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Labor, Law, and Training in Early Modern London: Apprenticeship and the City’s Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2012

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References

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14 Wallis, “Apprenticeship and Training.”

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21 Emerson, Thomas, A Concise Treatise on the Courts of Law of the City of London (London, 1794), 66Google Scholar. See also Hovland, Stephanie R., “Apprenticeship in Later Medieval London, c. 1300–c. 1530” (PhD diss., Royal Holloway College, University of London, 2007), 2425Google Scholar; and Tucker, Penny, “London’s Courts of Law in the Fifteenth Century: The Litigant’s Perspective,” in Communities and Courts in Britain, 1150–1900, ed. Brooks, Christopher W. and Lobban, Michael (London, 1997), 2542Google Scholar.

22 Mariners’ apprentices were bound under the custom of London and needed to be enrolled in the town in which the apprentice lived or in the next corporate town: Maintenance of the Navy Act, 1562, 5 Eliz. I, c. 5, s. 12.

23 I am grateful to Michael Scott for allowing me to review a sample of petitions to the Court of Aldermen from his ongoing research. See also Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 304–5. The Sheriff’s Court may have had a role, but its records are lost, and it was mentioned in just one suit (an apprentice arrested for damages): London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLA/024/07/01 (Stratford v. Sewell, ca. 1655). Details of the LMA records are given in the appendix.

24 Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 298, 302–7; Shoemaker, Robert, Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660–1725 (Cambridge, 1991), 98100Google Scholar.

25 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Palmer v. Brett, 1680).

26 LMA, CLA/024/07/02 (Mundey v. Browne, ca. 1656).

27 See LMA, MC6/505A (1689), MC6/506A (1689).

28 Archer, Pursuit of Stability, 216–19; Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 209, 234.

29 Hovland, “Apprenticeship in Later Medieval London,” 24; Masters, Betty R., The Chamberlain of the City of London, 1237–1987 (London, 1988)Google Scholar. On the fee, see Greene, John, The Priviledges of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City (London, 1708), 208Google Scholar. For justices of the peace, see LMA, MC6/479B (1687), MC6/480A (1687).

30 See LMA, CLA/024/07/01 (Wright v. Barber, ca. 1656), CLA/024/07/02 (Smart v. Woodstock, ca. 1656), MC6/257B (1670).

31 LMA, CLA/024/07/63 (Audley v. Greene, 1679).

32 See, esp., Pelling, Margaret, “Apprenticeship, Health and Social Cohesion in Early Modern London,” History Workshop Journal, no. 37 (Spring 1994): 3356CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Nest v. Barrow, ca. 1679).

34 Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 295–98.

35 Earle, Peter, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Pelling, “Apprenticeship, Health and Social Cohesion”; Laura Gowing, “‘The Manner of Submission’: Gender, Status and Demeanour in Seventeenth-Century London” (unpublished paper, King’s College London, 2011).

36 For persistence rate, see Minns and Wallis, “Rules and Reality”; for the mortality rate, see Schwarz, Leonard, “London Apprentices in the Seventeenth Century: Some Problems,” Local Population Studies 38 (1987): 1822Google Scholar. Also see Brooks, “Apprenticeship, Social Mobility,” 75.

37 The comparisons below use a sample of apprentices from surviving company registers: Webb, Cliff, London Livery Company Apprenticeship Registers (London, 19942011)Google Scholar. The All Apprentices sample contains apprentices from each decade in which a company’s records survive for seven plus years. The Discharge Bills sample is restricted to include bills from apprentices in these companies and decades. Because stratification by company shrinks the Discharge Bill sample, I group discharge bills into two periods: 1610–60 (n = 381) and 1689–1723 (n = 239). For these periods the All Apprentices sample contains 51,878 apprentices from thirty companies for 1610–60 and 34,177 from fifty-six companies for 1690–1720.

38 Citizens’ sons entered 7 percent of discharge bills in 1610–60 and 11 percent in 1690–1720. They made up 7 percent and 15 percent of all apprentices in each period. Apprentices from London and Middlesex entered 7 percent of discharge bills in 1610–60 and 15 percent in 1690–1720. They made up 7 percent and 12 percent of all apprentices in each period. None of these differences are statistically significant at a 10 percent level.

