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‘THE HONEST TRADESMAN’S HONOUR’: OCCUPATIONAL AND SOCIAL IDENTITY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Mark Hailwood
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Abstract

This paper starts from the proposition that historians of identity in the early modern period have paid insufficient attention to the significance of occupations and work. It demonstrates one possible approach to this topic by exploring the social identity of a particular occupational group – tradesmen – through a study of a particular source – printed broadside ballads. A number of important conclusions result: it argues that historians have overstated the dominance of craft-specific consciousness in the formation of early modern work-based identity (a term that is offered as a more helpful alternative to that of occupational identity), and suggests that broad-based identifiers such as ‘tradesman’ had a real purchase in contemporary discourse. It also considers the extent to which broader changes in the seventeenth-century economy – especially growing commercialisation and the increasing complexity of credit relations – affected the identity of the tradesman. Although the tension between the hard-working tradesman and the prodigal gentleman in ballad portraits suggests a growing social confidence on the part of the former, the marketplace is depicted to be as much a threat as an opportunity for tradesmen given the fragility of credit relationships. Moreover, the paper examines the gender dimensions of this occupational identity, arguing that a ‘female voice’ was central to ballad discussions of masculine ideals, and that the tradesman's patriarchal authority was generally portrayed as insecure. At its heart, the paper is an exploration of the intersection of class, gender and occupational identities in a period of economic change.

Type
The Rees Davies Prize Essay
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 24 , December 2014 , pp. 79 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This paper is the product of an Economic History Society Tawney Fellowship. Earlier versions were presented as a conference paper at the North American Conference on British Studies (my attendance at which was generously funded by the Royal Historical Society), and a seminar paper at the Institute of Historical Research. My thanks to the audiences at both for their feedback, and to Henry French, Steve Hindle, Alex Shepard and Brodie Waddell for reading and commenting on drafts of the paper.

References

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2 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), ‘Preface’. My italics.

3 Although Thompson was writing about the eighteenth century, I am focusing here on his influence on the social history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which arguably has been more significant: see Hailwood, Mark and Waddell, Brodie, ‘Plebeian Cultures in Early Modern England: 35 Years after E.P. Thompson’, Social History, 34, 4 (2009), 472–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Henry French with Jonathan Barry, ‘Identity and Agency in English Society, 1500–1800 – Introduction’, in Identity and Agency in England, 1500–1800, in Henry French and Jonathan Barry (Basingstoke, 2004), 1.

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11 This reflects a similar conclusion reached in relation to labouring men and women by Shepard, Alexandra, in ‘Poverty, Labour and the Language of Social Description in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 201 (2008), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My own conclusions here to some extent represent a caveat on those offered in my ‘Sociability, Work and Labouring Identity in Seventeenth-Century England’, Cultural and Social History, 8, 1 (2011), 9–29.

12 Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (1995), ‘Preface’.

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14 For scepticism about our ability to ‘recapture the way in which [printed ballads] might have been read or heard, internalized and appropriated’, see Fox, Adam, ‘Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England’, Past and Present, 145 (1994), 47–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a study that looks to mitigate problems of reception through a close reading of ballad form and content, see Wurzbach, Natascha, The Rise of the English Street Ballad (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

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16 For example The Glory of the Gentle-Craft, Pepys, 4.318 (1690); The Shooe = maker's Triumph, Pepys, 5.427 (1695). All ballads and collections cited in this paper were consulted via the open-access English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/). Dates provided are those given by EBBA, and relate to publication dates rather than dates of composition.

17 The Shooemaker Out-witted, Pepys, 3.271 (1684–1700).

18 John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs Digested into a Convenient Method for the Speedy Finding Any One upon Occasion (1678), 13.

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21 See their Man's Estate: Landed Gentry Masculinities, 1660–1900 (Oxford, 2012), ‘Introduction’.

22 For a reliance on such personal documents see the essays in Identity and Agency, ed. French and Barry.

23 Hailwood, ‘Sociability, Work and Labouring Identity’, 12–13.

24 JWalter, ohn, ‘Faces in the Crowd: Gender, Youth and Age in Early Modern Protest’, in The Family in Early Modern England, ed. Berry, Helen and Foyster, Elizabeth (Cambridge, 2007), 107Google Scholar.

