Hi Karen-
Interesting!
Refering to the last set of images:
#2 and #4 are 'Visitation' scenes, and the purse wearer is St. Elizabeth. The scene takes place shortly after the Annunciation, when Mary visits her cousin Elisabeth, who despite her advanced age has miraculously become pregnant with the future John the Baptist. St. Elizabeth is often depicted carrying a purse where Mary is not, so I have to wonder if this is a representation of current style, or a reference to Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy. Or perhaps it refers to Elizabeth's advanced age, i.e. perhaps only matrons carried purses. Dunno, but it piques my interest. I'm going to have a poke through Ferguson's 'Signs and Symbols in Christian Art' to see if he has anything to say on the subject.
#1) This image is interesting because it looks very regional to me, maybe Sienese or Iberian:
The structure of the painting makes me think it's a saint. If so, the purse may also by symbolic and not necessarily representitive of current style. Do you know any more about this image?
#3) This one looks very German or Northern Flemish:
The only woman wearing a purse looks like she could be the housekeeper or something, as she's serving the food, and she's wearing a headdress usually reserved for older/married woman, and she has a big honking wad of keys next to the purse. Clearly, she's the one 'holding the keys' in this household! So here, like with the St. Elizabeth, I wonder if wearing a purse is a clue to her status in the household, her married status, her age, or all 3.
The next 3 are early 16th C., so they are technically OOP for this discussion (cool purses though, eh?)
The woman in the Mac bible is a pilgrim, so she is wearing a pilgrim's satchel, same as the other pilgrims. I don't think that can be considered a 'purse' in the same sense as the others.
#3 is the only one I'd say supports the idea of a larger, shaped purse for women in the 15th C. (albeit late in the century, and for a woman of a particular station), but given what I'm seeing in the evidence presented, I'd say it represents a trend for older/married/housekeeper women to carry larger purses on the outside of their clothing, at least inside the house. Also given the information presented, it looks like by the first third of the 16th C. it became more common to see these purses worn by a broader group of women.
The early 16th C. images bring up other questions in my mind, such as whether Lady Dawtry's purse is an allusion to her philanthropic or charitable work (a very common symbol in 15th C. donor paintings) more than a reference to current fashion. The other 2 images make me wonder if the exterior belt pouch was a regional or class affectation, as the costume worn by the lovely German frau appears to be rather solidly of the merchant class, and the field worker in the other image is clearly of a lower station than the fashionably attired woman in the lower left of the painting.
It's all very interesting to consider!
Gwen
LOL The links are great, I hadn't seen the "View More" before... but I am kinda bad at paying attention to things like that. 
(IIRC, he doesn't write about that particular artistic trend, but he does bring that up about other purse-related images.)
so there's that.
