The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (44 page)

In Wiltshire in the 1630s the enclosure of Braydon Forest was resisted with what the Privy Council described as ‘riotous insolencies … committed in the night season by persons unknown, armed with Muskets’; when the principal actors were arrested, women’s names featured as well as men’s. At York in May 1642, women destroyed an enclosure and went to prison for their pains; like the she-soldiers, these particular viragos enjoyed
tobacco and ale ‘to make themselves merry when they had done their feats of activity’. Nor did the capital lack its own viragos: after the flight of the five members of Parliament in January 1642, King Charles I unwisely came to the City of London, hoping to secure their arrest at the instigation of the Lord Mayor. He failed (the members were not there) but after his departure certain citizens’ wives fell on to the Lord Mayor, pulled his chain from his neck, and at one point looked like pulling him and the Recorder of the City of London to pieces.
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A tract,
The Women’s Sharpe Revenge
, which appeared in 1640, under the pseudonymous authorship of ‘Mary Tattle-well and Joane Hit-him-home, Spinsters’, was probably the work of middle-class women – tradeswomen for example. Here grievances were aired, many about education, which have a familiar sound to modern ears: if women were taught singing and dancing it was ‘the better to please and content their [men’s] licentious appetites’. Daughters in general were ‘set only to Needle, to prick our fingers: or else to the Wheel to spin a fair thread for our undoings’. It was the policy of all parents in any case to subdue their daughters ‘and to make us men’s mere vassals, even unto all posterity’. Marriage was the be-all and end-all of the female existence: ‘What poor woman is ever taught that she should have a higher Design than to get her a Husband?’ At the same time it was claimed that the female character was infinitely preferable to that of the male, being for example far more chaste – the Virgin Mary, not Grandmother Eve, was cited here.
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When war broke out, however, these outwardly genteel preoccupations were swallowed up in the general disturbance. Those primitive cries of female protest which did make themselves heard tended to be on the basic subjects of food, money – and peace. All this had a raucous sound to frightened ears of both sexes (it was not only the men who shrank back in disgust or terror or both from the image of the Amazon). Certain groups of strong women who had long enjoyed the protection and even the encouragement of society now appeared to assume a more menacing aspect in these troubled times.

Of these the fishwives of Billingsgate market provided a striking – and strident – example. Women had been connected with the sale of fish in London as far back as medieval times, if not further, since an act of Edward III allowed the ‘continuance’ of itinerant fish-women called ‘billesteres’ (the poor who sold their fish in the street, first crying up their wares).
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These women were not however permitted to keep stalls ‘nor make a stay in the streets’; they were also enjoined to buy their fish from free fishmongers. A similar liberty was granted to a category described as including both ‘Persons and women’ who came from ‘the uplands’ with fish, ‘caught by them or their servants, in the waters of the Thames or other running streams’.

In the latter years of the seventeenth century, the fishwives’ trade became depressed in the face of the activities of salesmen who cut out these middlewomen and sold Thames fish directly on commission. To try and remedy this, in 1699 the Government ordered that Billingsgate be kept as an open market daily, and ‘not permitting the fisherwomen and others to buy the said fish of the said fishermen, so that the fishermen were obliged to sell their fish to the fishmongers at exorbitant rates’ was explicitly condemned.

However, in the early part of the century the fishwives flourished. In 1632 Donald Lupton gave a jovial picture of them in his
Characters of London
:
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‘these crying, wandering and travelling creatures carry their shops on their heads’, he wrote, their storehouse being Billingsgate or the foot of London Bridge and their habitation Turn-again Lane. As well as all sorts of fish, their tiny shops – ‘some two yards compass’ – would hold ‘herbs or roots, strawberries, apples or plums, cucumbers and such like’ and sometimes even nuts, oranges and lemons.

