Chapter 2 Households

Households and religious guilds

There is a marked lack of scholarly discussion on the topic of households within religious guilds.¹¹ The study of guild membership has almost solely concentrated on the status of individual members and the subsequent effect on the reputation and role of the entire guild within society. Where family membership has been commented upon within guild historiography, it frames them in relation to social status.¹² For York’s Corpus Christi guild, David Crouch discusses briefly the admittance of a small number of servants each year, from 1477 onwards, in relation to the prestige it added to the individual head of the relevant household within the guild itself. There were certainly instances of families joining Corpus Christi, for Crouch notes that ‘family’ memberships, in which children were included, usually cost 3s 6d yet he does not discuss this beyond providing a single example, nor does he engage with a discussion of family membership or the household.¹³ Examination of household membership within late medieval guilds is, therefore, long overdue.

Lynda Rollason’s study of non-monastic entries in the Durham Liber Vitae provides a useful point of comparison for the appearance of families and households within other kinds of ‘fraternal’ associations. The Liber Vitae cannot be directly equated to a guild or fraternity register (as only a small number of those that were granted confraternity can be found recorded in the Liber Vitae) although there are similarities which warrant a comparison here between the Palmers and Rollason’s analysis.¹⁴ Rollason notes that there was ‘no real tradition of family association’, and members of a household are rarely to be found in the Liber Vitae.¹⁵ Only two exceptions appear in the list of 1,688 non-monastic names: Bishop Louis de Beaumont and John of Gaunt, each with a list of their respective retainers.¹⁶ This is markedly different to the Palmers; the Liber Vitae shows the operation of the aristocratic affinity, within which the noble household was at the centre. These are the only two examples compared to the high number of households found in the Palmers’ membership.

Benefits of membership

Before a detailed study of the spread of guild membership within and between households in late medieval England and Wales can commence, the first substantive question to consider is the reason why households, including masters, their families and their servants, might wish to enrol in the Palmers’ Guild. Two interlocking motivations can be identified: piety and reputation. Both can similarly be ascribed to individual guild membership, but they take on a new significance in the context of the household. The Palmers provided a framework in which these two aims could be pursued by the heads of households across the social spectrum.

Late medieval religion was not circumscribed by the parish church but instead allowed room for individual preference in expressions of piety. Its range of expression, its ‘voluntary’ nature, and the depth of lay devotion have all been the focus of recent scholarship.¹⁷ In this instance, it pays to consider lay piety specifically within the framework of the household, and, additionally, to think about how household guild membership interacted with other forms of devotion. While several aspects of what follows have been subject to scholarly examination – for example, noble, gentry and mercantile piety – this work has largely been done in isolation,¹⁸ and it has already been noted that households have not featured in guild historiography at all, nor guilds in scholarship on households, despite the popularity of the topic over the past three decades. Fraternal membership has always been seen as a form of pious expression,¹⁹ but what did it mean for households specifically?

Before we consider guild membership as an expression of lay household piety, it is essential that we situate it within other types of devotion. The most immediate and universal encounter with religion was, arguably (although recognising the exceptions encompassed by ‘unorthodox’ expressions of religion),²⁰ at the level of the parish. Canonically, every Christian under the authority of the papacy belonged to a parish and was obliged to receive Mass and confess at least once a year. Parish churches, therefore, became foci for investment in various forms.²¹ Households were very much a part of this parochial existence; those who maintained them would attend church with their families, retainers and servants, often occupying a personal pew or chapel.²² Familial chapels could develop into mausolea, forming, essentially, an intergenerational representation of the household. Indeed, a typical example of this phenomenon is to be found in the church of St Michael and All Angels, Macclesfield, wherein numerous effigies and tombs of the Savage family (discussed in detail in the section ‘The influence of networks II: the external pressures’) reside.²³ Across the kingdom, parish churches could assume a symbolic mantle expressing ‘local identity and family power’ for many gentry families.²⁴ Wealthier individuals integrated themselves wholeheartedly and genuinely into the parish, spurred by a wider commemorative impulse and this involvement was not just an outward token of their status.²⁵

This is a view of the parish that emphasises integration – in terms of involvement and investment – especially on the part of those with wealth. Some historians have argued the opposite, citing family chapels and household oratories as evidence for a withdrawal from the parish, particularly in reference to the gentry.²⁶ The institution of chapels was transformative of both the physical and social household, and it seems likely that the household in its entirety would, at some level, have gravitated towards it for certain expressions of devotion, which may have been communal and reinforced household relationships. Domestic chapels were common among the social groups from whom household membership of the Palmers was drawn. Naturally, a prerequisite was surplus capital in order to obtain an episcopal or papal licence, employ a chaplain, create a sanctified space and stock the chapel, and so they were ubiquitous among noble households from an early date. By the late fourteenth century, however, chapels or oratories were also prevalent among even minor gentry,²⁷ and elite townspeople increasingly sought to obtain them.²⁸ The household functioned ‘as a spiritual unit as directed by its lay head’,²⁹ and the maintenance of a domestic chapel and accompanying clergy was an expression of the ‘good rule’ of a household visible to every visitor. As such, its existence had parallels to the household membership of a guild like the Palmers, in which the centrality of the household was the basis of their piety. Households operated through joint religious acts: for example, the communal reading of devotional books and worshipping in chapels or designated rooms in the house with portable altars. The material culture of late medieval cities suggests a strong culture within the household.³⁰ In membership of a guild like the Palmers households retained an element of the independence of religious investment but directed that investment into an expression of religion that simultaneously benefited the household as a unit while supporting a larger religious community.

Other forms of religious expression had similar pertinence for the household. Religious houses, guilds, pardons and indulgences were obvious sources of investment for the laity. The situation was one of reciprocity, where additional spiritual benefits were a result of participation, and such investment was commonplace across society. In some cases, this interaction was purely financial, like the involvement of Humphrey Newton’s household in his pardon-collecting habit.³¹ Others were more internal processes, such as devotional reading, which became exponentially popular and accessible throughout the late Middle Ages.³² Membership of the Palmers, in a way, was not out of the ordinary for households because it served as an extension of the operation of the household. Membership fit within the spiritual obligations of the householder to teach its inhabitants the Paternoster, Ave and Creed, as well as encourage spiritual observance.³³

Guild membership, therefore, must be understood within this wider household context, where devotion could be both parish-based or extra-parochial, and these were not at odds. The extent to which a household was genuinely ‘pious’ is often difficult to discern. Simply having a chapel with a daily Mass did not necessitate the attendance of members each day; the ideal and reality may have been very different. But we should not dismiss the existence of genuine spiritual concerns. The Middle Ages are no longer seen as an age of ‘blind faith’, but devotion and belief were often genuinely and deeply felt.³⁴ The penitential system that underpinned the Catholic Church, with the notion of the ‘third place’ of Purgatory, encouraged the accumulation of pro anima prayers in order to expedite the journey to salvation.³⁵ The Palmers employed priests to perform divine service, which benefited both the living and the dead. There are obvious individual reasons, therefore, that a master might enrol himself and his family in a religious guild, but this line of thought can also be extended to those under his care. The concern, highlighted later in this chapter, for masters to finish the payments of dead servants suggests that the resulting benefits of these prayers were sought, and channelled, in a household context. The affective bonds within the household may have manifested in a genuine concern for the spiritual welfare of servants, who may not have had the means to access other forms of religiosity that came at a financial cost.

It was also beneficial for heads of household to display their own piety in a wider societal context and, more crucially, to assert and project the pious nature of their entire household. Religious expression could take the form of giving alms, and servants, on occasion, were permitted reimbursement from their master if they gave charitably.³⁶ The fulfilment of the duty of each household member to give alms was an extension of household charity,³⁷ and thus an outward form of piety, which constituted a fulfilment, and indeed an exceeding, of societal expectations. Naturally the more elaborate the donation, the more favourable the external perception. Guild membership had the same purpose. The social capital accrued through fraternal membership was advantageous for individuals alone, but this personal benefit was multiplied for masters joining with their servants. As with the distribution of alms, the perception of the servants performing a pious act reflected favourably on the master. There was, therefore, two aspects to the motivations for masters to encourage enrolment of their household in the Palmers’ Guild. The first was internal, concerned with the welfare of the immortal soul. The second, on the other hand, was perceptibly external and constituted public acts that were witnessed by others. This theme is therefore inherently linked with another reason for household membership: the enhancement of the reputation of the household.

The medieval household was a microcosm of the body politic. As Philippa Maddern argued, the nation, cities and towns, and households could all be represented as the human body, with each respective head responsible for the obedience and order of all other parts of the metaphorical or physical polity.³⁸ Chris Given-Wilson has likewise argued that ‘the magnificence of (the king’s) domestic establishment was one of the yardsticks by which his political authority was judged’.³⁹ Nowhere is this sentiment better encapsulated than when the 1485 parliament of Henry VII insisted that ‘Your Honorable Household … must be kept and borne worshipfully and honorably, as it accordith to the honour of your estate and your said realme’.⁴⁰ A well-ordered household was the basis for order within the kingdom; disorder within the household would produce disruption elsewhere, rippling through society.⁴¹ The maintenance of discipline at every level within the household was a duty of the householder and anything less resulted in personal repercussions. In both urban and rural settings, the behaviour of servants outside of the home was the responsibility of the master and any misbehaviour might cause significant damage to his or her reputation.⁴² In a more intimate sense, should a servant marry without sanction, it could ‘jeopardise the appearance of household rule that sustained civic identities of both householders and servants’.⁴³ Yet a household ruled wisely led to godly behaviour of those within the household.⁴⁴ Guild membership captured that relationship of godliness and social respectability that were entwined in late medieval domesticity; it was the epitome of encouraging godly behaviour within a house, providing an additional outlet for religious activity, while fulfilling a social obligation of orderliness. Guilds provided an additional layer of order that ensured that members adhered to a common standard of behaviour – not just at guild events but in their private lives.⁴⁵ Householders not only demonstrated the respectability of their household with guild membership but it also reinforced good behaviour; it took the inward-facing establishment of order and respectable actions of the familia and presented it to the world outside of the household.

To become a ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ of a religious guild, ultimately, conferred a certain status and an identity, which mixed with pre-existing layers of identity and status: the statutes of guild membership that stated that members were to have a good reputation led to Gervase Rosser’s assertion that ‘social credit accrued to [a] member of a confraternity’.⁴⁶ Under closer examination, this ostensibly personal benefit appears also to have a secondary benefit for heads of households. ‘Good housekeeping’, along with control of the household through extensive management and a formal hierarchy, was key to preserving honour,⁴⁷ especially as the household as a whole formed a ‘crucial element in the master’s public image’.⁴⁸ The social capital accrued from guild membership was a route to circumvent and negate the damage that might arise from the bad reputation of members of the household, and was a measure to outwardly demonstrate the piety of the household in addition to partaking in exercises such as alms-giving and other charitable work that the guild undertook for those in need. Actions were catalysts for the creation or altering of reputation, and the charitable actions of a guild towards individual members of the public, such as the poor or the sick, or more general charity, such as the repair of roads or building of bridges, had the effect of increasing the reputation of individual guild members.⁴⁹ For a noble such as Edward Stafford, whose household, as we will see, contained young men of elite social status, concern for his retinue’s behaviour may have been a preoccupation and guild membership may have been an action of damage limitation to bolster perceptions of the morality of his household.

Moreover, the very materiality of joint membership of a guild and a domestic household was a clear demonstration of status and reputation; livery, which would have been worn at the guild’s annual feast and perhaps other occasions such as important festivals, consisted of hoods and badges and were a visible sign of membership. How precisely the hoods of the Palmers’ Guild would have been worn in tandem with a master’s livery is not clear, but the visual imagery of both liveries together would have been a striking exhibition of household guild membership. In a similar manner, evidence from other great guilds suggests that the feast was also an opportunity for the enrolment of large numbers of people in a very public setting.⁵⁰ Attendance at the Holy Cross feast at Stratford ranged from 108 to 160 annually in the early fifteenth century, while Luton’s Holy Trinity and Coventry’s Holy Trinity guilds expected several hundred each year, and all of these were occasions for mass enrolment.⁵¹ Although the guild records suggest that most of the Palmers’ enrolment took place outside Ludlow, it is not difficult to extend this line of thinking to suggest that the simultaneous enrolment of several members of a single household in one location would have been witnessed by a number of individuals, especially if a steward undertook his duties in a public area, such as a market place or another guild’s hall.

The impact of guild membership was three-fold, positively influencing the status of the head of a household, the nuclear family and servants. The bestowment of respectability was even more important when servants were relatives of the master, and the kinship ties that sometimes existed between servants and a master increased the high stakes of maintaining control and reputation of a household. While guild membership could be a private act of piety, it was also highly public in certain contexts, and so it advertised the piety and subsequent reputation of an individual. The religious benefits, as well as social, were open to, and indeed sought after, by mercantile, gentle, noble and royal households. The internal and external factors that influenced household membership of the guild will be considered in due course, but first it is necessary to consider what membership looked like in the records and in practice.

