Tracing the Lives of the London Silkwomen
In general non-aristocratic married women of the medieval period tend to be almost invisible to the historical record. Things improve somewhat in regard to those women who were widowed and thus can be found transacting business (personal and professional) in their own right. In the case of the London silkwomen this means that the information we have about their personal and business lives is very patchy; often we have more information about their husbands than we do about the women themselves. For example, it is rare that we know where they were born and grew up unless they were born into leading City families or we have documents relating to their apprenticeship. We have more information about those married women who registered their right to trade as femme sole as their business transactions are recorded in their own names. Fortunately, it was usual for a person’s trade or profession to be noted with their name in the record books. Some of the printed primary sources and calendars have been comprehensively indexed and this makes it easy to go through references for the trade of “silkwoman”. Armed with a list of the names of known silkwomen (and their husbands and children) it is possible to go through the index to check if there are any entries relating to them. As spelling was not standardised, it makes sense to try several spelling options for each name and this is particularly important when using computerised systems!
For example: Guildhall Library Letter Book K records for 18th October 7 Henry VI “Came Brother John Neel, master of the House of St. Thomas de Acon, and Thomas Bataille, mercer executors of Margaret Cliderowe, silkwoman, widow of Elias Cliderowe …” . This particular reference goes on to list some of the items left by Margaret Cliderowe but some records are more sparse and we have few if any other references to the women concerned. The Calendar of Close Rolls covering 1476-1485, for example, includes references to property transactions involving Margaret Hurtebees, silkwoman, but so far I have come across no references to her business activities. Similarly, Mariona Jerbray is listed on the Subsidy Roll of 1483 as a silkwoman and widow of German nationality, and is assessed to pay 6s 8d but again, as yet I have found no other references to her.
A certain amount of care is needed though, as names tend to reoccur in families; not just from generation to generation but in the same generation in different branches. A particularly clear example of this is the Frowyk family into which silkwoman Isabel married. The names Henry, Thomas and Isabel occur throughout the family in all branches and all generations and it is not always easy to work out to which individual a reference refers. Indeed, it seems likely that some compilers of biographies have mixed up some of the Frowyk men.
The survival of wills, accounts rolls and other City documents enable us to trace the transactions of individual silkwomen and their families. Equally useful are documents such as the letters of the Paston family and the household accounts of Thomas, Duke of Clarence . With regard to the business activities of the most active silkwomen, the accounts of the Royal Wardrobe are particularly useful. In these accounts we have a detailed description of the items purchased, the purchase price and, of course, the name of the seller and the year the purchase was made. Frequently the description includes the weight of silk in the item and the price is broken down into materials and labour. For some items we have a clear indication of how they were to be used.
A good example of this is some of the laces, tassels and buttons sold (along with other items) to the Wardrobe by Alice Claver in 1480. We know that she made 16 laces, 16 tassels and 16 buttons to decorate 6 books belonging to Edward IV. There was 6.75 ounces of silk in the laces and tassels for which she charged 14d per ounce plus a making up cost of 2s 8d. The blue silk and gold buttons were priced including the materials at 4s. We even know the names of the books in question. The accounts of other households tend to be more sparse and usually restricted to recording the item (sometimes in quite vague terms), the seller and the price.
Apprenticeship indentures show the terms and conditions under which young women learnt the craft. A couple are found preserved in the Public Record Office, along with papers relating to disputes concerning other apprenticeships. In one of these indentures we can see John Eland of Lincolnshire apprenticing his daughter Elizabeth to Elena and John Langwith for 7 years in 1454 to learn from Elena the craft of a silkwoman. We also know from the will of her first husband (a cutler) in 1425 that this was not Elena’s first experience as an apprentice mistress and in the records of the Tailors Company (John Langwith, her second husband, was a tailor) she is described as “Magistra Elena Langewyth”.
Documents recording apprenticeships can also show social and philanthropic attitudes. We know that during her long widowhood Alice Claver apprenticed a number of boys to various masters. Presumably this was a responsibility she undertook through the fraternities to which she belonged.
