The Women who Forged Medieval England - 6 minutes read
The forge of the Tower of London was constantly ablaze in summer 1346. England was at war with France, so, in addition to the Tower’s usual function as mint and prison, the royal fortress now served as a giant military hub, collating supplies of iron, timber and – most importantly for England’s prospects in the coming Crécy campaign – bows and arrows. Responsible for producing door hinges, window-bars, locks and keys to constrain prisoners of war, and now also arrow-heads, armour, horse-shoes, lance points and crossbow quarrels, was the master smith. By royal appointment, in 1346 that was Katherine le Fevre.
Katherine was the widow and, latterly, mother of the last two Tower smiths: Walter and Andrew le Fevre. Since at least 1336 she had lived in the Tower, observing and perhaps participating in her husband’s supervision of the forge. But whatever part she played in running operations in that period is unrecorded, like the contributions of many medieval wives and mothers in their family trade. Only in June 1346 does a royal patent write Katherine into the historical record. While her son Andrew was overseas serving with the royal army, Katherine was ordered to ‘keep up the king’s forge within the Tower and carry on [its] work … receiving the wages pertaining to the office’ – a substantial eight pence a day (her husband had earned 12 pence). The heavy responsibility of overseeing a specialist work force in the foremost fortress of a country at war now rested on her shoulders.
At first glance, Katherine seems exceptional. A woman acting as ‘master smith’ for a campaigning royal stronghold may be unique; even managing a metalworking enterprise is unusual. But although the specifics of her story are unfamiliar, Katherine’s experience is representative of many of her female peers.
Although the inferiority of medieval women was enshrined in law, medical theory and religious texts, informal female employment was an accepted reality of daily life. Wives, daughters and mothers were expected to contribute financially to their household, providing vital contributions to the family economy.
Katherine worked during a period of expanding opportunity and specialisation in smithing. The first smiths’ guild was documented in 1298 and within 70 years there were six ironworking guilds in London (smiths, armourers, spurriers, cutlers, ironmongers and lorimers). By 1422 there were 14, including wire-drawers, locksmiths and clock-makers. As a woman, Katherine could not join these guilds, but she could capitalise on the opportunity of warfare, whose demands were so great that smiths and armourers depended on their female relatives for unpaid labour. Indeed, the work of a guildman’s ‘wedded wife or daughter’ was accepted in the statutes of the leatherworkers and girdlers (belt-makers).
Many daughters duly followed their fathers into the industry. In the 1300s and 1310s the daughter of Reginald, an armourer in the armour-making neighbourhood of Cheapside, is named on the Patent Roll as ‘Alice la Haubergere’, ‘Alice the mail-maker’. Despite marrying a vintner and dabbling in brewing, Alice asserted her status as armourer and armour shop owner throughout her life. Similarly, in 1403 the father of Agnes Hecche of York bequeathed his business to Agnes and her brother: Agnes was left ‘all the instruments of [his] craft of mailwork’, her brother Adam the higher status and more physically strenuous furbishing tools. Mailwork was a subsidiary task, allotted to women and children as less-skilled labour; a secondary economic contribution to household finances.
After an urban smith died, his widow was customarily expected to complete the training of apprentices, execute his will and oversee his business ventures, as was the case for the bell founder Johanna Hill, who continued her husband’s work after his death in 1440, overseeing a team of workmen, servants and four apprentices. Although she only survived a year, seven bells cast by Johanna survive, all with her floret stamped onto them. Usually apprentices were male, but in 1346 the London cutler Agnes Cotiller indented a ‘Juseana’ as her apprentice and in 1348 Eustachia l’Armurer promised to train up her late husband’s daughter, probably in armouring.
Like Katherine, most identifiable working women were widows, but that does not mean that their work began only on the death of a husband, merely that widowhood provided the first formal recognition of a pre-existing situation. Far more numerous, but poorly documented, were the women who conveyed businesses, contacts, tools and trade between male relatives – with only the men’s names ever appearing on documents. Agnes Nayer did not inherit the trade of her armourer father, Peter, when he died in 1346, but she held sufficient local influence to help her Northumbrian husband William de Glendale infiltrate the closed shop of London armourmaking, ultimately helping him to remarkable success: by 1363 William was the king’s armourer.
Why do we know so little about women like Katherine? In the 14th century industries like smithing were increasingly regularised into guilds with formal indentures and recorded oaths of service. Yet such records prioritised the activities of the (often male) head of the household. Even wills and post-mortem inventories, which testified to the deceased’s trade through the tools or apprentices’ terms they bequeathed, are inadequate evidence for medieval women, who needed a husband’s permission to write her own. At exactly the time when working women were picking up the financial slack for their families, taking advantage of urbanisation, foreign war and the relative scarcity of labour after the Black Death, proof of their industry was elided by the very system in which they worked.
Katherine’s later life is just as enigmatic as her early experience. Presumably, when her son returned from the wars Katherine’s tenure as master smith ended. Andrew le Fevre was undoubtedly in charge by 1352, when he is listed in Tower accounts supplying arrow-heads for further military campaigns – which at least gives us some idea of the work Katherine undertook during his absence. One ‘Katherine the smith-wife’, possibly le Fevre, was employed at Westminster in 1348 for ‘steeling and battering [sharpening] the masons’ tools’. But with Andrew’s return Katherine once again disappears from the record. Perhaps she continued to support the family business. But like so many medieval women, with the status quo restored, Katherine le Fevre became a ‘silent partner’ once again.
Lauren Johnson is the author of Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI (Head of Zeus, 2019).
Source: History Today Feed