Living standards of the small trader class in fifteenth-century Canterbury: evidence of escheators’ records

Living standards of the small trader class in fifteenth-century Canterbury: evidence of escheators’ records

chris briggs and ben jervis

The escheator was an important royal official who, by the fifteenth century, had accumulated a wide range of responsibilities. Escheators were accountable to the exchequer, and each official was responsible for ‘escheats’ arising to the crown within a county or pair of counties, called an ‘escheatry’. One of the escheator’s roles was to account for goods and chattels forfeited to the crown by felons, fugitives and outlaws: people who had been convicted or indicted of felonies (including suicides); who had fled following an accusation of felony; or who had been outlawed following repeated failure to appear in court to answer a charge of felony, or to respond to a civil suit.1 Following conviction, indictment, flight, or outlawry, the escheator held an inquest of local men into the property of the felon, fugitive or outlaw. The goods and chattels were listed and valued, and sold locally for the benefit of the crown. In carrying out their work, the escheators generated a large number of records, which are especially full and detailed for the period between c.1370 and c.1460. These records contain a good deal of information on the household possessions of a wide range of non-elite persons, as they often incorporate lists of the forfeited items and their values.

This evidence remains under-exploited but its potential value to students of later medieval material culture is clearly significant.2 The lists of chattels that survive in the escheators’ archive certainly have their shortcomings, and pose problems of interpretation. For instance, while some chattels lists are very detailed, and can be treated with confidence as more-or-less complete descriptions of the movable goods of the forfeiting household, others are implausibly short and highly stereotyped. It is probable that some items were excluded from the process of appraisal, but concrete evidence that this was the case appears only rarely. There was also variation over time and over space in the practices of escheators in relation to felony forfeiture, which makes it difficult to establish secure patterns and trends. The evidence is not especially useful for investigating gender and material culture, since the vast majority of the forfeitures relate to men. Nonetheless, in spite of these and other problems, the evidence on material goods contained in the escheators’ archive is sufficiently abundant and rich to justify its exploitation, provided that a critical approach is taken to the question of what might be missing, and why.

The aim of the Leverhulme Trust funded research project ‘Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households 1300-1600’ (2016-2020) was to collect and analyse a large quantity of evidence from the later medieval escheators’ records, alongside similar material from sixteenth-century coroners’ reports, and a large dataset of small finds from archaeological excavations.3 Attention was focused on nine escheatries, containing 15 counties altogether; one of these escheatries was Kent and Middlesex. In seeking late medieval chattels lists, the project used three connected categories of escheators’ records in combination, all of which contain information on felony forfeiture:

the files of inquests (The National Archives class E 153), mostly collect together records of inquests held before the escheator, including inquests related to felony forfeiture;

the particulars of account (TNA class E 136), record the revenues of individual escheators, usually for a single year;

the escheators’ account rolls (E 357), bring together in large rolls the details of the revenues of every escheator over a period of several years.

The project worked with around 1,000 escheators’ chattels lists in total from the years 1370-1480.

The evidence gathered during the ‘Living Standards’ project underpins a larger study of non-elite consumption and material culture in late medieval and sixteenth-century English households, which covers subjects ranging from cooking and dining to dress and craft production.4 One issue that the project intended to investigate was the question of urban-rural differences in the material life of households. In a stimulating study using evidence mainly from large towns in comparison with a small body of rural inventories, Jeremy Goldberg argued that later medieval English material culture was characterised by a contrast between a ‘bourgeois value system’ and a ‘peasant value system’. Goldberg suggested that urban households were more likely than rural households to invest in items with a particular cultural meaning, such as silver spoons and cushions. Furthermore, he argued, rural dwellers had a greater propensity than their urban counterparts to invest in ‘outside’ goods, such as livestock, farming equipment and tools, rather than household goods, and where they did so, they exhibited a preference for essential cooking items rather than bedding and soft furnishings.5 To subject this model to close scrutiny using fresh evidence was an obvious objective of our project.

In collecting data from the escheators’ and coroners’ records it was found, however, that evidence on forfeitures from the largest towns in the selected case-study counties, such as Southampton, Winchester, Salisbury and Worcester, was rare. This seems to have been because these larger centres exercised rights of felony forfeiture within their jurisdictions as part of their borough privileges, and excluded royal officials such as escheators. As a result of this, the focus of the project and of its major output mentioned above is on rural and small-town households. Furthermore, such comparisons of urban and rural patterns that it proved possible to undertake were largely restricted to investigation of the experiences of small urban centres alongside those of households within villages and hamlets. These small towns were all outside the 50 largest towns as measured by the numbers of persons paying the 1377 poll tax.6 In many respects, though not all, the possessions of households in the small towns appear rather similar to those of the rural counterparts. Yet such a comparison fails to engage fully with Goldberg’s argument, since although that did consider the lesser towns, it was primarily focused on the contrast between the biggest urban centres and the countryside.