Guild membership: terminology

At a fundamental level, the descriptor given to each person in the records of the guild is important to consider. The Palmers’ use of the word servant to assign individuals an occupation presents obvious problems, as the term encompassed a range of different social and economic statuses. Within the gentry household, there was usually a clear distinction between the upper servants, who were household officers and included the likes of chamberlains, receivers, porters and cooks, and the lower servants taking on the role of grooms and labourers.⁵² ‘Servants’ could be gentle born, might hold property and might be local figures in their own right.⁵³ A glimpse of this range of household membership can be seen in a riding book which includes the enrolment of Edward IV’s household. Gentleman, cook, groom, squire, gentleman usher and yeoman of the king’s chamber were all terms assigned to members of the household.⁵⁴ Such specificity of household roles in guild documents is rarely seen subsequently. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the guild clerks switched to using servant liberally to describe almost anyone who occupied a role within the household, and it is only occasionally that an individual has a more specific role described in the riding books, and this is only ever in the households of princes or nobility.⁵⁵ As a result, the exact status of each household member is, for the most part, obscured. High-born sons who were part of Prince Arthur’s household, such as Anthony Willoughby and John Harley, were described simply as servant.⁵⁶ While some extant documents from noble and gentry households can augment the guild records by allowing us to understand some individuals’ positions within a household, the generic and frequent employment of the term servant means that we are often unable to construct a more accurate picture of the type of individual.⁵⁷

Likewise, despite the likelihood that most servants were unmarried, the descriptor of ‘single’ (man or woman), as found elsewhere in guild records, is never coupled with the descriptor ‘servant’.⁵⁸ Rosemary Horrox, when discussing the enrolment of William Hopton with the Mercers’ Company in 1475, argues that his guild entry, which describes him as an ‘esquire with the Duke of Gloucester’, categorically illustrates where the guild thought Compton’s ‘importance resided.’⁵⁹ The privileging of ‘servant’ suggests that a descriptor was assigned based on what was most prevalent in the minds of both individual and guild official at that moment of joining. The practicalities of locating individuals for invitation to future guild activities and repayment were prioritised by guild officers. It was enough to know to whom they were subordinate and therefore how to find them. The use of one word to describe an individual can obscure the multifaceted nature of medieval identities and it should not be taken for granted that how they were described in the records is the only identity by which we can view them.⁶⁰

While the linguistic obscurity of servant hides the variation within, it simultaneously conceals their income – an especially important consideration when discussing a community for which to belong involved a financial obligation. The accessible nature of the Palmers’ system of payment by instalment was a means to provide those unable to afford standard guild fees with access to a guild nonetheless. But the remuneration of household members was not straightforward. Usually, the recompense due for service came, at least in part, in the form of food, lodging and clothing – their immediate needs. A small cash wage was usually only presented quarterly or annually.⁶¹ However, one study has found that rural servants, considering that necessities were covered by the employer, were well paid by contemporary standards. The average wage calculated for 1495 was £1 5s (male) or 14s (female).⁶² Therefore, while it may be tempting to consider that all individuals listed as servants were people of little means, this may not have been the case. It is likely that there were considerable wage differentiations between various ranks of servants, and the overarching nature of this term must therefore be understood alongside servant wages of the period.⁶³ Gentlemen servants would have had a private income to support extra-household activities, as well as some form of income from their position. There was certainly a diversity among household members and within the ranks of the guild membership that can be obscured by the terminology used in guild records, complicating the process of studying patterns of membership.

Guild membership: patterns of household membership

The entry of a household into the Palmers could take many forms. Nuclear families (parents and their children) could join together, often taking up an entire folio of the riding book, listing each child’s name individually. This particular practice is almost solely to be found with gentry families, like the Herberts of Troy (Monmouthshire), although smaller nuclear families joined together in some number (for example, John Lewes, his wife and daughter from Shrewsbury).⁶⁴ Merchants signed up their children less frequently, instead focusing on themselves and their wives. This difference could be indicative of a number of things: fiscal restrictions, fewer children⁶⁵ and differing attitudes towards guild membership. A household could also enrol a steady (or haphazard) stream of masters and servants over a series of years. John Hadden of Coventry provides an insightful example. Hadden began his association with the Palmers not through his own enrolment but through that of his son in 1502/3.⁶⁶ That same year, one of Hadden’s servants, John Meredith, became a member.⁶⁷ Hadden himself joined in 1505/6, paying his admission fee in one lump sum.⁶⁸ His servant Richard Phelipp, and Phelipp’s wife, Margery, committed their names to the guild in the same year. Somewhat surprisingly, their names do not appear immediately after their master’s. In fact they do not even appear on the same folio but are rather found two folios after his entry. This was similar to the situation when the first of Hadden’s servants joined in the same year of his son; the servant John appears on the folio following Hadden’s son, not the same one. This is unusual, as often members of the same household appear sequentially (if they have signed up in the same year).⁶⁹ The grouping of household members together was presumably simply a reflection of the order in which individuals joined up together, which suggests that Richard Phelipp signed up after his master did in 1505/6. Another servant in Hadden’s household was William Veyll, who joined the guild in the year following his master and fellow servants.⁷⁰

The employment of servants necessitated a certain level of wealth, and prosperous urban centres were one place where such wealth existed. Mercantile classes had a propensity to maintain servants as much as the gentry and nobility,⁷¹ although it is hard to determine whether they were joining with all of their servants, or just a select few, for household accounts rarely survive. We might take Coventry as a typical example, where a large number of merchant and artisan households maintained servants. Bailey Lane, situated in the heart of Coventry, with St Mary’s Hall on the south side and St Michael’s parish church on the north, was particularly known for its prosperity, and many merchants and goldsmiths lived there. The 1377 poll tax returns for Bailey Lane showed that over eighty-three per cent of households kept servants within their household, with a mean number of 2.8 servants per household – slightly above Coventry’s average as a whole.⁷² By 1523, the number of Bailey Lane households with servants had dropped to sixty-seven per cent, although this was still a substantial majority.⁷³ Coventry was a significant contributor towards membership of the Palmers – certainly in individual membership but also in household membership.⁷⁴ These merchant households were frequent members, with some specifically from Bailey Lane. John Devell, a mercer of Bailey Lane, joined the Palmers in 1499/1500.⁷⁵ Three years later his wife Elisabeth joined, as did one of their servants, Margery Gellett.⁷⁶ Three more of Devell’s servants joined the Palmers in 1505/6 and 1507/8.⁷⁷ Although it is impossible to say whether or not the tenure of Devell’s servants overlapped, this suggests that this household was among the average size for Coventry. None of the servants paid for more than one year so it is unclear from the records if they continued in Devell’s service, or if new servants were becoming Palmers as they joined the household.

Furthermore, it was possible for members of the household to join without their masters at all. For example, Richard Lee of Quorn (Leicestershire) left no trace of joining the Palmers but his son, Robert, joined in 1489 along with two of Richard’s servants.⁷⁸ All three individuals completed payments and were enrolled on the formal registers of the guild. Three servants of John Lenche of Birmingham joined in 1506/7, without their master.⁷⁹ Similarly, four servants from the same Coventry household of an elusive individual known only in the guild riding books as ‘Master Symondes’ joined the Palmers in 1504/5 and 1506/7.⁸⁰ A fellow Coventry individual, ‘Master’ Thomas Banbrocke, cannot be found in the Palmers’ documents yet three of his female servants joined in 1504/5, 1506/7 and 1507/8.⁸¹ It therefore appears that structure of the household encouraged individuals to join the guild even when the head of the household was not a member, perhaps revealing the functioning of smaller communities within the household.

Households could also include those clergy who staffed the domestic chapels that were a mainstay of mercantile and gentry households.⁸² Household chapels were looked after by the clergy through a variety of means; stipendiary employment of chaplains, beneficed chaplains, local regular clergy and parish priests were all options for the household.⁸³ Great households frequently had a group of chaplains and a choir, like those employed by Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, while lesser elite households usually had at least one chaplain.⁸⁴ It might be assumed that the prevalence of household chapels would have resulted in a preponderance of chaplains among the scores of other household servants who joined the Palmers, but, surprisingly, this not the case. On the whole, clergy were present in force among the Palmers’ membership: over 500 names of those belonging to the secular clergy can be found throughout the riding books and admission registers.⁸⁵ However, only eleven of these individuals had a master or mistress written alongside their respective entries in the guild registers. Six of those masters were members of the Council of the Marches: four named Prince Arthur as their master, one the Lord President of the Council, and the other the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.⁸⁶ Other household chaplains who joined the Palmers were those employed by Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, George Grey, Earl of Kent, and Sir John Savage (of Hanley, Worcestershire).⁸⁷ Similarly, both Richard Mayhew, bishop of Hereford, and his chaplain, John Longland, were members.⁸⁸ Yet that each of the chaplains assigned to a household can be listed here highlights the rarity of household chaplains within the Palmers’ guild records, especially given the number of nobility within the guild’s community. But those eleven household chaplains that were Palmers possess a common denominator: they were employed by those who were politically active in the Welsh Marches. Margaret Pole and John Savage governed areas of the Marches through land ownership; George Grey, as discussed earlier, was associated with Arthur, Prince of Wales; the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield went on to become the president of the Council of the Marches (after 1514); and Richard Mayhew sat on commissions of the peace in border counties.⁸⁹ Governance of the region influenced the composition of the guild’s membership. The relationship between governing the Marches and the Palmers’ Guild, wherein membership was expected – which is discussed in detail in Chapter 4 – was extended to influence the enrolment of households.

Life cycle

The existence of servants in guild records is perhaps the most visible indicator of household membership. Multiple pressures were incumbent upon servants: their relationship with their master; their financial situation; and their stage in the ‘life cycle’ – and all of these undoubtedly affected their relationship with the Palmers’ Guild.

The traditional life cycle for servants after leaving the natal family is characterised as follows: first service, then marriage, and potentially employing servants in return. The cyclical nature emphasises the very fact that servants were not part of a ‘class’ but rather at a certain stage in their life.⁹⁰ For many, this stage was transient, which may explain many servants’ lack of completed guild payments.⁹¹ Of the 530 individuals who were given the descriptor servant, only 104 of them completed the required entrance fee – just over nineteen per cent.⁹²

Apprentices represent one group of servants for whom that role was only temporary. As very few servants had a second descriptor included in their guild entry, it can be challenging to identify apprentices. However, three of the individuals were described with an occupation followed by servant: Thomas White was a ‘grocer servant’ of Master Marler of Coventry, Edward Jannes, ‘merchant servant’ to Mistress Penk of Bristol and Richard Wilkins, ‘miller servant’ to Thomas Fowkner of Westbury.⁹³ The elasticity of the term ‘servant’ in the middle ages allowed scribes – and by extensions, institutions – to use the term for journeymen as well as apprentices, particularly when a journeyman was living in his master’s house.⁹⁴ It was a more frequent occurrence, in the Palmers’ Guild, for an apprentice or journeyman to be described as a servant without any occupational descriptor, like Robert Packington’s enrolment while apprenticed to the mercer Simon Rice of London.⁹⁵ Poll tax returns and legal records often assign individuals the descriptor ‘servant’ to individuals even if they are apprentices – in fact, the term apprentice rarely appears outside of craft guild ordinances, borough records and wills – because the concern was the identification of a relationship between an individual and an employee.⁹⁶ By exploring external evidence, however, it is possible to suggest a master–apprentice relationship in cases where it is not immediately obvious from the guild’s record-keeping. For example, Peter Abirdyng, servant of Hugo Elyot, merchant of Bristol, joined the Palmers in 1499/1500. The guild received one hoggeshead of wine in payment for his fee, and the stewards noted that his name was to be written into the guild register, indicating that the membership debt had been fulfilled.⁹⁷ Abirdyng’s status as a particular type of servant was, like most of the servants in the guild registers, not expanded upon, but the payments in kind might suggest that he was an apprentice to a wine merchant. A litigation case in the Court of Chancery from between 1515 and 1518 details Elyot’s involvement in the wine trade.⁹⁸ Elyot was involved in the North Atlantic trade and exploration expeditions, providing and fitting ships for multiple North Atlantic voyages in the first decade of the sixteenth century.⁹⁹

The relationship between the master and apprentice (or journeyman) was an important one in the flow of membership. The influence of masters upon younger members of the artisan and mercantile communities is well illustrated. William Rowley, mayor of Coventry in 1492 (and again briefly in 1496 due to the ill-timed death of the incumbent, John Dove), became a Palmer in 1499/1500.¹⁰⁰ In his professional life he was a draper and, naturally, took on apprentices to train and it appears his influence stretched beyond the shop. Two of his apprentices, William Ruddying and Thomas Waren, went on to assume a role in civic governance.¹⁰¹ While apprenticed to Rowley, these two young men also became Palmers – six years after their master.¹⁰² They were evidently learning from their professional master and their ‘elder’ in civic politics. There may have been an awareness among these up-and-coming young mercantile elites that not only were they expected to join their leading local fraternities – Corpus Christi first and then Holy Trinity, as will be discussed in the following chapter – but also that they needed to join a fraternity outside Coventry: the Palmers. The joining of a religious guild in this way may well have been an instance of what is known as ‘ordinary theology’ – a view developed by Jeff Astley which argues that Christian belief and actions are shaped throughout the experiences of life, new ideas and environments encountered by an individual.¹⁰³ For the medieval period, a study of fifteenth-century Norfolk wills conducted by Louisa Foroughi argues that an individual’s pious outlook was largely determined by shared experiences of religion, often influenced by upbringing, which dictated the elements of pious practice that formed part of their religious experience – such as devotions to particular saints or attachment to particular guilds.¹⁰⁴ Membership of the Palmers was one expression of ‘ordinary theology’ in action, wherein members of the household were expected to follow the example of the head of the household. The influence of a master in impressing their notions of the religious and social importance of guild membership onto apprentices, moreover, permeated further, manifesting itself in every relationship of the household. For apprentices, this influence may have been temporary, until they completed their apprenticeship and set up their own household, but it began a relationship with the guild that an apprentice could choose to continue after they had left service.

