Calendar of Bristol Apprentice Book, 1532-1565

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BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY'S
PUBLICATIONS
VOL.XXXIlI
CALENDAR
OF THE
BRISTOL
APPRENTICE BOOK
1532-1565
Part Il 1542 - 1552
BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY'S
PUBLICATIONS
General Editor: PROFESSOR PATRICK M cGRATH, M.A.,
Assistant General Editor: Miss ELIZABETH RALPH, M.A , F.S.A.
VOL. XXXIII
CALENDAR
OF THE
BRISTOL APPRENTICE BOOK
1532 - 1565
PART II
1542 - 1552
To
the Reverend Sam Culveiwell
CALENDAR
OF THE
BRISTOL
APPRENTICE BOOK
1532-1565
PART II
1542-1552
EDITED BY
ELIZABETH RALPH and NORA M. HARDWICK
Printed for the
BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY
1980
ISSN 0305-8729
© Eli;:.abeth Ralph and Nora M Hardu·ick
Produced for the Society by
Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucester
Printed in Great Britain by
Redwood Bum Limited
Trowbridge & Esher
CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgments VI
Editorial Method vii
List of abbreviations Vlll
Introduction 5
Text 5
Appendix 1 152
Appendix 11 153
Appendix 111 156
Index of Persons 159
Index of Places 182
Subject Index 191
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We should like to thank all those who in various ways have
contributed to the production of this volume: the staff of the
Bristol Record Office and Mr. G. Langley and Mrs. M. Crudge
of the Bristol Reference Library who willingly met our needs,
and Dr. Basil Cottle who helped to identify the many difficult
place names. We are particularly grateful to Miss Mary Williams,
the City Archivist for her unfailing help.
I acknowledge with thanks a grant from the Marc Fitch Fund.
EDITORIAL METHOD
The apprenticeship enrolments are written in Latin and have
been translated into English and calendared. There are, however,
some memoranda written in English and these have been trans
cribed in the form in which they appear and placed within inverted
commas.
For convenience of reference each entry has been numbered in
consecutive sequence and this is the number which is given in the
index.
Editorial comment such as the modern version of place names
has been put in square brackets.
The apprenticeship enrolments begin with the date written above
the entry. In the margin against each entry is the name of the
master with the letters viijd. The sum of 8d. was the Town
Clerk's fee for enrolment of each indenture. In calendaring, these
marginal notes have been omitted, but other marginal notes have
been included.
A specimen of the first entry is as follows:
[p. 239] ij die0 octobris [1542]
h etc Richardus Edwardes filius Thome Edwardes de Bristoll'
whytawer posuit seipsum apprenticium Willelmo Rede coryer
Civitate Bristoll' et Johanne uxori eius lam in arte de Coryour
quam etc a die dati presentis usque finem termini septem
annorum extunc etc Soluetque xvj solidos sterling' ac iiijd. per
liberate Bristol/' predicte cum duplice apparatu etc nomine etc.
Words shown in italics, being common form, are not included in
the calendar. In addition the scribe condensed several standard
clauses, indicated by etceteras. These are explained by Denzil
Hollis in Part I, p.13.
ABBREVIATIONS
app apprentice
d daughter
dee deceased
Jun junior
f fee to be paid by the master for the apprentice's freedom of
the city
n d no date
s son
wf wife
yrs years
English and Welsh counties
Beds Lanes Rado
Berks Leics Sa lop
Bucks Lines Som
Derb Mid Staffs
Glam Mon Warw
Glos Northants Wilts
Hants Notts Worcs
Herts Oxon Yorks
Hunts Pembs
INTRODUCTION
Bristol possesses an almost complete set of Apprentice Books
from 1532 and a complementary series of Burgess Books from
1558. Those admitted to the freedom of the city between the
years 1532 and 1558 can be found in the Mayor's Audits' which
contain lists of burgesses giving the fees which they paid, so that
in fact there is a record of those made free from 1532.
The volume of apprenticeship indentures now edited covers the
period 1542-1552 and is Part II of the first Bristol Apprentice
Book, 1532-1565.2 The first part, 1532-1542 was transcribed and
edited by Denzil Hollis and published by the Bristol Record
Society in 1948.3 In the Introduction of Part 1, Mr. Hollis
described the format of the volume in great detail and discussed
the system of apprenticeship in Bristol using all relevant
contemporary records.
Recently Dr. Anne Yarborough of the Catholic University of
America has made a study of the system of apprentices in Bristol
before the Statute of Artificers for a Ph.D. dissertation, 'Bristol's
apprentices in the 16th century: the cultural and regional mobility
of an age group.' Subsequently, she has written an article entitled
'Geographical and social origins of Bristol apprentices, 1542-
1565' which will be published shortly.• In view of the work done
by Mr. Hollis and that already done and still being done by Dr.
Y·arborough it is not the intention of this present Introduction to
consider the significance of the indentures enrolled, but only to
comment briefly on points of interest.
The enrolments show that an organised system of recording the
indentures was in operation at least thirty years before the
Statute of Artificers and Apprentices of 1563 which initiated a
national regulation of apprenticeship uniform for towns and
country. The system in Bristol was largely based on the customs
of London.5
'. B.R.O.
2. B.R.O. 04352.
3. Calendar of the Bristol Apprentice Book, 1532-1565, Part 1, 1532-1542 by
Denzil Hollis, (Bristol Record Society, vol.XIV. 1948.)
4. Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vol.98.
198 l.
5. The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar ed. by L. Toulmin-Smith, (Camden Society
1872), pp. 102-103.