Consumption and Gender in the Early seventeenth Century Household: the
world of Alice Le Strange, by Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012. £60. ISBN 978 0 19 923353 3
I first wrote about this project eighteen months ago before the book was
published. I put it on my Christmas list but nobody bought it for me. I have
now purchased it for myself and am very happy. I recommend this book for anyone
studying the period. Alice Le Strange kept accounts from 1610 (her husband Hamon
actually started them in 1606) until 1654, so they cover almost all of the
first half of the seventeenth century, and everything involved in the running
of a gentry household.
The Le
Stranges were Norfolk gentry and had lived in the area for 300 years before the
accounts covered here start. Hamon Le Strange was, in 1603, one of the men who
rode to Scotland to inform James of the death of Elizabeth. He got a knighthood
out of it, but he was not a courtier preferring to live in Norfolk and run his
estate.
The book analyses
the accounts in various different ways, and does not include a complete transcription
of the account books.
One chapter in the book
covers the acquisition of goods, that is how they bought food, clothing,
furnishings etc., another covers what
the authors call everyday consumables, what they ate, what they drank, what
they used to light the house, what items were cleaned with and what medicines
were used, which medical people were consulted.
The chapter on
material culture covers furniture and furnishings, there is for example a
complete account for the cost of furnishing a bedroom in 1628 which runs from
28 shillings for the bedstead itself, to 3s 6d for 4 dozen horn curtain rings,
and £53 19s for 83 yards of crimson damask. The
same treatment is given to clothes and household textiles. While Alice’s own
clothing allowance of £66 13s 4d a year is not in the accounts, the clothing of
the children is, and is often detailed. Particularly interesting was the
purchase in 1630 of 29 yards of white calico (cotton) for Nicholas’s shirts.
The chapter on the
family life cycle covers such things as how many people (family and servants)
were in the household, it ranged from 10 to 30, and what the annual expenditure
was, again a wide range from £926 to £2723. The accounts make little mention of
the Civil War. The Le Strange’s were royalist, and Sir Hamon was involved in
the unsuccessful defence of King’s Lynn in 1643, resulting in a comment in the
accounts “Made and spent in suit by the unjust and tyrannical oppression of Mr.
Toll and others of his faction in Lynn concerning the siege - £1088”
There is a chapter
on elite consumption; this is not normal day to day expenditure but the costs incurred
by holding office, travelling, and leisure activities. When Sir Hamon was
Sherriff of the county for example, the
bill for feeding the assize judges came to £84 19s 7d. Likewise there are
payments to the town waits (musicians), the purchase of hawks for hunting a
pastime Sir Hamon was fond of, the purchase of books, musical instruments and a
pair of compasses and a quadrant.
The chapter on the
employment of labour covers not only what was paid to servants and day
labourers, but also the Le Strange’s relationship with specialists. The
warrener, for example, was not paid by the Le Stranges, he paid them £8 a year
for the right to farm the rabbits. There is a useful section which compares
what was paid by the Le Stranges with what was the statutory wage at the time.
