Kaleidoscope 7.1., Katherine Krick, “Review of Going to Market: Women, Trade and Social
Relations in Early Modern English Towns, c.1550-1650 by David Pennington”
Volume 7, no. 1, 2016
Review of Going to Market: Women, Trade and Social Relations
in Early Modern English Towns, c.1550-1650 by David Pennington
KATHERINE KRICK
This recent addition to Ashgate’s ‘History of Retailing and Consumption’ series offers a glimpse into
an oft-neglected part of English commercial history. David Pennington discusses the influence of women
on the trading communities of early modern England, re-evaluating their contribution to market forces in
light of court records and popular ballads.
Pennington sets out to reconsider how women participated in trade, focussing on the ways in which
women could participate by looking at the statements by and rulings on women by local courts. The book
argues that women played a far more subtle and important role in the functioning of town markets than has
been previously understood. The premise of this book is very interesting but it reads as a reworked doctoral
thesis more than anything. The organisation is inconsistent; the introduction does not offer an overall
structure for the book and the first and seventh chapters fail to highlight what is forthcoming in the
following chapter as he does in the rest of the chapters (to the great aid to the reader).
Pennington’s introduction does a decent job of setting out what the previous literature has explained
concerning women’s roles in trade. He also examines the pitfalls of his sources but fails to offer any sort of
direction for how the argument will progress through the book. The second chapter is spent examining
popular ballads and how they have been used to portray women in trade. While this was a useful
description of the literature, it did not warrant a full separate chapter. At the end, he acknowledges this
material did not represent the reality of the situation and focusses on London, but as he also says he does
not want to focus his book on London, this could have been folded into his introduction in fewer words.
The most helpful thing that Pennington does is foreshadow the argument of the succeeding chapter at the
end of Chapter Two.
Chapters Three and Four summarize some of the ways in which women participated in trade.
Chapter Three looks into women’s roles as extensions of their households into the marketplace.
In particular, he picks up on the theme that ‘middle class’ households (i.e. neither the wealthy merchants
nor the poverty-stricken) relied on women doing more than just housework. His sources are ‘compelling
incidental evidence that wives often operated as traders for their husbands’, adding nuance to
the conclusion that women were useful as their husband’s agents or in taking over their husband’s trade
when widowed. Chapter Four examines more female opportunities outside of the marketplace. ‘Women, so
the current consensus holds, pursued the types of commercial activities men found to be too little paying
to pursue.’ Pennington disputes this by offering examples of where men and women participated in the
same commercial fields. The rest of the chapter focuses on the role women played in acting as middlemen
or second-hand retailers. More interestingly, Pennington discusses the possible role these women placed
as fences for stolen goods. However, once again, he only gives specific examples to arguments already
made. These two chapters present interesting material but are little more than summaries of previous
scholarship.
Reassessments of old arguments and challenges to the status quo of this area of research finally
arrive in Chapters Five, Six, and Seven. Chapter Five discusses how town authorities put restrictions on
women. Specifically, Pennington examines whether restrictions were gender related or due to other factors.
The major conclusion, which is more nuanced than in previous scholarship, is that women were allowed to
trade so long as their activity did not harm the household or the general economic stability of the town
where the woman was based. Chapter Six seriously challenges previous interpretations of the material.
In this chapter, Pennington reviews the sexual insults made against women in legal proceedings. Typically,
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Kaleidoscope 7.1., Katherine Krick, “Review of Going to Market: Women, Trade and Social
Relations in Early Modern English Towns, c.1550-1650 by David Pennington”
these insults have been interpreted as being made because women were operating in the public sphere.
However, Pennington offers a different nuance to the argument – the insults were more commonly made
when an economic dispute degenerated into name-calling. He interprets it as being the case that these
insults were more offensive because they impugned a woman’s ability to maintain good trade relations
rather than it being the issue of sexual honesty. While the latter was important, if it did not affect one’s
trading capabilities, it was not believed to be as offensive. Chapter Seven investigates how ‘Christian charity’
and economic activity fitted together. Again, this is a valuable rethink of the concept – most interpretations
offer that charity was a common activity related to Christian values with no other benefits other than those
that were spiritual and ‘women from plebeian and middling households were amongst the firmest
supporters of the values of neighborly charity and Christian love’. Pennington emphasises that, in reality,
the virtue of charity was an extension of economic well-being. On one hand, it presupposed that if one’s
own family fell onto hard times, those who were prosperous would help them back. On the other,
it illustrated to the world that one’s family was sufficiently provided for, was economically prosperous
enough, to offer such help. This chapter ended with a good summation of the argument but failed to signal
what is coming in the next chapter as the previous chapters had been doing.
Chapters Eight and Nine examine previous arguments of how women’s words affected their
relationships and standing. Chapter Eight looks at how women affected each other’s reputations. In
particular, it examines how in court women’s words could make or break both male and female
reputations. This chapter returns to signalling what will be discussed in the next chapter. Chapter Nine
re-evaluates women’s roles in food riots in light of the new interpretations of their words. Pennington
discusses that women were protesting not just that there were food shortages but their usual economic
sources were being trodden upon. Both of these chapters are interesting, but the conclusions are tenuous
and the evidence weak. Chapter Ten concludes the book with a review of how Pennington’s material has
resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the economic role of women.
The book is generally well laid-out, formatted, and edited. However, two issues arise from the source
material used. Firstly, the introduction, which discusses why the sources used were chosen, makes
no mention of the Oxford court records though they are heavily relied upon throughout the book. Secondly,
there is a fairly large quantity of material used that postdates 1650. The number of cases discussed from
the 1670s and 1690s implies that the title ought to have covered c.1550-1700. The titles of the chapters
are generally apt, with the exception of Chapter Six ‘Women, Commerce, and Female Reputation’ and
Chapter Nine ‘Women, Protest, and Marketplace Politics’, neither of which are as explicit as the other
chapter titles. There were minimal typographical errors, the bibliography appears complete, and the index
seems to include all relevant entries. Additionally, the book uses footnotes rather than endnotes, which is
helpful in not having to keep two sets of pages open at once. The reader would have been better served by
the consistent use of sign-posting to show how the argument was meant to progress. But overall, the
material of this book was interesting, especially where new arguments were made, despite the
organisational inconsistencies. Hopefully, it will inspire further research on the role of women in trade.
Katherine Krick
History Department
Durham University
Katherine Krick is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Durham University. Her thesis
looks at the production and content of the 1549 edition of the Book of Common Prayer in relation to
the earlier service books of the Church of England. She compare the details between the method of
production and the content of the books to see what elements are similar and examine the possible
reasons for the similarities.
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