The escheators’ records are not entirely devoid of lists of chattels from large towns, however, and the aim of the present article is to present a small amount of such evidence as a supplement to the comparison of rural places and small urban centres contained in the larger project output mentioned above. This evidence comes from Canterbury, a large town for which chattels lists seems to be relatively common, if not abundant.7 A small sample of six lists from Canterbury dating from the period 1420-47 is investigated here. These are analysed alongside the records of a further 71 forfeitures of the period 1401-51 collected as part of the project. For 15 of these we do not have a place of residence, and we know only that the forfeiture occurred in Kent or, in seven cases, Kent or Middlesex. However, the remainder relate to specified locations across Kent, including one from Rochester, and one from Dartford. In what follows, a comparison of the six lists with the larger Kent/Middlesex sample allows us to look again at Goldberg’s thesis concerning rural-urban differences, and to ask how far Canterbury stands out as different in its region.

The sample

The six lists we have selected are not the product of an exhaustive search in the escheators’ archive, and doubtless there are further Canterbury examples extant therein. They have essentially been gathered at random from the digital images and notes produced in the course of building the main escheators’ dataset, of which they do not form a part. Although they do not rival the very longest lists collected on the ‘Living Standards’ project, like those from Kent/Middlesex escheatry more generally, these Canterbury examples are nonetheless relatively detailed and the number of items or groups of items in each list is comparatively large. In several cases the forfeiture is recorded in more than one location within the escheator’s archive, which allows for cross-checking and some consolidation of information from different documents in the transcriptions below. It is interesting that five of the six forfeitures arose from civil outlawry (non-appearance in pleas of debt), and only one from felony or, more correctly, fear of arrest for felony (No. 6). There is some evidence that chattels lists produced in connection with civil outlawry may have been more selective and less ‘complete’ than those resulting from crime or flight. However, although it is impossible to tell for sure, the five Canterbury examples connected with civil outlawry do not obviously represent a subset of the outlaw’s goods. In one case (No. 1), the document explicitly reports the jury’s oath to the effect that the forfeiting outlaw ‘had no more goods and chattels’ beyond those listed, on the day on which he was outlawed or afterwards. In only one case is the total valuation a suspiciously ‘rounded’ sum; this is No. 2 (13s. 4d., or one mark). One may tentatively regard these lists, therefore, as full listings of the household goods of the forfeiting individual.

In terms of stated occupation, the six comprise one jeweller, one husbandman, one corviser (i.e. shoemaker), and three chapmen. The marked presence of chapmen – ‘chapman’ taken here to mean a petty trader – is striking. No chapmen appear among the 71 forfeitures from villages and small towns in Kent, though there are a few in the larger escheators’ dataset used in the ‘Living Standards’ project. This presence of Canterbury chapmen provides an important reminder of one of the channels through which residents outside the largest towns must have accessed many smaller commodities.8 It is notable that two of the chapmen (Nos 1 and 2) were defendants in debt cases involving London plaintiffs. This suggests they were involved in the redistribution of goods acquired from merchants in the capital. Chapmen appear relatively infrequently, however, on the contemporary lists of Canterbury ‘intrantes’, or those paying an annual fee to reside and trade independently within the liberty of Canterbury. Only one person with the occupational designation ‘chapman’ appears on those lists between 1420 and 1445, though there is a small number of individuals bearing the surname ‘Chapman’.9 This meagre total may show that chapmen based in Canterbury traded mainly outside of the city, so did not need to pay the entry fee.

Given that all six lists relate to artisans or traders, one must not necessarily assume that all the goods in the list are personal or household possessions, since some of them may have been stock. This possibility is considered below on a case by case basis. It should be noted that two of the lists make some effort to distinguish items ‘in the shop’ from what are presumably household goods.

A final general comment about the six is that the total valuations are not especially large, exceeding £2 in only two cases, with the largest valuation being that of William Wainflete (No. 1), at just under £4. The median total valuation for the 71 Kent/Middlesex lists was just under £2. These six men were evidently not among Canterbury’s wealthiest fifteenth-century residents. It is also notable that there are many relatively low value items (4d. and below) in the Canterbury lists, suggesting again a degree of thoroughness on the part of those who undertook the inquests and valuations. Another way of looking at this, however, is that in rural households that held high value crops and animals, a chair worth 2d. might be overlooked, while in an urban household with few capital goods it might be valued and seized. This possibility needs to be borne in mind in what follows.

The lists

In this section the six lists are set out,10 each with a commentary below focusing primarily on those items that stand out as unusual or worthy of comment in the context of the larger body of rural and small-town chattels lists.

