Honesty, worth and gender in early modern England, 1560-1640

Abstract

In January 1600 Beatrice Swynney, the wife of a Cambridge tailor, was produced as a witness in a defamation case brought by the minister of her parish against a fellow parishioner, the baker John Fidling, in the course of which her honesty, and that of many of her neighbours, was brought into question. Walter House, who was a fellow of Queens’ College as well as minister of St Andrew’s parish, complained that John Fidling had denounced him as ‘a scald and scurvy priest… a beast… a Raskall a knave & a troblesome fellowe’. Fidling had also accused House of bringing his parish to ‘such a glameringe & troble as never was before’, and objected that House had made a presentment against ‘one of the honestest men of the parishe’.1 Consequently, according to the allegations against him, Fidling had wished ‘a home plague’ upon House to ‘fetche him out of the parishe’, adding ‘the devill brought him into the parishe & his dame [will] fetch him out’, before declaring that ‘I will never turne my tonge to my tayle for such a Jack as he is.’2.