The haunting of Susan Lay: servants and mistresses in seventeenth-century England

At Easter 1650, Susan Lay, a servant in an Essex alehouse, saw the ghost of her mistress, who had been buried three days before. This article explores the history that lay behind her experience: of sexual relationships with both her master and his son, the births and deaths of two bastard children, and beneath it all, a relationship of antagonism, competition, and intimacy with her mistress. It uses this and other legal records to examine the relationship between women in early modern households, arguing that, while antagonisms between women are typically part of effective patriarchies, the domestic life and social structures of mid seventeenth-century England bound servants and mistresses peculiarly tightly together, giving servants licence to dream of replacing their mistresses and mistresses cause to feel threatened by their servants, and making the competitive relations between women functional to patriarchal order. It suggests, finally, that at this moment in time and in this context, seeing a ghost was the best, perhaps the only, way this servant had to tell a suppressed story and stake a claim to a household that had excluded her.     

Navigation and the seventeenth-century draining of the Fens

Draining the Fens in the seventeenth century led to serious conflicts with navigation, conflicts which have not been properly understood in some important literature. Contrary to common belief, Vermuyden's scheme did incorporate navigation locks at Denver and elsewhere. Trade at King's Lynn and over the inland waterways did expand during the second half of the century. These facts lead to a re-assessment of the drainage/navigation interests, focussing on specific issues such as the funding arrangements for drainage and the damage to embankments by horses hauling vessels. Hence arise further questions about the understanding and motives underlying the public positions adopted by stakeholders.     

Infield-outfield farming on a seventeenth-century Scottish estate

Infield-outfield farming in pre-eighteenth-century Scotland has been dismissed as a uniformly extensive, low-yield system of cultivation forming an adjunct to a basically pastoral economy and incapable of improvement and evolution. There are, however, grounds for believing that this model is over-generalized and reflects a lack of detailed studies of the primary sources. A particularly well-documented example of a midseventeenth century field system is available for the Dundas estates near Edinburgh. The evidence for this estate indicates that infield-outfield farming had evolved into a relatively intensive system in which animal husbandry played a minor role and which concentrated on grain production. The ways in which this system evolved are then considered and the implications in terms of a re-evaluation of the traditional model of the development of Scottish field systems are explored.     

The royal confessor and his rivals in seventeenth-century France

The most memorable portraits of the French royal confessorsof any period are in Saint-Simon's memoirs, and his judgementsof them have survived relatively unscathed compared to thosehe delivered on Louis XIV's ministers generally. His accountassumes that royal confessors normally wielded huge influence,but in fact the situation that he describes applies only toLouis XIV's confessors. This essay attempts to put the riseof the confessor into its historical context from Henri IV'sreign onwards, primarily by attempting to analyse the rivalsand alternatives to the confessor—grand almoners, archbishopsof Paris, cardinal ministers. The solutions that emerged underLouis XIV were in no way inevitable, which may explain why theydid not survive him. The longevity of his confessors in officecontrasts sharply with the fragility of earlier generationsof confessors and reflects the shifts in the roles they playedwithin court and ecclesiastical politics.     

Violence and vigilance in Nahua communities of seventeenth-century central Mexico

While historians have long studied the institutional dimensions of crime and punishment, this article examines the informal, extra-legal efforts of Nahuas and other residents of central Mexican communities to contend with violence and resolve conflicts. Residents of Nahua communities could not rely entirely on the authorities for protection and justice; rather, by being vigilant and taking matters into their own hands, they played a vital but underappreciated role in policing their communities, dealing with disorder, and preserving the peace. As such, they shouldered some of the law enforcement functions of the state apparatus. At times, their contributions could prove indispensable to the administration of justice. Their efforts not only helped to maintain public order and protect one another but they also tell us much about perceptions of acceptable behavior as well as notions of civic responsibility and, by extension, community membership and social solidarity.     

Town founding in seventeenth-century North America: Jamestown in Virginia

Jamestown in Virginia provides a case study of one facet of the geography of England's overseas expansion in the seventeenth century. Recent discussions of not only Jamestown but all early North American settlements have laid stress on two points. The first towns were founded as entrepôts for international trade in raw materials and were located at central points on colonial coastlines to exert monopoly control over trade. But Jamestown fulfilled neither of these objectives. It was conceived by its promoters, at least initially, as a trading station similar, in many ways, to the Kontors of the Hansa towns and the fondachi of Italian city states. In English institutional terms Jamestown was to be a staple. Its location was off-centre with respect to pre-settlement boundary lines. Its founding was influenced partly by perceptions of the Chesapeake and partly by rivalries in the imperial contest for North America. Jamestown's settlers also had a comprehensive list of town site criteria that included references to trade routes, to site defensibility, and to the physical environment. Although not a prototype for later colonization of the Atlantic Seaboard, Jamestown represented the first settlement form.