17
Lies Vervaet
In search of a golden age
The demographic catastrophe of the Black Death in the second half of the fourteenth century caused a severe shortage of labour. Although there has been fundamental agreement that the working activities of medieval women before the plague were not restricted to housework or family care, some scholars have emphasized the high participation of women in the labour market between c. 1350 and c. 1500. They argue that the shortage of male workers enabled women to find employment in jobs that had earlier been the preserve of men.1 Moreover, the postplague labour shortage is thought to have led to somewhat greater wage equality between the sexes. According to S. Penn, in English agriculture women often even received wages equal to men’s.2 The demographic catastrophe also resulted in an abundance of agricultural land after 1348–50, which is thought to have expanded the opportunities for female landholding.3 This supposed golden age was a short-lived era, since the economic position of women would come under increased pressure from the sixteenth century onward.4 However, for the Northern Low Countries researchers have harshly disputed the deteriorating conditions in the early modern period following the supposedly brief golden age.5
The idea of a golden age has been challenged. S. Bardsley has rejected the equal pay idea for the late medieval English countryside. She argues that men only received the same pay as women when they were young, old or in some other way disabled. Healthy adult men were always paid more than healthy adult women.6 According to J. Bennett, women’s work was always low-skilled, low-status and low-paid. Dominating patriarchal prejudices devaluated women’s work in comparison to men’s.7 The same patriarchal structures restrained English women to control more land in the decades following the Black Death, according to S. Bardsley. The heavily gendered nature of landholding resulted in shifting inheritance practices so that few women continued to hold the same total area as before.8 S. Ogilvie points to the institutional restraints – caused, among other things, by guild pressure or community norms, for women on the preindustrial labour market in Germany. She argues that gender-specific work patterns must be regarded as arising from individual decisions about how to use one’s time, within the framework of existing constraints, including technology, cultural norms and institutions.9
Recently, the golden age idea has reemerged in debates about economic development and the origin of modern marriage patterns. According to T. De Moor and J. L. van Zanden, the higher participation and remuneration of women in the labour market in the post-Black Death period in Northwestern Europe resulted in their emancipation. By working as servants for several years, women could save some money. Among other things, this should have resulted in marriages based on consensus, which in turn, via different processes, stimulated economic growth.10 This challenging hypothesis has restimulated debate on the economic opportunities of women. Scholars have even recently linked the history of women’s labour-force participation with economic growth.11
However, the debate about women’s economic opportunities in the late medieval rural world is limited by a number of problems. Firstly, the debate is chiefly considered from the perspective of female wage labour. Additionally, historians sometimes have focused too much on the bare wages of women and on a national level, bringing together data from various places and times, for instance, to reconstruct national wage series. To assess the importance of wage labour for women, aspects such as the frequency and the type of employment and the category of working women, according to marital status or to social group, should be considered. Because of the emphasis on wage labour, other additional sources of income, such as cultivating land, working in rural industries or activities on the credit market, have received too little attention. Secondly, the debate is heavily based on the English experience. England was severely struck by the plague, so that after its initial visitation and recurrences, by the 1370s the population had been halved. In other regions, the impact of the Black Death was less straightforward.12 The question then is how these varying conditions may have impacted differently on women’s economic opportunities.
In order to widen the scope, I focus on the economic opportunities for women in late medieval Flanders. In this county, scholars have focused on the activities of urban women. They have demonstrated that in the large blooming Flemish cities, women were heavily involved in the management and practice of their husbands’ trades, were active as market sellers and invested and managed their own property without male representatives, in spite of the dominance of numerous guilds of economic life.13 In the Flemish countryside, however, guilds played only a minor role and labour legislation only arose in the second half of the sixteenth century.14 Consequently, working women acted within a rather free and competitive wage market. Moreover, Flemish women enjoyed more fundamental legal and inheritance rights there than in other European regions. For instance, daughters received the same proportion of the inheritance as sons.15 So, at least in theory, women in this region experienced less normative and institutional restrictions than, for instance, in medieval England or in early modern Germany. Remarkably, the economic activities of women on the late medieval Flemish countryside, and by extension the preindustrial rural Low Countries, has rather been neglected.16
I will focus on women’s experiences on a regional and local level. For two decades, social and economic historians have argued for a more regional scope in historiography, since economic development principally took place at a regional scale.17 Moreover, according to gender historians such as J. Bennett and A. Schmidt, gathering new empirical evidence from a regional or local perspective is needed to thoroughly understand the full range of women’s experiences.18 Secondly, focusing on a local level enables us to observe all possible sources of income of women, not only wage labour. Additionally, it allows us to fully take into account the local rural economy, which determined to a certain degree the economic possibilities of women. These possibilities were evidently also shaped by customs, laws, political institutions and religious teachings.19 I will discuss the various economic possibilities for women in the village of Zuienkerke in the first half of the fifteenth century. Before doing so, I briefly introduce the village and its inhabitants.
Zuienkerke in coastal Flanders
The village of Zuienkerke is situated in the rich clay polders north of the city of Bruges. Although human presence and exploitation of the wetlands can be attested in the seventh and eighth century, the region was only enduring embanked by the end of the tenth century. Consequently, land use changed from wetlands to intensive arable farming.20 Parishes were founded especially during the eleventh century. The parish of Zuienkerke did not fully overlap with the Ambacht of Zuienkerke, one of the administrative units of the Franc the Bruges, the large rural district around the city of Bruges.21 At the end of the eighteenth century, the village of Zuienkerke had a surface of 1,589 hectares.22 Some smaller enclaves of the clerical seigniory of the provost of the church of St. Donaas of Bruges were situated on the territory of medieval Zuienkerke.23 Most importantly, Zuienkerke is closely connected with St. John’s Hospital of Bruges because this major urban landlord owned several large farms and numerous small plots of land in the area. However, its tenants were not obliged to perform servile dues.24 Unfree labour indeed had been insignificant in Flanders from the high Middle Ages onward.25
Based on a tax list of 1425, the Ambacht of Zuienkerke counted approximately 1,133 inhabitants. However, in the following century, this number markedly decreased. In 1527, the population was estimated at approximately 450 souls.26 Unfortunately, local or even regional estimations about the population losses caused by the Black Death in the second half of the fourteenth century are lacking. For the Southern Low Countries, historians have recently argued that the Black Death had a more severe impact than once believed. The outbreak, now estimated at a loss of 30% of the population, was followed by recurrent serious plagues throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.27 While the impact of these echo-epidemics for Zuienkerke remains unclear, the striking population decrease was undoubtedly also due to structural changes of the economy.
