Elizabethan Households (1995): Difference between revisions

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Elizabethan Households, one of the Exhibitions at the Folger, opened on February 13, 1995 and closed on May 20, 1995. Curated by the Folger's Executive Director of the Folger Institute Lena Cowen Orlin, the exhibition aimed to open a fresh investigation of domestic life in Elizabethan England and to demonstrate some of the ways in which it is possible to pursue such an investigation using the Folger's collections.

Curation

From 1982 to 1996, Lena Cowen Orlin coordinated postdoctoral seminars and conferences at the Folger Shakespeare Library as Executive Director of the Folger Institute.

Contents of the Exhibition

Exhibition Highlights

[list highlights here]

Gallery Layout

The exhibition took place in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Case 1: The Great Rebuilding

The period 1570 to 1640 has been called "The Great Rebuilding" because so many English men and women built new houses, added dining rooms and parlors to their great halls and bedchambers, and achieved new standards of domestic comfort and luxury. Chimneys replaced open hearths, staircases supplanted ladders, glass was installed in windows, wainscoting warmed interior walls, and wall paintings and woven hangings added color and design. Meanwhile, Elizabethan and Jacobean courtiers created an impressive legacy with their country houses, built under the inspiration of new Continental ideas.

Items Included

Johann Amos Comenius. Orbis sensualium pictus...Visible world. Translated into English, by Charles Hoole. London: Printed for Charles Mearne, his Majesties bookseller at the Kings Arms at Charing-Cross, 1685. Call number: C5525; displayed p. 146-147.
- This little book for children illustrates different parts of the natural and material world as a means of conveying Latin vocabulary. In 1685, Charles Hoole translated the original Dutch version of 1664 into English. Plate 66 shows the parts of a house, each numbered to correspond to the appropriate word.
A Briefe Declaration for What Manner of Special/Nusance Concerning Private Dwelling Houses, a Man May Have his Remedy by Assise. London: By Thomas Cotes for William Cooke, 1639. Call number: STC 6454; displayed sig. B2.
- Building in the 16th and 17th centuries, like that today, was not accomplished without difficulties. First published in 1636, this tract presents the conflicting arguments of four lawyers in a case from over half a century earlier. One Master Hales had sued his neighbor, J. S., for constructing a house that blocked his light.
Pierre Le Muet (1591-1669). Maniere de Bastir pour Touttes Sortes de Personnes. Paris: Chez Melchior Tavernier, 1623. Call number: Folio NA2515 .L35 1623 Cage; displayed pp. 100-101.
- "Architecture" as we know it was not a profession in the 16th century. It was an avocation, principally for gentlemen. By contrast, "building" was a trade, with methods passed down from one generation to another of carpenters and masons. As new architectural ideas were imported from the Continent, new means of communication were required, including architectural manuals like this one once owned by John Evelyn.
Robert Plot (1640-1696). The Natural History of Staffordshire. Oxford: Printed at the Theater, 1686. Call number: 136- 592f; displayed plate between 358-359.
- Changing fashions in English domestic architecture are strongly marked in this illustration of Tixall Hall, with its irregular late-medieval house and symmetrical 17th-century gatehouse. Robert Plot, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, clearly prefers the later style.
Hartmann Schopper (b. 1542). Panoplia Omnium llliberalium Mechanicarum Woodcuts by Jost Amman. Frankfurt: Georg Corvinus for Sigismund Feyerabend, 1568. Call number: GT5770 .S4 Cage.
- Brick was necessary for replacing open hearths with chimneys, an important aspect of the Great Rebuilding. The builder of a great house might have to establish a stoneworks, a brick kiln, an iron foundry, and a glass manufactory near his construction site. With construction complete, these enterprises might then remain as local resources for less wealthy builders.
Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (1520-1608). Letter to Richard Bagott. From Hardwick Hall, 19 September 1594.
- Hardwick Hall was so famous that it lent its name to a popular jingle ("Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall"), as well as to its builder, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as "Bess of Hardwick." Despite her experience with other building ventures, she confronted a problem still familiar today, a "lewd," or bungling, workman who had not completed the work she had paid for. Here she seeks legal recourse from the county Justices of the Peace.
Companion to Georg von Schwartzstat, Baron von Offenbach. Journal of Travels in The Netherlands, England, France, and Germany. Manuscript, 1609. Call number: V.a.316-317.
- The only Tudor monarch to do much building was Henry VIII, but with Nonsuch, in particular he set architectural standards for a century. The keeper of this diary pasted in an illustration of the palace from John Speed's map of Surrey. The motto reads: Since they have not its like the Britons/Often are wont to praise this, and call it Nonsuch by name."
Paving Tiles. London, 1600-1650. White tin glaze decorated in blue, green, yellow, and tan.
- Because these tiles were kiln wasters, found at a pottery site in Pickleherring, near London, we know that they represent English work. Much ceramic work was imported from The Netherlands. The camel on one tile shows the Elizabethan fascination with exotic beasts. The other tile is one of a set of four that together form the image of a Tudor rose. Lent by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Case 2: The Householder