39 Female apprentices entered nine of 1,304 bills.

40 Testing the distributions statistically is difficult given the small numbers of bills from most companies.

41 Apprentices in “Great Twelve” companies in 1610–60 made up 51 percent of the sample of All Apprentices and entered 48 percent of discharge bills. In 1690–1710, the figures were 31 percent of All Apprentices and 24 percent of discharge bills (this difference is significant at the 95 percent level on a two-sample Z-test). The declining share of the All Apprentices sample from the Great Twelve companies is due to changes in sample composition driven by record survival, not shifts in the relative popularity of companies.

42 Apprentices conventionally reported both their master’s occupation and company in discharge bills. This is unusual for London, and because there is a risk that some apprentices may have still reported their company’s nominal trade rather than their master’s actual occupation it is worth examining what occupations remain common without this effect. If we restrict our sample to apprentices learning different trades to those governed by their company for which there is no ambiguity (e.g., tailors in the Drapers’ Company), the most common trades are tailor, weaver, joiner, merchant, and haberdasher (in that order).

43 Brooks, C. W., “Interpersonal Conflict and Social Tension: Civil Litigation in England, 1640–1830,” in The First Modern Society: Essays in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. Beier, A. L., Cannadine, David, and Rosenheim, James M. (Cambridge, 1989), 357–99Google Scholar; Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), 216–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Lex Londinensis; or the City Law (London, 1680), 56Google Scholar.

45 Emerson, Concise Treatise on the Courts of Law, 66–67.

46 That is, 924 of 1,172 discharge bills recording cause.

47 On the development of apprenticeship customs, see Hovland, “Apprenticeship in later Medieval London,” 151–83.

48 Judgments were given in 826 of 994 discharge bills (this part of the process was not recorded for all bills in Scott’s sample). See Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 255; and Horwitz, Henry and Polden, Patrick, “Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?” Journal of British Studies 35, no. 1 (1996), 54, table 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Physical abuse cases were also less often discharged in Northern Quarter sessions: Rushton, “The Matter in Variance,” 99.

50 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Palmer v. Brett, 1680).

51 Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 199–203.

52 LMA, MC6/495A (1689).

53 The share of bills citing nonenrollment (sample size in parentheses) was 100 percent (24) in 1574–99; 98 percent (143) in 1609–18; 80 percent (125) in 1620–29; 84 percent (186) in 1639–49; 81 percent (467) in 1650–60; 65 percent (129) in 1690–95; and 62 percent (150) in 1717–23.

54 In 1690–1723, training was cited by 10 percent of discharge bills, turning out by 7 percent, leaving trade by 7 percent (N = 303).

55 The share of bills for which judgments were recorded (sample size in parentheses) was 92 percent (24) in 1574–99; 79 percent (141) in 1609–18; 100 percent (109) in 1620–29; 96 percent (46) in 1639–49; 93 percent (445) in 1650–60; 92 percent (129) in 1690–95; and 32 percent (150) in 1717–23. However, for 1717–23, when the “incomplete” bills in which no information about court process is given are excluded, we see judgments in forty-eight of fifty-one discharge bills.

56 Broader in contractual terms, the social composition was always mixed.

57 If the apprentice refused to attend, the master could enroll indentures on his own: Greene, Priviledges of the Lord Mayor, 305.

58 Some Rules for the Conduct of Life (London, n.d.), 22–23.

59 Fee level for 1680 recorded in Lex Londinensis, 42. This remained the same in the 1830s: Second Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Municipal Corporations in England and Wales: London and Southwark: London Companies, House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, c. 239, vol. 25 (1837), 59.

60 Enrollment rates derived from freedom fines reflect practices around ten years earlier. Percentage of freemen by servitude whose indentures had been enrolled by their master: 1550s, 76 percent (196 of 257); 1660s, 56 percent (123 of 215); 1681, 64 percent (196 of 307); 1699, 60 percent (56 of 93); 1711, 63 percent (147 of 234). Sources: 1550s, Welch, Charles, Register of Freemen of the City of London in the Reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, Middlesex Archaeological Society (London, 1908), 240Google Scholar; 1660s, LMA, COL/CHD/FR/01/003, 245–280; 1680–1700, LMA, COL/CHD/FR/02/04–05 (December 1681–January 1682), COL/CHD/FR/02/141 (May 1699), COL/CHD/FR/02/279–281 (March–May 1711).