Indeed, during the late Middle Ages and sixteenth century, the part of the county of Flanders bordering the North Sea – coastal Flanders – underwent fundamental social and economic changes. Around 1300, small freehold peasants, cultivating no more than one to three hectares of arable land, dominated rural society. For example, the numerous tenants of St. John’s hospital paid a customary rent for plots encompassing by average 0.50 to 1 hectares in Zuienkerke and surrounding villages. Even plots less than 0.50 hectares were common.28 Those peasants combined arable farming with protoindustrial activities such as peat digging, wool processing, salt making or fishing. Gradually those smallholders lost their properties to urban dwellers and (ecclesiastical) institutional landowners. The new landowners leased their lands under competitive conditions for short terms. By the middle of the sixteenth century, large commercial tenant farmers dominated rural society.29 In Zuienkerke, farms encompassed approximately twenty to fifty hectares of land in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth century.30
Consequently, the first half of the fifteenth century, the period under consideration, was a turbulent period in the economic, social and demographic sphere. Evidently, the question arises: what impact did this have on the economic opportunities for women? As mentioned, women on the medieval Flemish countryside have been neglected until now. For the coastal area, this is partly due to the limited presence of manors, which institution generated early and extremely rich sources in other regions or countries.31 Moreover, most large farms, making use of wage labour, were leased out here rather early, from the fourteenth century onward. Detailed account books from landlords are almost completely lacking for the late medieval period and sixteenth century. Fortunately, recently some highly informative administrative sources have been discovered for the area north of Bruges, which allow us to get some insight on the economic life of the region. Several sources are related to the most important landlord, St. John’s Hospital of Bruges, while others are related to the local government. For Flanders, these kinds of sources have so far remained untouched by scholars using a gendered perspective. Hence, I will intensively discuss the possibilities of these unexplored sources in the debate about the economic opportunities of rural women.
Single, married and widowed women
For most women living in the village of Zuienkerke in the first half of the fifteenth century, we can assume they were earning a living in close collaboration with their husband or with their parents and siblings. According to B. Hanawalt, the peasant household should be considered as an economic unit, husband and wife each contributing their separate skills and their separate domains of labor.32 The integral role of female labour to a peasant holding is demonstrated by some late medieval English customs, where male tenants had to render a double rent to the lord if they were married.33 The tasks connected to a peasant holding were all gendered according to J. Whittle. Some were tightly restricted to either men or women, others showed a preponderance of one gender or the other, while other activities were mixed. The responsibilities of wives went further than childcare and housework. Raising poultry, pigs, fruit and vegetables was typically done by women, in addition to dairying and spinning.34 The items they produced could be sold, of which the cash return, according to P. J. P. Goldberg, may have afforded women some independence of action and a very real degree of economic clout within the familial economy.35
Obviously, not all women lived in economic partnership with their husbands, fathers or relatives. A large group of women became or remained single. The most appropriate source to present an image of the importance of single women in society is taxation. For rural Flanders, very few late medieval lists have survived.36 Fortunately and quite exceptionally, for several Ambachten of the Franc de Bruges, nominative tax lists have been preserved from the beginning of the fifteenth century onward.37 In these lists, the duties ordered by the Franc de Bruges’ government or ordered by the county government were divided among all the taxpayers.38 In the Franc de Bruges, the units of division were not the classic hearths, or the classic heads, but “indivisible properties”. In practice, the bearers of an indivisible property were in most cases nuclear families. However, also orphans, siblings or single people such as widows appeared as units. Historians have discussed which criteria were used to estimate the size of indivisible properties. Recently, it has become clear that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the total cultivated acreage foremost determined the tax contribution. Also other forms of income were also likely charged. Consequently, these tax registers cannot be considered as wealth tax, but rather as income tax.39
A tax list is preserved for 1425 for the Ambacht of Zuienkerke.40 In comparison to other preserved lists, the number of fiscal exemptions, in particular primarily for impoverished widows or orphans, was extremely limited.41 It is probable that the list represents nearly all local inhabitants. Zuienkerke contained 277 different units of taxpayers in 1425. The contribution per taxpayer was not expressed in money, but in multiples or in fractions of one particular basic unit, the so-called lood. The least-wealthiest taxpayer had to contribute 1/8 of a lood, while the wealthiest contributed 15/8 lood. This implied that the income of the latter was considered fifteenth times higher than the first one. Zuienkerke was characterized by an outspoken fiscal inequality: 72.20% of all taxpayers only contributed 1/8 or 2/8 lood, while only 4.69% contributed more than 8/8 lood (see Table 17.2). However, in comparison to the surrounding villages, this inequality was not unusual.42
Which position did women take in this fiscal story? In most cases, the person responsible for the taxable indivisible property was a man, typically considered as the head of the household. For the listed women, we can accept that they were heading their own household at that time. Most likely, they were single, because customs entailed that husbands controlled and managed the communal property of a married couple. Approximately one-sixth of the households in Zuienkerke (forty-four cases, 15.88%) was headed by a woman in 1425 (see Table 17.1). This proportion markedly corresponds with the figures of the city of Bruges in 1394–96, where 14.2% of the households was female. Similar to the figures for the small town of Eeklo and the hamlet Balgerhoeke of 1399, most of the female taxpayers were widows (11.55%).43 At least one-third of these widows lived together with their children; for instance, Ampluenie, widow of Michiel Wittebaers and their heirs. These women, whose names were for the most part given, were always identified in reference to their deceased husband, such as Agneese, widow of Pieter filius Diederix. Although historians have stressed that not every daughter or every woman without the adage “wife of” or “widow of” can be considered as single, most likely a small number of the Zuienkerke women (twelve cases, 4.33%) was never married.44 In a fiscal system centered on male-headed households, they bore a reference to their father, such as Barbele daughter of Lievin, son of Hendrix or because they bore no reference at all, such as Catheline Weyds or Maroye Sceluwaerts.45 Unmarried women, living alone or possibly with their illegitimate children, were rather a rare phenomenon in Zuienkerke. However, it is possible that this particular group of women was larger, but not registered in the 1425 tax list. Recently, J. Bennett demonstrated that large groups of unmarried, poor and landless persons wandered around the countryside in late medieval England and that these persons were often female.46
|
Table 17.1 Number and percentage of women in the 1425 tax list of the Ambacht of Zuienkerke |
||
|
Number |
% |
|
|
Widows without children |
21 |
7.58 |
|
Widows with children |
11 |
3.97 |
|
Daughters |
8 |
2.89 |
|
No related women |
4 |
1.44 |
|
Total women |
44 |
15.88 |
|
Total taxpayers |
277 |
100 |
Source: See State Archives of Bruges, Bundels van het Brugse Vrije, 271: zetting ambacht Zuienkerke, 1425.
Where can we place the female taxpayers in the social ladder of the village? Table 17.2 makes clear that the women belonged to the less-fortunate inhabitants. While three-fourths of all taxpayers contributed less than a quarter of a lood, more than 80% of women belonged to this group. Women heading a household were less represented among the middling groups and not at all among the wealthiest inhabitants. Especially widows with children and the women for which we assume they were never married were much poorer than the average inhabitant. This all leads to the question of how these unmarried or widowed women could earn a living.
