Collins rarely wrote about himself and his family. This paragraph in the draft of a lengthy letter on mathematical topics is one of only a few brief accounts.
{Extract from a letter of John Collins to Dr. John Beale, August 20, 1672. Beale was one of the earliest fellows elected to the Royal Society in the early 1660s. Transcription: "I married the younger daughter of two only children of Mr. Wm. Austin, who, being one of his Majesty's cooks, when P. of Wales, was, by Dr. Wilkins' means, made and continued master cook of Wadham college in Oxford, during the late troubles, and is now master cook, to his Majesty, of the Lord s k[itchen]. I live at my said father-in-law's house in Petty [France], W[estminster], over against the Adam and Eve. He is now in Cheshire with his other daughter, and may return, if God please, a little after Michaelmas. Whilst in Oxford he was much esteemed for his great skill in simpling, gardening, planting trees, flowers, &c. which I mention, as understanding your good knowledge and delight therein."}
He fathered seven children, about whom nothing is known. He numbered them only once, in a letter dated May 23, 1677, to a parish priest whose skill in mathematics he admired. Five years later he said that even in 1672 he had "a great family to maintain," meaning wife and children.[1]
This latter statement was a report of a request he made that the government pay him arrears in salary and pension that were owed. Here's the relevant section in the clerk's "secretary" hand.
{Source: Manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu at Beaulieu House. Transcription: "In June 1670 Collins was employed as chief Clerke in the Councill of Plantations under Mr Slingesby as Secretary, who promised to procure the said Collins a Salary of 200£ per annum, but a Committee of the Councill would agree to allow no more than 150£, and was so ill paid that at Michaelmas 1672 there was about 300£ due to him, he having a great family to maintain, was necessitated to coame that and seeke other employments for obtaining a livelyhood, and happy it was he then lost it, in regard others so employed, have been so ill paid, and Collins hath yet owing to him on that account 150£. Moreover whilst Collins was there employed he kept most of the Bookes, which are many, his hand Writing being better liked that others."}
We don't know the date of his wedding, but if Collins had a great family to maintain in 1672 he must have been married some years before then. He can't have married while serving on shipboard in the Mediterranean (1642-49) so it's reasonable to suppose the event took place in the 1650s. Still, I think the early 1660s are a better guess.
We know for sure that the event took place before April 23, 1663, because on that date a mathematical practitioner wrote to Collins and in closing he sent his "respects to yourself and Mrs. Collins." I think it would have taken place after the summer of 1660. That was when her father was appointed a chief cook to the King. That job brought him and his family to London from Oxford and Collins was then in London and had been for some time.
Regardless of their wedding date, we can be sure that Collins and his wife were happily married because the correspondent goes on to style her as his "second self." The phrase suggests that the author, Michael Dary, perceived an unusually close relationship between man and wife. It was used by others in Collins' time (and later) but as between friends not marriage partners. You can see this in the examples given in the Oxford English Dictionary. And you guess how infrequently such closeness was apparent between man and wife in reading the forceful admonition of William Penn, speaking out against the usual practices of his time: "But in Marriage do thou be wise; prefer the Person before Money, Vertue before Beauty, the Mind before the Body: Then thou hast a Wife, a Friend, a Companion, a Second Self; one that bears an equal Share with thee in all thy Toyls and Troubles."[2]
At the time Collins married, both he and his fiancée were modestly well off, "middling" in the terminology of the time. Afterwards his personal finances advanced and declined in a pattern similar to the fluctuations of the finances of the royal court and, at the time of his death in 1683, he was owed quite a bit in suspended pension and other deferred government payments.[3]
His wife's name was Bellona. As he says in the letter quoted above, she was the younger of two daughters, born into a small family that was headed by a master chef, William Austin. During her youth William Austin was, first, the chief cook in the kitchen of the Prince of Wales — Charles, eldest son of king Charles I — and then, during the years of the Civil War and Commonwealth, chief cook in the kitchen at Oxford's Wadham College.[4] When Charles became King Charles II, Austin was appointed his chief cook of the "household" kitchen. The household kitchen was "below stairs" and it fed not the King and those who dined at his table, but rather all others who ate at the king's expense: staff, courtiers, hangers-on, and even members of the House of Lords when they gathered in Parliament.[5]
