Taking It to the Streets: Hucksters and Huckstering in Early Modern Southampton, circa 1550-1652

Taking It to the Streets: Hucksters and Huckstering in Early Modern Southampton, circa1550-1652Author(s): David PenningtonSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 657-679Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20478999 .

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Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIX/3 (2008) ISSN 0361-0160

Taking It to the Streets: Hucksters and Huckstering in Early Modern

Southampton, circa 1550-1652 David Pennington

Washington University, St. Louis

Historians have long recognized the prominent role women played in vending food and fuel on the streets of early modern towns, but huckstering was a profitable part time trade that attracted men as well as women. Indeed, there were probably more male than female hucksters operating in Southampton and other towns. While many scholars have been skeptical of the commercial opportunities open to street traders, hucksters, far from being under the thumb of exploitive suppliers, were sharp and independent, and adept at using their status as wholesale buyers to obtain goods at discount and sell them for profit. As an analysis of the presentments of Southamp ton's court leet shows, not only was huckstering a difficult commerce to constrain, but town authorities were loath to deny wives and widows one of the few trades they could practice in order to support themselves and their families.

CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTIONS OF YOUNG, PRETTY MAIDS crying "fresh cheese and cream" in London and humorous portraits of redoubtable widows pushing bread and pies on passersby underscore the prominent role women played in the com merce of city streets.1 Historians of women's work have long noted that huckster ing-the selling of small parcels of goods (most often food and fuel)-was a common occupation among townswomen.2 Because it fell outside the purview of guilds and regulated crafts, and required relatively little capital, huckstering was one of the few commercial trades open to poor women. But the involvement of men as well as women in street selling has received little attention. As a close study of hucksters operating in early modern Southampton indicates, men too found it

1W Turner, "A new Ballad intituled, I haue fresh Cheese and Cr?ame" (c. 1612), in The Pepys Ballads, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 1:48-50; "The

Old Pudding-pye Woman" (c. 1674-81), in The Roxburghe Ballads, ed. J. W Ebsworth (Hertford: Ballad Society, 1893), 7:77.

2Marjorie Keniston Mclntosh, Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2005), 130-32, 161, 197-99; Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 278; Peter Earle, "The

Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries," Economic

History Review, 2nd series, 42 (Aug. 1989), 328-53, at 341; Sue Wright, "'Churmaids, Huswyfes and

Hucksters': The Employment of Women in Tudor and Stuart Salisbury," in Women and Work in Pre

Industrial England, ed. Lindsey Charles and Lorna Duffin (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 108-9; Alice

Clark, Working Life Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919; repr., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1982), 207-9.

Financial support for research for this article was provided in part by a dissertation writer's grant awarded in 2004 by Washington University, St. Louis.

657



658 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIX/3 (2008)

worth their time to hawk food and fuel on the streets. Indeed, probably more men

than women sold goods on the streets in early modern Southampton and other towns. A recognition that both men and women found huckstering to be an attrac tive commercial endeavor invites a reconsideration of the opportunities open to petty traders in early modern towns.

To be sure, scholars have occasionally noted the involvement of men as well as women in petty retailing.3 Nevertheless, historians have been concerned primarily with what the experiences of female hucksters can reveal more broadly about the status of female workers in early modern towns. In her study of working women in Renaissance Germany, Merry Wiesner emphasizes the important role female ped dlers played in providing their communities with daily necessities; the frequency with which city authorities complained of peddlers' sharp commercial practices and high prices is suggestive of the profits which women could earn by hawking fruit, game, fish, and other victuals.4 Historians of English working women are somewhat less optimistic in their assessments of the position of female hucksters. These historians argue that female street traders had little bargaining power in dealing with wealthy suppliers and earned very small amounts by selling their goods on the streets.5 Furthermore, as Alice Clark argued long ago, regulations against regrators (those who bought victuals and sold them the same day) and forestallers (those who intercepted and bought goods before they reached the

marketplace) "seriously hampered" female hucksters in their pursuit of profits.6 As Marjorie McIntosh thus concludes, "normally, women worked as hucksters only if they had no other legitimate means of earning a living."7 The involvement of

women in huckstering appears to be emblematic of the limited occupational opportunities women faced in early modern labor markets.

The presence of male hucksters, including at least a few men who practiced skilled trades, in towns such as Southampton suggests that huckstering was in fact more profitable than low-paying, female-specific occupations such as spinning and the household cleaning work done by charmaids. Hucksters, both male and female, were not always in as disadvantaged a bargaining position vis-'a-vis suppli

3Merry Wiesner notes that both men and women were involved in the selling of poultry, game, and fish in Renaissance German cities: Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 1986), 112,119-20. Grethe Jacobsen presents similar findings in her work on

female workers in Danish towns: "Women's Work and Women's Role: Ideology and Reality in Danish

Urban Society, 1300-1550," Scandinavian Economic History Review 31, no. 1 (1983): 10-11. Both men

and women operated as chapmen, distributing a wide variety of consumer goods throughout rural

England: Margaret Spufford, The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and Their Wares

in the Seventeenth Century (London: Hambledon, 1984).

4Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany, 111-27; idem, "Spinning Out Capital: Women's Work in Preindustrial Europe, 1350-1750," in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 3rd ed., ed. Renate Bridentahl, Susan Mosher Stuard, and Merry E. Wiesner (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1998), 218-20.

5McIntosh, Working Women in English Society, 130-32; Mendelson and Crawford, Women in

Early Modern England, 278; Clark, Working Life of Women, 207-9.

6Clark, Working Life of Women, 207.

7McIntosh, Working Women in English Society, 132.



Pennington / Hucksters & Huckstering in Early Modern Southampton 659

ers as has sometimes been assumed. Hucksters often showed sharpness, indepen dence, and acuity in using their position as wholesale buyers to secure goods at discount. These peripatetic traders had no lack of customers; because they were willing to sell their goods door-to-door, they were able to compete effectively with traders who operated from shops and market stalls. Efforts to enforce regulations against forestallers and regrators had relatively little impact in limiting the profits of Southampton hucksters. To be sure, the Southampton court leet occasionally succeeded in levying petty fines against hucksters, but the court's efforts to control the numbers and commercial practices of hucksters were curbed by the mayor, the aldermen, and humble consumers. Town officials and consumers alike showed discernment in identifying the causes of dearth; they were much more concerned with the activities of corn exporters-those middlemen who truly endangered the food supply of the town-than the activities of local hucksters. A study of huck stering can provide insight into the local politics of provision as well as the identi ties and commercial practices of street peddlers.

The particularly extensive records that survive from Southampton make the town a good candidate for a detailed case study of huckstering in early modern England. Especially valuable are the surviving lists of presentments from the town's annual court leet.8 The business of Southampton's court leet, unlike many other early modern courts leet, was not confined to issues of decayed streets, rub bish, and other public nuisances; the Southampton court leet retained its power to prosecute those traders who offended against market regulations of the town. This broad mandate, and the fact that members of the jury were drawn from respect able burgesses from all of Southampton's parishes, ensured that the leet was at the center of efforts to control the ranks and business activities of the town's hucksters throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Presided over by the

mayor, the twelve jurors of the leet advised the mayor and the justices of the quar ter sessions on who should and should not be granted hucksters' licenses. In addi tion, the leet had the power to levy fines against those who huckstered without licenses and those who "forestalled" the market by buying goods outside or within the marketplace before 1 1:00 AM or noon. If the mayor and his assembly agreed

with the leet jurors that a fine should be amerced against a particular trader, the jurors had the power to decide the amount of the fine. Presentments of fines and attempts to limit the ranks of hucksters to licensed dealers yields information on the gender and occupational identities of 149 hucksters who operated in the town from 1550 to 1652.9 The efforts of the Southampton court leet to prevent forestall

8Courts leet were originally manorial courts of medieval origin in charge of investigating and

punishing criminal offenses; see Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (hereafter OED), s.v. "court leet."

