her fee and the registrar wrote her name down. That night she had chicken and spiced ale. She led a good life.

Or, whatever, some guy in York had kind of a weird name and was otherwise entirely unremarkable. I know that could also be the truth, I just choose the better story. Women are written out of too many stories, I’d rather write one in where she didn’t really exist than risk erasing one more.

More Women Workers in York: Looking at the Ebor Cause Papers

http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/causepapers/

I have begun to explore additional research avenues for examining the lives and economic activities of women living in medieval York. One potential resource is the Ebor Cause Papers: these are records of individual cases heard in the ecclesiastical courts at York between 1300 and 1858. These cases represent a cross-section of medieval legal proceedings and can provide some insight into the daily lives of common people. The Cause Papers have been digitized, making them readily accessible to the casual researcher; I chose to use only the most basic records for this preliminary study. Under basic access, one can see the name, role (plaintiff, witness, etc.), and employment of participants in each case, as well as some other notes and details.

Continue reading “More Women Workers in York: Looking at the Ebor Cause Papers”

Female Guild Members in York, England between 1272 and 1377

This is an abbreviated version of a paper I presented at An Tir’s Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship in March of this year. The full paper is available online: https://medievalyork.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/womenswork1.pdf

Abstract:

Through an examination of archived medieval documents, this paper presents evidence for women in guilds and trades in York during the reigns of Edward I through III. I examined digital transcriptions of primary source documents, primarily the York Register of Freemen, extracting data about female names and occupations. By analyzing these data, I was able to compare my findings to those of other researchers who have written about women as workers in other areas of medieval Europe. Overall, I found that the situation for women in York was consistent with that for women in other medieval European cities: while women did participate (sometimes significantly) in wage-work, women’s participation was typically limited to certain types of jobs in certain industries, and women rarely achieved full guild membership.

Continue reading “Female Guild Members in York, England between 1272 and 1377”

Women as Workers in Medieval England (a brief overview)

This is an excerpt from a research paper I presented at An Tir’s Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship in March. The full paper is available in the files section, and includes a full bibliography and works cited; this post has been edited from the introduction to that paper and provides a broad overview of women’s roles in medieval English town economies. The original introduction had a large number of footnotes, because I love footnotes, which I have awkwardly inserted as parentheticals.

The purpose of this research was to uncover evidence for women’s participation in trades, paid work, and commercial/craft guilds (as opposed to parish guilds) in York, England during the reigns of Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III, which covered the years 1272-1377. This was a transitional period in Europe, corresponding with a rise in urbanization and the subsequent boom of the guild movement. In England in particular this was a period of tremendous social upheaval; from the relative stability of the thirteenth century, the early fourteenth century brought a series of famines that significantly weakened both systems and people, and the devastation of the Black Death left chaos in its wake. Yet guilds persisted in spite of significant social upheaval, a phenomenon which has been relatively well-studied. In post-plague England, wages for skilled workers increased, and in general there was an increase in the percentage of the working population involved in trades rather than agriculture. (See Penn and Dyer, “Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence from the Enforcement of the Labour Laws” for more analysis of general post-plague patterns.)

Continue reading “Women as Workers in Medieval England (a brief overview)”

Photos of my KASC Displays and Entries

Photos of my displays / entries from An Tir’s 2015 Kingdom Arts and Sciences Championship:

My display for my research paper on women in York guilds

Pigments, ink, and paint-making supplies

The paints I made (plus some modern gold paint for comparison)

All three of the paintings I completed side by side by side

This is the second complete practice painting that I finished. It has my dog in place of the hound from the original, and other than the gold paint I used paints I made myself.

The finished miniature, done using historical paints on parchment.

Closer image of some of my pie display elements.

Another part of my pie display, with all my samples.

Close-up of one of the historical flours I used

Basin and towel for handwashing. We are civilized people!

I made a pie for the populace to taste, too.

This is the finished pie that I served my judges on Saturday. The one I had for Sunday looked even better, but I didn't get pictures of it. — This is the finished pie that I served my judges on Saturday. The one I had for Sunday looked even better, but I didn’t get pictures of it.

This is a photo I took before the event of one of my test pies, showing details of the filling.

My Kingdom Arts and Sciences documentation

PDF copies of my research paper and documentation for my two projects are up in the files section. Now you too can experience the thrill of reading 64 pages about medieval pies, or the wonder of graphs that help us interpret the lives of medieval women, or the frisson of fear of knowing that I have a lot of toxic pigments in my garage right now.

Here are the abstracts from each of these, to get you a little excited:

Early 16th century French miniature: For this entry I aimed to replicate one of the full-page miniatures found in an illuminated manuscript originally commissioned for a Dominican cloister in Poissy, France around 1510. This work was based in large part on my close study of the manuscript itself and my analysis of the painting techniques used within it. I supplemented this with research into similar manuscripts from the same time period and place, especially ones which are incomplete (which give clues to the techniques used to produce their illuminations). My main interest in completing this project was to practice using more historical materials and techniques in my scribal work. I made my own ink and paints and documented the processes I used for each. The finished painting was completed on parchment using paints I made from period pigments or modern chemically similar substitutes.

Late 14th century pie: For this entry I prepared a meat pie based on a recipe from Forme of Cury, a culinary manuscript attributed to Richard II’s master cooks and believed to have been compiled around 1390. The pie I chose to recreate is representative of trends in foods consumed by high-status individuals in England during the high medieval and late medieval periods. Building on research I did for a pie crust project presented last year, the crust was prepared using stone ground and sieved flour from heirloom rivet and bread wheat grown in mixed fields in England. The filling contains three different types of birds: squab, chicken, and quail (as a stand-in for passerine songbirds, which are largely illegal to kill in the US), as well as eggs, currants, and spices. The consumption of birds was a sign of wealth during this time period, so it is fitting that a royal pie contain multiple types of desirable (and expensive) birds. The other filling ingredients would have been imported to England, adding considerably to their cost. This is also a very labor intensive food; multiple steps and some specialized techniques are required to produce this pie, which is a further indication of the social context in which this pie would have existed.

Women’s Work: Through an examination of archived medieval documents, this paper presents evidence for women in guilds and trades in York during the reigns of Edward I through III. I examined digital transcriptions of primary source documents, including the York Register of Freemen and the Ebor Cause Papers, extracting data about female names and occupations. By analyzing these data, I was able to compare my findings to those of other researchers who have written about women as workers in other areas of medieval Europe. Overall, I found that the situation for women in York was consistent with that for women in other medieval European cities: while women did participate (sometimes significantly) in wage-work, women’s participation was typically limited to certain types of jobs in certain industries, and women rarely achieved full guild membership.

Again, to read the full papers, hop over to files.