|
Table 17.2 Position of the female taxpayers in the 1425 tax list of the Ambacht of Zuienkerke |
||
|
Contribution in the taxation (number of loden) |
Number of taxable indivisible properties (%) |
Number of female indivisible properties (%) |
|
0.125 |
50.54 |
61.36 |
|
0.25 |
21.66 |
20.45 |
|
0.375 |
6.86 |
4.55 |
|
0.5 |
6.5 |
4.55 |
|
0.625 |
1.44 |
0.00 |
|
0.75 |
5.42 |
2.27 |
|
0.875 |
2.89 |
2.27 |
|
1 |
2.17 |
4.55 |
|
1.125 |
0.72 |
0.00 |
|
1.25 |
1.08 |
0.00 |
|
1.375 |
0.36 |
0.00 |
|
1.875 |
0.36 |
0.00 |
Managing land
In late medieval rural Europe, land remained the foremost source of income. Lives were profoundly shaped by the availability and exploitation of land. In England, men’s and women’s rights to land were not equal. Sons were preferred over daughters in the inheritance of land. Marriage removed rights of property ownership from women and placed them in the hands of their husbands. As a consequence, the proportion of land held by women was rather low in late medieval English manors, varying according to manor and individual lordship between c. 5% and 20%.47 Moreover, despite demographic shocks caused by the Black Death, and fundamental economic changes such as the end of serfdom, increased landlessness and the commercialization of rural economy, female (customary) landholding remained markedly stable between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries in England.48 As mentioned in the introduction, in the county of Flanders, women enjoyed favorable inheritance rights, acquiring the same proportions as their brothers.49 Unmarried women had the competence to act.50 In the fourteenth-century Flemish blooming cities, married women were legally capable, managing their affairs and estates without male interference.51 Widows also enjoyed favorable marital property customs, retaining strong rights over the communal property. In the Franc de Bruges, the surviving spouse inherited half of the communal property, the heirs the other half.52 Moreover, notwithstanding minimal local differences, the surviving spouse received a lifetime usufruct of parts of the inheritance of the heirs, regardless of their sex.53 So, at least in theory, single or widowed women could hold and manage land independently.
The question arises whether these extensive inheritance and legal rights resulted in larger economic possibilities than, for instance, in late medieval England. To assess the importance of landholding by women, one particular source stands out in coastal Flanders, namely the water board registers. Every landowner, in practice the freeholders and the customary holders, contributed financially to the maintenance of dikes and roads, according to the surface owned. To be able to levy the taxes, all owners were enumerated in the water board registers of the administrative and fiscal districts, called wateringen in the region north of Bruges. For the Blankenbergse Watering, the area in which the largest part of the village of Zuienkerke was situated, the oldest extensive water board register dates from 1456.54 An analysis of the most important parts belonging to Zuienkerke shows an uneven distribution of the property rights.55 More than 70% of all landowners (144 different owners in total) possessed less than five hectares of land, while 15% possessed ten hectares and more. In the latter group, we find owners of thirty to eighty hectares. Among those large landowners, we especially discover rich urban dwellers, such as Jan Metteneye, and urban ecclesiastical organizations, such as the abbey of Eekhout, the abbey of St. Clara and, of course, St. John’s Hospital of Bruges. This pattern does not surprise, because the importance of urban land ownership was recently demonstrated. In the sixteenth century, 20% to 40% of all the land of the Franc de Bruges was in the hands of Bruges citizens and another 15% in the hands of Bruges ecclesiastical organizations.56 Already in 1456, more than one-third (35%) of the land in the Blankenbergse Watering was owned by organizations, not only from Bruges, but also local-based organizations, such as the church of Zuienkerke, the poor table of Zuienkerke and the churches of neighboring villages. Accordingly, it is hardly surprising that female landholders had rather a marginal position. The sixteen landholding women of Zuienkerke owned together approximately 9% of the land. Moreover, all land-owning women were widows, except for one noble women, who was seemingly single. The widows, in contrast to the 1425 tax register, were only mentioned in relation to their delayed husband, such as the widow of Jacob Zwartvaghere. Approximately one-third of the widows owned the land together with their children, such as the widow and heirs of Pieter Plante. That widows retained rights on the land is clearly demonstrated by the Cods family. The widow of Stevin Cods owned at least 5.13 hectares of land in the Blankenbergse Watering, while her son (or stepson) owned at least 0.61 hectares in the same area. Considering the owned acreage or the type of land, no outspoken differences can be observed between female and male holders. Usually, a landholder north of Bruges managed between two and three hectares of land.
Despite the differences in inheritance and marital rights, the observed pattern of female landholding markedly corresponds to the findings of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Norfolk. Here similarly women rarely made up more than 10% of the landholders on any one manor. Almost all landholding women were widows. Finally, also the pattern of landholding (type, surface, etc.) was not different between the sexes in late medieval Norfolk.57 The lack of single and married women as landholders in the Blankenbergse Watering was due to a number of reasons. It is probable that daughters received their inheritance at marriage, as was the practice in late medieval Norfolk.58 Married women retained the property rights on their inherited land, but this land was considered as belonging to the marital unit and thus controlled and managed by the male spouse. Hence, in administrative sources, the husband, as head of the household and responsible taxpayer, was registered as the landholder. In later sources such as the water board register of the Blankenbergse Watering of 1554–60, it was mentioned that the land originated from the inheritance of the wife, by the words causa uxoris.59 Secondly, J. Whittle has argued that the demand for land also affected female landholding. When land was difficult to acquire, sons were increasingly favoured over widows in succession.60 The land market in fifteenth-century coastal Flanders was a closed market. Nearly half of the land in the studied area was in the hands of Bruges well-off citizens and ecclesiastical organizations. For peasants, it became difficult to gain access to land, whether free or customary. It is indicative that only eleven of the 127 distinguished surnames in the 1425 tax register appeared as landholders’ surnames in the 1456 water board register. This small proportion cannot be solely explained by the time gap of thirty years, but by the nearly landlessness of numerous inhabitants of Zuienkerke. In this situation we can suppose that, when land became available in a peasant family, this land was given to a son to enable him to start a farm.61 Finally, as J. Whittle and S. Bardsley have argued, we can similarly point to the misogynist nature of cultural values, that men were more suitable property-holders than women, amongst others.
Single or widowed women obviously had rather few opportunities to make a living by managing and cultivating their own land in Zuienkerke around 1450. However, an increasing part of the land in coastal Flanders was given in short-term leases in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. By the middle of the sixteenth century, approximately 90% of all the land was leased out.62 In Zuienkerke, St. John’s hospital, for instance, leased out at least 160 hectares land to local inhabitants around 1440. Most of the land was given in nine-year contracts. The impact this new type of landholding had on women has never been systematically addressed. Some historians have assumed that as the old forms of tenures were eroded in favour of leasehold, widows’ access to land decreased all over England.63 For the Franc of Bruges, customary law did not contain explicit restrictions for women to lease land. Conversely, sixteenth-century codified customary law explicitly mentioned that the widow and the heirs of a deceased tenant had the right to continue the agreed contract.64 As always, theory differed from practice. We can retrace female leaseholders in extensive land registers of landlords, which give an enumeration of all the plots of land, its surfaces and locations and, more importantly, its current tenants. In these sources, we find the contractual leaseholders, which differ sometimes from the actual leaseholders.65 For the individuals who appeared in the landlords’ accounts and who annually delivered the rent, we can assume they were the actual leaseholders, cultivating the land. If these individuals were female, we can assume these women were actually “working the land”, whether or not with the help of labourers.66 An analysis of both types of sources preserved for St. John’s Hospital considering Zuienkerke and surroundings gives the same result: women seldom rented a plot of land in the first half of the fifteenth century.67 Among St. John’s short-term leaseholders in Zuienkerke, only between 6% and 18% were female in the first half of the fifteenth century. However, there is a marked difference between different types of leasehold: on the one hand large, complex holdings and on the other hand small, separate plots of land only functioning as components of a holding. Women were seldom registered as tenants of large, complex holdings of St. John’s. However, some marginal notes in the landlord’s accounts indicate that possibly widows managed the farm in the period between the death of their husband and the arrival of a new male tenant. The rent was sometimes paid by an unknown individual, who later appears to be the next tenant. This tenant was probably the new husband of the widow, a pattern of succession that regularly occurred in the area in the sixteenth century. The former, deceased tenant was still registered as official tenant, because his widow completed the term while she was already remarried.68 Remarkably, these findings did not count for the small plots of land. Several women hired small parcels of St. John’s: five of twenty-eight individual tenants in the village of Zuienkerke were female, according to the land register of 1420 (18%). However, three of the five women rented tiny plots with houses, but such houses were not common in the area. Moreover, all women in the land register were widows. The question is whether they had just completed the agreed term, as was stipulated by customary law, or were they able to negotiate lease contracts without male interference. To answer this question, serial sources are necessary. An analysis of the annual rent payments to St. John’s shows that several widows indeed succeeded their husband as actual leaseholder. They cultivated the small plots of land until the contract expired, just as customary law prescribed. Katheline, widow of Arnout de Brune, for instance, leased a plot of land from at latest 1443 until 1449. Then she was succeeded by another man. However, in the villages surrounding Zuienkerke, several widows entered a new contract with St. John’s when the term, once agreed upon with their husband, expired. For example, Margriete, the widow of Joos filius Reinaard Suchts, rented a half hectare-plot in 1443. The contract for this plot started in 1440. In 1453, Margriete was still paying the rent for the same plot of land, while contracts never lasted for more than nine years.69 The widows were almost never succeeded by their sons. This implied that these women cultivated the land to earn a living for themselves and for their family and not in the first place to offer their heirs prospects to the lease market of St. John’s.
