Elizabeth Brice and Elizabeth Rede: Two Female Goldsmiths

Linda Mitchell’s research made extensive use of prosopography as a methodology for explicating the lives of aristocratic women, especially those living on the Welsh Marches. This article employs her prosopographical methodology to illuminate the careers of Elizabeth Rede and Elizabeth Brice, two women who were members of London’s Goldsmiths’ Company. The Goldsmiths’ Company was one of the most powerful companies in medieval London, and many mayors, sheriffs, and aldermen came from this company. While we know a great deal about the role of the company in London politics and about the structure of the company itself, we know little about female goldsmiths. What makes the two women of this essay worth analyzing and comparing is that Elizabeth Rede’s husband Bartholomew had been apprentice to Elizabeth Brice’s husband, Hugh. These women undoubtably knew each other, and Brice’s career may well have served as a model for Elizabeth. Since Elizabeth Rede’s and Elizabeth Brice’s husbands had both been aldermen and mayor, positions that required great personal resources, both women had considerable resources at their disposal once widowed and remained actively involved in the Goldsmith’s guild. Upon her widowhood in 1497, Elizabeth Brice began paying membership dues and trained at least one apprentice, showing that she continued her husband’s shop and maybe even practiced gold smithery herself. Elizabeth Rede was widowed in 1505 and paid membership dues in the company every year until her death thirty years later. While there is no evidence she worked as a goldsmith, she was very involved with the Goldsmiths’ as executor of her husband’s will. She used this position to set up an endowment specifically to help the widows of goldsmiths who had fallen on difficult times. Comparing the life and careers of these women shows something of the shadowy world of female artisans and the ways in which elite London women interacted with powerful companies.