4 - Female Service and the Village Community in South-West England 1550–1650: The Labour Laws Reconsidered

Summary

In 1634 in the parish of Brampford Speke in Devon, 22-year-old Mary Smith returned home to care for her sick mother. She remained there for around three months before her neighbours complained to Sir Nicholas Marten, the Justice of the Peace, that Mary was ‘not living with a master’. Questioned by the Justice, she was forced to ‘procure a Master’ but left his service after only a short time. Mary was reported again, the Justice this time threatening to send her to the Bridewell if she did not leave her mother's home and retain a position in service. By December 1635, Mary had conceded defeat, at least temporarily, and had taken up employment as a servant in the household of a 64-year-old widow named Katherine Mogridge. She remained there for at least five weeks before disappearing from record.

Sara Mendelson suggests that Mary's movement back and forth from her mother's home was a relatively common experience for unmarried women and that the ‘survival of the family unit was of higher priority than a young woman's career outside the home’. Returning to the family home was certainly not uncommon for female servants. In 1609, Catherine Hatton of Bisley in Gloucestershire was forced to leave service upon the death of her mistress, Margery Shoell. Instead of finding employment elsewhere, Catherine returned home to her parents. Mary Bond, who worked in service alongside Mary Smith in Katherine Mogridge's home also periodically resided with her father between positions she held in service. However, as Mary Smith's story indicates, such transient living and working arrangements were not tolerated by law. The complaint that her neighbours made to Sir Nicholas Marten that she was ‘not living with a master’ appealed to the legislation set out in the 1563 Statute of Artificers, which ruled that:

every person between the age of Twelve yeres and the age of Threescore yeres, not beinge laufullie reteyned, nor [an] apprentice […] nor beinge reteyned by the yere or half the yere at the leaste […] be compelled to be reteyned to serve in husbandrye by the yere.