1. William Wainflete, 142011

Inquest taken at Canterbury on Thursday next after the feast of St Gregory the pope in the seventh year of the reign of King Henry V (14 March 1420) after the conquest of England before William Spondon escheator of the lord king in the aforesaid county by virtue of his office, by oath of Henry Lymynge, Robert Virle, Richard Saghier, John Lyon, John Atte Court, John Wulward, John Welde, John Andever, Walter Heyward, John Payn, Thomas Vynour and Thomas Atte Welle, jurors, who say upon their oath that William Wainflete of Canterbury, jeweller, outlawed at the suit of Simon Bertelot of London in a plea of debt, had diverse goods and chattels after the promulgation of his outlawry, namely:

in the hall one chair, price 6d.;

one table with one pair of trestles, price 8d;

one basin with ewer, price 3s. 4d.;

two candlesticks of latten, price 8d.;

one dorser with bankers and six cushions, price 5s.;

item in the chamber, three beds with equipment except curtains [absque ridell’ seu curten],12 price 24s.;

one sword, price 2s. 8d.;

one chest, price 2s.;

one bow with twelve arrows, price 2s. 6d.;

item in the pantry and buttery, three pewter pots, price 2s.;

two salt cellars, price 8d.;

two tablecloths and two napkins [manuterg’], price 16d.;

four barrels, price 12d.;

one breadbasket, price 4d.;

three cups of ash, price 2d.;

item in the kitchen, two brass pots, price 3s. 4d.;

three pans, price 2s. 2d.;

two tripods, price 18d.;

one skimmer [scomer] of latten, price 2d.;

item in the shop, one chest, price 18d.;

twenty ells of linen cloth, price 10s.;

two dozen girdles [de gerdell’], price 4s.;

eight girths for horses, price 16d.,

one piece of blue carde,13 price 3s. 4d.;

item debt of 39s which [Thomas] Frank’ attorney in the bench owes to the same William Wainflete for jewels sold to him, which remain in the hands of the same [Thomas] Frank. They say further by their oath that the same William Wainflete had no more goods or chattels lands or tenements on the day upon which he was outlawed or afterwards in the said county of Kent, as far as the same jury is able to establish. In testimony of which, the jurors aforesaid affix their seals to this inquest on the day, year and in the place abovesaid. All of which, except the debts, is sold to Thomas Norman for five marks, 7s. 6d. 74s. 2d.

The occupational designation of William Wainflete – ‘jeweller’ – is quite unusual. There are no other jewellers in the overall escheators’ sample, though there are a number of goldsmiths (not all forfeitures carry an occupational descriptor). Also, no individual bearing the occupational description ‘jeweller’ could be traced in the Canterbury ‘intrantes’ lists covering the period preceding Wainflete’s forfeiture (1415-20).14 Wainflete’s list is relatively unusual for an escheators’ example, in that it explicitly distinguishes rooms and their contents, noting goods in the hall, chamber, pantry and buttery, and shop, allowing us to differentiate between household goods and stock.15 That Wainflete was involved in working precious stones and metals, or at least in their sale, is indicated by the debt owed to him by the attorney Thomas Frank for ‘jewels’ bought from him. What we see in his shop, however, is perhaps more typical perhaps of a small merchant or draper.

In the domestic spaces, the items worthiest of note are the beds, and also the breadbasket, and cups. Wainflete’s three beds ‘with equipment’ valued at 24s. support Goldberg’s overall thesis, since they are suggestive of quite significant investment in items for sleeping, despite the fact that they lacked curtains; the ‘equipment’ presumably refers to ceilings over the beds, or other items such as coverlets or pillows. It was relatively rare for rural and small-town households to possess more than just a single bed. Also, many held just sheets, blankets and coverlets, with the bed itself not separately valued, presumably because it was of low value, consisting perhaps of a canvas stuffed with straw or some other form of cheap mattress. The Kent/Middlesex sample yields 15 lists which contain at least one ‘bed’. More elaborate beds like that of Wainflete can be identified in rural households in this sample, such as the ‘two beds with all the equipment’ forfeited by agriculturalist John Slege of Marden in 1406, but they are unusual.16

The breadbasket is a very interesting item suggestive of refinement and care in the preservation of food. No other reference to such an object appears in the escheators’ lists used in the project. Also in the buttery and pantry were three cups of ash. Drinking vessels of any kind are quite unusual in the escheators’ records of forfeitures relating to rural and small-town households. Wainflete’s wooden cups are very low in value (2d.), and we may suspect that such items were common in many households in both town and country, but were rarely appraised, or were lumped under indistinguishable ‘household utensils’, when there were more valuable items available for seizure. Only one cup appears among the 71 rural and small-town Kent/Middlesex lists. This is a silver cup worth 3s. 4d. belonging to Robert de Erhethe alias Kelme, of Erith, a relatively wealthy man (no occupation given) indicted for treason in 1407. He also possessed two mazers, worth 2s. altogether.17 The fact that Wainflete’s cups were appraised where those undoubtedly possessed by others were not is suggestive in part of the assiduous way in which the inquests and escheators went about their work in Canterbury.

