Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 (review)

Abstract

Reviews 115 dericalism, but that the laity and the clergy were cooperating, even to the exent that clerics joined many gilds. Bainbridge warns, however, that over the whole population, gilds cannot be seen as central to religious experience: the majority of the laity were too poor to participate. As well as providing church lights, gilds were central to many lay people's funeralrites.In a reconstruction of mentalite, Bainbridge suggests that the stages in a funeral and other commemorative rituals can be seen as 'markers in the passage of grief. In addition, she insists that w e should consider eschatological history over the longue duree, arguing that beliefs about the afterlife change in a cyclical pattern. As part of insurance for the afterlife, the dispensation of charity was an additional gild function. Charity directed to other members of the group was more important than that given by people of higher to those of lower status. Gilds provide many examples of the former. By the sixteenth century, however, the deserving poor became increasingly the recipients of charity. Where earlier, the poor reciprocated with prayer, now that this prayer was irrelevant, the medieval ideal of caritas declined. Bainbridge concludes her book with a fascinating discussion of the contribution of the gilds to local government, using this relationship to shed new light on such institutions as the parish, the diocese and the manor. In addition, she examines the gilds as a 'microcosm' of society, reflecting hierarchies, collective identities and corporations. Finally she traces the sixteenth-century abolition of the gilds, and the replacement of their function in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the parish. Bainbridge has lucidly set out a great deal of new information about the late medieval gilds, explaining them both as a product and a reflection of their society. In places, her analysis is obscured by a mass of detail, and as a result, the important contributions of this book are less clear than one would wish. Bainbridge has added to the recent debate concerning the laity in late medieval religion with a welcome focus on institutional rather than individual piety. In addition, her book straddles the rather artificial divide between medieval and Early Modern England. It deserves to be read by all religious scholars of either era. Kathleen Troup Department of History University of Waikato Bennett, Judith M., Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in Changing World, 1300-1600, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xiv, 260; R.R.P. A U $110. Ale, Beer, and Brewsters is a detailed and readable account of the histor w o m e n in brewing in late medieval and early modern England, and 116 Reviews demonstrates the author's long and intimate acquaintance with her subject matter. Judith Bennett has authored, co-authored and co-edited many articles and books on women's history and w o m e n in brewing over the past decade, several of which form the basis for chapters in this latest work. The layout of the book is easy to follow: eight chapters, tracing the changes to the ale industry and women's position within it during this period, and an appendix, in which most of the specialised data and the conventions used to interpret i t are discussed. The use of tabulated information elsewhere in the book is kept to a minimum and fulfils its function of facilitating rather than obfuscating the argument. Bennett puts the rich array of extant records of the history of brewing to work in the service of women's history. Reserving judgement with regard to the 'thesis of decline' (p. 147), which dictates that the status of women suffered a dramatic setback between the late medieval and Early Modern periods, Bennett argues that the history of women's work is as much one of continuity as of change. She gleans evidence from a wide variety of sources, including manorial and civic accounts, court records and wills, to demonstrate that brewing as an industry, and the demographic of those who brewed, changed considerably between 1300 and 1600. Brewing was affected by technological advances and increasing regulation, becoming distinctly masculinised by the seventeenth century. W o...