In early modern England, children were sold to the highest bidder: 'This was presented as a care system'
Children who lost their fathers in early modern England ran the risk of being sold to the highest bidder. Although Shakespeare wrote about it in his plays, the practice disappeared from collective memory for a long time. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers is bringing it back to light in a new Vidi research project.
This system of ‘wardship’ affected approximately four hundred children and ten people with intellectual disabilities each year. ‘When the father died and the child inherited land, the king or queen initially became the child's guardian, even if the mother was still alive,’ Fikkers explains. 'The monarch could then choose to sell the child, after which people could put in a bid. '
The bidders could be the mother or other relatives of the child, but it was also common for the child to be sold to someone looking for a lucrative deal. Fikkers: 'It was presented as a care system, but as guardian, you could completely plunder the child's land while you had them in your care. You could also marry them off to a partner of your choosing. If the child did not want that partner, they had to pay a very high fine to get out of it.'
Archives in the pond
This system was controversial even in its own time. ‘The court that dealt with all these cases was one of the many reasons why civil war broke out in the mid-seventeenth century,’ says Fikkers. ‘People felt that the king had far too much power.’
The court's poor reputation is also one of the reasons why little research has been done on wardship. ‘The stories vary, but it seems that the archives were either thrown in a fish yard or dumped in a fish cellar,’ says Fikkers. ‘The sources I want to look at happen to be in fairly good condition, but many other of the court’s sources have been damaged by moisture and rodents. They have also hardly been catalogued. I want to do that, and then reconstruct as many stories as possible about these children and their family members.’
Judicial and literary texts
Fikkers combines legal sources with literary ones. ‘We already know that some plays deal with wardship, such as Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. But we have missed the extent of this: more than half of Shakespeare’s plays contain references to wardship yet we have long overlooked them. This is partly because ‘ward’ can have 24 literal meanings in English. The interpretation I am looking for is only one of them. As a result, for a long time editors thought that it would be implausible to interpret the plays in this way.
Nevertheless, Fikkers believes that these literary texts can broaden our understanding of wardship. ‘The writers may focus on the more juicy elements, such as forced marriages, and attach major consequences to them, including murder. Issues such as lack of education are given less attention. Nevertheless, the way in which wardship is written about reveals the attitude towards this system that prevailed in society at the time.’