Although life in Tudor was ordered in a strict hierarchy, service was common for all classes, and servants were not necessarily the lowest stratum in society. This book looks at the servant life in the Tudor period. It examines relations between servants and their masters, peering into the bedrooms, kitchens and parlours of the ordinary folk.

Although life in Tudor was ordered in a strict hierarchy, service was common for all classes, and servants were not necessarily the lowest stratum in society. This book looks at the servant life in the Tudor period. It examines relations between servants and their masters, peering into the bedrooms, kitchens and parlours of the ordinary folk.

Drawing upon archival material as well as the drama, popular verse and pamphlets, this book reads representations of masters and servants in relation to key Renaissance preoccupations. Apprentices, journeymen, male domestic servants, maidservants and stewards, Burnett argues, were deployed in literary texts to address questions about the exercise of power, social change and the threat of economic upheaval. In this way, writers were instrumental in creating servant 'cultures', and spaces within which forms of political resistance could be realized.

Master and servant acts, the cornerstone of English employment law for more than four hundred years, gave largely unsupervised, inferior magistrates wide discretion over employment relations, including the power to whip, fine, and imprison men, women, and children for breach of private contracts with their employers. The English model was adopted, modified, and reinvented in more than a thousand colonial statutes and ordinances regulating the recruitment, retention, and discipline of workers in shops, mines, and factories; on farms, in forests, and on plantations; and at sea. This collection presents the first integrated comparative account of employment law, its enforcement, and its importance throughout the British Empire. Sweeping in its geographic and temporal scope, this volume tests the relationship between enacted law and enforced law in varied settings, with different social and racial structures, different economies, and different constitutional relationships to Britain. Investigations of the enforcement of master and servant law in England, the British Caribbean, India, Africa, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, and colonial America shed new light on the nature of law and legal institutions, the role of inferior courts in compelling performance, and the definition of "free labor" within a multiracial empire. Contributors: David M. Anderson, St. Antony's College, Oxford Michael Anderson, London School of Economics Jerry Bannister, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia M. K. Banton, National Archives of the United Kingdom, London Martin Chanock, La Trobe University, Australia Paul Craven, York University Juanita De Barros, McMaster University Christopher Frank, University of Manitoba Douglas Hay, York University Prabhu P. Mohapatra, Delhi University, India Christopher Munn, University of Hong Kong Michael Quinlan, University of New South Wales Richard Rathbone, University of Wales, Aberystwyth Christopher Tomlins, American Bar Foundation, Chicago Mary Turner, London University

A new, transformative history – in Tudor times there were Black people living and working in Britain, and they were free ‘This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth.’ David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. The untold stories of the Black Tudors, dazzlingly brought to life by Kaufmann, will transform how we see this most intriguing period of history. *** Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer ‘That rare thing: a book about the 16th century that said something new.’ Evening Standard, Books of the Year ‘Splendid… a cracking contribution to the field.’ Dan Jones, Sunday Times ‘Consistently fascinating, historically invaluable… the narrative is pacy... Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in the same light again.’ Daily Mail

Women in the Tudor age are often overshadowed by their male counterparts. Even those of royalty were deemed inferior to males. while women may have been classed as the inferior gender, women played a vital role in Tudor society. As daughters, mothers and wives they were expected to be obedient to the man of the household, but how effective would those households be without the influence of women? Many opportunities including much formal education and professions were closed to women, their early years spent imitating their mothers before learning to run a household in preparation for marriage. Once married their responsibilities would vary greatly according to their social status and rank. Widowhood left some in vulnerable conditions while for others it enabled them to make a life for themselves and become independent in a largely patriarchal society. Women’s Lives in the Tudor Era aims to look at the roles of women across all backgrounds and how expectations of them differed during the various stages of life.

Alison Sim is a specialist in Tudor housewifery skills, thus the more complete and stimulating overview of life for 16th century women. Many books dealing with this subject tend to give recipes and medicines without comment.

Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy considerably advances existing scholarship on the institution of service in early modern culture and as represented on the early modern stage. With its focus on the homes of the middling sorts, to whom the protagonists of domestic tragedy belong, the book expands our understanding of employer-servant relationships beyond elite and aristocratic circles, the focus of previous studies. Drawing on early modern advice literature, household guides, domestic manuals, sermons, treatises, proverbs, mothers’ legacies, funeral sermons, diaries, letters, and jest books as well as making use of the recent findings by social and cultural historians of early modern England, the book examines the consequences of disordered domesticity for the master-servant relationship. This study nuances the picture of domestic servants constructed by both early modern moralists and modern scholarship, arguing against overarching, reductive narratives. The book argues that the experience of household service as depicted in domestic tragedy, like in real life, was complex and varied and that there was no typical experience of service.

Leading historian Carolyn Steedman offers a fascinating and compelling account of love, life and domestic service in eighteenth-century England. This book, situated in the regional and chronological epicentre of E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, focuses on the relationship between a Church of England clergyman (the Master of the title) and his pregnant maidservant in the late eighteenth century. This case-study of people behaving in ways quite contrary to the standard historical account sheds new light on the much wider historical questions of Anglicanism as social thought, the economic history of the industrial revolution, domestic service, the poor law, literacy, education, and the very making of the English working class. It offers a unique meditation on the relationship between history and literature and will be of interest to scholars and students of industrial England, social and cultural history and English literature.

This fascinating book studies the life and times of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, Henry VIII's dearest sister and his closest companion. Charles rose from being Henry's childhood friend to becoming the Duke of Suffolk; a consummate courtier and diplomat. Mary was always royalty. At first married to the King of France, Mary quickly wed Charles after Louis XII's death in 1515, against her brother's wishes. Their actions could have been construed as treason yet Henry chose to spare their lives. They returned to court and despite their ongoing disagreements throughout the years, especially over the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn, the Tudor Brandons remained Henry's most loyal subjects and perhaps more importantly, his beloved family.