By the time of her father's appointment to serve the king Bellona was probably of an age at which she have been expected to seek a husband and start a family. We don't know when she met John Collins. It's likely they encountered one another in the late 1630s, during her father's service to the Prince of Wales. Then in his teens, Collins was employed as a "servant's servant" to help John Marr, who was clerk in the kitchen where Bellona's father was master cook. If not Bellona herself, Collins certainly was acquainted with William Austin at that time. Whether or not they met when young, they're likely, as I say, to have bonded sometime after August 1660 when Austin returned from Oxford to London on his appointment as head of the new King's household kitchen.[6]
Not long after the time I suppose the two to have begun courting, Bellona sought and received appointment as a laundress for the intended wife of King Charles. The treaty of marriage was signed June 23, 1661, but the royal wedding did not take place (in three ceremonies) until the following spring. Bellona received her appointment in between, on November 14, 1661. It was no menial position. She was "laundress of the board" and her job was both to supervise and to some degree carry out the cleaning and pressing of the queen's table linen. There were two other laundresses of the board: one of the king's "privy" table and another of the household. The three had help from at least four pages, probably more, as well as a yeoman and a couple of grooms. Since meals consumed at the queen's table were smaller than at the household table and both smaller and less elaborate than at the king's table, Bellona would have needed less of this help than the other two.[7]
Not surprisingly, the salary of the laundress of the queen's board was a few pounds lower than that of the two others. It does not seem like very much money at all — £18 5s a year — but it was supplemented by "board wages," or money paid out in lieu of room and board and these board wages may have enhanced her income quite a bit. The amount of her board wages isn't recorded, but when in 1685 the board wages of the laundress to the household table were stopped, her salary was increased to £120. If Bellona's total income from her job was even approaching £100 a year she was doing quite well by standards of the time. In fact she would be doing very well whether she was then a single woman living at home or a newly married one setting up her own household.[8]
Competition for the position was intense. After Charles was crowned he and his court officers were inundated with requests from people who had suffered by their adherence to the royal cause during the Civil War and Commonwealth period. This extract from the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, for May 1662, shows three formal requests for the job.[9]
The three were occasioned by the wedding of Charles and Catherine in Lisbon by proxy in April 1662. The petitioners evidently did not know (or did not care) that Bellona had received her appointment half a year before. The record of her appointment is laconic.[10]
As a child of the royal household Bellona would have grown up with many of the people with whom she now served. However she would not have been personally known to any of the high officers of the court, and their reference to her as "Mary, jun." shows that they did not know her given name (presumably in their ignorance they used her mother's name — hence the "jun.").
Although most single women were in the workforce, few had jobs as well paying as Bellona's. No matter how much her family connection may have helped her, she herself must have both vigorously pursued the job and shown herself worthy of holding it.[11]
We don't know what Bellona looked like, but this Dutch painting probably gives a reasonably good idea of her clothing and the work she performed.
{Washerwoman by Gabriel Metsu, ca. 1660s; source: wikipedia (National Museum, Warsaw)}
In Bellona's time one laundered table linen by boiling and washing with soap. The laundresses used lye to remove stains and sunlight or bluing to whiten. They hung or spread linens to dry and then used either "smoothers" or heated irons to flatten the fabric and give it a pleasant sheen. Once smoothed, the linens would be placed in a press such as the one shown below. The press would impart attractive folds.
{This press is in collections of the Wawel Royal Castle, Cracow.}
Not an ordinary meal, this shows the coronation banquet for James II, the successor of Charles II. You can see the folds in the linen at table ends.
{source: The history of the coronation of James II and of his royal consort Queen Mary: solemnized in the Collegiate church of St. Peter in the city of Westminster, on Thursday the 23 of April 1685 by Francis Sandford (London: In the Savoy: printed by T. Newcomb, 1687)}
This enlarged detail shows the folds more plainly.