In fifteenth-century Zuienkerke, single unmarried women could never lease land. Widows, however, could remain on small, separated plots of land once rented together with their husband. Moreover, widows could enter for the same plot of land a new contract with landlords as St. John’s. Apparently, only widows were considered able to cultivate land independently, but only small plots of land, and most likely, small farms. A widow at the head of a large holding was not accepted in this period, possibly due to the workload. Landlords likely expected that (widowed) women could not gather and command the labour needed to cultivate the land, especially during the harvest season.70 Male, mobile day-labourers may not have respected the widow or refused to carry out her orders.
Despite the advantageous juridical situation of Flemish women, in fifteenth-century Zuienkerke the managing and/or cultivation of land, whether freehold land, customary land or lease land, was strictly reserved for married couples and possibly single men.71 Women only became independent landholders or leaseholders when widowed. Still, the proportion of widows was rather low. Due to the increasing importance of nonlocal landowners on the land market, most likely sons were preferred over widows in the family inheritance strategy of locals. Widows were also apparently considered as unsuitable for managing larger holdings such as the farms of St. John’s Hospital of Bruges.
Wage labour on large farms
Since landholding, whether free or customary, was predominantly reserved for a small group of wealthy widows and since lease holding was mostly limited to the widows of deceased tenants – and this moreover only for tiny plots of land – the single women and the widows without landed resources had to look for other sources of income.
One possibility was working for a wage, whether paid in cash or in goods, on large farms. Despite the growing attention for female paid employment, still little is known about the actual work conditions. Information relating to the tasks performed, the wages paid and the employment patterns in comparison to men is scarce for the rural late medieval world. For Flanders, the most obvious reason is that most large farms, which made extensive use of wage labour, were leased out from the fourteenth century onward.72 From the moment of leasing, landlords only registered the delivered rents in account books. Handbooks of (tenant) farmers are extremely rare. However, we know that some institutional landowners decided not to lease out all of their lands, but to keep at least a part under direct exploitation. Evidence of labour organization was registered in these landlords’ administration.
In Zuienkerke, women could find employment on the large (tenant) farms. We do not have figures for the first half of the fifteenth century, but in the sixteenth century, the village counted at least seventeen extensive holdings.73 The most renowned holding was Scueringhe farm, encompassing approximately 200 hectares of land. Unlike the other large holdings of the village, Scueringhe farm was directly exploited by the owner, St. John’s Hospital of Bruges. Fortunately, some detailed annual accounts are preserved for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but rather fragmentarily. Moreover, the information varies from just a single sum for all labour to a nominative list of workers, their performed tasks and their remuneration. Nevertheless, these accounts are a unique source and shed light on rural wage labor, which is not available for the abundant leased out farms in the region.74 With its size, Scueringhe was probably one of the largest holdings of coastal Flanders. Consequently, the friars of St. John’s were the most important employers of the region. In 1445, for instance, no less than 165 individuals received a wage by working at least temporarily at Scueringhe farm.
As on other well-known large holdings of preindustrial Flanders, two different types of labourers were hired on Scueringhe farm. The first group, the servants, permanently resided on the farm during the term they were hired. Board and lodging was part of their remuneration. Casual labourers, the second group, were hired by the day or received piece rates for particular tasks. Scueringhe’s administration divided the casual labourers into two groups, the regular day-labourers and the harvesters.75
Among the servants, we only find a small number of women. The number of female servants fluctuated between three or four persons; occasionally St. John’s hired five women, while the number of male servants always fluctuated between thirty and thirty-five persons. This skewed sex-ratio among servants is not unusual for coastal Flanders.76 One or two of the Scueringhe maids mainly worked in the household, while the other ones were mainly related to the dairying. Of course, these women probably performed a whole range of tasks.77 Although individual wages depended upon age, experience and skill, the remuneration of the maids was generally rather low. In 1445, the dairy maid earned 144 Flemish d. groten for a half year of service. With this sum, she could buy 471 liters of wheat on the Bruges cereal market.78 Her colleague the kitchen maid, most likely an elder and more experienced woman, received 192 Flemish d. groten for a half year of service, while another household maid only received 84 Flemish d. groten during the same term. Unsurprisingly, the remuneration of female servants was always far less than the remuneration of male servants. Usually, the wages of maids amounted to one-third to two-thirds of the wages of men. From a European perspective, this proportion appears to be the usual one in agriculture.79
From the perspective of the whole village, the limited number of female servants at Scueringhe farm is striking. All other large farms of Zuienkerke were managed by a tenant family. The agricultural tasks typically related to women were primarily performed by the wife and the daughters of the tenant on these holdings. Most likely only during certain periods a limited number of female resident workers was hired. This implied that the job opportunities for women as servants were remarkably limited. Moreover, the financial rewards were far less attractive in comparison to those for men. Obviously, female service did not provide the advantageous opportunities in Zuienkerke as has recently been assumed.
As casual labourers, women only found employment at Scueringhe farm during the harvest, not during the other seasons. Women were never hired as threshers or diggers, nor as skilled thatchers, carpenters and the like. Nevertheless, female labour was of considerable importance during the summer. In 1446, seventy-three of the 120 harvesters were female (61%). According to the detailed records of the harvests of 1445 and 1446, women did not only bind or gather the sheaves, but also performed the job of reaping with the sickle. Approximately 65% of all hired reapers was female. As demonstrated for the late medieval English countryside and for fourteenth-century northern France, women were an essential part of the harvest labour force.80 For harvest labour at Scueringhe farm, women received the same piece rates for reaping as their male counterparts. In the 1440s, this was 35 to 45 Flemish d. groten per hectare. This “equal pay” seems to be in contradiction with the general findings about women’s work, which has been considered low-paid compared to men. However, in this region of commercial cereal agriculture, wage discrimination according to gender was improbable, as was also stated by J. Hatcher for some regions in late medieval England.81 At Scueringhe farm, approximately 120 to 150 hectares of crops had to be harvested in a couple of weeks’ time. As one reaper processed approximately 0.20 to 0.35 hectare per day, St. John’s had to mobilize a large number of workers within a short period of time. In such a situation, systematic discrimination of women, by offering them lower rates, would have been neither rational nor efficient. The use of piece rates, the same for both sexes, meant that labourers were motivated to work speedily.