61 In 1729–30, the city registered an average of 1,304 freemen and 1,330 apprentices; in 1759–60, the numbers were 878 freemen and 1,059 apprentices: LMA, COL/CHD/FR/10/1/6, COL/CHD/FR/10/1/9.

62 See, e.g., Lex Londinensis, 43–44; Some Rules for the Conduct of Life; Greene, Priviledges of the Lord Mayor, 28–30; and The Freemen of London’s Necessary and Useful Companion (London, n.d.), 50–52.

63 Some Rules for the Conduct of Life, 23. This text is undated, but internal evidence on the statutes cited dates it to between 1746 and 1765. The British Library copy has a manuscript note on the frontispiece: “given me before the Chamberlain at the taking of my freedom.”

64 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Sutton v. Woodrow, ca. 1678). See also LMA, CLA/024/08/84 (26 March 1687), MC6/518 (1690).

65 Conversely, easier exit may also have encouraged departure, as the city warned.

66 The timing, extent, and composition of “decline” remain debated. Compare Unwin, George, The Guilds and Companies of London, 4th ed. (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Kahl, W. F., The Development of the London Livery Companies: An Historical Essay and a Select Bibliography (Cambridge, 1960), 2529Google Scholar; and Berlin, Michael, “Guilds in Decline? London Livery Companies and the Rise of a Liberal Economy, 1600–1800,” in Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400–1800, ed. Epstein, S. R. and Prak, Maarten (Cambridge, 2008), 316–42Google Scholar.

67 Premiums are only available for equity cases (see below): this omits apprentices without premiums and biases the sample to apprentices with large premiums. The mean premium in equity cases citing nonenrollment was £83 against £69 for other causes (n = 243). However, the difference is not statistically significant at the 10 percent level (t = 1.25).

68 Brooks, “Interpersonal Conflict,” 359 n. 9.

69 Some Rules for the Conduct of Life, 23. See also Bohun, William, Privilegia Londini: Or, the Rights, Liberties, Privileges, Laws, and Customs of the City of London, 3rd ed. (London, 1723), 340–41Google Scholar; and The Pocket Remembrancer; or a Concise History of the City of London (London, 1750), 152Google Scholar.

70 Guildhall Library, MS5257/3, f. 11v (13 February 1598/9).

71 CLA/024/07/88 (Prouting v. Lawford, ca. 1701).

72 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Nest v. Barrow, ca. 1701). See also CLA/024/07/62 (Tayler v. Spicer, ca. 1678), CLA/024/07/63 (Anderton v. Fountain, 1679), CLA/024/07/63 (Audley v. Greene, 1679), CLA/024/07/63 (Hatt v. Botley, ca. 1679), CLA/024/07/63 (Thornecomb v. Taylor, ca. 1679), CLA/024/07/88 (Prouting v. Lawford, ca. 1701)), CLA/024/07/89 (Abbingdon v. Peacocke, ca. 1702), CLA/024/07/01 (Richards v. Blanchard, ca. 1655), and CLA/024/07/02 (Smart v. Woodstock, ca. 1656). See also Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 317.

73 LMA, CLA/024/07/88 (Burford v. Apleford, ca. 1702). Similar charges are common; see, e.g., CLA/024/07/02 (Chapman v. Roberts, 1655), CLA/024/07/02 (Power v. Foster, ca. 1656), MC6/502 (1689), and MC6/504B (1689).

74 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Browne v. Brerewood, 1679). Similar charges are found in CLA/024/07/62 (Palmer v. Brett, 1680) and CLA/024/07/63 (Giles v. Rogers, 1679).

