Worldly Goods of Elizabeth Pacy (1682)

An Inventory of all and singular the goods and chattels, rights and credits, of Elizabeth Pacy late of Lowestoft in the county of Suffolk, widow, deceased, valued and apprized by John Wilde, Henry Warde, Samuel Smyth, John Aldred, John Fowler and James Pacy the 18th day of August Anno. Dm. 1682 as followeth vizt. 

Glossary

Andirons – free-standing iron uprights with horizontal bars for supporting logs in a fire-place and sometimes having integral hooks to carry roasting rods or spits.

Barres – probably wooden poles or bars used for turning crabs, when winching small craft onto land.

Basting spoon – spoon used to dribble fat onto meat while it was roasting.

Beetle – a heavy wooden mallet, sometimes referred to as a maul.

Belcony – obsolete spelling of balcony, which probably means a shelf of some kind to hold the glasses referred to – these being status symbols of their time.

Billett[s] – short coppiced ash or oak rods used in the curing of red herrings. 

Board Cloathe – tablecloth.

Bonds – formal legal documents authenticating loans of money, with a copy held by each if the people involved.

Boules – variant spelling of bowls referring to the small wooden casks used as floats on drift-nets for catching both herring and mackerel.

Boults – variant spelling of bolts, which were rolls of cloth of varying specific length.

Bushel – former Imperial dry measure of volume equal to eight gallons in capacity. Much used, at one time for measuring grain. The item referred here was probably a wooden or metal container of required size.

Buttrys – the buttery was a ground-floor service-room used originally for the storage of liquids (especially wine and beer) and with its name deriving from Old French boteille, meaning “bottle”. It was originally (in medieval times and in the houses of the rich) next to the kitchen – sometimes becoming integrated with it. The presence of three butteries, here, probably means that they were annexes of some kind to the rear of the house.

Cane stone – probably Caen stone, from Normandy. French limestone highly rated as a building material for appearance and workability.

Chaldron – dry measure used for coal. The Newcastle chaldron weighed 53 stones; the London chaldron was defined as 36 bushels (216 stones). Regular East Coast trade in coal from at least the early 16th century onwards, between Newcastle and Lowestoft, suggests the former weight.

Chafing dish – metal dish which kept food hot in a container above, by means of burning charcoal.

Close stool – early type of commode, with covered chamber pot set within a chair. 

Cockboate – small ship’s lifeboat.

Cordage – probably refers to the cords and ropes used in ships’ rigging.

Crabb – a small capstan used for pulling inshore craft up above the tide-line.

Cradle – probably refers to a fire-cradle: a legged, free-standing, structure of iron standing within a hearth and containing a fire.

Curry – comb for grooming horses.

Cwt – abbreviation for hundredweight: from C (Roman numeral for 100) and wt (weight).

Darnick – variant spelling of Dornic (the Flemish town of Dornik, al. Tournai). A heavy fabric made there from a combination of linen and wool (sometimes with silk added) was widely used for curtains and wall-hangings.

Deales – soft-wood planks of pine, fir or spruce, often imported from the Baltic.

Diap – an abbreviation of diaper, indicating a linen fabric with a diamond pattern woven into it. Much used for both towels and napkins.

Dole – a dole, in this case, refers specifically to a pair of drift-nets – this often being the basic contribution made by ordinary crew members to the gear used at sea.

Drawing table – given that this was in the kitchen, use for writing or drawing may not have been its function. It may have been for removing the entrails of rabbits, game birds and wildfowl.

Fann – A shallow wicker basket used for winnowing grain.

Ferryboate – a rowing-boat used for conveying goods to and from the shoreline – Lowestoft having no harbour until one was constructed 1827-30.

Fire/fyer cradle – a legged, free-standing structure of iron, standing within a hearth and containing a fire.

Fire pann – shallow iron vessel, which stood beneath a fire cradle, to catch embers which fell through, and which could be used to carry this material to start fires in other parts of the house. Its location in the hall chamber suggests a safety factor in mind, to prevent accidental spread of fire in an upstairs room.

Fish kittle – variant spelling of kettle. An oval metal container used for cooking fish.

Foreiron – a fire-side implement of some kind. Not able to be specific, but the word “fore” may suggest something placed or used at the front.

Hake – a hook used to suspend pots over a fire.

Holland Duck – tough linen fabric, with the Duck element being a variant of Dutch – this being suggestive of the cloth’s origins.

Holland napkins – table linen for wiping hands and mouth. The term could also apply to small towels made of the same fabric.