When the women harvested a whole day, they were able to earn a daily wage of 8 to 11 Flemish d. groten a day.82 In comparison to the contemporary daily wages for male casual labourers in the same region, this is an extremely high remuneration. Piece rates during the harvest season, however, usually peaked, as we know from later periods.83 Moreover, the decades around 1440 and 1450 are generally considered as advantageous for wage labourers in Flanders.84 Nevertheless, by working the whole harvest period on Scueringhe farm, women could earn a high sum in the 1440s. Katheline van Ghent, for instance, reaped 5.97 hectares in total in 1445, for which she received 216 Flemish d. groten. This sum approaches the amount of money a female servant received for a whole year of service.85 It is clear that, when talking about female wage labour, we must differentiate according to the type of employment, as was recently emphasized by J. Wheisdorf and J. Humphries. Those scholars have demonstrated a similar gap between daily wages implicit in annual service contracts and those earned casually during the late Middle Ages.86
This optimistic image of female harvest labour in Zuienkerke, which could give evidence to the idea of a late medieval golden age, however, needs to be moderated. Only during a very limited period during the year, approximately one month, were the high piece rates available for women, and most likely only at certain large farms reserving parts of their production for commercialization. As has been emphasized, employment in agriculture was primarily characterized by irregularity.87 This was especially appealing to Zuienkerke’s women, who were only hired during the harvest weeks and not at all during the rest of the year. Moreover, to earn high daily wages, the harvesters most likely toiled from sunrise to sunset. Such work could not be performed by all women. Harvest work was possible for women who were able to travel around, from farm to farm, looking for high wages. Most likely, they did not have younger children (or other family members) to care for. Indeed, the registration of the names of female workers suggests they were mostly young and unmarried. At least one-third of Scueringhe’s female harvesters (in 1445 fourteen out of forty-two; in 1446 seventeenth out of forty-three) bore a diminutive name (suffix –“kin”), indicating a younger age in Middle Dutch administrative sources.88 Betkin (Elizabeth), Lyskin (Elizabeth) and Maykin (Mary) were most likely adolescents. Moreover, the administrator never referred to the women’s husbands, but occasionally to their fathers. As mentioned above, classifying these women automatically as “single” is risky. Recently, the remarkable lack of a marital status in administrative and juridical sources for women in fourteenth-century Flemish and Brabant cities has been emphasized.89 The women’s marital status was simply irrelevant for the author of the documents, as long as they knew where to find the person who had obligations to the (land)lord or who had testified. Nevertheless, St. John’s always mentioned the women’s husbands, whether deceased or not, in its fifteenth-century administrative sources, as was discussed above, so it is more likely that the Scueringhe harvest workers were single. Another point suggesting that Scueringhe’s harvesters were mostly young and single is that the crew changed weekly in the 1440s, most likely also daily. Thus, harvest workers were very mobile. Finally, it is striking that Scueringhe’s harvesters and their relatives from the 1440s were rarely included in the 1425 tax list, although there is a time gap of twenty years. Whether the workers came from other villages, whether their families were too poor to be taxed.
The detailed Scueringhe accounts date from a period characterized by population shortage. Numerous people fled from Bruges and the coastal area around 1435–40, because of the Bruges Revolt of 1436–38 and because of the plundering of the area by English soldiers as part of the Hundred Years’ war. Additionally, this period witnessed an outbreak of the plague (1438–39) and a serious famine (1437–39).90 Women likely benefitted from the labour shortage, performing harvest tasks that were usually reserved for men. In more stable periods, such as the 1540s, men exclusively harvested the crops. Women were pushed into low-paid assisting jobs, such as binding.91 It appears that in the commercial cereal agriculture of coastal Flanders, women functioned as a reserve pool in the labour market, only called on in times of labour shortage, as asserted by M. Mavis for late medieval England.92 Consequently, the opportunities of casual labour on large holdings in fifteenth-century Zuienkerke should not be overestimated.
Rural industries and various sources of income
For late medieval England, it is documented that many rural women worked in the ale industry. Brewing and selling ale was a very small-scale business, locally performed, which (temporally) supplemented the family income.93 For the village of Zuienkerke, direct evidence of local industrial activities performed by women is lacking. However, the presence of some brick production centers in Zuienkerke and surrounding villages in the late Middle Ages undoubtedly offered possibilities. St. John’s Hospital owned a productive brick kiln near Scueringhe farm. In the sixteenth century, the remnants were converted into a large tenant farm, by no coincidence called the Teghelrie. The oven was, as usual, situated close to a waterway, so that the bricks could be easily transported to the city of Bruges. Several other small brick kilns were situated in late medieval Zuienkerke.94 In the close-by village of Ramskapelle, the Bruges government erected three brick kilns in the 1330s, providing the city annually with an enormous amount of bricks and tiles until the beginning of the fifteenth century.95 The brick and tile production of the Low Countries predominantly occurred in coastal areas such as Friesland, Holland and Flanders, because the clay and peat could be easily dug and because natural stones were lacking.96 Information on employment patterns in this labour-intensive sector derived only from early modern cases. Each oven required one skilled brick master. Moreover, the clay had to be dug, brought to the oven and stamped. Then, the bricks or tiles were formed and piled in the oven. Finally, the bricks had to be transported. These tasks were performed by unskilled labourers.97 To provide fuel for the ovens, peat was used. Peat digging was an important by-industry in the twelfth, thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries in the coastal area. From the fourteenth century onward, most peat supplies were running out.98 However, on a local level, small-scale peat digging remained important until the end of the eighteenth century. Several plots of land in Zuienkerke were indicated as uutghedarinct in the seventeenth-century village land register.99 In the 1540s, St. John’s hired several male workers to dig peat on the lands of Scueringhe farm. The manual labour of peat digging was usually exclusively done by men. The stacking of the turves could be done by women and/or children.100 Undoubtedly, women also performed the unskilled work in the brick and tile production. Both brick making and peat digging were seasonal employments and characterized by irregularity. Both activities depended on the demands of the (urban) building industry, a sector that was very sensitive to economic fluctuations. For instance, the brick kiln of St. John’s hospital in Zuienkerke only worked when the institution organized a large building or restoration campaign. Being irregular and temporary work, brick making and accompanying peat digging was a type of activity that could be easily combined with small-scale agriculture.
