The Servant of One Master: Controlling Early Modern Labour Mobility through Identity Documentation

Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Small Grant

Servants who moved between masters over longer distances in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century England were legally required to bear papers, called testimonials. I reconstructed the prescription and practice of this system. Due to a paucity of evidence, historians previously wondered if servant testimonials were ever actually used. I found registers of testimonials for forty-seven servants across the period of study. This finding advances our knowledge of past migrant documentation practices. I argue that, though little enforced, servant testimonials held a place in most contemporaries’ minds. To merely grasp the concept of the testimonial was to recognize the fundamental ideal that servants should only depart their masters with the masters’ permission. Masters’ and legislators’ projection of the image of an orderly economy in which labor followed the demands of power, meant that everyone understood this principle and their awareness shaped their decisions about moving and seeking work.