Here are, at left, a glass English linen smoother and, at right, a detail from a medieval painting showing linen folds in a more ordinary meal at the king's table.[12]
{The right hand image is a detail from a medieval painting (Histoire d'Olivier de Castille et d'Artus d'Algarbe, Paris, BnF). I couldn't find an example from Bellona's time. Source of both images: oldandinteresting.com}
These two images also give a general idea of Bellona's appearance. The first shows an English housewife in the time of Bellona's childhood and the second shows a Dutch servant of the time when she'd become an adult. She may have looked something like the first when she dressed at her best and something like the second when at work.
{On the left: Drawing of an Englishwoman by Wenceslaus Hollar, circa 1645; source: English Costume Painted & Described by Dion Clayton Calthrop (Adam & Charles, London, 1907). On the right: Detail from A Woman Reading a Letter by Gabriel Metsu, ca. 1662 (Dutch); source: Nicole Kipar's Late 17th Century Clothing History}
Of the clothes worn by working women in the reign of Charles II, one source says: "The poorer classes were not, of course, dressed in hooped skirts, but the bodice and gown over the petticoat, the apron, and the turned back cuff to the short sleeve were worn by all. The orange wench laced her gown neatly, and wore a white cloth tied over her head; about her shoulders she wore a kerchief of white, and often a plain frill of linen at her elbows."
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Some sources:
An introduction to merchants accounts : containing five distinct questions or accounts by John Collins (London, Printed by James Flesher for Nicholas Bourn, 1653, 2d ed 1664)
Report on the manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (Printed for H. M. Stationary off., by Mackie & co. ld., 1900) and the MSS original from Beaulieu
The Personal Rule of Charles I by Kevin Sharpe (Yale University Press, 1996)
The Later Stuart Royal Household 1660–1714 in 'Chronological Survey 1660-1837: The Later Stuart Household, 1660-1714', Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised): Court Officers, 1660-1837 (2006), pp. LXXVI-XCVIII. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43757 Date accessed: 09 December 2011
'Introduction: Administrative structure and work', Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised): Court Officers, 1660-1837 (2006), pp. XX-XXXVII. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43751 Date accessed: 09 December 2011.
The King's Servants: the Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–1642, by G.E. Aylmer (London, 1961)
The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837 R. O. Bucholz, Project Director. The Database of Court Officers is an online computer database providing the career histories of every remunerated officer and servant of the English royal household from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.
Calendar of state papers / Domestic series / Reign of Charles II, 1661-1662 ed. by Mary Anne Everett Green (Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861)
Some fruits of solitude by William Penn (London, Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1693, reprinted: S. T. Freemantle, 1900)
The Life and Times of John Wilkins Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Bishop of Chester by P. A. Wright Henderson (William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London, 1910)
Calendar of State Papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II 1660-1685 (Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861)
Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II: preserved in the state paper department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, Volume 1 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860)
Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century: including letters of Barrow, Flamsteed, Wallis, and Newton, printed from the originals in the collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of Macclesfield, Vol. 1, compiled by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (Oxford, the University Press, 1841)
Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century, including letters of Barrow [&c.] in the collection of the earl of Macclesfield, Vol. 2, compiled by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (Oxford, the University Press, 1841)
Some fruits of solitude by William Penn (London, Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1693, reprinted: S. T. Freemantle, 1900)
English Costume Painted & Described by Dion Clayton Calthrop (Adam & Charles, London, 1907)
History of laundry on oldandinteresting.com
Prospects and preliminary work on female occupational structure in England from
1500 to the national census by Jacob Field and Amy Erickson (University of Cambridge). Extract: "The assessments for the 1666 Hearth Tax for the City of London, abstracted by Jacob Field for his doctoral thesis on the Great Fire, illustrates this approach but also show its difficulties. This listing was drawn up by a number of different assessors, not all of whom recorded occupations. The total sample of householders was 11,195, 1,661 of whom were female. Around ten per cent of females had their occupation recorded, representing 177 individuals, compared to around 20 per cent of males, representing 1,888 individuals. As table 1 shows, the data is slightly skewed towards the upper end of the socio-economic spectrum – particularly vastly underestimating the proportion of females engaged in service." (See table p.6)
Identifying women's occupations in early modern London by Amy Erickson. Abstract: "This paper is a preliminary survey of three sources for women's occupations in eighteenth-century London: apprenticeships in the city livery companies; the registers of Christ's Hospital showing apprenticeships; and the records of testimony in the Old Bailey. There is currently only one article in print on the female occupational geography of London in this period (P. Earle, 1989), based on testimony in church court records. In the sources examined here, women worked largely in public, trading and production occupations. This profile is substantially different from the preponderance of domestic service and making/mending textiles which appears in the church court records."
"Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England by Amy M Froide; review by: Retha M Warnicke" Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 622-623 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1353/ren.2008.0342
Froide says that about a third of English women were single during the middle years of the seventeenth century. Many stayed unmarried, but most eventually, like Bellona Austin, did marry. Social norms made it difficult for them to support themselves, but many did nonetheless. Excerpt: "singlewomen, like all women at this time, were considered physically and emotionally inferior to men in a patriarchal society that disadvantaged them in comparison to men of their class or status, especially in regard to wealth, earning power and access to high status public office."
"Singlewomen in the European past, 1250-1800 by Judith Bennett; Amy Froide; review by June Purvis" The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 461 (Apr., 2000), pp. 443-444Published by: Oxford University Press; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/579115
"Hilda L. Smith. All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics, and the False Universal in England, 1640-1832, review by: Deborah Valenze" The American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 1 (February 2004), pp. 251-252 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/530280
Catherine of Braganza (Queen) in the Diary of Samuel Pepys
Catherine of Braganza
Catherine of Braganca (1638 - 1705) on h2g2 by Not Panicking Ltd
Catherine of Braganza, in Wikipedia
Queen Catherine of Braganza Website of the Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment
C17th England: Catherine of Braganza on themakeupgallery
Portrait of Catherine of Braganza by Mary Ellyn Kunz on the web site of Pennsbury Manor Volunteers
Catherine of Braganza on Tea at Trianon by Elena Maria Vidal.
Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705) by Heidi Murphy on Britannia.com
Catherine of Braganza by Thomas Frederick Tout in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09
Catherine of Braganza
Early modern England 1485-1714 by R. O. Bucholz and Newton Key (John Wiley and Sons, 2009)
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Notes:
[1] The priest was Thomas Baker who held the living at Bishop's Nympton, Devon, and, as an avocation of course, was an excellent mathematician. On May 23 1677 Collins wrote him this. "I have yours of the 23d of April, and have been dilatory in answering. The truth of it is, it hath been my misfortune to be concerned in public employments, as in the Council of Plantations, &c., wherein I have not been paid, and have great arrears due to me, for want whereof I am almost ruined; and having a numerous family to maintain, to wit, a wife, and seven small children, I am forced to undertake such occasional business as offers, and by consequence to neglect a correspondence with the learned, which, though unworthy, I much covet. Sir Jonas Moore being a surveyor of the Stores and Ordnance, and now naval preparations going on, he is much in journeys and absent, so that I can give you no account as yet of your labours going to the press, though I much wish I could, and shall omit no endeavours to hasten." -- Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century: including letters of Barrow, Flamsteed, Wallis, and Newton, printed from the originals in the collection of the right honourable the Earl of Macclesfield : In two volumes, Volume 2 compiled by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (Oxford, at the University Press, 1841)
[2] Christoph J. Scriba's article on Collins in the DNB says "About 1670 he married Bellona, laundress of the table linen to the queen, and the younger daughter of William Austen, head cook to Charles II; they had seven children." It's strange he gets the wedding date wrong, though all else right. Regarding second self, here is what the OED says:
second self n. a friend who agrees absolutely with one's tastes and opinions, or for whose welfare one cares as much as for one's own.Penn's admonition comes from Some fruits of solitude by William Penn (London, Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1693, reprinted: S. T. Freemantle, 1900). Here is the closing sentence of the letter to Collins by his mathematical practitioner friend, in full:
1586 T. Bowes tr. P. de la Primaudaye French Acad. I. 150 The mightie and inuiolable bond of friendship, as of a second-selfe did constraine him to lend his eare to his friend.
1665 R. Brathwait Comment Two Tales Chaucer (1901) 93, I will offer to your choice two things, wherein please your self, and you shall please me who am your second self.