Finally, spinning, a typical female occupation in the late Middle Ages, was probably of minor importance. Because of the gradual relocation of the manufacture of cheaper and middle-range woolens from the large Flemish cities to smaller textile towns and the countryside in the fourteenth century, urban and rural weavers heavily competed. Complaints of the Bruges weavers resulted in the restriction of a maximum two loams per village in the Franc the Bruges. Marketing wool was prohibited, except for domestic consumption.101 Among other things, this regulation made a domestic textile industry, with the pattern of spinning wives and weaving husbands, difficult to develop in coastal areas. Preparatory activities of wool processing probably took place in the countryside. Unfortunately, the competition between urban and rural women for such jobs is primarily known from the urban perspective until now.102
The single and widowed women of the 1425 tax list belonged to the poorest segments of the village. It is likely that they lacked sufficient capital to be active on the credit market and make money out of it, although recently some scholars have emphasized the important role of women in credit transactions.103 Although women are traditionally considered as its primary exploiters, common lands or common rights to private lands (e.g., pasture) did not bring relief in Zuienkerke. Both rights were as good as absent in fifteenth-century Franc the Bruges.
Concluding comments
Exploring and interpreting female economic activity in the late medieval North-Western European countryside is hampered by some complexities. Evidence remains scarce and fragmented. Moreover, as good as all evidence left to us was written down by male administrators. Regional differences in the legal, social and economic organisation of society brought about a great deal of variation. Local case studies allow us to place the full range of women’s economic experiences in its proper context. In the fifteenth-century village of Zuienkerke in coastal Flanders, a dynamic region characterized by concentration of land, holdings and increasing commercialization, opportunities for women to make a living without husbands or fathers were limited. This observation contrasts with the legal and juridical situation of Flemish women, which is generally considered as advantageous, and also with the idea of a golden age of women after the Black Death. Access to land, whether freehold, customary or lease land, was largely reserved for men. Population losses did not result in expanded employment opportunities. Only a particular group of women had access to a particular segment of the rural labour market (i.e., harvest work). However, remuneration was large for this kind of work. Employment in rural industries, such as brick making or spinning wool, was limited and largely affected by the demands of the nearby metropole Bruges. On the other hand, the nearby city offered numerous perspectives, from service to prostitution.104 Most likely, the single and widowed women of Zuienkerke, clearly present in the village, combined numerous sources of income: cultivating land, working temporarily for wages on large farms or in rural industries, selling produced goods, etc. Other female economic activities, not discussed here, could be revealed by studying offences, conflicts, processes, etc. Unfortunately, sources containing glimpses or reports of tensions are only preserved from the later fifteenth century and from the sixteenth century.
In this chapter, one particular short period was highlighted. However, research on the long term, and intensive comparison with other local case studies is necessary to understand the mechanisms and structures that excluded half of the population from the land market, lease market and most segments of the rural labour market.
Notes
1. R. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), pp. 95–110; C. M. Barron, ‘The “golden age” of women in medieval London’, in K. Bate (ed.), Medieval Women in Southern England (Reading, 1989), pp. 46–50; P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, Work and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy. Women in York and Yorkshire c. 1300-1520 (Oxford, 1992); M. K. McIntosh, Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 250–3.
2. S. A. C. Penn, ‘Female wage-earners in late fourteenth-century England’, Agricultural History Review, 35 (1987), pp. 8–11.
3. M. E. Mate, Daughters, Wives, and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350-1535 (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 193.
4. M. Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550 (Chicago and London, 1998), pp. 138–43; J. L. Van Zanden, ‘The Malthusian Intermezzo. Women’s wages and human capital formation between the late Middle Ages and the demographic transition of the 19th century’, The History of the Family, 16 (2011), pp. 334–5.
5. Women enjoyed increasing freedom and opportunities in Dutch capitalist society from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, following M. Van der Heijden, E. van Nederveen-Meerkerk and A. Schmidt, ‘Terugkeer van het patriarchaat? Vrije vrouwen in de Republiek’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 6 (2009), pp. 26–52.
6. S. Bardsley, ‘Women’s work reconsidered, gender and wage differentiation in late medieval England’, Past and Present, 165 (1999), pp. 22–7.
7. J. M. Bennett, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England. Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 (Oxford, 1999); J. M. Bennett, ‘Confronting continuity’, Journal of Women’s History, 9 (1997), pp. 84–5.
8. S. Bardsley, ‘Peasant women and inheritance of land in fourteenth-century England’, Continuity and Change, 29 (2014), pp. 297–324.
9. S. Ogilvie, Bitter Living. Women, Markets and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany (Oxford, 2003).
10. M. De Moor and J. L. Van Zanden, ‘Girl power: the European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period’, Economic History Review, 63 (2009), pp. 1–33.
11. J. Humphries and C. Sarasua, ‘Off the record: reconstructing women’s labor force participation rates in the European past’, Feminist Economics, 18 (2012), pp. 39–67.
12. J. Roosen and D. Curtis, ‘The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?’, The Economic History Review 71 (2018), pp. 1–25.
13. M. Howell, Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986); P. Stabel, ‘Women at the market’, in M. Boone, T. de Hemptinne and W. Blockmans (eds.), Secretum scriptorum. Liber alumnorum Water Prevenier (Leuven, 1999), pp. 259–76; S. Hutton, Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent (New York, 2011).
14. C. Verlinden and J. Craeybeckx, J., Prijzen- en lonenpolitiek in de Nederlanden in 1561 en 1588-1589: onuitgegeven adviezen, ontwerpen en ordonnanties (Brussels, 1962), p. 6.
15. P. Godding, Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle (Brussels, 1991), p. 333.
16. Two notable exemptions are P. Van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid in de Zeeuwse landbouw in de achttiende eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2 (2005), pp. 43–59 and S. De Langhe, Oude Vrijsters. Bestaansstrategieën van ongehuwde vrouwen op het Brugse platteland, late achttiende- begin negentiende eeuw (unpublished PhD, Ghent University, 2013).
17. E. Thoen, ‘Social Agrosystems’ as an economic concept to explain regional differences. An essay taking the former county of Flanders as an example (Middle Ages - 19th century)’, in B. J. P. Van Bavel and P. Hoppenbrouwers (eds.), Landholding and Land Transfer in the North Sea Area (Late Middle Ages - 19th Century) (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 47–66; B. J. P. van Bavel, Manors and Markets. Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500–1600 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 3–7.
18. J. M. Bennett, ‘Medieval women in modern perspective’, in B. G. Smith (ed.), Women’s History in Global Perspective (Champaign, 2000), p. 144; A. Schmidt, ‘Vrouwenarbeid in Nederland in de vroegmoderne tijd’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2 (2005), pp. 11–2.
19. See about these matters for instance D. Elliott, ‘Gender and the Christian traditions’, in J. M. Bennett and R. M. Karras (eds.), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 21–35; M. A. Kelleher, ‘Later medieval law in community context’, in Bennett and Karras (eds.), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 133–47; M. Muller, ‘Peasant women, agency and status in late 13th and early 14th century England, some reconsiderations’, in C. Beattie and M. F. Stevens (eds.), Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe, c. 1200-1700 (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 90–113.
20. D. Tys, ‘The medieval embankment of coastal Flanders in context’, in E. Thoen, G. J. Borger, A. M. J. de Kraker, T. Soens, D. Tys, L. Vervaet and H. J. T. Weerts (eds.), Landscapes or Seascapes? The History of Coastal Environment in the North Sea Area Reconsidered (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 229–30.
21. E. Huys, ‘Kasselrij van het Brugse Vrije (ca. 1000 - 1795)’, in W. Prevenier and B. Augustijn (eds.), De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen tot 1795 (Brussels, 1999), pp. 26–8.
