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