2. John Maldon, c.142518

But he [the escheator] responds for 13s. 4d. as the price of diverse goods and chattels below written which belonged to John Maldon of Canterbury in the said county of Kent, chapman, outlawed in the city of London on Monday next before the feast of St Margaret in the third year of the said king that now is (16 July 1425) at the suit of William Pek citizen and mercer of London in a plea of debt, namely:

a small dining table with trestles, price 12d.;

one form, price 4d.;

two benches [sedelium], price 4d.;

one basin with worn [debilis] ewer, price 16d.;

two small brass pots, price 40d.;

one brass pan, price 6d.;

one frying pan, price 4d.;

one tripod, price 3d.;

one gridiron, price 3d.;

one iron spit, price 6d.;

four platters, five dishes, three saucers and one garlic mortar of wood, price 4d.;

one table cloth with worn napkins, price 6d.;

one coverlet, three sheets, two blankets and one canvas, price 4s. 4d.

forfeited to the lord king for this cause, and thus appraised as is contained in a certain inquest thereof taken and remaining against these particulars, and thus sold to William Chilton, as the said former escheator says upon his oath.

John Maldon was one of the three chapmen appearing in the sample. We must be particularly cautious with the chapmen since some of the small articles in their lists may represent goods for sale, rather than household possessions. In this list, however, there is no attempt to separate off stock from domestic items, so it seems reasonable to assume that most if not all of the contents of this list are Maldon’s own property.

Maldon’s two benches are especially noteworthy. It is generally assumed that a chair was reserved for the head of the household, with other members of the household perhaps sitting on forms or benches.19 However only five lists among the 71 from Kent/Middlesex include chairs or benches (one with a bench, three with a chair, and one with both bench and chair). Moreover, in each of these five cases there is only a single chair or bench. The evidence of multiple benches in the Canterbury lists therefore hints at a distinctive urban character to seating. Beyond this, Maldon’s list is notable for its sizeable collection of items associated with food preparation. Clearly he was able to roast meat in the home. Maldon also had one very distinctive item of food preparation, his wooden garlic mortar. This, again, finds no exact parallel in the wider escheators’ dataset, and while mortars for food preparation can sometimes be found, there are no examples in the contemporary rural and small-town lists from Kent/Middlesex. The most plausible interpretation of the relevant section of Maldon’s list (looking at the valuations, and wording) is that the platters, dishes, saucers and garlic mortar should all be understood as being made of wood. Unlike many wealthier households in both town and countryside Maldon’s appears to have possessed no metal tableware.

3. Walter Bosewyn, 143720

And he [the escheator] is burdened upon account concerning 35s. 11d. as the price of diverse goods and chattels below written which belonged to Walter Bosewyn of Canterbury in the said county of Kent, husbandman, outlawed in the same county on the 8th day of April in the said 15th year (8 April 1437) at the suit of William Manston in a plea of debt, namely:

one worn dorser of red and black worsted, price 2s.;

six old cushions and one worn banker, price 18d.;

three tables (mensarum) and one broken hearth of iron, price 3s.;

one close cupboard, price 12d.;

one form, price 2d.;

one pair of trestles and two benches, price 3d.;

one worn bed of blue worsted, price 20d.;

one coverlet, one pair of worn sheets, one broken and old featherbed, and one pillow, price 2s. 2d.;

two gowns of old black russet, price 4s.;

one chest with a pair of worn and torn sheets, price 2d.;

three platters, three dishes, three old salt cellars of pewter, price 12d.;

two brass pots, one cauldron and four worn pans, price 3s.;

one hanging ewer (lavacrum pendibil’), price 12d.;

and two worn horses with one saddle and two old bridles, price 12s. 4d.,

forfeited to the lord king for this cause, and thus appraised and sold to a certain Thomas Petham together with 10d. of increment beyond the prices in the above particulars, as is contained in a certain inquest thereof taken before the same former escheator by virtue of his office, and remaining against these particulars.

Walter Bosewyn is described as a ‘husbandman’. A more general finding of the ‘Living Standards’ project was the high degree of involvement in agriculture in places with urban characteristics. Bosewyn’s list would seem to be evidence of that feature even in a very large town like Canterbury. However, we should note that the only item in his list that marks him out as an agriculturalist are his two ‘worn’ horses. It is striking that these are the only animals present in any of the six lists. This underlines the fact that these lists really are very different from their rural and small-town counterparts.

Like John Maldon, Bosewyn had two benches, which was unusual, as the other households in the wider Kent/Middlesex sample possessing these items had just one. Bosewyn was also quite well supplied with soft furnishings, such as a dorser, cushions and a banker, though these seem to have been rather old. His possessions also include clothing, which is quite a rare feature of these six lists and of the escheators’ dataset as a whole. His gowns are not high value items, being old, made of russet, a comparatively inexpensive cloth, and apparently not lined.

