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Female Merchants? Women, Debt, and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1266–1532

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Richard Goddard
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Abstract

This article examines English women who were engaged in wholesale long-distance or international trade in the later Middle Ages. These women made up only a small proportion of English merchants, averaging about 3 to 4 percent of the mercantile population, often working in partnership with their husbands. The article systematically quantifies, for the first time, women's penetration into this male-dominated trade and adds new perspectives to our understanding of women and trade in the Middle Ages by using both debt and customs records. It poses important questions about women's economic roles, the nature or distinctiveness of their businesses, and the ways that their actions fitted within mercantile activity more broadly. It examines the extent to which wives acted as equal economic partners with their husbands and also assesses the extent to which women's economic potential or agency in wholesale trade was shaped, or indeed constrained, by economic and patriarchal forces. It concludes by arguing that patriarchy certainly limited female access to wholesale markets, particularly after 1300, along with other linked features that also shaped women's economic trading endeavors. These features included status, access to capital, and the advantages to working within dynamic, extensive, and busy markets such as those found in later medieval London.

Type
Original Manuscript
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 494 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2019 

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59 TNA C 241/175/99.

60 TNA C 241/282/94; for other examples, see TNA C 241/192/79; TNA C 241/281/133, TNA C 241/192/79; TNA C 241/281/133.

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63 Sharpe, Letter-Book B, 65; for other examples, see Sharpe, Letter-Book B, 126–27.

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66 Sharpe, 36.

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94 Gras, 416; see also 434 for a similar example from Ipswich (Suffolk).

95 Gras, 409–10.

96 Kowaleski, Haverner's Accounts, 35–36.

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107 Gras, 500.

108 Hicks, ed., English Overland Trade, maps 3–32B.

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110 Hicks, maps 3–32B.

111 Carus-Wilson, Overseas Trade of Bristol, 210–12.

112 TNA PROB 11/4/176.

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114 Carus-Wilson, 241, 263.

115 Carus-Wilson, 227, 233, 258.

116 Carus-Wilson, 243, 263, 276.

117 Carus-Wilson, 235, 261, 278.

118 Carus-Wilson, 261–63.

119 Carus-Wilson, 261.

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126 Cobb, 27.

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129 Wilson, 90.

130 This 4 percent figure is the mean of all the debt and customs percentages cited above. It is intended only as a general guide to overall participation rates.

131 This is suggested implicitly, but not explored systematically, in Barron, “‘Golden Age’”; Lacey, “Women and Work”; Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life-Cycle, 123.

132 Goddard, Credit and Trade, 212–36.

133 Goddard, “High Finance.”