22. S. Vrielinck, De territoriale indeling van België (1795-1963): bestuursgeografisch en statistisch repertorium van de gemeenten en de supracommunale eenheden (administratief en gerechtelijk) (Leuven, 2000), part 3, p. 1783; one hectare encompasses 2,4710 acres.
23. L. Gilliodts-Van Severen, Coutume de la Prévoté de Bruges (Brussels, 1887), part 1, pp. 3–4 and 122–4.
24. L. Vervaet, Goederenbeheer in een veranderende samenleving. Het Sint-Janshospitaal van Brugge, c. 1275-c. 1575 (unpublished PhD Thesis, Ghent University, 2015), p. 58.
25. A. Verhulst, Précis d’histoire rurale de la Belgique (Brussels, 1990), pp. 73–5.
26. K. Dombrecht, Plattelandsgemeenschappen, lokale elites en ongelijkheid in het Vlaamse kustgebied (14e-16e eeuw). Case-study: Dudzele ambacht (unpublished PhD Thesis, Ghent University, 2014), pp. 67–72.
27. Roosen and Curtis, ‘Light touch’.
28. State Archives of Bruges (from now on SAB), Aanwinsten, nr. 989: land register St. John’s hospital, 1310.
29. T. Soens, De spade in de dijk? Waterbeheer en rurale samenleving in de Vlaamse kustvlakte (1280 - 1580) (Ghent, 2009), pp. 75–112.
30. Dombrecht, Plattelandsgemeenschappen, pp. 27, 95.
31. For instance, M. Bailey, The English Manor c. 1200 to c. 1500 (Manchester, 2002).
32. B. Hanawalt, ‘Peasant’s women contribution to the home economy in late medieval England’, in B. Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial England (Bloomington, IN, 1986), p. 17.
33. Muller, ‘Peasant women’, pp. 99–100.
34. J. Whittle, ‘Rural economies’, in J. M. Bennett and R. Karras (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 312 and 316–7.
35. P. J. P Goldberg, ‘The public and the private: women in the pre-plague economy’, in P. R. Coss en S. D. Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth Century England (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 82. The same line of reasoning can be found for farmwives in early modern Zeeland Flanders, Van Cruyningen, ‘Vrouwenarbeid’, pp. 50–2.
36. Especially urban tax lists have been preserved and intensively studied, for instance M. Boone, M. Dumon and B. Reusens, Immobiliënmarkt, fiscaliteit en sociale ongelijkheid te Gent, 1483-1503 (Heule, 1981).
37. A. Zoete, De beden in het graafschap Vlaanderen onder de hertogen Jan zonder Vrees en Filips de Goede (1405-1467) (Brussels, 1994), pp. 254–6.
38. N. Maddens, De Beden in het graafschap Vlaanderen tijdens de regering van keizer Karel V (1515-1550) (unpublished PhD Thesis, Catholic University of Leuven, 1975), pp. 105 and 137–8; N. Maddens, ‘Het verschil tussen de “pointinghe” en de “zettinghe”, voornamelijk in het Brugse Vrije, tijdens de periode 1515 – 1550’, Standen en Landen, 44 (1968), p. 33.
39. Dombrecht, Plattelandsgemeenschappen, pp. 38–41 and 143–7. Later in this chapter it will become clear why the estimations were not based on the size of landholding: a large proportion of Zuienkerke’s inhabitants was (nearly) landless in the fifteenth century.
40. SAB, Bundels van het Brugse Vrije, 271: zetting ambacht Zuienkerke, 1425. I would like to thank Dr. Kristof Dombrecht to inform me about this particular tax list.
41. Maddens, ‘Verschil’. This remark is important, because R. Wall has demonstrated that the proportion of taxpayers who were women often fell below their proportion in the general population in early modern England, R. Wall, ‘Widows and unmarried women as taxpayers in England before 1800’, History of the Family, 12 (2007), p. 254.
42. Dombrecht, Plattelandsgemeenschappen, pp. 144–5.
43. P. Stabel, ‘Working alone? Single women in the urban economy of late medieval Flanders (thirteenth-early fifteenth centuries)’, in J. De Groot, I. Devos and A. Schmidt (eds.), Single Life and the City 1200-1900 (Houndmills, 2015), pp. 31–2.
44. Muller, ‘Peasant women’, pp. 104–6 and Bennett, Ale, Beer and Brewsters, pp. 166–70.
45. SAB, Bundels van het Brugse Vrije, 271: zetting ambacht Zuienkerke, 1425.
46. J. M. Bennett, ‘Women and poverty: girls on their own in England before 1348’, in K. M. Langdon and P. R. Schofield (eds.), Peasants and Lords in the Medieval English Economy. Essays in Honour of Bruce M.S. Campbell (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 311–6.
47. J. Whittle, ‘Inheritance, marriage, widowhood and remarriage: a comparative perspective on women and landholding north-east Norfolk, 1440-1580’, Continuity and Change, 13 (1998), pp. 33–9; Muller, ‘Peasant women’, pp. 111–2.
48. Whittle, ‘Inheritance’; Bardsley, ‘Peasant women’.
49. With the exception of feudal land, which was usually granted to the firstborn son, Godding, Droit privé, pp. 291 and 333.
50. Godding, Droit privé, pp. 78–9; D. Heirbaut, Privaatrechtsgeschiedenis van de Romeinen tot heden (Ghent, 2005), pp. 191–2.
51. E. Kittell, ‘Guardianship over women in medieval Flanders: a reappraisal’, Journal of Social History 31 (1998), pp. 907–9; Hutton, Women and Economic Activities, pp. 42–58.
52. L. Gilliodts-Van Severen, Coutume du Franc de Bruges (Brussels, 1879), part I, pp. 152–70.
53. Godding, Droit privé, p. 266.
54. Archives of the Public Welfare Organisation of Bruges, Archives of the St. John’s Hospital, A. Water Boards, nr. 7: Water Board Register of the Blankenbergse Watering, 1456.
55. It is difficult to determine which parts belonged to the village of Zuienkerke, because water board registers used a completely different division of the area, apart from the parochial territory or the territory of the Ambacht. This division was based on geographical elements, such as ditches, roads, dikes, crossroads etc. I analyzed a surface encompassing approximately 740 hectares of land.
56. Soens, Spade in de dijk, pp. 97–9.
57. Whittle, ‘Inheritance’, pp. 35–8.
58. Whittle, ‘Inheritance’, p. 46.
59. SAB, Watering Blankenberge, nr. 101–5, nr. 134: Ommeloper van de Blankenbergse Watering, 1554–60.
60. Whittle, ‘Inheritance’, p. 65.
61. For rural Flanders, medieval testaments and wills have been unexplored until now.
62. T. Soens and E. Thoen, ‘The origin of leaseholding in the former county of Flanders (13th-16th centuries)’, in B. J. P. Van Bavel and P. Schofield (eds.), The Development of Leasehold in Northwestern Europe, c. 1200-1600 (Turnhout, 2008), p. 34.
63. E. P. Thompsom, ‘The grid of inheritance: a comment’, in J. Goody, J. Thirsk and E. P. Thompson (eds.), Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 335–6 and 357–8; B. A. Holderness, ‘Widows in preindustrial society: an essay upon their economic functions’, in R. M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), p. 433.
64. Gilliodts-Van Severen, Coutume du Franc de Bruges, p. 88.
65. Since lease contracts did lose their function when the term expired, only limited numbers have been preserved. Moreover, for small plots of land, the agreements were made orally.
