ABSTRACT
A ‘family’ of thirteen people, which was also a unit of production of thirteen, less the children still incapable of work, was quite big for English society at that time and in a way exceptional as well. The manner in which this economic necessity was provided for shows how well the traditional, patriarchal structure of society could be adapted to meet the needs of a particular economy. There was the society of man and wife, that of parents and children, and that of master and servant. All those in life-cycle service, all women, all unmarried persons were caught up, so to speak, ‘subsumed’ is the ugly word we shall use, into the personalities of their fathers and masters. The paid servants of both sexes had their specified and familiar position in the family household, as much part of it during their residence as the sons and daughters, but not quite in the same situation of course.