Accounts rolls in the Public Record Office show us purchases of silk made by individual silkwomen from Italian merchants and businessmen. Other documents show trade disputes such as that between silkwomen Katherine Dore and Joan Wolbarowe or the one between Cecily Walcott and her Genoese supplier Barnard de Via Cava .
Private letters can describe business transactions and also pass on the gossip. A clear example of this is a letter of 1474 between two of the Paston brothers. One has been buying goods from his “sylkemade” who tells him that she is making some of the wedding clothes for “Stoctonys doghtre”. The bride-to-be is highly likely to be the daughter of silkwoman Elizabeth Stokton and her mercer husband John, who was Mayor of London in 1470/1. The letter goes on discuss the gossip between the two women as passed on by the sylkmade .
One of the best sources of information about private family life and social status is that of wills. Women’s wills in particular often go into considerable detail about people, relationships and possessions. We see Beatrice Fyler in her will appointing fellow silkwoman Alice Claver as one of her executors. Alice herself appoints Katherine Champyon , who may well have been an ex-apprentice and trusted employee in Alice’s business. Alice Claver’s will also mentions her current apprentice, godchildren, almschildren and servants. From wills we can gain an insight into these women’s possessions. For example Elena Langwith’s will mentions clothing, bedding, silver spoons and other plate and rings. Isabel Frowyk’s will mentions her books of hours and her rosaries. By the late fifteenth century many wills were written in English. Elena and John Langwith’s wills, made in 1466 and 1481, are both in English while those of Isabel Frowyk and her husband Henry, made very slightly but not much earlier, are both in Latin.
Wills also give a very good insight into popular religious practices, as the first bequests in them are usually concerned with acts and bequests for the good of the testator’s soul. Alice Claver, for example, makes bequests for prayers for her soul to the parish priest at her own church, to another local church and to a fraternity of which she was a member, as well as making other charitable and religious bequests. Elena Langwith leaves property to the Tailors Company on condition that they use some of the income to keep the obits of herself and her husband in a very particular way .
In the case of some of the married silkwomen we can learn or infer something of their private life from references to their husbands and wider family. The records relating to the family of Isabel Frowyk illustrate this. It is from the will of her husband, Henry, that we know that she continued with her silkwoman’s business after her marriage , despite his own highly successful career. Her own will makes no mention of the business. There are numerous records showing Henry at work, including a record of him acting as judge in an important mercantile case . We even have a watercolour portrait of him in his aldermanic robes, dated around 1450 . We know that her son Thomas became a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex, was knighted in 1478 and died in September 1485 of the sweating sickness. We know that one of her grandsons, also a Thomas, became Chief Justice at a young age and that, eventually, ownership of the house in which Isabel and Henry had lived passed to their great granddaughter Frideswide . The records of the City Companies and Gilds are another good source of information about the husbands and sons of silkwomen, as many of them were active in their gilds. There are also references to the women themselves, particular when, as widows, they take on responsibilities in their deceased husbands’ businesses.
Some records of property holding have survived and using these and the information in wills and other legal documents sometimes we can say exactly where some of the silkwomen lived. Derek Keene has produced an extremely useful survey of property and from this, for example, we know the site in Bow Lane where Elizabeth and John Stokton lived. The site of the property left by Elena Langwith to the Tailors’ Company is still in the Company’s ownership .
We can gain some insight into the background against which these women lived and worked by looking at some more general documents. The petitions made by the silkwomen to Parliament during the fifteenth century give us an idea of the business climate in which they were competing . Here we see the women acting jointly to request action to protect their craft and receiving the backing of the legislature. This shows us not only the climate of competition but also that the silkwomen were sufficiently well organised to lobby for protection and that Parliament was sufficiently well disposed towards them to grant trade protection over a sustained period. The first petition was made in 1455 and the provisions of the last expired in 1505. Legislation such as the Sumptuary Acts give an idea of the social stratification while the records of the gilds and livery companies show us social life in action. The accounts of the Tailors’ Company, for example, show the widowed Elena Langwith and a companion being invited to Company Feasts.