Bosewyn’s ‘hanging ewer’ is an unusual object. Basins and ewers for handwashing are relatively common in the escheators’ lists of this period, in both small towns and the countryside, and they speak of an element of decorum and ritual around dining. Ten of the 71 Kent/Middlesex lists include them, for instance. However, no ‘hanging ewer’ appears in that sample, and only one other example has been identified, namely the ‘hangynlaver’ that belonged to John Dyer, a dyer of Warminster (Wiltshire) outlawed for a civil suit in 1444.21 This object was presumably permanently suspended prior to use for handwashing, a feature that may have enhanced the impression it left on any visitors to the household.

The other item of especial note among Bosewyn’s chattels is the ‘close cupboard’. This term presumably describes a cupboard that could be closed with doors, concealing the contents from view. Like the ‘hanging ewer’, this again speaks to a possibly distinctive use of space and of objects in Bosewyn’s household. Cupboards are quite rare in general in the escheators’ lists. Just two examples appear in the sample of 71, and both of these are simply described as ‘cupboard’. Interestingly, both belonged to clerics. One (value 12d.) belonged to the wealthy clerk, Hugh Cetur of Woodchurch, who murdered John Smyth, a chaplain, in 1414 and left behind a lengthy list of forfeited chattels.22 The other belonged to John atte Water, clerk of Faversham; this cupboard was valued at the substantial sum of 10s.23 The only cupboards recorded for Kent therefore occur in distinctive lists, that is, those of clerics and of a resident of the county’s major town.

4. John Edmond, 143724

And [the escheator responds] concerning 8s. 5d. as the price of diverse goods below written which belonged to John Edmond of Canterbury aforesaid, chapman, outlawed in the county of Middlesex on Thursday next after the feast of St Ambrose in the said 15th year (11 April 1437) at the suit of Richard Edyncham of Woodchurch in a plea of debt, namely:

one basin and ewer, price 20d.;

one pewter pottle pot, price 10d.;

one pewter pint pot, price 6d.;

one verjuice barrel, price 2d.;

one andiron, price 4d.;

one rack of iron, price 1d.;

one old painted cloth, price 6d.;

four pewter platters, price 8d.;

three pewter dishes, price 6d.;

three pewter salt cellars, price 2d.;

one coverlet, price 9d.;

one pair of sheets with one old pillow, price 20d.;

one traunschell’, price 2d.;

forfeited to the lord king for this cause, and thus appraised and sold to a certain William Rynge together with 5d. of increment beyond the prices in the above particulars, as is contained in the aforesaid inquest.

The chattels of chapman John Edmond had a low overall value of 8s. 5d. Again, we face the problem that some of these items may have been for sale. The list also includes the only object across the six lists to defy identification entirely; we have not encountered the word traunschell’ elsewhere in the escheators’ records, and it is not clear what it refers to.

Like three of the other five, Edmond had a basin with a ewer. That he possessed three pewter salt cellars is unusual – typically one sees just one or two of these items – but the total valuation is strikingly low, at just 2d. Perhaps these were cheap examples, underlining the possibility that some items of pewter tableware were available at a range of price levels, and were widely available to those who wished to acquire them. Like William Wainflete, John Edmond is unusual in that his drinking vessels are recorded, in this case one pewter pottle pot, and one pewter pint pot. Again, these make for a Canterbury list that stands out; there are no other drinking vessels with the same description across the entire escheators’ dataset.

5. John Alburgh, 144325

But he [the escheator] responds for 33s. 1d. as the price of diverse goods and chattels below written which John Alburgh lately of Canterbury in the same county of Kent, chapman, who was outlawed in the same county on the 14th day of October in the 22nd year of the said king (14 October 1443) who now is at the suit of John Turnour in a plea of debt, had on the same day, namely:

one mattress, price 8d;

one worn featherbed, price 12d.;

seven small worn pillows, price 8d.;

four blankets, price 16d.;

six pairs of /worn\ sheets, price 2s.;

four bed coverlets, price 2s. 8d.;

two curtains of linen cloth, price 8d.;

one linen cloth called a ‘hallyng’ and three bankers, price 20d.;

one ewer of electrum, price 4d.;

two tablecloths, two small napkins [manuterg’], price 20d.;

three chests, price 2s. 4d.;

two iron andirons, price 4d.;

one dung fork, price 2d.;

one table, price 8d.;

two cups called mazers bound with silver, price 4s.;

one belt harnessed with silver, price 20d.;

two pairs of prayer beads [ii par’ precum], price 12d.;

eight worn cushions, price 8d.;

two brass basins [ene’] with one brass ewer, price 16d.;

two pots of electrum, price 7d.;

three /small\ brass pots and two small broken brass pans; price 22d.;

twenty pieces of electrum, price 20d.;

one candlestick of latten, price 2d.;

one cup, price 12d.;

one woman’s gown lined price [sic] with coney, with a tunic, price 12d.;

one broken silver hook [unc’], price 2s.;

forfeited to the lord king for this cause, and thus appraised and sold as is contained in a certain inquest thereof taken before the same former escheator by virtue of his office, and delivered upon this account and also in the said roll of particulars.

