{"id":2187,"date":"2024-11-26T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/materialcultureofwills\/?p=2187"},"modified":"2024-11-26T07:43:43","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T07:43:43","slug":"will-of-the-month-the-many-hats-of-a-gloucester-cap-maker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/materialcultureofwills\/2024\/11\/26\/will-of-the-month-the-many-hats-of-a-gloucester-cap-maker\/","title":{"rendered":"Will of the Month: The many \u2018hats\u2019 of a Gloucester cap-maker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This month\u2019s post analyses the will of John Huggens or Huggyns, a \u2018Capper\u2019 or cap-maker who died in Gloucester in 1544.[1]<\/a> Huggens\u2019 will shows how just one type of object, the humble woollen cap, could underpin personal relationships and have multiple meanings within an individual\u2019s life. Caps were a big part of Huggens\u2019 world: making them was his trade, but they were also mentioned several times in his will as bequests to friends and family, and as gifts designed to recompense the overseers of his estate and those who nursed him in his final sickness.<\/p>\n\n\n

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John More (1509-c.1559), son of Sir Thomas More, wearing a felted wool cap. Detail from the drawing by Holbein in the Royal Collection, Windsor (1526). http:\/\/www.royalcollection.org.uk\/collection\/912226\/john-more<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Huggens the Capper<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Capping\u2019, the making or knitting of woollen caps, was linked to the English wool trade and was an important industry in early Tudor Gloucester, but it had begun to decline around the time that Huggens made his will. Records from early sixteenth-century Gloucester mention around nine principal cappers working at any one time, some of whom employed large numbers of people.[2]<\/a> Huggens may have run a smaller operation, but he certainly had an apprentice, John Barret, who he left \u2018thirtene shillinges foure pence\u2019 to be paid once his obligations to Huggens\u2019 widow and son had been fulfilled. Huggens\u2019 encounters with other Gloucester cappers also appear in other historical records. In 1537, he informed against the Mayor of Gloucester and fellow capper Thomas Bell the Elder, claiming that Bell had called Bishop Latimer \u2018a horesone heretycke\u2019.[3]<\/a> Huggens\u2019 co-accuser was another capper, John Rastell, who was later named the overseer of Huggens\u2019 will. Bell was likely at this time the chief capper in Gloucester \u2013 is it possible that Huggens and Rastell had ulterior motives for informing against their local competitor in this way?<\/p>\n\n\n

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“Glocester. Glovernia. Claudiocestria” town plan by Pierre Van Der Aa of about 1720, based on the original by John Speed of 1610. Copper engraved antique map, with recent hand colouring. [from ancestryimages.com<\/a>: https:\/\/www.ancestryimages.com\/proddetail.php?prod=f5768<\/a> ]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Best girdles and best beads<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is of course quite possible that Huggens informed against Bell for matters of faith and conscience: Bell was a man of local standing and influence, he had spoken ill of a reforming Bishop, and he had perhaps exhibited traditional Catholic sympathies. But another feature of Huggens\u2019 will, proved seven years after this incident, perhaps complicates Huggens\u2019 alleged criticism of Bell \u2013 his mention of \u2018beades\u2019, a term almost always used to denote rosary beads at this time.[4]<\/a> He left to his daughter-in-law \u2018my wiefs beste girdle and hur beste beades\u2019. But there was a caveat \u2013 his wife was still alive, and he clarified that \u2018my wief shall have thuse of them during her liefe\u2019. The bequest of beads that were envisaged to be in continual use thus suggests that Huggens or members of his family were certainly not committed reformers. Huggens also bequeaths money to his ‘gostly father’ Sir John Williams, which seems to be a reference to his priestly confessor.

Specifying bequests that his wife would have use of during her lifetime was a means of setting aside items as distinct from the residue of household goods that would go to his eldest son. He gave \u2018to Johana the eldest daughter of my saide soon Rafe Huggyns my beste sylver sallte double gylte with a coover\u2019 and to Rafe\u2019s second daughter, also named Johana, \u2018my secoonde sallte of silver parcel gyllte withe the coover\u2019. But both these silver gilt salts, the best and second best, to the first and second Johanas, were to remain to the use of Huggens\u2019 wife during her lifetime. \u2018Same-name\u2019 living siblings were mentioned more than once in this will: Huggens left a bequest to Thomas Bell the Younger, the half-brother of the aforementioned cap-maker Thomas Bell the Elder, of \u2018a gowne clothe of pewke\u2019 (a woollen cloth).[5]<\/a> An additional cloth-based bequest, his \u2018slyvelesse cote of Kentish clothe\u2019 went to \u2018the poore man called Thomas Shepparde\u2019. That Huggens left a poor man a coat that he himself had owned and presumably worn suggests a degree of personal connection and consideration that goes beyond more expected charitable bequests of money. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Sixteenth-century woollen cap, British, The Met Museum Accession Number: 29.158.486, https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/art\/collection\/search\/81552<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u2018one of my beste Cappes\u2019<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside these bequests of gowns, coats, beads, girdles, and silverware, it is Huggens\u2019 own caps that are a key feature of his will. Huggens left caps to a few different people, some of which he explicitly identified as having made himself. He left to John Stakes \u2018a Button cap of the beste makynge\u2019: a bequest that signals a desire for Stakes to receive a high-quality item, perhaps one of the better examples of his craftsmanship. He gave \u2018to Katheryn Staninge one of my beste Cappes for her wearyng and lykwyse to Elizabeth Graunger I gyve an noother of my beste cappes for her wearyng for their paynes taken withe me in my sicknes\u2019. These \u2018beste cappes\u2019 were gifted in recognition and gratitude for the women\u2019s work in caring for him, presumably during the sickness that prompted him to make his will (he died, and the will was proved, around four months later). Both women had likely already been paid or reimbursed in kind for their care work, and these caps were likely an additional token of gratitude. They received the caps for their \u2018wearyng\u2019: as with the gift of the sleeveless coat to the poor man Thomas Shepparde, these bequests were practical and personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018the beste cappe of my makyng\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huggens asked that John Rastell, his fellow capper and co-accuser of Thomas Bell the Elder, be made an overseer of his will, and gave him \u2018for his paynes\u2019 in seeing the will performed \u2018six shillinges eight pence and the beste cappe of my makyng for his wearyng\u2019. That Rastell would receive the \u2018beste\u2019 cap emphasises the high regard with which the role of \u2018overseer\u2019 was esteemed, and the trust placed in Rastell to fulfil it. While Huggens appeared to have valued women’s care work as comparable to the labour of overseeing a will, he perhaps also wanted his fellow craftsman to receive a sample of his very best work. These \u2018beste\u2019 or nearly best caps were not only high-quality items designed to recognise and recompense the work of care or complex administration, but they were also personal representations of the labour of the testator\u2019s own hands. Indicative of Huggens\u2019 life\u2019s work, they were chosen specially and designed for the named individual to use and wear, forming a tactile connection between testator and beneficiary. The considered dispersal of otherwise ordinary and ubiquitous woollen caps, became, in the context of the craftsman\u2019s will, a means of ensuring the remembrance of the testator. The humble woollen cap was both a practical garment and a personal token that, in its bequeathing, fulfilled a similar function to the distribution of mourning rings.<\/p>\n\n\n