Many of these courts in the early modern period lost their jurisdiction over various types of criminal offenses to other, more recently established courts, such as the quarter sessions.

9This list of hucksters is drawn from the leet presentments in Southampton Civic Record Office

(hereafter SRO), Southampton Corporation Records (hereafter SC), 6/1/2-56. Records survive for

fifty-five of the 102 years examined here. Leet records become very sparse after 1652, and make no

mention of hucksters for the rest of the seventeenth century. An extensive calendar, which often includes archival material verbatim, of the Southampton leet records for the years 1550 to 1624 was




ing and other sharp practices provide unusual insight into the business of huck

stering. This article also explores the activities of peddlers in Cambridge and

Manchester in order to assess the representativeness of the Southampton case. 10

WHO WERE THE HUCKSTERS?

As McIntosh notes, "huckster," a word of medieval origins, was "the feminine form of someone who hawks or haggles goods."11 Indeed, it does appear that most of the

persons who hawked goods on the streets of medieval towns were female; as R. H.

Hilton has shown, the young, single women who were the majority of immigrants

entering many medieval English towns were especially active in huckstering.12 But

this historically rooted, gender-specific definition of "huckster" should not gull us into assuming that the hucksters of early modern English towns were predomi

nately women. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, the leet jurors of Southamp

ton had come to consider huckstering as a kind of economic activity, a street

commerce which they believed to be potentially injurious to the community. They

were under no illusion that huckstering was limited to women. A glance at the def

inition of "huckster" in the Oxford English Dictionary is no substitute for a detailed

investigation of who was in fact trading on the streets of this early modern town.

The evidence from Southampton on the numbers of men relative to women

who were presented for huckstering is surprising. Of the 149 persons designated as

compiled: F. J. C. Hearnshaw and D. M. Hearnshaw, eds., Court Leet Records [of Southampton], South

ampton Record Society Publications, vols. 1, 2, 4, 6 in 4 vols. (Southampton: H. M. Gilbert & Son,

1905-8). For the above information on the jurisdictional boundaries and procedure of this court leet, see ibid., l:xi-xiii. While giving a good idea of the types of business done by the court, the Hearnshaws'

calendar rarely provides the names of the hucksters presented by the court leet, and it does not extend

beyond 1624. Therefore, when necessary, reference is made to the archival material; but, when possible, reference is made to the material presented in the more readily available calendar. In addition, I have

drawn in particular on the records of the deliberations of the mayor and his assembly, published in J. W. Horrocks, ed., Assembly Books of Southampton [1602-1616], Southampton Record Society Publica

tions, vols. 19, 21, 24, 25 in 4 vols. (Southampton: Cox & Sharland, 1917-25); W J. Connor, ed., The

Southampton Mayor's Book of 1606-1608, Southampton Record Series 22 (Southampton: Southampton

University Press, 1978). 1 especially useful are the records of Elizabethan Cambridge University's court leet, which had

jurisdiction over Cambridge's market: Cambridge University Archive (hereafter CUA), Cambridge

University Registry (hereafter CUR) 17, fols. 15r-49r; and the leet records of sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century Manchester: J. P. Earwaker, ed., The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 12 vols. (Manchester: H. Blacklock, 1884-90).

1 Mclntosh, Working Women in English Society, 130; see also OED, s.v. "huckster," definition la.

12For female hucksters in medieval towns, see R. H. Hilton, "Lords, Burgesses and Hucksters,"

Past and Present 97 (1982): 3-15; idem, "Small Town Society in England before the Black Death," Past

and Present 105 (1984): 65-68; Diane Hutton, "Women in Fourteenth Century Shrewsbury," in

Women and Work in Pre-Industrial England, 97; Maryanne Kowaleski, "Women's Work in a Market

Town: Exeter in the Late Fourteenth Century," in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed.

Barbara Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 147-48. But even in the medieval

period, huckstering was not a gender-specific occupation. The records of the poll tax of 1381 for

Southwark report twenty-one women and five men as hucksters: Martha Carlin, Medieval Southwark

(London: Hambledon, 1996), 203, 259-69.




"hucksters" by the court leet between 1550 and 1652, ninety-four (63 percent) were men. 13 The men in this population traded in the same types of goods as their female counterparts: fuels (such as coal and faggots) and victuals (such as bread, produce, eggs, and cheese). Furthermore, male hucksters were most frequently presented for forestalling the market or trading without license, the same offenses which most commonly ensnared female hucksters. The gender of the trader does not seem to have been a key factor in the jury's deliberations.

It is unlikely that many of these men were presented for the huckstering offenses of their wives. Of course, the common law doctrine of coverture, in which husband and wife were considered one person under the law, often had the effect of obscuring the participation of married women in local courts. For instance, husbands often appear alone as litigants in debt suits which arose out of the com mercial activities of their wives.14 Where town regulations were breached, how ever, the mayor and the leet were concerned to identify the actual offenders, including those who forestalled the market or huckstered without license. That at least some women in this period were denoted as married or operating indepen dently of a husband suggests that in cases in which a wife practiced huckstering, her husband was not invariably presented before the leet as a huckster in her stead.15 Furthermore, the petitions to mayor and town assembly of two men for huckstering licenses indicate that men as well as women wanted to break into the trade. In 1609, William Greene gained a "hughster" license after promising that he

would keep the "towne orders" which forbid hucksters' buying victuals in the market before 11:00 AM. Similarly, the town government in 1610 granted Peter Quayt's petition for a huckstering license, again, if he did not forestall the mar ket.16 Huckstering in Southampton was far from a female-dominated trade.

Was this extensive involvement of men in huckstering unique to Southamp ton? It has been suggested that the presence of large numbers of hucksters in a community indicates a lack of employment opportunities.17 Indeed, the lack of jobs in early modern Southampton may have driven some men to street trading.

13SRO, SC 6/1/2-56. The names of all persons recorded as hucksters, the years they were

presented, and in the case of women, their marital status, is given in the appendix. No designation of

the marital status of men is provided in the leet records.

14Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 37-38; Alexandra Shepard, "Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England c. 1580-1640," Past and Present 167

(2000): 90-95; Craig Muldrew, '"A Mutual Assent of Her Mind'? Women, Debt, Litigation and

Contract in Early Modern England," History Workshop Journal 55 (2003): 47-71, at 57. (I thank Dr.

Muldrew for bringing his insightful article to my attention.) Similarly, husbands probably paid the stall

and art fees required by Southampton's leet for trading done by their wives in the marketplace, which

could account for the almost total absence of wives from such lists. See Amy M. Froid, Never Married:

Singlewomen in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 95.

