Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700 Edited by James Daybell
Early Modern Literature in History
Within the ...
33 downloads
1355 Views
2MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700 Edited by James Daybell
Early Modern Literature in History
Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Titles include: Anna R. Beer
SIR WALTER RALEGH AND HIS READERS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Speaking to the People
Cedric C. Brown and Arthur F. Marotti (editors)
TEXTS AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Martin Butler (editor)
RE-PRESENTING BEN JONSON
Text, History, Performance
Jocelyn Catty
WRITING RAPE, WRITING WOMEN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Unbridled Speech
Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (editors)
‘THIS DOUBLE VOICE’
Gendered Writing in Early Modern England
James Daybell (editor)
EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S LETTER WRITING, 1450–1700
John Dolan
POETIC OCCASION FROM MILTON TO WORDSWORTH
Henk Dragstra, Sheila Ottway and Helen Wilcox (editors)
BETRAYING OUR SELVES
Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern English Texts
Pauline Kiernan
STAGING SHAKESPEARE AT THE NEW GLOBE
Ronald Knowles (editor)
SHAKESPEARE AND CARNIVAL
After Bakhtin
James Loxley
ROYALISM AND POETRY IN THE ENGLISH CIVIL WARS
The Drawn Sword
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
General Editor: Cedric C. Brown Professor of English and Head of Department, University of Reading
Arthur F. Marotti (editor)
CATHOLICISM AND ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN EARLY MODERN
ENGLISH TEXTS
The series Early Modern Literature in History is published in association with the Renaissance Texts Research Centre at the University of Reading.
Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71472–5 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Mark Thornton Burnett
MASTERS AND SERVANTS IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA AND CULTURE
Authority and Obedience
Edited by
James Daybell Research Fellow in History University of Reading
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700
Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1 and 5 © James Daybell 2001 Chapters 2–4 and 6–13 © Palgrave Publishers Ltd 2001
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–94579–4 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Early modern women’s letter writing, 1450–1700 / edited by James Daybell. p. cm. — (Early modern literature in history)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0–333–94579–4
1. English letters—Women authors—History and criticism.
2. English letters—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and
criticism. 3. English letters—Middle English, 1100–1500–
–History and criticism. 4. Women and literature—Great Britain–
–History—17th century. 5. Women and literature—Great Britain–
–History—16th century. 6. Women and literature—Great Britain–
–History—To 1500. 7. Letter writing, English—History. I. Daybell,
James, 1972– II. Early modern literature in history (Palgrave (Firm))
PR914 .E2 2001 826.009’9287—dc21 2001021877 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
For Ralph Houlbrooke
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
This page intentionally left blank
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Acknowledgements
ix
List of Abbreviations
xi
Notes on the Contributors
xiii
1 Introduction James Daybell
1
2 Reaction, Consolation and Redress in the Letters of the Paston Women Roger Dalrymple
16
3 Letter-Writing by English Noblewomen in the Early Fifteenth Century Jennifer C. Ward
29
4 Commanding Communications: the Fifteenth-Century Letters of the Stonor Women Alison Truelove
42
5 Female Literacy and the Social Conventions of Women's Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603 James Daybell
59
6 Deference and De®ance in Women's Letters of the Thynne Family: the Rhetoric of Relationships Alison Wall
77
7 Fighting for Family in a Patronage Society: the Epistolary Armoury of Anne Newdigate (1574±1618) Vivienne Larminie
94
8 `How Subject to Interpretation': Lady Arbella Stuart and the Reading of Illness Sara Jayne Steen
109
9 Tudor and Stuart Women: their Lives through their Letters Rosemary O'Day
127
vii
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Contents
viii Contents
11
12
13
143
`Doe not supose me a well mortifyed Nun dead to the world': Letter-Writing in Early Modern English Convents Claire Walker
159
Gentle Companions: Single Women and their Letters in Late Stuart England Susan Whyman
177
`Begging pardon for all mistakes or errors in this writeing I being a woman & doing itt myselfe': Family Narratives in some Early Eighteenth-Century Letters Anne Laurence
194
Index
207
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
10 Patriarchy, Puritanism and Politics: the Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley (1598±1643) Jacqueline Eales
This book of essays represents the fruits of a collaborative project of about four years' duration. In the late 1990s it became apparent to me and some others that, despite the huge amount of new work on women, including those living in the early modern period, much was still unexplored about their letter-writing. Yet the potential ®eld is very large indeed and of much interest to scholars in different disciplines. Accordingly, a dedicated group of seminars was set up within the fourth international Literature and History conference at Reading, in July 1998, as a ®rst means of bringing interested scholars from Britain, the United States and Australia together. This group of sessions was entitled `Privy and Powerful Communications: Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England 1450±1700'. My thanks are due not only to those who presented papers at the event but also to those who provided informed support at the conference: Toby Barnard, Phillipa Hardman and Anthea Hume. During the conference it became apparent that there was much enthusiasm for the project, and plans were formed to build further on the work and to produce a broadly based book which could offer a review of an exciting ®eld. Consequently, delegates agreed to revise and augment their contributions in the light of discussions at the conference, and new contributions were sought to strengthen the volume, producing the present essays from Roger Dalrymple, Sara Jayne Steen and Susan Whyman. As editor, I would like to thank the various collaborators over the whole period of the development of the book for their enthusiasm and dedication to the venture. I should also enter a note of regret, that two contributions presented at the 1998 conference had already been committed to publication elsewhere: Susan Doran's `Elizabeth I's Religion: Clues from Her Letters', Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2001), and Karen Robertson's `Tracing Women's Connections from a Letter of Elizabeth Lady Ralegh', in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women's Alliances in Early Modern England, eds Karen Robertson and Susan Frye (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 149±64. For continued encouragement, guidance and advice concerning the book I am grateful to Cedric Brown, general editor of the Early Modern Literature in History series, and to Eleanor Birne at Palgrave and Barbara Slater for assistance with the ®nal submission. To my family, Anthea Platt and Roger Dalrymple I give affectionate thanks for all their encouragement. ix
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Acknowledgements
I would also like to thank Ross Aldrich, Jonathan Bell, Martin Simpson, Alan Stewart, and above all Heather Wolfe, for their support in the ®nal stages of preparing this book. My deepest personal gratitude, however, goes to Ralph Houlbrooke who was involved at every stage of the project, from its inception as a conference, through the intricacies of publishing contracts, to completion as a volume. His generosity, enthusiasm, friendship and counsel have made the whole process all the more easy. It is to him that this book is dedicated, as an outstanding supervisor and exemplary scholar. J.R.T.D
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
x Acknowledgements
BL BL Add. MS BL Cott. MS BL Eg. MS BL Harl. MS BL Lansd. MS Bodl. CKS CSP CUL CUP DNB EETS EHR EcHR Folger GLRO HC 1558±1603 HJ HMC HMSO Kendal RO LPL LSE MSS N&Q NRA NRO NUL OED OUP P&P PRO PRO SP 10 PRO SP 12
British Library British Library, Additional MS British Library, Cottonian MS British Library, Egerton MS British Library, Harleian MS British Library, Lansdowne MS Bodleian Library, Oxford Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone Calendar of State Papers Cambridge University Library Cambridge University Press Dictionary of National Biography Early English Text Society English Historical Review Economic History Review Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington Greater London Record Of®ce The House of Commons 1558±1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 3 vols (London: History of Parliament Trust, 1981) Historical Journal Historical Manuscripts Commission Her Majesty's Stationery Of®ce Kendal Record Of®ce, Cumbria Lambeth Palace Library Leeds Studies in English Manuscripts Notes and Queries National Register of Archives Norfolk Record Of®ce, Norwich Nottingham University Library Oxford English Dictionary Oxford University Press Past and Present Public Record Of®ce, Kew Public Record Of®ce, State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI Public Record Of®ce, State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth xi
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
List of Abbreviations
PRO SP 15 PRO SP 46 RES RH RO Staffs. RO TRHS WCRO YAS
Public Record Of®ce, State Papers, Domestic, Addenda Public Record Of®ce, State Papers, Domestic, Supplementary Review of English Studies Recusant History Record Of®ce Staffordshire Record Of®ce Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Warwickshire County Record Of®ce Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds
Original spelling has been retained throughout in quotations from manuscripts. Symbols are used where quoting from editions to replicate the editorial practices employed.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
xii List of Abbreviations
Roger Dalrymple is Rosemary Woolf Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Somerville College, Oxford. He is author of Language and Piety in Middle English Romance (2000) and of articles on fourteenth- and ®fteenthcentury poetry. James Daybell is a Research Fellow in History at the University of Reading. His doctoral thesis is on `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603' (University of Reading, 1999). He has published several articles and is currently working on a book, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England. Jacqueline Eales is a Reader in History at Canterbury Christ Church University College. She has written Puritans and Roundheads (1990), on the Harley family, and Women in Early Modern England, 1500±1700 (1998). She currently works on political preaching in the English Civil Wars. Vivienne Larminie is a Research Editor of the New Dictionary of National Biography, and author of Wealth, Kinship and Culture: the Seventeenth Century Newdigates and their World (1995). Her current research interests include male and female piety in Vaud, Switzerland. Anne Laurence is Senior Lecturer in History at the Open University. She has published articles on various aspects of women's lives in the British Isles in the early modern period and is author of Women in England 1500±1760: a Social History (1994). Rosemary O'Day is Professor of History and Director of the Charles Booth Centre at the Open University. Recent books include The Family and Family Relationships (1994) and The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450±1800: Servants of the Commonweal (2000). Sara Jayne Steen, Professor and Chair of English at Montana State University, is the author of books and articles on early modern theatre and women writers; currently she is co-editing an interdisciplinary special issue of Quidditas on early modern women.
xiii
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Notes on the Contributors
xiv Notes on the Contributors
Claire Walker lectures in the History Department at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She researches early modern women's religious houses in France and the Low Countries, and she is currently completing Gender and Politics in Seventeenth-Century English Convents. Alison Wall was Senior Lecturer in History, University of Sidney, and Lecturer in Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. She has published articles and a book on politics, articles on marriage and women's role, and Two Elizabethan Women: Correspondence of Joan and Maria Thynne 1575±1611, Wiltshire Record Society, 38 (1983). Jennifer C. Ward was Senior Lecturer in History at Goldsmiths College, University of London, until her retirement in 1999. She is author of English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (1992), and edited Women of the English Nobility and Gentry 1066±1500 (1995). Susan Whyman's PhD is from Princeton University. Her publications include Sociability and Power (1999) and ```Paper Visits'': the PostRestoration Letter as Seen through the Verney Family Archive' in Epistolary Selves, ed. R. Earle (1999).
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove is completing an edition of the Stonor Letters for her doctoral thesis, while teaching medieval literature in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London.
1
James Daybell
Right wurshipfull husbonde, I recomaunde me vnto you. Plesith you to witte that myn avnte Mondeforthe hath desiryd me to write to you besechyng you that dyee wol wechesafe to chevesshe for her at London xxti marke for to be payed to Mastre Ponyngys outher on Saterday or Sonday, weche schalbe Seint Andrwes Daye, in discharchyng of them that be bounden to Mastre Ponyngys of the seide xxti marke for the wardeship of here doughter . . . As towchyng for your leveryes, ther can noon be gete heere of that coloure that ye wolde haue of nouther murrey nor blwe nor goode russettys vndrenethe iij s. the yerde at the lowest price, and yet is ther not j-nough of on clothe and coloure to serue you. And as for to be purveid in Suffolk it wolnot be purveide nought now ayenst this tyme wythoute they had had warnyng at Michelmesse, as I am enformed. And the blissed Trenyte haue you in his kepyng. Wreten at Norweche on Seint Kateryn Day. Be your Margaret Paston (Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 25 Nov. [1460])1
Dear Sister . . . I am in hopes your King of France behaves better than our Duke of Bedford, who by the care of a pious Mother certainly preserv'd his Virginity to his marriage bed, where he was so much disapointed in his fair Bride (who tho à his own Inclination could not bestow on him those expressless Raptures he had ®gur'd himselfe) that he allready Pukes at the very name of her, and determines to let his Estate go to his Brother, rather than go through the ®lthy Drudgery of getting an Heir to it. N.B. 1
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Introduction
This is true History and I think the most extrodinary has happen'd in this last age. This comes of living till sixteen without a competent knowledge either of practical or speculative Anatomy, and litterally thinking ®ne Ladys compos'd of Lillys and Roses . . . Adieu, Dear Sister, I take a sincere part in all that relates to you, and am ever yours. I beg as the last favour that you would make some small Enquiry and let me know the minute Lord Finch is at Paris. (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Frances, Countess of Mar [1725])2 These extracts from the letters of two well-known female correspondents, each from opposite ends of our chronological spectrum, well illustrate the development of women's letter-writing over the period and the diversity of individual experience. Written in the mid-®fteenth century, Margaret Paston's dictated letter to her husband represents a functional or pragmatic mode of correspondence concerned almost exclusively with business. Despite elements of colloquialism, the formal style of the letter impedes any emotive or affective content. By contrast, Lady Mary Montagu's early eighteenth-century holograph epistle to her sister is gossipy, rather risque and perhaps intentionally humorous. It displays greater informality of purpose and appears more open and intimate, attaining an almost literary quality. Nonetheless, even for the eighteenth century this letter is exceptional: few women can have written with such freedom on a man's attitude to sexual activity. Less interested than Margaret Paston in letters as a means of transacting and conveying instructions, Lady Montagu utilised correspondence as a vehicle for lengthy description, narrative and travelwriting. It provided a creative outlet for a woman impelled to write and `entertain' an audience.3 While the Pastons preserved letters as legal evidence, Lady Montagu was conscious that her own letters would record her literary achievements as a serious writer: her Turkish Embassy letters were reworked from originals, organised into albums and published posthumously a year after her death.4 On one level, comparison of these two seemingly disparate examples of women's correspondence indicates change in the nature of letters as documents or texts over the late medieval and early modern periods, the emergence of more personal epistolary forms, and the increasing range of private, introspective and ¯exible uses for which letters were employed. It also highlights broad variations over time in terms of levels of women's education, attitudes to literacy, letter-writing conventions, and the style and content of letters. On the other hand, evident also are the continuities of certain aspects of female experience: the centrality of family to women's lives and the enduring patterns of relationships. Of
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
2 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
further signi®cance is the fact that both women were able to operate through letters, though in very different ways: while Lady Montagu wrote her own correspondence, Margaret Paston's letter was penned by Richard Calle, bailiff to the Pastons.5 The manner in which letters were constructed immediately introduces conceptual problems in terms of de®ning women's letters and assessing a signatory's control and intent. Given the restrictions on epistolary privacy, how far can a letter written by someone else, even if dictated, represent what a woman wished to have set down? Also, to what extent did methods of composition affect letters' characteristics? These are questions at the heart of this volume.6 The complexity of letters is equally clear from the contrasting examples of these two women's correspondence. Indeed, letters lend themselves to a wide range of analyses: historical, literary, lexical, palaeographic and gender-based. As social documents they are useful as indicators of female literacy, the quality of familial and other relationships, and of women's social interaction in general. They offer details of women's lives, roles and their engagement in a variety of activities, social and religious, literary and political. Studied as texts or samples of women's writing and material culture, letters exhibit examples of female self-expression. Where letters are analytical rather than merely descriptive, one can detect a degree of inwardness amidst the calculation, convention and projected personas, and observe ways in which women comprehended and articulated thoughts, emotions and experiences. In order to capture the multifaceted nature of women's letters and letter-writing, this volume embraces an interdisciplinary approach, spanning social and political history, medieval and renaissance literature, and women's studies. The study of epistolary development and social change is facilitated by its chronological organisation. Furthermore, many of the essays express other agendas, for example issues of medical theory, religion, government and politics. Taken as a whole, the volume shows that women's letter-writing during the late medieval and early modern periods was a very much larger and more socially diversi®ed area of female activity than has generally been assumed, one that extended from royal women, such as Arbella Stuart, through women of the nobility and gentry, to members of the middling classes. Women's letters, although considerably less in number than surviving men's letters, provide a rich and signi®cant corpus of female authored texts: an estimated 10 000 items of women's correspondence are extant just for the period to 1642. In terms of content, there are broad similarities between men's and women's letters ± both for example discuss matters of a public and private, domestic and political nature. However, as Anne Laurence and Rosemary O'Day argue, female letter-writers bring an
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 3
alternative viewpoint to those of men on social affairs. All in all, letters as a form of written record offer a unique perspective on late medieval and early modern women, different from both male voiced prescriptive literature as well as other `autobiographical' sources such as diaries and memoirs, which generally conform to strict religious interpretative models, and for much of the period, for women at least, either do not survive or are small in number.7 Perhaps the most fundamental factor affecting women's letter-writing over this period was the variation in levels of female literacy and education. While some women clearly could write letters, others were unable to do so. As the ®rst three essays in the volume indicate, few ®fteenth-century women were able to write or used that skill for letterwriting. Thus, like Margaret Paston, many relied on the services of amanuenses or scribes, which some scholars suggest may indicate low levels of late medieval lay literacy, especially among women.8 Indeed, Alison Truelove's analysis of the letters of the Stonor family suggests that women were more likely than men to dictate letters, rather than use their own hands. How far this re¯ects cultural practices rather than female illiteracy is hard to determine. From the sixteenth century onwards, however, women increasingly wrote their own correspondence, and several essayists discern generational differences in women's letter-writing ability. Susan Whyman, for example, notes the in¯uence of writing masters on the Verney women of the eighteenth century, whose letters display marked improvements in spelling, grammar and presentation compared with those of their relatively untutored seventeenth-century female relations. More broadly, this and other contributions indicate gradual advances towards more formalised educational provision for upper-class women generally within the household. Indeed, Vivienne Larminie remarks that the generation of Fitton girls after Anne Newdigate (d.1618) were taught by governesses or tutors. In spite of greater female facility with a pen, employment of secretaries was customary for both literate women and men throughout the early modern period. My own essay, which is focused on the years 1540 to 1603, argues that for those women capable of writing, use of personal literacy for epistolary composition was determined by social convention and shifts in letter-writing practices. It draws a fundamental distinction in the nature and purpose of writing between business correspondence, which was considered menial, routine, technical and best delegated to a secretary, and private and personal writing, which was spontaneous, intimate, creative and more likely to be written in the woman's own hand.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
4 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
While the ability to write brought distinct advantages, the positive or emancipating effects of literacy on the role of women must not be exaggerated. Indeed, as inferred earlier, apparent illiteracy or inadequate penmanship did not prevent women from conducting correspondence and securing a means of written expression. Nor did it stop them from manoeuvring outside traditionally de®ned domestic spheres. Jennifer Ward in particular emphasises the power of ®fteenth-century noblewomen and their use of letters in estate management, and as religious patrons and political intermediaries. Certain scholars suggest (not uncontroversially) that if anything, female in¯uence may have in fact declined during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because of the centralisation of government functions away from the great households and periphery and the development of increasingly sti¯ing gender codes seeking to restrict the scope of women's activities.9 Furthermore, oral modes of operation ± face to face interaction and use of messengers ± were widespread and coexisted with literate practices throughout the period.10 Letter-writers regularly entrusted further details to bearers, who also conveyed replies by word of mouth. The unwillingness to commit intelligence to paper also suggests the insecurity associated with the epistolary medium, as does Brilliana Harley's use of secret codes. It seems that in certain circumstances it was actually considered more appropriate and respectful to meet someone in person than to write them a letter.11 Clearly, however, a letter was preferable as a means of communicating information to letting it be heard by rumour. Both Roger Dalrymple and Jacqueline Eales point out that letters acting either as a way of redressing false reports or as a means of con®rmation often assumed greater authority than local rumour. Greater reliance still was placed on letters in a woman's own hand. One therefore deduces a hierarchy of methods by which information could be communicated: interview, personally written letter, dictated letter and rumour. The study of women's epistolary skills goes beyond the rudimentary analysis of writing literacy. As many of the contributions to this volume demonstrate, the physical act of writing a letter represents only a small part of the process of composition, a process demanding diverse other skills: organisation and persuasiveness, linguistic and verbal dexterity, rhetorical and social adroitness, as well as technical and legal expertise. Such skills may sometimes have been acquired through formal teaching, but often appear to have been gleaned through experience or were innate. Indeed, one detects that the cogent and persuasive letters of Anne Newdigate and the exceptional Maria Thynne owed as much to these women's natural abilities, determination and forceful personalities as
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 5
they did to tuition. What is more, writing was an activity traditionally considered separate from the intellectual pursuit of composition and, as highlighted by Alison Truelove, in dictating to amanuenses women were participating, albeit unknowingly, in a scholarly tradition.12 A number of contributors ± Roger Dalrymple, Alison Truelove and Anne Laurence ± comment on the oral quality of letters: the incidence of colloquialisms, non-standard forms and erratic or phonetic spellings.13 While in certain cases dictation may have caused letters to resemble conversation or speech, colloquial elements within correspondence also conceivably indicate a person more familiar with verbal than written media. How far oral or colloquial characteristics are distinctive of women's letters is judiciously considered by Alison Truelove in her essay on the Stonor women. Accounting for scribal in¯uence and formal stylistic constraints, she ventures that women's letters may differ lexically from men's in their adoption of new and unusual linguistic forms apparently encountered in everyday speech. Thus, women are portrayed as innovators of linguistic development. However, she is also careful to argue that there is limited evidence of a speci®cally female style and that structure and language was often conditioned more by social status and circumstance than by gender. By analysing examples of correspondence from women of different backgrounds Truelove argues that the letters of gentlewomen are more formally stylised and less in¯uenced by spoken colloquialisms than those of women of mercantile origins. This essay should be read alongside Roger Dalrymple's piece on the Paston women's letters, which explores the balance between oral and literary in¯uences. For Dr Dalrymple it is the colloquial aspects of the letters that are most revealing, unaffected as they are by the rigid formulae of the ars dictaminis. Compared with the literary commonplaces of consolatory piety, they permit glimpses of `reaction', a more emotive, unmeasured mode of writing. A related issue is the degree to which letters can be considered personal, or in other words private and self-re¯ective. In the ®rst instance, the style and character of letters are linked to epistolary conventions, which underwent marked change over the period. Indeed, Jennifer Ward suggests that the apparent stiffness of late medieval correspondence re¯ects a greater emphasis on formality than in early modern England. This echoes Ralph Houlbrooke's argument that humanist letter-writing manuals encouraged `the cultivation of an easy, intimate style, and the expression of individual feelings of affection', gradually supplanting medieval epistolary forms which accentuated distinctions between superiors and subordinates within the family.14 Thus, while in 1484
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
6 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Margaret Cely wrote to her husband as `Ryght [re]uer[en]d and worchupfull Ser', more informal modes of address were employed by women from the sixteenth century onwards.15 Certainly by the seventeenth century wives' use of endearing terms and egalitarian forms of Christian names, in the manner of Maria Thynne's `sweet thomken', was not that rare, despite puritan precepts which counselled deference.16 Rosemary O'Day notes similar differences in convention within the Clifford and Bagot collections. These examples further illustrate change in the nature of letters as a source. However, it is less clear how far developments in epistolary convention represent wider social change in the quality of relationships. Equally hard to establish are the precise ways in which letter-writing conventions were disseminated among women. Evidence of female readership of epistolary manuals is slight, though Jacqueline Eales describes Brilliana Harley's citation of Senecan epistles in her commonplace book. Alison Wall states that even if Maria Thynne had been aware of the model letters outlined in books such as Angel Day's The English Secretorie (1586) her letters showed little or no sign of their in¯uence. Instead women's familiarity with conventions, as Alison Truelove suggests, is more likely to stem from contact with the form, through receiving letters. A deeper question, however, is how far women's letters are mannered or sincere, whether they re¯ect true feelings or merely imitated appropriate styles. Is there a sense in which there was a formality in being informal, an affectation of being affectionate? How should one interpret the commonplace voices of maternal counsel and command, daughterly obedience and wifely duty? Perhaps most interesting is where letter writers deviate from standard forms and phrases. The nature of correspondence is also closely linked to the mechanics of letter-writing: the manner of composition and dispatch. Use of amanuenses denied women the epistolary privacy achieved by those who conducted correspondence in their own hands. Although dictation might record the words a woman wished to have set down, the collaborative process, on the other hand, if not always involving secretarial input, certainly constrained female correspondents and led to self-censorship on their part.17 Reluctance to entrust more intimate sentiments to a scribe, or indeed to a letter, further accounts for the relatively impersonal, detached nature of late medieval correspondence. Where women wrote their own letters or even merely penned a postscript, this resulted in freer forms of expression, un®ltered by a third party. Rising female literacy over the period therefore promoted greater con®dentiality and led to more intimate and privy communications.18 Concomitantly, women utilised
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 7
letters for an increasing range of purposes, both formal and informal, pragmatic and introspective. Susan Whyman, for example, argues that for the single women of the Verney family, letters performed an almost cathartic function, acting as a means of unburdening or release and selfjusti®cation. Likewise, Alison Wall's study of the Thynnes, and Elizabeth Bourne's letter of rebuke to Lady Conway quoted in my own essay reveal women employing letters to snub and issue insults. The apparent immediacy of such letters contrasts with the degrees of calculation and arti®ce evident in letters produced under different circumstances. Correspondence written spontaneously in the heat of anger and passion, close to important events, or in haste enforced by a bearer's imminent departure allowed little time for re¯ection. A more purposeful approach to letter-writing is encountered in Vivienne Larminie's essay, which highlights the fact that Anne Newdigate corrected drafts of petitions for her son's wardship. The image of herself as a mother who breast fed or `nursed' her children appears deliberate and was in fact reworked.19 Similarly, Lady Arbella Stuart circumspectly drafted and revised her own correspondence in order to fashion a carefully constructed persona, as depicted by Sara Jayne Steen. A study of successive drafts of Stuart's letters is particularly telling of initial reactions in that it discloses passages lost by subsequent amendments and the toning down of language and phraseology considered inappropriate, perhaps too hastily or rashly applied to paper. Moreover, Professor Steen's essay raises further issues about the interpretation of women's letters as texts capable of complex or multiple readings. In her analysis of illness in Arbella Stuart's letters, Steen investigates the competing balance between impulsiveness and calculation in her writing, assessing the extent to which complaints of ill health appear genuine or in actual fact represent political strategy. This and other essays alert us to the importance of contextualisation, the circumstances in which letters were produced, the desirability of reconstructing, where possible, both sides of an epistolary exchange and the need to examine letters side by side with other types of documentary evidence: diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, wills and account books. As Rosemary O'Day reminds us, letters are not isolated texts. Thus, Steen's interrogation of Arbella Stuart's own writings is complemented by scrutiny of medical treatises, contemporary accounts and other correspondence, in order better to elucidate the way in which Stuart understood and used her illness, and how others perceived her behaviour. Anne Laurence further draws to our attention the theoretical and methodological challenges of reading the complex narratives contained in the women's letters to the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
8 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Tory high churchman John Walker, letters which recorded the sufferings of family members who were royalist clergymen during the civil war. Dr Laurence argues that the letters exhibit similar problems to those encountered in oral testimony and witchcraft accounts, stressing the use of common devices to emphasise and heighten descriptions of hardship and suffering. The interpretative complications discussed by Steen and Laurence are matched by the problems of how to read women's use of overtly submissive or deferential language ± whether as convention, device or as symptomatic of women's feelings of inferiority to men. Many of the contributions to this volume suggest that images of female weakness and incapacity were employed by women to their own advantage. Vivienne Larminie argues that Anne Newdigate's portrayal of herself as a defenceless woman belies the overall con®dence and self-assurance conveyed by her letters. In like manner, Alison Wall notes Joan Thynne's utilisation of the `rhetoric of submission' in letters to her husband, discerning also elements of boldness and criticism. By contrast, Maria Thynne was less restrained than her mother-in-law in correspondence with her own husband and openly mocked precepts of female obedience. While Maria clearly subverted patriarchal gender codes, the apparent sarcasm in her letters also suggests a playfulness and compatibility with her husband. These examples should be compared with Jacqueline Eales's study of Lady Brilliana Harley. Dr Eales argues that Lady Harley broadly accepted the implications of patriarchy and that her obedient tone and comportment as a dutiful wife in early writings to her husband was conditioned by her puritanism. However, this did not prevent her strategic use of her womanhood in other letters in order to extort sympathy from royalists within the county. The differing degrees of wifely submission and authority to which these essays testify also re¯ects variations in the balance of authority or power within marriage. In actual practice the in¯uence women enjoyed within marital relationships was based on a variety of factors: character, age, wealth and circumstance. Taking age as one example, Jacqueline Eales suggests that the 20-year age gap between Brilliana Harley and Sir Robert, whose third wife she was, may account for the impression given by her letters that at least initially she was the subordinate partner within the marriage. Conversely, the intimacy apparent in my own essay between Lord and Lady Lisle, and the latter's involvement in Calais politics, may stem in some way from the fact that Lisle was appointed Lord Deputy in his seventies, when his administrative powers had possibly passed their peak. Lady Lisle, on the other hand, a widow and a
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 9
wealthy and experienced woman in her own right, was some 30 years his junior.20 Formal and submissive modes of address in letters to husbands easily coexisted with sentiments of affection. In fact Jacqueline Eales reads Brilliana Harley's correspondence to her husband as love letters; both Roger Dalrymple and Alison Truelove detect glimpses of marital intimacy among letters of the Paston and Stonor wives; and analysis of Joan Thynne's correspondence reveals the development of mutual affection between herself and her husband John, in what was an arranged marriage.21 Though signs of warmth are not uncommon in women's letters, on the whole wives' letters appear less expressive of emotion than those of husbands. An obvious exception to this is Thomas Thynne, whose only surviving letter to his wife Maria primarily concerns business and has none of the effusiveness of her correspondence to him.22 For the medieval period, the fact that men were more likely than women to write themselves partly explains the apparent reserve that Alison Truelove observes in wives' letters within the Stonor archive compared to those of their male counterparts. The comparatively more open and relaxed style and freedom of expression displayed by husbands' letters may also re¯ect men's con®dence, higher levels of male literacy and greater familiarity with epistolary mediums. Of wider interest is the question of how far the manner of women's writing was affected by the gender of recipients. In particular, this question is addressed by Alison Wall who in her essay also explores the nature of women's correspondence with men other than their husbands, and looks at whether women wrote differently to female and male correspondents. Her analysis of the Thynne papers suggests that rank, social status, position within the family and local in¯uence had as much impact as gender, if not more, on the tone of a letter. Thus, Joan Thynne commanded male deference through her personal following in Shropshire; as mistress of Longleat she received humble epistles from her daughter-in-law Maria, though this changed on the death of Joan's husband; and as a mother she expected ®lial respect from her son Thomas. Indeed, Joan Thynne's letters to her son, which mix maternal rebuke and censure with advice and command, mirror those of other mothers discussed in the volume: Margaret Paston, Anne Bacon and Brilliana Harley. In terms of female interaction ± a subject little studied by scholars of gender ± Alison Wall looks at modes of address and the tone of letters in order to examine women's relations with other women, both older and younger and of differing social status. She contrasts the formality of
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
10 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
women's letters to mothers-in-law with examples of more open and intimate correspondence between mothers and daughters. Similar expressions of warmth and affection between women are re¯ected in the letters of Anne Newdigate's close female correspondents described by Vivienne Larminie, while further examples of female antagonism can be discovered in Susan Whyman's essay. Although letter-writing could reinforce social distinctions between female correspondents and recipients, through polite conventions of address, deferential language and self-deprecating apologies for `scribbled lines', what emerges from Alison Wall's essay (and indeed others) is the complexity of women's emotional lives and the range in quality of relationships they experienced: distant and familiar, hostile and passionate. Useful as indicators of the differing intensities of individual relationships, letters also act as records of women's everyday lives and experiences. Studying the contents of letters, Rosemary O'Day outlines the range of activities in which women engaged: marriage arrangement, the household economy, domestic and religious patronage, medicine and education. Beyond this, letters highlight the central importance of family for most women. Vivienne Larminie, for example, depicts Anne Newdigate's role in `®ghting' for the interests of family. During her marriage it was Anne rather than her husband who by letter-writing cultivated and maintained a network of patronage contacts among kin, courtiers and local gentry, which could later be exploited. Here, letters worked to foster social and political links in much the same way as did other functions, including gift giving and hospitality. In widowhood, Lady Newdigate's `epistolary armoury' was employed to secure her son's wardship and to forward the marriages and careers of her other children. The martial language evident in Larminie's description of Anne's role is likewise used by Roger Dalrymple to characterise the determination and duty with which Margaret Paston issued letters of redress in order to secure the interests, honour and reputation of her family. While Joan Thynne and Brilliana Harley physically defended their ancestral homes against armed threat, for other women letters acted as weapons to be levelled at adversaries who threatened their family. Familial responsibilities and obligations imposed by marriage and motherhood authorised women to operate beyond the con®nes of the narrowly de®ned household or domestic sphere. In Anne Laurence's essay, women's chronicling of the experiences of related clergymen and their families during the civil war and the Interregnum, although motivated by `female' concern for reputation, involved them in the traditionally male worlds of historical record, and religious and political
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 11
debate. Furthermore, as shown by Jacqueline Eales, defence of family and religious beliefs prompted and justi®ed women's intervention in the political affairs of the civil war, an activity that she interprets as a continuation of the political and social roles of upper-class women as far back as the later middle ages. Impelled both by the desire to maintain her family's standing as well as by her puritan convictions, Brilliana Harley actively resisted royalist threats. In letters to local royalist governors, however, her resistance was couched solely in terms of familial duty, a tactic calculated to de¯ect criticism and engender understanding of her dif®cult position; there was little mention of the political and religious ideology so evident in her letters to immediate family. The obvious religious dimension to Brilliana Harley's correspondence is also encountered in other women's letters discussed in the volume, notably Margaret and Agnes Paston and Lady Anne Newdigate. The example of Brilliana Harley also raises the issues of the impact of the civil war and the extent to which married women could operate independently of husbands. While Lady Harley referred decisions concerning the estates to her husband, her father-in-law and the stewards, Dr Eales' essay highlights other evidence of more autonomous action: the offering of advice to her husband and the running of her son's parliamentary campaign. Clearly, the exigencies of civil war allowed more scope for female manoeuvre, but similar patterns of women giving advice and being allowed to use their own discretion in business matters are widespread for other periods. More generally though, these letters re¯ect relationships at a distance, women operating in the absence of men. Less clear from marital correspondence is the balance of power and division of duties when husbands were at home. Furthermore, that evidence of women's activities is greater for the civil war than for other periods relates also to the fact that increased absence of men during the 1640s simply generated more correspondence, as did the crises of the 1530s.23 During the civil war and other times of separation, letters functioned as an important means of communication, allowing women to disseminate and keep abreast of news, to maintain contacts with family, and to secure emotional as well as material support. For the nuns discussed in Claire Walker's essay, letters provided their only contact with the outside world. Although monastic rules and statutes were aimed at restricting letterwriting in order to distance nuns from worldly affairs and cut emotional ties with kin, practical realities forced many to eschew the strictest de®nitions of enclosure. Correspondence was vital to the running of convents: news of persecution and struggle fostered Catholic solidarity,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
12 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
while recruitment and monastic business conducted by letter ensured economic survival. The essay emphasises the ways in which letters enabled nuns to intervene beyond the cloister as brokers and patrons, and as participants in secular and religious politics at a national level. Of particular interest are the Ghent Benedictines who in the 1650s put their postal networks at the disposal of Charles II to convey royalist mail, and whose abbess Mary Knatchbull later sought the conversion of the king and his ministers.24 With the obvious exception of nuns, the experiences of single women are less well represented in family letter collections. Indeed, Rosemary O'Day notes that the Bagot correspondence includes very few letters from single females, in contrast with the Ferrar family where unmarried women were involved in household decisions and engaged in letter-writing for pragmatic reasons. Survival or non-survival of letters may also re¯ect male policies of document preservation; correspondence from single women may have been considered less important or less worth keeping than letters from wives and married daughters. Perhaps the most signi®cant source of letters by single women are the Verney manuscripts which are exploited by Susan Whyman in her essay as part of a reassessment of the position of unmarried women during the early modern period. Her analysis indicates the dependence of spinsters on the patronage of male heads of the Verney family and the importance of letters as a means of securing ®nancial assistance. However, Dr Whyman also argues that despite their inferior status single women were not without a function, but rather assumed speci®c responsibilities within the family: they acted as companions to other women and in a fashion operated as `domestic spies', passing on valuable social and political information. In conclusion, many of the contributors to this collection use letters to locate the different forms of women's power and in¯uence within the family, locality and occasionally within a wider political scene. Whether by case study or analysis by period or social group these essays highlight the range of female experience and the diversity of women's letter-writing activities in late medieval and early modern England. Inspired by a variety of impulses ± religious, creative, literary, political and familial ± women's letters indicate greater levels of female familiarity with epistolary mediums, irrespective of educational barriers and levels of literacy, than might previously have been assumed. Taken as a whole, the essays broadly examine the development of women's correspondence, revealing the increasing personalisation of women's letter-writing over the period as well as the growing number of uses for which letters were employed, both privy and powerful. Finally, while it is hoped that this book will
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 13
signi®cantly enhance our understanding of women's lives and illustrate the richness of letters as a source of both women's history and women's writing, it also inevitably raises certain issues that remain unanswered, some of which this introduction has attempted to draw out. A further aim of the book is to open the way to further scholarship in what is a burgeoning and exciting ®eld of research.