Of the three chapmen’s lists, that of John Alburgh is the one where there is the strongest suspicion that one is looking at (second-hand) goods for sale intermingled with household goods. The quantities involved might lead us to that view; there is a good deal of bedding and soft furnishings (e.g. seven pillows, six pairs of sheets), and the ‘20 pieces of electrum’ may point in the same direction. Even if this is the case, however, there is still value in such lists, since they help one to understand the kinds of objects that were available to purchase.

The two references here to ‘electrum’ – Alburgh’s ewer is also described as made of this material – are unusual. There is just one other list in the corpus of escheators’ lists which mentions ‘electrum’, in that case in reference to two dishes made of this material.26 The term perhaps refers to an alloy of gold and silver, but given the low valuations in Alburgh’s list, it is just possible it is used as an alternative word for pewter. Alburgh’s list also includes items of clothing, but as in Bosewyn’s list, the value is low, with a fur-lined woman’s gown and a tunic being appraised together at just 12d. No other garment lined with coney (rabbit) has been identified in the escheators’ lists used for the project.

6. John Clerk, 144727

But he [the escheator] responds for 47s. 4½d. as the price of diverse goods and chattels below written which a certain John Clerk late of Canterbury in the said county of Kent, corviser, who, through fear of arrest for diverse felonies done by him on the 20th day of February in the 25th year of the said king that now is (20 February 1447) did withdraw himself, and fled from this land unto an unknown place, had on the day of the aforesaid withdrawal and flight, namely:

seventeen dozen pairs of new shoes [sotular’], price each dozen 2s.;

two pairs of small boots [ocrear’], price 2s. 8d.;

three bows with 24 worn arrows, price 2s.;

five worn painted vestments; price 20d.;

one broken sword, price 6d.;

one sallet, price 16d.;

two old chests, price 6d.;

one pair of prayer beads [precarum], price 1d.;

two measures of which one is called ‘half bushel’ and the other is called a ‘pek’, price of the same 2d.;

one table and two pairs of trestles and one worn chair with two forms, price of the same 6d.;

one pair of leather bottles [utrium], price 4d.;

one pan, price 1d.;

one cauldron, price 2½d.;

and other things pertaining to the art of shoemaking lately existing in the shop of the said John Clerk, price 3s. 4d., forfeited to the lord king for this cause, and thus appraised and sold as is contained in a certain inquest thereof taken before the same former escheator by virtue of his office, and delivered upon this account as is contained in the same place.

The sixth and final Canterbury list relates to the corviser John Clerk. Corvisers are very common indeed in the ‘intrantes’ lists. No John Clerk with that occupation descriptor appears in the lists of the years 1440-47, but there is a John Clerk tailor in the 1444-5 list, who is conceivably the same man. In this escheator’s list we would seem to have a good prospect of distinguishing stock and tools from the household goods, since the articles pertaining to the art of shoemaking are noted and valued at the end of the list as a separate category, though not individually described. That said, the list opens with a description of footwear that is clearly Clerk’s stock for sale. The quantities are surprisingly large, and it is clear that these shoes and boots comprised the bulk of his goods and chattels, by value. The reference to armour in the shape of a sallet (a headpiece) raises the possibility that Clerk was also repairing armour, but there is no need to resort to that conclusion, since arms and armour were a fairly common feature of the escheators’ lists. At least one item of weaponry or armour appears in 14 lists among the 71 from Kent/Middlesex, for instance.

The measures (a ‘bushel’ and a ‘pek’) are also worthy of comment. Bushel measures are occasionally encountered in the escheators’ lists. Clerk’s measures are perhaps indicative of direct purchase of grain from merchants, since transactions in the market would presumably have used those measures provided by the market authorities. Once again, these are items of strikingly low value. Finally, like John Alburgh, John Clerk possessed prayer beads. This evidence on beads may reflect the presence of a particularly urban expression of devotion in this period, since the only other list among the 71 mentioning beads is that of Thomas Hert of the small town of Folkestone, outlawed in 1421, who had ‘beads of jet’.28 Yet we cannot push that point too far; Hert was heavily involved in agriculture and, moreover, we cannot exclude the possibility that rural households possessed beads that were not appraised given their comparatively low value.

Summary

In seeking to summarize the main differences and similarities between the small group of Canterbury lists, and the larger sample of 71 mainly rural lists from Kent/Middlesex, one may focus firstly on the items that are prominent in the latter but simply absent from the former (or barely present). The most obvious category is livestock. Out of the 71 rural and small-town lists, 56 have animals, including nine with at least one ox, 31 with at least one cow, 35 with one or more horse or mare, 11 with at least one sheep or lamb, and 36 with one or more pigs or piglets. Crops are another contrast; 37 of the 71 lists feature a quantity of at least one of the three main grains, wheat, barley, and oats. Farming equipment is also present in the 71 lists, but hardly at all in the six from Canterbury; there are four lists out of the 71 with a plough, and 12 with a cart or wain. John Alburgh had a dung fork, but that is about the only item of agricultural equipment in the six Canterbury lists. These conclusions are perhaps not surprising, but they underline the very stark urban-rural differences that separate the Canterbury lists from the other lists from Kent/Middlesex, which are not as clear when one compares villages with lesser places of more questionable urban status.

