Free Review – Early Modern England

Published in 2021, Laura Gowing’s Ingenious Trade explores the world of female domestic crafts during seventeenth-century London. An accomplished scholar, Gowing is a Fellow of the British Academy and a professor of early modern England at King’s College London. Her research specifically examines female bodies, sexuality, crime, and she specializes in London as a geographic focus.

Using an extensive search through Mayor’s Court records, tax lists, and “other administrative records,” (8) Gowing reconstructs the model of female apprenticeship and labor through a lens that contrasts with most of the historiography of female labor in seventeenth-century London. As she writes: “Histories of women’s work customarily frame it as under-recognized, informal, flexible and unregulated,” (8). Contrasted with Mansell’s Female Servants, who argues that female servile labor was often fluid and contingent, Gowing argues that female apprenticeships were different; apprenticeship contracted women to one another with “legally significant” expectations for both parties. She finds that not only were women employing another but also that the mistress was fundamental to the training of the apprentice (136). This initial point leads to two arguments that form the backbone of her book.

First and foremost, that female apprentices entered skilled positions through the same means as their male counterparts. And were in fact substantial contributors to London’s ever-growing economy. This is especially true in the textile trade, which Gowing spends the majority of her book covering. Second, and a point that she admittedly does not spent as much time discussing as I would have thought, that apprenticeships were a phenomena that transcended socio-economic boundaries. She states that female apprenticeships were “a well-established route to independent work, practised in parishes and towns around the country as well as in guilds…and drawing girls from the poorest to the gentry..” (1).

Family and connections play a large role in Gowing’s overall arguments as well. Several times the families of both apprentice and mistress become heavily involved in the business negotiations of contracting a girl’s labor. This could often take a dubious turn as seen through the court case of Mary Jones, whose mistress her family sued alleging a failure to train their daughter. Gowing writes signed on as an apprentice for Frances Carey and her husband, only to be left mostly untrained and instead used by the couple for tedious labor of keeping their failing shop. Apprentices also feature as the guilty party, as in the case of Ann Gray, whose unpaid debts and breach of trust by selling goods on credit landed her in debtor’s prison. In both cases, the families of both apprentices and mistresses become known through mentions in court records. The returns of premiums by masters to the girls’ families serves as one piece of evidence that seventeenth-century London was a highly litigious society.

Chapter 1 focuses on the Royal Exchange before the Great Fire destroyed most of it. Uniquely for this chapter, Gowing reconstructs the Exchange through spatial arrangements of shops and its networks. The upper levels where female shops typically were, Gowing highlights as a place that apprentices would have been learning their trade daily. Chapters 2 and 3 focus less on space and more on the girls as apprenteices and the women who trained and mentored them. It is here that Gowing identifies the late 17th century as a massive watershed moment in England (and Europe overall), as the number of female apprentices began to grow. Chapter 4 covers the skills that girls learned. Meanwhile the most humanizing chapter arguably comes in the fifth section, which covers discipline and how masters played a role in conforming girls to society. She writes that part of the training for an apprentice was to “fashion themselves into the likeness of masters and mistresses,” (183). While both boys and girls were disciplined to conform to patriarchal authority, the discipline they were to receive could vary, as well as what set in motion their discipline as well. Resistance plays a large role in this chapter too, and serves as a means for her to reinforce the agency of a group that is otherwise largely ignored in the records. The final chapter of substance covers how women received the “freedom” (the right to trade within the City). The freedom was an important function since it acted as both a gateway into a male-dominated merchant class, and it also was the very thing that limited them. Gowing highlights the importance of marriage among released apprentices and many times throughout the book, states that girls married soon after their apprenticeship ended and never again applied the trade. Gowing writes that “Living with and woring round those rules reminded women of the legal weight of marriage as well as the potential for using custom and petitioning to negotiate it,” (242).

Like many social histories that have been written, Gowing balances the agency of these women with the constraints that would have been placed on them for their gender. While apprenticeship did indeed give young girls training for independent work and adulthood like it did for young boys, social limitations more often than not constricted what independent work they could take up. This work typically came in the form of the booming textile trade. Most of the girls who were trained as apprentices in this book worked in some fashion of the textile trade. Gowing agues that “Women’s work in the textile trades trades of early modern London was critical to the expansion of those trade in the service of new patterns of consumptions, which included quicker, cheaper fashion, often bought off the peg, with numerous ready-made accessories, alongside more disposable household goods,” (3).