The Elizabethan household was a political institution, described as "a little commonwealth," with many points of analogy to the larger realm. Just as the English constitution was monarchic so the household was patriarchal with the householder enjoying absolute authority in his domestical kingdom." So strong was the belief that ' every man is king at home that it was extremely rare for a man to start a family under his parents' roof. Instead he set up his own establishment, where his wife, children, and servants were enjoined to be submissive and obedient to him. Of course, notions of domestic governance worked better in theory than in practice.

Items Included

William Gouge (1578-1653). Of Domesticall Duties. London: John Haviland for William Bladen, 1622. Folger STC 12119.2; displayed A6r.
- William Gouge, a Puritan divine, dedicated this work to his parishioners in the Blackfriars precinct in London. They had heard preliminary versions in his weekly sermons. Nehemiah Wallington took this book as his guide for his responsibilities as a householder. In the table of contents, the 74 duties charted for the wife and the 76 for the husband are crosslisted to fuller explanations and exhortations within the book.
Richard Day (1552-1607?). A Booke of Christian Praiers, Collected out of the Ancient Writers, and Best Learned in Our Time. London: For the Company of Stationers, 1608. Call number: STC 6432; displayed C1r.
- Richard Day's father, John, assembled and printed a collection of prayers in 1569. The son's substantially revised edition of 1578, subsequently reprinted in 1581, 1590, and 1608, is generally known as "Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book." As depicted here, home is a safe haven for the householder. According to the literature of the period, he aspired to domestic peacefulness and quiet above all.
John Fit John (fl. 1577). A Diamonde Most Precious, Worthy to be Marked; Instructing all Maysters and Servauntes, How They Ought to Leade Their Lives. London: Hugh Jackson, 1577. Call number: STC 10929; displayed O2r.
- Because the literature of the period emphasizes so strongly the hierarchical nature of the Elizabethan household, there has been much discussion of whether there was room for love and affection in marital relations. Here, in 1640, William Dowsing displays strong emotion: "A month want[ing] two days after my wife's death I have cause to eat my bread with ashes."
R.R. The House-holders Helpe, for Domesticall Discipline. London: George Purslowe for John Budge, 1615. Call number: STC 20586; displayed title page.
- The dialogue was a popular form for advice manuals. Generally there was a speaker offering wise counsel to a straw man, who was either ignorant or erring. One dialogue in this work is between "father" and "son." It emphasizes the obligation of the householder to serve as a good model for those in his household and to take responsibility for their moral and religious education.
Tenor of the whole psalmes in foure partes... and abolishyng of other vayne and triflyng ballades. London: John Day, 1563. Call number: STC 2431; displayed H2.
- A modest household might well have had only one chair, reserved for the head of the house. The housewife and children would use stools or would share a form ( or bench). The distinction conferred by the chair survives today in the title "chairman." In the positioning of the figures shown here, the householder visibly exerts his patriarchal dominance over the housewife grouped with her children.
The Lamentable and True Tragedy of Master Arden of Feversham in Kent. London: Elizabeth Allde, 1633. Call number: STC 735 copy 2; displayed A1r.
- As shown in this illustration from the third edition of the stageplay based on his murder, Thomas Arden was attacked in his parlor while playing at "tables" (a game comparable to backgammon). Ten people were judged guilty of the murder in 1551. The convicted ringleader was Arden's own wife, Alice. Nearly a hundred years later, the case was still notorious as a signpost that family relations did not always conform to those outlined in the conduct manuals.
Nehemiah Wallington (1598-1658). Writing Book. Manuscript, 1654. Call number: V.a. 436; displayed pp. 14-15.
- Most diaries from the early modem period were written by members of the clergy and the gentry. The remarkable Nehemiah Wallington was a London "turner," or lathe-worker, who compiled 50 handwritten volumes of spiritual autobiography. In a passage for 1622 he records purchasing "Mr. Gougbe's book OJ Domestical Duties, that so everyone of us may learn and know our duties .... And ... a few years after I did draw out 31 articles for my family for the reforming of our lives .... "
Ivory Shoehorn. English, 1613. Engraved with stylized motifs, including a Tudor rose surmounted by a crown.
- Robert Mindum, one of the earliest of the Master Homers working in London, Sheffield, and York, carved this shoehorn as a gift to his wife, Jane. Lent by Agecroft Association.