25 Round Boyes Indeed, Pepys, 1.442 (1632); see also Hailwood, ‘Sociability, Work and Labouring Identity’.

26 The Honest Tradesmans Honour Vindicated, Pepys, 4.350 (1678–88).

27 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1906), 26 July 1664, 273.

28 Kilburn-Toppin, Jasmine, ‘“Discords Have Arisen and Brotherly Love Decreased”: The Spatial and Material Contexts of the Guild Feast in Early Modern London’, Brewery History, 150 (2013), 28–38Google Scholar.

29 Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (1726), ‘Introduction’.

30 Although it was a distinction that was sometimes made and probed in early seventeenth-century city comedies: Arab, Ronda, Manly Mechanicals on the Early Modern English Stage (Selinsgrove, 2011), 130–1Google Scholar.

31 This imprecise definition of the term tradesman for the seventeenth century is supported by the OED, which lists examples from across the century and later of ‘tradesman’ being used both to mean ‘one who is skilled in and follows one of the industrial arts; an artificer, an artisan, a craftsman’, and to mean ‘one who is engaged in trade or the sale of commodities; esp. a shopkeeper’. Even here, it is not always clear from the examples offered that the term is being used to mean precisely one definition rather than the other, although more precise regional uses like those outlined by Defoe are noted from the nineteenth century. The same can be said of the earliest appearance of the term ‘tradesman’ in an ESTC title, a blank form of orders to check weights and measures from c. 1619, which is directed at ‘Millers, Bakers, Brewers, Inholders, Vinteners, Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Alehouse-keepers, Butchers, Chandlers, Smithes, Weavers, Farmers, Maltsters, Taylors, Glovers, Clothiers, Cloathworkers, Fullers, and generally all Artificers, Tradesmen or any other person or persons whatsoever…that useth or hath any Waight or Measures whatsoever’. Whether a distinction is being drawn between ‘artificers’ and ‘tradesmen’, or the terms are being used interchangeably, is not clear. This reflects the fact that if such a distinction was understood by contemporaries, it was rarely deployed with any precision.

32 This section is based upon Sacks, David Harris, ‘Commonwealth Discourse and Economic Thought: The Morality of Exchange’, in The Elizabethan World, ed. Doran, Susan and Jones, Norman (Abingdon, 2010), 392Google Scholar.

33 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1992), 51; O’Connell, Laura Stevenson, ‘The Elizabethan Bourgeois Hero-Tale: Aspects of an Adolescent Social Consciousness’, in After the Reformation: Essays in Honor of J. H. Hexter, ed. Malament, B. B. (Manchester, 1980), 284–5Google Scholar.

34 Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), 274CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Stevenson, Laura Caroline, Praise and Paradox: Merchants and Craftsmen in Elizabethan Popular Literature (Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation.

37 This emphasis on a more anxious identity can also be seen in Ronda Arab's more recent appraisal of dramatic representations of tradesmen, which focuses in particular on the masculinity of retail-only tradesmen in early seventeenth-century city comedies. There is, however, little emphasis on credit relations in her work: Arab, Manly Mechanicals, ch. 4.

38 Robin Hood and the Tanner, Pepys, 2.111 (1681–4). See also A New Song to Drive away Cold Winter, Pepys, 2.107 (1684–6).

39 Ballad depictions of alehouse sociability were not always exclusively male, although portrayals of occupational gatherings invariably were. See Hailwood, Alehouses and Good Fellowship, ch. 3.

40 Hailwood, ‘Sociability, Work and Labouring Identity’.

41 O’Connell, ‘The Elizabethan Bourgeois Hero-Tale’, 284.

42 The Poore Man Payes for All, Roxburghe, 1.326 (1601–40).

43 Pepys, 4.350 (1678–88).

44 Pepys, 1.442 (1632).

45 Pepys, 4.350 (1678–88).

46 The Three Merry Coblers, Pepys, 1.408 (1623–61).

47 Newes Good and New, Pepys, 1.210 (1623); The Golden Age, Pepys, 1.152 (1625–35); The Honest Age, Pepys, 1.156 (1601–40).

48 Newes Good and New, Pepys, 1.210 (1623).

49 Knavery in All Trades, Pepys, 1.166 (1632). For similar examples, see Truth in Mourning, Pepys, 2.52 (1687); The Sorrowful Complaint of Conscience and Plain-Dealing, Pepys, 4.354 (1671–1702).

