NABOTH'S VINEYARD : HACKNEY RECTORY IN THE 17TH CENTURY

Introduction

In late May 1601, officers of the Court of Star Chamber at Westminster arrived in Hackney with warrants for the arrest of the tenant of the rectory. He was a country gentleman from Cheshire and would-be courtier, in his fifties, called John Daniell. He had moved to Hackney less than a year previously with his wife Jane, a Protestant exile from the Low Countries, and their children. He was accused of blackmailing £1,720 from the Countess of Essex, by threatening to reveal to the authorities the contents of letters to her from her husband the Earl. She had deposited these letters for safe keeping with Jane Daniell, whom she had formerly employed as her gentlewoman. The Earl of Essex, Elizabeth I's disgraced favourite, had been John's patron but the relationship had not produced the material rewards he had expected. This was the motive for the crime. John was found guilty, imprisoned, and fined £3,000. In part payment of the fine, Hackney rectory was seized by Commissioners of the Exchequer and eventually sold to the Heybourne family of Tottenham.

Unusually, John and Jane Daniell left manuscript autobiographies which told their side of the story, and described their attempts to recover the rectory. These are John's 'Danyells Dysasters', and Jane's 'The Misfortunes of Jane Danyell' [1].They offer a marvellous insight into their characters, as well as casting light on their way of life in Hackney. There are two inventories of the Rectory - or Parsonage - house itself: one of the house prepared for the Exchequer Commission, and a second of the gatehouse prepared by Jane Daniell herself. A third inventory lists agricultural produce and tools ('certayne necessaries for husbandrie') in the outbuildings of the Parsonage.[2] These records give a unique picture of one of Hackney's 'lost' houses of the Elizabethan period during which a number of aristocrats, courtiers and office holders made residence in Hackney fashionable. This article seeks to interpret this evidence of the way of life of such people, and to give an impression of one of their houses.

Rectors, patrons and farmers

The rectory of Hackney - that property which pertained to the rector - included the Parsonage house and the glebe land surrounding it. In 1622 there were about five acres of glebe, lying to the west of the house,[3] and in 1650 this land was farmed as pasture.[4] By 1650 two tenements, or houses, had been built on the glebe. All this property lay on the west side of Church Street (as the northern part of Mare Street was called until 1868) and north of the confluence of Hackney and Pigwell Brooks.
As well as the glebe, the rectory also included the tithes of the arable produce of the parish, and an estate, the manor of Grumbolds.[5] This was a compact property running along both sides of Church Street. Copyholds of the manor included the Black and White House to the south of the church, and its grounds in Church Field; house property in Church Street; and at least part of Dame Sairey's Croft, a field at the top of the street, on the north side of Dalston Lane and Lower Clapton Road.
In 1535 the rectory as a whole was worth the sizeable sum of £26 per annum. It was estimated in 1650 (after a long period of inflation) that it could be let for £140 a year. It was therefore a worthwhile piece of preferment, and had the added attraction of being a sinecure, with no pastoral responsibilities other than the repair of the chancel of the church. Cure of souls in Hackney parish was the responsibility of the vicar, although his living was worth a third of the value of the rectory in 1650.

As most rectors were absentees it became common practice during the course of the century for the rector to lease out the rectory, including the tithes, glebe, parsonage and Grumbolds manor to a layman who 'farmed' it - paying the rector a fixed sum and enjoying the profits himself. The extent of the farmers' authority is indicated by their holding of the manorial courts for Grumbolds in lieu of the rector. Williarn Sutton, rector 1588-1622, leased the rectory to George Smyth, who assigned it to John Daniell in 1600. Daniell also acquired the right to appoint the rector - the advowson - and after his disgrace both estate and advowson were obtained by Ferdinando Heybourne.

The later 17th century farmers seem to have been primarily interested in the rectory as an investment. Most of them are described in the deeds as citizens of London, and neither the hearth tax return of 1664 or.that of 1671 [6] list the then farmers as being resident in Church Street. After passing through a number of hands, the farm of the rectory, together with the manor of Lordshold. with which it became associated, passed in 1697 to Francis Tyssen the elder.

A flurry of quitclaims extinguishing the rights of numerous former patrons and farmers followed Tyssen's acquisition. It is some consolation to the modern reader trying to master the legal complexities of the transfers of the rectory leases that the residents of Hackney at the time were equally perplexed. In October 1659 the churchwardens gave notice to Richard Blackwell 'or whom it does con­cern to take care for the repayres of the chancell'. [7] Blackwell had been farmer of the rectory in the early 1650s, but appears to have relinquished his interest as early as 1654. Who should assume the responsibility of the rector seems to have been a contentious issue in the parish.