Notes I would like to thank Ralph Houlbrooke and Anthea Platt for their helpful comments on this introduction. 1. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Norman Davis, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, 1976), 1, no. 156, pp. 262±3. 2. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965±67), 2, pp. 54±6 (pp. 55±6). 3. On the characteristics of eighteenth-century letter-writing see Clare Brant, `Eighteenth-Century Letters: Aspects of the Genre' (Unpublished D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, 1989), esp. her chapter on Lady Montagu. 4. Diane Watt, ` ``No Writing For Writing's Sake'': the Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women', in Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, eds Karen Cherawatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 122±38 (p. 123); The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Clare Brant (London: Everyman, 1992), p. 223. 5. Paston Letters, ed. Davis, 1, p. 262. 6. Similar questions are posed in Margaret W. Ferguson, `Renaissance Concepts of the ``Woman Writer'' ', in Women and Literature in Britain 1500±1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), pp. 143±68 (p. 151). 7. On early modern autobiographies and diaries see Ralph Houlbrooke, English Family Life, 1576±1716: an Anthology of Diaries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), esp. the introduction; A. Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a SeventeenthCentury Clergyman: an Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge: CUP, 1970), esp. ch. 1, `Diary Keeping in Seventeenth-Century England'. 8. Most fourteenth- and ®fteenth-century letters were in fact the work of scribes, themselves probably ecclesiastics: J. Taylor, `Letters and Letter Collections in England 1300±1420', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 24 (1980), 57±70 (p. 69). See also V.M. O'Mara, `Female Scribal Ability and Scribal Activity in Late Medieval England: the Evidence?', LSE, 27 (1996), 87±130 (pp. 96±7). 9. Joan Kelly, `Did Women Have a Renaissance?', in Joan Kelly, Women, History and Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 19±50 (p. 35); Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 1±13; Mary Beth Rose, Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988), pp. xvi±xvii. On
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
14 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
10.
11. 12. 13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.
restrictive gender codes see Anthony J. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500±1800 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), esp. ch. 19. For discussion of the intersection of written and oral cultures see Keith Thomas, `The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England', in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, Wolfson College Lectures 1985, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 97±131 (pp. 97±8); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500±1800 (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), p. 226; and Jonathan Barry, `Literacy and Literature in Popular Culture: Reading and Writing in Historical Perspective', in Popular Culture in England c.1500±1850, ed. Tim Harris (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 69±94 (p. 75). James Daybell, `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1999), pp. 275±8. Giles Constable, Letters and Letter Collections (Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental, facs. xvii, 1976), p. 42. Ralph Houlbrooke similarly notes Dorothy Bacon's phonetic spellings in his introduction to the edition of her letters: Jane Key, ed., `The Letters and Will of Lady Dorothy Bacon, 1597±1629', The Norfolk Record Society, 56 (1993), pp. 77±112. Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450±1700 (Harlow: Longman, 1984), p. 32. Alison Hanham, ed., The Cely Letters, 1472±1488, EETS No. 273 (OUP, 1975), p. 222. Daybell, Thesis, pp. 224±9. James Daybell, `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603: an Introduction to the Issues of Authorship and Construction', Shakespeare Studies, 27 (September 1999), 161±86. Houlbrooke, The English Family, p. 101. WCRO Newdegate Papers CR 136/B307, n.d. The word `nursed' replaces the deleted phrase `bred up': Daybell, Thesis, p. 162. James Daybell, `The Political Role of Upper-Class Women in Early Tudor England as Evidenced by Their Correspondence' (Unpublished MA dissertation, Reading University, 1996), p. 45. Two Elizabethan Women: Correspondence of Joan and Maria Thynne 1575±1611, ed. Alison D. Wall (Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 38, Devizes, 1983). Ibid., letter 65, pp. 50±1, [c.May 1610]. Barbara J. Harris, `Women and Politics in Early Tudor England', HJ, 33 (1990), 259±81 (pp. 271±2). It has also been shown that nuns were involved through letters in theological debates of the ®fteenth and sixteenth centuries: Albrecht Classen, `Footnotes to the German Canon: Maria von Wolkenstein and Argula von Grumbach', in The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 12 (1989), 131±47.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 15
Reaction, Consolation and Redress in the Letters of the Paston Women Roger Dalrymple
Apparently removed from letter-writing ®rsthand, the Paston women were nevertheless far from unlettered. Their mastery of the topoi of administrative and familial letters is well documented, their expressive force memorable. Envisaging their composition of a letter, however, scholarly tradition has the Paston women sit down with amanuensis rather than pen. Norman Davis has remarked the likelihood that Agnes and Margaret Paston `could not write themselves, or at any rate did not ®nd writing easy and did not like it'1 ± a view supported more recently in V.M. O'Mara's survey of female scribal activity in late medieval England: `there is very little proof provided by the Paston letters that women could write, and even if they could, they did so but rarely'.2 While consensus has emerged as to the limited role of the Paston women in scribal activity, what awaits further demonstration is the extent to which their letters exploit a shifting balance between competing oral and literary in¯uences ± a balance their use of amanuenses may well have prompted them to re¯ect upon. On one side of this balance is the colloquial quality, the apparent proximity to ®fteenth-century speech for which the women's letters are much celebrated.3 Beyond this, it is additionally demonstrable that in certain epistles a component of reaction is embodied, the letters conveying not simply an item of news but a degree of response to the intelligence conveyed. At the same time however, a counterbalancing literary in¯uence is evident in the letters of the Paston women, particularly centring around the traditional commonplaces of consolatory piety.4 An examination of these contrasting aspects shows a marked ¯uidity in the stylistic approaches and practices adopted by ®fteenth-century women letter-writers. Additionally, a focus upon contrasting oral and literary in¯uences provides a helpful context in which to view Margaret 16
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
2
Paston's many letters of redress: where the written word is employed as the corrective counter to oral slander or false report. Under these principles of reaction, consolation and redress, the Paston women depart from the paradigm of the purely pragmatic missive, offering the modern reader a point of insight and empathy, and contributing some of the most compelling epistles of the collection.
Reaction The Paston women are their own judicious editors. There are plentiful signs that more impassioned or less discreet sentiments were more readily entrusted to the lips of a faithful messenger than expanded upon in writing.5 Under the recurrent disclaimer that a female writer `lacks leisure' to enlarge upon her theme, we might detect a withdrawal from thoughts too emotive or non-pragmatic to be committed to writing. The letters of Margaret Paston, with which this essay is primarily concerned, re¯ect such an editorial policy throughout their chronology. With the death of John Paston I in 1466, what brief glimpses of marital intimacy we are afforded in Margaret's earlier letters give way to a robust voice of counsel and command, admonishing wayward sons to live up to their late father's memory and maintain the estates and assets he accrued. Accordingly, like the wider Paston collection, Margaret's epistles tell us much of quotidian life of the period, evoking the commodities the Pastons traded (and disputed), the property they managed and the very textures they touched, but little of an inner life, little of the emotional spectrum. This absence of `writing for writing's sake' is the less remarkable in light of the sheer mechanics of the writing of a letter in this period.6 The labour involved in the production and dispatch of a letter legislates against the likelihood that a wholly affective missive might be sent.7 Why be effusive when a letter might readily go astray? `I wot dnote whedyr ye had the lettyr or not, for I had non answer ther-of fro yow' wrote Margaret Paston to her husband in 1460.8 Yet sometimes the women's letters may take on a more emotive aspect when their language evokes spontaneous or largely unmediated reaction to an event reported. On occasion, the breezy cataloguing of parish deaths and disputes is coloured by a hint of emotional response. At such points, the style of narration takes on an added force. Language appears to be set down in suf®cient heat of temper, or in suf®cient proximity to a momentous event, that we glean not only what Douglas Gray has styled `a simple, unforced impression which seems to re¯ect colloquial speech' but additionally a sense of a perspective largely un®ltered by the formulae of the ars dictaminis.9
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Roger Dalrymple 17
How might such `reactive' writing be identi®ed? An instructive norm against which to measure this quality is afforded by the famous letter sent to John Paston I by William Lomnor in May 1450. The letter reports a momentous affair of state: the exile and murder of the Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole. The opening proceeds quickly through the salutatio and captatio benevolientiae to strike a more emotive note: Ryght worchipfulle ser, I recomaunde me to yow, and am right sory of that I shalle sey, and haue soo weshe this litel bille with sorwfulle terys that on-ethes ye shulle reede it.10 The assertion sets up expectations of a letter rich in emotion ± but the most muted of accounts follows. The death of the duke is described in a prose devoid of the lurid, emotive adjectives the letter's prologue might prompt a reader to anticipate.11 Initially forthcoming, Lomnor's prologue in many respects epitomises the reticence of the wider collection: it is the bill, the letter itself that is washed in tears, not the language that is rich in emotion. The bias is towards the concrete and the tangible over the introspective and re¯ective. Generally, the women's letters embody this same bias. Any glimpses of emotion are summarily displaced by the resurgence of the pragmatic. Thus when she writes to her son John Paston III in (perhaps) 1471 Margaret is anxious for news, concerned for his safety, harried by reports of his injury, even death: Also, it was told me this day that ye were hurt be affray that was mad vp-on you be feles disgysed. Ther-[fore] in any wyse send me word in hast how youre brothere doth, and ye bothyn, for I shall not ben wele at eas till I know how at ye do.12 An apparent index of heightened emotion, this agitated writing climaxes in the wary command: `Lete this letter be brent whan ye haue vnderstond it.' But the postscript to the letter is quite different in tone and focus: `Item, I pray you send me iiij suger lofes, ich of them of iij li., and iiij li. of dates if thei be newe.'13 Even this most serious, impassioned of missives doubles as a shopping list. The emphasis is markedly different, however, in a letter by Agnes Paston, dated 6 July 1453. This letter is a strong candidate for consideration as an epistle embodying reaction. The bias is away from the pragmatic towards the personal; it is expressed in language adventurous enough to stray from the plainly descriptive to the affective. Agnes writes to her son reporting a
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
18 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Roger Dalrymple 19
And as for tydyngys, Phylyppe Berney is passyd to God on Munday last past, wyt e grettes peyn that evyr I sey man. And on Tuysday Sere Jon Heny[n]gham [y]ede to hys chyrche and herd iij massys, and cam hom agayn nevyr meryer, and seyd to hese wyf that he wuld go sey a lytyll deuocion in hese gardeyn and than he wuld dyne; and forth-wyth he felt a feyntyng in hese legge and syyd doun. Thys was at ix of e clok, and he was ded or none.14 Hevingham is introduced in medias res; we are not informed in advance of his death. The detail of his disposition `nevyr meryer', his words to his wife, the gentle but insidious twinge in the leg are all strung together in a paratactical prose typical enough of the period but expressive here of that hushed clench of anxiety and shock experienced when death visits a neighbour suddenly.15 Margaret also writes of Hevingham's passing. Her account is less elaborate but is nevertheless tinged with the same sense evident in Agnes's letter that the sudden death was indeed a local talking point: `His seknesse toke hym on Tewysday at ix on e clok before none, and be too after none he was dedd.'16 In assessing how truly `reactive' or affective these accounts are, we might juxtapose the more typical account of another local's death reported by Margaret in (probably) 1451: Ser Herry Inglose is passyd to God this nygth, hoys sowle God asoyll, and was caryid for this day at ix of e clok to Seynt Feyis, and there shall be beryid. If ye desyer to bey any of hys stuff I pray you send me word er-of in hast, and I shall speke to Robert Inglose and to Wychyngham er-of. I suppose ei ben executorys.17 or that of another neighbour: Gerrardys wyff is deed, and there is a fayre place of hers to selle in Seynt Gregorys parysh, as it is told me. I suppose if ye leke to bye it ye shuld have it worth the mony.18 In both cases the newsworthy aspect would appear to be not the death itself but the portable property and real estate made available by its fact.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
death ± a familiar enough event and one more socially countenanced than is the case today. Yet in the tone of Agnes's letter is something of that sense of shock that attends the sudden, unlooked-for death:
The exceptional character of Agnes's account of Hevingham's death is thus thrown into relief. Reactive writing is also evident in Margaret's famous account of the attack upon the family chaplain James Gloys by a belligerent local landowner, Wymondham.19 In narrating the fracas, Margaret promises her husband that the insults and `large langage' heard `ye shall knowe herafter by mouthe' yet the written account is nevertheless full and animated. Like Agnes's report of Hevingham's death, the animation of the writing is such that a long period of re¯ection on the narrated action is not suggested: reaction forms as reporting takes place. And with e noise of is a-saut and affray my modir and I come owt of e chirche from e sakeryng; and I bad Gloys go in dto my moderis place ageyne, and so he dede. And thanne Wymondham called my moder and me strong hores, and seid e Pastons and alle her kyn were [. . .] knave and charl as he was. And he had meche large langage, as ye shall knowe her-after by mowthe.20 In promising further revelations by mouth Margaret establishes one of few ®xed boundaries between the oral and written modes: by letter she sends John a piece of intelligence; by mouth she will give him a piece of her mind. Briefer instances of Margaret's apparently unmediated reaction to events may be discerned in her poignant laments at prolonged separation, often included as postscripts ± `I xhall thynke my-selfe halfe a wedowe because ye xal not [be] at home'; `for thys ys to wyry a lyffe to a-byde for you and all youre' ± and in her response to that most deafening prompt ± silence: `I thynk ryght long to hyre tydyngys tyll I haue t[y]dyngys from you'; `I merveyl meche at [y]e send me nomore tydyngys an [y]e haue sent'; `I pray yow at ye be not strange of wryting of letterys to me betwix is and at ye come hom; if I myght I wold haue euery day on from yow.'21 Such comments are almost `asides', sentiments not yet ossi®ed in convention, not wholly controlled by stylistic decorum.
Consolation If the element of reactive writing in the letters of the Paston women illuminates the colloquial strand of their correspondence, a more literary in¯uence is discernible in the distinct consolatory strand.22 Moreover, the consolatory piety of the Paston women places them into a different mode of discourse from that employed in the greater body of their letters. The
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
20 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
relation between female writer and male recipient shifts from a predominantly subservient one to a more ¯uid relationship between consolator and consolandus. This distinctive strand of consolatory writing appears not only in Margaret's letters but also is richly anticipated by her mother-in-law. Agnes Paston has already exercised the authority of consolatory discourse: her famous counsel of her overworked son proceeds in cadences which are biblical and Chaucerian by turns: Be my counseyle, dyspose [y]oure-selfe as myche as [y]e may to haue lesse to do in e worlde. [y]oure fadyr sayde, `In lytyl bysynes lyeth myche reste'. is worlde is but a orugh-fare and ful of woo, and whan we departe er-fro, ri[g]th nou[y]gth bere wyth vs but oure good dedys and ylle.23 Beyond the literary interest of the oft-cited passage, its insistence that worldly goods ultimately bring no spiritual bene®t is striking. Conventional though this wisdom is, it is a wisdom which gainsays the Pastons' notorious concern for worldly goods. Following tradition, and impacting on gender roles, the consolator here gains licence to gainsay the dominant perspective, to controvert the (socially superior) consolandus in bringing him to a broader perspective.24 This propensity of consolation to place the consolator in an authoritative mode of discourse is exploited by Margaret also. Like Agnes before her in the `pilgrim' letter, Margaret's letters deviate from pragmatic concerns and recon®gure relations of status when offering her family spiritual counsel. She shows thorough absorption of consolatory commonplaces when exhorting patience or when characterising tribulation as a mark of God's favour. Thus Margaret's letter to her son John Paston II in 1469 enjoins: `fore Goddys loue, [. . .] takeyt pacyently, and thanke God of hys vysitacyon'25 and, writing on another occasion to the same son, the matriarch elaborates upon this view of tribulation: Send me word how ye doo of yowyr syknes at ye had on yowyr hey and yowyr lege; and yff God wol nowt ssuffyr yow to haue helth, thank hym ther-off and takyt passhently, and com hom a-geyn to me, and we shall lyve to-gedyr as God woll geve vs grase to do.26 Margaret's letters also present her as active in consoling and reassuring the tenants occupying the disputed Paston lands. She reports to John Paston I in 1465: `I haue spoken wyth youre tenauntys of Haylesdon and
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Roger Dalrymple 21
Drayton both, and putte hem in confort as well as I canne'.27 In this, she perpetuates the classically derived tradition of visitation to the af¯icted as the most desirable mode of consolation ± solace sent by letter being the next best thing.28 Margaret later reports to John Paston II how the `pore tenauntes [. . .] come to me for comfort and socour, sumtyme be vj or vij to-geder'.29 If her spoken counsel was as measured as her written consolation to her son, the tenants had the bene®t of wise words indeed. Yet Margaret's incorporation of consolatory topoi in her letters extends beyond the conventional. Appeals for deliverance by God are manifold in her letters, appeals often laced with laments that earthly remedy for certain ills is not forthcoming. In exasperated tones she writes to her son: `I haue litell help nor comfort of non of yow yet; God geve me grase to haue heraftir.'30 Resonant as a piece of maternal chiding, Margaret's comment is revealing of her ability to manipulate and adapt the traditional topoi of consolation. Promise of recompense for suffering `heraftir' is precisely what the consolatory tradition promises ± earthly hardship will be succeeded by heavenly reward. Yet here, the consolatory commonplace is reproduced to provoke a response, to induce a dutiful son to bring about remedy in the more foreseeable and immediate `heraftir'. Margaret's letters employ consolatory topoi not simply as end-points but as means to an end.
Redress In these features of reaction and consolation, differing proportions of oral and literary in¯uence have been apparent. Accordingly, within Margaret's own letters, contrasting attitudes are displayed towards the spoken word (particularly those words uttered in gossip) and the authoritative written word. Margaret's letters establish a function for themselves in providing a true record of a contested subject ± or an af®rmation of good character when character is blackened. To her husband in 1449 Margaret writes: `dHeree dare noman seyn a gode wurd for [y]ou in is cuntreÂ. God amend it.'31 Such reports are frequent in her letters. As the Paston lands are disputed and the loyalties of sympathisers and associates oscillate, Margaret provides many such opinion polls for her husband: `The pepyll was nevyr bettyr dysposyd to yow than they be at thys owyr'; `Ye wer nevyr so welcome in-to Norfolk as ye schall be when ye come home, I trowe'; `Ye are ryth myche bownde to thank God, and all tho at loue yow, at ye haue so gret loue of the pepyll as ye haue.'32 Yet when report is unfavourable it is not always left to God
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
22 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
alone to `amend it'. Margaret's letters show an active concern for the maintenance of honour, the blazoning of truth and the redressing of slanders. The Pastons, `undeniably obsessed with honour'33 must counter and rebuff the `noysynges' of a restless locality, of those intending deliberate slander or those simply indulging tongues given to rumour. `There is a gret noyse in is town' wrote Margaret in 1451 of political unrest, later reminding her son with pride, `your fader was noysed of so gret valew'.34 `Noyse', a keyword in her letters, connotes a clamour always political, often malicious, always with consequences.35 In accord with her concern for the maintenance of family honour, Margaret participates in an economy of `noyse' where reputation and renown are not ®xed but require rati®cation and supplementation. This balance of `noyse' might be tipped readily by too great a preponderance of partisan speakers. Thus Margaret communicates to her husband her concern: Yowre tenawntys wold fayn at summe dmenee of yowris shuld abyde amongis hem, for they ben in gred diswyre what they may do, the langage is so grett on the toer party that it makyth e tenawntys sore afferd that ye shuld not regoyse itt.36 Thus, as the Wars of the Roses ®nd re¯ection in the microcosm of the Norfolk gentry, Margaret's letter to John I of 7 January 1462 speaks of `false schrewys at wold mak a rwmor in is contreÂ' and further delineates the structure of this context of `noyse': Pepyll of this contre begynyth to wax wyld, and it is seyd her at my lord of Clarans and the Dwek of Suthfolk, and serteyn jwgys wyth hem dschold come downe and syt on syche pepyll as be noysyd ryotous in thys contreÂ.37 Margaret's letters offer insight into how she did her part to maintain Paston family honour and renown in this economy of `noyse': apprising tenants of developments, representing family interests at court and seeking by her correspondence to rebut rumour. During the duke of Suffolk's attack on Hellesdon, an ailing Margaret vows to her husband, despite sickness, `to my powere I wyl do as I can or may in yowre materys'.38 Moreover, in countering `noyse' with her writings, Margaret shows much faith in the written word as redressive, an idea in keeping with the careful preservation of much of the Paston correspondence by the family as documentation of value in any possible legal disputes and supported by her statement to her son: `Youre fadere, wham God assole, in
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Roger Dalrymple 23
hys trobyll seson set more by hys wrytyngys and evydens than he dede by any of his moveabell godys.'39 Likewise, her own letters are often forged in opposition to gossip, rumour and lies: 1449 ®nds her disputing property rights with those who deny the prior agreements struck: `and ey for-swere it, as ei do oer thyngys more, at it was neuer seyd; dande meche thyng at I know veryly was seyd'; 1461 ®nds her apprising her husband of slander: `It is told me at e seyd Will reportyth of yow as shamfully as he can in dyuers place.'40 Whilst Margaret can contextualise certain of the rumours emanating from Norfolk, she is often at the mercy of rumours proceeding from London. Her correspondence to the capital shows frequent anxiety as to the well-being of her sons. If reports of their deaths have been greatly exaggerated, they have nevertheless caused great concern: rumour has run ahead of the authority of the written word, send me word how that your brothere doth. It was told here that he shuld haue be ded, which caused many folkes, and me bothyn, to be right hevy [. . .] for I shall not ben wele at eas till I know how at ye do [. . .] for it was seid here pleynly that your brothere was poysoned.41 Likewise, Margaret wrote to her husband: `I pray yow hertly at ye wole wychesaue to send me word how ye do as hastly as ye may, for my hert schall nevyr be in ese tyll I haue dtydyngyse fro yow.'42 The distress caused was clearly profound when a simple trip into company could result in the hearing of intelligence which, though often groundless, must take considerable time for a letter's arrival to dispel. A collision of the spheres of false oral report and written authority is starkly evident in the companion letters exchanged by Margaret and John Paston II in September 1469 when John Paston III lay besieged in Caister Castle. Margaret informs the elder son of his brother's plight, adding `Dawbeney and Berney be dedde and diuerse othere gretly hurt.'43 Yet the companion letter from her son challenges Margaret's version of events, pronouncing the `dead' allies alive and well: Moodre, vppon Saterday last was Dawbeney and Bernay were on lyve and mery, and I suppose ther cam no man owt of the place to yow syn that tyme that cowde haue asserteynyd to yow of there dethys.44 At the mercy of the spoken word, Margaret can only upbraid her son for his tone and allege her dependence upon rumour for information:
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
24 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Roger Dalrymple 25
In this we hear the frustration of Margaret's being beholden to false report. Even her letters may sometimes be the bearers of misinformation: `I dhauee wrytyn as yt haue be enformed me.' Margaret's letters of redress are occasionally more familial in focus. Her letter to her husband of 18 August 1465 suggests that false report is to blame for a family falling out: me thynkyth by my cosyn Clere that she wold fayn haue youre gode wyll and that she hath sworyn ryght faythfully to me that there shall no defaute be founde in here [. . .] She sayth she wote well such langage as hath be reportyd to you of here othere-wyse then she hath deseruyd causyth you to be othere-wyse to here then ye shold be. She had to me thys langage wypyng, and told me of dyuers othere thyngys the whych ye shall haue knowlych of hereaftere.46 The diplomacy that served Margaret so well in representing her family's business interests might clearly be utilised to settle disputes closer to home.47 Less dramatic than her accounts of scuf¯es, confrontations and legal disputes, this quiet account of a woman's `language wypyng' is resonant for readers other than the intended recipient of 1465.48 The letters of Agnes and Margaret Paston, then, illustrate certain of the distinctive uses the ®fteenth-century matriarch might make of the letterwriting forum. Whilst their letters are most often predicated upon practical concerns, components of reaction, consolation and redress stand out among the `tydyngys' conveyed. Letters of report may embody reactive passages where a degree of emotional response intrudes upon plain narrative. Letters of petition and of news can occasionally give way to letters of consolation, where the relationship between writer and recipient is recon®gured, affording the female letter-writer a more authoritative discursive mode than the norm. Finally, for Margaret, letters of redress play a valuable role in securing and preserving the interests and reputation of her family. In a country exposed to a steady torrent of competing propaganda and rhetoric at the level of national politics, Margaret's letters form weapons as trusty as the `crossbows' she once requests from her husband ± weapons with which false report may be countered, slanders redressed.49 The ®xed, stable text of the letter is employed to counter the unstable nature of report and chatter, to secure the last word.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
me thynke be e letter at [y]e sent me be Robeyn at [y]e thynke at I xuld wryte to [y]ow fabyls and ymagynacyons. But I do not soo; I dhauee wrytyn as yt haue be enformed me, and wulle do.45
In Margaret's correspondence this last concern is arguably the greatest. Certainly, when she writes early in widowhood to her son, her complaint to him is typical of her wider preoccupations: `Yt is a schame, and a thyng at is myche spokyn of in thys contreÂ, at [y]owr faders graue ston is not mad.'50 Cast in stone or inscribed on paper, it is the written word that can still the `noyse' and which remains our surest memorial.
Notes I am most grateful to James Daybell and Caroline Cole for their valuable comments during the preparation of this essay. 1. Norman Davis's views on the scribal activity of the Paston women remain the orthodoxy: `The Language of the Pastons', Proceedings of the British Academy, 40 (1954), 119±39 (p. 121). 2. V.M. O'Mara, `Female Scribal Ability and Scribal Activity in Late Medieval England: the Evidence?', LSE, 27 (1996), 87±130 (p. 92). See also Norman Davis, `The Text of Margaret Paston's Letters', Medium ávum, 18 (1949), 12±28 (p. 14). On women's involvement in composing letters during the sixteenth century see J. Daybell, `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603: an Introduction to the Issues of Authorship and Construction', Shakespeare Studies, 27 (1999), 161±86. 3. Some of these colloquial resonances are still in the process of coming to light. See Andrew Breeze, `Margaret Paston's ``Grene a Lyere'' ', N&Q, 45 (1998), 29±30. 4. Malcolm Parkes observes that the `development in family letters of conscious written usage with subconscious literary echoes, as opposed to spoken usage, indicates a sophisticated rather than a rudimentary form of literacy': `The Literacy of the Laity', in Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts, ed. M. Parkes (London: Hambledon, 1991), pp. 275±97 (p. 295). 5. All quotations are taken from Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Norman Davis, 2 vols (Oxford, 1971, 1976) [hereafter PL]. See for example, nos 126 (p. 219); 130 (p. 226); 131 (p. 229). 6. Virginia Woolf's famous comment is cited by Diane Watt: ` ``No Writing for Writing's Sake'': the Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women', in Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, ed. K. Cherewatuk and W. Wiehaus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1993), pp. 122±38 (p. 122). 7. H.S. Bennett's chapter on `Letters and Letter-Writing' remains an evocative and broad survey of the topic: The Pastons and their England, 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 1932, repr. 1968), pp. 114±27. 8. PL, I, 157 (p. 263). 9. Douglas Gray ed., The Oxford Book of Late Medieval Verse and Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 33. 10. PL, II, 450 (p. 35).
