Usury legislation, cash, and credit: the development of the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods<sup>1</sup>

Spicksley, Judith

doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00402.x

Cited by 36 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…These findings are basically consistent with evidence of women’s participation as investors or lenders in other historical credit networks (e.g. Hoffman et al 1999; Spicksley 2008).…”

Section: Basic Features Of the Florentine Interpersonal Credit Networksupporting

confidence: 88%

The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

McLean¹,

Gondal²

2014

Arch. eur. sociol.

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We analyze a network of 3,590 interpersonal credit ties among Renaissance Florentine elite households to determine how Florentine personal credit was socially structured. We assess the network in light of various social and economic motivations Florentines might have had to exchange credit with each other. We explore the extent of participation by people from different categories, such as neighborhoods, factions, and guilds, and we determine whether loans flowed primarily within or between such groupings. We observe considerable homophily within families and neighborhoods, but also extensive circulation of credit among the most commercially and politically active Florentines. The overall connectivity of this network of interpersonal credit transactions resembles the social structure of other contemporaneous Florentine networks, such as marriage and business, suggesting that interpersonal credit was an important and distinct domain in which elite membership was confirmed and elite social solidarity achieved.

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“…These findings are basically consistent with evidence of women’s participation as investors or lenders in other historical credit networks (e.g. Hoffman et al 1999; Spicksley 2008).…”

Section: Basic Features Of the Florentine Interpersonal Credit Networksupporting

confidence: 88%

The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

McLean¹,

Gondal²

2014

Arch. eur. sociol.

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“…Making an interesting contribution to both economic and gender history, Spicksley asks whether there was a connection between inheritance practices, a rise in money‐lending by single women, and the increase in female celibacy in the seventeenth century. Using a large database of wills, the author is able to show a marked shift in the preferences of will‐makers from endowing daughters with livestock towards bequeathing sums of cash.…”

Section: (Iii) 1500–1700 Jonathan Healey University Of Cambridgementioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

Pratt¹,

Schofield²,

Healey

et al. 2009

The Economic History Review

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“…20 Judith Spicksley's figures of bequests in the diocese of Lincoln from fathers to eldest or only daughters show that by the 1690s, cash was far and away the most important inheritance for women. 21…”

Section: 4mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women, banks and the securities market in early eighteenth-century England

Laurence

2008

Routledge International Studies in Business History

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This chapter is above all about women's agency, about their participation in the stock market, their increasing use of banks and the implied political choices in those activities. The understanding of women's political action, as a result of twenty years of research into both women and the relations between men and women, has led to an extension of our understanding of the political world beyond that of the male 'political nation' to include women's influence, patronage and the informal politics of locality, church and corporate bodies. 2 This chapter explores a further manifestation of women's participation in the politicised world of early eighteenth century England, especially during the period of the South Sea Bubble. This chapter is concerned with women investors in the South Sea Bubble of 1720 and the role that one particular bank played in facilitating their participation. The daring swap of government debt for equity in the South Sea Company and the share issues that accompanied this, the rapid inflation in share prices in the first half of 1720 and the ensuing collapse have become a byword for a stock market boom and bust. Historians of the Bubble have been much hampered by the destruction of the South Sea Company's share registers, so the customer ledgers of Hoare's Bank which record its customers' purchases and sales of stock, lottery tickets and government debt; dividend and interest payments on stock; and prizes from the lottery are a valuable source for the investment activities of private individuals at the time of the South Sea Bubble. The use of a bank was itself a novel activitybanks had until the late seventeenth century largely taken mercantile customers and dealt in loans and money transfers rather than serving as deposit banks. But by no means all banks acted for customers in this way. So this chapter considers the investments made by women customers of Hoare's Bank and the way in which their participation in the market was facilitated by the bank. The investment choices 4.2 made by the bank's customers give some credence to Bruce Carruthers's arguments about the politicisation of the market, so the chapter concludes with a consideration of the role of politics in the finances of Hoare's Bank customers. Women and investmentAttitudes to women's investment behaviour have been contradictory: in the eighteenth century women were taken as the prime example of those affected by the fever that swept up the population during the South Sea Bubble; later commentators have tended to treat them as conservative investors, choosing stock backed by the government for its supposed safety, the Bank of England over the other chartered companies, and annuities and bonds over stock. 3 Stock investment was seen as 'suitable for patriotic and prudent gentlemen, but ill-advised and dangerous for women', though it was patriotic to buy government debt. 4 Women were believed to lack judgement and to be gullible enough to be duped by unscrupulous brokers and jobbers. 5 It has long been assumed, too, that women were pr...

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Usury legislation, cash, and credit: the development of the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods¹

Cited by 36 publications

References 26 publications

The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

Women, banks and the securities market in early eighteenth-century England

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Usury legislation, cash, and credit: the development of the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods1

Cited by 36 publications

References 26 publications

The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

Women, banks and the securities market in early eighteenth-century England

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Usury legislation, cash, and credit: the development of the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods¹