Top of page

Where was the Parsonage house?

Although the early 17th century is the period for which we have most information about the Parsonage house, its location is only identifiable from 18th century evidence. The records of the land tax in 1727 note that Francis John Tyssen, as farmer of the rectory, was assessed for the Parsonage at a rental value of £20. Presumably the house was unoccupied. By 1735 William Wood is recorded as tenant, again at a rent of £20. Wood was still tenant in 1760, but at a rent of £10, and this fell to £8 in 1764. This may reflect the fact that Wood was reducing the amount of land he rented, rather than representing a fall in the value of the parsonage property.

1764 is the last year in which the land tax records show William Wood as tenant of the Parsonage house. In 1768 the tenant is Anthony Brunn. A lease of 12 March 1766 details the transaction between E J. Tyssen and Brunn, landlord of the New Mermaid tavem, who leased over 2 acres of property behind the Mermaid and its existing bowling green. The property rented out includes houses and gardens formerly leased to John Rawlinson and the capital messuage with yard and gardens 'now in the possession of -------Wood'. [8] This is clearly the Parsonage house, and a plan appended to the lease enables us to identify the property exactly.

The Parsonage house is a good sized building, standing detached 50 yards or so behind the west side of Church Street at the end of an alley way marked as Sweet Bryer Walk. We know from the evidence of Jane Daniell's inventory that at one time the Parsonage had a gatehouse. Presumably this lay at one end or the other of this passage. The two acres or so of land leased to Brunn were presumably the vestiges the of the five acres of pasture which surrounded the house in 1650.
Brurm's motive for leasing the Parsonage and its grounds was to expand the facilities of the Mermaid.

The Mermaid grounds in 1764, before Brunn's enlargements. The 'capital house', D, is the Parsonage.

A plan attached to the renewal of the lease in 1777 [9] shows that a large block, the Assembly Rooms, had been erected on the line of Sweet Bryer Walk, which had disappeared. The Assembly Rooms were used for a wide variety of functions - 'subscription balls ... public meetings ... in science, religion, or politics'.[10] The land, which already appears from the 1766 plan to have undergone some formal planting, perhaps by John Rawlinson, tenant of the grounds of the Parsonage in the early 18th century, was laid out as pleasure gardens and a trap ball ground, according to a further plan of the Mermaid premises of 1810.[11]

The 1810 plan also suggests that the Parsonage house survived until that date. Certainly a building of much the same size and position as in 1766 appears. It is described as 'cottages'; presumably it had been divided up, perhaps to accommodate staff of the Mermaid. If this hypothesis is correct (and it must be admitted that in 1790 a fire did 'considerable damage' to the outbuildings of the Mermaid), a watercolour of Captain Sadler's balloon ascent from the Mermaid gardens in 1811 may be the only surviving illustration of the Parsonage house [12]

The building in the centre, gable end on, shows what the parsonage house may have looked like in 1811.

The view is over Buck Horse or House Lane, later Cold Bath Lane (and now Kerimure Road) to the wall of the gardens. The high roofed building above which the church tower emerges is the Assembly Rooms. The former Parsonage house is the building to the right of the Assembly Rooms, gable end on to the viewer. It is a substantial two storey house and has the appearance of an older timber framed building which has been adapted over the years. The two small chimneys emerging from either end of the building below the edge of the roof may have been added when the house was divided.
But we can learn rather more about the Parsonage house than its site and (conjecturally) its early nineteenth century appearance. The events of 1601, and their aftermath, produced records which give a unique picture of agricultural and domestic activity in Hackney at the turn of the 17th century.

Top of page

The rectory estate in 1601

The actual seizure of Hackney rectory and its administration until the lease was transferred to other hands was carried out by a prosperous middle-aged yeoman from Church Street called Ralph Bell.[13] He was appointed under the Exchequer Commission of 29 June 1601 and wasted no time in taking up his new responsibilities. The first payment recorded in his accounts is brutal and to the point - 6d to a smith to break open the lock of the Parsonage house.[14]

As steward of the rectory for the Commissioners till at least the end of August, Bell's first responsibility was to gather the tithe on the agricultural produce of the parish. The detailed accounts of his transactions show that at this point most of the tithe was gathered in kind. Bell continued to employ Daniell's men, but because of the scale of the harvest, 'strangers', presumably labourers from another parish, had to be employed on a daily basis.