On the other hand, there are certain items owned by at least half of the Canterbury households (if we assume for the moment that most of the chapmen’s goods represent their own household possessions), which, while detectable in the other Kentish lists, are rarer and tend to feature in exceptional cases. Some examples have already been mentioned. Chairs and benches are an obvious case, featuring in four of the six Canterbury lists (two with chairs, two with benches), but in just five of the 71 lists. The idea that chairs might be an ‘urban’ feature is supported by the fact that one of the group of five appears in a list from Rochester, categorized in this case as a small town. This is the 1417 list of John Mone senior, who also had a dorser ‘for the hall’, a banker and four cushions, one featherbed and one pallet.29 The possibility that urban households may have invested more heavily than their rural counterparts in more substantial and comfortable beds has also been raised above. Other goods to focus on in this respect might be salt cellars; three of the six Canterbury lists include them, but they occur in just two lists among the 71, one of which is the list of the wealthy clerk Hugh Cetur of Woodchurch, mentioned above.

When it comes to Goldberg’s ‘marker goods’ – cushions and spoons – the findings are somewhat more complex. Three of the Canterbury lists feature cushions, and in quite substantial sets of six and eight. In one case, of course, that of Alburgh, we may be looking at items for sale. The 71 lists yield five with cushions, of which one is that of John Mone of Rochester, cited above, and three relate to civil outlaws whose precise place of residence is unknown. The urban-rural contrast in taste and preference posited by Goldberg thus appears to be borne out where cushions are concerned. However, the picture for spoons is rather different. None of the six Canterbury households possessed spoons, silver or otherwise. This is very surprising given Goldberg’s emphasis on these items as a component of the ‘bourgeois value system’. It may reflect the fact that none of the six seems to have been especially wealthy. In the 71 Kent/Middlesex lists, there are three with ‘silver spoons’, and one with ‘spoons’. Two of these are clerics, and a third is Robert de Erhethe alias Kelme, of Erith, whom we met above. The fourth, Thomas Paccheherst, is interesting, since although his place of residence is unknown, he appears to have been a bona fide rural dweller and substantial cultivator, possessing crops and livestock, but also six silver spoons worth 6s., and goods worth over £11 altogether.30

Across the escheators’ dataset as a whole, Thomas is certainly not the only example of a substantial agriculturalist who possessed silver spoons.

Conclusion

The lists from Canterbury examined here are few in number but they are full of interesting detail and shed useful light on the material world of artisan and trader households in a large town, especially when compared with contemporary equivalents from the rural hinterland. This investigation largely provides support for Goldberg’s model of systematic differences between large towns and the countryside in material culture and value systems. Yet economic realities and contrasting modes of earning a living also drive the differences that are observed between the six Canterbury lists and the 71 from the countryside and small towns of Kent and Middlesex. With a couple of exceptions, the Canterbury chapmen and artisans seem to have had relatively little wealth invested in capital goods such as tools and raw materials, so attention in the forfeiture process naturally fell on their often quite sophisticated assemblages of household utensils, many of which were individually of low value. By contrast, the rural households that made a living from agriculture had most of their wealth tied up in animals, crops and farming equipment. They were perhaps less interested in investing in domestic comforts, or (in some cases) less able to do so, but one should also bear in mind that any relatively low value items that those households may have possessed, such as chairs and some items of tableware, may not have attracted the attention of escheators and jurors, who were much more concerned with seizing and disposing of valuable agricultural resources.

acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding the research on which this article is based. Special thanks are owed to Dr Matthew Tompkins for his meticulous work collecting and transcribing material from the escheators’ records.

endnotes

1 On felony forfeiture, see K. Kesselring, ‘Felony forfeiture in England, c.1170–1870’, Journal of Legal History, 30 (3) (2009), 201-26. Escheators also dealt with forfeited land, but the project on which this article is based is concerned mainly with movables.

2 In her work on Kent, Mavis Mate was one of the few scholars to date to use the escheators’ records to look at peasant agriculture and household consumption and production: M. Mate, ‘The economy of Kent 1200-1500: the aftermath of the Black Death’, in S. Sweetinburgh (ed.), Later medieval Kent (Woodbridge, 2010), 20; M. Mate, ‘Agricultural technology in southeast England, 1348-1530’, in G. Astill and J. Langdon (eds), Medieval farming and technology: the impact of agricultural change in northwest Europe (Leiden, 1997), 251-74.