Going on their rounds, they would first of all set up ‘a good cry’, hoping to sell the contents of their basket for 5s; ‘they are merriest when all their ware is gone’, he reported. Then they would ‘meet in mirth, singing, dancing, and the middle as a Parenthesis, they use scolding’. If a particular fishwife was missing of an evening in a drinking house, it was suspected that she had had a bad return, or paid off some old debts, or gone
bankrupt. If anyone ‘drank out’ their whole stock, the remedy was simple: ‘it’s but pawning a petticoat in Long Lane or themselves in Turnbull Street to set up again’. In short the fishwives were ‘creatures soon up and soon down’.

Lupton’s reference to the fishwives’ ‘scolding’ in the midst of all their merry singing and dancing was significant. The fishwives’ language was notorious. By the Restoration, the term ‘fishwife’ had become synonymous with one who swore (as ‘Billingsgate’ was already used to denote foul language); in the early eighteenth century ‘a Billingsgate’ was defined as ‘a scolding, impudent slut’, Addison making a whimsical reference to ‘debates which frequently arise among ladies of British fishery’. During the Civil War period, James Strong, author of
Joanereidos
, stressed this aspect of their charms, saluting:

… ye warlike bands

That march towards Billingsgate with eager hands,

And tongues more loud than bellowing Drums, to scale

Oyster or Herring ships, when they strike sail …

Those not sharing Strong’s admiration for women who had ‘stronger grown’ were on the contrary much alarmed by the appearance of the stalwart and loud-mouthed fishwives among the women who petitioned the House of Commons. As Samuel Butler wrote in
Hudibras
:

The oyster women had locked their fish up,

And trudged away to cry ‘No bishop’.
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The fact that the women’s tongues probably were louder than ‘bellowing Drums’ did not add to the cogency of their case; on the contrary it confirmed that disgust for and fear of a scolding woman mentioned in connection with witches, and associated at a primitive level in society’s consciousness with female activists.

The great women’s peace petition of August 1643 – Parliament having recently rejected proposals which many had hoped would lead to the end of the war – was variously
described.
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The women arrived wearing white silk ribbons in their hats ‘to cry for Peace, which was to the women a pleasing thing’. Numbers as large as 6,000 were mentioned although one contemporary report spoke more plausibly of 200 or 300 ‘oyster wives’, who with other ‘dirty and tattered sluts’ arrived at the House of Commons and threatened to use violence to those there ‘as were Enemies to Peace’. Another report referred to ‘Whores, Bawds, Oyster-women, Kitchen-stuffe women, Beggar women and the very scum of the scum of the Suburbs, besides abundance of Irish women’ (here were a number of prejudices neatly combined). Other reports spoke more simply of citizens’ wives with their babies at the breast. Ironically enough, this was the peace-seeking mob – ‘divers women killed by the soldiers in this tumult, yet unappeased’ – which the Royalist Sir John Scudamore mentioned approvingly to Brilliana Lady Harley as an implied reproach to her unfeminine conduct in prolonging the siege of Brampton Bryan Castle (see p. 217). In London their violence had appalled both Houses of Parliament.

First of all the women forced their way into the yard at Westminster, beating the sentinels about and yelling at each dignitary who passed on his way to the House of Lords: ‘We will have Peace presently, and our King’. Other women bewailed the loss of their husbands slain in the war. Sir Simonds D’Ewes, he who had, as we shall see, put an effective end to the voting of the women freeholders in Suffolk, displayed some cunning by declaring himself all for peace. In this manner he was able to pass through the mob easily, even receiving some ‘benedictions’. Others were less wily and thus less fortunate. Violence continued to be shown; ministers and soldiers, especially those with short hair (still at this date considered a mark of a Roundhead), had it pulled. The women’s especial venom was reserved for those MPs such as Pym who had received them favourably over earlier petitions in 1642, and promised them that their distress would be alleviated.