While, for some, service was one stage of life in late medieval England, there may also have been several gradations within this stage. Movement and changes in employment can be witnessed in the Palmers’ records, and so it repays to consider how these factored into guild membership. Servants were usually engaged in service for months or perhaps up to a year at a time.¹⁰⁵ Hiring fairs, taking place around certain feast days according to local customs, provided opportunities for servants to find employment.¹⁰⁶ Movement from one household to another was certainly beneficial for servants, allowing them to move up the hierarchy by taking on new responsibilities.¹⁰⁷ The movement of servants on a potentially regular basis could explain the frequency of uncompleted membership fees. Indeed, there was certainly a large proportion of servants who only contributed one payment.¹⁰⁸ This trend is suggestive of two things. First, and most practically, it is likely that these individuals moved on to service in a different household, acting in accordance with the prevalence of single-year service contracts. More pertinently, however, for the understanding of household guild membership, it is also indicative of the employer’s influence among their dependants. A single payment might suggest that dedication to the Palmers was fleeting and that it was perhaps not a pressing concern for the new employer. This observation firmly places the initial enrolment of servants, for the most part, in the hands of their masters.

This being said, the potential agency of servants ought not to be forgotten or overlooked. Due to the nature of surviving source material, this agency can be viewed only through financial commitment towards the guild. We are therefore not privy to personal opinions or attitudes and can only discern commitment at the most basic level by determining whether membership payments were continued over time. If employment in a household was terminated, there was nothing stopping a servant from continuing his or her payments. Thomas Selby, servant of Thomas Chapman of Bristol, entered the Palmers in 1505/6.¹⁰⁹ A later marginal inscription notes ‘Coventry’, suggesting that Selby had moved and there may have been a change in Selby’s household service. There was certainly a change in residency, but the guild was able to seek out Selby to complete his payments. It is impossible to identify when the stewards noted Selby’s move to Coventry, but it is safe to assume that it was during the ten-year period he took to complete paying his 6s 8d fine. The riding books had an overt practical purpose and were used to locate and record individuals with their respective payments. There would be no need to note that he was in Coventry if he had already finished payments, for his name would have been written in the registers of admission. As such, Selby’s continued payments illustrate not only a continued level of commitment – a decade of annual 8d payments was more fiscal dedication than many Palmers showed – but a desire to remain part of the guild even when he had left the original location where he had joined. But this is not the only example of such a phenomenon. Agnes Downe, a servant of Roger Amore, initially joined the Palmers in Derby but later moved to London, where she continued payment.¹¹⁰ William Coke, a servant of William Moklow of Wigmore, moved to Gloucester at some point after his initial enrolment in the Palmers in 1498/9.¹¹¹ Again, like Selby, Coke’s relocation did not affect his dedication to the guild: he finished paying his 6s 8d fee in 1507/8. What is unclear about these servants and their subsequent moves is whether the individuals themselves were moving to another city independently – to join another household or to start their own – or whether the master’s household was moving. In all three instances, the masters’ names do not appear in the surviving guild records, therefore leaving us none the wiser as to whether the whole household also changed location. However, it is probable that in at least some of these cases, servants chose to continue their guild payments while working in more than one household, exercising their own agency.

Servants had access to new jobs outside hiring fairs, and these could be pursued through a number of different routes. The most well-documented opportunity was through kin employed in a different household.¹¹² Another route to service within the household was through kinship with the head of a household. Kinship connections between servants and employers highlight the existence of the emotional bonds possible between household members, despite the power dynamic of a relationship that necessitated one party holding power over the other. Provisions might be made for the employment of poor family members, should they be willing to work as servants within the household.¹¹³ It has been suggested, albeit with strong caution, that servants possessing the same surname as their employer were related and that this can be used justifiably in the absence of alternative sources.¹¹⁴ Due to limited sources of information about many members of the Palmers’ Guild, we could suggest the involvement of kin servants was present in guild membership. For example, Joan Nevell, servant of Richard Nevell of Aconbury, Herefordshire, joined in 1515/16.¹¹⁵ Richard Nevell of Herefordshire, who joined the Palmers in 1503/4, may have been her master, although not enough evidence can be gathered to say this with any confidence.¹¹⁶ Another servant within the Palmers, John Milward, similarly possessed the same surname as his employer, Alice Milward of Ludlow.¹¹⁷

Based on the names of individuals within the household of Margery Adene of Hereford, it might be that Katherine and Elizabeth Higgons found employment through family connection. Katherine joined the Palmers in 1503/4 and, two years later, so did Elizabeth, while they were both in the service of Margery.¹¹⁸ If their enrolment dates are anything to go by, it may have been that Katherine was employed first and suggested the service of her kin Elizabeth. Such connections may have worked to influence guild membership too. Like the previous examples of continued fiscal investment in guild membership, Katherine paid her membership fee in sixteen annual instalments ranging from 4d to 8d. Was it possible that Katherine was in service to Margery for those sixteen years? There was no correction or change in her initial entry in the riding books. Longer periods of service in the same household, ranging from two to seven years, have been found to occur in Yorkshire, although sixteen years exceeds even this significantly.¹¹⁹

The next stage in the ‘life cycle’ was the setting up of one’s own house which, financial circumstances permitting, did not mean that membership payments could not be fulfilled. The life cycle of servanthood had largely been discussed with the view that most individuals were engaged in service prior to marriage.¹²⁰ ‘Life cycle service’ encompassed the period of time from adolescence until marriage – in essence, the time when most people did not possess their own household. Few, if any, of the lower servants of the household would have married while in service, and when they left service they would have hoped to marry, having accumulated wealth and skills as they came of age in service.¹²¹ The movement of household individuals from a serving position to an attachment of a husband can only be viewed within the Palmers’ records on occasion. Isabella Attouneleff, servant of Thomas Banbrocke of Coventry, joined the Palmers in 1505/6. A scribble in the margin informs the steward that she could now be located with her husband, who joined in 1507/8.¹²² Annyng Maynwring, servant of Thomas Pontesbury of Battlefield (Shropshire), made a single payment of 4d before a note was written beside her name, stating that she could be found with her husband, Richard Twisse, in the book of new recruits for 1516/17.¹²³ Their new location was Myddle, about seven miles north of Battlefield.

Guild membership could also assist with the transition between service and marriage. Both female and male servants were among the guild brethren, yet only 132 of the 530 servants in the Palmers’ guild were female, placing them firmly in the gendered minority of their occupational group represented in the guild.¹²⁴ This is perhaps surprising, as Jeremy Goldberg’s research found that women outnumbered men in towns and constituted a relatively high proportion of servants, but it may be explained by the gentry and noble tendency to employ men over women.¹²⁵ The employers of these female servants, however, align with wider occupational trends – female servants were more common among employers involved with textile and mercantile trades.¹²⁶ The under-representation of female servants within guild membership can be explained by the fact that relatively few female servants remained in service beyond their mid-twenties, after which came marriage.¹²⁷

The single status of female servants means that there was an added reason to join a religious guild, as guilds sometimes provided dowries. So-called ‘maidens’ guilds’ existed primarily for the purpose of providing comfort and support for young, unmarried women, particularly servants.¹²⁸ For mixed-sex guilds, dowry provisions do appear to have been common in the guild returns of 1389 – but this has not prevented the assumption that they were nevertheless a widespread aspect of guild charity.¹²⁹ In fact, there are only two known examples: the Palmers and a guild in Berwick-upon-Tweed.¹³⁰ The guild of St Mary’s, Kingston-upon-Hull, made provisions for a loan of 10s. to impoverished unmarried women but it is not explicit that this was to be used for dowry provisions.¹³¹ The Palmers’ ordinances, as recorded in the 1389 guild returns, pledged:

If any good girl of the gild, of marriageable age, cannot have the means found by her father, either to go into a religious house or marry, whichever she wishes to do; friendly and right help shall be given her, out of our means and our common chest, towards enabling her to do whichever of the two she wishes.¹³²

If most female servants were unmarried, as has generally been concluded, then the Palmers might have seemed especially attractive to females in service.¹³³ While the exact wages given to servants is debated, it is likely that the degree to which a servant might save for marriage was limited – especially for female servants who were paid significantly less than their male counterparts.¹³⁴ The assistance with a dowry would certainly have been appealing to some female servants; if not the reason for their enrolment, it may have been an attractive motivation to continue contributing to their membership fee once they had left the employment of the master who had encouraged them to become a Palmer.¹³⁵ For the nineteen female servants from Coventry, the two major guilds there (Corpus Christi and Holy Trinity) did not have provisions for a dowry.¹³⁶ Of course, the incomplete nature of the surviving accounts for the Palmers’ Guild, however, makes it difficult to verify the extent to which the ordinances were fulfilled and such charity provided, or whether the ordinances were aspirational or influenced by the political circumstances of their creation in 1389.¹³⁷ Surviving accounts provide some examples of female members receiving charity, but the circumstances of their need is not detailed.¹³⁸ Regardless of the extent of the realization of this particular avenue of guild charity, it was, as Ben McRee has argued, one arm in a larger strategy of charity that included almsgiving, hospitals and schools.¹³⁹ While the reality of how much, if any, money from the guild chest was given to single women in need is not known, we should not discount the possibility of the guild’s ordinances influencing decisions to join.

The ultimate stage of any life cycle is, of course, death, and this finality is borne out in some detail in the membership records of the Palmers’ Guild. Like much of the preceding and proceeding discussion, an investigation into deceased servants raises questions about the involvement of other parties (notably the master), about what it meant to be a guild member and about the level of commitment to the guild. As mentioned, just over nineteen per cent of those described as servants completed the required entrance fee.¹⁴⁰ Twenty-nine of the 104 who completed the entrance fee were deceased when they eventually became full members, begging the question of who paid for their membership fee. Jennet ap Owen of Wiston (Pembrokeshire) initially joined the Palmers in 1503/4.¹⁴¹ Following standard practice, ‘6s 8d’ was written beside his name, indicating the sum to pay. However, the sum was then crossed out and ‘3s 4d’ was written above, which was subsequently paid under Richard Bargott’s stewardship in 1505. The change in admission fee and the delayed payment suggest that Jennet ap Owen had died after initial enrolment to the guild under Cheyne and Hocke’s stewardship in 1503/4. Jennet ap Owen’s master, John Wogan, was himself a Palmer, as were a number of others in his household.¹⁴² It seems reasonable to infer that Wogan completed Jennet ap Owen’s payments post-mortem.