Hurryes – dialect term for small quantities of hay or grain (the latter, usually before threshing had taken place). 

IMPRIS – abbreviation for the Latin legal term in primis, meaning “in the first place”. 

Jack – a device which assisted even and efficient roasting of meat on a spit, consisting of a metal set of windmill vanes located in the flue (to be driven by the rising hot air) and connected to the spit by a system of gears which rotated the spit itself.

Jack waights – variant spelling of weights. Used to ensure balance control of the roasting system described immediately above. 

Latch pan – a metal pan used to catch the fat dripping from roasting meat.

Leghorn – the name used at the time for the Italian port of Livorno – the main point of reception in the Mediterranean for red herrings exported from Lowesoft. 

Lint – a term used of drift-net meshes before they had been set up into nets ready for use. The word probably suggests that the nets had originally been made of flax fibre before tougher hemp replaced it. The term was used right into the 20th century, when cotton had long replaced hemp as the material used.

Loves – fish-house racks, on which speets of herring were hung to cure. The word may have derived from the French louvre, even though the slats were not angled. 

Lumber – unused pieces of furniture and other household items. The term may have derived from earlier use as a word which meant to move in a clumsy or blundering manner.

Marcht – abbreviated form of Marchant (variant of Merchant) – giving an indication of the vessel’s use in maritime trade, not in fishing.

Mount – refers to the terraced cliffside, where the lower levels would have accommodated the buildings associated with the family’s commercial activities.

Mr – abbreviated form of Master, indicating who commanded the vessel.

Noyalls – probably norsels, the lengths of twine which secured the meshes of a drift-net to the head-line. 

Ocum – variant spelling of oakum, the fibres of old ropes used in caulking the planking in ships’ hulls and decks.

Pantry – a room originally used in medieval times – in large houses – for the storage of bread (deriving from the French word pain). It later became adopted for all kinds of food needing to be kept cool .

Piggs – ingots.

Parcell – general term for a quantity or collection of things related.

Pillowbeare – pillowcase.

Plate – utensils or other items made of silver (the term deriving from the late medieval Latin word plata, indicating the sheet of metal from which such things were made).

Presse – a linen press (wooden cabinet or cupboard designed to store and smooth fabrics and clothing).

Purrs – fire-side tongs,

Rafts – could refer either to roof timbers or ship mast’s spars – the latter seeming more likely, given the context here.

Roste Irons – variant spelling of roast. These implements were small gridirons, placed above the fire to cook smaller items of meat than needed to be turned by spit. 

Rugg – variant spelling of rug, which either refers to a piece of coarse woollen material of a particular kind or to a coverlet made from this. Probably, the latter. 

Sences – given the Parlour location for these, and the following reference to “another picture”, the word is probably a misspelling of scenes. Which perhaps indicates landscape views of some kind.

Skilletts – three-legged metal cooking vessels, with a long handle, used for boiling and stewing.

Skreenes – variant spelling of screens. The pair located in the Cellar Chamber were probably fireside screens of some kind; that referred to in the Mount (in conjunction with a bushel and fan) was a sieve of some kind for cleaning grain.

Spitts – variant spelling of spits, these being the speets (slender coppiced hazel rods) on which red herring were to hung to cure in fish-houses. 

Standard – probably a large wooden candle holder of some kind.

Stillyard – variant spelling of steelyard – a two-armed balance for weighing goods. 

Stone table – either a tablet of some kind or a hard surface on which fish of different kinds were dealt with as part of the curing process.

Swills – baskets used for the washing and draining herrings prior to curing.

Tosting irons – variant spelling of toasting. The implements were probably toasting-forks. 

Turky – variant spelling of Turkey, which refers to the carpet fabrics imported from there, which were used to cover tables and upholster chairs.

Twilt – dialect term for a quilt.

Vallins – variant spelling of valance, which was part of a four-poster bed’s hangings.

Vizt. – variant form of viz and abbreviation of the Latin videlicet, meaning “that is to say” (i.e, namely).

Waigh – variant spelling of wey, which was a quantity of forty bushels of salt and which weighed one ton when dry. The word derived from weigh and was used to give the specific weight of particular commodities – which varied accordingly.

• The document (which is essentially that of Elizabeth Pacy’s husband, Samuel, who had died on 17 September 1680) has been reproduced here in its original spelling.