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
26 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
11. It would of course be incumbent upon Lomnor to provide a clear and accurate record of events, eschewing lurid detail. 12. PL, I, 213, (p. 360). 13. Ibid., I, 213 (p. 361). 14. Ibid., I, 26 (p. 39): Agnes Paston to John Paston I, 6 July 1453. 15. Such a paratactical style is employed in the English chronicles of the period and is famously the dominant stylistic mode of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur. See P.J.C. Field, Romance and Chronicle: a Study of Malory's Prose Style (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971), ch. 2. 16. PL, I, 147 (p. 250): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 6 July 1453. 17. Ibid., I, 141 (p. 243): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, probably 1451, 1 July. 18. Ibid., I, 144 (p. 246): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, probably 1452, 5 Nov. 19. For useful commentary on this letter see Norman Davis, `Style and Stereotype in Early English Letters', LSE, 1 (1967), 7±15 (p. 15); Janel Mueller, The Native Tongue and the Word: Developments in English Prose Style 1380±1580 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 90±1; Watt, `No Writing for Writing's Sake', p. 131. 20. PL, I, 129 (p. 224): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 19 May 1448. The ellipsis in the text, caused by a hole in the paper, has the felicitous effect of censoring the (possibly expletive) execrations of Wymondham. 21. Ibid., 153 (p. 258); 180 (p. 299); 181 (p. 300); 132 (p. 232); 150 (p. 254). 22. Diane Watt draws attention to the book ownership of the Paston women, implying their literacy: `Agnes borrowed a copy of the Stimulus Conscientiae and her daughter Anne owned a copy of the Siege of Thebes': `No Writing for Writing's Sake', p. 124. 23. PL, I, 30 (p. 43): Agnes Paston to John Paston I, perhaps 1465, 29 Oct. On the literary pedigree of the allusions see Parkes, `The Literacy of the Laity', p. 295. 24. See for example, the Narrator's attempted consolation of the socially superior Man in Black in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, ll. 522 ff. 25. PL, I, 205 (p. 346). 26. Ibid., I, 221 (p. 372). 27. Ibid., I, 196 (p. 330). 28. `In classical, Christian, and indeed modern times a personal visit to the bereaved counts as the most effective form of consolation, but a personal letter can be an acceptable substitute. The consolations of Seneca, among the most in¯uential examples of the form, were all letters': Brian Vickers, `Shakespearian Consolations', Proceedings of the British Academy, 82 (1993), 219±84 (pp. 228± 9). On consolation in Middle English literary texts see Michael Means, The `Consolatio' Genre in Middle English Literature (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1972). 29. PL, I, 200 (p. 337). 30. Ibid., I, 207 (p. 349): Margaret Paston to John Paston II, 15 July 1470. 31. Ibid., I, 131 (p. 230): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 15 Feb. 1449. 32. Ibid., I, 165 (p. 274), 169 (p. 280), 163 (p. 271). 33. Philippa Maddern, `Honour among the Pastons: Gender and Integrity in Fifteenth-Century English Provincial Society', Journal of Medieval History, 14 (1988), 357±71 (p. 357). 34. PL, I, 137 (p. 238): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 3 Mar. 1451; I, 200 (p. 337): Margaret Paston to John Paston II, 12 Mar. 1469.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Roger Dalrymple 27
35. Middle English Dictionary, sense 3(a). It is signi®cant that `noyse' forms a key word in the nearly contemporary Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, where the `noyse' of factional warfare initiates the destruction of the Round Table. See Malory: Works, ed. EugeÁne Vinaver, 2nd edn (Oxford: OUP, 1971), p. 674; p. 676 et passim. 36. PL, I, 138 (p. 239): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 15 Mar. 1451. 37. Ibid., I, 168 (p. 279). 38. Ibid., I, 188 (p. 310): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 12 July 1465. 39. Ibid., I, 198 ( p. 333): Margaret Paston to John Paston II, 29 Oct. 1466. 40. Ibid., I, 131 (p. 229): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 15 Feb. 1449; I, 161 (p. 269): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 15 July 1461. 41. Ibid., I, 213 (p. 360): Margaret Paston to John Paston III, probably 1471, 7 Dec. 42. Ibid., I, 168 (p. 279): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 7 Jan. 1462. 43. Ibid., I, 204 (p. 344): Margaret Paston to John Paston II, 12 Sept. 1469. 44. Ibid., I, 243 (p. 405): John Paston II to Margaret Paston, 15 Sept. 1469. 45. Ibid., I, 205 (pp. 345±6): Margaret Paston to John Paston II, 22±30 Sept. 1469. 46. Ibid., I, 190 (p. 316): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 18 Aug. 1465. 47. The epistle is ultimately a domestic letter of petition, a mode of writing which women letter-writers were to develop more fully in the succeeding century. See James Daybell, `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1999), ch. 5. 48. One of Margaret's most famous letters of redress, documenting her attempts to mitigate the fall-out from Margery Paston's illicit marriage to the bailiff Richard Calle, is recently printed in Carolyne Larrington, ed., Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: a Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 36±8. 49. PL, I, 130 (p. 226): Margaret Paston to John Paston I, 1448: `I recomawnd me to [y]u and prey [y]w to gete som crosse bowis, and wyndacis to bynd em wyth'. 50. Ibid., I, 212 (p. 359): Margaret Paston to John Paston III, 29 Nov. 1471.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
28 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Letter-Writing by English Noblewomen in the Early Fifteenth Century Jennifer C. Ward
When we engage in letter-writing at the present day, we do so for a variety of purposes. We may be conducting business, paying bills, making arrangements with people we do not know. Or we may be writing to family or friends, bringing them up to date on various items of news, keeping in touch so that when we next meet them we can simply pick up where we left off. Our use of language varies, from the formal and impersonal in the business letter, to a readiness to display our feelings and emotions in private correspondence. At the same time, we exercise a form of self-censorship, bearing in mind to whom we are writing, and adapting our style and subject-matter to the recipient. Our education and careers teach us a variety of ways in which to express ourselves, and we place great reliance on the written word, even though we realise its dangers. It is important to be aware of our expectations from letter-writing before we can appreciate its signi®cance to English noblewomen in the early ®fteenth century. To what extent and on what occasions did these women engage in letter-writing? What were its conventions and content? What reliance was placed upon it? By about 1400, most women of the gentry and lesser and higher nobility would have been able to read, and would have needed this skill for business as well as private, notably devotional, purposes. Literacy among women of the nobility was socially acceptable, and a number of treatises urged that women should learn to read, even if only to be able to read religious works.1 Writing was a different matter. It has recently been suggested that Elizabeth, Lady Zouche may well have written her own letters, but if so she was probably in a minority; work on later ®fteenth-century letter collections suggests that few women could write or only rarely made use of this skill, preferring to get any writing done by their clerks.2 However, with many noblewomen's letters of about 1400 only surviving as copies, this issue cannot really be examined. 29
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
3
Well before 1400, the written word had become a trusted form of communication, and letters are only one of a great variety of forms of documentation in the early ®fteenth century. Letters were used for a variety of purposes, and those of noblewomen were usually written in French or English, with the earliest English letters dating from 1392 and 1393.3 Only a tiny proportion of the letters written have survived, and there is no major archive for the nobility like those of the Stonors, Pastons, Celys and Plumptons. Much of the surviving correspondence found its way for some reason into the royal archives; many people are represented only by a single letter, or possibly by two or three, but a ®le of eighteen documents including ®ve letters relates to Elizabeth, Lady Zouche,4 and a group of eight letters from the surviving page of a letterbook to Lady Alice de Bryene.5 Letters can also be found in episcopal and monastic registers, and more particularly in formularies and commonplace books; many letters of the Despenser family dating from about 1400 were copied into a commonplace book for the clerk's private use.6 In these cases, it cannot be assumed that a full copy was always made; subject-matter and other details may have been omitted, and further editing may have taken place. When the letters themselves are examined, the ®rst impression is one of formality and convention, even among family and friends. This applies to the letters of both men and women. The opening of a letter followed a standard format, with certain variations in wording. The address and commendation indicated respect. It was usual to express hope that the recipient was well and would continue to be so in the future; writers also commonly mentioned their own good health and thanked God for it.7 The length of this opening section varied and could be extremely elaborate, as when Robert Lovell wrote to his mother-in-law, Alice de Bryene, probably in 1397.8 Anne, wife of Sir Edward Boteler, wrote to Lady Audley: Most honoured, reverend and gracious lady, I commend myself to you as much as I know or am able, in all manner obedient, reverent and honoured, praying Almighty God that he recompense you where I cannot for all the sovereign kindness, help and relief which of your great courtesy you have graciously made to me, of which, most gracious lady, I dare to ask for the continuance.9 On the other hand, Elizabeth, Lady Zouche usually addressed her London agent, John Bore, `Rygt wel be loued frend, I greet [y]ow wel', and once as `Dere frend'.10 These expressions of respect and affection, although conventional, may represent genuine emotion; however, they need to be
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
30 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Jennifer C. Ward 31
My most honoured lady and mother, entirely beloved with all my heart, may the blessed Trinity have you in his keeping and give you a good and long life, and may all your honourable desires be accomplished . . . Your humble son, if it pleases you, Robert Lovell.11 Elizabeth, Lady Zouche, like other letter-writers, normally gave the place and date of writing, and then simply put her name.12 Not all letters were dated and, on some occasions, the day and month were given, but not the year. These conventional openings and endings highlight the signi®cance of rank and status in the late medieval world. The choice of words, particularly in the address, made clear the relative positions of writer and recipient, whether inside or outside the family, and rank was a far more important factor than gender. Anne Boteler clearly wanted to ingratiate herself with Lady Audley with whom she wished to stay in order to recount her `wrongs'. Although her letter provides no details, the reason for her requested visit can be inferred from other evidence: her marriage was in dif®culties. Similarly, Laurence d'Allerthorpe, a cleric of St Paul's cathedral in London, wanted a favourable answer from Joan de Bohun, Countess of Hereford, who was the most powerful magnate in Essex in the early ®fteenth century: Most noble, honoured and gracious lady, I commend myself to your noble highness with my whole heart as entirely and specially as I know or can, at the same time most cordially desiring to hear good news of you and of your noble estate. May God in his high power maintain and increase it in honour for ever.13 By contrast, Elizabeth, Lady Zouche was writing to an inferior whom she did not need to impress, the mode of address employed is therefore less exaggerated. In these cases, more was involved than just a letter-writing convention. Respect for superiors was deeply ingrained in society and a writer anxious for a particular response had to use the appropriate means of expression. Moreover, it is likely that formality and convention were considered to be a useful cover for emotions. The importance of maintaining one's
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
read against the whole letter and other contextual evidence before they can be accepted. Likewise at the endings of letters, where again conventional phrases were used, sentiments cannot be taken at face value. Robert Lovell ended his letter:
dignity and honour and not yielding to adversity is underlined by a letter of condolence sent by Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich to his niece, Lady Despenser, after her husband, Thomas, Lord Despenser, had been beheaded during the Holland rising against Henry IV in 1400.14 There is no doubt that Lady Despenser was in a dif®cult situation; anyone who rebelled against the Crown committed treason and forfeited his goods and estates, and, although the widow's inheritance and jointure were exempt from forfeiture, the family was likely to be seriously affected.15 However, the bishop stressed that Lady Despenser must submit to reason. To question God's will was sinful; it was an even greater sin to be so consumed with grief as to be at the point of death. In such a state, he reasoned, man cannot govern himself or look after his goods. Taking reason as her chief governor, the bishop urged his niece to exert herself to recover what was recoverable, by which he presumably meant her property as well as the standing of the Despenser family. He offered to do what would be to her honour, pro®t, pleasure and comfort. If she wanted, he would be father, uncle, husband and brother to her, to the best of his power. The bishop showed affection for his niece and an understanding of her predicament, but was convinced that she had to control her emotions and be pragmatic. While conventions of letter-writing throw light on social attitudes, it is the content of letters which show whether they were `privy and powerful communications'. The modern reader expects letters, especially private and family letters, to elicit women's voices, though this is not always the case. Letters by 1400 were often detailed and informative, but they did not necessarily give the full story; a shared understanding of background circumstances and other factors, which remain dif®cult for the twentiethcentury reader to grasp, enabled the recipient to read more into the letter than was actually written. Politically sensitive letters dispatched at a time of uncertainty, as in the years after the deposition of Richard II in 1399 and the accession of Henry IV, would have been especially carefully written. There is in fact very little in the letters which could not be read by an outsider, and in this sense they cannot be described as completely private. Even in family letters, formal expressions were used. This may partly have been due to the letters being written by a clerk rather than by the woman herself, but it also re¯ects a greater emphasis in society on formality than in the Tudor and Stuart period. By then, increased literacy and more use of writing for personal matters appears to have led to a greater willingness to express feelings and emotion, at least towards the members of the writer's family.16
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
32 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Moreover, in the early ®fteenth century, as indeed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was usual to give extra information to the bearer of the letter. This underlines the continuing importance of oral communication and the trust placed in messengers. Thus Lady Despenser, corresponding with Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote that she would do what she could for his clerk, Master Henry Ware, and had done what he asked for the latter's cousin; she noted also that the bearer had been entrusted with more information.17 A letter from George, Earl of Dunbar to Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland, mainly concerned with the affairs of Coldingham Priory, also mentioned that some information for which the countess had asked was being conveyed by messenger.18 This type of statement is often found. The use of letters as family communications was widespread among noblewomen by the early ®fteenth century, often to provide news and information. In spite of the conventional and formal elements, familial correspondence throws considerable light on the nature of relationships. The letters provide some opportunity to learn about the personalities of the noblewoman and of members of her family. This personal element is rarely found in other forms of documentation, such as wills, and household, legal and administrative material, although these can provide useful corroboration in some cases, especially where only a single letter to or from a noblewoman survives. Letters are especially important in highlighting the contacts among the extended family. The signi®cance of kindred rarely appears in other forms of documentation where the emphasis is usually centred on the life, concerns and future of the husband and his wife and children. Joan de Bohun, Countess of Hereford was in touch not only with her two daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren, but also with her brothers, Richard, Earl of Arundel and Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury. In an undated letter to the archbishop, Joan wrote to explain why she could not spend Easter with him; she was due to be at Denny Abbey on Wednesday 11 April, where she would stay before returning to Walden on Friday to spend Easter. Not wishing to offend her brother, the countess asked him to reply to her letter.19 The close relationship between Joan and Thomas is borne out by his household accounts when he was bishop of Ely (1374±88) which bear witness to frequent visits which were usually marked by various festivities and excursions.20 The correspondence of Bishop Henry Despenser with his nieces also underlines the existence and importance of close-knit extended family networks. His letter of condolence to Lady Despenser was part of a considerable family correspondence. He wrote to Anne Boteler congratu-
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jennifer C. Ward 33
lating her on the birth of her son (who apparently died in childhood), and asking her for further news. He also intervened when there was trouble between Anne and her husband Sir Edward Boteler, asking for the help of Lady Audley, saying that Boteler had refused to see him in London and that he was suing him in the archbishop's court. (Anne's own letter to Lady Audley, previously referred to, had been a request to visit her to recount her wrongs, which she would not commit to writing.) The correspondence between the bishop and his nieces was not all one way: Anne wrote to him about the affairs of another niece, Lady Ferrers of Chartley, beseeching him to take charge of Lady Ferrers' youngest son. A further letter from an unnamed niece stated that receipt of the bishop's news would alleviate her melancholy state.21 A letter from Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, sister of Henry IV and Queen of Portugal, shows a desire to promote the fortunes of members of the family, and it is likely that such encouragement of family interests was widespread. It was partly at her instigation that the marriage took place between Beatrice, her husband John I's illegitimate daughter, and Thomas, Earl of Arundel. Arundel had promised a substantial sum of money to Henry IV for the right to make his own choice of wife; however, he agreed to marry Beatrice, only to ®nd that the money was still being demanded by the king. Philippa intervened to press her brother to release the earl from making the payment. The letter combined respect and affection, being addressed to `the most high and powerful prince, my most supremely beloved brother'; she wrote that her children wished to be humbly remembered to the king, she offered to send him anything from Portugal that would please him, and ended the letter with a prayer to Jesus to give him prosperity, joy and long life.22 Letters within the nuclear family combine affectionate conventions with the prosaic details of news. Although it cannot be taken for granted that affectionate greetings denoted a loving marital relationship, the desire to be in contact and exchange news points to closeness and common interests between husband and wife. In some cases the husband put considerable trust in his wife's judgement and abilities. John Devereux the younger, writing to his wife Philippa, daughter of Alice de Bryene, in 1396, began and ended very affectionately, calling Philippa his `best-beloved partner'; he hoped to hear her news, and told her he was in good health; and he gave her news of the preparations at Calais for the arrival of the king of France and his daughter Isabel for her marriage to Richard II.23 Other letters show how business was managed within the family. About 1399, Alice, Countess of Kent corresponded with her son over a potential retainer, and intervened on behalf of a receiver in
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
34 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Lincolnshire who was in arrears on his accounts.24 John Bourchier in 1374 greeted his wife and children 100 000 times, and then in the same sentence informed her that his ransom would cost 12 000 francs; he had been taken prisoner during the Hundred Years War. He urged her not to marvel that the sum was so large, as he had been in great danger of losing his life, and he pressed her to raise the money; more information would be provided by the bearer of the letter.25 Letters also indicate the existence of friendships among the nobility which again can be dif®cult to pinpoint in more formal documents. Details in letters throw light on the closeness of friendships, as in the epistolary exchange between Bishop Henry Despenser and Philippa, Queen of Portugal. The bishop informed her that he had been ill but that her letters had cured him; Philippa had asked him to take action on behalf of one of her ladies, Elizabeth Elmham, and he promised to do his best.26 On another occasion, Philippa wrote to thank him for his presents, and especially for the little bags which, she said, were so highly prized in Portugal that she would like more to be sent from time to time. She wrote that if there was anything in Portugal that he would like she would send it.27 These letters show that men and women were making use of letters to keep in touch with family and friends. They were essentially private communications in the sense that they related to a small and often interrelated group of people, and they provide a personal insight into the correspondents. There is more information on matters of mutual concern than on the nature of relationships, but the letters make it clear that both the extended and the nuclear family had a vital social role, and that friendship was highly prized. It was when letters were concerned with the lady's public business of estate management and patronage that they can be seen as expressions of power. Widowed noblewomen were responsible for estates accumulated from jointure, dower and sometimes inheritance, and, as estates were scattered, both messengers and letters were used in administration. Similarly, any noblewoman running her household would have some recourse to letters in securing supplies, although much could be done by oral communications to servants and tradesmen. There was inevitably some blurring in the letters between public business and private concerns. The letters of Elizabeth, Lady Zouche to John Bore in London were concerned with estate business and also required him to buy damask, silk and velvet, a rosary for her mother, as well as jewels and wine.28 What is apparent in these and similar letters is the wealth and power exercised by these women, many of whom played an active role in decision-making.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jennifer C. Ward 35
A series of letters of 1401±6 from Margaret, Countess of Warwick to Bishop Henry Despenser underlines the importance of the letter in the exercise of power in the locality and the need for amicable local relationships. Neighbourhood networks could contribute much to the stability and order of a locality. On one occasion, Margaret introduced J.T., the bearer of the letter, to the bishop; she was sending him to manage her Norfolk estates which were situated near the bishop's and she requested the bishop's good lordship. She recommended her tenants to the bishop's favour on two other occasions.29 Possibly in 1402, she complained that she had not been able to hold her hundred court because the parson of Beeston had held it in the name of the earl of Arundel and ordered his chaplain to proclaim from the pulpit that all parishioners should resist her. She referred to the dishonour she had suffered and, worried about the possible disinheritance of her son, she asked Bishop Despenser to correct the parson.30 The bishop's answers do not survive, but clearly letters were vitally important in landed business. Relations between neighbouring landowners rarely appear in other documentation unless there was a quarrel or litigation; surviving letters are therefore of particular importance in assessing local relationships. It was universally accepted that women had a legitimate role as intermediaries, a role closely linked to their landed responsibilities and to their exercise of patronage. Social networks, based on concepts of hierarchy, good lordship and mutual interests, were the foundation of late medieval local society, and were formed and nurtured by both men and women.31 Bonds were fostered by gifts, by letter and by personal contact. The latter has left relatively little mark on the records, apart from some details about visits in household accounts.32 Household accounts also provide evidence for the widespread use of gifts; in 1385±86 Margaret Marshal, Countess of Norfolk gave and received presents of, among other things, wine, oats, boar, salmon, lampreys, poultry and game.33 Such items would be given and received by all noblewomen, although the scale would vary. In return for gifts, they offered patronage and protection. In this respect, the letter again acted as an instrument of power, and the use of the letter to request favours for a particular individual was widespread among men and women of the elite. At the end of the 1390s, Philippa of Portugal requested her cousin Richard II to provide a bene®ce for her chancellor, Master Adam Davenport, who wished to retire to England.34 A more detailed letter was written by Joan, Countess of Westmorland to her half-brother Henry IV on behalf of Christopher Standith and his wife Margaret.35 Christopher had been in the king's service in Wales, spending much of his own money, and as a result he and
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
36 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Margaret had now left home. Margaret was uncomfortably housed with her many children; she had, according to Joan, one or two babies every year. Christopher was the youngest member of his family, and he and Margaret had married for love. The king had promised Christopher future reward, but what they needed was present help. It was Margaret who asked Joan to intercede; her father had been John of Gaunt's chancellor, so she had some connection with the countess and probably felt that she was her best intermediary with the king. Women conferred as well as requested favours. About 1400, the king's chancellor and treasurer wrote to the `most honoured and reverend' abbess of Wilton, asking her to present a clerk to the church of Berwick St John, as the present incumbent was not likely to live long and a vacancy would soon occur.36 The dispensing of favours was often marked by an element of reciprocity: Lady Despenser promised Archbishop Thomas Arundel that she would do what she could for his clerk. At the same time, she placed her trust in the archbishop and acknowledged his very great kindness and courtesy.37 Furthermore, women played an important role in acting as intermediaries on behalf of individuals and communities. In this respect, they were acting as a channel to facilitate the exercise of patronage or the granting of a petition. Such actions could be part of their estate responsibilities, but often emanated from the locality where the noblewoman resided and where she exercised in¯uence. In writing to her son Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent at the end of the fourteenth century, his mother, Countess Alice, reported that W. Baudewyn wanted to enter the earl's service. She had told Baudewyn that the earl would not be able to afford to take anyone on for the next two years, but he still wanted to become the earl's retainer for a small fee.38 Baudewyn was probably thinking of the advantageous contacts to be made in Holland's entourage. A community in need would urge or persuade an in¯uential member of the nobility to intervene in the right quarters so as to secure a particular favour or concession. Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny was in a good position to write to her uncle, Archbishop Thomas Arundel, to issue letters like his predecessor's in aid of repairing a bridge on the lands of Wenlock Priory; presumably, an indulgence was sought.39 Margaret, Countess of Warwick wrote to Bishop Despenser on behalf of Shouldham Priory in Norfolk which had close connections with the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, and was where her sister-in-law and niece were nuns.40 Laurence d'Allerthorpe's petition to Joan, Countess of Hereford complained of certain men of Maldon who had captured a ship and crew discharging coal at Heybridge;41 Laurence was
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jennifer C. Ward 37
in charge of the manor of Heybridge which was one of the possessions of St Paul's Cathedral. The intervention of women to settle quarrels and preserve the peace was an acceptable female activity according to contemporary theorists, and this again was facilitated by letter. Philippa of Portugal asked Archbishop Arundel to settle the quarrel between her brother Henry Bolingbroke and Bishop Despenser.42 She said that she had received much kindness from the bishop, and was writing to her brother to ask him to pardon the bishop for love of her. The bishop was certainly under suspicion early in Henry IV's reign, as he was thought to have been implicated in the Holland rising in the course of which Thomas, Lord Despenser lost his life. The outcome of these letters is only occasionally known; it is rare to have replies to correspondence and much was probably settled by oral communication. As for the two cases referred to, it appears from later evidence that the quarrel between Henry IV and Despenser was settled. Laurence's petition resulted in a royal order to the bailiffs of Maldon to free the ship from arrest, and it was stated that the whole matter was to be considered by the king's council. What the letters show as a whole is that women were ready to exercise power.43 The networks so far considered have been concerned with material and worldly gains; archbishops and bishops were involved in the same landed and political concerns as their lay neighbours, and were part of the same social and kindred networks. Yet it is clear from wills, tombs and household accounts that spiritual values were a major preoccupation of men and women of the late Middle Ages. Letters can show the ongoing relationship between noblewomen and churchmen on religious matters. Anne, Countess of Stafford was descended from the de Bohun earls of Hereford and Essex (she was the grand-daughter of Joan de Bohun), and she maintained her natal family's connection with the priory of Lanthony Secunda in Gloucestershire. She and members of her family and household were received into the priory's fraternity.44 In a letter of 1433, she referred to her gift of ornaments to the church, to be held by the priory forever. She also asked the canons to remember her in their prayers and to pray for the soul of her third husband Sir William Bourchier, Count of Eu (d.1420) who was buried at the priory. Anne herself intended to be buried at Lanthony. She had a high opinion of the priory, referring in the letter to its virtuous way of life.45 The gift of ornaments was valuable and extensive, comprising altar vessels and vestments; the silver-gilt chalice, incense boat, cruets and paxbred were worth £23 18s 8d.46 In his reply to the countess's letter, the prior assured her that two masses would be said every day at
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
38 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
the Trinity altar, one for her continuing welfare, pro®t and long life, and a requiem mass for her husband. In the margin of the register is a nota bene against the prior's reply.47 An undated letter from Anne, possibly of 1426 as it refers to the marriage of her son Henry, points even more clearly to the close relationship she had with the priory.48 The letter was addressed to her `right dear and entirely well-beloved'. In it the countess informed the prior that she had been ill since their last meeting, but now recovered she planned to be at the priory in ten days' time. She then went on to discuss various business and ®nancial matters. This group of letters can certainly be described as both `privy and powerful communications'. By the early ®fteenth century, letter-writing by noblewomen was an acceptable and widely used means of conveying information and transacting business, whether concerned with the household, estates, social networking or spiritual concerns. Written information was regarded as reliable and trustworthy, although the bearer of a letter often carried additional information, probably details which were considered too sensitive to commit to writing. Letters concerned both the woman's private and public sphere. They open up areas of family and social concerns which we would only guess at from more formal documents, and they re¯ect women's exercise of power in their own localities and other areas of female in¯uence. Correspondence was not the only way of doing business; much was probably still done orally through personal contact. Yet letters by the early 1400s had come a long way from the scrappy texts giving credence to the bearer which date from 200 years before. In sum, early ®fteenth-century letters show women playing a variety of social roles alongside relations, friends, landowners, churchmen and political ®gures, and, although fewer letters survive for women than men, those that we have reinforce the importance and power of noblewomen in the late medieval world.
Notes 1. M.B. Parkes, `The Literacy of the Laity' in Scribes, Scripts and Readers, ed. M. Parkes (London: Hambledon, 1991), pp. 275±97 (pp. 286±91); C.M. Meale, ` ``. . . alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch'': Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England', in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150±1500, ed. C.M. Meale (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), pp. 128±58 (p. 133); N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 144, 156±63. 2. P. Payne and C. Barron, `The Letters and Life of Elizabeth Despenser, Lady Zouche (d.1408)', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 41 (1997), 126±56 (p. 140);
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jennifer C. Ward 39
3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
15. 16. 17.
18.
19. 20.
