Identifying Women Proprietors in Wills from Fifteenth-Century London
Kate Kelsey Staples
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2008, vol. 3
Abstract
Fifteenth-century London pulsed with mercantile activity. London had a population of about 40,000 at the start of the century, and women were a crucial part of this burgeoning city. These were widows active in the trades of their husbands, married women pursuing livelihoods independent of or complementary to that of their husbands, and single women in the service industry. Despite the existence of strong patriarchal structures and a male-dominated culture in early modern England that limited women’s control of property and certain freedoms, these women were active agents in a diverse marketplace. London in the fifteenth century was a city dominated by male mercantile activity in which women nonetheless filled a crucial niche in the marketplace, and thus it fits the model of Bruges explained by James Murray.
Many studies of urban women rely on such valuable city documents as accounts that record fines and rents of commercial property, regulations on prostitution, guild records, and apprenticeship contracts. Testaments, often considered expressions of piety, are another type of document that can inform modern audiences about expectations for women as proprietors. Through testaments, we can see wives and daughters possibly designated as managers of the various types of commercial property that lay at the heart of the early modern mercantile economy.
Identifying Women Proprietors in Wills from Fifteenth-Century London
Kate Kelsey Staples
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2008, vol. 3
Abstract
Fifteenth-century London pulsed with mercantile activity. London had a population of about 40,000 at the start of the century, and women were a crucial part of this burgeoning city. These were widows active in the trades of their husbands, married women pursuing livelihoods independent of or complementary to that of their husbands, and single women in the service industry. Despite the existence of strong patriarchal structures and a male-dominated culture in early modern England that limited women’s control of property and certain freedoms, these women were active agents in a diverse marketplace. London in the fifteenth century was a city dominated by male mercantile activity in which women nonetheless filled a crucial niche in the marketplace, and thus it fits the model of Bruges explained by James Murray.
Many studies of urban women rely on such valuable city documents as accounts that record fines and rents of commercial property, regulations on prostitution, guild records, and apprenticeship contracts. Testaments, often considered expressions of piety, are another type of document that can inform modern audiences about expectations for women as proprietors. Through testaments, we can see wives and daughters possibly designated as managers of the various types of commercial property that lay at the heart of the early modern mercantile economy.
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