15SRO, SC 6/1/27, unfoliated: presentment in 1603 of a list of "fit" and "unfit" hucksters and

"tipplers" (ale house or tavern keepers). Similar exactitude was observed by town authorities in

medieval and early modern Germany; see Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany, 134-35.

16Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 2:71, 100. These are the only two instances in the

surviving records of residents' requesting huckstering licenses.

17McIntosh, Working Women in English Society, 132; Clark, Working Life of Women, 209.




Southampton suffered rising unemployment during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as competition from London and the diversion of Italian traders depressed Southampton's cloth production and export trades.18 But a look at Cambridge and Manchester-towns which, like Southampton, retained courts leet active in prosecuting commercial infractions-suggests that the downturn in Southampton's cloth industry by itself cannot explain the attraction of men to huckstering. The jurors and clerks in these courts leet, unlike Southampton jurors and clerks, did not designate "hucksters" among the prosecuted; it is thus impos sible to obtain as clear a picture of the percentage of street traders in Cambridge and Manchester who were male. Both of these courts were scrupulous in denoting the actual identity of the trader offending against market regulations, rather than amercing husbands for the infractions of their wives, suggesting that men feature prominently in Cambridge University's leet presentments against the forestalling or regrating of victuals, two offenses commonly associated with huckstering. Of the ninety-four persons who were presented at least once for regrating or forestall ing victuals such as fruit, bread, cheese, and butter during the reign of Elizabeth I, sixty-two were men (66 percent).19 The involvement of men in hawking in Eliza bethan Cambridge cannot be explained as the result of an unpropitious labor mar ket. Employment prospects in Cambridge were rosy in comparison to Southampton: an especially fertile hinterland offered opportunities for farm laborers; a strategic position along a riverine system which linked the town to the

North Sea port of King's Lynn opened opportunities for watermen; and the growth of the university created a seller's market for wares such as draperies, stationery,

18Alwyn A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton 1270-1600 (Southampton:

Southampton University Press, 1951); idem, "London Capitalists and the Decline of Southampton in the

Early Tudor Period," Economic History Review, 2nd series, 2 (1949): 137-51. Ruddock may have

overestimated the vibrancy of Southampton's trade sector during the fourteenth and early fifteenth

centuries; see Olive Coleman, "Trade and Prosperity in the Fifteenth Century: Some Aspects of the Trade

of Southampton," Economic History Review, 2nd series, 16 (1963): 9-22; H. S. Cobb, "Cloth Exports from

London and Southampton in the Later Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries: A Revision," Economic

History Review, 2nd series, 31 (Nov. 1978): 601-9. Nevertheless, the downturn in Southampton's commerce is perhaps reflected in its declining population, despite a steady trickle of immigrants (who were often complained of by town authorities) throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After

reaching a peak of 4,200 persons in 1596, the population of the town declined to about 3,000 persons in

1641, and stagnated for the rest of the century. For population estimates, see Sheila D. Thomson, ed., The

Book of Examinations and Depositions before the Mayor and Justices of Southampton 1648-1663

(Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1994), 37:xix; T. B. James, Southampton Sources: 1086

1900 (Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1983), 22:3, fig. 1.

19CUA, CUR 17, fols. 15r-49r; records survive for only twenty years of Elizabeth's enire reign (1558-1603). Subsequent university leet records were poorly kept and had a much lower survival rate

than Elizabethan records. As with the Southampton leet records, care appears to have been taken by the Elizabethan clerks to record whether the offender was male or female, with wives being presented in their own names. Excluded from analysis are those presented for "engrossing" wheat and other

corns, and those presented for exporting corn and bread outside the jurisdiction of the university, as

these wholesalers were not likely to be in the business of hawking small parcels of goods on the street.




and candles.20 In mid-seventeenth-century Manchester, a prominent center of the manufacture of "new draperies," there was near parity in the numbers of men and women presented for offenses most commonly associated with huckstering: during the particularly well recorded years of 1648 to 1662, twenty-two men (52 percent) and twenty women (48 percent) were amerced for regrating or forestall ing victuals, including meat, fowl, butter, and cheese.21 Men were undoubtedly just as eager as women to obtain and hawk small parcels of victuals.

For many men, huckstering was a profitable part-time trade rather than a full time occupation. Although the Southampton leet rarely noted the professions other than huckstering and tippling (alehouse or tavern keeping) of those prose cuted by the court, jurors designated at least two men who practiced skilled trades-a sawyer and a joiner-as hucksters.22 The economic privileges which came with the status of a skilled profession did not preclude a sharp eye for com mercial opportunities which did not pertain to the trade. For instance, Thomas Fletcher, a Southampton joiner, was prosecuted in 1601 and again in 1602 for engrossing the onions, cabbage, and oranges unloaded on Southampton's docks.23

William Greene, whose petition for a huckster's license is mentioned above, inge niously practiced three related professions at once. In addition to being a huckster, he was also a licensed tippler and a musician. He could thus entertain his custom ers with music as he (or perhaps his wife or servant) plied them with food and drink; he could then unload the leftover food from the night before on the street.24 Greene's various endeavors support Heather Swanson's contention that many householders practiced more than one trade in order to make a living.25

Greene was hardly alone in recognizing the commercial advantages of com bining the trades of public house keeping and huckstering. The jurors of the Southampton leet had some warrant in complaining in 1574 that "all the tiplers in this towne arr hocksters."26 While the leet jurors only occasionally noted the pro

20Nigel Goose, "Economic and Social Aspects of Provincial Towns: A Comparative Study of

Cambridge, Colchester and Reading, c. 1500-1700" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1984), 43

44, 47-48, 129-50; Mary Christine Siraut, "Some Aspects of the Economic and Social History of

Cambridge under Elizabeth I" (M.Litt. diss., University of Cambridge, 1978), chaps. 2, 3.

21Earwaker, Court Leet Records of... Manchester, vol. 4 and 5:11. Again, excluded from the data are presentments against wholesalers; also excluded are presentments against cordwainers and tanners

accused of attempting to corner the market on leather. For cloth manufacturing in Manchester, see

C. G. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1984), 2:95-97; Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern

Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 167.

22SRO, SC 6/1/12, unfoliated.

23Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 2:335, 362; however, because

he was not explicitly designated as a "huckster," I have not included him in the above analysis of

Southampton hucksters.

24SRO, SC 6/1/32, fols. 23v, 33r; Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 2:71.

25Heather Swanson, "The Illusion of Economic Structure: Craft Guilds in Late Medieval English Towns," Past and Present 121 (1988): 29-48; see also Hilton, "Small Town Society," 62.

26Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 1:104. There is no evidence

that hucksters in Southampton sold ale on the streets as they did in London and other towns (for ale

hucksters, see Mclntosh, Working Women in English Society, 161).




fessions of guild members, they recorded the identities of victuallers and alehouse keepers with unwavering regularity. There was a significant overlap between the two trades. Of the ninety-four men labeled as hucksters, twenty-six (28 percent) also ran public houses. This overlap in the personnel of the two trades reflects the fact that successful public house keeping and huckstering required a common set of contacts and commercial skills. Both tipplers and hucksters had to have con tacts with bakers, butchers, costermongers, dairy producers, and other suppliers of victuals; and both had to have the credit and bargaining skill necessary to "cheapen" and then sell their provisions for profit. Huckstering provided many Southampton alehouse and tavern keepers a way to recoup the losses of provisions left unsold from the night before.