Enrolment after death was not uncommon in the guild; 700 people overall are recorded as deceased, totalling just over 4 per cent (4.09 per cent) of the known brethren of the guild. It appears that there was a determination, on the part of the laity, to ensure deceased servants were placed on the register of admission: only four such examples were not entered. This equates to ninety per cent of deceased servants within the guild being fully-fledged members. This trend is certainly striking compared to both the low percentage of living servants who completed payments (nineteen per cent) and the overall membership completion (from eighteen per cent to thirty-three per cent per annum). The nature of some of the records, namely the clerk’s receipt books, means that it is not possible to identify if some of the deceased individuals had their payments completed: these recorded single payments, and it was only after consulting the appropriate riding book that a steward would know whether the individual had paid the full amount. Therefore, there is a total of 617 deceased Palmers for whom we can definitively discern whether or not they completed payments and were entered in the registers. Of this group, the full fee was paid for 436 individuals, meaning that 181 deceased members were definitively not entered in the guild registers. It is interesting to note that the majority of deceased members did have their fees fully paid (seventy-one per cent) while, overall, the completion of payments was much lower.¹⁴³ But the tendency of deceased servants to have fees fully paid therefore significantly exceeds even this trend – ninety per cent compared to seventy-one per cent. For the dead, then, despite the obvious issue of being unable to personally complete their membership fee, their high rate of admission is in contrast to the membership trends of their living counterparts who were engaged in service and to the more general enrolment of the dead. Several reasons may be posited for this discrepancy. If we assume, as has been suggested, that servant involvement in the guild was often done at the instigation of the master (hence the prevalence of single-year payments in line with single-year contracts) then we might infer that it was the master who continued post-mortem payments for their servants. Such a suggestion would account for the disproportionately high percentage of deceased servants. This might have been done out of a sense of spiritual obligation. Although the relationship between masters and servants was one based on subordination, this carried with it certain duties: provision of sustenance, clothing, payment, welfare, and so on. This could feasibly extend beyond death, when spiritual care was most pressing.¹⁴⁴ Servants were unlikely to afford chantries or annual obits for their souls, and so the corporate spiritual care of the guild seems like an obvious draw, and masters may have considered this within their purview of care. Stratford’s Guild of the Holy Cross also included the souls of servants.¹⁴⁵ Richard Bromley enrolled his two children and one of his servants into the Stratford guild; so, too, did the incoming master, Adrian Quyny, alongside his deceased relatives in 1515.¹⁴⁶ In these instances, the deceased members benefitted only from pro anima prayers of the guild priests; the social-minded activities of the guild were, of course, irrelevant to departed brethren. It was, therefore, imperative that the fees of the deceased brethren were settled by their master or kin. Through their life cycle, servants played an important role in the household, and this also brought them into contact with the guild. Whether they joined through the influence of their master and paid only one year of fees, or became lifelong guild members as they moved through different households and roles, their membership of the guild played a role in the community, reputation and piety of the wider household.

The influence of networks I: insular pressures

The proliferation and wide use of the term ‘servant’ in guild records, discussed earlier, highlights that the medieval understanding of service involved an aspect of mutual obligation.¹⁴⁷ Service in merchant and gentry households often demanded co-residency and the close proximity between master and servant naturally developed an avenue for influence to run through the relationship each way. We have already briefly touched upon the guiding hand of the master in servants’ guild membership – as, for example, in single-year contracts – but it is now time to explore this theme in more detail. What were the internal mechanisms that increased household guild membership, and how far can we see them in the enrolment of names in the Palmers’ Guild? The influence of both the master and other members of the household in fostering membership must be considered in order to answer this question.

The payment of guild membership for servants by masters and mistresses was not a form of financial obligation enforced by the guild, given that there was no penalty for non-payment. It was instead an expression of the bonds formed between the head and servant of a household. Part of the mutual care within this relationship was spiritual. As discussed earlier, the spiritual care of the household was under the purview of the master or mistress and the payment of guild membership was a concrete way for masters to fulfil that obligation as well as exert their own extra-parochial preferences.¹⁴⁸ He or she was, after all, the ultimate authority within this domestic framework. While chapels were a standard forum of religious activity within the gentry and noble household,¹⁴⁹ more personalised forms of spiritual dedication were also prevalent throughout late medieval society. For example, Sir Humphrey Newton of Cheshire was a keen collector of pardons and accumulated half a million years’ worth.¹⁵⁰ This interest was then reflected in the actions of his household, demonstrated by a payment of 1d to a nurse named Kathryn to allow her to purchase a pardon of the friary of St John.¹⁵¹ If this pardon was intended as a gift to Kathryn, then Newton’s sponsorship in this regard – albeit a small sum – demonstrates the influence that an employer could have on the extra-parochial religious activities of those in his employment. This accumulation of pardons was extra-parochial, and guild membership can also be characterised as such, as demonstrated through the enrolment (and sometimes payment on their behalf) of multiple members of a household alongside a master or mistress. While some masters preferred to express their extra-parochial interests through pardons or chapels, others used guild membership.

The relationship between a master and servant in late medieval England therefore went beyond a transactional relationship of dues and payment for services rendered. The household was a functioning unit which frequently led to meaningful relationships between masters and servants. Upon the death of a master, normal practice dictated that the service of an individual was not forgotten, nor were household servants left without provision. Care was usually taken to ensure the employment of servants for a period of time (usually up to six months) after the death of the master, and, beyond that, servants were commonly remembered in employer’s wills, often in the form of bequests of clothing.¹⁵² In 1519, for example, the Palmer John Hadden of Coventry bequeathed ‘to every man servant in my house ablack gowne and xx s. in money’.¹⁵³ Female servants were likewise bequeathed a black gown, but only 8s 6d in money.¹⁵⁴ Monetary bequests were also common but not usually substantial, and so Hadden’s case is noteworthy.¹⁵⁵ He arguably had a more significant association with the Palmers than many members, with the enrolment of his immediate family and servants, as discussed earlier in this chapter. The bequest of black gowns to Hadden’s servants came with obligations of their own, as they were probably expected to participate in his funeral and commemorative services, wearing the black gowns in mourning.¹⁵⁶ The bequest of money, by contrast, was an act of benevolence towards individuals who had been an integral part of his familia. William Veyll, his fellow Palmer and servant, was remembered with a more specific bequest: ‘Also to william vele that was my servant hys duete he owith me is x li which I forgyve hym’.¹⁵⁷ While Veyll was no longer part of Hadden’s household, he was still remembered in Hadden’s will. The forgiveness of debt was part of a common discourse of late medieval will-making, but the absolving of a debt of a former servant was an act that underlined the recipient’s role as an extension of the familia even after they had left.¹⁵⁸ It is this persistent attention to his servants’ well-being, on the part of Hadden, that underscores the very nature of his household – one where servants are enveloped within the same sphere as the immediate family – which is also typified in the remarkable enrolment of Hadden himself, his natal family and several servants in the Palmers. Hadden’s bountiful and numerous bequests to both pious and secular recipients is testament to his wealth, and £10, while a substantial sum, was evidently not a crippling debt for Hadden to forgive. Bequests to servants by their employers shows that the master–servant relationship was not purely exploitative.¹⁵⁹ As Kermode’s study of the Yorkshire towns of Beverley, Hull and York demonstrates, some fifteen to twenty-six per cent of wills mention servants receiving small gifts of cash, meaning this trend was common enough.¹⁶⁰ Forgiveness of Veyll’s debt by Hadden was, in part, a demonstration of financial care administered by a master (while also undoubtedly a proactive action to ease Hadden’s reckoning at the Last Judgement), while the spiritual duty of care implicit in a master–servant relationship was enacted through household enrolment in the Palmers’ Guild.

The relationships created by virtue of being head of a household – both with servants and family members – could take the form of fiscal responsibility. There may therefore have been many occasions in which a master or mistress were responsible for a servant’s entry into the Palmers. On occasion, this is clear. For example, when Elisabeth Arnald, a widow from Westbury (Wiltshire), joined the Palmers in 1505/6, she enrolled (and paid for) the deceased John Arnald at the same time. It is likely that this man was her husband, although he is not described as such. Elisabeth did not just pay for her and John’s membership; she paid for the membership of one of John’s servants, William, at the same time.¹⁶¹ This is one of the few times when it is explicitly stated that a mistress took charge of a household member’s debt to the guild. A small number of servants remained in service to their master’s widow for a number of years after a master’s death.¹⁶² Elisabeth’s payment for her deceased husband’s servant suggests that William was indeed carrying on a role within the same household. That guild membership was the form of spiritual care she chose to encourage within their household was also a reflection of Elisabeth’s interests in extra-parochial activities. William’s membership was a result of Elisabeth’s interests and the completion of William’s membership fee a fulfilment of an obligation. This trend was not isolated to the Ludlow guild; in York, William Snawsell, former Lord Mayor, and William Chymney, former Chamberlain (and Lord Mayor in 1486) introduced two and four servants of their household respectively into the Corpus Christi Guild and appear to have paid their fees.¹⁶³ It is worth noting that only 6d was charged for a servant’s entrance into the Corpus Christi guild, and a fee of 3s 6d for ‘family’ memberships which would include children – significantly lower fees than that which individuals and households of the Palmers paid.¹⁶⁴

It is almost certain that there are other instances of heads of household paying the membership fees for their subordinates despite not being explicitly mentioned. One way to deduce the encouragement of household membership is through a study of the practicalities of payments. The most common method by which servants paid their membership was in coin. However, there are a few examples of servants’ fines being paid in goods, as seen previously with potential apprentices. To return to the example of Hugh Elyot, merchant of Bristol, and his apprentice Peter Abirdyng, we have already seen that the guild received wine in payment for his fee.¹⁶⁵ Elyot’s wife, Alice, joined the guild in the same year and gave exactly the same payment.¹⁶⁶ The payment of a hoggeshead of wine, therefore, is an example of the head of the household’s occupation being revealed through membership payments. Guild fees in wine were not wholly unusual, with a small proportion of Bristol merchants paying in this manner – a signpost to their commercial interests – but the wine paid by Alice and Peter reveals that Elyot was the facilitator.¹⁶⁷ If a master, or husband, was controlling payments, as suggested in this example, it seems likely that he both approved of, and perhaps orchestrated, the membership of other people in his household.

There was an extraordinary number of individuals who did not complete their membership payments to the guild. The Palmers did not have a system of penalisation for those who did not pay their fines – this was the case both in an overall sense, such as completing the entire fine, and in an annual sense, for many individuals missed a year or two of payment before resuming. There is certainly no documentary evidence of their pursuit of individuals who did not complete their fines. The acts of masters and mistresses paying for servants were not a form of financial obligation enforced by the guild: it was an expression of the bonds formed between the head and servant of a household. Part of the mutual care within this relationship was the spiritual. The spiritual care of the household was under the purview of the master or mistress and the payment of guild membership was a very concrete way for masters to fulfil that obligation as well as exert their own extra-parochial preferences.

The close-knit nature of some gentry households influenced actions of both servants and masters. The affective and economic bonds of the household tied individuals together in such a way that membership of the entire household must be considered, rather than simply the individuals whose names appear on the membership records. In 1520/1, Rees Griffith, son and heir of William Griffith (knight and chamberlain of North Wales) joined the Palmers along with his sister Elisabeth. On the same folio a further seven members are noted from the household of William Griffith.¹⁶⁸ The females of the house, Ellyn, the wife of Morgan Gittowe, and Kateryne Ludlow (daughter of Laurence Ludlow) were described as ‘with my lady Griffith’. Alice Adams, however, was described as ‘servant with my lady Griffith’. Walter, Robert and John were likewise described as servants with ‘Sir Griffith, knight’ (clarifying that their service was not to Rees Griffith, but to his father William). The final individual, William ap Rees, was described as ‘beyng with Sir Griffith’, again suggesting that his service was less of a traditional servant and more likely to be of some gentle birth. In many cases, it is apparent that there existed a certain friendship between gentry servants and their masters, undoubtedly fostered through a reciprocal relationship and mutual support.¹⁶⁹ Guild membership was certainly prolific among this Welsh gentry family and its household. The influence of the Griffith family can be detected, just as can be found in countless examples of gentry, noble and merchant masters, in the enrolment of significant numbers of their household. The household, as a unit, was regularly acting in an extra-parochial manner to such an extent that they joined not their local parish guild, but a guild based outside their local place of worship. Unfortunately, no further guild membership records survive past 1521, leaving us none the wiser as to whether members of the Griffith household demonstrated their financial dedication to the guild through the completion of their fee.

It is clear that masters had an interest in disseminating guild membership through their household for both pious and reputational reasons, but the impetus for the enrolment of so many members of the household should not be put solely on the shoulders of the head of the household. While emphasis has repeatedly been placed on the notion that, given the inconsistency of document survival, the absence of a master’s name does not preclude his own enrolment in the Palmers, in some cases it may have been that the master did not in fact enrol. Membership may have been, in some households, a servant initiative intended to support the piety or sense of community of a smaller group within the household. Guild membership permeated household life through all layers, and bonds certainly existed between servants within the house. The enrolment of household members in successive years is suggestive of the power of proximity of other guild members. As mentioned, three female servants of Thomas Banbrocke joined the Palmers, one after each other in 1504/5, 1506/7 and 1507/8. Johanna Osbern and Elisabeth Jeffreys, servants to John Devell of Coventry, joined the Palmers in 1505/6 and another servant from the same household, Alice Wylde, joined two years later.¹⁷⁰ The initial enrolment of a servant of Richard Norbery in 1498/9 may have led to the enrolment of another household servant, John Nekson, the following year.¹⁷¹ The household of one Master Symondes of Coventry was a substantial presence in the guild records, with four servants of his household joining. Two women joined in 1504/5 and another two joined in 1506/7.¹⁷² It was certainly not only urban households that follow this trend: gentry households in rural areas display similar patterns. Four servants from the household of Sir John Wogan of Wiston (Pembrokeshire) signed up in 1503/4 and another two the following year.¹⁷³ The introduction of new servants in successive years from the same household undeniably expresses a continued interest in the Palmers.

