This has been written because someone said in a Facebook group, I want to use lace, but I want it to be relevant to my station. This was something that worried people at the time. Samuel Pepys at one point in 1669 wrote he did not wear a particular suit “because it was too fine with the gold lace at the hands, that I was afeard to be seen in it.” When he did get around to wearing it he wrote “Povy told me of my gold-lace sleeves in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also, so as to resolve never to appear in Court with them, but presently to have them taken off, as it is fit I should, and so to my wife at Unthanke’s, and coach, and so called at my tailor’s to that purpose.” (1)
Below are images from a letter from Elizabeth Isham (1609-1654) to her father, with samples of ten penny, seven penny, six penny and tuppenny lace. (2) These are simple cheap laces, the type that caused Margaret Spufford to write that “lace represented perhaps, the most straightforward index of cheap luxury.” (3 p. 99) They are compared to the values set for a day’s work by the Suffolk Sessions in 1630, these rates were found – that is the employer provided food and drink during the day. (4 pp. 307-11)
Tuppenny lace – This maybe the type of lace that poor children were set to making when they were learning to make lace so that “no child be suffered to beg,” but that they should learn “as soon as ever they be capable of instruction.” (5 p. 89) The rate set in 1630 for “women and such impotent persons that weed corn,” was 2d a day.
Sixpenny lace - There are two laces at this rate. In 1630 6d was the day rate for a tailor, a hedger or a dawber. A dawber is a man who covers the walls of a building with daub, as in wattle and daub. This type of lace is also bought by the gentry, the Shuttleworth accounts have twelve yards of six pence a yard lace being bought “for my Mris” in 1613. (6 p. 206)
Sevenpenny and ten penny laces – You are now into the wages paid to skilled men. A master joiner or master carpenter, or a thatcher might be paid 8d a day. This is also the rate for mowers and reapers of corn, who are paid more than mowers of hay.
As can be seen the above are all very simple laces, and all white linen. Black lace was usually made of silk, and purchased for mourning. In 1626 the Howards of Naworth Castle purchased “13 yeards of black bone lace for my Lady 13s.” (7 p. 239)
How much were more expensive, deeper, more complex linen bone [bobbin] laces in the Civil War period? The chapman William Mackerell in 1642 had bone laces in his stock ranging from 5d to 3s 8d a yard. (3 pp. 186-90) The most expensive laces where those purchased by the aristocracy. In 1641 the Marquis of Hertford’s accounts have “paid by my Hon Ladie for 4 yards of bone lace at 15s a yard, 2 yards of bone lace at 10s per yard, for making 4 laced round handkerchers.” (8 p. 19)
What about metal laces? They were valued by the ounce because of the value of the metal. When Elizabeth le Strange got married in 1635 she bought for two gowns for her wedding, silver bone lace (22.25 ounces equaling 28 yards) for six shillings a yard. (8 p. 126)
References
1. Pepys, Samuel. Diary. [Online] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary.
2. Levey, Santina. Lace: a history. London : Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.
3. Spufford, Margaret. The great reclothing of rural England: petty chapman and their wares in the seventeenth century. London : Hambledon Press, 1984.
4. Archbold, W.A.J. An Assessment of wages for 1630. English Historical Review. 1897, Vol. 12.
5. Slack, Paul. Poverty in Early Stuart Salibury. Devizes : Wiltshire Record Society, 1975.
6. Harland, John (ed.). The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths ...1582-1621, Part 1. Lancaster : Chetham Society, 1856.
7. Ornsby, G. ed. Selections from the Household Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle. Publications of the Surtees Society. 1878, Vol. 68.
8. Morgan, F. C. Private Purse Accounts of the Marquis of Hertford, Michaelmas 1641-2. Antiquaries Journal. 1945, Vols. 25, 12-42, pp. 12-42.
9. Whittle, Jane and Griffiths, Elizabeth. Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household. Oxford : OUP, 2012.