V.M. O'Mara, `Female Scribal Ability and Scribal Activity in Late Medieval England: the Evidence?', LSE, 27 (1996), 87±130 (pp. 91±6). The development of trust in writing is discussed by M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (London: Edward Arnold, l979), pp. 231±57; Parkes, p. 288. PRO E101/512/10. Four letters and one bond were printed by E. Rickert, `Some English Personal Letters of 1402', RES, 8 (1932), 257±63; and all the letters with a calendar of the other documents by Payne and Barron, pp. 146±52. PRO SC1/51/24; the letters were printed by E. Rickert, `A Leaf from a Fourteenth-Century Letter Book', Modern Philology, 25 (1927±8), 249±55. Anglo-Norman Letters and Petitions from All Souls MS.182, ed. M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 3 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1941). The conventional format of ®fteenth-century letters in English is discussed by N. Davis, `The Litera Troili and English Letters', RES, 16 (1965), 233±44; `A Note on Pearl', RES, 17 (1966), 403±5; `Style and Stereotype in Early English Letters', LSE, 1 (1967), 7±17. Rickert, `A Leaf', pp. 253±4; the letter is quoted in translation and discussed by P. Coss, The Lady in Medieval England 1000±1500 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), p. 66. Anglo-Norman Letters, p. 91. Payne and Barron, pp. 148±51. Rickert, `A Leaf', pp. 253±4. Payne and Barron, pp. 148±52. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 383±4, 416±17. Ibid., pp. 110±12. Constance, Lady Despenser was the bishop's niece by marriage. She was the granddaughter of Edward III, and the daughter of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York. Shortly after her husband's death, she was in fact granted some of her husband's estates to the value of 1000 marks (£666 13s. 4d.) a year, her husband's goods and chattels to the value of £200, together with items of plate; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1399±1401 (HMSO, 1903), pp. 204±5, 223±4, 226. She was subsequently permitted to sue for her dower; Rotuli Parliamentorum (1783), 3, p. 533. J.R. Lander, `Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453±1509', HJ, 4 (1961), 119±51 (p. 119); reprinted in J.R. Lander, Crown and Nobility, 1450±1509 (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), pp. 127±58. See Chapter 5. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 353±4. Thomas Arundel was bishop of Ely between 1374 and 1388, archbishop of York between 1388 and 1396, and archbishop of Canterbury from 1396 until his death in 1414; he was in exile at the end of Richard II's reign, between 1397 and 1399. The Correspondence, Inventories, Account Rolls, and Law Proceedings of the Priory of Coldingham, ed. J. Raine (Surtees Society, 12, 1841), pp. 89±90. Joan was daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, and the second wife of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland (d.1425); she died in 1440. The letter may well date from her widowhood. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 84±5. M. Aston, Thomas Arundel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 172±3, 181±91, 194±200.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
40 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
21. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 103, 383±4, 92±3, 366. None of these letters is dated, but it is likely that they all belong to the beginning of the ®fteenth century. Bishop Henry Despenser died in 1406. 22. John I also asked for the payment to be remitted. M.A.E. Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies From the Twelfth Century to the Close of Mary's Reign, 3 vols (London: Colburn, 1846), 1, pp. 78±81; Royal and Historical Letters during the Reign of Henry IV, ed. F.C. Hingeston, 2 vols, Rolls Series (1860), 2, pp. 83±102. 23. Rickert, `A Leaf' p. 254; Coss, pp. 65±6. 24. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 260±1, 274. 25. M. Jones, `The Fortunes of War: the Military Career of John Second Lord Bourchier (d.1400)', Essex Archaeology and History, 26 (1995), 145±61 (p. 159). 26. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 360±2. 27. Ibid., pp. 372±3. 28. Payne and Barron, pp. 148±52. 29. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 90, 98, 106±7. 30. Ibid., pp. 100±1. The advowson of Beeston was the subject of a commission of inquiry in 1402, and Thomas, Earl of Arundel was involved; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1401±5 (HMSO, 1905), pp. 131±2. 31. Among women, widows were especially important in social networking because of their landed responsibilities, although wives also had a part to play. 32. For example, Household Book of Alice de Bryene 1412±1413 (Ipswich: Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, 1931), which recorded the lady's guests each day. 33. BL Add. Roll 17208; Medieval Framlingham. Select Documents 1270±1524, ed. J. Ridgard (Suffolk Records Society, 27, 1985), pp. 86±128. Margaret was created duchess of Norfolk in 1399. 34. Anglo-Norman Letters, pp. 73±4. 35. Wood, pp. 82±5. 36. Anglo-Norman Letters, p. 457. 37. Ibid., pp. 353±4. 38. Ibid., pp. 260±1. 39. Ibid., p. 81. 40. Ibid., pp. 107±8. Countess Margaret pointed out that she held the patronage of the priory, and ought to regard it with great tenderness and love because her husband's sister and her niece Katherine Beauchamp were both nuns there. 41. Ibid., pp. 416±17. 42. Ibid., pp. 347±80. The letter must have been written in 1399 as Philippa gave her brother the title of duke of Lancaster; Henry succeeded his father, John of Gaunt, who died in early February 1399, and he became king on 30 September in the same year. At the time of writing, Archbishop Thomas Arundel was in exile. 43. Calendar of Close Rolls, 1399±1402 (HMSO, 1927), p. 349. 44. PRO C115/K2/6682, ff.148r, 192r. 45. Ibid., f.250v. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., f.251r. 48. Ibid., f.191r. In 1426, Henry Bourchier married Isabel, daughter of Richard, Earl of Cambridge and widow of Sir Thomas Grey.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jennifer C. Ward 41
Commanding Communications: the Fifteenth-Century Letters of the Stonor Women Alison Truelove
Letters can offer unique insight into people's lives, especially when the writers are no longer able to provide spoken accounts of their experiences. Annotated collections of correspondence by famous individuals have always been popular, as much for their entertainment value as their historical content, satisfying human curiosity while providing social analysts with potentially important source material. Private papers of all kinds are especially valuable when they concern those who are otherwise relatively hidden from the scholar's view. This is especially true in the case of medieval women. Their undeniably disadvantaged position in society inevitably led to their absence in many documents dating from the period, the majority of which were produced by of®cial institutions in which women had no role. Images and descriptions of the late medieval female are numerous in literary and religious texts, but all too often depict women as either weak and dangerously distracting, like Eve, or divinely virtuous, blameless creatures, like the Virgin Mary. Even when medieval authors chose to depart from such stereotypes, literary intentions often conspire to provide us with less than typical examples of women's experiences. In order to understand the reality behind such texts, it is necessary to read documents that are less reliant on literary conventions, and, ideally, those that women themselves had a role in creating. Writings that ful®l each of these requirements may be found in the surviving late medieval letter collections. Of these, the Paston correspondence provides the largest number of writings by women, and offers abundant information on domestic life and familial relations during the ®fteenth century.1 Margaret Paston has attracted much attention for her proli®c epistolary output and the forthright character it portrays; her female contemporaries also provide valuable insights through their own letters.2 The Cely and Plumpton collections3 each offer just two letters by 42
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
4
women, while the Stonor archive4 provides 31 female-authored letters, along with associated papers relating to the formally documented aspects of the women's lives. The medieval Stonors were a wealthy gentry family who had been established at their Oxfordshire home, a few miles north-west of Henley, since at least the late thirteenth century. With estates in six different counties, and a good deal of participation in public life through of®ceholding, the majority of the surviving correspondence relates to estate management and other business matters. Domestic arrangements, family relationships and wider social interaction are also revealed, and the letters of the women, far from being restricted to the domestic sphere, embrace a wide range of subject matters. The most prominent of the female correspondents is Elizabeth Stonor, the widow of a wealthy London mercer, who married William Stonor in 1475. Thirteen of her letters to William survive, all but one written from London.5 After Elizabeth's death in 1479, William married Agnes Wydeslade, a wealthy Devonshire widow from whom we have two letters.6 William's third wife, Anne, was the daughter of John Neville, Marquis of Montagu, and one of her letters to William survives.7 We also have four letters by Jane, William's mother, who was the daughter of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk,8 one by his sister Mary,9 and one from a distant cousin, Margery Hampden, who also wrote the postscript of a letter by her husband.10 Other female-authored letters are by associates of the Stonor family, including one from Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk, who was the step-mother of Jane Stonor and an in¯uential local ®gure.11 Alice, Lady Sudeley, and Dame Katherine Arundell each provide one letter,12 and there are two by Edward IV's Queen, Elizabeth Woodville.13 Two of the letters, from Eleanor la Despenser and Margaret Courtney, date from the fourteenth century and are in French,14 and the remaining two, from Alice Idle and N. Palmer, are less clearly part of the Stonor collection.15 This chapter examines what these letters add to our existing view of women's lives in the Middle Ages, while evaluating some of the linguistic characteristics of such correspondence. Women's letter-writing was regarded by medieval society as an acceptable and a practically useful activity, but was not without circumscription. When the Goodman of Paris wrote a book of instructions for his young wife at the end of the fourteenth century, he included advice on letter-writing: And I counsel you that you receive with great joy and reverence the loving and private letters of your husband, and secretly and all alone
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 43
read them unto yourself, and all alone write again unto him with your own hand, if you know how, or by the hand of another very privy person; and write unto him good and loving words and tell him your joys and diversions, and receive not nor read any other letters, nor write unto no other person, save by another's hand and in another's presence, and cause them to be read in public.16 There is little evidence, however, that the Stonor women regarded their letters as especially private forms of communication. The use of personal secretaries was widespread among the gentry and nobility of the period, and despite the implications of the Goodman of Paris, this did not necessarily denote an inability to write, but rather a reluctance to do so when there was a convenient alternative. Moreover, given the fact that Elizabeth Stonor used at least nine different scribes, it is unlikely that she chose them for their discretion, but rather because they happened to be close at hand. Kingsford, the ®rst editor of the letters, made the assumption that despite the frequent use of secretaries the female correspondents were generally able to write if they so desired, but careful study of the original manuscripts fails to promote such an optimistic view.17 Certainly, some of the women signed their letters with their own hand, as Elizabeth Stonor did, but ultimately the evidence is unclear. Agnes Stonor's letters are each in different hands, and in the signed one the signature is in the same hand as the body of the letter.18 A different scribe wrote each of Jane Stonor's letters, and not one is personally signed, while Margery Hampden's writings are in the same hand, and potentially are autograph. Anne Neville and Alice Chaucer evidently signed their own letters once an amanuensis had written them, while the letters of Mary Barantyne, of Alice, Lady Sudeley and of Katherine Arundell are all written in neat, professional hands which also produce a signature.19 Women's use of secretaries is con®rmed in a letter to Elizabeth Stonor by Thomas Betson, the future husband of her daughter, Katherine: I am wrothe with Katerynn by cause she sendith me no writtynge; I haue to hir dyuerse tymes, and ffor lacke off answere I wax wery. She myght gett a secretary yff she wold, and yff she will nat it shall putt me to lesse labour to answere hir lettres agayn.20 Thomas's annoyance at Katherine's reluctance to write, along with the evidence of his numerous letters to Elizabeth, also endorses the view that in this period men both tolerated and positively expected women to partake in letter-writing. Moreover, the Stonor evidence indicates that
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
44 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
men wrote directly to women about personal and business matters without fear that they were transgressing social codes, presupposing the ability of the women to respond appropriately. Despite the probability that scribes were widely used by women, whether for prestige, convenience or out of necessity, it is possible only rarely to evaluate whether letters were written by the female author or a scribe. It is therefore unwise to draw conclusions as to the writing abilities of the women concerned, and more important to consider the potential in¯uence the use of secretaries may have had on the content of the letters. Contrary to the ideals of the Goodman of Paris, dictation to another individual inevitably led to a lack of privacy in the communication, and as women were more likely than men to employ the services of a scribe, they would certainly have been less able to regard the letter as a con®dential document. Along with signing her dictated letters, Elizabeth Stonor often added an autograph postscript, probably after they had passed out of the hands of the scribe.21 That these were sometimes cryptically personal indicates an understandable reluctance to reveal personal matters, meant for the attention of her husband, to another individual; and their shaky and inexperienced appearance implies that her use of a scribe was possibly as much due to necessity as convenience. Other remarks in her letters indicate an unquestioned ability to read,22 and her signed account book of 1478±7923 indicates that she could read well enough to approve of its contents. Her literacy, then, was suf®cient for her requirements, and with access to the services of a number of different secretaries, she had no need to improve her elementary writing skills. Elizabeth Stonor had ample opportunity for letter-writing, since although she moved into the Oxfordshire family home after her marriage to William Stonor, she spent much of her time in London. There is even some evidence that she carried on the business of her ®rst husband, Thomas Ryche: a 1478 memorandum among the Cely papers refers to `Helsabethe Reche, mercer of London', suggesting not only that she continued as a mercer in her own right, but also that she kept the name of Ryche when acting in this capacity.24 In his search for a suitable wife, William Stonor must have found Elizabeth's London connections and independent wealth particularly attractive, and her close friendship with the merchant Thomas Betson, later her son-in-law, led to a brief but productive partnership with William in the wool-export trade. Elizabeth's role in coordinating this is signi®ed by the fact that the joint venture appears to have ended when she died in 1479.25 Her strong character reveals itself well in her letters to her husband, which are full of requests that often seem insistent despite being shrouded
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 45
in polite rhetoric. She invariably began by thanking William for his own letters and accompanying gifts. These were usually items such as wild boar and venison ± delicacies in the city ± but also included jewelled rings. In a letter of 1476 Elizabeth implored her husband to send her no more rings with stones in, since the jewel of one had fallen out and been lost on its journey to London.26 But gifts can have been little comfort in times of separation, and neither partner seems to have enjoyed being apart. Almost all of Elizabeth's letters contain lines in which she expressed her desire to see William soon, either wishing him in London with her, or for herself to be free to return to Stonor. Her comment in a letter of 1477 is representative of other similar remarks, and provides a glimpse of William's own feelings: `Syre, I thank you hertely that hyt pleasyd you to wyshe me with you at redyng off my letter; truly I wold I had a be there with you at that same season with all my hert.'27 That William's later wives expressed similar sentiments in their letters suggests that such statements were, to an extent, conventional within correspondence of the period. We should not, therefore, attach too great an importance to them, although accompanying expressions of affection indicate that they may have been founded on genuine feeling. Elizabeth Stonor's concern for her husband's health is evident throughout her letters to him. In 1476 she urged William to join her in London in order to avoid a contagious epidemic: gentyll cosyn, I vnderstonde that my brother and yowris is sore seke of the poxes, wherfore I am right hevy and sory of your beyng there, ffor the eyre of poxe is full contagious and namely to them that ben nye of blode, &c. Wherfore I wolde pray you, gentyll cosyn, that ye wolde comme hedyr, and yif hit wolde plese you so to doo, &c. And yif that hit lyke yow not so to doo, gentill cosyn, lettith me have hedyr some horsis, I pray you, and that I may comme to you, ffor ingood faith I can fynde hit in myn herte to put my self in jubardy there as ye be, and shall do whiles my lyff endurith, to the pleasure of God and youres, &c. For in good faith I thought neuer so longe sith I see yow.28 Elizabeth's willingness to return to Stonor and place herself at risk of infection for the sake of being with her husband surely denotes genuine affection, although comments later in the same letter of her unhappiness at being left in London show that her offer was not entirely altruistic. In October 1478, when in the capital for the memorial service of her ®rst husband, she wrote to William that she was `veray wery off London', often left alone and miserable, and unable to return home because of unpaid
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
46 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
bills which prevented her from leaving town with reputation intact.29 It seems, then, that Elizabeth's visits to London were not wholly pleasurable. Certainly she seems to have enjoyed spending time with her family there, and she wrote enthusiastically of meetings with the king and his mother in the company of Elizabeth of York, the sister of Edward IV and wife of Jane Stonor's half-brother John.30 Yet much of her time away from Stonor was occupied with tedious business matters and worrying about the health of her husband and children. The four children from Elizabeth's ®rst marriage did not routinely accompany her in her visits to London. Her letters indicate that unless remarkable circumstances occurred, they remained at Stonor, attended to by servants under the supervision of William. Twice Elizabeth requested in her letters that the children be sent to her in London, once because her daughter Katherine was ill and needed medical treatment, and again because of the risk of infection from a local epidemic.31 Elsewhere she wrote to William that the children were a comfort in his absence, and other remarks indicate that husband and wife took equal responsibility for the children, even though William was not their natural father.32 Upon meeting a potential husband for one of her daughters, Elizabeth wrote to William that she would not enter into negotiations for a marriage until she had discussed matters with him, acknowledging that he would be a `Rygt kynd and lovyng ffadir'.33 Such a positive view of parental affection is matched in a letter assumed to be by Jane Stonor to her daughter.34 She was placed against the wishes of her parents in the household of her aunt, the aforementioned Elizabeth of York, but does not seem to have enjoyed the experience. Her mother's letter acknowledges that if those who `dyd so gret labour and diligence' to have her are weary of her, she would be welcomed home, but only with the permission of the queen, who had arranged the placement. The practice of placing children of the gentry and nobility in other respectable households was widespread in the medieval period, and was deemed to advance social prospects while providing an education, but only through letters such as this can we observe the experiences of the children involved.35 Like Elizabeth and William, Jane and Thomas Stonor apparently enjoyed an affectionate marriage, although Jane rarely betrays her feelings for her husband in her correspondence. Instead, it is Thomas's letter to his wife that reveals marital affection, addressing Jane as `myne oone good Jane' and `goode swete Lemman'.36 Jane's own letters to Thomas lack such expressive language, as she forcefully stated her views and questioned his authority. Comments in later letters by other correspondents suggest that Jane was a formidable woman in her old age, and her letters to her
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 47
husband do little to dispel this view.37 They are brief and purposeful, one of 1463 informing him that she had reluctantly taken delivery of a privy seal document on his behalf, and one of around 1470 in which she disagreed with his idea of having William Lovell to stay with them.38 Such curtness might be interpreted negatively, but her direct honesty and readiness to challenge her husband on such matters indicates that she presupposed his willingness to consider her views. Their relationship, like that of Elizabeth and William, evidently involved a balance of power and mutual honesty, which might be regarded as more indicative of a close and loving marriage than affectionate words alone. There are indications that French, not English, was Jane's ®rst language, which may account for the curtness as well as the high incidence of French loan words in her letters.39 The unusual phonetic spellings ± such as `aschusyt' for `excuse it' ± signify dif®culties on the part of her scribe to understand her dictations, and this warns that we should not assume lack of eloquence to denote absence of feeling. As Jane's letters show, the Stonor wives, like the Pastons, were frequently left in charge of the household and local estates while their husbands were away, and seem to have coped admirably with the task.40 They had numerous servants to carry out most of the work, but surviving receipts show Jane Stonor taking personal delivery of revenues from the family's receivers, and the account books of Elizabeth Stonor and of her husband's grandmother, Alice, con®rm the women's jurisdiction over household ®nances.41 The general absence of information on domestic activity within the Stonor archive is a good indication that things ran smoothly and required little intervention by the women. Elizabeth Stonor's only surviving letter written from the family home in her husband's absence contains no references to domestic matters. Instead, she related news of potential wardships and stewardships, and reported the death of the local parson with emphasis on who his executors were, revealing her understanding that the abiding concern would be how his estate was distributed.42 Such awareness of events and opportunities in the local community indicates that women like Elizabeth were not excluded from the network that distributed this information. Large households, made up of servants mainly from the local area, certainly must have aided the gathering of news, and Elizabeth's letters indicate her use of such information to further the prospects of the family. The importance of being `honourable' and `worshipful' in this period is indicated in the salutations of letters, and the task of maintaining family reputation fell as much on gentry wives as their husbands. Honour was inevitably linked with status, which could be
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
48 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
augmented through the holding of of®cial positions within the community and maintained through gestures such as the exchange of gifts, an activity well documented by correspondence.43 Elizabeth's particular concern with such matters indicates that her mercantile background engendered similar aspirations as those evidenced among established gentry families. Her tendency to over-indulge in the trappings of gentry life is suggested in her own correspondence, which alternately reveals extravagant consumption and concern with unpaid bills. In 1478 the Stonors owed over £10 to the brother of Thomas Betson for wine, and in the same year Elizabeth wrote to William that she was being called upon daily for money.44 This recalls Christine de Pisan's warning to widows in The Treasure of the City of Ladies that `there is absolutely no shame in living within your income, however small it may be, but there is shame if creditors are always coming to your door'.45 In another letter to William, Elizabeth complains of being `ryght bare off sarventys', asking for more to be sent to her, and elsewhere she reports Elizabeth of York's complaint that William ought to provide his sisters with better attire, or she would refuse to keep them in her household.46 These examples suggest the precarious nature of the family's ®nances. Warnings by Thomas Betson that Elizabeth should beware of large expenses, along with an indication that her brother-in-law Thomas regarded her spending habits unfavourably, show that Elizabeth's levels of consumption did not pass by unnoticed or without consequence.47 After Elizabeth's death, William received a letter from his uncle, William Harleston, advising him that as a widower he might reduce his household with `honour and worship' and thus keep within his livelihood.48 Expenditure evidently was tolerated for the prestige and honour it conferred, but placed too considerable a demand on the family coffers to be continued without justi®cation. Preoccupation with status is symptomatic of the society in which the Stonors lived, and the letter played an important role in reinforcing the nature of relationships between correspondents. The tradition of letterwriting in the Western world was well established by the ®fteenth century, and although conventions were more relaxed in practical application than in earlier centuries, the rules surrounding the composition of letters were still highly prescriptive. The basic format of medieval correspondence evolved out of the rhetorical study of letter composition, the ars dictaminis, which was disseminated in the Middle Ages through letter-manuals.49 Initially, these publications conditioned epistolary practice among the formally educated, whose compositions in Latin and French were carefully constructed in accordance with a strict
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 49
framework dictated by the manuals. Within this framework were ®ve main sections, alternatives for which were prescribed according to the sender's relationship with the recipient, and the speci®c intentions of the communication. By the late fourteenth century, when English was again used in letters, the formulas of the manuals would have been translated into the vernacular, dictating the future style of personal correspondence.50 Studies focused on the signi®cance of salutations used in late medieval letters as indicators of social status and attitudes draw interesting conclusions as to the relationships between some authors and recipients.51 However, it is important to recognise that just as we use conventional phrases such as `yours faithfully' in our own letters without seriously considering their semantic content, certain ®fteenth-century writers may have been similarly unconscious of the linguistic implications of the phrases they used. Yet although women's limited access to education, even among the higher echelons of society, might suggest that they were ignorant of the highly ordered structuring of the medieval letter, the evidence of the female-authored Stonor letters indicates a general understanding of the expected norms within the genre. This might be the result of intervention by possibly more informed scribes, but there is no doubt that even when dictating letters, the women were aware of the expected overall structure. This knowledge presumably was developed through regular practical contact with the form rather than through formal instruction.52 Structurally, the more formal the subject, the more adherent to convention the letter seems to have been. This can be seen clearly in the letters by noblewomen such as Alice, Lady Sudeley and Alice Chaucer, whose brief and purposeful missives to Thomas and William Stonor respectively share the same structure, despite being written almost 50 years apart. In each case, the salutation is almost identical ± `Right trusty and entirely (well)beloved friend' ± and is followed by a greeting or recommendation, before the purpose of the letter is explained. Both women stressed that their trust was placed in the recipient to carry out their commands, and stated that they would happily reciprocate the favour they requested.53 The rhetoric they employed was not only classical in origin, but also was carefully crafted to ensure that their own status was recognised by the recipient, while assuming trust in him in order to promote the chances of a favourable outcome. The placing of trust in others is a device used especially by the women in their letters, which reveal a proportionately higher usage of the verb `to trust' than male-authored letters. Consequently, although the structure of the letters
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
50 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
was modelled on classical examples, linguistic usage within this framework may have been gender-in¯uenced. However, it seems that status, of both the author and of the intended recipient, plays an important role in in¯uencing language and style. Careful analysis of the language of women's letters will reveal the extent of this trend and ascertain whether there is any evidence of linguistic features preferred by women. A useful measure by which to assess the language characteristics within the Stonor letters is that of how close they are to Chancery Standard English, but such work is heavily reliant on variant spellings, and given the frequent use of scribes in producing the women's letters, it would be unwise to draw any conclusions regarding female language use from such features.54 It might be assumed, however, that women made the majority of lexical choices, although this too can be challenged. Letters such as those from the queen are likely to have been the products of scribes who wrote appropriate compositions based on a brief outline of intention, the female signatory having had little in¯uence over their style. Moreover, such scribes are likely to have been conservative in their language use, again creating a false impression of women's own linguistic dexterity. Even letters between family members apparently written directly from dictation may have been subject to considerable scribal intervention. Study of the language used within Elizabeth Stonor's letters shows that linguistic usage varies from scribe to scribe, importantly indicating that lexical choices in these writings were not necessarily Elizabeth's own. Three of her letters, each written by the same scribe, include the phrase `ye schale understande that', a phrase used only once in her remaining correspondence. Other features such as variations in use of present participles in prefatory phrases, or conjunctions such as `and' and `wherefore', further support the contention that Elizabeth's letters re¯ect her own use of language less clearly than might ®rst appear. Similarly, recurring phrases and syntactical patterns throughout the women's correspondence indicate the existence of stock phrases commonly employed within letters, which only distantly re¯ect the spoken language. These are likely to have been subject most to scribal in¯uence, each writer preferring different ways to introduce and conclude remarks dictated to him or her. Scribal in¯uence seems least prevalent in those parts of the letters that are less reliant on convention, that is, those parts beyond the formulaic salutations or valedictions. Therefore authors rather than scribes might be assumed to have been responsible for any unusual vocabulary including innovative linguistic choices. Of all the Stonor women, Elizabeth was the most resourceful in terms of her vocabulary, perhaps because, in writing to her husband, she was less
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 51
anxious than others to convey status or to be persuasive through formal expression. Consequently she used a variety of words and phrases which uniquely re¯ect the colloquial language of the merchant class of late ®fteenth-century London. In 1478 she wrote to William, `many tymes I am post a loyne and that causeth me to thynnke the more ellynger' ± a sentence that neatly expresses her unhappiness at being left alone so often, but that sounds unfamiliar to modern readers.55 When describing the duchess of Suffolk's discontent at the attire of William's sisters, Elizabeth remarked that she was `hal®ndell dysplesyd', unusually adopting the Old English compound rather than the more common, contemporary form `half'.56 These and other unusual lexical choices in her letters more closely than others re¯ect everyday speech and indicate the richness of that language, sometimes hidden in the more formulaic correspondence of other writers, male and female alike. No other female correspondent comes close to Elizabeth's lexical variety. Her social environment and, due to her intimacy with the recipients, her relative freedom from the constraints that dictated the style of more formal letters were stronger in¯uences on style than the fact that she was a woman. Is there, then, any evidence of a speci®cally female style among the letters of the Stonor women? The most important question to be addressed in this respect is that of whether the women's letters can be grouped together purely on stylistic grounds. A cursory glance at the basic structures of the documents suggests this cannot be done. The letter by Alice Chaucer compared with that of Alice, Lady Sudeley, proves to have more in common in terms of phraseology with a letter of 1481 by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and the letters of both women display greater similarities to correspondence of Lord Lovell and other nobles than the remaining female-authored letters.57 Likewise, the letters of Elizabeth Stonor, with their numerous colloquialisms and non-standard forms, resemble those of other mercantile London correspondents, particularly Thomas Betson, more than those of any other female. Here we observe a further distinction between gentry women born into the class, such as Agnes Stonor, and those who married into it, such as Elizabeth Stonor. A comparison of the correspondence of both women reveals Agnes's letter to be more formally stylised and less in¯uenced by spoken colloquialisms than those of Elizabeth. Jane Stonor's letters are most similar to those of her husband Thomas, even to the point of using identical blessings in letters to their son William. The phrase used, `I send you God's blessing and mine', occurs nowhere else in the Stonor letters, although Norman Davis has noted its use in model letters and literature.58 The close similarity between their
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
52 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
letters reinforces the view that stylistic in¯uences, particularly in the case of women, were more likely to have come from contact with other examples of the form than from contemporary letter-writing manuals.59 Further, given that letters authored by men outnumbered those by women throughout the period, women would have had resource to proportionately fewer female-authored writings, so the probability of the perpetuation of any feminine discourse style, if any such existed, would have been minimal. It follows that any features identi®ed as existing predominantly within the women's letters are rather the result of a spoken tradition, which may have imposed underlying and possibly unconscious standards upon female discourse. Such standards re¯ect social status, age, or the letter's subject matter, the register of the writing being adjusted according to individual circumstances. We are able to assess to what extent women deviated from, or conformed to, certain norms. Taking potential scribal intervention into account, we can approach a good understanding of how individual women used language both within the form of the letter, appropriated as it was from male scholarly origins, and by association in their everyday speech. Elizabeth Stonor's colloquial vocabulary has been shown to be particularly valuable in this respect; other features warrant further consideration. It has been suggested, for instance, that women have been the innovators in linguistic changes throughout the history of the English language, adopting more quickly than men new forms that spread through colloquial spoken interaction.60 To take an example, `you' began to supplant its predecessor `ye' in the subject pronoun position from the fourteenth century onwards, the change being complete only by the end of the sixteenth century. The change has been attributed to phonological confusion in spoken language, so we might expect to ®nd its use more prevalent in the writings of those less versed in the conventions of written compositions. This contention is fully supported by the evidence of Elizabeth Stonor's letters, which have a de®nite colloquial tone and appear to some extent to reproduce her words as she spoke them. She chooses `you' over the older form `ye' in 29 per cent of her uses of the subject pronoun, compared with a 5 per cent usage by her younger contemporary Thomas Betson. As a group the women were similarly advanced in their adoption of the relative pronoun `which' over the older compound `the which', again illustrating innovative language use. Overall, their use of `which' over `the which' stands at 48 per cent, which compares well with an attested ®gure of 50 per cent in Chancery English. That the majority of these uses are in a non-formulaic context furthers the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 53
contention that the women concerned had assimilated the innovation into their lexicon, presumably unaware of its formulaic origins. These examples further suggest that the language within the women's letters, especially those less constrained by formal stylistic demands, shows characteristics determined more by spoken than written example. This ®ts well with the common assumption that women were on the whole less literate than their male counterparts, their relative unfamiliarity with written texts resulting in a greater reliance on verbal discourse to formulate written sentences. So, while the general structure and style of the letters seem to re¯ect circumstances and status more than the author's gender, the language itself was to some extent differentiated from that of the male writers. The use of new linguistic forms and unusual vocabulary has been seen as distinctive in the women's letters, particularly in those of Elizabeth Stonor, although further evidence of a speci®cally female style is limited. It is true that when Agnes Wydeslade wrote to her future husband William in 1480, she used phrases such as `so pore a woman as y am' and `my power [poor] welfare', which conceivably re¯ects a stereotypical submissive female attitude.61 However, they might also be interpreted positively as tactical rhetorical devices, used to invite a favourable response from the recipient. A widow herself, Agnes seems to have been anxious to remarry, and in the letter to the recently widowed William she may have been conforming to the model of a helpless woman in order to provoke his sympathy. That she married William shortly afterwards suggests that the letter was effective. This invites the conclusion that for the women themselves, scribal in¯uence was not necessarily a problem. Elizabeth circumvented the dif®culties of privacy by adding her own postscripts to letters, nobles such as Alice, Lady Sudeley and Elizabeth Woodville seem to have handed complete responsibility for the writing of their letters to scribes, while others such as Agnes Stonor almost certainly welcomed the experienced advice of more knowledgeable individuals. Regardless of the extent of intervention by others, each of the women's letters in the Stonor collection successfully commands our attention as readers, whether through highly structured formats, through authoritative words, or simply through a narrative and colloquial style. We might assume that their original recipients found them equally effective and persuasive. While the letters are most obviously of use to scholars for what they reveal of women's lives in the late Middle Ages, they offer much more besides. They shed light on language usage and change both in general and speci®cally by women, they provide valuable commentary on the relationships between individuals and how these might be expressed
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
54 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
through particular linguistic choices, and they invite further speculation on the writing abilities of medieval women. Finally, it is interesting to note that women's experience of letterwriting in the ®fteenth century came far closer than that of their male counterparts to the scholarly origins of the form. The ars dictaminis was literally the practice of literary composition through dictation, letterwriting therefore existing as a verbal rather than manual skill.62 Whether they knew it or not, in dictating their letters to scribes the Stonor women were practising a tradition deeply seated in intellectual history, while the majority of men of their class undertook the labour of writing their own compositions. Women may have appropriated a genre created and disseminated by men, invited by convention to adopt certain stylistic traits conceived by men, but it was they and not their husbands or sons who perpetuated the intellectual traditions of the form.
Notes I would like to thank Prof. Caroline Barron for many helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. 1. Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971 and 1976). 2. For example, A.S. Haskell, `The Paston Women on Marriage in FifteenthCentury England', Viator, 4 (1973), 459±71; D. Watt, ` ``No writing for writing's sake'': the Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women', in Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, eds K. Cherewatuk and U. Wiehaus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 122±38. 3. Alison Hanham, ed., The Cely Letters 1472±1488, EETS 273 (London: OUP, 1975); Joan Kirby, ed., The Plumpton Letters and Papers (Camden Society, 5th ser., 8, 1996). 4. C.L. Kingsford, ed., The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290±1483, 3 vols (Camden Society, 3rd ser., 29, 30 and Miscellany 12, 1919 and 1923) (hereafter SLP) is the only published edition of the documents, although this has been reissued, with a new introduction by Christine Carpenter, as Kingsford's Stonor Letters and Papers 1290±1483 (Cambridge: CUP, 1996). Kingsford's transcriptions are not entirely accurate, and quotations within this chapter are taken from my own transcriptions of the documents, made during work on a new edition. In this chapter, references to Stonor documents are to their number in Kingsford's edition, or to their PRO reference number if unpublished. In quotations from the documents, the thorn and yogh graphs have been normalised to th or y/g as appropriate. 5. SLP 168±73, 175, 180, 204, 208, 226, 229 and 237, written between 1476 and 1479.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 55
6. Ibid., 261 and 262, written in 1480. 7. Ibid., 306, dated 1482. 8. Ibid., 70 and 106 (to Thomas Stonor, her husband, written 1463 and c.1470), 120 (to her daughter, written c.1472) and 158 (to William, written c.1475). 9. Ibid., 294, dated 1481. Mary married John Barantyne of Haseley, and had a son named William. 10. Ibid., 186 (to William, written c.1477) and No. 75 (postscript of letter to Thomas Stonor, written c.1465). 11. Ibid., 148 (written c.1475). Her father, Thomas Chaucer, occurs regularly in Stonor deeds relating to property transactions, including PRO C146/1482, C146/3536, C146/3015, and C146/5718. 12. SLP 53 (written before 1431) and 125 (written c.1473). Alice, Lady Sudeley (d. 1443) was the daughter of Sir John Beauchamp of Powyk, and the widow of Thomas Boteler (d. 1398) of Sudeley, Gloucestershire, later marrying Sir John Dalyngrygge (d. 1408) of Bodiam, Sussex. Katherine Arundell (d. 1479) was the widow of Sir John Arundell of Laherne, Cornwall, and later married Sir Roger Lewknor (d. 1478). 13. Ibid., 293 (to the forester of Blackmore, dated 1481) and 319 (to William Stonor, dated 1482). 14. Ibid., 3 (to John de Stonor, dated 1326) and 38 (to Edmund de Stonor, dated 1380). 15. Ibid., 356 (unaddressed, dated 1481) and 134 (to Thomas Hampden, written before 1474). 16. Eileen Power (trans.), The Goodman of Paris (London: Routledge, 1928), p. 106. 17. SLP, vol. 29, p. xlvii. 18. Ibid., 262. 19. For a useful survey of medieval women's writing abilities see V.M. O'Mara, `Female Scribal Ability and Scribal Activity in Late Medieval England: the Evidence?', LSE, 27 (1996), 87±130. 20. SLP 185. 21. Ibid., 172, 175, 176, 180 and 204 all contain autograph postscripts by Elizabeth Stonor. 22. In one letter (SLP 176) she wrote: `plesith hit yow to vnderstonde that I haue receyuyd your lettre, and a byll closid in the said lettre, which I haue redde and ryght will vnderstondyd'. 23. Ibid., 233. 24. A. Hanham, The Celys and their World (Oxford: OUP, 1985), p. 196. Elizabeth may also have spent time in London for reasons of status; it has been noted that the ®fteenth-century nobility were beginning to appreciate the attractions of urban life at this time. Jennifer C. Ward, `English Noblewomen and the Local Community in the Later Middle Ages', in Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. Diane Watt (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), pp. 186±203 (p. 189). 25. Customs Accounts for 1478±79 show William Stonor and Thomas Betson making substantial shipments of wool out of London ports: PRO E122/73/40, 18±19 Edw. IV. (I am grateful to Eleanor Quinton for this reference.) There is no surviving correspondence between the two men after Elizabeth's death at the end of 1479, although one letter shows that in 1482 Betson owed William £1200: SLP 310.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
56 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.
34. 35.
36. 37. 38. 39. 40.
41.
42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.
SLP 172.
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., 169.
Ibid., 229.
Ibid., 172.
Ibid., 168 and 169.
Ibid., 172.
In SLP 176, while in SLP 169 she thanked him for tending to her children at
Stonor while she was in London. It has been suggested that relationships
between children and step-parents were rarely this good: Ralph A. Houlbrooke,
The English Family 1450±1700 (Harlow: Longman, 1984), p. 218.
SLP 120.
Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: the Education of the English Kings
and Aristocracy 1066±1530 (London: Methuen, 1984), especially pp. 59±60.
Joan Kirby notes that Dorothy Plumpton was also unhappy in her position with
Lady Darcy, her step-grandmother: `Women in the Plumpton Correspondence:
Fiction and Reality', in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented
to John Taylor, eds Ian Wood and G.A. Loud (London: Hambledon Press, 1991),
pp. 219±32 (p. 228).
SLP 91.
Ibid., 301 and 320.
Ibid., 70 and 106.
For discussion of Jane's parentage and possible French education see Ibid., vol.
29, p. xxv; R.J. Stonor, Stonor (Newport: Johns, 1952), p. 127; Carpenter,
Kingsford's Stonor Letters, vol.1, p. 5, n. 19.
See Rowena Archer, ` ``How ladies . . . who live on their manors ought to
manage their households and estates'': Women as Landholders and Admin istrators in the Later Middle Ages', in Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women
in English Society c.1200±1500, ed. P.J.P. Goldberg (Stroud: Sutton, 1992),
pp. 149±81.
See P.W. Fleming, `Household Servants of the Yorkist and Early Tudor Gentry',
in Early Tudor England: Proceedings of the 1987 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel
Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 19±36; PRO C47/37/22/26±9;
SLP 233 and 55.
Ibid., 237.
See P. Maddern, `Honour among the Pastons: Gender and Integrity in
Fifteenth-Century English Provincial Society', Journal of Medieval History, 14
(1988), 357±71 for more on this issue.
PRO C47/37/4/28 (printed as part of SLP 224); SLP 229.
Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies or the Book of the Three
Virtues, ed. S. Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), quoted in R. Archer,
op. cit., p. 172.
SLP 204 and 172.
SLP 211 and 180.
SLP 260.
See Norman Davis, `The Litera Troili and English Letters', RES, 16 (1965),
234±44, and entries on `Rhetoric' and `Dictamen' in J.R. Strayer, ed., Dictionary
of the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984). Also see James J.
Murphy, ed., Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts (Berkeley: University of California
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Truelove 57
50.
51. 52.
53. 54.
55. 56. 57. 58.
59. 60. 61. 62.