Membership of the Palmers may have created a sense of community across the entire household. While numbers alone do not always imply significance, the prominence of servants and their masters in the guild suggests the strength of ties within the household. We might suspect that active involvement with the Palmers was difficult for members who lived some hundreds of miles away from Ludlow. But the household was one way to make membership of the Palmers a communal experience. For Sir John Wogan, collective membership among twelve of his household enabled them to create their own community of Palmers in rural Pembrokeshire. His wife Anna, three of their children and seven servants all committed their names to become Palmers between 1504 and 1506.¹⁷⁴ As country gentry, they were less likely to come into frequent coincidental contact with other Palmers than their fellow guild members in towns. John Wogan and his household created their own microcosm of the guild. These household microcosms were self-replicating and helped encourage membership, which was in turn encouraged by the genuine affective bonds or those of expectation and hierarchical pressure.

Religious households

The expectations, pressures and bonds of co-residency were felt by both religious and secular households alike. Religious houses of all types joined the Palmers’ Guild in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly those within the Welsh Marches, and displayed an enthusiasm for guild membership that was mirrored by abbots and priors from across England and Wales.¹⁷⁵ Benedictine monks and nuns were the most numerous (with twenty different houses represented), followed by the Augustinian and Cistercian orders (eight and seven houses respectively), with a smaller number of Cluniac, Carmelite and Premonstratensian communities enrolling. In total, over 300 regular clergy joined the Palmers in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.¹⁷⁶ The popularity of the Palmers’ Guild within late medieval religious houses was reflected in the enrolment of the laity who worked within these institutions. The two Llanthony houses – Llanthony Prima in Monmouthshire and Llanthony Secunda at Gloucester – illustrate this phenomenon well.¹⁷⁷ 1504/5 was the first time the canons from Llanthony Secunda joined the Palmers (seven canons and the prior), but they were accompanied by six servants from their house.¹⁷⁸ These non-monastic members are described individually as ‘servant’ and no further description of their role is given in the record. Servants from other houses, including Gloucester, Reading, Worcester, Chester, Evesham and Great Malvern, joined the Palmers alongside the religious affiliates of those houses.¹⁷⁹ The majority are described as servants of the religious house, but there are exceptions that reflect the realities of these ecclesiastical institutions. The superior of a house kept his or her own household, financially supported by the monastery.¹⁸⁰ In the case of Llanthony Secunda in 1504/5, each man was described as a servant of the lord prior; a similar situation can be found in those enrolled from Bromfield (Shropshire), St Bartholomew the Great (Smithfield), Buildwas (Shropshire) and Nuneaton (Warwickshire). We might assume that – given these descriptions – the influence of the head of a household worked in much the same way in religious houses or secular households.

A saying, copied into the sixteenth-century ‘journal’ of Prior William More of Worcester, alludes to the importance of guild membership for heads of households, secular and religious: ‘Each seeks after those like him. A sober lord has a sober household. A foolish lord has a foolish household; for since God is holy he seeks a holy household’.¹⁸¹ The inclusion of such a phrase suggests that it found resonance with More who, as the head of the monastic household, sought to emulate God’s holy example by ensuring that those under his charge (in both his personal household and the monastery more widely) were sufficiently holy themselves. We might also see this sentiment as indicative of wider attitudes. Membership of a prestigious religious fraternity, such as the Palmers’ Guild, was a relatively easy way for heads to encourage further religiosity in and among their brethren and servants. The enrolment of servants provided a way of enacting the superior’s desire for a ‘holy household’ while likewise assisting the need to maintain a household of good repute. The behaviour of the servants of the abbot, prior or prioress was a factor in the reputation of the house as a whole, and, in a period of increasing debate about the role of the superior’s household in late medieval England, ensuring that attendants were honourable and ‘holy’ was an important preoccupation of the superior.¹⁸² If the heads of secular households were motivated to ensure their subordinates appeared outwardly pious, this impetus was multiplied for the head of a religious household.

How far the impetus for guild membership was in an individual’s own hands versus pressure from a superior or the community is unclear. There must have been some individual choice as there are (as far as we know) no examples of the entirety of a monastic and lay community at the same house joining at the same time, which might have suggested mandatory or enforced membership within that community. There are, however, moments in which a sweeping enthusiasm for the Palmers is apparent, as found in 1504/5 in Llanthony Secunda, whose servants and monks almost exclusively joined in one year. The enrolment of new canons and servants from Llanthony Secunda was not found again until 1515/16, although it must be remembered that only partial membership records survive for the period between 1509 and 1515.¹⁸³

The monastic house, like the secular household, was a natural ally for the continually expanding Palmers’ Guild in the century leading up to the Reformation; through access to a concentrated group of like-minded individuals, the guild could easily attract new members while also increasing the chances of consistently paid fees. For, practically, if collecting money from one member of the house, others would probably contribute at the same time. At Llanthony Secunda, despite the lack of (visible) continued recruitment in this house, the canons duly continued to pay their debt to the guild. Robert Cun exemplifies the standard practice for this house. He joined with his brethren in 1504/5, and each subsequent year he contributed varying amounts between 8d and 20d, until he had paid the total entrance fee of 6s 8d.¹⁸⁴ For the years in which Cun paid, payments from fellow brethren, like John Gloucetur and Thomas Maysmor were also recorded.¹⁸⁵ Each of these men contributed a portion of money towards their membership fee every year; a regularity that may have been encouraged by communal living. The active participation of the household, as a microcosm of membership, was further reinforced by the regular potations, not to mention gifts, to the household facilitated by the guild stewards each year.

While households were not necessarily entirely insular in nature, the bonds created through co-residency were not negligible in their translation to guild membership. Households with members within them were microcosms of the guild, each scattered across Wales and England, but working to reinforce solidarity between participants. A master’s particular interest in guild membership led to wider household membership, while more horizontal connections between servants could encourage membership. The obligations of a master to provide for his servants’ spiritual and physical well-being was another factor, and a responsibility that might take the form of financial responsibility for a servant who had begun membership payments but was unable to complete them. Each participant in a household would have experienced the influence of their connections with both their master and co-residents. Co-residency networks, therefore, were a significant contributor to the facilitation of guild networks.

The influence of networks II: external pressures

The strength of ties between members of a household explains how and why many servants enrolled in the Palmers’ Guild. These ties were both vertical and horizontal: between masters and servants and between servants and their colleagues. But households were not isolated structures, and those of the gentry and nobility certainly experienced, and reacted to, the actions of their peers and the influence of role models such as the royal household. This section will therefore pick up this theme in an attempt to identify and analyse the external pressures that encouraged household membership of the Palmers.

In the 1460s, forty-seven members of Edward IV’s household, including servants of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, enrolled in the Palmers.¹⁸⁶ Edward’s association was no doubt spurred by his father’s enrolment in the guild in 1438, a product of the position of Richard, Duke of York, as lord of Ludlow.¹⁸⁷ Whether a deliberate policy or not, Henry’s household – and his children and grandchildren’s households – association with the Palmers continued a relationship between a local institution and its lord.¹⁸⁸ Of course, when the king was the lord, the trickle-down of membership through his affinity was more impressive than members of the nobility. This royal example may very well have set a precedent for the gentry and nobility during the 1460s and 1470s, but unfortunately the dearth of guild sources during Edward’s reign leaves no way to corroborate this theory. The sources are, however, more complete for the years during Henry VII’s reign. The first members of Henry’s household joined the guild between 1485 and 1489, although only three did so.¹⁸⁹ In the 1490s, between two and five members joined per annum and this continued throughout the guild’s lifetime, yet this was only a fraction of the 800 plus members of Henry’s household.¹⁹⁰ These figures inevitably raise the question of the extent to which the royal household influenced membership of the Palmers. Did noble households join the Palmers as a unit because of the trend set out by Edward IV, Henry VII and Arthur, Prince of Wales?

The numbers of Henry VII’s household joining the guild on an annual basis were small, and there appears to have been no immediate effect on noble households, as the first recorded noble household did not join the Palmers until 1501/2.¹⁹¹ Yet Henry’s household was not the only royal household in the realm in the late fifteenth century. The impact on household membership of the king’s two sons, Arthur and Henry, was arguably more influential than their father’s. Arthur’s initial involvement with the guild was, of course, a product of his move to Ludlow in 1493, as was the enrolment of numerous members of his household who resided with him until his death in 1502. At least ninety-eight members of the ‘prince’s household’ enrolled in the Palmers between 1497 and 1509. This period includes the time after Arthur’s death in which his brother Henry was Prince of Wales, from 1503 until his accession in 1509. Of the ninety-eight known members of the princes’ households, seventy-eight joined under Arthur, while only twenty joined while Henry was prince.¹⁹² This discrepancy can partly be accounted for by the transfer of some of Arthur’s household to Henry, as some members continued paying off their membership fee during Henry’s time as Prince of Wales.¹⁹³ Continued enrolment of members of Prince Henry’s household, despite his lack of residency in Ludlow, speaks to a precedent that was set by Arthur.

Some of those in service with Arthur had servants of their own, and the knock-on effect in relation to them is worth considering here. Four servants under the heading of the ‘prince’s household’ in 1499/1500 were identified as servants of William Uvedale, knight, commissioner and councillor of the Council of the Marches, who himself was in Arthur’s service.¹⁹⁴ Uvedale’s deceased parents, Thomas and Margaret, are enrolled on the same folio as his servants. It is quite clear that Uvedale was responsible for enrolling both his servants and his parents, a fact which demonstrates a certain level of investment in membership. The example of Bishop William Smyth’s household again demonstrates the effect patterns of membership set by Arthur had on noble households. Smyth was president of the Council of the Marches and a prominent member of the prince’s household, and, although he himself is not known to have enrolled (but likely did), thirteen of Smyth’s servants joined the Palmers under the heading of the ‘prince’s household’ in the riding books.¹⁹⁵ In the cases of Uvedale and Smyth, their household membership was influenced by two factors: their own position as part of Arthur’s entourage and the example set by Arthur. Just as with servants in smaller households, the internal pressures that emanated from a precedent set by Arthur informed the shape of guild membership within the princely household, but the respective head of each smaller household was a lynchpin who clearly disseminated patterns of guild membership downwards, thereby creating two tiers of influence. It is apparent, therefore, that there was an expectation that participation in the guild was part of the role of each man and his servants.

Households within the larger, princely household, however, were not the only examples of the influence of the princely household on membership. It also set the model for separate noble household enrolment in the guild. The Prince of Wales’ attachment to Ludlow as the seat of the Council of the Marches as well as his personal seat of power may have directed his own initial involvement, but his actions were felt across the kingdom. A few notable nobles and their households joined the guild in the years following Arthur’s move to Ludlow and the beginning of his household enrolment. For example, George Grey, Earl of Kent, and his wife Katherine enrolled in 1501/2 along with nine other members of their household.¹⁹⁶ In the same year, Thomas, Earl of Surrey and Lord High Treasurer of England, joined with Agnes, his wife, and three other members of the household.¹⁹⁷ The quick succession of enrolment by these nobles is demonstrative of Arthur’s influence within the personal households of his subjects. While not members of the Council, there was evidently a trend or a fashion for noble involvement in the Palmers which can be traced back to Arthur’s association with Ludlow. Certainly both Grey and Howard had their own connections to Arthur, as might be expected for nobility of the realm; Grey had familial connections with Arthur’s mother, Elizabeth of York, through his first marriage and to Henry VII through his second marriage, while Howard was heavily involved in both Arthur’s wedding and funeral.¹⁹⁸

One of the interesting characteristics of household membership within a guild was the ability, or potential, to ‘flatten’ the hierarchies present within the household. As has been mentioned, the household could be stratified and governed by strict regulations.¹⁹⁹ Yet guild membership, outside of the governing council, was a space without formal hierarchy for the majority of members. As Gervase Rosser has argued, guild feasts were a space in which members could forge relationships that crossed traditional economic and social boundaries within the hierarchical structures.²⁰⁰ Unspoken politics and hierarchy may very well have existed, but, crucially, there was no institutionalised hierarchy among membership. The diversity and range of social status of members in the Palmers make this even more stark. That so many servants of gentry and mercantile houses joined, who appear to have been very much ‘ordinary’ servants and not of gentle birth, demonstrates the inclusivity of the guild.

