How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life by Goodman Ruth

Author:Goodman, Ruth [Goodman, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2016-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Painters

Tradesmen and craftsmen seem at first glance to have had very different working lives from those on the land, and some of them did. But there was also a significant area of overlap. Between 1560 and 1590 in the county of Essex, eight men described themselves as painters in their wills. Of these, six left bequests of farmland. Being a painter can only have been a part-time occupation for many, something that set them apart from their purely agricultural neighbours, but they would still have had much experience of the plough.

This mixing of craft and farm was a very common one, spreading financial risk for those concerned. In the Ipswich town records there is a clue as to why this was so important. The year 1597 was particularly hard: harvests had been poor for the previous two years and as the summer approached it was clear that, for a third year in a row, grain was going to be in short supply once again. Hunger was stalking the streets, as it had not done for over a generation. Robert Halle was a painter by trade; he had no land and was thus a full-time craftsman. The census of the poor that the town carried out that year included Robert Halle’s name and recorded that he was not earning anything at all. In a time of economic hardship few people were willing or able to have their house painted, and work had dried up for Robert. Many of those listed in the census of the poor had developed family strategies for bringing in a little income, with wives and children knitting, spinning or taking in washing. Robert’s wife and six children were not bringing in anything, however. The chances are that this poverty was a new thing for the Halle family. They had been comfortably off, a respectable urban family, and may have had servants and apprentices; now, however, there was nothing but a meagre and demeaning eighteen pence per week from the parish and a note in the record that spinning wheels and wool cards ought to be provided for them so that they could begin to support themselves.

Across the other side of the country in Chester, another painter was riding out the economic crisis with more success. Thomas Chaloner was a member of the Company of Painter-Stainers, Glaziers, Embroiderers and Stationers of that city. He, too, was a full-time craftsman, but one whose clientele had more of a buffer against the vagaries of the economy and the weather. He had served his apprenticeship within the guild and in 1584 had been made a free man of the city and a full member of the guild. In his turn he took on the young Randle Holme, second son of a well-to-do blacksmith, as an apprentice. Thomas specialized in heraldic painting, served as an ad hoc deputy to the College of Arms in 1591, and was eventually formally appointed to the role in 1598. Drawing up and accurately painting coats of

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