Press, 1971) for a translation of Anonymous of Bologna's `The Principles of Letter-Writing' (Rationes dictandi). The earliest known letter in English was written from Florence in 1392±3 by Sir John Hawkwood, although the earliest known letters written in English in England are those of Elizabeth, Lady Zouche, whose ®ve letters written in 1402±3 survive. The next earliest date from the early 1420s, as does the earliest Stonor Letter (SLP 42). See Helen Suggett, `The Use of French in England in the Later Middle Ages', TRHS, 28 (1946), 61±83 (pp. 66 and 69); P. Payne and C. Barron, `The Letters and Life of Elizabeth Despenser, Lady Zouche (d. 1408)', Nottingham Medieval Studies, 41 (1997), 126±56. For example, see Patricia Voichahoske, `Text Act and Tradition: Salutations and Status in the Paston Family, 1440±1495' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 1986). Salutations used by the women range from Elizabeth Stonor's lengthy but conventional `Right reverend and worshipful and entirely best beloved cousin', to Jane and Anne Stonor's simple uses of `sir', but none of the women are entirely consistent. Elizabeth is particularly creative, with minor modi®cations in each of her opening phrases. SLP 148 and 53. See M.P. Relihan, `The Language of the English Stonor Letters 1420±1483' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Tennessee, 1977). The thesis is based on Kingsford's edition, which is not reliable orthographically. My new edition of the Stonor documents will facilitate more accurate studies. SLP 229. Ibid., 172. Ibid., 243, 318 and 333. Ibid., 158 and 97. Davis counted numerous examples of the phrase in the Paston Letters and sixteenth-century correspondence, all used, as in the Stonor Letters, by a parent to a child: N. Davis, `A Note on Pearl', RES, 17 (1966), 403±5. See Davis, `The Litera Troili', p. 240. Terttu Nevalainen, `Gender Difference', in Sociolinguistics and Language History, eds Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 77±80. SLP 262. M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 271.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
58 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Female Literacy and the Social Conventions of Women's Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603 James Daybell
English women's letters for the period 1540 to 1603 exhibit widely diverging levels of female scribal activity. While many letters are holograph, written by women in their own hands, others were penned by amanuenses, bearing only the signature of a female correspondent. This in some measure re¯ects variations in degrees of women's literacy during the sixteenth century. Represented by a corpus of some 2300 letters surveyed are highly literate women, ¯uent correspondents, pro®cient at writing in several styles, hands and languages, including Latin. At the opposite end of the spectrum are women who were unable to write their own letters but who could perhaps read and scrawl a barely legible signature or only perform a mark. However, differences in women's scribal ability provide but one part of the equation. Of the women who employed the services of a secretary for correspondence many did so out of choice and, at other times, themselves wrote. This points to a fundamental distinction between a woman's ability to write and her propensity to do so. This chapter is therefore concerned as much with general attitudes to literacy and letter-writing as with actual literacy levels. It explores several issues related to epistolary composition: the range of women's writing abilities, as well as the conventions and practices governing the actual penning of letters and utilisation of secretaries.1 Lastly, the chapter interrogates the assumption that literacy, or more precisely the ability to write letters, had a positive or emancipating impact on women's lives. Central to this study is the question of how to discern whether or not a woman was herself capable of writing a letter. Letters can certainly be used as indicators of female literacy and illiteracy. Here, assessment relies largely on palaeographic analysis of the documents.2 Of 650 female letterwriters studied for the period 1540±1603, only secretarial letters survive for some 23 per cent of women. What proportion of these women were 59
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
5
constrained to use an amanuensis because they were insuf®ciently skilled at writing personally to conduct correspondence is hard to gauge. In rare instances textual references register a sender's inability to write. Mary Harding expressed regret to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland that her letters to her ladyship were not more frequent: `umbely beseching your honor not to be ofended withe me for that I write noe oftner to your honour/ thee caues is that I cannot write myselfe and I am louthe to make any bodye acquianted withe my leaters'.3 More widely reliable, however, is a qualitative examination of secretarial letters for pro®ciency or ¯uency of autograph signatures. This furnishes some indication of the true extent of a woman's writing skills. Laboured or scratchy signatures may signify female correspondents unaccustomed to writing who found great dif®culty even in signing their own names. Muriel St Clare Byrne concludes from Honor, Lady Lisle's awkward attempts at signatures that she was unable herself to write letters.4 The letters from Elizabeth Sutton to her husband Sir Thomas Sutton, founder of Charterhouse Hospital, are also rather tortuously subscribed, suggesting that she too was not used to writing.5 For both women producing a signature probably represented the limits of their writing abilities. More problematic are cases where only a single non-holograph letter survives for a particular woman, which accounts for over 130 female correspondents sampled. In such instances it is dif®cult to evaluate letter-writing habits and to assess competency at writing, beyond signing ability. In fact establishing conclusively an individual's inability to write letters from extant secretarial examples alone creates uncertainties: indeed, it may be that a woman for various reasons simply chose not to write herself. Nevertheless, it is likely that during the sixteenth century, as in earlier periods, women more than men were forced by levels of illiteracy and inadequate literacy skills to use secretaries.6 Certain women, although capable of writing letters, in practice may have been discouraged or made less con®dent in corresponding themselves by their poor orthography and diction. The atrocious hand and erratic spelling of a holograph postscript to a missive from Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk to her brother Henry, Lord Stafford probably accounts for the duchess's use of a secretary for the main body of the letter. A transcript of the postscript is included verbatim in order to illustrate fully the extent of Elizabeth Howard's idiosyncratic orthography: Brorder I pra you to ssand me my ness dorety by kass I kno har kon dessess se sal not lake hass long hass I leffe and he wold be hord by me
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
60 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
James Daybell 61
Despite greater orthographic regularity by the end of the 1500s many women's letters continue to display eccentric and phonetic spellings. Individual female letter-writers were clearly self-conscious of the fact that they could not spell, which on occasion may have deterred them from writing personally. Corresponding in 1597, Elizabeth Kitson informed Sir John Hobart that, `in this letter much false Incgliche I am suer you shall/red/ but let tru meanynge counterfayl that falte'.8 Indications of more widespread embarrassment at irregular spelling are glimpsed in Edmund Coote's The English School Maister (1596). The manual, which aimed to teach the rules of correct English spelling, was addressed to an audience `that now for want' of `true orthography . . . are ashamed to write unto their best friends: for which I haue heard many gentlewomen offer much'.9 Pride and self-esteem appear to have encouraged women to acquire and improve literacy skills for purposes of correspondence. Further, the desire to acquit oneself well on paper could account for the numerous holograph presentation letters, which were painstakingly penned by women for show in neat italic scripts, and which often bear ¯ourishing signatures. The reluctance of some women to write also may have been caused by the ridicule with which their poor erudition and inability to spell was sometimes met. Criticisms of the quality of female epistolary output are quite common: Philip Gawdy teased his sister-in-law for her `fals[e] orthographye'.10 More spiteful than this example of fraternal mocking, Elizabeth Bourne, writing under the pseudonym Frances Wesley, harshly reproved Lady Conway for her `late learned eloquence': you must sett aparte more of your idell exercyses/by larger tyme and more industrie of your scole M[aster]s to become a deaper studient in rethoricke then yet you arr/a good wyll you showe such as yll wordes may sett forthe/but your scole M[aste]r . . . he maks you use many sentences and lytell substance and you tell straynge tales and no trothe/the faulte ys greate and I wyshe you to mende yt/though wee well some tymes take lyberty to speak barborously/yett owght yt not to be untrewly when the wyttness of our hand maks yt a recorde/but happelie you apply to the exercyse to become a plesyng scoler to your m[aste]r.11 With similar malevolence Maria Thynne scorned Joan Thynne, whom she had recently replaced as mistress of Longleat, for her penmanship: `if you
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
at hor haless I kyng he be hone kyne tha ffaless drab and kouk and nat ben I hade hadehar to my couffert.7
gave a fee to any counsellor to indite your letter, it was bestowed to little purpose'.12 The effect of Maria Thynne's insult is heightened by the fact that it exposed social and generational differences in standards of literacy: eloquence and learning as well as noble birth enabled Maria to treat contemptuously her widowed mother-in-law Joan, herself the daughter of a London merchant.13 Disparaging comments of this nature by other women ± far from displaying stereotypical virtues of female humility and submissiveness on the part of the women issuing the insults ± indicate an increasing unacceptability for upper-class women to be unable to write or indeed to write badly. To some extent female correspondents' unease in their own letterwriting abilities may be re¯ected in the considerable numbers of early modern women's letters that apologise for `scribbled lines' or `rude writing'. Nevertheless, such self-deprecatory comments belie a complex range of motives and customs, and should not always be accepted at face value.14 Within learned circles at least it was epistolary convention for both women and men to uphold a demeanour of false modesty: Lucy St John wrote to her father, Lord Burghley, in an elegant hand, yet courteously excused her `bade writynge'; Bartholomew Kemp, Clerk of the Great Seal, implored Lady Anne Bacon to pardon his `rude l[ett]res'.15 This manner of self-criticism, which was governed less by gender than by social status or position, acted as a way for subordinates to demonstrate respect or deference to superiors. While Lucy St John's letter should be interpreted as a mark of ®lial respect, Kemp's signi®ed his deference towards a woman of higher social rank. Moreover, women in particular could exploit assumptions of female intellectual inferiority, in order to project an aura of vulnerability to male recipients ± a strategy employed to good effect in the business sphere.16 For signi®cant numbers of the female letter-writers surveyed during this period, literacy was not an obstacle to conducting personal correspondence: a high proportion in fact wrote all their own letters and for over a third of women examples of both holograph and secretarial letters survive. The latter group of women were obviously capable of writing letters themselves, but often chose to delegate the task to scribes. Given that a woman could write herself, the decision of whether to do so was dependent upon various factors: custom, the type and context of a letter, the relationship between writer and addressee, and precise circumstances. Accordingly, the present discussion is concerned with the broad mapping of patterns of letter-writing in order to identify the different contexts in which secretaries were employed by `literate' individuals and those where women were more likely personally to engage in writing letters.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
62 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
First, in numerous cases use of amanuenses was necessary for women rendered physically incapable of writing by old age, ill-health or emotional distress. On her deathbed, Winifred, dowager Marchioness of Winchester, too weak to write, dictated a letter to Burghley containing instructions for her will. In an appended note her daughter Lady Anne Dacre informed the Lord Treasurer that her mother had been `so wicke in bodye as she cold not sine this leter whiche she mouche desyred to haue writon to your lo[rdship]'.17 Susan Grey, Countess of Kent dispatched an epistle to her aunt Elizabeth Talbot, dowager Countess of Shrewsbury beseeching her to `pardon me that I write not this w[i]th my owne hand/ for that my ®nger continuethe so evell as that I am not able to howld a penn'.18 Corresponding with Sir Robert Cecil concerning the estate of her late husband, Robert, Earl of Essex, following his execution for treason in 1601, Frances Devereux explained that she was too distressed herself to write: Good M[aste]r Sec[retary] beare w[i]th me that I write not all in mine owne hand/I beegann it but my weak sinnewes would not suffer me to proceed to the third line/but inforced me to use an others help in writinge what my distemperd brayne did confusedly digest.19 In this missive, material expression of the countess of Essex's mental suffering, whether sincere or affected, may have strengthened the petition by presenting her as a pitiable widow, an image with strong religious associations. Furthermore, the need to apologise for not having written oneself suggests that these women were expected to write their own letters and that they wanted to do so. An examination of groups of holograph and non-holograph letters within speci®c archives highlights the situations where it was appropriate or conventional to engage secretarial assistance and those where correspondents were expected to write in their own hands. In broadly distinguishing formal and business from family letters, the former were more commonly written by secretaries than by women themselves. Of 18 letters discovered among the Exchequer papers at the Public Record Of®ce, each dealing with ®nancial matters, all but two were written by secretaries.20 Additional letters survive for over half of the women, at least one of which is holograph, which attests that they could in fact write, but had chosen not to correspond personally with Exchequer of®cials. Other government, legal and corporate archives, where examples of women's letters are found, exhibit equally high numbers of secretarial correspondence. By contrast the proportion of holograph letters is usually much
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 63
larger in collections of family papers. For example, of a sample of 41 women's letters for the period discovered in the Paget Papers, over 30 were penned by the female signatory.21 Similarly, a group of 35 letters to the earl of Essex from his mother, Lettice Dudley, his sisters Penelope Rich and Dorothy Percy, and his wife, includes only one item of correspondence by a secretary.22 Conventions governing the writing of letters become more pronounced when one compares methods of composition used for different types of letters ± business or formal, domestic or familiar ± within an individual woman's overall correspondence. The example of Anne Dudley, Countess of Warwick, for whom there are a range of approximately 30 letters still extant, well illustrates this. Among the countess's letters, eight can be categorised as personal letters, written to relatives conveying news and greetings; the remainder are more formulaic business letters to of®cials, dealing with administrative and patronage matters. All but two items of her personal correspondence are holograph, including three epistles addressed to her sister Margaret, Countess of Cumberland.23 By comparison, only four business letters are in the countess's own hand, the others were produced by an amanuensis. In sum, the more personal and intimate the relationship between sender and recipient, the more likely it was that a letter would be personally written. Conversely, the more formal the writing and the less impersonal the relationship, the more common it was for the sender to distance herself from the task of writing. Employing secretaries to conduct business correspondence was customary for both women and men throughout the medieval and early modern periods, as indeed it still is today.24 Use of a scribe spared correspondents the drudgery of writing, an activity considered by some to be demeaning and incompatible with nobility.25 Indeed, the humanist author Vives writing in the early Tudor period described the `multitude of nobles who hope that they are going to be esteemed as better born in proportion as they are ignorant of the art of writing'.26 The writing of business letters retained a sense of stigma during the sixteenth century, even though the ability to write became more widespread among the upper classes. Involving the preparing of ink and paper, and the cutting of quills, the task of writing was deemed a tedious and messy one best left to servants.27 In a letter to Sir Thomas Smith, Mary Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond bemoaned the `travail' of writing.28 Clearly, a pro®cient secretary could alleviate the more arduous aspects of epistolary composition. Thus, a crucial distinction lay in the purpose of writing between, on the one hand, formal and business writing, which was considered menial,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
64 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
routine and technical, and on the other, private and personal writing, which was intimate, spontaneous and creative. The former was normally undertaken by an amanuensis; the latter was increasingly conducted in women's own hands. The ability to write, therefore, was treated more and more as a reserve skill by women of the nobility and gentry, one that could be called upon when occasion required. In the context of the exigencies of women's everyday lives, delegation to a secretary can also be viewed as an ef®cient way to dispatch correspondence. Engulfed by business and legal affairs arising from estate and household management, women were responsible for large amounts of outgoing correspondence ± petitions for favour to government of®cials, letters negotiating ®nancial interests, intercessions on behalf of family members, suits on behalf of dependants and clients ± as indeed many essays in this volume testify. It was therefore only administrative good sense to employ a scribe to deal with what potentially could be an overwhelming amount of paperwork. This may well explain the reason why Lady Anne Newdigate, a proli®c correspondent on behalf of her family, sometimes employed a secretary for her formal letters; on other occasions though she drafted her own business letters.29 Other women complained that the pressure imposed on them by business matters left little time to write their own letters: Audrey Aleyn in correspondence with her brother Thomas, Lord Paget stated, `having diverse matters to move to you/I am driven to use a strang hand'.30 Anne, Lady Hungerford apologised to her daughter Dorothy Essex for failing to reply to her letters, explaining `I wolde I had liuing that I might be out of the lawe then I shulde haue mor lessure to write.'31 At a pragmatic level secretaries were utilised for personal as well as business correspondence due to the speed and pro®ciency with which they could expedite the task. Indeed, a `swift' hand was considered by Sir Michael Hicks, patronage secretary to Burghley, to be an essential secretarial skill.32 Certainly when time was short women may have preferred to use a secretary: Alice Stanley, Countess of Derby hurried by a bearer's urgent departure informed Sir Robert Cecil `but that the jentleman was in hast/I had my selfe w[i]th my owne hande writt to you'.33 In this sense, the sporadic nature by which letters were dispatched could determine whether a woman or her secretary wrote a letter. Formal business writing, because of its technical precision, is more likely than familiar correspondence to exhibit signs of secretarial endeavour or collaboration with a third party cognisant of legal, political or ®nancial practices. Letters of this sort needed careful wording, and although some women display impressive knowledge of law and
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 65
administration many clearly felt it wise to procure expert advice in these areas, the same way that nowadays one might consult a solicitor or an accountant. Elizabeth Hatton wrote to Sir John Hobart for his help to convey a tract of land, requesting that he inform her `to what porpos & in what forme I shall wryte to thos that shall conuay the land . . . I know you will drawe out my meanyng beetor then I can seet it doune.'34 Likewise, Elizabeth Bourne having ®rst drafted a petition to the queen then sought the assistance of Sir John Conway in honing it: acordyng to my sympell skyll I haue set doune my petycyon to her ma[jes]ty/wych I have sent you to amend for I can doo it no beter and I thinke it far from that it should be I ther fore pray you to correct hit and sende hit me.35 Although tempting to interpret such comments as indicative of female inexperience and insecurity within business spheres, they more likely represent ploys to secure guidance. Both these women were in reality accomplished letter-writers who frequently penned their own missives. Moreover, innumerable correspondents regardless of gender sought technical advice in drafting letters.36 Also, it was not uncommon for women to assist men in letter-writing, which stands as clear testimony of female competence. John Bourchier, Earl of Bath clearly considered his third wife Margaret to be a pro®cient letter-writer and regularly relied on her counsel. On one occasion he asked his wife's opinion on a letter he had written to Lord Stourton, inviting her to make any amendments she felt necessary: I haue sent you a copy of the same/yf you shall so like it/if no I haue sent you a blanke & my name therunto/prayenge you and if any thinge be amysse therin to reforme the same accordinglye as you did the laste wiche I did very well like.37 Similarly, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury appears to have valued his wife Elizabeth's judgement of his correspondence. The countess once informed her husband, `I have sende your letter agene and thanke you for them they requyre no ansore/but when you wryte remember to thanke hym for them.'38 Elsewhere the earl expressed his satisfaction at one of his wife's letters: `your letter cam very well & I lyk them so well they could nott be amended'.39 Husbands also entrusted wives to correspond on their behalf. Sir Thomas Baskerville, the military commander, requested his wife Mary to send `2 or 3 lin[e]s from your self' to Lord Willoughby
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
66 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
excusing that he himself had not written, while Sir Robert Sidney charged his wife Barbara with replying to a correspondent's letter: `I pray you write a letter of thanks to Mr Sanford and let him know that hee shall heare shortly from you.'40 That women acted in such advisory and delegated capacities indicates high levels of female conversance with epistolary media as well as women's business acumen. Certainly Lady Grace Mildmay believed that her governess `could apprehend and contrive any matter whatsoever propounded unto her most judiciously and set her mind down in writing either by letters indited or otherwise as well as most men could have done'.41 Although it was customary to employ amanuenses for formal correspondence, many female letter-writers judged it important to correspond personally with of®cials where there existed bonds of political `friendship' between sender and recipient. This in turn clouds distinctions between personal or private and business correspondence. The signi®cance attached to holograph letters as a sign of respect for the addressee also explains women's frequent apologies for not using their own hands. In a letter to Burghley, petitioning for the wardship of Nicholas Halswell, Lady Mary Sidney added a holograph postscript excusing her use of an amanuensis: I besyche your l[ordshi]pe pardon me I wryght no lardglier nor w[i]th my own hande/for I am so very syke as I canot indure to wryghte altho I must confes hit wer my part not to truble your good l[ordshi]pe in this or enny other suet w[i]thout forther respect of your great coortesis and noble dealings w[i]th me.42 As Lady Sidney's note indicates, secretarial letters were judged less personal than holograph correspondence. Margaret Clifford expressed regret at the impersonal nature of a letter she dispatched to the duke of Lennox: `excuse I pray your lo[rdship] an other bodies hand th[a]t hath expressed my hearte'.43 In a personal political system, where individual relationships were paramount, privy communications lent a degree of con®dentiality to exchanges between correspondents, which was central to cultivating and maintaining social and political contacts.44 Correspondents also personally wrote to of®cials letters that contained politically sensitive material, prejudicial to family reputation and honour, which was best kept secret from servants or clerks. This was because the process of using an amanuensis, which was far from private, inhibited openness and often led to self-censorship on the part of the sender.45 The adverse effects of dictation are described in an Erasmian dialogue:
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 67
68 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Re¯ecting the Dutch humanist's remarks, Lady Catherine Daubeney, anxious to maintain con®dentiality, informed Thomas Cromwell that she preferred to correspond with him in her own hand rather than to `trust any so far as to know my mind'.47 The motivation for women to write was increased by a desire for greater command over their own affairs. Arguing in favour of female education, the English writing master Martin Billingsley in his manual The Pen's Excellencie (1618) stated that writing was an essential skill for widows who wished to manage their estates: the practise of this art [writing] is so necessary for women, and consequently so excellent, that no woman surviving her husband, and who had an estate left her, ought to be without the use thereof, at lest in some reasonable manner: for thereby shee comes to a certainty of her estate, without trusting to the reports of such as are usually imployed to looke into the same: whereas otherwise for want of it, she is subject to the manifold deceits now used in the world, and by that meanes plungeth her selfe into a multitude of inconveniences.48 The ability to write oneself also led to greater epistolary control and presented opportunities for independent personal expression, for women to defend themselves and to set down their own words on paper. Lady Anne Glenham wrote to Sir Julius Caesar stating, `I had expresed my mind in words'; Frances Withypoll declared to Sir John Hobart that she was `resolued to wright my opinion'.49 For a signi®cant number of women, including Lady Anne Bacon, Lady Elizabeth Russell and Lady Penelope Rich, nearly all their extant letters are holograph, irrespective of recipient; only rarely did they use amanuenses, which demonstrates a determination to exert full control over correspondence. A further reason for the importance of personally written letters lies in the fact that a woman's own handwriting conferred a particular authority on her correspondence and acted as proof or guarantee of a letter's contents. To Erasmus it was `very easy to forge a signature but very dif®cult to forge a complete letter. A man's handwriting like his voice has a special individual quality.'50 Lady Elizabeth Willoughby promised her
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
If you dictate verbatim, then it is goodbye to your privacy; and so you disguise some things and suppress others in order to avoid having an unwanted con®dant. Hence, quite apart from the problem of the genuineness of the text, no open conversation with a friend is possible here.46
son Percival that if he helped to discharge his father's debts she would strive to pass on her husband's estates to him, stating that he could `lay her own handwriting to her charge'.51 Documents produced in a person's own hand were apparently considered more binding than those that were merely signed; they were also regarded as better witness of an individual's intentions. Thus, Mary Holcroft disputing the will of her mistress Lady Hastings wrote to Sir John Puckering, the Lord Keeper, requesting that he force her mistress's husband Francis Hastings, whom she alleged had falsely excluded her from the inheritance, to produce `that draught of the will w[hi]ch he gave to his man strasmore to keepe w[hi]ch was of her owne hande writing'.52 The large proportion of holograph women's letters among family papers is in part due to the high expectations that correspondence between relatives should be personally conducted. Parents were keen to encourage daughters to use letter-writing skills: Honor, Lady Lisle, in the 1530s urged her daughter Anne, then at court, to practise her own hand in letters sent home.53 Sir Robert Sidney's pleasure in his daughter Mary's progress in letter-writing is attested by his offer to reward her with a dress as a present. In a letter to his wife Barbara, Sidney wrote, `I thank Mall for her letter and am ecseeding glad she writes so wel/tel her for me I will give her a new gown for her letter.'54 Writing letters oneself, as a means of keeping in touch, was by many looked upon as a duty or obligation, demonstrating obedience and respect. Lady Eleanor Zouche wrote to her cousin Thomas Randolph explaining that despite her illness, the regard she had for him compelled her to write in her own hand: I haue bene very sicke/& not yet so well recouered th[a]t I can/& not in duer to wryt or to read/but w[i]t[h] great payne/yet when I remember to whom it is/I can not in any wyse yeld to any excuse.55 Symptomatic of daughterly respect, Elizabeth Grey, wife of Henry Grey, wrote to her mother the countess of Shrewsbury stating, `I nowe haue no other ocation to drawe me to trobell yo[u]r la[dyship] with my ill hande butt only to perfome my duty.'56 Maternal complaints were commonly directed at sons for neglecting their duty and failing to write in person: Lady Anne Bacon and Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, both chided their sons for employing amanuenses for corresponding with them.57 Recipients clearly placed great value on letters from relatives where the services of a scribe had been dispensed with. In appreciation of an epistle penned by her brother-in-law Burghley, Lady Elizabeth Russell wrote to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 69
thank him for troubling to correspond in his own hand: `I kiss the hand th[a]t tooke so muche payne w[i]t[h] penn.'58 Likewise, Alexander Colles reported to his mistress Lady Margaret Long that her future husband the earl of Bath `dyd receive with much gentleness' her letter, adding that he `gave you great thanks that it now pleased you to take the pains to write yourself'.59 Time and effort taken to correspond oneself, rather than delegating the task to a clerk, demonstrated the attention given to a letter by a writer. Moreover, the letters produced by one's own pen were likely to be more personal and intimate than dictated epistles: Erasmus expressed `how warmly we respond whenever we receive from friends or scholars letters written in their own hands! We feel as if we were listening to them and seeing them face to face.'60 The desire for letters to be written personally is perhaps strongest among married couples during the sixteenth century, where it was considered important in both precept and practice for there to be epistolary privacy between husband and wife. Martin Billingsley extolled the virtues of writing for women in order that `the secrets that are and ought to be, betweene a Man and Wife . . . in either of their absences may be con®ned to their owne privacy'.61 The evidence of marital correspondence itself further indicates couples' demands for con®dentiality: in fact over 80 per cent of letters to husbands by some 46 individual wives are holograph.62 Of those women employing secretaries to write for them, only two appear to have done so because they were unable to write: Joan Alleyn, wife of the actor Edward Alleyn, and Elizabeth Sutton, both of whom corresponded between 1600 and 1603.63 Indeed, most letters composed using an amanuensis were sent by women who would normally have written themselves but who were prevented from so doing by illness or fatigue. Joan Thynne, for example, apologised to her husband for not writing in her own hand: `I came to London this present Sunday at three of the clock. I did endure my journey very well but I was very weary at night, wherefore I hope you will pardon me because I did not write myself.'64 Additionally, third parties occasionally helped wives to construct letters to husbands where con¯ict within the marriage necessitated more carefully worded epistles.65 Part of the apparent need for privacy, as argued by Linda Pollock, is explained by spousal concern to keep secret matters relating to business, reputation and honour.66 John Gamage, for example, wrote to his wife stating, `I wold wyshe that my doings myght be a secret.'67 However, there is also a sense in which greater personalisation of letter-writing was encouraged by married couples' wishes to be more intimate, endearing and affectionate in expression. Honor, Lady Lisle, asked her husband to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
70 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
James Daybell 71
Good my lord, whereas in my former letters I have written to you that you should write to me with your own hand, whereof ii lines shold be more comfort to me than a hundred of another man's hand; my meaning therein is not to require of you to take so much pain as 6 to write 6 to me in your own hand in or for all your business or necessary affairs, but only at your own pleasure of sum secret things as it shall please you to advertise me of, and at your convenient leisure to signify unto me part of your gentle hart, which unto me shall be most rejoice and comfort.68 It was normal for couples to write personally to each other; to get another to write in one's stead was to provoke question and was often interpreted as a sign of a letter-writer's illness or displeasure. Joan Thynne in a letter to her husband John, remarked that: I do not a little marvel that I hear from you but not by your own [hand], which surely giveth me occasion to think that you are not in good health. Wherefore sir, to put away such doubts I humbly desire you that you would take so much pains as to write to me yourself which shall not a little engladden me, whereas now I stand in great doubt.69 Likewise, Maria Thynne announced to her husband Thomas her dislike of his using a servant to write to her: `I like not his writing in your name for it is as though thou were angry.'70 Wives able to write themselves also attached emotional signi®cance to penning their own letters: Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, wrote tenderly to her husband the earl, explaining that `of late I haue yoused to wryte letyll w[i]t[h] my owne hande but coulde nott now forbayre'.71 Expressions of this sort further suggest the need for spouses to communicate with each other in a more personal manner; to some degree correspondence represents an extension of the transient private spaces attainable within early modern marriages.72 Related to the issues of female literacy levels with which this essay began, women who were self-conscious of their poor writing abilities appear to have been more willing to use their own hands to write informal letters to family than for of®cial correspondence. Katherine Howard described herself to her husband Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, as an `eyll . . . writter', stating `I would not show my baed hande to any but 6 to 6 you which I knowe will taket in good part wher et mouche wors[e].'73 In
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
write to her himself of `secret things'; two lines in his hand were better than a hundred from another:
72 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Thus being desirus to heare of your good helth . . . I am so boulde to trouble you with my rude wrighting and in ditieng/for nobodi is privi to it but my pen and I presumieng that you will take it in good parte or ells I should be diskuriged hereafter to indite ani more of my selfe.74 This indicates that certain female letter-writers may have felt greater con®dence operating within domestic or household contexts, and that the family offered a more private environment within which to write letters, one in which they believed their educational de®ciencies would be accepted without ridicule. At the heart of this chapter is the question of how far literacy or letterwriting ability had a positive effect on women's lives. Here, it is important that the impact of literacy should not be overplayed as an emancipating force for women.75 Viewed within the context of late medieval and early Tudor evidence, female roles attain a degree of continuity. Seemingly illiterate women appear to have been highly active in areas of household and estate management, and political and religious patronage, whether operating face to face or through the intermediary of a messenger.76 Furthermore, unlettered individuals had access to scriveners, or at a higher level to secretaries, who performed various scribal functions. Educational barriers therefore did not inevitably preclude women from epistolary activity. Thus, Elizabeth Shelton, herself unable to write, in 1603 sent a letter to her father complaining of the treatment that she was experiencing from her uncle, in whose household she had been placed. Despite her inability to write, not only was she able to persuade someone within her uncle's household to write a letter for her, but also she seems to have had it secretly conveyed to her father. `I desire you in any wayes' she begged her father `let not my uncle knowe th[a]t I have writte unto you/ for I gett one to write unawares to him/by cause I hard him in such a rage.'77 Clearly, women were able to conduct correspondence within dif®cult and restricted circumstances despite their illiteracy. In the ®nal analysis, however, acquisition of full literacy ± the ability to read and write ± conferred signi®cant bene®ts that were denied to women whose partial or total illiteracy prevented them from writing their own letters: conducting personalised correspondence in maintaining social and business relationships; writing more intimate letters to family members; greater degrees of personal control over language and self-expression; con®dentiality in business, and a tighter grip on
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
like manner, Susannah Fanshawe wrote to her cousin Thomas Fanshawe concerned that no one other than he should see her writing:
household and business affairs. Indeed, as levels of female writing ability rose during the period, more personal and introspective uses were made of letters, either as emotional, `literary' or religious outlets.78 Additionally, the availability of a trustworthy scribe was not always guaranteed. Letter-writing therefore increasingly formed an integral part of the education of an upper-class woman, one that would equip her with the necessary societal skills for her roles as mother, wife and mistress of a household.
Notes I would like to thank Ralph Houlbrooke and Roger Dalrymple for their comments on earlier versions of this essay. 1. Elsewhere I have dealt with methods of epistolary composition: James Daybell, `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing, 1540±1603: an Introduction to the Issues of Authorship and Construction', Shakespeare Studies, 27 (1999), 161±86. 2. For detailed discussion of the holograph status of women's letters see James Daybell, `Women's Letters and Letter-Writing in England, 1540±1603' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1999), pp. 68±76, 104±7 [hereafter Daybell, Thesis] 3. HMC Report on the Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, Preserved at Belvoir Castle, 3 vols (HMSO, 1888), 1, p. 301: 24 July [1592]. 4. Muriel St Clare Byrne, The Lisle Letters, 6 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 1, p. 32, plate 8j; idem 2, p. 700. 5. GLRO, Charterhouse Archives, ACC 1876/F3/7/1±3, 5 and 6, 1876 F3/7/2/68 and 70, c.1600±02. 6. See Alison Truelove, Chapter 4, this volume, for comments on literacy and ®fteenth-century women's letter-writing practices. 7. M.A.E. Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies from the Twelfth Century to the Close of Mary's Reign, 3 vols. (Colburn, 1846), 3, p. 191. Wood's translation reads, `Brother, I pray you to send me my niece Dorothy, because I know her conditions ± she shall not lack as long as I live, an you would be heard by me at (all), or else I think you be own kin to false drab and cook; an not been (had it not been) I had had her to my comfort'. For the original document see BL Cott. MS Titus, B.I. f.162. 8. BL Harl. MS 4712 ff.412±3, 3 Oct. 1597. 9. Edmund Coote, The English Schoole Maister (Widow Orwin, 1596), sig. A2. 10. BL Eg. MS 2804 f.84: Philip Gawdy to Bassingbourne Gawdy, n.d. 11. BL Add. MS 23212 ff.193±193v, n.d. 12. Alison D. Wall, ed., Two Elizabethan Women: Correspondence of Joan and Maria Thynne 1575±1611 (Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 38, Devizes, 1983), pp. 33±5 (p. 34), letter 49, c.1605. [hereafter T.E.W.] For background to the relationship of these two women see Alison Wall, Chapter 6, this volume.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 73
13. Ibid., pp. xv, xvii±xix, xxvi, xxx. 14. James Daybell, `Ples acsep thes my skrybled lynes: the Construction and Conventions of Women's Letters in England, 1540±1603', Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountains Medieval and Renaissance Society, 20 (1999), 123±40. 15. BL Lansd. MS 104 f.175, Sept. 1588; LPL Bacon MS 649 f.63, 13 Mar. 1594. 16. Daybell, Thesis, chs 4, 5. See also Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: the Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and their World (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), p. 88. 17. PRO SP 12/190/36, 16 June 1586. 18. Folger, Cavendish/Talbot MS, X.d. 428 f.38, 26 Jan. 1593. 19. Hat®eld House, Cecil MS 85 f.139, 3 Apr. 1601. 20. PRO SP 46/27/39. 21. Staffs. RO, Paget Papers, D603, D1734. 22. WCRO, `Essex Letter Book c.1595±1600', MI 229. 23. Kendal RO, Hoth®eld MSS, WD/HOTH Box 44. 24. The Lisle Letters, 4, pp. 229±30; Paul Hammer, `The Use of Scholarship: the Secretariat of Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, c.1585±1601', EHR, 109, 430 (Feb. 1994), 26±51; A.G.R. Smith, `The Secretariats of the Cecils, c.1580±1612', EHR, 83 (1968), 481±504; H.S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England (Cambridge: CUP, 1922; reprinted 1991), pp. 115±17; Christine Carpenter, ed., Kingsford's Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290±1483 (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), pp. 74±5. 25. Giles Constable, Letters and Letter Collections (Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental, facs. xvii, 1976), p. 42. 26. Jonathan Goldberg, Writing Matter from the Hands of the English Renaissance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 113. 27. Keith Thomas, `The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England', in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, Wolfson College Lectures 1985, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 97±131 (p. 100). 28. PRO SP 10/7/1, 4 May 1549. 29. WCRO, Newdegate Papers, CR 136 B307, B308, B309a: secretarial drafts. For expert analysis of Lady Newdigate's correspondence see Vivienne Larminie, Chapter 7, this volume. 30. Paget Papers, D603 K1/3/40, 25 Oct. 1572. 31. PRO SP 15/18/19 f.5, 25 Mar. 1570. 32. A.G.R. Smith, Servant of the Cecils: the Life of Sir Michael Hicks (London: Cape, 1977), p. 37. 33. Cecil MS 182 f.66, 25 June 1601. 34. Bodl. Tanner MS 286 f.5, n.d. 35. BL Add. MS 23212 f.118, n.d. 36. Daybell, `Issues of Authorship', pp. 167±8. 37. CUL Hengrave MS 88/1 f.141, n.d. 38. LPL Talbot MS 3205 f.66, n.d. 39. Folger X.d. 428 f.89, 1570. 40. BL Harl. MS 4762 f.25, n.d; CKS, De L'Isle MS, U1475 C81/108, 16 July 1604. I am grateful to Lord De L'Isle for permission to quote from these manuscripts. 41. Linda Pollock, With Faith and Physic: the Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay 1552±1620 (London: Collins and Brown, 1993), p. 26. 42. BL Lansd. MS 17 f.41, 12 Sept. 1573.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
74 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
43. Kendal RO, WD/Hoth Box 44, n.d. 44. The personal nature of Tudor politics is outlined in W.T. MacCaffrey, `Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Politics', in Elizabethan Government and Society, ed. S.T. Bindoff, Juel Hurst®eld and C.H. Williams (London: Athlone Press, 1961), pp. 95±127 (p. 99); J.E. Neale, `The Elizabethan Political Scene', in Essays in Elizabethan History, ed. J.E. Neale (Cape, 1958), pp. 59±84 (pp. 61±2). 45. On the impact of secretarial input see Daybell, `Issues of Authorship', pp. 166±70, 176±80. 46. A.S. Osley, Scribes and Sources: Handbook of the Chancery Hand in the Sixteenth Century: Texts from the Writing Masters (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 30. 47. Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, 2, letter 53, pp. 119±24 (p. 122), 1534. 48. Martin Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie or the Secretaries Delighte (1618), pp. 35±35v. 49. BL Lansd. MS 158 f.92, 26 Mar. 1598; Bodl. Tanner MS 283 ff.71±2 (f.71), n.d. 50. Osley, Scribes and Sources, p. 29. 51. HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (HMSO, 1911), p. 570, n.d. 52. BL Harl. MS 6996 f.95, 8 Apr. 1594. 53. The Lisle Letters, 5, letter 1126: Anne Basset to Lady Lisle, 15 Mar. 1538. 54. De L'Isle MS U1475 C81/68, 6 Oct. 1595. 55. BL Harl. MS 6994 f.4, 28 Apr. 1586. 56. LPL Talbot MS 3205 f.104, 1604. 57. LPL Bacon MS 651 f.328: Lady Anne Bacon to Anthony Bacon, 5 Aug. 1595; Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, 3, pp. 303±4 (p. 303): Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter to Earl of Devonshire, 8 June 1555. 58. BL Lansd. MS 10 f.136, 25 Aug. 1584. 59. CUL Hengrave MS 88/I f.10, 27 Dec. 1547. Also printed in John Gage, The History and Antiquities of Hengrave in Suffolk (Carpenter, 1822), pp. 121±3 (p. 121). 60. Osley, Scribes and Sources, p. 29. 61. Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie, p. 35. 62. Husbands' letters to wives likewise exhibit little secretarial intervention: Daybell, Thesis, pp. 220±4. 63. Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Muniments of Alleyn's College of God's Gift at Dulwich, ed. George F. Warner (Longmans, Green and Co., 1881), p. 24, note 5: Joan Alleyn to Edward Alleyn, 21 Oct. 1603. 64. T.E.W., p. 5, letter 11, 6 Mar. 1580. 65. Daybell, Thesis, pp. 81±4. 66. Linda Pollock, `Living On the Stage of the World: the Concept of Privacy Among the Elite of Early Modern England', in Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570±1920 and its Interpretation, ed. Adrian Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 78±96 (pp. 85, 87, 89±90). 67. PRO SP 46/60/2, Feb. 1576. 68. The Lisle Letters, 5, letter 1544, 21 Sept. 1539. Although Lady Lisle was herself seemingly unable to write, St Clare Byrne has noted that her intimate letters to her husband were dictated verbatim, in contrast to business letters where secretaries were left to add conventional introductory and closing formulae: 6 Ibid., 1, p. 32, and 4, pp. 229±30. Words between marks ( ) were inserted above the line.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
James Daybell 75
69. 70. 71. 72.
