Silkwoman

A silkwoman was a woman in medieval, Tudor, and Stuart England who traded in silks and other fine fabrics.[1][2] London silkwomen held some trading rights independently from their husbands and were exempted from some of the usual customs and laws of coverture.[3] The trade and craft of the silkwoman was encouraged by a statute of Henry VI of England as a countermeasure to imports of silk thread, and a suitable occupation for "young gentlewomen and other apprentices".[4]

  1. ^ Kate Ash, 'Silkwomen', Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Maria Hayward, Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles (Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 522-523.
  2. ^ Marian K. Dale, 'The London Silkwomen of the Fiftenth Century', Econmomic History Review', 4 (1933), pp. 324-5.
  3. ^ Amy Louise Erickson, 'Coverture and Capitalism', History Workshop Journal, 59:1 (2005), pp. 1-16: Tim Stretton, 'Women', Susan Doran & Norman Jones', The Elizabethan World (Routledge, 2011), pp. 337, 341, 347.
  4. ^ Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth (London, 1830), p. 242.