| Abstract: | This article reconfigures our understanding of female service in early modern England by examining the roles and spaces female servants occupied not only within their employers homes but outside and within the wider community. Using both quantitative and qualitative approaches to categorise and analyse the spaces in which female servants were recorded in church court depositions from the dioceses of Exeter, Gloucester and Winchester between 1550 and 1650, it argues that female servants were not confined to the domestic sphere either in their work or their social interactions. And further, it shows that female servants' links to the wider community gave them power and agency – limited perhaps, but significant nonetheless - in their dealings with their employers. |