73. 74. 75. 76.
77. 78.
T.E.W, p. 4, letter 9, 7 Mar. 1577. Ibid., pp. 32±3 (p. 33), letter 48 (after Aug. 1604). LPL Talbot MS 3205 f.73, n.d. For discussion of lack of privacy in the early modern period see Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450±1700 (Harlow: Longman, 1984) p. 23; Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570±1640 (Cambridge: CUP, 1987), p. 245; Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500±1800 (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), p. 102; Pollock, `Living On the Stage of the World'; Orest Ranum, `The Refuges of Intimacy', in A History of Private Life: III. The Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Roger Chartier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 207±63. 6 Longleat House, Seymour Papers, 5 f.182, n.d. Words between marks ( ) were inserted above the line. PRO SP 46/16/211, 28 Aug. 1580. The dangers of overemphasising the positive effects of literacy are debated in Thomas, `The Meaning of Literacy', pp. 97, and 113±14. Jennifer Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (Harlow: Longman, 1992) pp. 129±42; Eileen Power, Medieval Women (Cambridge: CUP, 1975; Canto edition, 1997), pp. 34±9; Barbara A. Hanawalt, `Lady Honor Lisle's Networks of In¯uence', in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 188±212; James Daybell, `The Political Role of Upper-Class Women in Early Tudor England as Evidenced by their Correspondence' (Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Reading, 1996), pp. 2±6 and 28±47. PRO SP 46/57/204b: Elizabeth Shelton to J. Astwick, 18 Dec. 1603. Daybell, Thesis, pp. 191±203.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
76 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Deference and De®ance in Women's Letters of the Thynne Family: the Rhetoric of Relationships Alison Wall
`For the titles which a wife in speaking to her husband, or naming him . . . they must be such as signify superiority, and so savour of reverence' wrote William Gouge; he ordered women always to use deferential expressions in addressing their husbands, for: Contrary are those compellations which argue equality or inferiority, rather than superiority . . . such as these, ``Sweet, Sweeting, Heart, Sweetheart, Love, Joy, Dear, etc'' and such as these ``Duck, Chick, Pigsnie, etc'' and husband's Christian names as ``John, Thomas, William, Henry, etc'', which if they be contracted (as many use to contract them thus Jack, Tom, Will, Hal) they are much more unseemly: servants are usually so called. Women were told even to think submissively: `Subjection is that mask which wives are directed to aim at in their thoughts, words, and deeds.'1 Similarly the Elizabethan Homily on Marriage, which everyone heard read in parish churches, commanded women to obey their husbands but also to show subjection.2 And some women were suitably obedient and deferential to their husbands, as the funeral sermons for Katherine Stubbes, Katherine Brettergh, Elizabeth Gouge, and others claimed.3 Katherine Stubbes `surpassed in the virtue of humility' and `would never contrary him in anything', according to Philip Stubbes, who published the biography of his dead wife deliberately as a model of obedience and deference for other women to follow.4 It was reprinted an astonishing 24 times by 1637, so people must have been eager to buy such a handbook to instil subservience! Joan Thynne obediently utilised the rhetoric of submission. Her letters commenced very formally: `Mr Thynne', `Good Mr Thynne', occasionally 77
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
6
under stress `my good husband'; never any pet or nicknames.5 Early in her marriage she was signing letters very conventionally `your obedient wife', `your loving wife during life to command'; later `your everloving wife' or `your loving and faithful wife', although perhaps there could be a hidden barb in this last one. For in 1601 she implied he was too friendly with women at court, complaining that his court friends could not get him a knighthood, `yet methinks some of your great ladies might do so much for you'.6 In this sharp remark, she was also criticising his strategy at court, without the prescribed deference. The quantity of surviving evidence for women's, and men's, reactions to the didactic literature is less than we would like, since private papers where personal views might be found are singular and rarely preserved, compared with the multiple copies of books printed. But some such evidence remains, scattered in general correspondence of family archives. Since women were admonished to be meek and submissive, then we want to enquire if women's letters just followed formulaic rhetoric, using merely conventional phrases of obedience and wishes for good health. Or could these women express nuances of emotion, and show their awareness of social gradations as well as of patriarchy? Their education was often limited and, as with Joan Thynne's, their handwriting was frequently rather childish and unformed compared with that of educated men. Some women's surviving letters are simply brief and matter-of-fact, showing no very personal response. Fortunately the women's letters of the Thynne family tell us more; they express attitudes and strong emotions. To help understand them, a very wide range of other material survives to ®ll out the contexts: letters from family members and advisers, as well as lawsuits in Chancery, Star Chamber, and the ecclesiastical court. These women's letters demonstrate clear awareness of the precepts, but a much wider and more subtle range of relationships than envisaged by the preachers and writers. Joan Thynne, and later her daughter-in-law Maria, sometimes did use expressions of submission in writing to their husbands. Joan could phrase needs as requests, asking her husband to send supplies `if it please you to afford the charges'. Regarding arrangements at Caus Castle where she lived mostly at that time, she wrote in 1601 `and therefore good Mr Thynne consider speedily what course you intend to take and I shall ever be ready to be commanded by you'.7 But neither woman maintained real humility. From early on Joan, still a teenager, told him what to do; she even demanded he sack a servant, and sent commands about how John should behave to her father, to `acknowledge your faults although they be many'!8 She instructed him acerbically about his political career at court,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
78 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Alison Wall 79
I know thou wilt say (receiving two letters in a day from me) that I have tried the virtue of aspen leaves under my tongue, which makes me prattle so much, but consider that all is business, for . . . there is not a more silent woman living than myself.9 She too upbraided a husband, and delivered instructions. She could be sarcastic. When he did not allow her to make decisions at Longleat, she wrote him a diatribe, complaining that `others . . . can wonder (as they well may) that my advice and consent (being in right to be mistress there) should in no cause be taken . . .'.10 In another letter she wrote: in praise of thy kindness to me, thy dogs, thy hawks, the hare and the foxes, and also in commendation of thy great care of thy businesses in the country, that I think I need not amplify any more on that text, for I have crowned thee for an admirable good husband with poetical laurel, and admired the inexpressible singularity of thy love in the cogitations of piamater, I can say no more but that in way of gratuity, the dogs shall without interruption expel their excremental corruption in the best room (which is thy bed) whensoever full feeding makes their bellies ache . . . and so on in de®ant mode ± for his making her pregnant!11 Her letters are extraordinarily vivid. There is no evidence that Maria had seen the models for types of letter set out in textbooks such as those of Angel Day, Abraham Fleming or William Fulwood, which do include rhetoric for letters of complaint.12 But hers are so speci®c and individually expressed that they can owe little or nothing to such books, even if she knew of them. The prohibition on pet names was sometimes de®ed. Men certainly used them often, and perhaps we can identify an epistolary double standard, where men used pet names while women were supposed to remain formal. Robert Sidney's letters to his wife Barbara frequently commence `Sweetheart' and one ended with the informal `Farewell sweet wenche' as a variation from his `Farewell sweet Barbara'. Unfortunately her replies do not survive to tell us how she addressed him. He considered their marriage more affectionate than others, writing in 1594 `I would not
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
their lawsuits, farming and ®nancial matters, but inserted occasional humble words between the forceful phrases. Maria Thynne went further and deliberately mocked the precepts in writing to her husband Thomas:
for anything that the il husbands at the Court should know how fond I am growne to send you in this fashion the ®rst dainties I can come by'.13 The earl of Dorset wrote to his wife, the assertive Anne Clifford, as `sweete Harte', as did Nathaniel Bacon to his wife Jane.14 John Thynne addressed his wife as `Good Pug' or `My good Pug'. Yet as we saw, Joan Thynne always obeyed the demands for formality of address and signature in writing back to him. But rhetoric differed from reality; her formal address does not mean it was a stiff relationship. Theirs had been a carefully arranged marriage when she was only 16, but they developed affection, and expressed it. Twenty years on, Joan wrote: I would all things were ended to your content and yourself here with me where you were never so welcome as now you should be unto me, a most discontented creature till I hear from you or see you, which I heartily pray you, may be as soon as possible. She wrote three weeks later `My love to yourself is such not to be broken by knives or anything else whiles I live', still signing quite formally `your loving wife for ever'.15 In contrasting style, the next generation altered the style of address. Their son Thomas Thynne wrote to his wife Maria as `Good Sweet'.16 But she was far more effusive and not at all deferential to him; she went well beyond the prohibited `Tom' for Thomas: `Mine own sweet Thomken', `My fair Tomken', even `Sirrah' (Sirrah was a put-down term which could lead to serious trouble, even duels, if used between men of equal status in public!). Her signing-off was always unconventional, usually playful as well as affectionate: `ask all the husbands in London, or ask the question in the Lower House, what requests they grant their wives, and then good husband think upon your fool at home as there is cause. Thine Maria' or `And so once more fare ever well, my best & Sweetest Thomkene, & many thowsand tymes more than thess many thankes 1 00000000000000000000000000 for thy kinde wanton letters. Thinne & only all thinne, Marya', the row of zeros used to ®ll about a third of a line.17 As well as using pet names, she played with words to express ironic dismay as when he made her pregnant, but also sexy love. Very few women's letters of the period do that. My best beloved Thomken, and my best little Sirrah, know that I have not, nor will forget how you made my modest blood ¯ush up into my bashful cheek at your ®rst letter, thou threatened sound payment, and I sound repayment, so as when we meet, there will be pay, and repay,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
80 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Alison Wall 81
The dog Latin is meant to suggest `you will rise up frequently'. In another letter she anxiously sent medical instructions, ending with expressions of affection that surely were genuine: `God in Heaven preserve thy health as long as I live, and continue thy love to me, as I may have cause to love thee no less than I do, which is yet as my own soul.'18 Love accompanied de®ance. The 1563 Homily on Matrimony recognised the possibility that women might try to rule, and later there was a literature of the stroppy wife. Other writers like William Heale argued that God made woman `an equal associat and fellow-helper for man', and Edmund Tilney claimed that it would be better to be beloved by a wife than feared.19 Between the textbook extremes, both Joan and Maria successfully managed a marital balance ± their letters show that they were able to ¯out some of the strictures and assert themselves. Yet they both made their marriages work well, as warm and trusting partnerships ± unlike some other assertive women. Elizabeth Willoughby's marital troubles led her to leave home, but to defend her interests she had to return; however, along with apparent submission, she wrote that `I shall refuse to enter into any hard condicions.' Willoughby took the conventional line, writing sharply to her that part of her letter `may minister occasion of offence' and that `I do not ®nd as yet by yor letter eyther that yow confesse yor fault or require pardon therof in such humilitie as is mete and convenient for the recovering of my goodwill'!20 `Bess of Hardwick' feuded notoriously with her fourth husband Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, so that Queen Elizabeth intervened, and the pair lived separately; the wife busy creating Hardwick Hall. Anne Clifford, `proud Northern lady' did not defer to her husbands, the earl of Dorset and the earl of Pembroke, nor even to King James, in her successful crusade to secure her inherited lands.21 Maria Thynne's strange much younger sister the pamphleteer Eleanor Davies, insisted on publishing, so that her angry husband burned her works!22 Sadly I know of no letters Eleanor wrote to him about that! Perhaps we know more about the wives who in their rhetoric and behaviour, de®ed the command for submission, the women who made demands, than we do about quiet domestic mice. A few family collections include anodyne women's letters. But if women disobeyed the strictures to stay indoors and concentrate on household matters, if they dealt with other matters and people, `meddled in the world', they probably wrote
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
which will pass and repass, allgiges vltes fregnan tolles, thou knowest my mind, though thou dost not understand me . . . Your horses are taken up, and I will take thee up when thou comest home . . .
more letters, and the letters were more likely to be preserved, since parts were about estate business, and so evidence of insubordination survived too. If women's letters to their husbands could mingle submission with mockery, advice, even de®ance, how did women write to other men? Were they self-abasing and humble to all men? Robert Cleaver recommended a good wife should also be modest, humble, kind and quiet in her dealings with others, and William Whately that a woman should use moderate and quiet speech to any men.23 Or did they throw their weight around with ordinary men, even when submissive to their own husbands? Elizabeth, the London sister of Joan Thynne, did not bother with humility when she wrote to Joan's husband, her brother-inlaw, without any ¯owery rhetoric, and even with open irritation. Some were just practical ± `I have sent gloves of carnation taffeta for your son' or `the true note of money laid out' for her brother-in-law and his family over two years. In 1600, she acidly told him that his son Thomas could not be sent to travel on the Continent for less than £100 per year, for `I hope your meaning is not that he shall go over to live as one that is enjoined to do some penance there.' Elizabeth threatened that if John Thynne refused to provide as much for his son, then she and her courtier husband would not help him by asking the queen for the boy's licence to travel, nor by informing the French ambassador! In 1601, referring to problems with Thomas, she very strongly criticised her brother-in-law for neglecting her advice: `if yourself would have followed my counsell, this had been clearely avoyded', and she told Thynne that in anger against his son he should not forget the love for his son, he should correct an error `rather than bitterly in displeasure condemne as an unpardonable offence'. Elizabeth lectured her brother-in-law outright, telling him to be a good and not a bad father to Thomas.24 Where money was owing, women could be pretty short and matter-of fact, especially to brothers ± Gresham Thynne sharply rebuked her brother John, the master of Longleat, in 1603, because she could not get money he was due to pay, but `is going to Court' and needed it.25 The next owner of Longleat, Thomas Thynne, was chivvied by his sister Dorothy as well as their mother, to pay Dorothy's inheritance due from the estate. Dorothy ®rst wrote a fulsome letter to him in 1606, hedging around the fact that in her current negotiations for marriage, he needed to cooperate: my mother . . . desireth a good Joyncture for me, but what is offered I know not: it may be these bearers her men can shewe you what is it, onely my desire is, as it is expedient, to understand your good likeing
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
82 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Alison Wall 83
She addressed it `to my most esteemed brother Sir Thomas Thynne knight'.26 But that match failed, and two years later Joan politely asked her son to help Dorothy: `myself and your sister do wholly reserve the managing of this business to your own best discretion'. No marriage occurred then, and in 1611 Joan wrote three increasingly angry letters to her son to pay his sister's inheritance, the ®rst of them complaining that he failed to come according to his promise. In the second she wrote `Good son, these bearers by authority from your sister are coming to you to receave her money which I hope you will care to make them payment of.' He still did not pay, for a month later still `you came not according to your promise, which gave both her and myself much discontentment . . .'.27 Irritated mothers through the ages have written like this, we may think, and to his mother, a son remains her child, even when like Thomas, he was knighted and an MP. But Thomas owed his sister her inheritance of £1000 ± maybe a million pounds in today's value, so it was a serious issue. Thomas's mother-in-law Lucy, wife of George, Lord Audley, also wrote angrily to Thomas. As the wife of an aristocrat, she could claim that her high status outweighed gender, that there was the social superiority, as well as the generational hierarchy. Thomas was often dilatory and irritating, even at 23 years old and more. Lady Audley wrote a long letter to rebuke Thomas: `Sonn Thynn, I receaved a letter som three weekes synse . . . lyke wyse now annother, wheare in I ®nde your Dyscontentemente and am sorye you take all in the worste parte'. She berates him sarcastically for complaining that she is withholding a small amount of money, which she did suppose `had byn your wyfes, and that I myghte have made so bowlde with myne owne Daughter' but `I meane not to mak bowld with her hense forthe for a halfe pennye', ironically apologising. (This undated letter was addressed to him as `esquire', so before August 1604 when he was knighted.) There were dif®culties about a ®nancial agreement, probably to overcome the lack of dowry and jointure arrangements because of Thomas's sudden marriage to her daughter. But she rebukes him on that too, writing that `for your assurance, yt ys nowe no lesse than a yeer synse I wyshed you to cawse your cownsell to drawe yt up . . . so as theare ys no faulte in mee yf all bee not ended to your lykinge'. This long angry tirade, though, she ends `Your mother and sure friend Lucy Audley'. Delays continued, however, and she imperiously told Thomas he must do his part; later, that he must stop troubling himself or his counsel over it till she has resolved some `new matter'.28 We should
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
thereto, for I hope your Brotherly love will herein and alwayes show your desire of my best advauncement.
note that Maria's mother, Lucy Audley, was organising the ®nancial contract, even though Lord Audley was alive and might be expected to handle such matters. Lady Audley's tone suggests that she is doing her best, and that Thomas is ungrateful and dif®cult. There is certainly no hint that the man is superior to woman in everything, nor that she is deferring to any other man such as her husband in handling the business. She told Thomas that if her plans worked, he should be satis®ed with suf®cient security, and less dif®culty than with other property that had apparently been suggested in settlement. And she hinted that she was dealing with great persons over it, and Thomas had jolly well better toe the line: `I would not make Poynts to tell you whom yt weare whose pleasuer I attend.'29 Joan Thynne attracted much male deference within the wider family and beyond, as she built up a personal following in Shropshire around Caus Castle, which she held and defended while her husband was at court or Longleat, and from 1604 as a widow. `Cousins' Reynold Williams, and others discussed legal tactics without talking down to her. In 1593, Williams wrote to her about her choice of jurors, and promised to support the favourable ones.30 James Croft wrote her in 1602 an unusually obsequious response to her thanks for hospitality, saying `a welcomer guest never came unto me' and assuring Joan that a friend of his would do her any good. Croft himself claimed to be `leaving my self always at yor devoti[on] to persue the love and honest of®ce of a poore frende'. He was declaring himself to be of her faction, probably in the long dispute over the Caus estates. And Croft was not a yokel, but the son of a courtier; he was a gentleman pensioner to Queen Elizabeth and soon to be knighted.31 John Iston wrote in 1605 `We (I meane of this neighbourhoode all) wishinge your good return to this quyet and true countye of Sallop . . . you can never have more love there than here.' Iston helped with the estate, and his ending offered deference, calling her `Your Worship'.32 Her supporters thought she should maintain her position in Shropshire rather than spend more time elsewhere. In 1608, Thomas Purslow also used the strongly deferential formula `your Worship' at the start and four more times in a letter, interspersed with `your' and `your Ladyship'. More signi®cantly, he referred to `Mr Newbury and others your followers'. So gentlemen and others belonged to her circle, and promised her their assistance in disputes.33 So far we have been exploring women's and men's relationships and the problem of female subservience. The extensive theoretical work on the construction of gender has focused on women's relations with men, and on women's perceptions of themselves and their roles as wives.34 Now, I
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
84 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
have become curious to see how women related to other women. How did they address them and what indications are there of attitudes to older or younger women, especially family members ± often among the most fraught relationships? For Elizabethan and Jacobean society emphasised not only values of patriarchy, but also of social hierarchy, that order and degree should put everyone at their proper level. Sumptuary laws even speci®ed gradations so that people did not dress to appear of higher status than they were! So did women, in practice, respond to such notions? Up to now, there has been little attention to female interaction among the elite. The letters of the Thynne family do include some interesting female interactions, and show that all was not sweetness and light. Before looking at them, let us consider brie¯y the letters of a young wife, Anne Bacon, married to Norfolk gentleman Nathaniel Bacon in 1569. She was initially sent off to live with her husband's family, despite fears of `my Lady's sharpness towards her'. Despite the pain, afterwards young Anne sent conventional humble thanks `my dutie most humbly rememebred unto your good Ladyship', and to `acknowledge my self greatly bounden to yow for the great care that yow alwaies had of my well doiunge duringe my beinge with yow'. Letters to her own stepmother were similarly humble `least by not writinge I sholde seame to forget that dutie which I justly owe'.35 Anne's letters show a vivid contrast between the approaches to different women in the family, for she was the acknowledged illegitimate daughter of Sir Thomas Gresham, and really was much humbler. Writing to her natural mother, she is much freer, telling her that she is sick of staying in relatives' houses and wishes she and her husband could have a house of their own, where mother could stay at length. With approaching pregnancy Anne fervently wished her mother were with her. She thanks her for some cloth `more than bestowed on me by any other towards my lying down'. This implicitly thanked her own relatively poor mother for managing to provide more towards the childbed than the rich stepmother and mother-in-law.36 The contrast in style stems largely from the difference in writing to an actual mother. But she also allowed for the difference in status between the recipients. Anne's mother was mere Mistress Dutton, addressed as `Mother Dutton'; the others were Lady Bacon, and Lady Gresham. The mother-in-law relationship was more problematic for Joan Thynne, who was sent to Longleat after her marriage, to be shown the ropes by her husband's stepmother Lady Dorothy Thynne. In 1576 16-year-old Joan complained bitterly to her young husband, then in London, about his family's treatment of her. She wrote from Longleat that
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Wall 85
86 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
But it was dif®cult on both sides. There is a colourful bitchy letter from Margaret, Countess of Derby to Joan's mother-in-law Dorothy, working up to the fact that she needs to be warned about Joan: Marry, the Alderman's daughter dissembleth not her kind. She is altogether bent to disgrace you and belie you, and as I believe doth greatly injure you and your house. She hath reported that you will not allow her meat, drink, or any other thing needful, and that by your means she is restrained in such a miserable sort as I shame to rehearse: you nickname her unto her face, and scorn and mock her behind her back. She saieth: with many other despiteful reproaches which for the vainness therof I am weary to recite. However, the countess could not resist reciting more details of Joan's misbehaviour, and went on: But in ®ne she concluded that was naught in you but pride, malice, and mischief . . . Therefore if you love your own quiet and credit, take heed of such venomous vermin, and now you be warned, be armed. Suffer not such moths quietly to harbour in your gown till they fret a hole in your nearer garment.38 The countess writes as a friend, and although her status is higher, that is not really apparent in the way she addresses Dorothy ± she just can't wait to tell! But there is a very strong social snobbery in her discussion of commercial types and the fact that they do not know how to behave: `the Alderman's daughter dissembleth not her kind'. Twenty-®ve years later, Joan's own daughter-in-law wrote to her in February 1602: My good mother, if you did but know at how high a rate I would estimate your favour, and how much I would endeavour to deserve the continuance thereof; the reverent conceit I hold of your virtuous disposition makes me rest assured that you would willingly bestow it; where it should be received with so grateful an acknowledgement of
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
almost daily my Lady keeps her accustomed courtesy towards me which I may count a hell to heavenly joys or such lady's love that will force me to leave this country . . . I hope you will not have me stay where I shall be so vilely abused as now. I am more meeter for some servant than for one of my estate.37
Alison Wall 87
This letter concludes `with as many wishes for the increase of your happiness, as yourself can desire / Your loving daughter at command / Maria Thynne'. Over a year later, she wrote: To you my dearly loved mother are these lines sent from her that hath vowed to make herself as worthy as her best service can make her, of so kind a mother as yourself . . . I crave nothing but your good opinion, which I will be . . . thankful for. The letter concludes `Your very loving and obedient daughter Maria Thynne'.39 As a young daughter-in-law writing to her husband's mother, these polite yet warm letters seem clearly to demonstrate the proper deferential and affectionate attitude from the younger generation to the older. They follow accepted style and are conventionally humble. But they are not quite what they seem, for there was a dramatic background to them, and further developments afterward. Thomas Thynne and Maria Audley had married seven years before, in a clandestine ceremony at night in an inn at Beacons®eld where Thomas had ridden from Corpus Christi, his Oxford college, and Maria travelled from the court by coach. The families were the most bitter feuding enemies, and the couple parted next morning and kept the marriage secret from the Thynnes for over a year.40 On hearing of it, Joan expressed her view of her son's match: `how hard is my hap to live to see my chiefest hope and joy my greatest grief and sorrow'. And his parents sought to persuade Thomas to repudiate the marriage.41 There followed a long lawsuit in the Court of Arches, Maria and her family defending the marriage, while Thomas's parents hoped that the wedding would be declared invalid and the marriage annulled. This outcome would have ruined Maria's honour, and any prospects of another match, as Lady Audley pointed out. But in the summer of 1601 the ecclesiastical court judge ®nally examined the young people in private under oath, and then declared it was a valid, intended marriage.42 Almost immediately, Maria started writing to Thomas's mother, in the terms we have seen. The letters were not of genuine feeling, but were seeking to soften her up to accept the marriage, and to create a reconciliation. On the ®rst of them, Maria put a lock of her dark red hair under her Audley family seal.43 (Maria wrote this letter more neatly and tidily than most of her letters, trying to impress.) It is likely that Joan
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
your goodness, and be requited with so large a measure of zealous affection.
had never even met Maria, for in 1602 she wrote `I cannot yet account of her'.44 That might help to explain what Maria was doing with the hair, but more it was an appeal to sentiment. If we had only Maria's ®rst few letters, without information on the true circumstances and the parents' hostility, we would have a very misleading view of the relationships, and think them much friendlier than they were. There was also a little in-laws' spat between the young pair's two mothers, Lucy Audley and Joan Thynne. On 10 June 1602, Lucy wrote to help the reconciliation, `notwithstanding the doubt long since conceived how any letters of mine might ®nd a grateful acceptation'. She wrote a rather roundabout letter, seeking friendship and justifying her own behaviour. She points out that Thomas is beloved to her, and asks Joan to accept Maria, who would `carry both a loving and dutiful regard to you as her husband's mother'. It is cautious, though not especially warm, ending `so I rest both your eyes and my hands, remaining your assured friend, Lucy Audley' ± which of course she was not, or not yet.45 But the phrase aimed to start communications. Lucy Audley wanted reasonable relations, but was touchy. (Maria herself also wrote three days later to Joan, possibly sent via Thomas, since the letter mentions that he is with his mother.)46 But Joan was resentful ± she waited two months to reply, and noted that she had expected to be sought out long since. She harps on the fact that she had lost her son, who once she had loved more than herself, to the marriage and to Maria's family.47 There is another dimension to these letters as well as the very complicated emotional situation. That is the question of social status. For Joan was still the alderman's daughter and wife of a country esquire, not even knighted. Lucy was the wife of George Touchet, Lord Audley, who sat in the House of Lords. Both women show they are aware of this difference. Joan uses `your ladyship' in the course of her letter. And she says she would not wrong inferior persons, `much less an honourable Lady of your place and reputation'. So she refers directly to the other mother-in-law's superior social position, but without becoming servile; indeed she is somewhat self-important and critical. It is not clear if anything came of these exchanges in June±August 1602. Earlier that year, Joan had even refused to see Thomas, telling people that he had dealt `monstrous unnatural and unkindly' to her, though she would not be a monster toward him, but a letter or two would not be enough.48 In July, Maria seemed to accept that reconciliation had failed, for she wrote a `last letter'. Nevertheless she wrote again at least twice more after that, mentioning Joan's letters to her (which do not survive).49 The patriarch of Maria's family, her grandfather Sir James Marvin, had joined the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
88 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
campaign, writing to John Thynne in March 1603 asking him to suppress all old griefs and dislikes, and accept his son's marriage. Marvin's appeal failed, and the Thynnes never accepted Maria, although in May 1603, Joan may have thawed slightly, and Maria was writing to excuse herself, signing, `your very loving and obedient daughter'.50 But Maria's apparent deference to her mother-in-law did not continue when their relative status altered greatly in 1604 on the death of John Thynne. Thomas as the heir, and Maria, took over the great estate of Longleat, displacing Joan. Moreover, Thomas was knighted in August 1604. Worse, John had died intestate, leaving arguments over inheritance. In 1605 Joan Thynne commenced a furious Chancery suit against Thomas, for her three younger children's inheritance. She still expressed bitterness about Thomas's clandestine marriage, complaining that without his parents' knowledge, he had taken to wife the daughter of a nobleman, without securing any dowry.51 So relations between the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law deteriorated further for two reasons: although the younger generation, Maria now was the social superior, with no need to toady. Joan was merely a widow. And apparently Joan had written criticising Thomas as well as the management of Longleat. Maria's de®ance came with a passionate and cutting invective, showing an extraordinary command of language to express revenge, and an unusual level of insult between women. She taunts Joan, saying: I confess (without shame) it is true my garden is too ruinous, and yet to make you more merrier you shall be of my counsel, that my intent is, before it be better, to make it worse. For . . . I intend to plough it up and sow all variety of fruit at a ®t season. I beseech you laugh, and so will I at your captiousness. Now, whereas you write your ground put to basest uses, is better manured than my garden, surely if it were a grandmother of my own and equal to myself by birth, I should answer that odious comparison with telling you I believe so corpulent a Lady cannot but do much yourself towards the soiling of land, and I think that hath been, and will be all the good you intend to leave behind you at Corsley.52 There is a lot more of this sarcasm, in total contrast to the earlier simpering reconciliation letters. No humility here, no deference, but a de®ant riposte, stressing Maria's higher status by birth. And not surprisingly, this is her last letter to her mother-in-law ± how could she ever follow this up?
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Wall 89
Clearly, some women could write remarkably potent persuasion, affection, as well as chiding or insult, especially vividly in the case of Maria Thynne. And these letters can help to answer some of our questions about how relatives viewed and wrote to each other. They referred overtly to social status. Words may sometimes be manipulated to produce effects, not necessarily to express actual feelings, and modes of expression alter according to the recipient. They alter with change of circumstance and of course with quarrels and reconciliations. The women knew their place (although they did not necessarily keep it), and they could use words passionately, to lash, as well as to love. They lived complicated emotional lives with a range of distance and closeness to different family members. In relationships with them they were certainly not cold and unfeeling, and they could express themselves powerfully: sometimes in deference and, despite the precepts, sometimes in de®ance.
Notes This is a revised version of the paper given at the Literature and History Conference, and to the History and English Research Seminar at Reading; I am grateful to the audiences at both and especially to Ralph Houlbrooke for helpful discussion. 1. William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (First edn 1622; 1634 edn), pp. 285±6. William Whately also opposed nicknames such as Tom, Dick, Ned for husbands: A Bride-Bush or, A Direction for Married Persons . . . (1619), p. 199. 2. Homily on Marriage (1563), any edition. 3. Philip Stubbes, A Christal Glasse for Christian Women: Contayning an Excellent Discourse of the Life and Death of Katherine Stubbes (1591); William Harrison, Death's Advantage Little Regarded . . . Two Funerall Sermons at the Burial of K. Brettergh (with a life by William Leigh, 1602, six editions by 1617); Nicholas Guy, Pieties Pillar: Or A Sermon Preached at the Funerall of Mistresse Elizabeth Gouge . . . (1626). 4. Stubbes, sig. A3. 5. Most of the letters of Joan Thynne and of Maria are printed, in modernised spelling: Two Elizabethan Women: Correspondence of Joan and Maria Thynne 1575±1611, ed. Alison D. Wall (Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 38, Devizes, 1983), (hereafter T.E.W.), along with some letters to them. Other documents from the MSS of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat, Thynne Papers (hereafter T.P.); my thanks to the late Marquess of Bath for permission to use them. In quotations from letters other than from the edition cited above, original spelling is retained, but abbreviations extended and punctuation added. 6. T.E.W., pp. 19±20. (I propose to discuss both political and family life in a book on the Thynnes 1540±1640). 7. T.E.W., pp. 16, 21.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
90 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
20.
