Opened 20th June 2024

Middling Culture Exhibition

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Launched 20th June 2024

The Shakespearean Memory Parlour

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About the Exhibition

Welcome to the Middling Culture exhibition, where we highlight the lives of England's sixteenth and seventeenth century middle class. Through curated images and artifacts, we explore their daily realities—neither wealthy nor impoverished, but socially significant.

Our exhibition is organized into thematic sections, showcasing objects that define the middling class and its communities. These items illustrate their social mobility and distinct identity amidst broader society, revealing their role in shaping England's cultural landscape.

Popular Objects

Explore our collection showcasing treasured artifacts from England's middling class, offering insights into daily life, social mobility, and cultural identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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Edward Alleyn’s Memorandum on Dulwich College

Memorandum

This is one of the cases treated by Simon Forman (1552-1611), a middling man who became a physician and astrologer. Originally from Salisbury, he was educated at the local grammar school and then became an apprentice hosier and grocer, keeping up his studies after hours. Later, he attended the University of Oxford, whilst also working as a servant. He then taught at various schools, worked as a carpenter, studied astronomy and even spent time in prison (for possessing magic books). Forman is, however, remembered for his life as a physician because he kept notebooks known as 'casebooks.' They detailed his patients, their ailments and their treatments.<br />
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Here, a particular case recorded in the top left-hand corner, dated 9am Sunday 28 July 1599, is an �horary� consultation (where a chart is drawn up for the exact time a question is posed). Here the patient asked: whether the fleet of Spain or Any enemy will come Against England this year or no[t] before all hallow tide next. This reflects a widespread concern with international politics and the particular threat from Roman Catholic forces a decade after the Spanish Armada had been deflected.

Astrological casebooks

Casebook

Do you need a type of literacy to �read� Google maps? How do you know how to use such visual and verbal depictions of space? Early modern England was relatively newly acquainted with maps. Although they had been around for a long time by the Tudor period, in the years that follow 1550 there was a huge expansion in who could access or own them. They were increasingly bought or made by middling individuals. As many were officeholders in their local communities, like churchwardens, middling individuals had a very keen interest in the geography of their local areas, perhaps more so than the gentry above them.<br />
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Middling customers with enough spending money could purchase maps of all kinds, including in expensive but not unattainable �folio� books (large �format volumes). Middling professionals like William Smith sat at heart of the expansion in mapmaking. Smith drew this map of Bristol while touring the country writing an account of local places and features. He was trained in making coats of arms (the drawings of shields or crests given to �noble� families). However, he was a passionate �antiquarian��a term that came to be applied to those interested in local history. He was also interested in what distinguishes different towns and cities across England, and these maps were to be read alongside what we might now regard as his �guide-books.�<br />
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He also includes, alongside the maps, the kind of information we would get from a travel app: this volume includes the distances and times it takes to travel from one location to another across the country. Here, his detailed manuscript sketch, with a textual �key,� falls into a recognisable model of the period�s geography. Such images become particularly popular when John Speed�s famous maps from the period became more readily available in print.

The Particular Description of England by William Smith

Map

Aemilia Lanyer (Bassano) is the first professional female writer to publish a substantial volume of poems in England. The poems and letters in <em>Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum</em> (1611) are all dedicated to women, including King James I�s wife, Queen Anne. Lanyer�s poems are mostly religious, but her best-known poem is �The Description of Cooke-ham' which describes the grand country estate belonging to her patron the Countess of Cumberland. Now referred to as the sub-genre of �country house� poems, Lanyer�s description of the estate and how the plenty of the house and lands served its owner to create an earthly paradise was one of the first of its kind. Her book is considered by many as an early example of feminist literature, but significantly it shows that some middling women were able to make writing their occupation. <br />
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Lanyer was the daughter of the Venetian Jewish musician, Baptista Bassano, who secured a position in the court of Edward VI. Lanyer is likely to have been educated at court and her work suggests that she was acquainted with a number of elite women and their households. She made writing her profession: <em>Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum</em> was the first volume of English poetry to have a female author�s full name on its title page. She continued her dedication to female education by setting up a school for girls in London in 1617. Sadly, the school closed just two years later due to financial troubles. <br />
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Lanyer�s life follows a similar pattern to the experience of many male writers of the day. Her father�s position at court might have made him �lesser� gentry, but his status and wealth came from his craft as a musician rather than land and property. Lanyer relied on a combination of marriage and, like all successful writers, patronage, to support her writing. Once published, and with some wealth to her name, she turned to charitable work, (opening a school for the poor), as did numerous upper middling men including theatre entrepreneur Edward Alleyn. Yet her work was also viewed by some with suspicion. Her gender, along with her Italian and Jewish heritage, were the parts of her identity critics chose to focus on, posing risks and limitations to her social standing. Lanyer�s poetry tells us that women could make a career as writers, but this occupation did not always have a positive impact on their reputation and status.

Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

Salve Deus Rex Iudaeorum by Aemilia Lanyer

Social identity was bound up with religious identity during a period when divisions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism were causing conflict across Europe. From the mid-sixteenth-century, English popular culture became increasingly hostile to the Catholic Church. This is an example of pro-Protestant propaganda produced early in the 1620s. It dates from a wave of anti-Catholic feeling responding to the proposed marriage of Prince Charles and a Spanish princess. It depicts two (failed) attempts to overthrow the English monarchy and impose Roman Catholicism on its people � the Spanish Armada (1588) on the left of the print and the Gunpowder Plot (1605) on the right. It combines these two events as evidence that God was on the side of the Protestant English.<br />
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The print speaks to a strong sense of religious and national identity that had emerged by the 1620s. Buying this print would show awareness of national politics and objection to the so-called �Spanish match� and act as a conversation piece within groups of like-minded peers. The designer of the print was Ipswich preacher Samuel Ward, who also had some of his sermons published around this time. This engraving was published in Amsterdam, indicating the wider religious and cultural networks of the middling.

Double Deliverance

Illustrated print engraving

Red leather gloves

Gloves

This building was an extension of 43 High Street, Reigate, put up in the 1620s when the property was in the tenancy of the Wyld family. The extension was taken down in the 1980s and was subsequently re-erected at the Weald & Downland Living Museum.<br />
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From the late 1500s to the late 1600s, England went through a period often referred to now as the �Great Rebuilding�. During this time, people invested more than ever in their homes. Many built completely new houses, while others chose to substantially alter existing buildings. Some of the most popular home improvements included extensions like this, as well as the addition of fireplaces, staircases and glass windows. People also spent more money on goods with which to furnish their homes. These home renovations not only improved people�s quality of life but were key assets for middling people like the Wyld family. The alteration of their existing home in Reigate was a major investment and would have displayed the success and status of the family to the local community.<br />
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Not only did the extension provide additional living space, but its high-quality decoration (some of which remains today) also suggests that it was intended for conspicuous display: to receive and entertain guests.