The household of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, does not, however, conform to the trend of membership at all levels of the household. In 1505/6, while Henry was Prince of Wales, Stafford headed the enrolment of at least nineteen members of his household and the duchess joined the following year.²⁰¹ A further four individuals joined the Palmers at the same time as the duke; they may have been part of his household although it is unclear from the records. This was the largest household enrolled in the Palmers, with the exceptions of the king’s and princes’ households. Stafford had a significant number of gentle-born servants in his household: between thirty-three and thirty-seven per cent.²⁰² The members of his household who joined the Palmers were almost wholly gentle-born or held positions within the higher echelons of the household hierarchy. They included men such as John Russell, his secretary; John Gregory, clerk of the household; Richard Pooley, clerk of the spicery and future clerk of the household; Thomas Kemys, gentleman server; and Ambrose Skelton, gentleman server.²⁰³ The type of servants who joined the Palmers with the duke, such as his receiver and secretary, coupled with the complete absence of female servants, suggests that these individuals were part of his ‘riding’ household, for there were certainly gentlewomen employed in the duke’s household.²⁰⁴ This is further suggested by the fact that these entries were recorded under the heading of Extranei, and not enrolled at the duke’s formal residences at Thornbury or London.²⁰⁵ The duchess’ separate enrolment in the guild records is significant; she did not enrol at the same time as her husband or his servants, rather appearing on the registers of admission in 1507.²⁰⁶ Buckingham’s household was fluid. Only a portion of his councillors – men found with him in the guild records like his secretary, treasurer, comptroller – resided at his primary residence of Thornbury at any one time.²⁰⁷ Although there would have been lesser servants among the travelling household (which consisted of approximately sixty people), none of these are to be found in the Palmers’ records.²⁰⁸ Did the hierarchy of the household translate to guild membership in the case of the great noble households? Stafford’s example would suggest that the inclusivity did not stretch into the household of the duke; only his closest servants became members. Was this, in fact, another demonstration of internal influence? Unlike other households, both gentry and merchant, where the head of the household encouraged membership among servants of all statuses, thus increasing the guild’s membership, only certain, more elite, members of Stafford’s household joined – a sign, perhaps, of his distance from lesser servants in his household. In this case, the master’s influence did not appear to be aligned with the guild’s ethos, for the Palmers did not exclude individuals based on their status in society.

More likely guild membership among those close to Stafford was a result of Stafford’s conscientious policy regarding religious institutions. He took an active role in visiting religious houses around Thornbury, bestowing large sums of money on them. He endowed Tewkesbury Abbey with an annual income of £60, and, very publicly restored order to Kingswood Abbey (Gloucestershire) when a riot broke out there in 1517.²⁰⁹ His standing was demonstrated when the canons of Maxstoke requested that Stafford sit in judgement on their prior.²¹⁰ Like many great households, he had a chapel and several chaplains along with a choir.²¹¹ Barbara Harris has suggested that he exhibited an attachment to shrines, as each year, around Easter, Buckingham spent a month or more visiting shrines in a local area (changing each year).²¹² In 1508, he spent the period between 29 March and 30 June at a monastery in Keynsham, Somerset, and visited nearby religious shrines.²¹³ He owned enough church plate to create a suitable atmosphere in the chapel at his principal seat at Thornbury to complement the opulence of his residence.²¹⁴ Joining the fraternity at Ludlow was another expression of Stafford’s piety, and his interest in guild membership was probably the motivation for those of his household that did join up – those who were closest to him rather than a cross-section of his household. Stafford’s household membership, although appearing at first sight to be an outlier, was consistent with the wider patterns of guild membership as promoted by the personal interests of the master outlined earlier.

Alongside household piety, Stafford’s own interest in the guild may have been influenced by familial networks beyond the household. It is a truism that late medieval England consisted of a dense tangle of interwoven ties between gentle and noble families, and many of these connections were forged through marriage which were ultimately the extension of kinship ties. The household, while generally considered a group of individuals who were co-resident, had a wider influence in bolstering the membership of the guild. Familial ties were a significant factor behind the influx of certain households joining the Palmers, as can be demonstrated in the case of Stafford. Stafford’s brother-in-law, Sir Walter Herbert of Chepstow and his wife, Anne, joined the Palmers in 1505/6 along with two of their servants.²¹⁵ It is hardly coincidental that Anne’s brother, Stafford, then joined the Palmers the following year alongside ten members of his household.²¹⁶ In the same year that Stafford’s household became Palmers, Anne returned to her brother’s residence as a widow.²¹⁷ The enrolment of the Herberts and their servants in the Palmers the previous year, and Anne’s move to Thornbury, is too closely aligned to the enrolment of Stafford and his household to be mere coincidence. Over the next two years, while Anne was living at Thornbury, at least another four members of Stafford’s household became guild members.²¹⁸ Walter and Anne Herbert were not the only ones of this extended family already involved in the Palmers. The Herberts of Troy, another branch of the family, were a substantial presence in Monmouthshire. Like the primary branch of the family, the household of William Herbert (Walter’s half-brother) were Palmers. Blanche, his wife, joined in 1504/5, alongside three of their children and two servants.²¹⁹ Both lines of the Herberts embodied a sort of advocacy for family influence upon guild membership, but, more specifically, the household as an actor within the guild. While household ties were clearly an influence on membership, so, too, were kinship ties in fostering household membership.

These were not isolated cases of familial influence. Thomas Savage was the most distantly located (from Ludlow) member of a Cheshire gentry family but was the first to engage with the Palmers. Savage served as a diplomat through the late 1480s and 1490s and then moved through a succession of roles within the Church: from the bishopric of Rochester to that of London in 1496 and finally to the archbishopric of York in 1501. Bishop Savage’s relationship with the Palmers began with the enrolment of four of his servants in 1497 while he was bishop of London.²²⁰ Over the next decade, a steady trickle of individuals connected with the Savages began to join the Palmers. Savage, despite being located in London, sparked a movement within his kin network. After various servants of Thomas’ household enrolled, John Savage VI (of Hanley, Staffordshire) followed suit with the enrolment of four of his servants.²²¹ It seems highly likely that the kinship ties between John VI and his uncle Thomas prompted the former to embrace the concept of household membership to a guild along with the spiritual and social benefits attached to it. The kinship link was the stimulus, but the influence of co-residency within the household equally played a role in encouraging membership. Unlike Bishop Thomas’ household, who joined all at once, the Savage household at Hanley joined the Palmers in a slow stream. The enrolment of the first servant took place in 1499, followed by Alice (aunt of John VI) in 1503, then her siblings Edmund and Margaret, along with another servant of John VI, in 1504. Finally, two more servants enrolled in 1505, followed by Lawrence Savage in 1506.²²² Maud, John VI’s aunt, also enrolled at Hanley along with her husband Sir Robert Needham.²²³ While they were unlikely to be living permanently with the Savages, for their home lay in Shenton (Shropshire) they must have been visiting the Savage household for their enrolment to take place in Hanley. The domino effect on enrolment of the household is clear, and it was blind to status. The growth of membership within the Savage household continually alternated between servant and gentleman/woman or even both together in the same year. Further kinship ties are visible in the enrolment of Thomas Stanley and four servants of his father, George Stanley, Baron Strange, and heir apparent to Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby.²²⁴ The Stanleys were cousins of the Savages through the marriage of Katherine Stanley to John IV Savage. While the fairly substantial number of twenty individuals associated with these prominent, intertwined families might seem unsurprising if taken simply as a nod to their location near Shropshire, which was the Palmers’ base, the breakdown of their enrolment has demonstrated that their guild membership was a product of the influences of kinship and co-residency rather than simple proximity. It is clear, therefore, that wider networks influenced the choices made by individual households, including royal influence and that of broad kin networks.

Conclusion

Perhaps unsurprisingly, household membership in the Palmers’ Guild was as diverse as individual membership. Yet three broad trends account for why household membership became popular in late medieval England and Wales. The first was the influence of life cycle, especially in reference to servants. If service is conceptualised as one stage of this life cycle, then single-year payments can be readily accounted for, but other factors such as moving, marriage and death proved to be equally influential on membership trends. Throughout this process, the guiding hand of the master is often identifiable (although not in all cases), and this leads to the second substantive reason for membership: internal household influences in the forms of an employer’s personal preferences, the affective bonds between members of a household, and the creation of Palmer enclaves at a distance from the guild itself. Households of regional magnates and gentry have been noted for their role as centres of ‘religious instruction’, alongside the more obvious religious houses, and guild membership appears to have been an output of this role of the household .²²⁵ These internal factors were both contrasted with, and complemented by, external pressures, such as kinship links between households and the example set by Prince Arthur’s court at Ludlow. It is clear from these trends that certain benefits encouraged household guild membership. These benefits fall into two interrelated strands: piety and reputation.

More generally, the reach of the Palmers’ Guild, geographically and socially, allows us properly to situate this household membership. The relatively infrequent mention of the guild’s own mechanisms for recruitment in this chapter highlights the role the laity played in expansion of the Palmers. The role of guild administration in encouraging a diverse membership, as discussed in the Introduction, was vital to this achievement, but so, too, were the internal and external pressures on households. The processes by which households joined the guild, and the influences upon those processes, speak to the importance of the Palmers within late medieval society. Guild membership was a manifestation of the ‘ordinary theology’ of medieval men and women, explaining its pervasive nature in the household – and beyond.

Notes

1. 1.  SA: LB/5/1/1, m. 1. The membrane is damaged with no surviving identifications of where Joan (and therefore her master) was residing.

2. 2.  SA: LB/5/1/2.

3. 3.  SA: LB/5/1/3–4.

4. 4.  P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘Preface’, in The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850 – c. 1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body, ed. Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees Jones (Turnhout, 2003), 226.

5. 5.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 46r; LB/5/3/2, f. 136v; LB/5/3/7, f. 24r.

6. 6.  SA: LB/5/3/9, ff. 25r–v. Lady Newton’s involvement in the guild went beyond the encouragement of her household becoming Palmers, as a guild inventory of 1517/8 lists a gilt cup and cover gifted by her. LB/5/3/36, f. 17v.

7. 7.  SA: LB/5/3/1–15; LB/5/3/37.

8. 8.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 63r.

9. 9.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 120r. This may be modern-day Ingoldsby, Lincolnshire.

10. 10.  SA: LB/5/3/1, f. 3v.

11. 11.  Virginia Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside: Social and Religious Change in Cambridgeshire c. 1350–1558 (Woodbridge, 1996); Christine Carpenter, ‘Town and Country: The Stratford Guild and Political Networks of Fifteenth-century Warwickshire’, in The History of an English Borough: Stratford-upon-Avon 1196–1996, ed. Robert Bearman (Stroud, 1997), 62–79; Barbara A. Hanawalt and Ben R. McRee, ‘The Guilds of Homo Prudens in Late Medieval England’, Continuity and Change, 7, no. 2 (August 1992), 163–79; Robert Swanson, ‘Books of Brotherhood: Registering Fraternity and Confraternity in Late Medieval England’, in The Durham Liber Vitae and Its Context, ed. David Rollason, Alan J. Piper, Margaret Harvey and Lynda Rollason (Woodbridge, 2004), 233–46; Robert Swanson, ‘A Medieval Staffordshire Fraternity: The Guild of St. John the Baptist, Walsall’, in Staffordshire Histories: Essays in Honour of Michael Greenslade, ed. Philip Morgan and Anthony David Murray Phillips (Keele, 1999), 47–65.

12. 12.  David Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 2000), 181.

13. 13.  Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, 181.

14. 14.  As discussed in Swanson, ‘Books of Brotherhood’, 233–46.

15. 15.  Lynda Rollason, ‘The Late Medieval Non-Monastic Entries in the Durham Liber Vitae’, in The Durham Liber Vitae and Its Context, ed. David Rollason, Alan J. Piper, Margaret Harvey and Lynda Rollason (Woodbridge, 2004), 130–31.

16. 16.  Rollason, ‘Non-Monastic Entries’, 131.

17. 17.  Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, 2005); Gervase Rosser, ‘Parochial Conformity and Voluntary Religion in Late-Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1 (1991), 173–89; Clive Burgess, The Right Ordering of Souls: The Parish of All Saints’ Bristol on the Eve of the Reformation (Woodbridge, 2018).

18. 18.  Jenny Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1998); Clive Burgess, ‘Making Mammon Serve God: Merchant Piety in Later Medieval England’, in The Medieval Merchant: Proceedings of the 2012 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (Donington, 2014), 183–207; Joel T. Rosenthal, The Purchase of Paradise: The Social Function of Aristocratic Benevolence, 1307–1405 (London and Toronto, 1972); Christine Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), 242; Christine Carpenter, ‘Religion of the Gentry in the Fifteenth Century’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), 66; Nigel Saul, Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2017), 110; Nigel Saul, Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families in Sussex 1280–1400 (Oxford, 1986), 159.

19. 19.  Caroline M. Barron, ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F.R.H. Du Boulay, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1985) 13–37.

20. 20.  Rob Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety (Woodbridge, 2006).

21. 21.  One way this was expressed was in the rebuilding of parish churches, a feat which was undertaken under many different auspices and by many different groups: Gabriel Byng, Church Building and Society in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2017).

22. 22.  Gabriel Byng, ‘ “In Common for Everyone”: Shared Space and Private Possessions in the English Parish Church Nave’, Journal of Medieval History, 45, no. 2 (2019), 231–53.