21. 22.
23.
24. 25.
Ibid., pp. 2±3. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., pp. 32±3. Piamater means tender mother, OED. Angel Day, The English Secretorie (1595) includes examples for family subscriptions, such as `Your La. loving and obedient Daughter', `Yours everloving and most assured', pp. 13±16, and of whole letters, including invective to disobedient sons, Part I, pp. 42±6; II, pp. 34±47. William Fulwood, The Enemie of Idlenesse (1568); Abraham Fleming, A Panoplie of Epistles (1576). In¯uenced by Erasmus's De Conscribendis Epistolis, these books followed Roman rhetorical models. HMC., De L'Isle & Dudley, vol. 2: letters from Robert Sidney to Barbara, esp. pp. vii, 100, 102, 153. K. Acheson, The Diary of Anne Clifford 1616±1619 (NY and London: Garland Publishing, 1995), p. 10. Other works on Anne Clifford include George Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, 1590±1676: Her Life, Letters and Work (2nd edn, Wake®eld: S.R. Publishers, 1967); Richard Spence, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery [sic], (Stroud: Sutton, 1997). Bacon's letter: The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis, 1613±1644, ed. Lord Braybrooke (Privately pr. 1842), p. 83. T.E.W., pp. 11±12. Everyone in her family called her `Mall'; she told Thomas `make much of thy Mall when thou dost come home', and she punned on `mall' as in `Mallenchollye', Ibid., p. 33, & n. 5. Ibid., pp. 32, 33, 36, 37; T.P., viii f.6. T.E.W., pp. 37, 36. Margaret Ezell, The Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987) discusses the literature and the anti-female satire as entertainment; William Heale, An Apologie for Women . . . (Oxford, 1609), pp. 52±3; Edmund Tilney, A Briefe and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Mariage . . . (1568, refs here to 1571 edn), sig. Biij. Alice Friedman, `Portrait of a Marriage: the Willoughby Letters of 1585±6', Signs, ii, 3, (Spring 1986), 542±55, esp. pp. 550, 552. See also her House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). David Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977); for Clifford see n. 14. Since George Ballard's Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (Oxford, 1752, London, 1775), many people have written on Eleanor, including Esther Cope, Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never Soe Mad a Ladie (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992). R.C. [R. Cleaver], A Godlie Forme of Household Government (1600; ®rst edn 1598, later edns with John Dod), p. 87; Whately, Bride-Bush, (1617 edn), p. 41, discussed in Jacqueline Eales, `Gender Construction in Early Modern England and the Conduct Books of William Whately', Ecclesiastical History Society, 34 (1998, R. Swanson ed.), p. 171. T.P., vi ff.11, 197; Ibid., vii ff.185, 200. Ibid., v f.124.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Wall 91
26. Ibid., viii f.25. 27. T.E.W., pp. 45, 51±3. Domestic advice books do not clarify the age when a boy's obedience to his mother reduced. 28. T.P., viii ff.60±3, three undated letters, the ®rst before Aug. 1604, when Thomas was knighted; the others after, as they are addressed to `Sir Thomas Thynne'. I hope to include these in an expanded edition of the Thynne women's correspondence. 29. Ibid, viii f.63. 30. T.E.W., pp. 7±8, 35±6. 31. T.P., vii f.241. Croft, DNB. s.v. his father Sir James Croft, died 1590. 32. T.P., vii f.288. 33. T.E.W., p. 43. 34. Kathleen Davies, `Continuity and Change in Literary Advice on Marriage', in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, ed. R.B. Outhwaite (London: Europa, 1981) remains an excellent guide; Alison Wall, `Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice: the Thynne Family of Longleat', History, 75, (Feb. 1990), 23±38; Ezell, Patriarch's Wife. Margaret Sommerville, Sex and Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early-Modern Society (London: Arnold, 1995), esp. pp. 174±209, gives a general introduction to the theory. Non-elite women feature in research on witchcraft, and on defamation, notably Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), where con¯icts between women are explored. 35. The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, vol. 1, 1556±1577, eds. A. Hassell Smith, G.M. Baker and R.W. Kenny (Norfolk Record Society, 1978 and 1979), esp. p. 11, pp. 23±4, 25, 53, 60, 74, drafts in her husband's hand. 36. Ibid., pp. 25, 75, 78. Cf. Anne Clifford's very affectionate correspondence with her mother: Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, ch. 8. 37. T.E.W., p. 2. 38. Ibid., pp. 55±6. 39. Ibid., pp. 22, 31. 40. Alison Wall, `For Love, Money, or Politics? A Clandestine Marriage and the Elizabethan Court of Arches', HJ, 38, 3 (1995), 511±33; T.E.W., Intro. pp. xxv±xxvii; evidence based on unpublished MSS. All previous publications incorrectly dated the marriage to 1601 or 1603, and ignored the circumstances. 41. T.E.W., pp. 8, 9±12. 42. Wall, `Clandestine Marriage', esp. pp. 527±8. 43. T.E.W., pp. xxvii, 21 & n. 1; Wall, `Clandestine Marriage', p. 528. 44. T.E.W., p. 29. 45. Ibid., p. 26; T.P. vii f.232. The handwriting is a female style, but more carefully and decoratively written than her others. 46. T.E.W., pp. 26±7. 47. Ibid., pp. 28±9; T.P. vii f.237. Joan's normal hand is here much neater and ¯ourished ± she must have taken long over it. Most of her letters are in her hand; a few of her last ones are different hands, probably of her male retainers at Caus. 48. Samuel Bowdler reported to Thomas Thynne about his parent's attitudes and recommended ways to conciliate them, 28 March 1602, T.E.W., pp. 57±9.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
92 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
49. Ibid., pp. 27±8, Maria says she will not write again, though a postscript mentions a new letter from Joan which there is no time to answer; the next two, pp. 29, 31. 50. T.P., vii f.253; T.E.W., p. 31. 51. T.P. Vol. LXXXIV Box XXXVII, ff.4±105, comment on lack of `portion' f.87. Lord Chancellor Ellesmere's efforts to settle this, June 1605, T.P., vii ff.329, 330; viii f.72. In the Barrington family, inheritance by the son caused problems with his mother, nevertheless the relationship between Judith Barrington and her mother-in-law seems genuinely warm, as when she expresses hope that her mother-in-law would stay the whole summer: Barrington Family Letters 1628±1632, ed. Arthur Searle (Camden Society, 4th ser., 28, 1983), pp. 17, 68±9, 95, 152, 209. 52. T.E.W., pp. 33±5, undated but probably 1605.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Alison Wall 93
Fighting for Family in a Patronage Society: the Epistolary Armoury of Anne Newdigate (1574±1618) Vivienne Larminie
Over the last 20 years or so, the recovery of an impressive and expanding corpus of women's writing and the emergence, piecemeal, of evidence relating to individual female experience of childhood and youth, has to a modest degree revised upwards estimates of girls' access to academic learning in the early modern period.1 Nonetheless, even among the social elite, the nature and extent of the early education of many women remains unknown, and, given the frustrating lacunae of the available sources, may seem often destined to remain so.2 Anne (Fitton) Newdigate's formation is at ®rst sight a case in point. There is no direct evidence, as there is for the next generation of Fitton girls, that a governess or tutor was employed; it is not known whether she learned any foreign languages, or even if she spent any extended period in a household other than her own.3 What is clear, however, is that she was educated. She was educated in the general sense that she had acquired in good measure the social and managerial skills indispensable for holding her own in the competitive world of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean elite; she was educated in the particular sense that she possessed the technical and intellectual skills requisite for keeping detailed and careful account books, for appreciating musical, literary and classical allusions, and, above all, for expressing herself forcefully, eloquently and persuasively on paper.4 As a result, through periodic visiting in London and the provinces, and through an apparently frequent exchange of letters, Anne could sustain effectively a geographically far-¯ung circle of correspondents, which included courtiers, of®ce-holders, kin and servants. Her epistolary skills, and this range of contacts, proved vital to the Newdigate family. While during her husband's lifetime her letters maintained important links with the court, and nurtured them with leading local gentry in the county 94
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
7
where they were newly established, after his death in 1610 her powers of written persuasion were critical in rescuing her eldest son and his estates from the worst burdens of wardship and in forwarding the careers and marriages of all her children. Indeed, her eloquence, together with her aptitude for household and estate management and her strenuous efforts to cultivate, when she could, face to face contact with those who moved in London society, was critical to the family's very survival in the ranks of the greater gentry. Anne was born in October 1574, the elder daughter of Sir Edward Fitton of Gawsworth, Cheshire, and his wife Alice Holcroft.5 It is evident that she spent a signi®cant part of her youth in London and in close proximity to the royal court. William Kemp, the comic actor, in dedicating his Nine Dayes Wonder to `Anne Fitton, maid of honour', mistook Anne for her younger sister Mary, whose court career was to end in scandal in 1601, but it is an understandable mistake.6 If Anne did not attend the queen directly, she moved in the highest echelons of the social and political elite. Through her father's favour with Lord Burghley, she had an entreÂe to the Cecil household and called Elizabeth Vere a friend; her father was on visiting terms with the Stanleys, Earls of Derby; Francis Fitton, the great uncle whose favourite niece she was, was married to the dowager Duchess of Northumberland, and Lucy Percy called her cousin; she knew Arbella Stuart, a year younger than herself.7 On 30 April 1587, when she was twelve and a half, Anne married 16-year-old John Newdigate, the eldest son of another John Newdigate, a gentleman with many children and hidden debts. For the ®rst seven years and more Anne's life apparently was little changed. The young couple continued to live in Sir Edward Fitton's house and at his expense, as John went to university and as the saga of his grossly-encumbered landed inheritance slowly unfolded. If John lacked the anticipated ®nancial resources ± and he did to a staggering degree ± he was however well supplied with good connections. The relatives of John's mother Martha Cave ± the lawyer Crokes and the courtier Knollys ± and the near neighbours of his small Hare®eld estate, the Egertons, came within Anne's reach.8 Since they spent a good deal of time, it would seem, in London, habits of mixing with the eminent and the powerful were perpetuated. However, by 1595 Sir Edward Fitton, on this and on other accounts considerably the poorer, had sorted out his son-in-law's tortuous affairs to the extent that the young couple were able to take possession of the estate at Arbury in Warwickshire acquired by Newdigate senior, now dead. Thereafter John and Anne Newdigate made Arbury their main home. Arriving without money in a county with which neither of them had any
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Vivienne Larminie 95
prior connection and on an estate which needed energetic farming in order to make their ®nancial situation viable, they needed both to cultivate their new neighbours and to maintain vital connections with their friends in and around the court if they were to retain the social status to which they were accustomed. Some time could be, and was, spent visiting locally and further a®eld, but social intercourse through letterwriting was vital while farming and thrift dictated that they remain largely at Arbury.9 Judging by surviving correspondence, it was Anne Newdigate, rather than her husband, who took the lead in this. While John studied to improve himself as a Christian and a magistrate, churning out many folios of reading notes and some speeches to juries, it was principally his wife who received letters, from both female and male relatives, friends and acquaintances, and almost certainly above all she who wrote them.10 Although very little outgoing correspondence survives before 1610, incoming letters reveal as much: `I have delyverd your letter to my Lady Derbye', wrote great-uncle Francis Fitton to Anne in 1601, speaking of the great lady who was the Newdigates' neighbour at Hare®eld.11 In view both of the paucity of Anne's own writing from this period and of the fact that I have addressed elsewhere the signi®cance of others' letters to her in her husband's lifetime, I do not propose to dwell long on them, focusing primarily instead on the period of her widowhood, but because correspondence undertaken later so clearly rested on skills honed and contacts formed earlier, it is worth brief attention.12 From the beginning letters were critical in nurturing links with friends in London and the court. Correspondence kept communication alive between Anne and Francis Fitton, who gave generously of his time and money to prosecute the Newdigates' affairs in the law courts and elsewhere in London, and to get John a knighthood: `myne owne sweet niece I thanke you moche for your last of the 14 of this instante . . . and so lykewyse for many other before, because I honor you and love you as any the deerest friends you have'.13 A rare surviving reply of 4 March 1602, to `my assured good uncle . . . at his lodging at the redd cocke in the Strande', lends insight into the continuity of business between them, containing thanks for items of haberdashery sent from the city, mention of Anne's letters to royal of®cials and commendations to aunt Engle®eld.14 It was not just a one-way process, for the Newdigate family's bene®t. `Longing soe much as I doe to heere of your good agreement with the contrye life', wrote Henry Carye, later Viscount Falkland, to Anne in December 1596, `I have persuaded my comforteless eyes to watch till my hand might discover my desire to be satis®ed therein.' Frequent communication was
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
96 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
encouraged and would be reciprocated ± `wright with every occasion, soe shall you hence ordinarily receyve salutacons' ± and evidently need not depend on an urgent desire to pass on information ± `noe news here worthy you, all at this end of towne are become melancolique for want of yor presens. I love you and ever will.'15 Lady Margaret Hoby and Lady Maccles®eld wrote in similar, if less gallant vein, and as they moved between London and provincial estates several gentlewomen, including Elizabeth, Lady Grey, Mildred, Lady Maxey, and Elizabeth, Lady Ashburnham, evidently exchanged letters with their `sister', but no relation, Anne Newdigate.16 Sometimes letters were occasioned by services rendered, as when Lettice Digby, Lady Offaly, acknowledged Anne's help in looking after her family when she was absent from her husband's seat at Coleshill, and Frances Egerton, Lady Brackley, expressed appreciation of Anne's gift of a book.17 Sometimes letters were `mere' expressions of affection, as was Anne's own to Lady Gray in about 1611. Addressed to `my harts all honoring Lady', it displayed a dynamic and alliterative eloquence: al the actions of my pore lives pilgrimages performance . . . is to solicit our merciful redimer . . . that he would be pleased to power upon you as many blessed comforts as in his rich goodness he vouchsafeth to bestowe uppon his best beloved.18 Initially it may be tempting to dismiss such letters as of little value to the historian, being all rhetoric and no news, but that seems to miss a vital point: important ties were being nourished, and it was the women of the family who were writing and keeping the correspondence. The Newdigates' chief contact at court was Sir William Knollys, made comptroller of the household in 1596 and succeeding to various in¯uential of®ces thereafter.19 He wrote frequently to Anne, prompted ®rst by his regard for Sir Edward Fitton, then by his need to con®de unrequited love for Mary Fitton (`yt may be you contrye wits can give counsel'), but ®nally `for your own worthynesse', that made him profess himself to his `fayre gossepp sweete & pleasant Nan', `a most faythfull ffrend who will ever be readye to doe all good of®ces wherein I may stead you'. Anne's letters were taken seriously ± `your ffayre written letter & more ffayrely endited I have receaved [and] read more then once or twyse' ± and he paid tribute on another occasion to their impact ± `your ffew lynes but verye pythye and signif®cant' ± such that he feared to `be thought unworthye yff I should suffer your letters to returne unanswered'.20
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Vivienne Larminie 97
Ironically, Anne's other habitual court advocate and correspondent was her kinsman Vice Admiral Sir Richard Leveson, a leading Staffordshire and Shropshire gentleman, who became from about 1602 Mary Fitton's lover, and who was the father of Anne Fitton or Leveson, born in 1603. Mary was installed at Leveson's manor house at Perton, near Wolverhampton, where Anne, apparently the principal bridge between her wayward sister and her disapproving parents, was an avowedly welcome visitor. Between Anne and Leveson, who stood godfather to Anne's son Richard in November 1602, there was a striking degree of intimacy.21 Addressing Anne as `deare partner' and `sweet wyffe', he pleaded that, whensoever my love or service may stand you in any stead: as I do now beare the title of your husband: so let me carry this much credit with you that I wilbe more at your devotion than the best of husbands are generally to the best reputed wyffes.22 He needed no prompting to use his position to Anne's advantage: `lay any thinge upon me that this place and my power can afforde and use no other body but my self'.23 When his efforts and those of other friends ultimately failed to secure for Anne the position of royal wet-nurse in the winter of 1604±5, Leveson paid tribute to the power of the written word in soothing rivalries and jealousies in¯amed by competition for preferment in advising Anne to write to Sir William Knollys, declaringe your mind to be as free from entertayninge unworthy conditions as you were apte at ®rst to nouryshe any hope that mought bringe possibility of Advancement to your house and posterity, which you are able to express in better wordes, and I will deliver yf you thinke so good with some Addition of my own.24 If correspondence with courtiers at this period failed to ful®l quite all the Newdigates' ambitions, correspondence with local gentry seems to have contributed immeasurably to their securing and keeping a place in the front rank of Warwickshire gentry, even though their ®nancial situation continued fragile.25 Between 1599 and his death in 1606, Anne exchanged letters, as well as visits, with Sir Fulke Greville senior, one of the leading gentlemen in the county ± a JP, twice sheriff, recorder of Warwick and of Stratford, and with an illustrious reputation which John Newdigate, whose relationship with him was respectful but evidently more formal, was to celebrate in a personal obituary.26 Very affectionate and paternal in tone, Greville's letters bear witness to Anne's effectiveness in communication:
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
98 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
I only glory that I have a servant which conteynes all vertews, and the same draws to her the trew love & afecktion off all good mynds, & myne in good faythe, sweet servant, in such sort that, thoughe I have the honor to be called your Master, you have the powre to command me & any thinge I have, & in that so redye to obey that I shalbe most glad when you shalbe pleased to use that your awcktority.27 After 1606, the connection was sustained through Fulke Greville the younger. In February 1608 Anne's kinsman Philip Mainwaring, steadily working his way up in Greville's service, `which I doe impute to be for your Ladyship's sake', rated Anne's regular letters so highly as to wish to be the bearer of them.28 If an indistinguishable mixture of affection and ambition instigated and characterised Anne Newdigate's correspondence before 1610, necessity underpinned it thereafter. Assiduous attention to farming and coalmining on John Newdigate's part, and to careful account-keeping on his wife's, had begun to generate a respectable estate income, with prospect of further enhancement.29 However, in the spring of 1610 John fell seriously ill. The couple had ®ve children under 13, including his heir, also John but known as Jack, who was just short of ten years old. This was potentially disastrous. The combined weight of continuing debt and of testamentary provision for Anne's jointure and younger children's portions would already put an overwhelming long-term burden on the estate, but an 11-year wardship until Jack reached his majority brought the prospect of control not only of Jack's education and marriage but also of the entire Newdigate inheritance passing into the hands of ®nancially predatory third parties.30 Anne and her steward William Whitehall, a younger son from a Staffordshire gentry family who served the Newdigates from the time he and John Newdigate were at Oxford in the 1580s until his death in 1637, calculated that only by Anne's obtaining the wardship and exploiting the estates vigorously herself, without extracting her jointure representing two-thirds of its value, could her children's rights be preserved.31 At this point, building on all the contacts she had previously established, and summoning all her epistolary skills, she took up her pen on behalf of herself and her children, and having succeeded in her ®rst aim, continued to deploy it to great effect for the remaining eight years of her life. Her surviving letters ± to friends, to of®cials and to servants ± reveal possession of a complete armoury of means of persuasion and of command, a woman well able to hold her own in written discourse. Even as her husband lay dying, Anne Newdigate wrote to the earl of Salisbury, as master of the Wards, seeking her son's wardship. Two fair
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Vivienne Larminie 99
drafts among the Newdegate papers are not in her hand, although a few corrections almost certainly are, but there are several indications of her authorship.32 A third draft in William Whitehall's hand was later endorsed by her younger son Richard `my mother's letter'.33 The style of all the drafts is consistent not only with a re¯ective memorandum beginning, `What I have by my Lord Graunteing me the wardship . . .', unquestionably in her hand but also with her other extant letters.34 Francis Beaumont of Bedworth, one of Anne's most assiduous correspondents and of advanced literary tastes, keen to see and digest at leisure what was spoken of as a particularly successful example of Anne's work, requested and received a copy of the letter.35 While the family account books reveal she regularly retained eminent legal counsel in London and thus had access to technical advice about procedure in the courts, there is no evidence that she relied on a secretary to compose business letters for her, or needed to do so.36 In fact, to be a woman, and able to exploit all the possibilities of that role, carried distinct advantages. Playing to the full the theme of an inadequate and defenceless female petitioner, her initial petition actually conveys an impression of con®dence, determination and polish. Presented as the `unmannerly presumption of a most unfortunate woman', `in this heavie extremitie being altogether frendles', writing `scraling womanishe lynes', the petitioner, `the unfortunate mother of ®ve yonge chylderen, all nursed upon my owne brestes, and now in burthen with the sixt in this uncomfortable tyme . . .' facing `I and all my pore children [being] utterly ruinated' nonetheless is not deserted by striking or emolient turns of phrase. Anne is assured of Cecil's `owne noble hart's disposition and worthie compassion of all', of `the wonted favorse . . . your honourable clemencie hath ever given testimonie of to widdowes and infants'. She acknowledges `I and myne bounde whilst wee breath to solicite the almightie for your encrease of honour to your owne noble hartes content.'37 The letter, supported by court advocates from among Anne's circle of correspondents, had the desired effect, in spite of competition for the wardship from the very well-placed Lord and Lady Harington.38 Greville's manservant Philip Mainwaring reported from court on its impact on 26 March 1610: your letter to my Lord was so passionate and moveinge as you did not need any better meanes for the obtayninge your desyer. Yet in my hearinge (my Lord speakinge of Sir John's death & your pitifull letter)
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
100 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Vivienne Larminie 101
Having got what she wanted, Anne herself proffered an acknowledgement in a further letter, more overtly con®dent but no less eloquent than the ®rst, and calculated ± with what degree of conscious arti®ce may be ultimately unfathomable ± to cement Cecil's good opinion. `Being engaged in all bound dutie for your favorable respect of mee and myne (releeving myne almost dying spirittes) in graunting unto me the wardshippe of my sonne, which was the onely comfort could in this time befall mee', she was prompted to communicate her `so great contentment, received from your honoure'. She was not afraid of appealing to platitude, but invested it with her own self-conscious if still unoriginal stamp: And although it be an ordinary phrase to say, I will pray for your honoure: yet I beseeche you favour me so much, as to beleeve, that with all constant heartes sinceritie, I will not faile daylie to solicite the Almightie, in your most earnest devotions, to graunt unto you the blessed happines of your own desires.40 Securing the wardship allowed Anne Newdigate, together with William Whitehall (although during her lifetime his role was patently subsidiary), complete control of her children and the chance to continue ef®cient, forward-looking estate management at Arbury, but it did not entirely insulate her from the problems connected with an under-aged heir.41 One neighbour, Mr Robinson, took advantage of the complications of wardship to press claims to some land belonging to the Newdigates. The Master of the Wards being, by this time, none other than Sir William Knollys, it is not entirely surprising that the court initially found in John Newdigate's favour, but Robinson found means of pressing his suit further.42 As the case dragged on through the courts, Anne had again occasion to write to Knollys in April 1616, displaying the familiar deft, effective mixture of apologetic and self-deprecation, and of con®dent and eloquent presumption. `Being obliged to your Lordship by sundrie your noble favoures to me worthles of any', she presumed to `troble' him. Hearing he had not been well ± `whose health I humbly beseeche God speedely & perfectly restore, to his glorie and your wellwisheing freinds comfort ± wanting other meanes to present my humbly sute unto your Lordship in this so short a times liberty', she `humbly beseech[ed] his Lordship', `to pardon this my unmannerlye boldness,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
three or four great persons . . . moved my Lord very earnestly for your good, who answered he had & would respect you.39
necessity enforceing', before proceeding to a clear outline of the situation in the courts and her own request.43 Unfortunately, not even the favour of so partial a judge as Knollys could prevent Anne's adversaries from pursuing their cases in other courts. A year or so later she felt compelled to apply to him again, relying on a letter `to be my solicitore', employing characteristically a winning mixture of piety, ¯attery and unanswerable rectitude: when your Lordship heares the equitye of the cause: I desire your favoure to me & my sonn as your owne wise iudiciall harte tells you it iustly deserveth, for it is Only A compackted trick of malice invented to troble me. But God hath hitherto often delivered me [from] their mischeifous plots & I make no [doubt] but so he ever will especially now I fall into the hands of so gracious A iudge as your Noble selfe. Which I hold as A great happiness to me.44 One of Anne Newdigate's trump cards in pressing her claims with the great was that she had renounced the idea of a second marriage for the good of her children. Were she `so accursed a woman as to marry agayne', she pointed out in a private memorandum, it would be `with a private purpose of my own commoditie to defraud my children'.45 However, she did not lack suitors, and not wishing to alienate any potential friends and well-wishers, used her epistolary skills to strike a ®ne balance between encouragement and repulsion. The most persistent was Francis Beaumont of Bedworth, who despite his high-¯own and learnedly allusive letters, did not scorn to hand Anne's replies round his family as models of their kind.46 It is not dif®cult to see why. Anne wrote carefully that, `these many testamonies of the contineweance of your frendlye respect of me can not by me be so worthlesslye esteeme[d] as silently to receave them, and neclect a little thanks (though to pore a requitall for so rich a curtesie)', but she kept her distance, establishing Beaumont's exact relationship to her: were she to neglect to acknowledge the courtesy, she would heape uppon myselfe that which I hate to be burthened with all, haveing bin ever precisely careful rather to cherishe a good opinion conceaved of me then to give just cause to extinguishe it, knoweing it much easier to get a frend then to keepe one.47 Anne used the medium which she had so successfully employed to get and keep friends to prosecute day-to-day estate business, as when she
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
102 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
wrote on 1 April 1615 to a `worthy knight' from whom she had received `sundrie testimonies of your freindly desire to performe al loveing of®ces to me & mine', presuming `thus unmanerly now to troble you' for assistance in effecting the lifting of a mortgage on the family's Brackenborough land.48 She also used it in 1614 to try to gain for her sons' tutor the living of Hinckley, ®ve miles from Arbury (as she observed) and thus suf®ciently near to allow him to continue to teach them until they went to university. Immediately she heard of the previous incumbent's death she wrote to a cousin, although `my last to you was but yesterday', seeking his assistance and informing him she had also written to Philip Mainwaring `my Lord Chancellor's man' since it was in his master's gift. Deprecating her own judgement ± `being ignorant in al thinges; much more in a business of this nature' ± she was none the less con®dent that she might approach potential brokers and recommend the man.49 Her greatest energies, however, were reserved for persuading kinsmen to be her agents in ®nding suitable marriage partners for her two eldest children, Mary and Jack. Striking up an acquaintance with her late husband's cousin Sir Anthony Chester of Chicheley, she had the satisfaction not only of having her letters well received ± `I cannot expresse how acceptable your kinde letters are to me' and `the sympathie of your letters received . . . revived my quayled spirites' ± but of his making careful enquiry for a match in Buckinghamshire.50 Command of the medium of correspondence, and con®dence in using it for her purposes, are displayed most notably in a series of letters to Sir Henry Slingsby, preserved among the Slingsby manuscripts. Slingsby, addressed as `the ®rst in the ranke of my dearliest beloved friends' was approached to help in the search for a match for Jack in 1617, and apparently responded most helpfully. The appropriate acknowledgement was ¯attery, at which Anne was adept: `the thanks I returned for your love and favoures are pore requitals to equale your worthye desert; neither can I ever be satis®ed that my best acknowledgement is suf®cient, by anye expression to discharge the debt I owe you'.51 And on another occasion: words are not suf®ciently powerful rightly to express what I owe you, yett doe me the honore to believe that whersoever I am, you have an affectionate cosin, that wisheth you as much blessed happiness as your own worthy heart can desire.52 Anne continued to present herself as the champion of her vulnerable children's future happiness seven and a half years into her widowhood, commending Slingsby as `your good selfe whose love is so respectively
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Vivienne Larminie 103
104 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
mistake not my purposs about my sonn, that I ever ment to entertaine any match for him, till that were answered, you so lovinglye motioned (here I seriouslie profess that I thinke my self so exceedinglie much bounde to you; & am so con®dent in your well-wisheing of me & mine that any match you shall please to propose for him. I shalbe so desireous to effect; my sonns lykeing therto agreeing) that I will referr my selfe to you for the conditions.53 Yet for all the ¯attery, and all the closing apologetic ± `fearing I have wearied you with this tediousness' and `these dumb lines' ± letters to Slingsby, like the letters of other men to her, were marked in some respects by frankness and an impression of minds meeting as equals.54 Anne was coy neither about her ®nancial means nor about her ambitions. Slingsby had suggested that Jack's chances of a good match might be enhanced if he possessed a knighthood, which Anne `confessed' she would `be most glad to purchase at an easy rate . . . for I doe thinke it might be an occasion of his soner bestoweing, because women are sometimes ambitious, especially young ones'.55 She had approached a member of the privy council, she explained in another letter, who had promised to procure the knighthood: `I will shrive my selfe unto you', she told Slingsby, `I acquainted him that it was your devise, for the better advancement of my sonn in marriage.'56 Evidently Slingsby had been made party to the reasons for the urgency of Jack's ®nding a bride ± until he did so there was no money either for his sisters' dowries or his younger brother's portion ± for Anne was candid about the slim prospects for a match with the daughter of a recently deceased merchant, one Mr Dorrington: `I thinke that portion I expect will not be had there' and `it is not like to be neare that sum our conveyniencie hopeth after'.57 Candid also about her intent to lobby all who might possibly help her to establish her children, Anne betrayed a paradoxical combination of passive piety and active ruthlessness. `God's wil be done', she remarked, apropos the procuring of the knighthood, `unless I sonner determined to have made some frend an instrument for effecting of such a business.'58 God's purposes would prevail ultimately, but in the meantime her responsibility in her calling as a mother and an estate manager was as great as her husband's had been as a godly magistrate. `I humbly thanke God . . . whoe is the worker of the minde; when his will is, he will I hope
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
carefull for the good of my pore chickens; uppon whose well doeing my lives cheife comfort dependeth'. Disarmingly, if not entirely truthfully, she put herself completely in Slingsby's hands:
send A happie matche for [Jack]; in the mean time I must uss the meanes & pray for a blessing.'59 Here indeed was a masterful woman, revealed by her letters as entirely equal to holding her own in dif®cult circumstances. Her 17-year-old son was, she reported to Slingsby, malleable as to his marriage: `yett have I great cause to thanke God for his respect to me, for will ever say whatsoever I will have him do; he will do it, though contrarie to his owne fancie . . . both for his good & his sisters.'60 Although Jack `sayth he can never have A pretier wench' than Mistress Dorrington, there was, Anne af®rmed, no dif®culty when the match was abandoned: `he is well satis®ed: whatsoever I persuade to, he is most willing to yield unto'.61 It is in Anne Newdigate's letters to her deputy steward William Henshawe, contemporaneous with those to Slingsby, that there emerges most strikingly that subtle combination of piety, humanity, determination and habit of command, together with a clear grasp of the way the world worked and what was required to conquer it for the bene®t of her family. She was still taking advantage of old friends and contacts, and in letters to a trusted servant, could review their usefulness. Twenty years on, old correspondent Henry Carye was now `Chancellor of the Exchequer', where the Newdigates had business: `I hope well since Mr Chancellor is the iudg. It seems he is often absent. I pray you make his [secretary] sure by what friends you can.'62 Master of the Wards, Lord Knollys was still an important contact, if not entirely reliable: `I hold it not so convyenient to write to my Lord Knollys till I have occasion to uss him, for it will but be forgotten.'63 A stream of authoritative instructions were handed to `good Willi' ± enquire after such-and-such, commend me to so-and-so, `buy me 3 quire of large gilt paper', `I have writt to Sir Francis Engle®eld to enquire out A match for Jack, put him in mind thereof.'64 But although there was no need to ¯atter Henshawe, Anne was generous, in a manner indicative of a successful manager of people, in her thanks to him and his relatives. She was sympathetic to `your poor uncle [Whitehall], who has had a long ®t in great extremity of pain', and frank, in this last year of her life, as to her fears for her own health. She extended a kind of intimacy, revealing her priorities and her methods.65 A potential `friend' who proved unreliable was to be `trouble[d] . . . in that kinde no more since he is so spare of his breath & liberall in his promise', but the task was not abandoned: `I hope yet to have A friend that will get it done eyther by payeing or prayeing or both.'66 Judging by her letters, that hope was not empty. Con®dent in the combined ef®cacy of God's bene®cence and her own efforts, she faced the world. `God blesse me and mine, I most humbly beseeche him, from the devil & all his instruments malice, & give me
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Vivienne Larminie 105
triumphe & victorie over my enemies as he hath done, & I trust in Jesus Christ will do.'67 By the time Anne Newdigate died in July 1618, she had not actually succeeded in arranging marriages for her eldest son and daughter.68 Nonetheless, through the determination, the con®dence and the persuasive skill so evident in her letters, she had made a critical contribution to her children's future well-being, preserving the estate from wardship, enhancing its revenues and, above all, securing invaluable friends and patrons. It may be that, as Francis Fitton and Fulke Greville implied, Anne Newdigate was extraordinarily endowed with charisma and especially adept at correspondence. However, the men who wrote to her were not noticeably surprised by ®nding themselves corresponding with a woman, and the women who wrote to her acknowledged a sisterhood in correspondence. Letter-writing was evidently a natural medium for oiling the wheels of friendship and patronage, and if in the process use was sometimes made of the convention of female weakness, relations between men and women were equalised to a signi®cant degree.
