Abstract
In 1602 Samuel Rowlands published a humorous story under the catchy title Tis Merrie when Gossips meete.1 It describes how three London women (a widow, wife and maidservant) meet in the street one day and go off to a tavern, where they feast on sausages and claret and gossip for hours about marriage and men. Rowlands’ story sets the scene for this chapter: it suggests how ordinary women could create their own social networks and their own social space, and hints at the potential implications for male authority. A Star Chamber case twenty years later offers a far more dramatic example of ‘gossips’ in action. Thomas Bulwer, a London apothecary, described how his former maidservant Joan Knipe had waged a war of revenge against his family ever since being turned away. It had climaxed one night in October 1622, after she and a female companion told their friends that Bulwer and his son were whoremongers, his daughters whores and his wife a witch. Around midnight Joan led an angry crowd to the Bulwers’ house, where they pelted the door and windows with dirt and dung and screamed abuse at the occupants. She made similar attacks on other nights, and persuaded another friend, single and pregnant, to give out that Bulwer’s son had fathered her child.
This is a revised version of papers given at Birmingham, the Institute of Historical Research (London), Nottingham Trent and Warwick. I am grateful to the participants, and also to the editors, for their comments.
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Notes and References
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Capp, B. (1996). Separate Domains? Women and Authority in Early Modern England. In: Griffiths, P., Fox, A., Hindle, S. (eds) The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24834-6_5
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