Agricultural History Review, Volume 66 Part 1 (2018), p. 156

Alice Le Strange, a seventeenth-century Norfolk woman with an extraordinary talent for accounting and estate management, is responsible for the archive that forms the basis for this exemplary edition. Hidden within a flap of one of her account books Alice’s husband Hamon wrote that ‘her price is above pearls’, highlighting the trust and admiration that he had for her in her role. Griffiths has already demonstrated Alice’s role as a manager of domestic affairs in Consumption and gender in the early seventeenth century household. The world of Alice Le Strange (published by her in 2012 in collaboration with Jane Whittle). This present volume looks to her role beyond the limits of the household. Thus, it provides a compelling piece of evidence for the crucial role that one remarkable woman had as overseer, improver and accountant of her family’s lands and suggests that historians need to look to women, as well as men, who fulfilled these duties.

The book begins with an extensive opening chapter that introduces the reader to the Le Strange family and to the contents of their impressive family archive. In this section, we learn of Alice Le Strange’s place within her family and broader Norfolk society, and the significance of her contribution to the management of her family’s estate and finances beyond the household. It also introduces the reader to the accounts that follow and provides historical context and detail to aid the reader’s navigation of them. We learn, for example, that when Alice came into the possession of her father’s estate at Sedgeford she commissioned extensive surveys and reconstructed the infield-outfield farming system for greater profitability. She also kept detailed records of the sheep that she and her five children owned. Furthermore, Griffiths explains how Alice and her family attempted to recover from the terrible losses they suffered as a result of the Civil Wars. The family lost most of their sheep to plunder by soldiers and were forced to pay fines to the Parliamentarian forces. Alice used one of her books to account for her family’s finances, documenting the losses that came about from the ‘unjust and tirannicall oppression’ (p. 83) that the family had suffered as a result of supporting the Royalists during the wars.

The accounts themselves are clearly presented and editorial decisions are explained throughout in footnotes. Griffiths explains that she tried to retain the ‘experimental nature’ (p. 59) of the original documents when presenting them. As a result, it is possible to observe Alice’s corrections and insertions even within the limitations of a printed transcript. This means that the reader can note Alice’s errors and occasional confusion (for example in the arithmetic within the sheep accounts) as well as her skill and overall success. All of this serves to present the accounts as documents with a real historical figure at their core and invites the reader to comprehend the incredible contribution that Alice made to the management of her estates.

The edition also contains several tools for the reader to use when navigating the accounts. There is a rather lovely pull out map to be found within the final cover of the book that reproduces the maps of Sedgeford that Alice commissioned from John Fisher in 1631. Additionally, as several of the printed accounts pertain to the family’s sheep holdings, there is also a very useful ‘Sheep Glossary’ – invaluable to any reader not familiar with the difference between a hogg and a shearling.

Above all, Her Price is Above Pearls is an incredibly valuable contribution to the history of women’s involvement in estate management, as well as for wider histories of estate management and accounting more broadly. It offers glimpses into the familial relationships that existed within a wealthy seventeenth-century family, from the accounts of the sheep belonging to the children to the wills of Alice and her husband at the end. It provides an in-depth insight into the running of a Norfolk estate and demonstrates the ways in which farming methods changed and improved over the period, as well as how such an estate recovered from the material losses of the 1640s. Most importantly, perhaps, this edition showcases the ways in which one particular woman wrote accounts, improved her estate and noted down perceived unjust losses within the accounts themselves for future generations to read.

By presenting the accounts of Alice Le Strange and holding her up as an extraordinary figure, this edition does not answer the question of whether women were active more generally as estate managers, accountants and improvers in the seventeenth century. This edition ought to prompt further exploration of the role of women as estate managers in the seventeenth century. In this way, the true nature and the potential uniqueness of Alice Le Strange’s achievements could be illuminated.