23. 23.  Nikolaus Pevsner and Edward Hubbard, The Buildings of England: Cheshire (New Haven, 1971; reprint 2001), 267.

24. 24.  Ian Forrest, ‘The Politics of Burial in Late Medieval Hereford’, English Historical Review, 125, no. 516 (October 2010), 1136.

25. 25.  Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 242; Saul, Lordship and Faith, 110; Richard Asquith, ‘Serving the Needs of a Lakeland Parish: Kendal in the Later Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, New Series, 17 (2017), 89–93.

26. 26.  Colin Richmond, ‘Religion and the Fifteenth-Century Gentleman’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. B. Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), 199.

27. 27.  This was certainly the case found by Carpenter. Some of the gentry names she gives as possessing chapels are family names found in the Palmers’ records: Chetwynds, Fulwodes and Harewells. Carpenter, ‘Religion of the Gentry’, 63.

28. 28.  Sarah Rees Jones and Felicity Riddy, ‘The Bolton Book of Hours: Female Domestic Piety and the Public Sphere’, in Household, Women and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turnhout, 2005), 238.

29. 29.  Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales: 1500–1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), 353.

30. 30.  Katherine L. French, Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London: Consumption and Domesticity After the Plague (Philadelphia, 2021), chapter 7.

31. 31.  Robert Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge, 2007).

32. 32.  Among the most common tools for such reading were books of hours, which ranged from elaborate illuminated volumes to cheap, printed ones. Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, 2006); Rees Jones and Riddy, ‘The Bolton Book of Hours’, 220.

33. 33.  For example, as instructed in Richard Whitford’s Werke for Housholders. Lucy Wooding, ‘Richard Whitford’s Werke for Housholders: Humanism, Monasticism and Tudor Household Piety’, Studies in Church History, 50 (2014), 162–5.

34. 34.  Ian Forrest, Trustworthy Men: How Inequality and Faith Made the Medieval Church (Princeton, 2018), chapter 1.

35. 35.  Clive Burgess, ‘A Fond Thing Vainly Invented: An Essay on Purgatory and Pious Motive in Late Medieval England’, in Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350–1750, ed. S.J. Wright (London 1988), 56–84.

36. 36.  R.G.K.A. Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (New York, 1987), 136.

37. 37.  Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, 136.

38. 38.  Philippa Maddern, ‘Order and Disorder’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson (London, 2004), 205–8.

39. 39.  Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics, and Finance in England, 1360–1413 (New Haven, 1986), 1.

40. 40.  ‘Henry VII: November 1485, Part 2’, in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry and Rosemary Horrox (Woodbridge, 2005), British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/parliament-rolls-medieval/november-1485-pt-2.

41. 41.  Maddern, ‘Order and Disorder’, 208.

42. 42.  Sarah Rees Jones, ‘Household, Work and the Problem of Mobile Labour: The Regulation of Labour in Medieval English Towns’, in The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. James Bothwell, J. Goldberg and W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2000), 142–3, 151; Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia, 2006), 144–5.

43. 43.  Philippa Maddern, ‘ “In Myn Own House”: The Troubled Connections Between Servant Marriages, Late-Medieval English Household Communities and Early Modern Historiography’, in Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (Aldershot, 2008), 54.

44. 44.  McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex and Civic Culture, 138.

45. 45.  Ben R. McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum, 67, no. 1 (January 1992), 70; Ben McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Regulation of Behaviour in Late Medieval Towns’, in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (Gloucester, 1987), 108–9. An early modern example of the importance placed on the behaviours, especially speech, as a reflection of reputation can be found in Jennifer Bishop, ‘Speech and Sociability: The Regulation of Language in the Livery Companies of Early Modern London’, in Cities and Solidarities: Urban Communities in Pre-modern Europe, ed. Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel (Abingdon, 2017), 208–24.

46. 46.  Gervase Rosser, ‘The Ethics of Confraternity’, in A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities, ed. Konrad Eisenbichier (Leiden, 2019), 91. Rosser discusses this idea more in depth in The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England, 1250–1550 (Oxford, 2015).

47. 47.  Felicity Heal, ‘Reciprocity and Exchange in the Late Medieval Household’, in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Barabara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minneapolis, 1996), 189.

48. 48.  Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, 131.

49. 49.  Rosser, ‘Ethics of Confraternity’, 104.

50. 50.  Rosser suggested that the practice for admission of new members took place at the end of the annual feast. Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33, no. 4 (October 1994), 435.

51. 51.  Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast’, 439.

52. 52.  Peter Fleming, ‘Household Servants of the Yorkist and Early Tudor Gentry’, in Early Tudor England: Proceedings of the 1987 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, 1989), 22.

53. 53.  Fleming, ‘Household Servants’, 28.

54. 54.  SA: LB/5/3/1.

55. 55.  The only consistent exception to this is the position of cook or clerk of the kitchen, which appears with regularity. Otherwise, other offices are rarely commented on. For example, only one example of a receiver is found: Thomas Seppenham (of the Duke of Buckingham’s household) in the Palmers’ register of 1507–9. SA: LB/5/1/4, m. 2.

56. 56.  SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 84r, 148v.

57. 57.  There is the possibility to search each individual’s background, and it might prove fruitful, although, with over 18,000 members, it would be a monumental task. For example, Roger Ledsam of Chester is described in the guild records as a servant of the Abbot of Chester, yet other sources reveal him to also be a shearman as well as a servant. SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 7v; R.V.H. Burne, The Monks of Chester (London, 1962), 147.

58. 58.  For example, SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 67v.

59. 59.  Rosemary Horrox, ‘Richard III and London’, The Ricardian, 6 (1985), 323.

60. 60.  Philippa Maddern expressed a warning that a description such as ‘servant’ in records doesn’t preclude other identities attached to them, such as ‘husband’ or ‘wife’: Maddern, ‘In Myn Own House’, 48.

61. 61.  Jane Whittle, ‘Servants in Rural England c. 1450–1650: Hired Work as a Means of Accumulating Wealth and Skills Before Marriage’, in The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400–1900, ed. Maria Ågren and Amy Louise Erickson (Abingdon, 2016), 90.

62. 62.  Whittle, ‘Servants in Rural England’, 95, 103.

63. 63.  Fleming, ‘Household Servants’, 24.

64. 64.  For the Herberts, see SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 25v; LB/5/3/7, f. 50v; LB/5/1/3, m. 7. For John Lewes and his family see: LB/5/3/7, f. 11v.

65. 65.  It is not easy to draw concrete conclusions about the size of families. For an analysis of household size generally, see J. Krause, ‘The Medieval Household: Large or Small?’, The Economic History Review, New Series, 9, no. 3 (1957), 420–32; Peter Fleming, Family and Household in Medieval England (Basingstoke, 2001), 65–70. The average household in late fourteenth-century York was between 3.91 and 4.58: Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 72–3. Norwich families had an average of 2.24 children: Norman Tanner, ‘Popular Religion in Norwich with Special Reference to the Evidence of Wills, 1370–1552’ (DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 1974), 58. Thrupp’s study of London found references to families with two to nineteen children: Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300–1500 (Michigan, 1989), 198–9.

66. 66.  SA: LB/5/3/4, f. 14v.

67. 67.  SA: LB/5/3/4, f. 15r.

68. 68.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 29r.

69. 69.  For example, Sir William Griffith’s household and Edward Stafford’s household.

70. 70.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 38r.

71. 71.  P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire, c. 1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), 195.

72. 72.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Lifecycle, 160; other major centres displayed similar trends of merchant households as substantial employers: merchants accounted for over fifty per cent of the employment of servants in York in 1377: Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 130. The mean number of servants in Coventry was between 2.45 and 2.7: Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 205.

73. 73.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 160, 311–5.

74. 74.  The number of new Palmers varied year to year. For example, in 1504/5, forty-nine Palmers joined from Coventry and sixty-one in 1507/8. Coventry was consistently in the top five towns that contributed to new membership.

75. 75.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 135r.

76. 76.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 28r.

77. 77.  SA: LB/5/3/7, ff. 29r, 29v; LB/5/3/9, f. 15v.

78. 78.  SA: LB/5/1/2, m. 6.

79. 79.  Lenche’s wife, Anne, did join the guild the year before the servants, and so Lenche may have joined himself in a year in which records do not survive. SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 7, f. 27r; LB/5/3/2, f. 36r.

80. 80.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 37v; LB/5/3/7, f. 19r.

81. 81.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 18v; LB/5/3/7, f. 29r; LB/5/3/9, f. 13v.

82. 82.  R.G.K.A. Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, 124; Rawlinson concludes that all gentle and noble households maintained a chapel: Kent Rawlinson, ‘The English Household Chapel c. 1100 – c.1500: An Institutional Study’ (PhD diss., Durham University, 2008), 258.

83. 83.  Rawlinson, ‘The English Household Chapel’, 263.

84. 84.  Rawlinson, ‘The English Household Chapel’, 264; Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, 127; Audrey M. Thorstad, The Culture of Castles in Tudor England and Wales (Woodbridge, 2019), 116.

85. 85.  This number consists of those who were given the following titles by the Palmers’ scribes: chaplain, rector, vicar, priest, prebendary and guild chaplain.

86. 86.  SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 83v, 84v, 119v, 184v.

87. 87.  SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 42v; LB/5/3/2, f. 140r. Two chaplains of Grey’s household joined: SA: LB/5/2/3, f. 35v.

88. 88.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 46v. It is possible that this John Longland was the same one who went on to become Henry VIII’s confessor and Bishop of Lincoln, but his connection to Hereford diocese does not appear in biographical accounts. A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1957), 1160–63; Margaret Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The Diocese of Lincoln Under John Longland, 1521–1547 (Cambridge, 1981).

89. 89.  ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57.

90. 90.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 158.

91. 91.  There are exceptions, of course, particularly with ‘career servants’, who stayed with a household longer-term. For example, a falconer who was employed by the bishop of London and joined the Palmers: SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 127v.

92. 92.  I have excluded the wives who were listed with male servants as it is unclear whether they were also servants.

93. 93.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 56v.

94. 94.  See, for example, an exploration of London journeymen and their relationships with masters: Barbara Hanawalt, Growing up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford, 1993), 195–8.

95. 95.  Also spelled ‘Ryse’. SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 81r; LB/5/1/4, m. 2; ‘Records of London’s Livery Companies Online: Apprentices and Freeman, 1400–1900’, https://londonroll.org/event/?company=mrc&event_id=MCEB2198.

96. 96.  P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘What Was a Servant?’, in Concepts and Practices of Service in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Anne Curry and Elizabeth Matthews (Woodbridge, 2000), 4.

97. 97.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 138v.

98. 98.  TNA: C 1/406/5.

99. 99.  James Lee, ‘Political Communication in Early Tudor England: The Bristol Elite, Urban Community and the Crown, c. 1471 – c.1553’ (PhD diss., University of the West of England, 2006), 41; Annabel Peacock, ‘The Men of Bristol and the Atlantic Discovery Voyages of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’ (MA thesis, University of Bristol, 2007), chapter 5.

100. 100.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 135r.

101. 101.  Waren held numerous offices before becoming mayor in 1519. Ruddyings was a member of the leet jury: The Coventry Leet Book: or Mayor’s Register Containing the Records of the City Court Leet, 2 vols., ed. Mary Dormer Harris (London, 1907).

102. 102.  SA: LB/5/3/7, ff. 15r, 16r.

103. 103.  Jeff Astley, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology (New York, 2002).

104. 104.  Louisa Foroughi, ‘ “To Sey or Thinke Otherwise”: Ordinary Theology and Facing Death in Late Medieval Norfolk’, Religions, 9, no. 67 (2018), 3–4.

105. 105.  Servants became more of a transient group by the fifteenth century: Christopher M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (New Haven, 1999), 37; Whittle, ‘Servants in Rural England’, 89; Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 176.

106. 106.  Anywhere north of the Trent and in Lincolnshire, the fairs usually took place around Martinmas (11 November) and elsewhere in the country around Michaelmas (29 September): Goldberg, ‘What Was a Servant?’, 11.

107. 107.  Goldberg, ‘What Was a Servant?’, 15.

108. 108.  The number of servants who only made one payment cannot be said with certainty. The riding books, especially for the late fifteenth century, have suffered damages that often obscure vital pieces of information, including a number of payments by individuals.

109. 109.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 53r.

110. 110.  SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 18r.

111. 111.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 178r.

112. 112.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 177; Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981), 59.

113. 113.  Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 152.

114. 114.  Goldberg, Work, Women and Life Cycle, 177.

115. 115.  SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 32v.

116. 116.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 8r.

117. 117.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 149r.

118. 118.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 50r. For Elizabeth’s entry, see LB/5/3/7, f. 46r.

119. 119.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 176.