The hay, gathered in July, and the wheat harvested in August were sold on to London merchants and tradesmen. On 28 July 1601 for instance one and a half loads of hay were sold to 'a carrinan or a brick man' at Shoreditch. Total receipts for the hay harvest were £20.15.3, and the receipts of the wheat harvest were £5.10.8. Other tithes were paid in cash. Mrs Whitmore at Balmes paid over ten shillings. It seems probable that tithes were gathered in kind from the common lands, and in cash from the enclosed fields of the wealthier inhabitants.

Also subject to tithe were peas, which must have been mainly a cash crop for the London markets. John Whally for example was growing over three acres. In the last week of July Bell received 33s 8d for the tithe on peas. According to the Commissioners' inventory of the Parsonage house, other tithes on peas were customarily paid about Christmas.

Gathering tithe crops was not always a straightforward undertaking. The week beginning the 3rd August was a difficult one for Bell. On Monday one of the cart horses developed the staggers and fell into the River Lea. It was rescued and treated with blood letting and a butter and tar dressing at a cost of 4s 2d. On Wednesday it rained all day. A number of Hackney townsmen spent the day out on the marshes in Mr Heynes' wheat field with Bell, deciding where the boundary between Hackney and Stepney parishes lay. Had his neighbours not been with him, comments Bell, the tithe would have been lost, which perhaps suggests that Stepney parish was actively trying to encroach into Hackney's territory. 5s 4d was paid to compensate Mr Lawrence, Mr Keyes and others for a wet day in a bleak field.

Besides the tithes, the inventory of the Parsonage indicates other agricultural activity, and as indicated by an autobiographical fragment among the State Papers, [15] John Daniell had spent some time on his Cheshire estates applying himself to 'husbandrie' earlier in his career. 'In the groundes' of the house the commissioners recorded four geldings (one perhaps was the horse which fell into the Lea). The inventory of farming equipment lists harness for seven horses. The five 'mylch kyne' or dairy cows presumably grazed in the five acres of pasture which surrounded the house. They were valued at 30s a head, although John claimed that they worth £4 a head. This was presumably what he had paid. The milk was processed in the milk house, one of the rooms in the Parsonage, which was equipped with a churn, a cheese rack and butter crocks.

The 'sow and three pigges' kept at the Parsonage, would also have been processed domestically. Listed in the inventory of the gatehouse are 'syx flytches of Bacon and iii Rooles [rolls] of grease', and 'a great drye fatt [vat] to powder [salt] hogs in.'
The Parsonage was equipped with two long carts, a dung cart and a waggon, together with a plough, harrow and assorted mattocks and pitchforks. This is indicative of agricultural activity on some scale, apart from the annual gathering of the tithes. It may well be that some of the glebe was farmed as arable, and indeed if we presume that some form of crop rotation was practised by the farmers of the rectory, the five acres surrounding the house need not always have been laid down to grass as they were in 1650. The inventory and accounts highlight the degree to which Hackney was already a market gardening community in the early 17th century.

Top of page

The Parsonage in 1601

We now know where the Parsonage stood, and perhaps what it looked like at the beginning of the 19th century. The records of the Daniell case give us more details of the building at the beginning of the 17th century.

According to the Commissioners' inventory, the rooms of the house were as follows. There were a hall, parlour, buttery, kitchen and milkhouse. These are likely to have been all on the ground floor. Mr Daniell's chamber, a study, Mrs Daniell's chamber, a chamber at the head of the stairs and another chamber were, presumably, on the first floor. The number of rooms makes the Parsonage comparable in size with contemporary small manor houses, yeomen's houses and parsonages of South East England.[16]

The evidence indicates that John had undertaken repairs and new building at the Parsonage. The questions prepared by him for witnesses to his case against Heybourne in the Court of Requests show that the sizeable sum of 100 marks had been paid to a Robert Houlder for building work. The inventory records that boards and timber remained there, presumably from this work.

