I've been following some local history accounts on Twitter, and came across a mention of Joyce Jeffries, who was a moneylender in Hereford at the time of the English Civil War.
I'd never come across a woman moneylender before, so I looked her up (she has her own page on Wikipedia).
She was born into the local gentry - her mother was the widow of Johannes Coningsby, in her second marriage, and she had older Coningsby half-siblings, Katherine and Humphrey. The Coningsby family was important locally - an earlier member of the family founded the almshouses at Coningsby Hospital on Widemarsh Street, which is still open to the public as a museum.
So she had good connections with the local gentry, and inherited money to start her business, which seems to have been very successful. She lived with her cousin Thomas until he died in 1625, and after that she was able to maintain her own establishment in Widemarsh Street, with several servants. She never married.
During the Civil War, she left Hereford to stay with relatives in the country, but she had a house built in Hereford in 1643. Unfortunately, it was knocked down the following year as part of the defences the City was raising for the Royalists, under the governorship of Colonel Barnabas Scudamore. As part of the defence works, part of the old bridge across the Wye was demolished. It was later re-built (and is still in use, of course) but the rebuilt arch is lower than the rest.
Joyce Jeffries died in 1648. Though she lived in Hereford for much of her life, and worshipped at All Saints Church, she was buried at Clifton-upon-Teme in Worcestershire.
She kept a diary and account book between 1638 and 1648. The original was destroyed in a library fire, but it has been published as The Business and Household Accounts of Joyce Jeffreys, Spinster of Hereford, 1638 - 48, edited by Judith Spicksley.
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