Folger Shakespeare Library
CELM

Joyce Jefferies

c.1570–1650

Introduction

The money-lender Joyce Jefferies left behind, evidently in her own handwriting, a revealing financial account book (*JeJ 1), one that is a rare exception to the pious autobiographical diaries and memoranda usually associated with women in this period. Although of precious little literary, rather than historical, value, it is a rare, possibly unique, early record of the professional scrivening activities of a woman, other contemporary examples of women's accountancy being generally devoted to domestic household accounts.

Miscellaneous

A New Booke of Receights

Unpublished in full. Extracts in various articles from 1857 onwards.

*JeJ 1
Autograph

A long narrow ledger (45.5 x 19 cm.) autograph financial account book, entitled A New Booke of Receights of Rents Anueties and Interest moneys begining at St Mary day 1638 written at Heryford, at John Fletchers howse, signed by Jefferies several times, with occasional annotations probably by her nephew and executor William Jefferies (including, on f. 23r, May 3d 1651. An abstracte out of my Aunte Jeffreyes hir book of receipts, of moneyes and moneyes due to hir for consideracions in arreare from severall persons), ii + 73 leaves (plus numerous blanks), in later half-vellum marbled boards.

1638-49

Bookplate of Sir Thomas Edward Winnington, MP, fourth Baronet (1811-72), of Stanford Court, Worcestershire, 1858. Hodgson's, 26 May 1932, lot 467.

Recorded in HMC, 1st Report (1970), Appendix, p. 53. Discussed in Robert Tittler, Money-Lending in the West Midlands: the Activities of Joyce Jefferies, 1638-49, Historical Research, 67 (1994), 249-63. Facsimiles, with transcriptions, of ff. 1r and 32r in Reading Early Modern Women, ed. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer (New York & London, 2004), pp. 266-70.

Contents