Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Calamities/Profligacy
The seventeenth century was an age of conspicuous consumption, meaning that people spent substantial amounts of money on luxury items in order to impress others. [1] The culture of conspicuous consumption led to the establishment of "gaming ordinaries (gambling resorts), bowling alleys, ale houses, discrete lodging houses, theatres, and pleasure gardens." [2] Many people spent time in London in order to take advantage of these amenities. They often spent a great deal of money on gambling, fine clothes, fancy houses, and generally living beyond their means. [3] A single family member's profligacy could place a significant financial strain on the whole family, such that "the profligate heir" became "the nightmare of the propertied classes." [4] Overspending was a serious problem for the nobility and gentry. In Scotland, "insubstantial incomes or overspending had affected Lords Borthwick, Ross of Harket, Elphinstone, Sommerville, Innermeith, Sinclair, Lindsay, Saltoun, Ogilvy, Methven, and Ochiltree." [5] One contemporary named Edward Waterhouse considered profligacy to be one of the main causes of the fall of great families. He saw "decline... as caused by “prophaneness”, “debauchery”, “heighth of Port and Pride of Living”, “disdain of thrift as Pedantry”, “vain and profuse gambling”, and having a “multitude of ill-chosen Acquaintance”. [6] Such behavior in sons often drew outrage from their fathers. Sir Nicholas Carew wrote a furious letter to his spendthrift son Francis after his son had to flee to France because he could not pay his debts. Carew accused his son of having "stupefied judgement with pride and vanety" [7]. The wife and children of a profligate man often suffered too. As one seventeenth-century ballad says,
"For while they did lead such extravagant lives,
Behold their poor children and sorrowful wives.
At home they might sit, and without e’re a bit,
While men in the ale-house drank more than was fit." [8]
References:
- ↑ John L. McMullan, "Criminal Organization in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century London," Social Problems 29, no. 3 (Feb., 1982): 312.
- ↑ McMullan, 312
- ↑ Stuart Woolf, "The Aristocracy in Transition: A Continental Comparison," The Economic History Review 23, no. 3 (Dec., 1970): 521.
- ↑ Miriam Slater, "The Weightiest Business: Marriage in an Upper-Gentry Family in Seventeenth-Century England," Past & Present no. 72 (Aug., 1976): 33.
- ↑ Keith M. Brown, "Aristocratic Finances and the Origins of the Scottish Revolution," The English Historical Review 104, no. 410 (Jan. 1989): 51.
- ↑ Andrew Sharp, "Edward Waterhouse's View of Social Change in Seventeenth-Century England," Past & Present 62 (Feb. 1974): 33.
- ↑ Linda A. Pollock, "Anger and the Negotiation of Relationships in Early Modern England," The Historical Journal 47, no. 3 (Sept. 2004): 575.
- ↑ J. A. Sharpe, "Plebeian Marriage in Stuart England: Some Evidence from Popular Literature," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 36 (1986): 76.