The work may have been more than just necessary repairs to the existing building. The period 1575-1615 saw the beginning of the 'Great Rebuilding' when gentry and yeomen in the more prosperous south east of the country began to make their existing timber framed hall houses more comfortable. Chimneys were inserted for more convenient cooking and heating, often replacing a fire in the middle of the hall with a smoke hole in the roof. At this period such halls often had a ceiling inserted to provide space for chambers above, and access to such chambers was provided by the building of framed staircases to replace simple ladders. Cooking began to be done in a purpose-built kitchen rather than in the hall. At the same time the growing fashion for privacy, which spread down from the aristocracy, led to gentry and yeoman families living in a parlour, leaving the hall to accommodate servants.

I would suggest that John was undertaking similar work in the Parsonage house. The existence of a kitchen, a parlour, chambers and a staircase is explicit. The presence of fire irons in several of the rooms (parlour, kitchen and buttery) indicates fireplaces and chimneys. There are at least four chambers and a study (perhaps little more than a closet) upstairs.

To accommodate these I think we can assume that the upper part of the hall must have been floored over, and it may be that the boards noted by the Commissioners were left over from this. It seems likely that John and Jane would try and make their new house as up to date as possible.

If John did adapt the Parsonage in accord with current fashion, the question arises as to what was there before. The court rolls of Grumbolds refer in 1487 to property 'opposite the Church, in the Highway and next to the Rectory of Hackney'. [17] This suggests that there was a Parsonage house on the same site, more or less, in 1502 when Christopher Urswick was appointed rector of Hackney. Urswick held a number of high church offices as a result of an active diplomatic career, but retired to Hackney soon after his appoint­ment.[18] It has been thought that Urswick lived at the house which bore his name, and which was subsequently acquired for the use of the parish. Alternatively known as Church House, this stood on the site of the Old Town Hall to the south of St Augustine's Tower until its demolition in 1802. According to Robinson, an inscription in the front of the house recorded that it had been built in 1520.[19] This suggests that Urswick must have lived elsewhere in Hackney until his new house was built, and he may have resided at the Parsonage house. If so, this must have been, or become during his residence, a suitable dwelling for a church dignitary. One can perhaps imagine it to have been a timber framed hall house on the wealden pattern; a hall of some size rising to the beams, between a service block at one end and a parlour block at the other, all under the same roof. By 1600 when John Daniell took over the property, such a house was old fashioned, and it is likely that he undertook the work outlined above to bring it up to date.

Top of page

The Daniells' lifestyle

The Commissioners' inventory not only names the rooms in the Parsonage house and their contents, but also allows us to reach some conclusions about how they were used. As mentioned above, at the end of the sixteenth century gentry families no longer lived in the hall of their houses, but usually dined and relaxed in the privacy of their (often new) parlour. The inventory suggests that the Daniells lived in this manner. The hall is furnished with two trestle tables and five stools, together with an old straw bed and its linen. This suggests that it was a room in which servants ate and slept. We know from Bell's accounts it was normal practice for the farm labourers to be fed by Daniell. Presumably it was also the entrance to the house.

The parlour appears to be rather more comfortable. A pair of andirons 'garnished with brasse' suggest a fireplace. There was a wickerwork chair with a trimmed cushion. There were also a chess set, and a number of books: a French herbal, a psalter and a 'little French booke called the contentment of the Spirit' -an interesting reminder of Jane's Flemish Protestant origins. A map of Ireland (bizarrely valued in the same lot as an old brush, all at 10d) perhaps indicates John's association with an earlier patron, the Anglo-Irish Earl of Ormonde, or later military involvement in Ireland with Essex. The parlour seems to have been the room in which the Daniells spent most of their leisure time.

While it was normal for the parlour to be used for informal living by gentry families, more formal occasions typically took place in the great chamber.[20] While no great chamber is specifically mentioned, 'Mr Daniell's Chamber' appears to be furnished as such. A table, three covered stools and a court cupboard are listed. The last was a side table or cabinet used to display plate, and we know that John spent £300 of his ill-gotten gains on gilt and silverware. This is all furniture of some substance and suggestive of formal entertaining. This chamber is also the only room in the Parsonage in which any form of decoration is mentioned, in this case four pictures. Pictures, usually portraits, were still a rarity even in wealthy households at the end of the sixteenth century. Four suggests conspicuous consumption on some scale. It is a great shame we do not know the subject of the pictures.

There was also a fifth picture; among the items left in the gatehouse by Jane was 'the countesse of Essex pycture'. This was in a chest, so may have been a miniature. Perhaps this was a valued gift from the Countess, and a poignant one, as it was Lady Essex's trust in Jane which gave John the opportunity of blackmailing her. Perhaps some of the other pictures in John's chamber portrayed his own patrons, the Earls of Essex and Ormonde.