While many men practiced huckstering as just one of two or more occupa tions, it is likely that most female hucksters in Southampton were widows who depended on huckstering as their primary means of earning a living. Of the fifty five Southampton women recorded as hucksters, forty-three (78 percent) were widows. Widow hucksters were active in Elizabethan Cambridge as well: they con stituted fourteen of the thirty-two women who at some point were prosecuted in the university leet for regrating or forestalling victuals.27 The reason for the prom inence of widows among female hucksters is obvious. With the exception of guild

members' widows who were fortunate enough to have the expertise and resources necessary to carry on their husbands' crafts, widows had few employment pros pects. Huckstering, unlike the regulated trades, could be practiced by anyone with a modicum of capital, with the exception of most never-married women (most often called "spinsters"), whose commercial activities were always tightly con strained by early modern town authorities.28 Huckstering was an important occu pation for widows faced with limited work options.

For married women, as opposed to widows, huckstering provided, as it did for men, earnings which could supplement other household occupations. Of the twelve Southampton women not designated as widows, at least three were mar ried. The other nine women listed by name alone were probably married as well, for the town assembly was consistent in noting and taking strong action against never-married women who practiced occupations other than domestic service. For instance, in 1607 the mayor and his assembly refused to consider the petition of one Ecton's wife that her never-married stepdaughter be allowed to open a shop to sell "smale wares by retayle."29 As Amy Froide finds in her study of the leet's

27CUA, CUR 17, fols. 15r-49r.

28See Froide, Never Married, 24-34, 95. Because the contemporary term "spinster" could denote

both marital status and occupation (on this point, see Pamela Sharpe, "Literally Spinsters: A New

Interpretation of Local Economy and Demography in Colyton in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd series, 44 [Feb. 1991]: 46-65), Froide and Sharpe's term

"never-married" for women who had never married is more precise than the contemporary term

"spinster." 29Connor, Southampton Mayor's Book, 107; the town government also went so far as to prosecute

regularly those charmaids who worked for more than one household instead of working under

contract to a particular household for a fixed term. See also Horrocks, Town Assembly Books, 1-4.




"stall and art" lists, which registered the fees paid to the town government by trad ers who did not have the freedom of the town, there was only one never-married woman recorded during our time period as a licensed huckster-Eleanor Beeston in 1611. Beeston also apparently worked as a charmaid and a prostitute.30 Married

women usually had a greater range of commercial opportunities than never-mar ried women. Wives married to cooperative husbands could draw upon the capital of the household in financing trades such as huckstering and pawnbroking. Fur thermore, their status as wives made them less a target than never-married women of town authorities suspicious of women who traded independent of the supervi sion of a male householder.

Hawking goods on the street was just one way in which wives could supple ment the earnings of male householders. As Peter Earle shows in his study of female workers in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century London, wives commonly practiced a variety of occupations independently of their husbands.31 Furthermore, female hucksters along with their male counterparts recognized the advantages of combining huckstering with victualling. Seven Southampton women-four widows and three women listed by name alone-earned money running victualling and tippling houses as well as huckstering.

The ease with which almost anyone could huckster made the trade attractive to a diverse group of townspeople. For poor widows, huckstering provided a

much-needed source of income to support themselves and their children. For wives, huckstering supplemented a husband's earnings. Most surprising, many male householders were not too proud to forgo the profits which came from sell ing victuals and fuel on the streets.

THE BUSINESS OF HUCKSTERING

The business of huckstering should not be romanticized. The lugging of goods through the streets was hard work, and undoubtedly brought little remuneration in comparison to the types of commerce dominated by elite burgesses and assem blymen, such as the vending of manufactured goods, wholesaling, and long-dis tance trading in luxury goods. Because many of the types of goods sold by hucksters were perishable, hucksters risked losses if they could not sell their goods in a timely fashion.32 Though huckstering was certainly a tough trade which required both strength and commercial skill, McIntosh's assertion that hucksters-because they were largely poor, small-scale traders-could expect "only a tiny profit (or only a tiny commission) for each item sold" is question

Such concern over the casual nature of never-married women's work was not unique to Southampton: see, e.g., Earwaker, Court Leet Records of... Manchester, 1:241, 2:37.

30There were only two other never-married women recorded in the stall and art lists before the

1680s: a woman whose trade is unknown and a daughter who inherited her mother's shop; Froide, Never Married, 95.

31Earle, "Female Labour Market in London," 337, table 8. Earle found that at least 60 percent of

married women pursued occupations independently of their husbands.

32Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 278.




able.33 In fact, the relationship between hucksters and their suppliers was often one of hard-nosed partnership rather than clear-cut exploitation of the huckster by his or her supplier.

To be sure, there was at least one supplier in early seventeenth-century South ampton who was able to exploit a particular cohort of hucksters. Judith Delamotte, the wife of a prominent clothier and minister of the Huguenot church of South ampton, operated her husband's business in the years before and after his death in 1617.34 Though widows could not become officers of the Clothiers' guild, Judith

Delamotte nevertheless played a major role in representing the interests of the guild to the town government. In 1615, she helped gain the assembly's assent for a scheme in which clothiers were to hire the poor youth of the town "and not straun gers as formerlie they have donne."35 The attraction of Delamotte's plan for a town government always concerned to limit the number of poor immigrants entering the town was obvious. But the jurors of the leet eventually grew suspicious of Dela

motte's motives; their concerns centered on the nature of her arrangements with her huckstering employees. In 1633, the jurors contended that though some of the town "may thinke her to be a good member of this towne in employeng the poore ... we conceiue otherwise of her," for she paid her workers with various goods she

had on hand or could obtain at cheap prices-such as soap, starch, pins, buttons, and coarse linen-rather than "readie mony." Delamotte perhaps believed that her employees could sell the goods at prices high enough to support themselves. But, according to the estimation of the leet jurors, by paying her workers in goods instead of currency, she cheated her workers out of more than 20 percent of their

wages, for they were forced "for mere necessitie" to hawk their goods at whatever prices they could get for them.36 Significantly, the relationship between Delamotte and her huckster-employees is the only evidence from Southampton that huck sters were employees of (and thus dependent upon) their suppliers. The fact that the leet took particular exception to Delamotte's business practices indicates that the vulnerable position of Delamotte's workers was seen as exceptional rather than typical of dealings between hucksters and their suppliers.

A consideration of the business done between hucksters who sold bread and bakers suggests that hucksters unattached to an exploitive employer were regularly able to obtain goods from their suppliers at low prices.37 There is no evidence to suggest that these traders were employees of their suppliers, and they enjoyed sig nificant advantages over individual consumers in obtaining supplies of bread. Hucksters, unlike many consumers, bought bread by the dozen rather than by the loaf, and the prospect of regular sales of relatively large quantities tempted bakers

33McIntosh, Working Women in English Society, 132.

34Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 4:xxix-xxx; Wright, "'Churmaids, Huswyfes and

Hucksters,'" 116nl.

35Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 4:3.

