The forge of the Tower of London was always ablaze in summer season 1346. England was at conflict with France, so, along with the Tower’s standard operate as mint and jail, the royal fortress now served as an enormous navy hub, collating provides of iron, timber and – most significantly for England’s prospects within the coming Crécy marketing campaign – bows and arrows. Liable for producing door hinges, window-bars, locks and keys to constrain prisoners of conflict, and now additionally arrow-heads, armour, horse-shoes, lance factors and crossbow quarrels, was the grasp smith. By royal appointment, in 1346 that was Katherine le Fevre.
Katherine was the widow and, latterly, mom of the final two Tower smiths: Walter and Andrew le Fevre. Since at the least 1336 she had lived within the Tower, observing and maybe collaborating in her husband’s supervision of the forge. However no matter half she performed in operating operations in that interval is unrecorded, just like the contributions of many medieval wives and moms of their household commerce. Solely in June 1346 does a royal patent write Katherine into the historic report. Whereas her son Andrew was abroad serving with the royal military, Katherine was ordered to ‘sustain the king’s forge inside the Tower and stick with it [its] work … receiving the wages pertaining to the workplace’ – a considerable eight pence a day (her husband had earned 12 pence). The heavy accountability of overseeing a specialist work drive within the foremost fortress of a rustic at conflict now rested on her shoulders.
At first look, Katherine appears distinctive. A girl appearing as ‘grasp smith’ for a campaigning royal stronghold could also be distinctive; even managing a metalworking enterprise is uncommon. However though the specifics of her story are unfamiliar, Katherine’s expertise is consultant of lots of her feminine friends.
Though the inferiority of medieval ladies was enshrined in regulation, medical principle and non secular texts, casual feminine employment was an accepted actuality of each day life. Wives, daughters and moms had been anticipated to contribute financially to their family, offering very important contributions to the household financial system.
Katherine labored throughout a interval of increasing alternative and specialisation in smithing. The primary smiths’ guild was documented in 1298 and inside 70 years there have been six ironworking guilds in London (smiths, armourers, spurriers, cutlers, ironmongers and lorimers). By 1422 there have been 14, together with wire-drawers, locksmiths and clock-makers. As a girl, Katherine couldn’t be part of these guilds, however she may capitalise on the chance of warfare, whose calls for had been so nice that smiths and armourers relied on their feminine family for unpaid labour. Certainly, the work of a guildman’s ‘wedded spouse or daughter’ was accepted within the statutes of the leatherworkers and girdlers (belt-makers).
Many daughters duly adopted their fathers into the business. Within the 1300s and 1310s the daughter of Reginald, an armourer within the armour-making neighbourhood of Cheapside, is known as on the Patent Roll as ‘Alice la Haubergere’, ‘Alice the mail-maker’. Regardless of marrying a vintner and dabbling in brewing, Alice asserted her standing as armourer and armour store proprietor all through her life. Equally, in 1403 the daddy of Agnes Hecche of York bequeathed his enterprise to Agnes and her brother: Agnes was left ‘all of the devices of [his] craft of mailwork’, her brother Adam the upper standing and extra bodily strenuous furbishing instruments. Mailwork was a subsidiary job, allotted to ladies and youngsters as less-skilled labour; a secondary financial contribution to family funds.
After an city smith died, his widow was typically anticipated to finish the coaching of apprentices, execute his will and oversee his enterprise ventures, as was the case for the bell founder Johanna Hill, who continued her husband’s work after his loss of life in 1440, overseeing a group of workmen, servants and 4 apprentices. Though she solely survived a yr, seven bells solid by Johanna survive, all along with her floret stamped onto them. Normally apprentices had been male, however in 1346 the London cutler Agnes Cotiller indented a ‘Juseana’ as her apprentice and in 1348 Eustachia l’Armurer promised to coach up her late husband’s daughter, in all probability in armouring.
Like Katherine, most identifiable working ladies had been widows, however that doesn’t imply that their work started solely on the loss of life of a husband, merely that widowhood supplied the primary formal recognition of a pre-existing scenario. Much more quite a few, however poorly documented, had been the ladies who conveyed companies, contacts, instruments and commerce between male family – with solely the boys’s names ever showing on paperwork. Agnes Nayer didn’t inherit the commerce of her armourer father, Peter, when he died in 1346, however she held enough native affect to assist her Northumbrian husband William de Glendale infiltrate the closed store of London armourmaking, finally serving to him to exceptional success: by 1363 William was the king’s armourer.
Why do we all know so little about ladies like Katherine? Within the 14th century industries like smithing had been more and more regularised into guilds with formal indentures and recorded oaths of service. But such data prioritised the actions of the (usually male) head of the family. Even wills and autopsy inventories, which testified to the deceased’s commerce by means of the instruments or apprentices’ phrases they bequeathed, are insufficient proof for medieval ladies, who wanted a husband’s permission to jot down her personal. At precisely the time when working ladies had been selecting up the monetary slack for his or her households, profiting from urbanisation, overseas conflict and the relative shortage of labour after the Black Loss of life, proof of their business was elided by the very system through which they labored.
Katherine’s later life is simply as enigmatic as her early expertise. Presumably, when her son returned from the wars Katherine’s tenure as grasp smith ended. Andrew le Fevre was undoubtedly in cost by 1352, when he’s listed in Tower accounts supplying arrow-heads for additional navy campaigns – which at the least offers us some concept of the work Katherine undertook throughout his absence. One ‘Katherine the smith-wife’, presumably le Fevre, was employed at Westminster in 1348 for ‘steeling and battering [sharpening] the masons’ instruments’. However with Andrew’s return Katherine as soon as once more disappears from the report. Maybe she continued to assist the household enterprise. However like so many medieval ladies, with the established order restored, Katherine le Fevre grew to become a ‘silent companion’ as soon as once more.
Lauren Johnson is the creator of Shadow King: The Life and Loss of life of Henry VI (Head of Zeus, 2019).