120. 120.  Fleming, Family and Household, 72–6; Whittle, ‘Servants in Rural England’, 89–110; Shannon McSheffrey, ed., Love and Marriage in Late Medieval London (Kalamazoo, 1995); Sarah Rees Jones, ‘Household, Work and the Problem of Mobile Labour: The Regulation of Labour in Medieval English Towns’, in The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. James Bothwell, J. Goldberg and W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2000), 133–53. Philippa Maddern challenged this historiographical tendency and concluded that some late medieval English households included married members who were in service: Maddern, ‘In Myn Own House’, 45–60.

121. 121.  Fleming, ‘Household Servants’, 25; Whittle, ‘Servants in Rural England’, 89.

122. 122.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 29r.

123. 123.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 14v.

124. 124.  This percentage has been calculated using the total number of entries, not the total number of individuals (husbands and wives are often within one entry). This produces a more accurate reflection as it is unclear whether the women described in the entries are also servants.

125. 125.  Goldberg has found that women outnumbered men in towns and constituted a relatively high proportion of servants: Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 165. Most servants in noble and gentry households were male: Fleming, Family and Household, 75.

126. 126.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 166, 187.

127. 127.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 172, 185.

128. 128.  Katherine L. French, ‘Maidens’ Lights and Wives’ Stores: Women’s Parish Guilds in Late Medieval England’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 29, no. 2 (Summer 1998), 399–425, especially 411; Katherine L. French, ‘ “To Free Them from Their Binding”: Women in the Late Medieval English Parish’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27, no. 3 (Winter 1997), 409.

129. 129.  Michele Saucer iterates that dowries were a provision provided by medieval guilds, while the Palmers are used as an example of guild provisions for single women by Cordelia Beattie. Michelle M. Saucer, Gender in Medieval Culture (London, 2015), 139; Cordelia Beattie, Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2007), 113.

130. 130.  Joshua Toulmin Smith, ed., English Gilds (London, 1963), 194, 340.

131. 131.  J. Toulmin Smith, English Gilds, 156.

132. 132.  J. Toulmin Smith, English Gilds, 193.

133. 133.  Maddern contested this assumption: Maddern, ‘In Myn Own House’, 45–60.

134. 134.  Whittle and Goldberg offer different interpretations of how much the average late medieval servant was paid and subsequently whether service allowed savings for marriage. Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 185–6, Whittle, ‘Servants in Rural England’, 95–103.

135. 135.  While it is difficult to discern how much ‘choice’ a servant had in their enrolment in the guild, continued payments beyond a year (the usual length of a contract) indicates an inclination towards membership.

136. 136.  The Palmers’ ordinances outline that they will provide a dowry for her when her father is unable. J. Toulmin Smith, English Gilds, 194, 215–9, 234.

137. 137.  Some historians have pointed out the limited – and at times, absence of – expenditure on those in need and questioned the reality of charity in late medieval fraternities. Barron, ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, 26–7; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), 255. For the circumstances of the 1389 guild returns see Jan Gerchow, ‘Gilds and Fourteenth-century Bureaucracy: The Case of 1338–9’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 40 (1996), 109–48.

138. 138.  For example, [Marga]ret Wyche, ‘sister of the guild’, received 2s from the guild in charity in 1425. SA: LB/5/3/24, m. 4. Other money given to brethren in need can be found throughout the same accounts.

139. 139.  Ben R. McRee, ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 32, no. 3 (July 1993), 195–225.

140. 140.  I have excluded the wives who were listed with male servants as it is unclear whether they were also servants.

141. 141.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 41v.

142. 142.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 15r; LB/5/3/5, ff. 41v, 42r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 28v, 31r; LB/5/3/7, f. 43r.

143. 143.  It ranged from eighteen to thirty-three per cent for each year of new recruits.

144. 144.  Enrolment of the deceased into England’s large fraternities has been explored in Rachael Harkes, ‘Remembering the Dead: Postmortem Guild Membership in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 63, no. 2 (April 2024), 323–48.

145. 145.  For example, Mairi Macdonald, ed., Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, St Mary and St John the Baptist, Stratford-upon-Avon (Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007), 81–2, 416–8.

146. 146.  Macdonald, Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon, 416–7.

147. 147.  Goldberg, ‘What Was a Servant?’, 2.

148. 148.  Extra-parochial is used here not in the sense of a guild as a competing religious institution to the parish but as involvement in religious institutions outside of the geographical confines of the parish.

149. 149.  Rawlinson, ‘The English Household Chapel’, 258; Nicholas Orme, ‘Church and Chapel in Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1996), 81–2.

150. 150.  Deborah Youngs, Humphrey Newton: An Early Tudor Gentleman (Woodbridge, 2008), 119–21.

151. 151.  Youngs, Humphrey Newton, 122, n. 71.

152. 152.  Goldberg, ‘What Was a Servant?’, 17; Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 182; Woolgar, The Great Household, 32–3.

153. 153.  TNA: PROB 11/19/241.

154. 154.  In gentry households, male household servants were twice as likely to receive bequests as female servants. The discrepancy between the two cash payments given may be a reflection of this or a reflection of the differences in wages that each gender received: Woolgar, The Great Household, 34.

155. 155.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 182.

156. 156.  Household members were expected to participate in the master’s funeral. Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, 135; Richard Asquith, ‘Piety and Trust: Testators and Executors in Pre-Reformation London’ (PhD diss., University of London, 2022), 114 and appendix 1.

157. 157.  TNA: PROB 11/19/241.

158. 158.  Kermode and Goldberg have both suggested this idea as demonstrated through gifts of cash or bedding to servants after they had left service. The phrase ‘once my servant’ was utilised in wills with some frequency: Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 130–31.

159. 159.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 182.

160. 160.  Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 130.

161. 161.  All three entries can be found in SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 56r. William is not given a last name. It does not say that he was deceased yet it does not appear that his fine was to be the full 6s 8d. The page is ripped but the required sum certainly was 5s.

162. 162.  Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle, 175–6.

163. 163.  Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, 181.

164. 164.  David Crouch, ‘Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire, 1389–1547’ (PhD diss., University of York, 1995), 297.

165. 165.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 138v.

166. 166.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 138v.

167. 167.  There is no record of Hugh Elyot in the Palmers, but the result of the lack of extant records does not preclude his membership.

168. 168.  It is unclear if Rees Griffith lived with his father at this time. It is certainly possible, for other gentry and noble families had their heirs and families remain with them after they came of age. For example, Edward, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, had his son and heir living with him even after the marriage and subsequent birth of his grandson. Barbara J. Harris, Edward Stafford: Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478–1521 (Stanford, 1986), 45.

169. 169.  For a discussion and many examples of friendship and support among gentry and their servants, see Fleming, ‘Household Servants’, 27–9, 31.

170. 170.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 29r; LB/5/3/9, f. 15v.

171. 171.  SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 67r, 164v.

172. 172.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 37r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 19r, 20r.

173. 173.  SA: LB/5/3/5, ff. 41v–42r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 28v, 31r.

174. 174.  Unfortunately, Wogan’s will is short, outlining his desired place of burial and naming his wife as his executrix, and no additional information about their household can be gleaned from it. TNA: PROB 11/39/302.

175. 175.  For suggestions as to why guild membership was popular among the regular clergy see Martin Heale, ‘Urban Guilds and the Religious Orders in Late Medieval England’, in The Urban Church in Late Medieval England: Essays from the 2017 Proceedings of the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, ed. David Harry and Christian Steer (Donington, 2019), 179–98; Rachael Harkes, ‘Joining a Fraternity in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow, c. 1250–1551’ (PhD diss., University of Durham, 2021), chapter 3.

176. 176.  Harkes, ‘Joining a Fraternity’, 121–5.

177. 177.  For a history of the two houses, see: Lionel Butler and Chris Given-Wilson, Medieval Monasteries of Great Britain (London, 1979), 287–9.

178. 178.  SA: LB/5/3/6, ff. 41v, 42r.

179. 179.  The following houses had lay servants begin membership payments: Abergavenny, Bath, Brecon, Brewood, Bromfield, Buildwas, Chester, Cirencester, Evesham, Gloucester (St Peter and St Paul), Great Malvern, Halesowen, Leicester, Leominster, Llanthony Prima, Llanthony Secunda, Nuneaton, Reading, Tewkesbury and Tintern. They are found across the archive. For an example, see SA: LB/5/3/7, ff. 23v, 26r.

180. 180.  For an overview of the households of superiors, see Martin Heale, ‘Abbots’ Households in Late Medieval England’, in The Elite Household in England, 1100–1500: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, ed. Christopher M. Woolgar (Donington, 2018), 258–76.

181. 181.  Ethel Fegan, ed., The Journal of Prior William More (London, 1919), 11–12.

182. 182.  Heale, ‘Abbots’ Households in Late Medieval England’, 266–76.

183. 183.  SA: LB/5/3/10.

184. 184.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 42r.

185. 185.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 42r.

186. 186.  SA: LB/5/3/1.

187. 187.  SA: LB/5/3/25, m. 1.

188. 188.  The lordship of Ludlow was tied to the Crown from the ascension of Edward IV. Alongside Ludlow (which was not a Marcher lordship), the majority of lordships in the Marches were in Crown hands in the early sixteenth century. William Rees, ‘The Union of England and Wales [with a transcript of the Act of Union]’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1937), 41.

189. 189.  There are four individuals from the household in the registers, but one is a repeat. SA: LB/5/1/2, mm. 1–3.

190. 190.  This pertains to the years for which records survive. The records are incomplete across every decade but especially for the first part of the 1490s. The records survive more fully for the early sixteenth century. SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 118r, 130v, 148r, 183r. For household numbers, see Woolgar, The Great Household, 10.

191. 191.  SA: LB/5/3/3.

192. 192.  For Arthur’s household, see SA: LB/5/3/2, and for Henry’s household see LB/5/3/4–8; LB/5/1/3–4.

193. 193.  For example, Henry Clerc and William ap Thomas, SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 84v, 184v.

194. 194.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 48r.

195. 195.  SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 84r, 118v, 148v; LB/5/3/5 f. 31v.

196. 196.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 35r.

197. 197.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 35v.

198. 198.  Sean Cunningham, Prince Arthur: The Tudor King Who Never Was (Stroud, 2016), 125, 202–3. Howard was the chief mourner at Arthur’s funeral: TNA: LC 2/1.

199. 199.  The Duke of Buckingham’s household provides an excellent example of this: Harris, Edward Stafford, chapter 4.

200. 200.  Gervase Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33, no. 4 (October 1994), 443.

201. 201.  SA: LB/5/3/8, ff. 6v–7v; LB/5/1/3, ff. 2–4; LB/5/1/4, f. 1.

202. 202.  Woolgar, The Great Household, 20.

203. 203.  Some of these are simply identified as servant or not even given a position in their entries in the guild records. Additional information has been gathered from household accounts of Edward Stafford: Harris, Edward Stafford, appendix A.

204. 204.  Margaret Geddynge, a gentlewoman, was in charge of the nursery and at least two other gentlewomen assisted her. Harris, Edward Stafford, 47.

205. 205.  SA: LB/5/3/8, ff. 6v, 7v. For more on the riding/foreign household versus the great household, see Woolgar, The Great Household, 15.

206. 206.  SA: LB/5/1/4, m. 1.

207. 207.  Harris, Edward Stafford, 93.

208. 208.  Harris, Edward Stafford, 77; Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham: 1394–1521 (Cambridge, 1988), 88.

209. 209.  Rawcliffe, The Staffords, 98.

210. 210.  Rawcliffe, The Staffords, 98.

211. 211.  Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, 127; Audrey M. Thorstad, ‘There and Back Again: The Hospitality and Consumption of a Sixteenth-Century English Travelling Household’, in Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More Than Just a Castle, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Leiden, 2018), 368.

212. 212.  Harris, Edward Stafford, 82.

213. 213.  Harris, Edward Stafford, 82.

214. 214.  Harris, Edward Stafford, 90.

215. 215.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 52v; LB/5/1/3, f. 6.

216. 216.  SA: LB/5/3/8, ff. 6v, 7v.

217. 217.  Harris, Edward Stafford, 50; John Gage, ‘Extracts from the Household Book of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham’, Archaeologia, 25 (1834), 320–21.

218. 218.  SA: LB/5/1/3, mm. 2, 4, 5; LB/5/1/4, m. 2.

219. 219.  SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 25r–v; LB/5/3/5, ff. 32r, 53r; LB/5/3/7, f. 50v; LB/5/1/3, m. 7.

220. 220.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 127v.

221. 221.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r; LB/5/3/6, 51r; LB/5/3/7, f. 68v.

222. 222.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r; LB/5/3/5, f. 74r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 50v, 51r; LB/5/3/7, f. 68v; LB/5/3/8, f. 11r.

223. 223.  SA: LB/5/3/5, ff. 73v, 74r.

224. 224.  SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 63r, 84r.

225. 225.  Jeri L. McIntosh, From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor 1516–1558 (New York, 2009), 197.