36SRO, SC 6/1/46, fol. 19r.

37Southampton authorities, like authorities in other towns, closely monitored bread prices,

yielding especially good evidence regarding the trade in bread.




to offer discounts. As Southampton leet jurors reported in presentments from 1626, 1627, and 1628, hucksters were better able than consumers to obtain cut-rate prices for bread from the bakers of the town. According to these presentments, hucksters were typically able to buy fourteen or fifteen loaves for the price of a dozen. Thus, if a huckster could sell all of his or her penny-loaves, he or she earned a profit of two or three pence on an investment of twelve pence.38 This might seem a slim profit margin, but regular demand for everyday necessities ensured that many hucksters could sell large quantities in the course of a day. The scale of some hucksters' operations could be substantial, particularly if the trader combined huckstering with another occupation. So large were the purchases of John James, an alehouse keeper and huckster, that in 1615 he was presented by the leet jurors for violating the prohibition against nonburgesses' buying goods by wholesale. The jurors noted that they would never have dared to buy such large quantities of victuals as James did "before we weare made Burgesses'"39 It is easy to imagine that those traders who combined tippling and huckstering were able to negotiate low prices for large quantities of a variety of victuals.

The ability of hucksters and victuallers to use their bargaining power to "cheapen" the prices of their suppliers is confirmed by evidence from other towns. The pudding-pie woman of one ballad marketed in London during the 1670s warns the baker that he shall lose her business if he does not agree to her price for bread. She declares: "I am an Old wife, tellfifteen to the dozen I For by that means

my profit doth fairly rise, / Or else I must never more cry Pudding-pyes."40 Such a

cry, as the author of the ballad hints, was often a bargaining tactic rather than a reflection of impoverished desperation. If a supplier was unwilling to assent to the buyer's price, the trader could appeal to that supplier's competitors. For instance, one woman serving visitors of Cambridge's Sturbridge Fair returned bread deliv ered to her stall on behalf of the baker Richard Scott, for he "would not deliver to her seaven penyworthe of white bread to the halfe dozen." After the return of the

bread, Scott's apprentice observed the servant of Elizabeth Helsden, a rival baker, delivering bread to the booth at the price demanded by the vendor.41 The men and women involved in hawking goods on the street knew how to leverage their status as regular buyers to bargain for low prices.

Successful hucksters had to be savvy in the face of their suppliers' greed and

officials' suspicions. Town governments were concerned that bakers were

unloading their underweight bread upon hucksters, which hucksters then sold on

38SRO, SC 6/1/41, fol. 15v; SC 6/1/42, fol. 18r; SC 6/1/43, fol. 14v. Similar findings were made by the Manchester court leet: Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of... Manchester, 3:289.

39Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 3:488; it was forbidden for

those below the rank of burgess to buy goods in Southampton by wholesale from foreign merchants.

In 1617, James's widow was presented for selling pepper, blue starch, and "other merchaundizes to the

great hinderance of other shopkeepers"; ibid., 527.

40"The Old Pudding-Pye Woman," in Ebsworth, ed., Roxburghe Ballads, 77; emphasis in the

original ballad.

41Office v. Elizabeth Helsden, CUA, Comm. Ct.V.7, p. 71.




the street at full price. Bakers could skirt the regulations of the assize of bread by selling their small loaves to hucksters in private. This practice, according to the Southampton jurors, constituted "A greate wrong to the poore" who bought bread from hucksters.42 Peddlers new to the trade and unaware of the tricks of bakers could suffer for their inexperience. Francis Sanderson, a blacksmith of Ely and a self-described "verie poore man" who did "not [have] experience in buying of bread:" spotted a commercial opportunity during the hard year of 1629. After raising money by selling his cow and borrowing from friends, he went to Cambridge with the intent to purchase bread which he could then sell to his neighbors. At Cambridge, he bought sixty dozen loaves from a baker, James Blaxlie. According to Sanderson, Blaxlie assured Sanderson that the loaves were of the weight required by statute; but upon Sanderson's return to Ely, the clerk of Ely's

market inspected the bread and found that all of the loaves wanted weight. The clerk seized the bread and, as required by statute, distributed it to the poor of the town.43 Such a large shipment of bread from Cambridge to Ely could hardly have failed to attract the attention of Ely's clerk of the market. But not all hucksters could have been so foolish as to purchase a large quantity of suspect bread which was likely to be intercepted and inspected by authorities. In the case of Southampton, it is probable that, aware of the town's limited ability to monitor and control huckstering, street peddlers knowingly accepted some light loaves from bakers in exchange for discounts.

The costs of dealing with shifty suppliers and anxious authorities were out weighed by the commercial opportunities offered by a trade that rarely lacked customers. Hucksters satisfied consumer demands which could not be fullfilled by traders tied to shops and market booths. The public market, open two days a week during specified hours, offered limited time for consumers to buy necessary provisions.44 Bakers and butchers' shops kept longer hours, but they probably delivered to only their most important customers. Hucksters sold everyday necessities whenever and wherever there was demand in parcels small enough that even most of the poor could afford them. As the leet jurors noted in 1605, the "comon poore people of this towne" most often bought goods such as eggs, bread, and faggots not at the marketplace or shop, but "by the penny at the second hande."45 Because they often lacked the economic reputation necessary for their neighbors to sell them goods on credit with much confidence of repayment, many poor laborers must have survived on the penny-priced parcels they pur

42 SRO,SC 6/1/43, fol. 14v.

4 CUA, V.C.Ct.III.31, nos. 27, 28; the account of this episode is drawn from a petition by

Sanderson to the dean and archdeacon of Ely Cathedral. His petition was affirmed by the dean and

archdeacon and delivered to the University vice-chancellor along with a request that Blaxlie return

Sanderson's money. 44A. L. Merson, ed., The Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton 1514-1602, 3 vols.,

Southampton Record Series 3 (Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1955), 2:45, 49.

45Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 3:425; see also Earwaker, Court Leet Records of... Manchester, 3:289.




chased from hucksters.46 However crucial they were in supplying the poor, huck sters were suspected by the leet jurors of creating marketplace shortages and shortchanging their customers. The leet was thus determined to control the num bers and more rapacious commercial practices of hucksters. But as leet juries rediscovered throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the huckstering trade was very difficult to restrain.

ENFORCEMENT PROBLEMS AND THE LOCAL POLITICS OF HUCKSTERING

Given contemporary widespread animosity toward middlemen in general, we risk overestimating the commercial opportunities open to hucksters. The middleman, whatever the scale of his or her operation, was a frequent target of suspicion and complaint during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Middlemen by the very nature of their trade violated an ideal-enshrined in local and national regulations against engrossers, forestallers, and regrators-that those who produced food stuffs and victuals should sell them directly to the local consumer. Middlemen were conceived of as "evill disposed persons" who connived to obtain foodstuffs, victuals, and other goods before they made it to the market; depriving the market place customer, middlemen reaped profits by selling their goods at artificially inflated prices.47 As Keith Wrightson reminds us, statutes and local regulations against middlemen reflected "the values of an economic culture in which the ben efits of commercial exchange were fully recognised, but regarded nonetheless as subordinate to the need to exercise control in the interest of the well-being of the immediate community"; violators of this ideal of course risked prosecution and fines.48 If local authorities fell short in ensuring the supply of food, the riotous poor, sometimes with the tacit support of local authorities, took matters into their own hands by seizing the foodstuffs of greedy, hard-hearted traders.49 There is much reason to suppose that a combination of heavy-handed enforcement of eco nomic regulations coupled with the threat of popular protests acted as a significant check on the activities of hucksters, but the hand-wringing presentments of the leet jurors tell a different story. Though they often justified their presentments against hucksters as actions in the interest of poor consumers, the leet jurors, as prominent members of the town, probably had more personal reasons for object ing to huckstering. Because hucksters depleted the market of goods and were in competition with market traders, hucksters likely hindered burgesses in their

46For the importance of credit in early modern society, see Craig Muldrew, The Economy of

Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (London: Macmillan,

1998).