3 Leverhulme Trust RPG 2016-219. The data from the project is accessible via the Archaeology Data Service at https://doi.org/10.5284/1085022. For a description of the escheators’ records and the project’s methodology, see C. Briggs, A. Forward and B. Jervis, ‘Living standards and material culture in English rural households 1300-1600’, Data Paper, Internet Archaeology 56 (2021). https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.56.14.

4 In the form of a monograph entitled The Material Culture of English Households: Consumption and Production in the Later Medieval and Tudor Countryside, forthcoming.

5 P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity in later medieval England: A material culture perspective’, in P.J.P. Goldberg and M. Kowaleski (eds), Medieval domesticity: home, housing and household in medieval England (Cambridge, 2008), 124-44; for important recent discussion of later medieval material culture and urban-rural differences, see also K. French, Household goods and good households in late medieval London. Consumption and domesticity after the plague (Philadelphia, 2021), 7, 218; J. Sear and K. Sneath, The origins of the consumer revolution in England: from brass pots to clocks (Abingdon, 2020), esp. 204-29.

6 See D. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Volume 1: 600–1540 (Cambridge, 2000), Appendix 5.

7 It is not clear whether this is because Canterbury did not assert its right to felony forfeitures within its jurisdiction, or did so only weakly, but this is possible.

8 J. Davis, ‘Marketing secondhand goods in late medieval England’, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 2 (3) (2010), 270-86; J. Davis, ‘“Men as march with fote packes”: pedlars and freedom of movement in late medieval England’, in P. Hordern (ed.), Freedom of movement in the middle ages (Donington, 2007), 137-56.

9 J. Meadows Cowper (ed.), Intrantes: a list of persons admitted to live and trade within the city of Canterbury, on payment of an annual fine, from 1392 to 1592 (Canterbury, 1904), discussed in S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Shepsters, hucksters and other businesswomen: female involvement in Canterbury’s fifteenth-century economy’, Archaeologia Cantiana 138 (2017), 179-99, and S. Sweetinburgh, ‘Starting a new life as artisans and traders in Ricardian and Henrician Canterbury (c.1400 and c.1500)’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 143 (2022), 33-50.

10 Text inserted is indicated thus: /price\, editorial additions in square brackets.

11 E 153/1014 m. 4; also E 136/96/7 m. 7, E 357/25 rot. 28. The inquest in E 153 is partly illegible so some details have been supplied from the text in E 136. (All archival documents cited in this article are deposited in TNA.)

12 The English word curten’ (curteyns in E 136/96/7) is apparently included here to explain ridelli, rather than to indicate two distinct objects.

13 ‘A type of fabric (probably linen or muslin) used for canopies, curtains, linings, etc.’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

14 J. Meadows Cowper (ed.), The roll of the freemen of the city of Canterbury from A.D. 1392 to 1800 (Canterbury, 1903), 89, provides a 1445 reference to Thomas Waynflete, son of William Waynflete, jeweller, but he is the sole jeweller of the period mentioned in this source.

15 C. Briggs, A. Forward, B. Jervis and M. Tompkins, ‘People, possessions and domestic space in late medieval escheators’ records’, Journal of Medieval History, 45 (2) (2019), 145-61.

16 The National Archives (TNA), E 357/17 rot. 13, m.1.

17 E 357/18 rot. 51.

18 E 136/97/4, mm. 10-11 (6-7 Henry VI); also E 153/1020 m. 9, E 357/29 m. 92 (5-7 Henry VI). The E 153 document states that these were Maldon’s goods on the date of the inquest and adds that ‘the jurors say that the aforesaid John Maldon did not have any more goods or chattels on the day of the taking of the aforesaid inquest’. Unfortunately, the date of that inquest is illegible, but given the dates covered by the relevant E 136 and E 357 accounts it is possible that it took place quite some time after Maldon’s outlawry. These E 136 and E 153 items also contain a short list relating to another Canterbury chapman, John Fuller.

19 C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later middle ages: social change in England c. 1200-1520, revised edn (Cambridge, 1998), 160.

20 E 136/97/11 mm. 18-19 (15-16 Henry VI, 1436-7). The date of the inquest is unknown. The corresponding E 357 account (E 537/34) is unfit for production.

21 E 357/37 m. 118d.

22 E 357/24 rot. 20, m. 2.

23 E 357/42 m. 72d.

24 E 136/97/11 m. 19 (15-16 Henry VI, 1436-7). The date of the inquest is unknown.

25 E 357/38 m. 50d (23-25 Henry VI, 1446-7). Note that here these are said to be the goods as at the point of outlawry, not at the time of the inquest.

26 E 136/196/2 m. 6.

27 E 357/39, m. 55d (25-27 Henry VI, 1448-9).

28 E 153/1015 m. 11.

29 E 357/25 rot. 4, m. 2.

30 E 357/18 rot. 51-2.