75 Forgetfulness: LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Phelps, ca. 1678).

76 LMA, MC6/499A (1699; deposition for the master).

77 Hay, “England, 1562–1975,” 82, 94.

78 Second Report of the Commissioners, 101.

79 Apprentices entering discharge bills could later become freemen if they completed their term with another master. Searching the freedom records for four companies suggests that the share of discharged apprentices who became freemen was comparable to that observed among all apprentices. Freedom rates by company are: apothecaries, 35 percent (n = 17) of discharged apprentices became freemen vs. 38 percent of all apprentices; clothworkers, 24–31 percent (n = 66) of discharged vs. 34 percent of all; stationers, 37 percent (n = 27) of discharged vs. 41 percent of all; merchant taylors, 13–35 percent (n = 132) of discharged vs. 23 percent of all. Ranges for clothworkers and stationers are good matches (by both apprentice and master name) and possible matches (just apprentice name). Sources: apothecaries, Guildhall Library, MS8200/1–4; clothworkers, Institute of Historical Research, “Clothworkers’ Membership Database”; stationers, Michael Turner, London Book Trades Database (2006), http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/290/ (accessed 30 August 2011); merchant taylors, Merchant Taylors Membership Index, 1530–1928 (London, 2009).

80 Epstein, “Guilds,” 691.

81 LMA, CLA/024/08/72 (7 April 1668). See also MC6/503B (1689; redistribution on apprentice’s death).

82 LMA, CLA/024/08/072–100.

83 LMA, CLA/024/07/89 (Babington v. Hanbury, ca. 1702). See also CLA/024/07/01 (Okeover v. Withers, 1655), CLA/024/07/02 (Smart v. Woodcock, ca. 1656), MC6/525B (1691), CLA/024/05/016 (Edmonds v. Braylsford, 1691), MC6/494, (1689), and MC6/478A (1687).

84 LMA, MC6/518.

85 Kearsley, George, Kearsley’s Table of Trades (London, 1786), 75Google Scholar. Higher costs were noted occasionally: £9 14s 8d in 1684 LMA, CLA/024/08/82 (Gerey v. Sykes, 2 June 1684).

86 Citizens’ sons entered 23 percent of equity cases (n = 55) but only 11 percent of discharge bills. Those with London and Middlesex origins entered 47 percent of equity cases (n = 51) but only 38 percent of discharge bills. Discharge bills from 1690 to 1720 are used here as the comparison group as they most closely match the period for which equity records survive.

87 Equity cases (n = 51). For reference, this group entered 14 percent of 1690–1720 discharge bills (n = 122).

88 Equity cases (n = 222).

89 In a sample of forty equity bills, seventeen were initiated by apprentices’ fathers, nine by their guardian, six by their mothers, and only eight by apprentices independently: LMA, CLA/024/07/01–02, 63, 88–89.

90 One case where the master undertakes to find the apprentice a new position: LMA, CLA/024/08/84 (6 March 1687).

91 Note that fig. 2 and subsequent statistics exclude any clothing given with apprentices, as this is valued in only thirty-nine decrees.

92 The proportion of equity cases mentioning nonenrollment (68 percent) is almost identical to the proportion of discharge bills for nonenrollment in 1690–1720 (66 percent).

93 LMA, CLA/024/08/074 (24 October 1671).

94 Pelling, “Apprenticeship, Health and Social Cohesion.”

95 LMA, MC6/521A (1690).

96 LMA, CLA/024/07/88 (Prouting v. Lawford, ca. 1701).

97 LMA, MC6/433A-B (1684).

98 LMA, MC6/526A (1691). See also MC6/527A (1691).

99 LMA, MC6/552A (1673).

100 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Weaver v. Feathers, ca. 1679).

101 LMA, CLA/024/07/62 (Browne v. [?], 1679).

102 LMA, CLA/024/07/88 (Burford v. Apleford, ca. 1702). For apprentice submissions: LMA, CLA/024/07/88 (Anderton v. Hancock, 1702), CLA/024/07/88 (Whitchurch v. Sambrooke, 1684).

103 “Apprentice faults” include embezzlement (forty-one), running away (twenty-four), and general misbehavior (sixteen).

104 “Master faults” include turning away apprentices (twenty-five), leaving off their trade for various reasons (twenty-two), failure to train (twelve), failure to provide necessaries (ten), excessive correction (twelve), and other ill usages (five).

105 Hovland, “Apprenticeship in Later Medieval London,” 129–32, 158–59, 164–65.

106 Ibid., 130. Another third had masters who had left trading or the city; a third cited instruction; about 5 percent cited excess correction.

107 Hovland, “Apprenticeship in Later Medieval London,” 154.

108 Dalton, Michael, The Country Justice (London, 1742), 142–43Google Scholar; Bird, James, The Laws Respecting Masters and Servants (London, 1795), 2930Google Scholar; Kearsley, Kearsley’s Table, 75.

