Characterising objections

In the short biographies outlined at the beginning of their depositions, female witnesses were identified by their marital status and male witnesses by their occupation. Married and single women comprised roughly equal proportions of objection-raising witnesses (45 and 39 per cent respectively). But married women represented a slightly lower proportion of objectionable witnesses than single women (35 per cent compared with 45 per cent). Widows made up just 20 per cent of objection-raising witnesses and 16 per cent of objectionable witnesses. Single women were therefore more frequently the target of church court exceptions than their married or widowed counterparts. This statistical analysis therefore echoes the findings of previous scholarship suggesting that young unmarried women’s behaviour was more frequently criticised than that of other social groups.

Both objection-raising and objectionable male witnesses held a broad range of occupations, although two notable differences are apparent. Servants were more frequently among those targeted, while gentlemen were more prominent among those raising objections. However, objection-raising witnesses were not exclusively drawn from the upper circles of society. Husbandmen were the most numerous occupational category in both groups.3 This pattern largely mirrors the occupational structure of early modern rural society. A high proportion of husbandmen is found in the diocese of Bath and Wells court (43 per cent of all stated occupations), where a large amount of the data studied was collected. The other three courts recorded proportions of between 26 and 32 per cent. Yeomen, tailors and weavers were also prominent, demonstrating that the power of raising exception to a witness did not simply lie in the hands of the wealthiest. Interestingly, a small number of objection-raising witnesses were also recorded as objectionable witnesses; tables could easily be turned and those objecting to witnesses could suddenly find themselves on the receiving end, sometimes revealing their own hypocrisy.

The median age of objection-raising witnesses was forty, while those they criticised had a median age of thirty-two.4 Keith Thomas suggests that age was given more precisely for those under the age of twenty. My findings suggest that those in their twenties also gave their ages with precision. See Keith Thomas, ‘Numeracy in Early Modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 37 (1987), 128. Objections were clearly more frequently made against testimonies of the young. But inverse age patterns are found when drilling down to look at the gender of the 155 objectionable witnesses whose ages are stated: sixty-four were women, and around 60 per cent of them were under thirty. By contrast, around 60 per cent of the ninety-one male witnesses were over thirty. Age itself could be raised as an objection to a witness. The vitriolic objections that witnesses levied were littered with words associated with youth, such as ‘boy, ‘girl’, ‘wench’ or simply ‘young’. Paul Griffiths identifies these words as linguistically reflecting transitional states from youth to adulthood.5 Griffiths, Youth and Authority, p. 21. The oldest objectionable witnesses described as ‘young’ were two women and a man all aged thirty. No married person was labelled as ‘young’, reinforcing the importance of marital status in gaining social standing and credibility.

Sometimes objection-raising witnesses hazarded a guess at the age of a witness in order to prove their youth and discredit their testimony. Husbandman John Nayle of Iron Acton in Gloucestershire described Elizabeth Bampton in 1612 as ‘aboute the age of fifteene or sixteene yeares & knoweth not what belongeth to an oath being a simple person’.6 Gloucestershire Archives (hereafter GA), GDR/114, Cressett Cox vs Silvester Nayle (1612). The median age of those identified as ‘young’ was twenty, indicating that these accusations of youth were accurate: indeed, Joanna Tintinye of Moorlinch in Somerset noted in 1606 that James Allyn was ‘scarce xxty [20] yeeres old’. In the brief biography at the beginning of his own testimony, he confirmed that he was twenty years old.7 Somerset Heritage Centre (hereafter SHC), DDCd30 and DDCd38, Margaret Huckbridge vs Agnes Salter (1606). Women were much more frequently the target of age-related character slurs: nineteen of the thirty-one witnesses (61 per cent) for whom youth-related language was used were women. In only one case was old age suggested as a reason to discount someone’s testimony. In 1605, twenty-one-year-old John Arney of Westbury in Somerset described yeoman Richard Hardweech as ‘a hastye forward ould man’. From his own testimony, we know that Richard was sixty years old.8 SHC, DDCd28, John Hardweech vs William Bowlting (1604). There was clearly, then, an age dynamic to taking exception with witnesses in court. Objectionable witnesses were on average younger than those objecting to them and age-related slurs were frequently used to cast doubt on their testimonies.

The key objections against the testimonies of young people that touch on the themes of labour regulation and social control can be broadly grouped into four main categories: 1) criminal or antisocial behaviour; 2) poverty; 3) vagrancy; 4) work. The first category of objection primarily reflects witnesses’ observations of social misbehaviour, whereas the final three relate to economic concerns, although these distinctions are of course not absolute. An accusation of theft against a witness could hint at their economic position (and many of those who were labelled as thieves by counter witnesses were described as poor). But the accusation of theft was also an accusation of immorality and dishonesty, indicating the overlap between these categories. Nonetheless, the categories provide a useful framework to help think about the dual concerns of the Statute of Artificers: labour regulation and social control. They also help us to think about the intersection of the Statute with other legislation, including vagrancy laws and poor laws. Table 8.2 sets out the number of witnesses who were described using terms that fell within these broader categories: 145 witnesses were accused of antisocial behaviour, while 165 were objected to on grounds that we might label ‘economic’ (poverty, vagrancy and work). The following sections explore in detail the objections that fell within these two groupings and what they can tell us about popular attitudes towards the young.