The average
yeoman had a one and a half story house, with a milkhouse, a
malthouse, and other small buildings attached to the dwelling. The
house would contain a main living room, a parlor, where there
would be one or more beds, and several other rooms with beds. No
longer was there a central great hall. Cooking was done in a
kitchen or over the open fire in the fireplace of the main room.
Furniture included large oak tables, stools, settes or forms,
chests, cupboards, and a few hard-backed simple chairs. Dishware
was wood or pewter. The yeomen were among those who governed the
nation. They often became sureties for recognizances, witnesses to
wills, parish managers, churchwardens, vestrymen, the chief civil
officers of parishes and towns, overseers of the poor, surveyors
of bridges and highways, jurymen and constables for the Justices
of the Peace, and sheriffs' bailiffs. The families and servants of
these yeomen ate meat, fish, wheaten bread, beer, cheese, milk,
butter, and fruit. Their wives were responsible for the dairy,
poultry, orchard, garden, and perhaps pigs. They smoked and cured
hams and bacon, salted fish, dried herbs for the kitchen or of
lavender and pot-pourri for sweetening the linen, and arranged
apples and roots in lofts or long garrets under the roof to last
the winter. They preserved fruits candied or in syrup. They
preserved wines; made perfumes, washes for preserving the hair and
complexion, rosemary to cleanse the hair, and elder-flower water
for sunburn; distilled beverages; ordered wool hemp, and flax to
spin for cloth (the weaving was usually done in the village);
fashioned and sewed clothes and house linens; embroidered; dyed;
malted oats; brewed; baked; and extracted oils.
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