Case 3: The Housewife

Elizabethan life was sufficiently complicated that the householder had to rely on his wife to run things in his absence. Whether noblewoman or farmwife, she saw to the provisioning of the house, supervised servants in their domestic chores and assumed joint responsibility for the religious education of servants and children. Th.is caused both theoretical and practical difficulties with regard to the household hierarchy. When William Gouge preached that the wife could not "dispose of the common goods of the family without her husband's consent," he admitted that "much exception was taken" by women who had clearly had occasion to do just that.

Items Included

Thomas Gataker (1574-1654). A good vvife Gods gift: and, a vvife indeed. Tvvo mariage sermons. London: John Haviland for Fulke Clifton, 1623. Call number: STC 11659; displayed B1r.
- Thomas Gataker maintains that a wife is not made simply through marriage; she has to earn the name by fulfilling her duties as a careful housewife and obedient spouse. He argues with such rhetorical flourish that one can almost hear him delivering his message from the pulpit. To prepare the sermon for publication, he added dense marginal notes citing his sources; Gataker was learned in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
Thomas Heywood (1574?-1641). A Curtaine Lecture. London: Robert Young for John Aston, 1637. Call number: STC 13312.
- In A Godly Form of Household Government (1598), John Dod and Robert Cleaver warned the husband to be careful in choosing a wife, because she would "continually be conversant with thee, at thy table in thy chamber in bed .... " This collection of anecdotes and observations about women takes as its dominant conceit the moments behind the bed curtains where the wife could have her say.
Jost Amman (1539-1591). Gynaeceum, sive Theatrum Mulierum. Frankfurt: Sigismund Feyerabend, 1586. Call number: GT585 .A7 Cage; displayed y2.
- The English woman in Amman's "Theater of Women" is wearing a pomander on a chain suspended from her waist. It would have contained a mixture of aromatic substances to protect her from infection.
Anne Southwell (1573?-1636). Commonplace Book. Manuscript, 1588-1636. Call number: [https://catalog.folger.edu/record/233276?ln=en%7C V.b.198}; displayed i. 65.
- Lady Anne Southwell's commonplace book includes rental records, inventories, some prose descriptions of fabulous beasts, and poems she wrote. After her death, her widower, Captain Henry Sibthorpe, added a list of her books. We know that most or all of them were hers because in 1631 she owned three trunks full of books, according to an inventory of her personal possessions. The size (folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo) of each of the 110 volumes is given following the title.
Embroidered Coif. English, c. 1580. Silk on linen with vines, flowers, and bees.
- Elizabethan women wore coifs inside the house. This beautiful example has not been cut out and

assembled for wearing. Instead, it remains as when its embroiderer finished her delicate work. Lent by The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Whole Booke of Psalmes. London: For the Company of Stationers, 1635. Call number: STC 2662; displayed embroidered binding.
- Women stitched decorative bindings and then carried these small volumes about the house with them. In 1591 Philip Stubbs wrote a tribute to his late wife Katherine that was intended to serve as a mirror for other wives. According to A Christal Glasse for Christian Women, Katherine was rarely found "without a Bible or some other good book in her hands."
Spherical silver hinged container with floral design, c. 16th century. Call number: H-P Lyttle Boke no.3 (realia).
A silver pomander, of the time of Queen Elizabeth, with a chain, c. 1558. Call number: H-P Reliques no.68 (realia).