Quote from Wallace Notestein, Frances Helen Reif, and Hartley Simpson, eds., Commons

Debates 1621 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 7:141, from the draft of an unsuccessful bill to

further restrict middlemen.

48Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, 111.

49A good overview of the topic is given in Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680 (1982;

repr., London: Routledge, 2002), 173-80.




attempts to obtain supplies and sell their goods in the marketplace.50 However, the limited punitive powers of the leet, the political missteps of leet jurors, and-above all-a lack of governmental and popular support for the leet's efforts contributed to the lax regulatory environment enjoyed by Southampton's hucksters, both male and female.

As the struggles of the leet to enlist the justices, mayor, and assemblymen in the enforcement of the licensing of hucksters underscore, the relationship between the leet and other local authorities was hardly one of consensus and cooperation. Leet jurors frequently found the mayor and the justices of the quarter sessions indifferent to the problem of huckstering. Complaining in 1571 that the prolifera tion of hucksters was leading to a "dearth" of victuals in the market, especially but ter, the leet jurors requested that the mayor act to ensure that hucksters be licensed and provide sureties that they seek their "provizion abroade & not to bye of such [victuals] as repareth to this market except" after 11:00 AM when the market opened to nonretail trade.51 But as a presentment in 1574 hints, whatever action the mayor may have taken was insufficient to prevent the growing numbers of "hucksters vnlissensid.'52 A growing sense of frustration among the leet jurors was evident during the hard years of the 1590s. In 1594, the jurors noted pointedly that the court's previous presentments "notw[i]thstanding" the ranks of offending hucksters continued to grow; and jurors in 1596 and 1601 complained that the "discreets," four townsmen who oversaw the buying and selling of victuals in the

market, were not doing their office.53 The quarter sessions of the town, which had the power to prosecute hucksters, were of little more help than the mayor and his assemblymen. Although a few unlicensed hucksters had been indicted by the 1602 quarter sessions, "still" the leet jurors groused, "there is no redress" of the problem. By 1602, the frequent complaints of the leet finally gained the attention of the mayor and the justices of the peace. According to a note beside the 1602 present ment complaining of the feebleness of the quarter session's efforts, "The Mayor & Justices [agreed] to call those [hucksters and public house keepers] who are not licensed."54

In 1603, the foot-dragging of the mayor, his assembly, and the justices once again stymied the leet's attempt to crack down on unlicensed hucksters. Though the 1603 leet had compiled a list of twenty-eight hucksters with recommendations of who should, and should not, be granted licenses, the jurors the following year found that the mayor, his assembly, and the justices had done nothing to reform the "palpable abuse" of unlicensed huckstering.55 The jurors of 1605 pleaded for

50A point first made by Clark in Working Life of Women, 207.

51Hearnshawand Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 1:65, 76-77.

52Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 1:104.

53Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 2:300, 316, 341. For the duties

of the discreets, see Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 2:54nl.


55SRO, SC 6/1/27, unfoliated; SC 6/1/28, unfoliated; Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet

Records [Southampton], 3:379, 400. The leet court recommended that sixteen of these traders be

granted licenses, and that twelve hucksters not be granted licenses.




the mayor to at least publicly proclaim the previous year's presentment against unlicensed hucksters.56 A sweeping presentment from the same year reveals the depth of the jurors' pessimism that the mayor was in fact willing to address a number of problems, including unlicensed huckstering:

whereas heretofore there hath by manye good presentments made & orders sett downe & establyshed [by the leet jurors and the mayor] tend inge ... to the publicke good ... & weere by the magistraits of this place promised to be effected & put in execucon; [we] doe ... present vnto [the mayor] that wee fynd not anye of thos[e] presentments anye wayes effected neither anye of the said defaults reformed ... w[hi] ch is not onlye a [cause of] great discontentment but a far more greater discouragment vnto vs ... in thes[e] servic[e]s[.]57

This lament signals an almost complete breakdown in the first years of the seven teenth century in relations between the mayor and his assembly and the jurors of the court leet. However prominent in their particular parishes, leet jurors enjoyed little respect from their superiors within Southampton's town government. The frustration of the leet in its dealings with other local authorities casts doubt on the notion that Southampton's town government was able to curtail the commercial activities of hucksters, both licensed and unlicensed.58

The tone of the jurors' presentments in the 1590s and the first decade of the seventeenth century suggests that the conflict between the leet and the town's rulers over the issue of huckstering was a symptom of an especially complacent town government unconcerned with the problems of humble consumers. But there are several reasons to doubt this interpretation. For one, the jurors were often confrontational toward the mayor in their presentments, and this probably hindered them in enlisting his support. Complaints that the discreets failed grossly in their duties may have stung the mayor, who also served as clerk of the market.59 Furthermore, in their 1603 list of fit and unfit hucksters and alehouse keepers, the jurors designated the mayor's undertenant as being unfit to keep an alehouse, a judgment which probably scotched any enthusiasm the mayor had to pursue the leet jurors' proposed reforms.60

Impolitic contentiousness alone cannot explain the failures of the leet, for the mayor and his brethren showed resolve in ensuring the town's food supply during times of crisis. When dearth threatened in April 1608, the mayor and his assembly ordered the staying of a ship owned by one Cornelius, an alderman, before the ship could embark to deliver its corn to London. Still concerned with the price of corn


57Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records [Southampton], 3:432. A clerk's note in the

margin mentions that the leet jurors were unsatisfied with the mayor's lack of energy in pursuing a

range of issues, including the suppressing of victuallers/alehouse keepers and hucksters, the need to

pave the streets, restrictions against undertenants, and the need to repair town houses.

58Compare Mclntosh, Working Women in English Society, 132, 197-98. 5 Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, Lxxxiv.