• The six assessors named represent a number of trades needed to make an accurate appraisal of the Pacy goods and assets. John Wilde and Henry Warde were merchants, Samuel Smyth [Smith] a yeoman with mixed interests, John Aldred a grocer, and John Fowler and James Pacy both mariners.

• The Pacy and Wilde family were related and James Wilde (father of the man named here) lived next door to the Pacys at what is now No. 80 High Street – the Pacy house itself being Nos. 81-83. James Wilde was a cousin of Samuel Pacy.

• There were also family connections with the Wards, who lived close by on part of what is now the Triangle Market area and who were also, like the Pacys, religious Dissenters (Nonconformists).

• The inventory was processed for probate purposes through the Norwich Diocese Consistory Court and is numbered Inv. 63/81. It is lodged in the Norfolk Record Office. 

• The Pacy family first appear in the Lowestoft parish registers on 28 October 1571, when Mark and Christian Pace [sic] had a son James baptised. Ten years later, on 9 July 1581, he and his second wife, Elizabeth (née White), had a son Nicholas baptised on 9 July 1581 – he, who was to become the father of Samuel Pacey who was baptised 8 January 1624 (1623, by old Julian Calendar reckoning). Mark Pacy was a mariner and probably involved in both fishing activity and maritime trade. His grandson, Samuel, owned three fishing vessels and had shares in five trading craft. At the time of his death (on the evidence of the surviving Lowestoft probate material ), he was probably the wealthiest man in town. The family possibly had antecedents further down the Suffolk coast in the Southwold-Dunwich area.

• The Pacy house (long converted into two shop units) still has a number of its original features 

recognisable on the inside. It was originally of cross-passage/lobby-entry build, which is reflected in the inventory’s recording its ground-floor layout of hall, parlour and kitchen.

• When a probate inventory was compiled, the assessors usually went round the house in the way most convenient to them, starting with the ground-floor rooms. Hence, hall, parlour and kitchen were dealt with first, before visiting the three butteries and pantry which were probably annexes of some kind in the yard. The wash-house would also have been located there and, seemingly, the writing closet also – which may have been a type of small office where Samuel Pacy had kept track of his business interests). After dealing with the ground-floor, the six of them then went upstairs, starting with the hall chamber, followed by the parlour chamber, the pantry chamber (which seems to suggest that the pantry was built onto the back of the house, with a room above) and the kitchen chamber. From there, they went up into the roof-space to the two attic rooms, which would have been used for servant accommodation and general storage. Next came the cellar chamber, which is somewhat enigmatic as no cellar is previously mentioned to. However, at this time, the word “cellar” did not necessarily mean a storage space below ground, but just a storage area of some kind above or below – and before “chamber” became largely (even exclusively) applied to a first-floor bedroom, it could apply to any room generally.

• Having dealt with the house and its yard, the assessors would then have gone down to the two lower terraces, abutting onto Whaplond Way (Whapload Road) and referred to here as The Mount – a word used to describe a hill or slope, as well as a mountain itself. And this is where all the buildings connected with the Pacy family’s commercial activities would have been located: barns, stables, salt-stores, fish-houses and anything else connected with farming, fishing, fish-curing and maritime trade. The six ferry boats listed were almost certainly down on the shoreline, where they were used for conveying goods to and from craft anchored up in the inshore roads, while the three fishing vessels would either have been anchored up awaiting the autumn herring season or engaged in some other local fishing venture. The five traders mentioned were probably all at sea, engaged in different kinds of commercial activity.

• Even the family cash assets are thrown in under items associated with The Mount, whereas money would have been kept securely in the house, in a locked and reinforced chest of some kind – probably in the hall chamber. And so are its moneylending activities. All of this financial activity and the paperwork attaching to it placed at the very end of the inventory. In both cases, the record being done this way both for convenience and for maintaining household security.

• One noticeable feature regarding the house itself is the mixed use of certain rooms, typical at the time in even wealthier circles (but less widespread than would have been the case 100 years earlier). The hall and the parlour were both reception spaces, with the former used for more formal occasions and the latter for the entertainment of friends and relatives. The chambers’ primary use was for sleeping, but it can be seen that both the hall and parlour ones also served for sitting – with the former (the larger) also storing all kinds of household linen and napery items, as well as its silver utensils. The pantry chamber held household bedlinen and napery, while the two attic rooms (the north seemingly larger than the south) held a mixture of furniture, bedlinen and other unnamed items.