Individual archaeological finds and extant items, while very useful for seeing how items were made and used, are less useful for tracing the work of the silkwomen. This is because it is rare that we know for certain who made them. Braids found in the London excavations may have been professionally made by some of the London silkwomen but could equally well have been produced in a domestic setting. The existence of collections of braiding instructions in fifteenth century books indicates that they were made on a wider scale than the purely professional. Similarly items in the Victoria and Albert Museum include the sort of work produced by silkwomen but many have come from an ecclesiastical source and while they may have been commissioned from silkwomen they could equally have originated in monastic workshops. All we can say when we look at these is that they are the sort of work produced by silkwomen throughout Europe.
Elizabeth Benns 2003
Bibliography & References
Primary Source Material
PRO References:
C 1/27/482
C 1/28/83
C1/66/455
C 1/75/106
C 1/110/125
C 1/274/12
E 101/128/30 m.6.
E 101/128/31 m.30.
E 210/1176
E 326/2223
E 404/73/1/18
PCC 9 Wattys
PCC 20 Stokton
PCC 10 Godyn
PCC 20 Godyn
PCC 3 Logge
PCC 24 Milles
Guildhall Library References:
GL Commissary Ct. Wills MS 9171/3 f.158v
GL Merchant Taylors’ Co. Account Books, vol 3 ff. 105 & 162
GL Cutlers Co Wardens Account Rolls MS 7146/16,20,21,23,24,26,27
GL MS 9171/6, f.280v
GL Letter Book K
British Library References
BL MS Harley 2320
BL MS Harley 4780
Printed Primary Sources
Rotuli Parliamentorum
Calendar of Fine Rolls, Vol 20 1461-1471
Calendar of Close Rolls 1476-1485
Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Hustings London AD 1258-1688 ed. R.R. Sharpe Guildhall Library
The Paston Letters
Secondary Sources
The London Silkwomen of the Fifteenth Century
Marian K. Dale 1932
Economic History Review Series 1, Part IV, pp 324-335
The Production of “Narrow Ware” by Silkwomen in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century England
Kay Lacey 1987
Textile History Vol 18, Part 2, pp187-204
Ellen Langwith: Silkwoman of London
Caroline Barron and Matthew Davies 2003
The Ricardian Vol XIII, pp 39-47
The Making of a Minor London Chronicle in the Household of Sir Thomas Frowyk (died 1485)
Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-***hs
The Ricardian Vol. X pp86-103
Sumptuary Legislation and personal Regulation in England
Frances Elizabeth Baldwin 1926
John Hopkins Press
Medieval London Widows 1300-1500
Ed. Caroline Barron & Anne Sutton 1994
Hambledon Press
The Alien Communities of London in the Fifteenth Century: The Subsidy Rolls of 1440 and 1483-4
Ed J L Bolton 1998
Richard III & York History Trust/Paul Watkins
Medieval Finds from Excavations in London c1150-1450: Textiles and Clothing
E. Crowfoot, F. Pritchard, K. Staniland 1996
HMSO London
The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, c1549-1613
Walter Goodwin Davis 1955
Anthoensen Press, Portland, Me
Cheapside Before the Great Fire
Derek Keene 1995
Economic and Social Research Council
The Acts of Court of the Mercers Company, 1453-1527
L. Lyell & F. Watney 1936
Cambridge
Textiles, Towns and Trade
John Munro
Essay X, pp 71-75
History of Parliament: Biographies 1439-1509
J. Wedgwood 1936
London
Household Accounts from Medieval England
Ed. C. M. Woolgar 1993
OUP for The British Academy
Comments on this article:
Guildhall letter bookI was very interested to see the reference to Guildhall Letter book K from 18th October which mentions the names of Neel and Battaille. These names occur in my family tree, (many of my ancestors were silkweavers). Could you tell me what year this was written? Thank you,
best wishes
Sally
Letter Book KThis entry was written in 1428. There is another entry about 18 months later referring to a bequest left by Margaret to her son.
It is interesting that both these executors have names that appear in your family. Thomas Bataille was a mercer.
Regards,
Elizabeth
Isabel and Henry FrowykRuth jenkins
Isabel and Henry FrowykRuth jenkins
Isabel FrowykI have a biography of Isabel nearly completed and have also written a couple of other pieces about the Frowyk family, so I now have quite a file of information about them.
Regards,
Elizabeth
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for its content.