By the afternoon, despite the efforts of a trained band, the women had blockaded the House for two hours. When the militia men shot powder at them the women howled scornfully
that it was ‘nothing but powder’ and hurled brickbats in reply. Another howl went up to produce ‘the Traitors that are against peace, that we may tear them in pieces. Give up Pym in the first place’, cried the women. A troop of soldiers was ordered up but the women simply tore their colours out of their hats and assaulted them in turn. Provoked, the soldiers began to use the flat of their swords: one woman was said to have been killed and another lost her nose. At last someone – it was not clear who – sent for a troop of horse, Waller’s Horse, known derisively as ‘Waller’s Dogs’, who cudgelled the petitioners with their canes. The women fled but before they could escape the pursuing horse further casualties were suffered, estimates of which varied from one or two to 100; and there were injured women as well.

Many of the women were sent to Bridewell, including ‘a most deformed Medusa or Hecuba, with an old rusty blade by her side’, whose hands had to be tied behind her back with ‘Match’ (the long fuse used for lighting the soldiers’ muskets).

There were persistent rumours that this outburst, and other similar outbursts by women, were not in fact genuine if over-violent expressions of the misery caused by the war, but something far more menacing: highly organized demonstrations on behalf of the other side – in this case the Royalists. It was suggested that the Royalist Earl of Holland had egged on the campaign and even provided the white silk for the favours. As a rider to this, it was often suggested that any particularly virulent body of protesting women had contained men within its ranks, dressed up as women; Jenny Geddes, for example, the Scotswoman who hurled her stool at the preacher in St Giles’ Cathedral in 1637, was alleged to have been an apprentice in disguise.
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It was of course impossible to disprove these propagandist allegations afterwards – which is why they were so effective. The mere possibility that a female mob might constitute an instrument to be wielded by the enemy, and even include the enemy itself concealed within, made yet more sinister a spectacle already disquieting enough to the male eye. It was not considered relevant that most of those women decked in white silk favours were probably sincere when they raised their voices and cried for
peace – sweet peace ‘which is to women a pleasing thing’. For if peace was pleasing to women (and to many men also) the sound of women’s voices raised in tumult calling for it was not.

Woodcuts of the time show plenty of women present in the crowd of spectators which watched the execution of King Charles I on 30 January 1649, anticipating the
tricoteuses
of the French Revolution by 150 years. This was the type of ‘Virago’ from whom her contemporaries shrank back.

Hindsight – but only hindsight – has shown the importance of female suffrage in the elevation of women’s condition; this importance was certainly not appreciated in the seventeenth century.

On ‘an extreme windy day’ in October 1640 the Parliamentary elections for the borough of Eye in Suffolk were being held according to the contemporary custom, in public – in ‘Mr Hambies’s field’. Some women, widows, arrived, to be ‘sworn’, as it happened on behalf of the two Presbyterian candidates, Sir Philip Parker and his uncle Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston. When the two knights were duly elected there were accusations of cheating from their opponents, amongst which was registered the fact that women had been allowed to be ‘sworn’. At which point everyone, not least the knights concerned, made haste to point out that the women had not got very far in their endeavour, owing to the prompt conduct of the High Sheriff of Suffolk, Sir Simonds D’Ewes.

At first, it is true, the women did have their votes taken owing to the ignorance of the clerks concerned, but when D’Ewes heard what was going on, ‘Mr Sheriff would have us take no women’s oaths’. Both the knights requested the women’s votes to be removed from the total, and when the High Sheriff ‘cast up the Books, he cast out the women of the general sum’. Sir Simonds D’Ewes was quite clear in his own mind as to the reason for his behaviour: ‘conceiving it a matter very unworthy of any Gentleman, and most dishonourable in such an election to make use of their [women’s] voices, although they might in law have been allowed’.
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It was significant that the women in Hambies’s field in 1640 were widows; once again, the widow, by her very status outside conventional male authority, occupied a position of potential strength. This was in any case a time of franchisal doubt concerning who could or could not vote (in those elections which were disputed and where public voting actually took place; undisputed nominations to Parliament were arranged behind the scenes).
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It is important to realize therefore that these widows were not acting as agitators but freeholders.