60SRO, SC 6/1/27, unfoliated, under the list for Holy Rood parish.




several months later, the mayor and his assembly contracted a merchant to obtain and ship rye to the town.61 Controlling the activities of hucksters was probably not a priority of the mayor and the assembly because, in contrast to corn badgers and exporters, hucksters invariably sold their food within the town; hucksters, in com parison to wholesalers, hardly constituted a major threat to the food supply of the town. The town government's focus on ensuring that large-scale shipments of corn reach the town was similar to the efforts of other city governments.62

Were the priorities of the leet at least in tune with the concerns of poor con sumers? Though it is always perilous to argue from a lack of evidence, it is highly suggestive-given the town government's alarm any time crowds committed an affray-that no instances of crowd actions against hucksters can be found in the records of the deliberations of the mayor and his assembly. The poor of the town

must have recognized that it was counterproductive to bully and assault those traders who made their living by selling bread and other victuals to consumers in the town. When confronted, however, by the threat posed by wholesalers intent on exporting corn from the town during times of dearth, humble consumers took aggressive action. Spotting an opportunity after the staying of alderman Corne lius's ship in 1608, several women with the help of the town crier boarded the ship and carried off the corn.63 A similar crowd action against a ship set to export corn from the county occurred in 1662 at Lymington, just outside Southampton.64 Poor consumers, like the town government, seemed to recognize that the activities of wholesalers and exporters-rather than the paltry practices of hucksters-were the most important factor in exacerbating food prices in years of poor harvests.65

Facing an uncooperative town government and a complacent populace, leet jurors resorted to exercising their right to levy fines against forestallers and those who huckstered without license. But the mayor's veto power seems to have dis suaded the leet, despite the vociferousness of its complaints against hucksters, from levying fines frequently. Out of twenty-nine years from 1604 to 1652 from which lists of leet presentments survive, the jurors complained of hucksters in fourteen of their lists, but succeeded in fining hucksters in only seven of those fourteen years.66 Even when fines were levied, they were too small to cripple even

61 Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 1:61-62, 69.

62John Walter and Keith Wrightson, "Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England," Past and Present 71 (1976): 27.

Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southampton, 1:62-63.

64Thomson, Books of Examinations and Depositions, 196.

65Indeed, we have only one clear example of taxation populaire from this period: in 1595,

apprentices of London seized the provisions of Southwark market traders and sold them for reduced

prices: British Library, Lansdowne MS 71, fol. 28r. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century crowds, unlike

their eighteenth-century counterparts, were incensed not so much by high food prices as by the

unwillingness of long-distance corn traders to sell their corn in local markets. Seizures of corn exports

by crowds, unlike demands that traders lower their prices, were common during periods of dearth; see

Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586

1660 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), chap. 2.

66SRO, SC 6/1/28-54. If we include the presentments for the years 1550 to 1603, fines appear to

be even more infrequent. The only instance of fines' being levied against hucksters by the leet for this




the humblest huckster. As the following table illustrates, average amercement amounts in the early seventeenth century, when adjusted for inflation and expressed in terms of prices for a basket consumer of goods in 1604, fluctuated between just 2d. and 9d.67

Fines Levied by the Southampton Court Leet against Hucksters

Year No. of Fines Average Fine Average Fine (inflation adjusted)a 1604 36 3.5d. 3.5d.

1615 18 3.od. 2.0d.

1616 23 9.5d. 7.0d.

1618 7 6.0d. 4.5d.

1619 7 5.5d. 4.5d.

1620 12 6.0d. 5.0d.

1640 21 12.0d. 9.od.

aPence expressed in terms of 1604 prices for a basket of consumer

goods.

Despite the general upward drift of amercement amounts, a huckster who found such infrequent fines onerous enough to quit the trade would have had to be con siderably poorer than the average laborer, who, E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila Hopkins estimate, earned around six to eight pence a day in 1604.68 The fines of the leet were affordable for many a man or married woman who practiced huck stering part time, and even for the many widows who huckstered as their primary occupation. It is doubtful that the sporadic, petty fines levied by this annual leet forced many hucksters from the trade.

Just as striking as the overall weakness of the leet's punishments was its rela tively lenient treatment of female hucksters. In her study of late medieval and early

modern brewsters, Judith Bennett argues that early modern authorities, motivated in part by an intent to constrain the activities of independent women, cracked down on brewsters and female alehouse keepers.69 But patriarchal prejudice is far

period occurred in 1550, in which year the leet amerced at least five unlicensed hucksters 12d., a steep fine relative to the amercements of the seventeenth century: Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, Court Leet

Records [Southampton], 1:6. (The editors mistakenly labeled the 1550 presentments as 1551 present ments; see James, Southampton Sources, 30.) Thus, in the fifty-five annual lists of presentments which

survive from the period of 1550 to 1652, hucksters were presented and fined in eight of those years. 67SRO, SC 6/1/28, unfoliated; SC 6/1/32, fols. 23r-24r; SC 6/1/33, unfoliated; SC 6/1/35, fol. 27v;

SC 6/1/36, unfoliated; SC 6/1/37, fol. 24r; SC 6/1/51, fol. 23v. In weighting average fines to account for

inflation, I have relied on the price index of E. H. Phelps-Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins: "Seven

Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders' Wage-Rates," in Essays in Economic

History, ed. E. M. Cams-Wilson (London: Edward Arnold, 1962), 2:194-96.

Phelps-Brown and Hopkins, "Seven Centuries of Building Wages," 2:170, fig. 1.

69Judith Bennett, Ale, Beer and Brewsters: Women's Work in a Changing World (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996), chap. 6.




from evident in the Southampton leet's presentments against hucksters. As the 1603 list of fit and unfit hucksters underscores, the leet was especially permissive in allowing wives and widows to trade on the streets. Out of eight women pre sented in 1603, seven women, including five widows and two married women, were deemed fit for licenses; only one, widow Hamm, who also ran a victualling house, was deemed unfit for a huckstering license. By contrast, only nine out of twenty male hucksters were granted licenses in 1603.70 Hostility toward female hucksters is also far from evident in the fines the leet levied against male and female street traders. The median fine levied against female traders from 1604 to 1640, again after adjusting for inflation and expressing all fines in terms of 1604 prices, was 3.5d.; the median fine for male traders, after making the same adjust ment, was 4.5d.71 However hostile the leet jurors were to huckstering in general, they were loath to deprive women of one of the few trades they could practice to support themselves and their families.72

This study of hucksters operating in early modern Southampton suggests that huckstering should not be examined exclusively in terms of the experiences of humble working women. Men and women found it worth their time to take to the streets to sell victuals, faggots, coal, and other goods. While many widows unable to take up skilled trades clung to huckstering as a much needed way to earn a liv ing, married women and male householders pursued huckstering as a profitable part-time trade which could supplement other household earnings. Despite its complaints regarding the injustices hucksters perpetrated upon poor consumers, the leet recognized that the minority of Southampton hucksters who were women had to be allowed to trade on the streets in order to supplement their households' resources.

The striking lack of support the Southampton leet jurors had in their attempts to constrain huckstering calls into question conventional notions of the "moral economy" as well. Leet jurors, representative of the comfortable burgesses of the town, resented the marketplace shortages caused by hucksters eager to obtain sup plies from traders before they reached the market. Significantly, the elite governors of the town and the poor were in agreement that corn exporters, those traders who by their activities did not just cause short-term price increases but indeed threat

70SRO, SC 6/1/27, unfoliated.

71SRO, SC 6/1/28, unfoliated; SC 6/1/32, fols. 23r-24r; SC 6/1/33, unfoliated; SC 6/1/35, fol. 27v;

SC 6/1/36, unfoliated; SC 6/1/37, fol. 24r; SC 6/1/51, fol. 23v. The average inflation-adjusted fine is a

less appropriate measure of central tendency than the median, for the average fine of the female

huckster is skewed by three atypically large amercements of female hucksters in 1616 (Allice James

[5s.], Joane Baker [2s.] and widow Groundye [2s.]). Nevertheless, the average inflation-adjusted fine

levied against female hucksters (6d.) versus male hucksters (4.5d.) again indicates a near parity between the amounts of fines against women vis-?-vis men.