Perhaps little more than a closet leading out of 'Mr Daniell's Chamber', the study contained just two hats, two rapiers and a pair of scales with weights. This is a reminder that a gentleman, to appear as such, usually carried a sword, and indeed John possessed a 'string of gould' from which to hang his weapon. The scales, together with nearly £7 in coin in a box perhaps hint at John's money lending activities which we know of from other sources.

At an earlier period, a great chamber served as a gentleman's bedroom as well as his main reception room. By the 16th century the two functions were served by two separate chambers. The room described as 'Mrs Daniell's Chamber' is I think the principal bedroom in which both of them slept. There is no bed in John's chamber. Jane's chamber is furnished in some style with a 'standing Bedsted of waysncote' - a substantial item of carpentry far removed from the straw pallet in the hall - with the necessary curtains and covers of green 'stuff' (a quality woollen material), a court cupboard, stool and table; a window curtain; and two bibles. There was also a 'trundle bed', one which could be pushed under the main bed during the day, in which a child or a servant may have slept.

In one other chamber there was a similar suite of furniture - standing bed, chair, stools and cupboard. The furniture of both chambers was valued at £8 4s, a sum which outraged John who claimed that he had spent £32 on the furnishings of the chambers. Once again it appears that John and Jane were keen to be seen to be spending money on their living arrangements.

Conspicuous consumption on furniture and fittings was matched by lavish outlay on clothes. There are detailed descriptions of John's clothes, contained in chests in 'Mr Danyell's Chamber'. Jane's are recorded as being in chests in the gatehouse, where they had been presumably moved when she was thrown out of the Parsonage house in June 1601. Such items as a 'Flannell wascote wrought with red Cruell', 'twoe dubletts of blacke stuffe', a lace ruff and 'one dammaske Cloake with sleeves garded with vellet' suggest the clothes for attendance at court which John records he bought after receiving Lady Essex's money.

Jane's clothes and accessories were similarly splendid. The inventory of the gatehouse records stomachers (a sort of externally worn decorative bodice), one wrought with gold, another decorated with 'sylke twyst', a gold and silk fan, and a fine holland apron. Even some of the childrens' clothes are magnificent; a child's mantle of crimson taffeta with a gold and silk fringe was perhaps a christening robe. The childrens' linens in a chest in the gatehouse must have been their every day wear.

Most of the clothes mentioned were for formal occasions such as visits to court. The inventories also suggest some of Jane's daily activities. Fourteen yards of 'houswyves flaxen' suggests that Jane spun her own yarn, perhaps on the little old spinning wheel in the buttery. In her 'Misfortunes', Jane quotes Proverbs to emphasise her matronly virtues: 'She seeketh wooll and flax and laboreth with her hands'.[21] We also see Jane undertaking the amateur health care which Elizabethan housewives commonly performed. The French herbal in the parlour would have been a source of information on herbal remedies for common complaints. Two other items carry hints of superstition, if not witchcraft, 'a stone for the spleen' and an 'e[a]gle stone'. The former is a charm worn against internal disorders, the latter was a hollow pebble with grit inside which rattled, and which was worn about the arm by pregnant women to prevent miscarriage. Once labour had begun, the stone was placed upon the abdomen to aid delivery of the child.[22] Jane records that she was in childbed in January 1600, about the time John put into effect his blackmail plot.

We can also presume that Jane supervised the domestic affairs of the Parsonage. We know the names of two of the servants, Mary Harper and Hugh Bramfield. There were three service rooms, kitchen, buttery and milkhouse. Kitchens as part of houses, as opposed to separate buildings, were a relatively new development in 1600. Used for preparing food, not all of them had fireplaces at this date, cooking being done in the old fashioned manner in the hall. We can probably assume from the presence of bellows, coal baskets and fire forks in the Parsonage kitchen that there was a fire for cooking here. Many different varieties of cooking utensils are listed, including brass kettles, spits, a frying pan and a gridiron. No food is mentioned, although this is perhaps not surprising, as the house appears to have been unoccupied for three months by the time when the inventory was made.

