ELIZABETHAN HISTORY

Traditional Trades And Cottage Crafts Listed In
The Austrey Parish Register 1558-1600

By Alan Roberts

We have to thank Elizabeth I for providing us with an impressive and comprehensive list of Austrey's sixteenth century inhabitants. Towards the end of her reign the old Queen enacted that the parish registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths that Thomas Cromwell instructed to be kept safely in the parish test should be copied into parchment books for better preservation. So we have through the diligence of the vicar a very full record of Austrey's Elizabethan inhabitants, with the names of their marriage partners and in most entries their occupations from 1558 onwards. Not all of those listed in the register actually settled in the parish. The entries seem to have been swollen by people from outside parishes, which appears to have been a fashionable place to marry. Some were outsiders marrying Austrey brides and then departing, or servants and itinerants registering a baptism or marriage before returning to their home village. Jeffrey Howe, the "traveller" recorded marrying Elizabeth in 1600 probably stayed only a day or two before moving on. This is a list of those who did not work in the fields, the traditional tradesmen and cottage-craft workers recorded in the Austrey register from 1558 to 1600.

© Alan Roberts, August 2013

Essays