50 The Carefull Wife's Good Counsel, Pepys, 2.73 (1675–96). For more on representations of female traders, see Pennington, David, ‘“Three Women and a Goose make a Market”: Representations of Market Women in Seventeenth-Century Popular Literature’, Seventeenth Century, 25, 1 (2010), 27–48Google Scholar.

51 Poor Robin's Prophesie, Pepys, 4.304 (1674–9).

52 For a similar argument relating to alewives see Pennington, ‘Three Women and a Goose’, 42.

53 The Country-Mans New Care Away, Roxburghe, 1.34 (1635).

54 Pepys, 4.350 (1678–88).

55 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 97, 253.

56 Pepys, 1.166 (1632).

57 The Tradesman's Complaint, Roxburghe, 2.454 (1662–92).

58 The Invincible Pride of Women, Pepys, 4.153 (1675–96).

59 This may have been changing in the late seventeenth century: McShane and Backhouse have identified the development from the 1680s of ballads in which workers in the textile trades voiced sentiments that endorsed luxury and fashionable consumption, in particular in relation to the wearing of top-knots, which were seen as a boon to tradesmen who produced the necessary ribbons: McShane and Backhouse, ‘Top-Knots and Lower Sorts’, 344–5.

60 Shepard, Alexandra, ‘“Swil-bols and Tos-pots”: Drink Culture and Male Bonding in England, c. 1560–1640’, in Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe, 1300–1800, ed. Gowing, Laura, Hunter, Michael and Rubin, Miri (Basingstoke, 2005), 110–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 A Health to All Good-Fellowes, Roxburghe, 1.150 (1601–40).

62 The Careless Drunkards, Pepys, 4.238 (1671–1702); see also The Distruction of Care, Pepys, 5.97 (1685–8).

63 I Tell You, John Jarret, You’l Breake, Pepys, 1.170 (1630).

64 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 159.

65 Jordan, Jennifer, ‘Her-Story Untold: The Absence of Women's Agency in Constructing Concepts of Early Modern Manhood’, Cultural and Social History, 4, 4 (2007), 575–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Clark, Sandra, ‘The Broadside Ballad and the Woman's Voice’, in Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500–1700, ed. Malcolmson, Cristina and Suzuki, Mihoko (Basingstoke, 2002), 103–20Google Scholar.

67 The Maidens Delight, Euing, 205 (1623–61).

68 Sure My Nurse Was a witch, Pepys, 1.204 (1630).

69 Pepys, 1.170. See, for example, A Caveat for Young Men, Pepys, 2.22 (1678–88); Wades Reformation, Pepys, 2.90 (1684–6).

70 Erickson, Amy, ‘Married Women's Occupations in Eighteenth-Century London’, Continuity and Change, 23, 2 (2008), 267–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 The Invincible Pride of Women, Pepys, 4.153 (1675–96).

72 The More Haste, the Worst Speed, Roxburghe, 4.62 (1672–96). For wives selling goods, see Pennington, ‘Three Women and a Goose’, 38

73 On the importance of spinning to household economies, see The Knitters Jobb, Roxburghe, 2.244 (1672–96), and Muldrew, Craig, ‘“Th’ancient Distaff” and “Whirling Spindle”: Measuring the Contribution of Spinning to Household Earnings and the National Economy in England, 1550–1770′, Economic History Review, 65, 2 (2012), 498–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 The Wanton Maidens Choice, Pepys, 3.190 (1671–1702).

75 The Buxome Lass of Bread-Street, Pepys, 3.295 (1675–96).

76 The London Cuckold, Pepys, 4.122 (1685–8). See also An Answer to the London Cuckold, Pepys, 4.123 (1685–8).

77 The Catologue of Contented Cuckolds, Pepys, 4.130 (1651–86).

78 An Amorous Dialogue between John and his Mistris, Roxburghe, 2.12 (1672–96); A Pleasant Jigg betwixt Jack and his Mistress, Pepys, 3.14 (1675–96).

79 An Amorous Dialogue between John and his Mistris, Roxburghe, 2.12 (1672–96).

80 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 328.

81 Ibid., 303.