72Similar consideration was given to poor widows who ran alehouses; Horrocks, Assembly Books

of Southampton 4:1; see also Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830 (New York:

Longman, 1983), 79.




ened the very food supply of the town, were the most significant threat to the sur vival of the community. However rapacious, hucksters made their living by selling goods to their neighbors; corn badgers did not. As this case study of early modern Southampton suggests, hucksters came from a more diverse social group than has heretofore been recognized, and the moral economy of town elites and humble consumers was more complex and nuanced than has been suspected.

APPENDIX

Male Hucksters Presented before the Southampton Court Leet and Town Assemblya

N es ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~years Prseted Othe Oc uain

Baclynge, Walter 1620

Baker, Thomas 1571 tippler

Barling, Anthony 1640

Barrowe, Domynick 1604

Blashfeild, William 1604

Bull, Henry 1603, 1604

Carpenter, Francis 1616

Cavell, John 1571 tippler

Cheston, Angus 1576

Childerley, Thomas 1603,1604,1616,1620 tippler, victualler

Colls, Thomas 1550

Coobe, Thomas 1616 tippler

Corneford, Thomas 1616 tippler

Courtney, Thomas 1603,1604

Crump, Robert 1616,1620

Crump (Crompl), Thomas 1603,1604 victualler

Cussens, Henry 1615

Davys, Richard 1576

Dawes, Thomson 1648,1652

Dousse, John 1576 joiner

Drynkwatter, Hary 1550

Ecton, Thomas 1604

Edmunds, John 1648

Enoughe (Enufe), John 1603,1604

Fauor, Peter 1603 victualler

Fennell, John 1604

Flemynge, Thomas 1550

Fryer (Frier, Friar), Thomas 1571,1576,1603 tippler, victualler

Gold, Thomas 1571 tippler




Male Hucksters Presented before the Southampton Court Leet and Town Assemblya (Continued)

N mes Ye~~~ars Presente Ote0cuain

Goldington, Thomas 1604

Goldsmith, Thomas 1604

Govin, John 1648

Grannt, Thomas 1604

Greene, William 1609, 1615, 1616 musician, tippler, Greene, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~victualler Grundye (Groundye), John 1604, 1615 tippler

Gylbert, William 1604

Hall, William 1603, 1604

Hallydaye, Roger 1550

Harvie (Harvey, Harvye), Richard 1576, 1603,1615, 616, sawyer, victualler

Heather, Henry 1619

Hellyer, Richard 1615, 1616

Hicks, Robert 1571 tippler

Hills, Edward 1616 tippler

Hinde, Nicholas 1604

Hobbs, Thomas 1640

Howse, William 1648

Israeli, William 1640

James, John 1615 tippler

Johnson, Thomas 1648

Jourdaine (Jurdane), John 1603, 1604, 1616 tippler, victualler

Kawtu (?), Thomas 1615

Lane, Francis 1640

Langmore, John 1640

Lewis, James 1603 victualler

Mallard, Mathew 1604

Martin, James 1640, 1648

Mathew, Joseph 1648

Mawdes, Roger 1615

Mawhalt, Roger 1603

Michell, William 1603, 1604

Milbery, Edward 1648

Mortemer, John 1604

Nettly, Thomas 1616 tippler

Parker, Henry 1603

Pecke (Pyke), Hugh 1618, 1619, 1620




Male Hucksters Presented before the Southampton Court Leet and Town Assemblya (Continued)

N esYer Pented Ohr0cpain

Pee, Anthony 1640

Petevin als. Cooke, Peter 1574

Quayt, Peter 1610

Redding, Edward 1640

Rennett, William 1615,1616

Roff (Roffe), Stephan 1604,1615,1616,1620 tippler

Rolfe, John 1640

Rossen, Symon 1604 victualler

Rowlands, John 1620

Sendall, Nicholus 1571 tippler

Skaine, George 1615

Skinner, William 1603,1604

Smith, Thomas 1603 victualler

Stevens, Richard 1648

Sturgis, Christopher 1604

Sutten, Thomas 1604

Sutton, John 1603

Thornehate, Robert 1615

Tompkins, William 1648

Townsonne, William 1604

Tulle, John 1604,1616 tippler

Turnam (Turneham), Henry 1618,1619

Vibert, John 1604

Vinell, John 1603

Wandrick, Michael 1603

Watts, John 1576 tippler

Williams, Thomas 1576 tippler

Winter, Thomas 1615 tippler

Yong, John 1640

Total: 94

aLeet Presentments: SRO, SC 6/1/2-56; records of the town assembly: Horrocks, Assembly Books of Southamp

ton, 2:71, 100.




Female Hucksters Presented before the Southampton Court Leet and Town Assemblya

Names M~~~aria SttsYasP etd Ote ccptonsli

Baker, Joan widow 1615, 1616

Basell married 1603

Bedlam widow 1576

Bedson, Joane widow 1640

Blanchard widow 1648

Bridges widow 1603

Bridges widow 1604

Carpenter, Rachel 1652

Chest, Joane widow 1615

Commings widow 1603

Cousend, Elizabeth widow 1640

Cowper, Elizabeth 1615

Cumberbatche, Catherine 1616 tippler

Cussud, Joan widow 1648

Daye, Agnes widow 1618,1619,1620

Deane, Elizabeth widow 1616

Dickenson, Elinor 1603,1604 Dominicke (Domynicke), Joane widow 1615,1616,1619 Dunniat widow 1652

Fursbye widow 1618,1619

Goast, Joane widow 1616

Groundye widow 1616 tippler Guilbert widow 1640

Hamm widow 1603 victualler

Hamon widow 1561 tippler

Hatt widow 1620

Head, Margaret widow 1616

Hicks married 1603

Higgins widow 1604

Israel widow 1648

James, Allice 1616 tippler

Jones widow 1603,1604

Knight, Abigail widow 1648

Lane, Joane 1618

Lawrence, Mary widow 1640

Moules widow 1620

Mowdlyne widow 1604




Female Hucksters Presented before the Southampton Court Leet and Town Assemblya (Continued)

Names Marital Status Ye~~~ars.; Pres~ente te cuain

Mugge widow 1604

Parsons, Elizabeth widow 1640

Peache widow 1620

Peale als. Parthrige, Anne widow 1640

Pooel married 1550

Pratt, Marian widow 1615,1616

Prouce, Margaret widow 1640

Rigges widow 1604

Rowland, Marye 1604

Slowe widow 1603, 1604

Smith, Joane widow 1640

Stevens, Jone widow 1640

Stevens, Magdalen widow 1576 tippler

Stones, Maglen 1571 tippler

Tompkins, Elizabeth 1640

Turnam, Anne widow 1640

Vesey widow 1603

Woll widow 1615

Total: 55

aLeet Presentments: SRO, SC 6/1/2-56; records of the town assembly: Horrocks, Assembly Books

of Southampton, 2:71, 100.



Documents

Taking It to the Streets: Hucksters and Huckstering in Early Modern Southampton, circa 1550-1652