1778 F. Burney Evelina I. xxvi. 215 As to Miss Mirvan, she is my second self, and neither hopes nor fears but as I do.
1851 E. Bulwer-Lytton Not so Bad i. i. 6 Ha, Softhead! my Pylades—my second self!
transf.
1609 Shakespeare Sonnets lxxiii. sig. E4, Blacke night..Deaths second selfe that seals vp all in rest.
Not to trouble you further, but my respects to yourself and Mrs. Collins, your second self, I shall only tell you, that if there be any thing wherein I may serve you at Bristol, it shall be endeavoured byYour engaged friend, Mich. Dary
Bristol, the 23rd
April, 1663.
-- Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century compiled by Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century (Oxford, the University Press, 1841)
[3] Regarding his status as someone "middling" Collins wrote of himself that he was "but a mean person," mean and middling connoting the same standard of living. Regarding money owed him, he was not alone in being stiffed by the government. The court always paid out more than it took in, but periodically the imbalance became so great that economies were necessary and it was these bouts of financial retrenchment that made government employment perilous. Collins did eventually receive some payments that the government owed him but not nearly what was owed. The phrase "but a mean person" appears in: "Narrative of John Collins, 1682," Report on the manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (Printed for H. M. Stationary off., by Mackie & co. ld., 1900)
[4] William Austin's association with John Wilkins is an interesting one. I suspect they were linked by friendship with John Marr. Wilkins was a scholar at Oxford. Marr was clerk, that is accountant and purchasing officer, in the same royal kitchen where Austin was chief chef. Wilkins and Marr were both eminent mathematicians and, when the royal court was in Oxford they very likely formed an acquaintance. When the position of chef at Wadham College became vacant, it's reasonable to suppose Marr proposed that Wilkens, then head of Wadham, hire the man for the job. It's interesting that Marr had employed Collins as "servant's servant," in this case clerk's assistant, because, though still in his teens, Collins may have met both Bellona Austin as well as John Wilkins at this time. He later wrote: "In my Youth-hood I was employed in Clerk-ship under, and received some Mathematical Knowledge from Mr. John Marr, one of the Clerks of the Kitchin to His Present MAJESTY, when Prince of Wales, the said Mr. Marr being very Eminent for his Mathematical Knowledge, some testimony whereof' may be evinced, from those excellent Dyals, wherewith the Gardens of our Late SOVEREIGN were adorned." -- An introduction to merchants accounts: containing five distinct questions or accounts by John Collins (London, Printed by James Flesher for Nicholas Bourn, 1653, 2d ed 1664)
[5] 'The household below stairs: Household Kitchen', Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised): Court Officers, 1660-1837 (2006), pp. 502-509. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43871 Date accessed: 25 November 2011.
[6] Here's a record of William Austin's appointment as master cook to King Charles II. The date of appointment is only a few weeks after Charles' return from exile.
{source: The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837 R. O. Bucholz, Project Director, an online computer database providing the career histories of every remunerated officer and servant of the English royal household from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837}
This table gives some idea of the extent and varied functions of the ca. 300 staff members "below stairs":
{source: The King's Servants: the Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–1642, by G.E. Aylmer (London, 1961)}
[7] See my list of sources for information about Catherine of Braganza, the royal laundry, and related topics. Bucholz provides a succinct description of the laundry's functions: The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837 R. O. Bucholz, Project Director, an online computer database providing the career histories of every remunerated officer and servant of the English royal household from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837
[8] See the Bucholz database for amounts paid laundry staff members.
[9] Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II: preserved in the state paper department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, Volume 1 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860)
[10] Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II: preserved in the state paper department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, Volume 1 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860)
[11] On single women in the workforce, see entries for Amy Ericson and Amy Froide in the sources list.
[12] Here is this interesting painting in full.
The BnF's caption reads: "Festin d'apparat. Histoire d'Olivier de Castille et d'Artus d'Algarbe, Paris, BnF, Département des manuscrits, Français 12574 fol. 181v. La table d'honneur est isolée sous un dais, tandis que le gros des convives se répartit le long d'une table, dont ils n'occupent qu'un côté. Le ballet des serviteurs est mené par le maître d'hôtel, tandis qu'au buffet et près du prince veillent d'autres officiers de bouche, prêts à répondre à ses moindres désirs. Des musicicens égayent le repas."
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