shoes&pattens0

120

Shoes and Pattens

Invoices and inventories give some idea of what the wealthier members of society were wearing as well as what they were paying for their shoes. For example, we read:

To Robert le Fermor, bootmaker of Fletestreet, for six pair of boots with tassels of silk and drops of silver-gilt, pńce of each pair, five shillings, bought for the King’s use. Westminster, 24th of May.

1110 s.

(Wardrobe accounts of the 14th year of Edward II (1320-1); Archaeologia xxvi (1836), 344-5)

The shoes of the common people do not seem to have been expensive items to make. Salzman listed the prices for piecework in Bristol in 1364 as threepence for making a pair of boots in their entirety: that is, a penny for cutting and twopence for sewing. Twopence was the payment for cutting one dozen shoes - a penny for all the uppers and a penny for the soles - with a further penny for lasting (Salzman 1923, 256). In the 13th and 14th centuries the average price of a pair of shoes, such as might be distributed charitably by the king to the poor, seems to have been about fivepence or sbcpence (Mander 1931, 5-7) -roughly equivalent to a day’s wages for a skilled labourer in the 14th century.

The Royal Wardrobe accounts contain a number of shoe-names, each presumably identifiable to contemporary readers as specific types, and these provide an idea of the variation that was possible. A reąuisition by Edward IV in 1480, for instance, includes the following items:

To Petir Herton cordewaner for a pair of shoon double soled of blac leder not lined pńce vd;. . . for a pair shoon of Spanish ledre single soled v d. each pair; for xj pair sloppes ... (of various types of leather) . . . price of etery payre xviij d ... to Thomas Hatche for two pair ofslippers price the pair vijd ... (to Peter Herton) . . . for ij pair patyns of leder price the pair xijd. for a pair of Botews of tawney Spaynyssh leder price xvjd. for vij pair Botews ofblac leder above the knee price of etery pair iiij s . . .

(ed. Nicholas 1830, 118-9)

Almost certainly some of these, such as the ‘shoon’, the ‘botews’ (but not the boots reaching above the knee) and the leather ‘patyns’, will have been very similar to items in the present collec-tion, but others - in particular, the ‘slippers’ and ‘sloppes’ - are not so readily identified. It is worth noting that by the end of the 15th century it was possible to specify ‘double soles’ - presumably ‘tum-welt’ or welted shoes - and that, as might be expected, the king would enjoy a much greater variety of leathers and finishes than is found in the normal archaeological assemblage.

Continental evidence similarly suggests that status is a factor which should be considered in the study of medieval footwear. Excavations in the towns of Dordrecht and s’Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands both yielded the same types of shoes, but in the former, morę affluent town, the shoes were decorated and barely wom when discarded, while in the latter, less affluent town, they were plain and heavily wom (O. Goubitz pers. comm.). Goubitz interprets the contents of a cess pit in Deventer as representing the footwear of an entire household. Shoes were found in sizes probably representing the parents and children, along with other shoes in the same sizes with the ąuarters cut off so that they could be wom as mules: the shoes of the owners cut back and reused by the family retainers (O. Goubitz pers. comm.). Many of the shoes in the present collection are heavily wom and cut up for reuse, and a large proportion exhibit signs of repair, especially to the soles (see above, pp. 89-90 and Tables 15-16). The description given by the Cunningtons of peasants’ shoes reinforced at the toe and heel with extra thicknesses of leather (Cunnington & Cunnington 1973, 111) accords well with shoes such as these, which have repair patches at toe and heel to cover holes in the original soles (Fig. 123).

WomerCs and children’s shoes

It is rarely possible when examining shoes to differentiate between those wom by women and those wom by men except by size (see discussion, above, pp. 103-5). Women are generally shown in contemporary illustrations either with their gowns completely covering their feet or with merely the toes protruding. Even Chaucer is of little help. He describes the Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales thus:

Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed.

Ful streite y-teyd, and shoos ful moiste and newe

(ed. Skeat 1912, 456-7).