66. The only indications of subletting, in the sense of subleasing the leased plots of St. John’s to others, date from the sixteenth century.
67. Archives of the Public Welfare Organisation of Bruges, Archives of the St. John’s Hospital of Bruges, Manuals St. John’s Hospital, B. 13 and B. 14, 1420; Accounts, 1400–01 to 1450–51.
68. Vervaet, Goederenbeheer, pp. 231–2.
69. Margriete could be remarried in the meantime. In that case however, her new husband would take over the lease contract after nine years, in 1449, and not she as actually occurred.
70. S. Bardsley has pointed to the persistent patriarchal expectations that most women could not gather the labour needed to manage their land as a possible explanation for the continuity in women’s ownership of land after the Black Death, ‘Peasant women and inheritance’, p. 320.
71. Evidently, for men is impossible to determine whether they were married or not, using only administrative sources. Only from the preservation of parish registers onwards, this is the sixteenth century – early seventeenth century for Flanders, detailed family reconstruction is possible.
72. Verhulst, Précis d’histoire, pp. 78, 110.
73. R. Boterberghe, Zuienkerke. Geschiedenis van een polderdorp (Zuienkerke, 1992), pp. 74–5 and 259–69.
74. Archives of the Public Welfare Organisation of Bruges, Archives of the St. John’s Hospital, Accounts St. John’s Hospital, 1412–13, 1413–14, 1419–20, 1420–21, 1421–22, 1442–43, 1443–44, 1445–46, 1446–47, 1453–54, 1454–55, 1455–56. All further evidence derives from these accounts.
75. L. Vervaet, ‘The employment of servants in 15th and 16th-century coastal Flanders: a case study of Scueringhe farm near Bruges’, in J. Whittle (ed.), Servants in Rural Europe (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 23–5.
76. T. Lambrecht, ‘The institution of service in rural Flanders in the sixteenth century: a regional perspective’, in J. Whittle (ed.), Servants in Rural Europe (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 40–1.
77. J. Whittle, ‘Housewives and servants in rural England, 1440-1650: evidence of women’s work from probate documents’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 15 (2005), pp. 61–8.
78. For the prices of wheat: A. Verhulst, ‘Prijzen van granen, boter en kaas te Brugge volgens de “slag” van het Sint-Donationaaskapittel (1348-1801)’, in C. Verlinden and J. Craeybeckx (eds.), Dokumenten voor de geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen in Vlaanderen en Brabant (Bruges, 1965), Part 2, pp. 3–70.
79. A. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981), pp.143–4; Bardsley, ‘Women’s work’, p. 29.
80. Roberts, M., ‘Sickles and scythes: women’s work and men’s work at harvest time’, History Workshop, 7 (1979), pp. 5–6; D. Youngs, ‘Servants and labourers on a late medieval demesme: the case of Newton, Cheshire, 1480-1520’, Agricultural History Review, 47 (1999), p. 157; B. Delmaire, ‘La femme aux champs (nord de la France, XIVe siècle)’, in L. Jegoe, S. Joye, T. Lienhard and J. Schneider (eds.), Splendor Reginae: passions, genre et famille. Mélanges en l’honneur de Régine Le Jan (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 140–3.
81. J. Hatcher, ‘Debate. Women’s work reconsidered: gender and wage differentiation in late medieval England’, Past and Present, 173 (2001), p. 195.
82. Vervaet, Goederenbeheer, p. 180
83. P. Van Cruyningen, Behoudend maar buigzaam. Boeren in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen 1650-1850 (Wageningen, 2000), p. 74: own calculation.
84. E. Thoen, Landbouweconomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late Middeleeuwen en het begin van de Moderne Tijden (Ghent, 1988), pp. 963–72; W. Blockmans, Metropolen aan de Noordzee: de geschiedenis van Nederland 1100-1560 (Amsterdam, 2010), p. 563.
85. In this comparison, the value of board and lodging for servants must be nuanced, because the Scueringhe casual workers certainly received beer and possibly also food during the day.
86. J. Humphries and J. Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women in England, 1260-1850’, Journal of Economic History, 75 (2015), pp. 418–9.
87. J. Hatcher, ‘Unreal wages: long-run living standards and the ‘golden age’ of the fifteenth century’, in B. Dodds and C. D. Liddy (eds.), Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell (Suffolk, 2011), pp. 6–7.
88. G. Dupont, ‘Van Copkin over Coppin naar Jacob. De relatie tussen de voornaamsvorm en de leeftijd van de naamdrager in het Middelnederlands op basis van administratieve bronnen voor het graafschap Vlaanderen, eind 14de - midden 16de eeuw’, Naamkunde, 33 (2001), pp. 119–21.
89. E. Kittell, ‘The construction of women’s social identity in medieval Douai. Evidence from identifying epithets’, Journal of Medieval History 25 (1999), pp. 215–27; Hutton, Women and Economic Activities, pp. 50–3; A. Bardyn, ‘Propertied women. Women’s ownership of immovable property in late medieval Brussels (1356-1460)’, Stadsgeschiedenis, 9 (2014), pp. 11–2.
90. W. Blockmans, ‘The social and economic effects of plague in the low countries 1349-1500’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 58 (1980), pp. 856–7.
91. Vervaet, Goederenbeheer, p. 184.
92. Mate, Daughters, pp. 11–20.
93. Bennett, Ale, Beer and Brewsters.
94. Boterberghe, Zuienkerke, p. 130.
95. Dombrecht, Plattelandsgemeenschappen, pp. 117–8.
96. Van Bavel, Manors, p. 350.
97. M. Limberger, ‘Early forms of proto-industry in the backyard of Antwerp? the Rupel area between the 15th and 16th centuries’, in B. Blondé, M. Galand and E. Vanhaute (eds.), Labour and Labour Markets between Town and Countryside (Middle Ages - 19th Century) (Turnhout, 2001), p. 167.
98. T. Soens and E. Thoen, ‘Mais où sont les tourbières d’antan? Géographie, chronologie et stratégies économiques du tourbage en Flandre (XIIe-XVIe siècles)’, in J. M. Derex and F. Gregoire, Histoire économique et sociale de la tourbe et des tourbières (Laon, 2007), pp. 52–8.
99. Boterberghe, Zuienkerke, p. 131.
100. B. Augustijn, ‘Traces of a proto-industrial organization of the medieval north Flemish peat region. Test-case Kieldrecht, a peat-diggers village ca. 1400’, in H. J. Nitz (ed.), The Medieval and Early-Modern Rural Landscape of Europe under the Impact of the Commercial Economy (Rastede, 1987), p. 68.
101. F. Priem, Documents extraits du dépôt des archives de la Flandre-occidentale à Bruges, deuxième série, tome sixième (Bruges, 1848–49), pp. 184–9.
102. P. Stabel, De kleine stad in Vlaanderen (14de-16de eeuw) (Brussels, 1995), pp. 138–47.
103. E. Dermineur (ed.), Women and Credit in Pre-industrial Europe (Turnhout, 2019).
104. One sixth of the fined Bruges whoremongers (male and female) originated from the Franc the Bruges in 1385–515, G. Dupont, Maagdenverleidsters, hoeren en speculanten: prostitutie in Brugge tijdens de Bourgondische periode (1385-1515) (Brugge, 1996), pp. 132–3.