109 Second Report of the Commissioners, 60, 127.

110 Clark, Peter, “Migration in England during the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Past and Present, no. 83 (1979): 6162Google Scholar; Pelling, Margaret, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London, 1998), 216–17Google Scholar.

111 Personal communications from C. W. Brooks and Craig Muldrew.

112 Regulation of Servants an Apprentices Act, 1746, 20 Geo II, c. 19, para 4 (up to £5 premium); Regulation of Apprentices Act, 1766, 6 Geo III, c. 25, s. I-2 (up to £10 premium).

113 Statutee of Artificers, 1562, 5 Eliz I, c. 4, para 35. Rushton, “The Matter in Variance,” esp. 96–98; Ben-Amos, “Service and the Coming of Age,” 55; Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 214–27; King, “Summary Courts and Social Relations.”

114 Seaver, Paul, “A Social Contract? Master against Servant in the Court of Requests,” History Today 39, no. 9 (1989): 5056Google Scholar; Ben-Amos, Ilana Krausman, Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT, 1994), 210–12Google Scholar; Horwitz, Henry and Moreton, Charles, eds., Samples of Chancery Pleadings and Suits, 1627, 1685, 1735 and 1785, List and Index Society, vol. 257 (London, 1995), 135, 276Google Scholar. No London exchequer cases in published samples focus on premiums: Horwitz, Henry and Cooke, Jessica, eds., London and Middlesex Exchequer Equity Pleadings, 1685–6 and 1784–5: A Calendar, London Record Society, vol. 35 (London, 2000), 7Google Scholar.

115 Barlow, Theodore, The Justice of Peace: A Treatise Containing the Power and Duty of That Magistrate (London, 1745), 34Google Scholar. This power was tested and settled gradually: Kearsley, Kearsley’s Table, 81–83; Comyns, John, A Digest of the Laws of England, 4th ed. (London, 1800), 552Google Scholar; Salkeld, William, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench, new ed. (London, 1773), 6768Google Scholar.

116 Cases in which a share of premiums is returned from three counties: Le Hardy, W., ed., Middlesex County Records: Calendar of the Sessions Books, 1689–1709 (London, 1905), 2, 19, 20, 25Google Scholar, and Hertfordshire County Records: Calendar to the Sessions Books, vol. 7, 1700–1752 (Hertford, 1931), 92, 115, 133Google Scholar; Le Hardy, W. and Reckitt, G., eds., County of Buckingham Calendar to the Sessions Records, vol. 2, 1694–1705 (Aylesbury, 1939), 7, 18–19Google Scholar, and County of Buckingham Calendar to the Sessions Records, vol. 3, 1705–1712 (Aylesbury, 1939), 10, 18Google Scholar.

117 Dunlop and Denman, English Apprenticeship and Child Labor, 187–88.

118 Ben-Amos, Adolescence and Youth; Griffiths, Youth and Authority; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, 216–17.

119 Brooks, C. W., Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008), 383–84Google Scholar.

120 There is no systematic study of the guild’s impact on apprenticeship in the city as of yet. Some indication of the (lack of) relationship between guild and city can be obtained for one livery company: in the Society of Apothecaries, none of the thirteen apprentices registered by the company who entered discharge bills from 1617 to 1670 were recorded as having appealed to the company’s court of assistants, although this body did arbitrate between apprentices and masters on occasion.

121 Archer, Pursuit of Stability; Wrightson, Keith, “The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,” in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Griffiths, Paul, Fox, Adam, and Hindle, Steve (Basingstoke, 1996), 1046CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Braddick, Michael and Walter, John, “Introduction; Grids of Power: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Early Modern Society,” in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. Braddick, Michael and Walter, John (Cambridge, 2001), 1315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meldrum, Tim, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660–1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Harlow, 2000), 6162Google Scholar.

122 Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 308; Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 118–19; Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 64–65.

123 Deakin, “Contract of Employment”; Andy Wood, “Subordination, Solidarity and the Limits of Popular Agency in a Yorkshire Valley, ca. 1596–1615,” Past and Present, no. 193 (2006): 41; Griffiths, Youth and Authority, 299–350; Wrightson, “Politics of the Parish,” 10–46.