An unsung aspect of this book is Gowing’s methodology. As is the case in several books we have read this semester, Stoyle’s Murderous Midsummer comes to mind, there are inherent biases and silences within the very sources she uses. For example, the paperwork of apprenticeship oftened concealed the part that women played in training girls. The documentation often recorded the married mistress under the name of their husband rather than their own name. But despite the “minimal historical and contemporary discussion,” Gowing’s findings through legal testimonies and these previously mentioned documents reveal “an established set of specialized skills and shared understandings of what, and how, young women learned,” (137-138).

Elizabeth’s French Wars, 1562-1598: English Intervention in the French Wars of Religion by William Heap is an extensive, albeit meandering, exploration of Elizabethan England’s military and diplomatic engagements in France. Heap, who earned his Bachelor of Arts in History at the University College of North Wales and his Maîtrise and Diplôme d’études approfondies at the Sorbonne in Paris, is a military historian experienced with research in both English and French archives. This background is critical to Elizabeth’s French Wars which dives deeply into the intersection of Anglo-French military and diplomatic relations. Inspired originally by finding diagrams of French fortifications in English archives, Heap’s monograph adds a great deal to an often-overlooked subject.

In Elizabeth’s French Wars, Heap’s primary argument is that while English involvement in the French Wars of Religion is both understudied by historians and often dismissed as insignificant, it was in fact highly impactful over the course of the conflict and a successful policy for Elizabeth I’s government. He defines this success in the context of the Queen’s principle foreign policy concern: preventing major foreign invasion. Heap argues that thanks to the wars “France was effectively neutralised” (Heap, 255). Furthermore, he claims that “Intervention prevented the unification of France and Spain in an [Catholic] alliance against England” and that it “ended French designs both in Scotland the Low Countries” (Heap, 255). Through military, financial, and diplomatic intervention, France, rather than England, was maintained as a central battlefield of European religious conflict and consequently this foreign policy “helped to preserve Elizabeth” despite her powerful enemies (Heap, 255). Heap connects this success to the influence of English investment, which was not insignificant. Rather, he argues that without said aid “the Huguenot resistance would soon have collapsed under Royalist pressure” and therefore the effect of English aid, and its success in keeping England’s enemies fighting elsewhere, is evident in the protracted nature of the conflict (Heap, 252). In his own words, he makes the bold claim that “England effectively kick-started and perpetuated the wars” (Heap, 14).

Heap spends a significant portion of his introduction addressing the historiographical angle of his thesis. He explains that the lack of attention this topic has received from other scholars is in part due to English military history in this time period being overshadowed by an interest in maritime history and Elizabeth as an individual character (Heap, 16). He also argues that within the military histories written on this period, English intervention is often sidelined because it manifested in skirmishes and sieges, not the pitched battles and decisive campaigns which grab attention. He points to historian John Hale as one example of this who claimed that it was not worth investigating “in depth” due to its lack of large scale engagements (Heap, 16). In addition, Heap notes that English military ventures in the Netherlands against Spain have also diverted attention away from the French conflicts, a trend he dates back to late nineteenth century historians such as John Motley and Clements Markham. He then situates his study and its subject in the long history and study of Anglo-French relations, noting that the peculiarity of the alliance between Elizabeth I and Henri IV also contributes to the topic’s estrangement.

While they are not numerous, Heap does also address the other historiographies which engage with English intervention in the French Wars of Religion. He groups both stalwarts of the field of English military history and more recent contributors; including John Fortescue, Alfred Rowse, Albert Pollard, and Henri Zuber; together into a single camp of critics who all label these Elizabethan campaigns in France as futile, insignificant, or even disastrous. This is a sentiment which Heap strongly opposes and throughout the monograph he demonstrates time and again that it is at best a simplistic mischaracterization. Heap shows both the depth of worthwhile material hitherto under explored and that those who have approached the subject before failed to appreciate the significance of English involvement.