• The presence of armaments in the hall (two muskets, two pistols, a cutlass, a sword, two belts (these, for the cutlass and sword) and two pairs of bandoliers (to hold cartridges) was both functional and decorative, with all of the items probably mounted on one of the walls for visual display intended to impress people who entered the room. But, they also represented the Pacy involvement in maritime activity, whereby firearms were carried on board (especially 

on trading vessels) as a means of countering piracy.

• The primary sea-related activities (fishing, fish-curing and maritime trade) were profitable – but not without risk, both from the weather and (from time to time) hostile action from European opponents. If you had vessels which caught fish (and the Pacys had three), it made sense to process the catches also in order to maximise the profits to be made.

• The three fishing vessels named have two (the Herring and the Mackerel) reflecting seasonal activity – the autumn months for herring and May-June for mackerel – while the third (Susan) bore the name of the oldest daughter. All three of them (not necessarily all together, nor every year) might also have gone on the late winter / early spring voyage to Faeroe and Iceland to fish for cod and ling. Though significantly, perhaps, there is no mention of either lines or hooks in the inventory. 

• The five trading craft were all shared with other investors, which was done to guard against total loss if a vessel sank and to spread the risk. The only case of the proportion of share not being stated is the last one – probably because it wasn’t known readily to hand. Two of the vessels (Baltic and Riga) were obviously involved in that particular area of North European commercial activity, whereby grain, malt and cured fish left Lowestoft with softwood planking, pitch, pig iron and rope-quality hemp coming in on the return journey. Both the Neptune and Red Lion might well have been similarly engaged and there was also the very important Mediterranean trade in red herrings to the Italian port of Leghorn (the Livorno of today), with all kinds of warm climate goods coming back to Lowestoft: dried fruits, spices, wine, olive oil, carpets and fabrics. The Black Lion (perhaps as suggested by its name) was a collier vessel engaged in the coastal coal trade from Newcastle-on-Tyne.

• Samuel Munds, named here as this vessel’s master, was thirty-nine years old – the son of James Munds (mariner). When he died in April 1710, he had by then become a merchant himself, with his probate inventory showing that his worldly goods were worth a total of £258 8s 3d. He lived in a house on the east side of the High Street at its northernmost end – abutting onto an earlier dwelling now occupied by No. 2 – and his interests in fishing, fish-curing, farming and brewing were sufficiently diverse to necessitate nine appraisers being required to value his estate. The single craft he owned, the Mayflower, was a fishing vessel. He was one of a handful of men of his time who, through a combination of hard work and business sense, were able to rise in status and influence.

• Although maritime activity was the primary focus of the Pacy family, agricultural operations formed a lesser interest. The presence of hay suggests this, being used to feed horses – and one animal is indeed mentioned, probably present for personal use (cartage probably being bought in). The reference to the screen, bushel and winnowing fan indicates the threshing and sorting of grain, being carried out – but, to what extent cannot be established. A number of the Lowestoft merchants were involved in farming, at varying levels of activity.

• Before banks became established, money-lending activity was in the hands of the wealthier members of society. And, in local market towns of the time, this meant merchants, brewers, grocers, drapers and the like, as well as yeomen and lawyers – plus the widows of men who had held these occupations. Analysis of this inventory shows that 37% of the total value of the Pacy estate was tied up in loans of one kind or another (probably at an interest rate of about 5%) – the bonds referred to being legal agreements relating to how much had been lent, with each party holding a document recording the amount of money itself and the date of expiry for repayment. The mortgages are just what they say they are: money borrowed on the agreed value of a particular piece (or pieces) of real estate, with the period of loan specified and with loss of the borrower’s property in the event of default. The “good” mortgages would have been current ones still within the agreed period of loan, while the “bad” ones would have been those where default had occurred. The same would have applied to the debts mentioned (both of which would have related to the money tied up in the Pacy business activities). The monetary amount of good and bad debts is sometimes shown in inventories, but that is not the case here. One of the duties placed upon a will’s executors was to see that any money owing by the deceased was paid.

• The level of wealth shown in this inventory, in the total value of the estate shown at the end (£2,849 4s 9d) – on the back of 507 wills and 100 probate inventories transcribed for the period 1561-1730 – suggests that Samuel and Elizabeth Pacy were probably Lowestoft’s wealthiest permanent residents of the 17th century. Exceeded only by “expat” Sir Thomas Allin, the town’s famous naval commander, who (on his retirement from sea-related duties) bought both the Lowestoft and Somerleyton manorial titles in 1672 and chose to live the life of a country gentleman in the latter.

CREDIT: David Butcher