The buttery was a principally a room for storing drink. It contained beer firkins and various other tubs and containers, as well as the spinning wheel already mentioned. The milk house has already been discussed in the context of the agricultural activity of the Parsonage. It was also used for the storage of cutlery and plate. Most of the latter was of pewter, including trencher plates, fruit dishes, pottingers and saucers. The ten trenchers - wooden plates - were presumably used by the servants. A Venice glass and two narrow mouthed glasses kept in the milk house were probably for family use. Notable by its absence from either the Parsonage house itself or the gatehouse is the gilt and silver plate on which the Daniells had spent £300 of Lady Essex's money. This may have been concealed from the Commissioners, or more likely liquidated to meet the expenses of John's trial and imprisonment and the family's move from Hackney. Nonetheless as with the furniture and clothes, the impression of the domestic arrangements given by the inventories is one of comfort if not luxury.

Top of page

Conclusion

In Hackney, at the beginning of the 17th century, to quote the antiquarian John Strype, 'divers Nobles ... had their country seats.". [23] Of these seats only Sutton House remains to exemplify such houses and the way of life of their inhabitants. The appearance, plan and some details are known of the grandest of them all, Brooke House; knowledge of others, such as the Black and White House, is confined to illustration; and some, such as Lord Zouche's house in Homerton with its famous garden, are known only from documentary sources. John and Jane Daniell were only briefly resident in Hackney, and their attempt to establish themselves among the higher gentry there was a spectacular failure. However there is every reason to believe that their domestic arrangements, agricultural activities, and even their social aspirations were typical of their gentry neighbours such as the Suttons and the Machells. We know that such grandees lived in Hackney; thanks to John and Jane Daniell we now have a better idea of how they lived here, and one reference suggests that the Daniells liked living here.

In her 'Misfortunes', Jane refers to Ferdinando Heybourne's ambition to acquire the rectory with reference to the Book of Kings: Heybourne 'thirsting after the parsonage of Hackney, as Ahab did for Naboth's vineyard, because it lay near him ... prevaile[d] .[24] Not only does this reference suggest that Heyboume's territorial expansion was particularly ruthless, it also implies that the Rectory was something precious to its occupiers. Certainly the next decade was spent by the Daniells in fruitless attempts to obtain its restoration. It would be nice to think that although the move to Hackney was one of social betterment, appropriate to aspiring courtiers who had come into money (however dishonestly), John and Jane had acquired an affection for the place.

Top of page

Notes

1. Hackney Archives Department (HAD), D/FrFYS 71/9,'Danyells Dysasters'; DIFITYS 7119, 'Misfortunes of jane Danyell'. Both appear to have been written in 1606, and were addressed to King James 1. The manuscript is at PRO SP4615011.
2. For the transcripts of material in the case of Daniell v. Richardson (Ferdinando Heyboume was known as Richardson in the earlier stages of his career) see HAD D/FITYS 15, 233-428. This includes the gate house inventory, and the accounts of Ralph Bell, the Commission's agent in Hackney. The Commissioners' inventory of the Parsonage house is at PRO SP12/282, as is the inventory of the farming equipment, SP461561236. A copy of the Parsonage house inventory is at HAD Z45.
3. HAD D/FITYS 2, 53-54.
4. HAD D/FMS 15, 53-55. For the rectory see VCH, 116. 5. VCR 79-80.
6. LMA MR/TH4 (1664); MWH 13 (167 1).
7. HAD D/FITYS 2, 275.
8. HAD M523.
9. HAD M529.
10. Benjamin Clarke, Glimpses of Ancient Hackney and Stoke Newington, (1894, 1986) 116.
11. HAD M550.
12. HAD WP4428.
13. The will of Ralph Bell, proved in the London Commissary Court in 160617, is transcribed at HAD D/FITYS 3013, 509. He states that he holds sums for tithe paid by named parishioners, indicating that he continued to be steward of the rectory until 1606.
14. Bell's stewardship accounts are transcribed at HAD D/F/ TYS 15, 357 ff.
15. State Papers Domestic, CC1-XXXI, 7711.
16. See M. W. Barley, The English Farmhouse and Cottage (1961) part 2.
17. HAD D/FMS 40, 49.
18. DNB, vol. 58.
19. W. Robinson, History and Antiquities of the Parish of Hackney (1842) 1, 91.
20. Mark Girouard, Life in the English CountryHouse (1978) ch. 4.
21. 'Misfortunes', 76; Proverbs 31, v13.
22. Alison Sim, The Tudor Housewife (1996) 16.
23. Stow, Survey of London (1720) 11, Appx, 122.
24. 'Misfortunes', 124.

Top of page