Following his extensive historiographical overview, Heap spends Chapter One outlining Elizabeth’s motivations for intervention and how the English became and stayed involved through each part of the conflict up to the Treaty of Vervins in 1598. Although there are further entanglements in the seventeenth century, they are beyond the reign of Elizabeth and therefore only briefly alluded to by Heap. He dedicates his second chapter to explaining the many ways in which the English intervened and the nature of the deployed forces, with a particular emphasis on material and logistics. This is followed by a traditional, blow by blow narrative of the various campaigns and operations English forces were involved in in Chapter Three. Heap then turns to the lived experience of English soldiers, politicians, and diplomats engaged in France during the period in Chapter Four and Elizabeth’s hostile reaction to the Treaty of Vervins which led to the cessation of fighting in France in Chapter Five. Finally, he turns to exploring English reactions to the conflict in Chapter Six.

While Heap frames his work as one of military history, and it indeed is, his methodology is diverse and he incorporates a great deal of diplomatic history as well. His source base is mainly documents and records found in state archives in both France and England. He takes full advantage of his proficiency in multiple languages. Chapter Six is dominated by literary and cultural analysis of various publications, political pamphlets, and other media created at the time which reflect the English reaction to the conflict. In constructing this picture, Heap compares various period translations of French publications to show that the titles were often altered in English translations to convey a shock and animosity towards England’s Catholic French enemies (Heap, 233).

In addition to qualitative analysis to reconstruct the course of events, Heap specifically employs quantitative analysis focusing on the logistical and financial records of intervention. This is especially prevalent in his second chapter where he provides a detailed account of the foreign subsidies paid to French allies and German Princes. He also puts forward extensive data collected on English weapons, armor, and ammunition exports sent to France (Heap, 84). Other examples of Heap’s extensive quantitative work can be found in his discussions and provided tables on manpower (110-111) and the cost of clothing soldiers (122). This quantitative analysis is critical in supporting his argument that English intervention was substantial as he demonstrates that while the number of soldiers provided was not always massive in scale, the overall investment was.

Finally, Heap also uses visual sources to great effect throughout his book. For example, he examines illustrations of various engagements and sieges like that at Gournay-en Bray to show the shift in equipment and approach of English soldiers towards pike and shot. He emphasizes the rising prominence of English Pikemen, and harquebusiers, over halberdiers and longbowmen (Heap, 116-117). He even draws upon modern images in Roger Agache’s aerial photography to corroborate the scale of the earthworks and fortifications depicted in period military plans (Heap, 186). Heap’s use of visual sources adds a welcome diversity and robustness to his arguments, and many are reproduced in color for the reader which further elevates the work.

While Elizabeth’s French Wars is impressive in its breadth and depth, it also suffers from a lack of focus at times. Heap often detours from his main argument into adjacent topics or various minutia. The previously mentioned discussion of English pikemen and the shift from longbow to arquebus is one example. While interesting and well thought out, Heap does not adequately make its relevance to his key arguments clear. This critique can also be leveraged at his sixth chapter. While interesting, how his analysis of public reactions to the conflicts demonstrates the impact of English involvement is unclear. Another facet of this diffuse quality is an additional argument, not yet touched on, which Heap makes. He provides a “re-evaluation” of Henri IV as a military leader, qualifying others’ critiques with the inhibiting circumstances he faced (Heap, 16). English troops were often used by Henri, and a variety of his operations are covered in the book, but this argument is out of place and disconnected from Heap’s others and would perhaps be better suited to a separate piece where it can stand on its own.

At the heart of this meandering quality is Heap’s organization. The monograph is structured thematically, with sections often moving internally in chronological order with a narrow focus. This organizational structure can be very effective but requires writing which clearly unites different themes back to one another and the main argument which is where Heap falls short. A chronological approach which weaves various themes and arguments together when relevant perhaps would have suited his style and topic better. Mark Stoyle’s A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549, another monograph which examines Tudor military operations (albeit internal), is an excellent example of chronological organization which addresses sub arguments and themes as they arise and as a result remains focused and cohesive.

In spite of these critiques, the quality of Heap’s extensive research shines through. If meandering, Heap’s exploration of a variety of minutia is interesting and brings the period to life. Elizabeth’s French Wars is an excellent demonstration of broad and deep research within Tudor military history. It is a much-needed addition to an underdeveloped historiography.

Free Review: “Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London” by Laura Gowing

Free Review: Elizabeth’s French Wars by William Heap