Notes 1. See for example: Sara Heller Mendelson, `Stuart Women's Diaries and Occasional Memoirs' and Patricia Crawford, `Women's Published Writings 1600±1700', in Women in English Society 1500±1800, ed. Mary Prior (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 181±210 and 211±82; Elaine Hobby, Virtue of Necessity: English Women's Writing 1649±1688 (Virago, 1988); Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen, eds Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox (London: Routledge, 1989), intro., pp. 1±27, and bibliography, pp. 225±35; T. Krontiris, Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1992); Women, Writing and History 1640±1740, eds Isobel Grundy and S. Wiseman (Batsford, 1992). On education itself, see: N. McMullen, `The Education of English Gentlewomen 1540±1640', History of Education, 6, 2 (1977), 87±101; Linda Pollock, ` ``Teach Her to Live Under Obedience'': the Making of Women in the Upper Ranks of Early Modern England', Continuity and Change, 4, 2 (1989), 231±58; Helen M. Jewell, Education in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 11±13, 56±60, 133. Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500±1800 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), remains cautious about the degree of scholarly education even for the elite: `a very small group of women mainly from noble families did experience the classical curriculum' (p. 366); they were `very much exceptions' (p. 367). 2. Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550±1720 (Oxford: OUP, 1998), pp. 90±1.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
106 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
3. I am grateful to Dr Caroline Bowden for this information. 4. What follows is an extension of research undertaken for my thesis, `The Lifestyle and Attitudes of the Seventeenth-Century Gentleman, with Special Reference to the Newdigates of Arbury Hall, Warwickshire' (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1980), and for Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: the Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and their World (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer for the Royal Historical Society, 1995). 5. WCRO, CR 136, B832. 6. F.B. Williams, Index of Dedications and Commendatory Verses in English Books before 1641 (1962). For Mary Fitton, and for an earlier analysis of Anne Newdigate and her correspondents, see Lady Newdigate-Newdegate, Gossip from a Muniment Room (Nutt, 1897). 7. HC 1558±1603, 2, 124; Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, pp. 127±8; WCRO, CR 136, B2 (Arbella Stuart), B434±6 (Lucy Percy), B513 (Elizabeth Vere). 8. Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, ch. 2, esp. pp. 25±30, and ch. 9, esp. pp. 126±30. 9. Ibid., esp. pp. 10±17. 10. V.M. Larminie, `The Godly Magistrate: the Private Philosophy and Public Life of Sir John Newdigate, 1571±1610' (Dugdale Society occasional paper 28, 1982). For evidence of Anne's authorship of letters, see below. 11. Newdigate-Newdegate, p. 39. 12. For a discussion of Anne as a wife, see Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, pp. 80±1, 90. 13. WCRO, CR136, B133±144; Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 127; Newdigate-Newdegate, p. 41. 14. WCRO, CR136, B304a. 15. WCRO, CR136, B66. 16. WCRO, CR136, B220±222 (Hoby), B273 (Maccles®eld, endorsed by Anne `one of my deare friends'), B166±180 (Grey), B270 (Maxey to `my deare & sweete sister'), B10a (Ashburnham). See also Mendelson and Crawford, p. 244. 17. WCRO, CR136, B400, B105. 18. WCRO, CR136, B306. 19. Pam Wright, `A Change in Direction: the Rami®cations of a Female Household, 1558±1603', in The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey (Harlow: Longman, 1987), pp. 147±72 (pp. 153±4). 20. WCRO, CR136, B231±43; Newdigate-Newdegate, esp. pp. 14±16, 27±9, 36±7. 21. HC 1558±1603, 2, 464±5; G.P. Mander, `Sir Richard Leveson and Mary Fitton, The Wolverhampton Antiquary (1933), 368±76. I am indebted to Mr Richard Wisker for this last reference. 22. WCRO, CR136, B256. Discussed in Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 81. 23. WCRO, CR136, B253. 24. Ibid., CR136, B259. 25. This continued after 1610: see for example, WCRO, CR136 B63 (Peter Burgoyne, 1615), B101 (John Dugdale, 1616). 26. Ibid., CR136, B182±90, B701; Ann Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire 1620±1660 (Cambridge: CUP, 1987), ch. 2.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Vivienne Larminie 107
27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.
WCRO, CR136, B182. WCRO, CR136, B276; Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 31. Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, pp. 14±15. Ibid., 31±2. WCRO, CR136, B307, B311. WCRO, CR136, B307±8. WCRO, CR136, B309. WCRO, CR136, B311. WCRO, CR136, B305. Vivienne Larminie, ed., `The Undergraduate Account Book of John and Richard Newdigate, 1618±1621' (Camden Society Miscellany, 30, 1990), pp. 154, 207±8, 246±7; Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 38. WCRO, CR136, B307. Newdigate-Newdegate, p. 89. WCRO, CR136, B277. WCRO, CR136, B308. Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, pp. 36±9; WCRO, CR136, B512. WCRO, CR136, B310. WCRO, CR136, B313 (two letters). Ibid. WCRO, CR136, B311. WCRO, C136, B24±39 (Beaumont letters); Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 87, n. 55. WCRO, CR136, B34 (endorsement). WCRO, CR136, B318. WCRO, CR136, B312. WCRO, CR136, B69±70. YAS, Slingsby MSS, DD56/M2 (12 September 1617). YAS, DD56/M2/58 (14 August 1617). YAS, DD56/M2 (9 October 1617). Lady Newdigate's simultaneous appeals to others for help is evident from her letters to William Henshawe: see below. Ibid., (12 September 1617). YAS, DD56/M2/58. YAS, DD56/M2 (12 September). Ibid. YAS, DD56/M2/58. YAS, DD211 (25 November 1617). YAS, DD56/M2 (9 October 1617). YAS, DD56/M2 (12 September 1617), DD211. WCRO, CR136, B314 (25 October 1617). Ibid. Ibid., and B316 (22 November 1617). WCRO, CR136, B314, B317 (26 November 1617). WCRO, CR136, B314. Ibid. See Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, pp. 38±9, 108±23.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
108 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
`How Subject to Interpretation': Lady Arbella Stuart and the Reading of Illness Sara Jayne Steen
A friend recently was diagnosed with re¯ex sympathetic dystrophy. To those who have compassion for her pain, she is an amazing woman, successful as a partner, parent and professional in spite of interspersing nerve blocks between commitments. To those who suspect her cautious words about `not feeling well today' she may seem unpredictable, too apt to reschedule appointments. She fears that her in-laws read her every statement within the context of their concern about whether their son is being manipulated by a malingerer. Because hers is a relatively `new' disease in terms of public awareness, her acquaintances have little direct knowledge and must extrapolate from their experience of related behaviours. As Sander L. Gilman notes, being ill is value-laden: `Like any complex text, the signs of illness are read within the conventions of an interpretive community that comprehends them in the light of earlier, powerful readings of what are understood to be similar or parallel texts.'1 That process of reading illness is signi®cant to discussions of letters written by the Lady Arbella Stuart (1575±1615), ®rst cousin to King James VI and I and niece to Mary Queen of Scots. From her later twenties until her death at nearly 40, Stuart repeatedly became ill (as she argued) or manufactured illness as a political ploy (as onlookers often judged) or engaged in a combination of the two. Sometimes she could not, or refused to, eat or drink, which places her among those fasting women who have received much attention in recent years. Her recurrent illnesses garnered extreme reactions from contemporaries, some of whom pitied her bodily in®rmity and `grief of mind' while others doubted her veracity and condemned her obstinacy. Any analysis of Stuart's prose must also involve to some degree a reading of her illness.
109
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
8
In this essay, I would like to examine Stuart's letters, and those of her contemporaries who comment on her case, in relation to modern and early modern beliefs about physical and mental health. Through these letters, we can explore seventeenth-century illness in words chosen by a bright, articulate woman and can compare her language with that of her observers. Because the health of a member of the royal family was a political issue, investigations were held and accounts shared, so that a surprising amount of evidence remains about how Stuart's illnesses were perceived. Extant letters and reports even allow us to glimpse a doctor± patient relationship sustained over years and complicated by politics at the highest level. Through their words, Stuart and her contemporaries have created the multiple texts of her illness that we interpret and create again as we read. I do not minimise the dif®culty of interpreting past medical terminology; the language of seventeenth-century illness to modern ears often is ambiguous. In Stuart's case, however, we have suf®cient information to attempt a current diagnosis. As I have suggested elsewhere2 and believe more strongly as a result of additional discussions with physicians and historians of science, it is probable that the Lady Arbella Stuart suffered from acute intermittent porphyria (AIP), a disease unknown in the seventeenth century but that `can be diagnosed in retrospect with some con®dence' because of the `speci®c combination of seemingly unconnected symptoms'.3 AIP is characterised by recurrent attacks of abdominal pain, with stomach and liver distention; severe muscle pain and weakness; mental shifts ranging from depression and excitement to delusion; dif®culty in swallowing and subsequent emaciation; convulsions; coma; and, if severe enough, death. The patient may suffer from restlessness, insomnia, a rapid or irregular pulse, or sensitivity to light. Extant letters by or about Stuart indicate that nearly all of these symptoms were present. The disease is biochemical, an inherited, dominant enzyme de®ciency; symptoms appear after puberty, usually in the third or fourth decade, and more commonly in women.4 Attacks may be mild or intense, with sudden onset and equally sudden recovery, and may be provoked by infection, stress, malnutrition, endocrine factors or medication.5 In addition, there is evidence of porphyria in her family. The disease appears in heterozygous individuals: any child of an affected parent would have a 50 per cent chance of having inherited the defect even if no symptoms were present. With symptoms, the diagnosis is increasingly likely. Because King James's physician, Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, maintained detailed notes, we have clinical evidence of James's
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
110 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
symptoms, including thick discoloured urine, that medical geneticists ®nd convincing. James's son Prince Henry probably died from porphyria, and James's daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia, was described as having had the disease.6 The illness can be traced forward through the house of Hanover, as dramatised in the 1995 ®lm The Madness of King George, and has been con®rmed by testing of descendants. Similar symptoms are recorded for James's mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and Arbella's father, Charles Stuart, as well as for James's grandfather, James V of Scotland. The common genetic source would be Margaret Tudor, who, like her sister Mary, suffered from recurrent episodes of weakness and pain; she died of what was described as `palsye'.7 Although the evidence is not as conclusive as modern testing, the case is strong. If we accept that diagnosis, AIP becomes part of the text of Stuart's illnesses and thus a framework for reading. That Stuart likely had porphyria does not indicate when her words might have been impulsive, re¯ecting physical excitement, and when carefully planned. It does not imply that she was not in control of her words at any given time. Until porphyria is in the most advanced stages, the higher critical functions such as reasoning remain intact between and even during attacks, which may occur months or years apart.8 Someone suffering from porphyria might learn to understand these attacks and how others respond to them, even to use the disease. If we accept the premise that Stuart suffered from AIP, then her life and writing involved a more complex interaction between patient, disease, intelligence, body and social situation that leaves much room for interpretation. No one in the early seventeenth century could have imagined an enzyme de®ciency. The medicine taught in English universities was Galenic, or based in humours: blood, choler, melancholy and phlegm. If one humour were imbalanced in relation to the others, the patient's mind might be affected. Grief could provoke imbalance; joy might restore health. The doctor's duty was to treat the whole patient, serving as con®dante and moral philosopher, because the body could not be cured without the mind.9 Women practitioners, who could not attend the university but who nonetheless played a central role in health care, shared this theory. Certainly women in Stuart's family were knowledgeable: her cousins Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, and Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel, composed medical texts,10 and the Lieutenant of the Tower once called Dr Moundford when Stuart became ill because if he had not, Elizabeth and Alethea's mother and Stuart's aunt, Mary Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, would have insisted on visiting `to minister Physick'.11
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Sara Jayne Steen 111
The diseases most relevant for our understanding of this milieu are melancholy and hysteria, somewhat variable and even overlapping diagnoses. Timothy Bright in his Treatise of Melancholie (1586) de®ned natural melancholy as a grosser part of the blood that in excess `surchargeth the bodie, and yeeldeth vp to the braine certaine vapors, whereby the vnderstanding is obscured'.12 Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) said the disease had as many symptoms as Proteus had forms: depression, grief, leanness, sore eyes, wind, stomach pain, inability to sleep, restless fantasies, idle talk and others. Causes included loss of liberty and sorrow.13 According to Michael MacDonald in his analysis of physician Richard Napier's case records, melancholy was the fashionable diagnosis for gentlefolk with emotional problems signalled by delusions, fear or sadness.14 Hysteria, from hystera, the Greek word for uterus, was the disease of the wandering womb, in which either the disturbed womb or vapours from it were believed to move upward through the body with disastrous effect. In 1603, Edward Jorden, a prominent member of the College of Physicians, published A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (with mother a term for uterus). In hysteria, he said, the organ most affected was the brain, leading to `®ts' affecting sense and motion. Symptoms might include an irregular or racing pulse, a damaged imagination or reason, loss of appetite, pain and convulsions. The mind was key: `here is also some Melancholike or capricious conceit . . . which being . . . remoued, the disease is easily ouercome'.15 Although these writers usefully acknowledge the role of the mind in illness, the logical corollary, especially if physic proves ineffectual, is to place responsibility on the patient, who must take charge of his or her passions. To a degree, then, melancholy and hysteria are what we would call psychosomatic, or in seventeenth-century language, the result of perturbations of mind. Writers such as Bright, Burton and Jorden assumed that these diseases could be suffered by both sexes, but the illnesses differed in connotation. Women were prone to melancholy because they were perceived as emotional, but melancholy increasingly became associated with men and the heroic suffering that led to art, while hysteria suggested women and triviality. Similarly, melancholia was suffered largely by the upper classes, while the lower classes were likelier to be thought hysterical.16 Not surprisingly, Stuart employed the language of melancholy; contemporaries' comments re¯ect both respect and disrespect. Until Stuart was 27 years old, she suffered only the usual childhood ailments. The question of illness ®rst occurs with letters that Stuart wrote in early 1603, after she had attempted to contract an unauthorised
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
112 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
marriage. During the 1602 Christmas holiday, while living in the custody of her grandmother, Elizabeth of Hardwick (Bess), Stuart had revived a proposal to marry another claimant. Queen Elizabeth's adviser Sir Robert Cecil quickly sent Sir Henry Brounker to investigate. Although the queen forgave Stuart, Bess became increasingly restrictive, and Stuart determined to force court attention to her situation by creating a ®ctional lover in prose. Stuart correctly anticipated that her letter would be forwarded to court.17 While she awaited reply, Stuart either deliberately began to starve herself or became too ill to eat and drink and then discovered that fasting conferred authority. Bess wrote to Robert Cecil on 21 February that Stuart had been `very sick w[i]th extream payne of her side w[hi]ch she never had before' and under a doctor's care for two weeks. She had been `inforced to take much phisick . . . but [she] ®ndes little ease./ I see hir minde is the cause of all.' Bess saw Stuart's pain as genuine and yet interpreted her behaviour as deliberately intractable; she wrote that Stuart `hath made a vowe not to eat or drink in this house at Hardwick or where I am'. To save Stuart's life, Bess had her moved elsewhere,18 and Brounker was dispatched, as Stuart had hoped. When Brounker returned, Stuart confessed her ®ction, then continued to employ it.19 Cecil, Brounker and the Privy Council joined her grandmother in condemning what seemed to them irrational behaviour. Cecil noted in one letter, drawing on the general theory of melancholy and hysteria, `I think that she hath some strange vapours to her braine', a phraseology at best disparaging.20 Privy Council members thought her letters written in `strange stile' and their release `inconvenient' and `disgracefull'; they suggested that she needed friends who could keep her `w[i]thin bounds of temper and quietnes',21 emphasising her need for self-control. Her grandmother wrote to Cecil and Sir John Stanhope that Stuart was `so wilfully bent' there was no reasoning with her; she spent her time writing idly, or foolishly.22 Brounker had argued from his ®rst visit that Stuart had been `somewhat distracted', suggesting a state between agitation and derangement. Later he told the Privy Council, echoing Bess, that `much writinge' had led to the `distempering of her braynes apparente enough by the multitude of her idle discourses' and to Cecil described her `wilfulnes'.23 Catholic priest Anthony Rivers said of the members of the court: `they give out that she is mad'.24 Historians often have considered these letters, which are rhetorically distinct from Stuart's other letters in being more ¯uid, angry, and associational, as evidence of mental disturbance, even weakness of character, and described them as `hysterical'.25
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Sara Jayne Steen 113
Stuart's language, however, is very different from that used by her scornful readers. In a letter written to Sir Henry Brounker on 4 March, she alludes to the lover early in the letter but explains at length and with frustration that she has been threatened and verbally abused, against Brounker's instructions, the moment he left Hardwick Hall. She has taken action in spite of `®nding my selfe scarse able to stand what for my side and what for my head'; she has `forti®ed my weake body as well as I can' and hopes that Brounker, who calls himself her friend, is ashamed to see his word broken before he could have reached his night's lodging.26 Two days later, she wrote to him that Sunday, the day of rest, can `not priviledge my travelling minde from imploying my restless penne'.27 Her most extended discussion occurs in a letter written to Brounker (and thus, as she knew, to Cecil and other Privy Councillors) on 9 March, the day before she attempted to escape with her uncle Henry Cavendish and 40 armed men. Here she mourns the Earl of Essex, executed for treason, and compares herself to him as one maligned by enemies. Stuart describes Essex's friendship and her sorrow. These are, she says, `malincholy thoughts' provoked `by the smarting feeling of my great losse who may well say I never had or shall have the like frend nor the like time to this to need a frend in Court'. She adds that she is well aware of how her text will be read: I do it [write thus much] not to be requited with your applause . . . nor that my troubled wittes cannot discerne how unlookt for, how subject to interpretation, how offensive almost every word will be even to you. But for somm reasons which I will tell you least, you returne to that opinion I tooke so very unkindely at your hands That the more I writt to the lesse purpose it was. First as I voluntaryly con®ne my selfe to teares silence, and solitarinesse . . . so I determined to spend this day in sending you the ill favoured picture of my griefe. Similarly, she knows that he will consider hers a `peevishly tedious' letter. Why has she written it? Because, she says, being allowed no company to my likeing and ®nding this the best excuse to avoid the tedious conversation I am bound to, I thinck the time best spent in tiring you with the idle conceits of my travelling minde till it make you ashamed to see into what a scribling melancholy (which is a kinde of madnesse and theare are severall kindes of it) you have brought me and leave me, if you leave me till I be my owne woman and then your trouble and mine too will cease.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
114 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
She emphasises that she is `in sorrow, sicknesse prison and many wayes distressed', of `malincholy innocence', and argues that she must try for relief `with speed because my weake body and travelling mind must be disburdned soone or I shall offend my God',28 presumably by committing suicide, a threat she could be certain the court would take seriously. Stuart's description of herself is of someone physically weak and in pain, troubled by grief and imprisonment, restless and excited (if the last suf®ces as a modern equivalent for a `travelling minde'), a suffering that she casts as melancholic and heroic. That she describes her wits as `troubled' and repeatedly employs the phrase `travelling minde' is signi®cant as a re¯ection of Stuart's understanding of what was happening to her. One might expect someone of royal rank in Stuart's situation to portray herself heroically to the court, but talk of suicide usually suggests serious distress. If Stuart had had an attack of AIP, then her comments about her muscular weakness, mental excitability, and efforts to be strong are not solely metaphorical or hyperbolic. She might have been capable of functioning intelligently and writing with rhetorical sophistication during either a painful attack or its aftermath or both. When King James's succession was established, Stuart was permitted to come to court. The `strange style' of her writing ceased. The letters Stuart wrote over the next seven years reveal no emotional disturbance and few discussions of physical ailments, a shift that probably suggested to some that her words had been, as they thought, wilfulness. Only when the throne no longer was at issue did any courtiers who had read her letters express sympathy. Stuart's uncle Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, wrote that Robert Cecil had advised King James to tell her he was satis®ed by her compliance and she could choose her place of residence; otherwise `it would redooble hir greefe, and af¯iction of mynd, wherw[i]th she had beene too too longe already tormented'.29 The second time that Stuart's health and letters were at issue was in 1610±11, after Stuart's clandestine marriage to William Seymour. During Stuart's years at court, King James had repeatedly promised to restore her patrimony, and thus establish her ®nancially, upon her wedding; but he had not approved any marriage. To the king's outrage, Stuart wed without permission a young nobleman who had a minor claim to the throne. Both were arrested. The ®rst indication of Stuart's illness occurred within weeks. According to the testimony of Stuart's attendant Anne Bradshaw ± taken during an inquiry in 1618, three years after Stuart's death, when James was frantically investigating rumours that his cousin had secretly given birth to a child ± in 1610
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Sara Jayne Steen 115
the Lady was distempered her body swelled, her gowne was let out shee her selfe let fall words that shee thought shee was w[i]th child but shee was not to her knowledge. Doctor Momford was the phisitian, this distemper fell into an issue of bloud w[hi]ch came from her. There was never any midwife p[ro]vided, neither was it ®tting, for this hapned 3. monthes after shee was maried and shee began to swell a month after mariage. The issue of bloud contynued 3 dayes and shee showed some of it to Doctor Momford.30 It is unclear whether the `shee' who showed the blood to Dr Moundford was Stuart or Bradshaw, but the wording argues that Stuart's physician did not perform a gynaecological examination, not surprisingly, given their sexes and stations. What happened is uncertain, but the swelling associated with an attack of AIP can mistakenly suggest pregnancy.31 The Thomas Moundford mentioned above had become Stuart's physician sometime after she joined James's court. By then, Moundford was well established. He had received degrees from Cambridge in the 1570s and early 1580s and by 1594 was a fellow of the College of Physicians, of which he served seven times as president. He was an expert on melancholy and hysteria. Moundford was both physician and divine, and professionally respected although his social status was well below Stuart's aristocratic rank. In 1603 Stuart had described as illness what others called obstinacy; in 1610±11 the situation recurred, with the difference that Stuart had allies such as Moundford. By January of 1611, King James had informed Stuart that she would be removed to Durham. Aware of what northern exile had meant to her aunt Mary Queen of Scots, Stuart fought to remain in London. First, she appealed for a writ of habeas corpus.32 Then, whether from muscular weakness or strategy or both, and under great stress, she became too ill to travel. Stuart was put into a litter, but told her carriers she could not continue. The Privy Council sent Sir James Croft with the king's command to physically remove Stuart `by the strength of mens handes . . . in case you ®nde hir still so willfull in that course of disobedience as to refuse to go on'.33 Stuart was carried six miles to Barnet. During these weeks, Moundford became Stuart's advocate; he consulted with her uncle Gilbert Talbot as though they were a team and argued her case with the king. From the beginning, however, Moundford did not believe that Stuart's weakness had a physical cause; its source, he told Gilbert Talbot, was grief. Nonetheless the poor condition of her body meant she could not travel without risk to her life.34
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
116 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Sara Jayne Steen 117
felt her pulse and entered into some discourse of her weaknes and in®rmities yesterdaye: and this morning he had a sighte of her uraine and agayne felt her pulse. I am sure that by nether of theis he can warrant ether amendment of her grefe, or contynuance of lyfe, if some contentment of minde be not joyned with physicke which I with all dewe respecte will cause to be ministered when tyme and oportunyte of place shalbe afourded us / In the meane tyme I am inforced to insiste in cordials.35 That Moundford thought Hammond's examinations of pulse and urine would be useless may re¯ect pique at having another physician consulted and perhaps increased the alliance with Stuart indicated by his use in his letters of `us' and `my Lady'. Pragmatically, he hoped that his care for his `distressed, weke and comfortlesse pacient' would be acknowledged.36 Because Moundford found no physical cause, he offered Stuart the good counsel indicated for melancholics. Stuart's uncle Gilbert agreed that `the indisposition of her boddy . . . is far the worsse, by the disquietnes of her mynde' and thanked Moundford for advising her to be patient and obedient. Gilbert said the king had told him in disgust `it is ynoughe to make any sound man syck to be carryed in a bed in the manner she is, much more for her whose unpatient & unquiett spirites heapeth uppon her selfe far gretter indisposition of boddy', suggesting, as did even compassionate observers, that the fault was in part her own. Gilbert regretted that `melancoly thoughtes . . . have gotten the uper hande of her' and was certain that if she believed the king's displeasure would not endure, `I sholde not muche doubte of her spedy recovery.'37 Dr Hammond concurred and told the Privy Council that Stuart was assuredly very weake, her pulse dull and melancoly for the moste parte, yet somtymes uncertayne; her water badd, showynge very great obstructions [suggesting colour or sediment in the urine]; her countenance very hevy, pale, and wann; nevertheles she was free . . . from any fever, or any other actuall sycknes, but of his conscience he protested that she was in no case to travayle untill God restored her to somme better strengeth, bothe of boddy and mynde.38 King James granted a month's rest. By 17 April Sir James Croft wrote to the Privy Council that to his knowledge Stuart had not been able to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
King James demanded a second opinion and sent Prince Henry's physician, Dr John Hammond. Moundford reported to her uncle that Hammond
walk the length of her bedchamber: neither did he ever discover her out of bed. He said she was `dejected', envisioning exile in its worst forms.39 Stuart's language in her letters, however, argues a reading other than that of a frightened woman who has made herself sick, though Stuart certainly appears to have been angry and frustrated. In the summer of 1610, she wrote to her husband, then in the Tower, in language that re¯ects her understanding that sorrow affected the body: For Gods sake let not your griefe worke upon your body. you may see by me what inconveniences it will bring one to. And no fortune I assure you daunts me so much as that weakenesse of body I ®nde in my selfe.40 After her disrupted journey, Stuart spoke more forcefully of her illness. For example, she wrote to Lord Fenton, in a heavily revised letter, `I have binne sicke even to the death from which it hath pleased God miraculously to deliver me for this present danger, but ®nde my selfe so weake.' She complains, in passages she later deleted, that `I can neither get clothes nor posset ale for example nor any thing but ordinary diett . . . not so much as a glister [enema]' and issues a threat: neither phisition nor other shall comme about me whilest I live till I have his Majesties favour with out which I desire not to live, and if you remember of olde I dare dy so I be not guilty of my owne death. Stuart suggests that she might allow herself to die, perhaps by fasting, without actively committing suicide, a mortal sin. She hopes that Fenton will help her at a time when she can hardly lift her pen: `my weaknes is sutch that [writing] is very paynfull to me to write and cannot be pleasant to any to read'.41 Similarly, when she appealed to Sir Robert Cecil, Stuart explained that `the extremytie of greefe . . . hath almost brought me to the brinck of the grave'.42 She wrote to one lord of her `af¯iction' and asked him to move others on her behalf, `my weaknesse not permitting me to write particulerly' to each one.43 She asked the Privy Council to intercede: I am in so weak case as I veryly thinck it would be the cause of my death to be removed any whither at this time though it weare to a place to my likeing. My late discomfortable journey (which I have not yet
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
118 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Sara Jayne Steen 119
In this letter, although Stuart focuses on her illness, she again is assertive, even aggressive, in her threat of what `the world would conceive' if she were forced into suicide.44 Although emphasising her weakness would have been strategic, she might have been straightforward. Stuart persuaded the king to extend her recovery time by offering, in Moundford's words, `her submission in a letter to his heighnes . . . with all dewe acknowledgment of her recoverye from the grave by tyme most gratiuslye graunted by him'.45 In her petition, Stuart responded to what James and the Privy Council had said, as recorded in letters sent to Croft and Moundford.46 Extant copies of these letters are in Stuart's handwriting or that of her attendant; that she was allowed to copy them suggests the sympathy of her keeper and her physician and Stuart's active involvement in these exchanges. In her request, Stuart answers every argument, carefully revising to tone down her anger. She is well aware of the discrepancy between her presentation of her illness and others' readings of it and directly confronts that difference, expressing her grief that James believed reports `which impute that to my obstinacie which proceeded meerelie out of necessitie'. She emphasises that she `endeavored by all good meanes to make my extreame weakenesse knowne to your Majestie'. She thanks James for the weeks earlier granted, describes her improvement, and requests an additional three weeks, by which `Doctor Moundford hopes I maie recover somuch strength as may enhable me to travell'.47 In the ®nal version of this letter, Stuart adds a further reassurance: And . . . as an arg[u]ment that I had never anie other thought then to gaine your Majesties favoure by obedyence I do promise to undergoe the Jorney after this time expired without anie resistans or refusall to do such things as are ®tt for mee to do to make my Jorney<s> less painefull, or perillous. On one draft, next to this passage, is a marginal notation that, had James seen it, might have given him second thoughts: `as thoughe I had made resistans etc. and so the Jorney more perilous and painefull by my selfe whereuppon I must confess I bely my selfe extreemely in this'. These words are resentful, not deferential, and they are written on a draft likely intended only for Stuart's private ®le, thus suggesting the genuineness of her weakness and inability to travel in Stuart's own mind. Conceding to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
recovered,) had almost ended my dayes and I have never since gonne out of a few little and hott roomes.
James's alternative reading of her illness, telling him what he wanted to hear, was a necessary deception to achieve her ends. When Stuart used the respite to plan her escape to France cross-dressed as a man and was physically capable of making the attempt, many people believed that her illness had been a ruse. (The rapid recovery associated with AIP often leads to accusations of duplicity.) The Venetian ambassador wrote to the Doge and Senate that Stuart had `feigned illness for many days previously, and was seen by no one but the doctor'.48 Even if an attack had occurred, Stuart perhaps pretended to be ill in the days before her escape; it is not surprising that James doubted Stuart's obedient words. Dr Moundford was among those immediately committed prisoner on suspicion of collusion.49 Soon after Stuart was recaptured and imprisoned in the Tower she again was reported to be ill. No extant letters can be con®rmed to have been written by Stuart after she entered the Tower, but documents about her health are numerous. Stuart was attended by another physician in prison, and her relationship with Moundford (who had been quickly released) altered, although she and her aunt Mary contributed £400 to the College of Physicians, perhaps by way of apology or payment to him.50 The Lieutenant of the Tower wrote that in 1612 Stuart had fallen ill and revealed, perhaps deliberately, that her aunt planned to deliver her to Roman Catholics who hoped to convert England through the crown. The Lieutenant obtained permission for Dr Moundford, `being her ordinary Phisicion in whome she dyd repose greate trust' to visit. Before Christmas, Stuart again fell into what Lieutenant Waad called `fyttes of distemper and convulsyons' and Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester, described as `greate distemper and vexatyon'. Aware of what others would suspect, Waad af®rmed that her `dangerous distemper . . . could be no ®ction'.51 As he wrote of his visits, Moundford understood the potential consequences of offending his audience. His reports to Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, who was in charge of this investigation, are detailed and cautious; Moundford refers not to `my Lady' but to `her Ladyship'. Even so, his statements suggest he had doubts about Stuart's veracity. He testi®ed that he found Stuart in bed, `as I thinke sleeping', though her attendant said Stuart could not eat or sleep. Stuart, he reported, then awakened and told him she was upset with her aunt. `Good Madame' Moundford said, remember one rule which I have often repeted: I did learne it of a wise woman. it is this. If thou be Croste, Crosse not thy selfe. and seing good Ladye that this rather Agritudo then Morbus [rather sickness than
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
120 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Sara Jayne Steen 121
It is not surprising that Stuart refused to talk further. Moundford here adopts a superior moral position, assuming that Stuart need only adjust her thinking to rise from bed. When he returned the next morning, Moundford commented on Stuart's insomnia and restlessness, Madame, I nowe doe not marveyle that yow sleepe not being this disquieted. for we physitions holde that Corpus animam sequitur in suis actionibus: Anima vero Corpus in suis accide[n]tibus [The body is governed by the spirit in its actions; but the spirit is governed by the body only in non-essential matters] and here nowe in your Ladyship I ®nde that mentis agitatio quae nunquam acquiescit in this ®tt perturbat omnia [an agitated mind for reason of which one cannot rest . . . throws all into confusion].52 Stuart's aunt Mary Talbot argued that the source of her niece's sickness was melancholy arising from rumours of her husband's `deboshed [debauched] cariage' in Paris and that Stuart, oppressed with grief, would be sorry for her words when `she came to her selfe', suggesting that Mary might have had experience with similar episodes before. Questioned later about the plot, a seemingly recovered Stuart rose and terminated the conversation when she chose. She is reported to have spoken of the episode as her `late dangerus sickness'.53 During the last years of Stuart's life, indications of disability alternate with indications of health. At one moment Stuart is handling her ®nancial affairs and working for her release and then is described as in `one of hir ®ttes'.54 Her illnesses are often characterised cavalierly. Likely in early 1613, at the time of Moundford's visits, Northampton wrote that Stuart `is in verie great danger at this present of no speciall disease but of a wastinge with an extreem debility[.] she hath neyther taken broth nor any drink more than once theas three daies which excesse on fastinge breedes idolnesse', his phraseology indicating that he saw her fasting as deliberate. He reports that she no longer wants to live, `stormes with extremity' at the idea of being attended by a physician or divine, and was for a time in `a kinde of traunce'.55 Nonetheless, Northampton, often himself characterised as duplicitous, says he is incredulous, given his
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
disease] the practise of this rule is verye nedefull. Then her Ladyship replied. I knowe not what it is. Well Madame saide I: your Ladyship shall ®nde my olde Cordiall of Pacience and Humilitie to be a most sovereigne medicine if it please yow to use it, soe ®nding her unwilling to use any farther speache I did take my leave.
knowledge of `more giddy partes plaid formerly by hir'. Her fasting, he says, is pretence: `god knowes what supplies are brought when the curtines are drawne'. In unpleasant terms, he laughs about what sound like delusions on Stuart's part and jokes that he's been told she can drink if tricked into toasting Devonshire's health. He describes her accusations of her aunt as `the trippes and turnes of an vnstaid tounge' carried about like a `whorly gigge'. Some have argued that her health might improve if she were removed from her `dismall' lodgings, but Northampton rejects the suggestion: if that works, he says, everyone in the Tower will `counterfaite as cunningely'.56 Writing of the rumours that were circulating that spring of 1613, John Chamberlain also is ¯ippant: she is `distracted' and `crakt in her braine'. Over a year later, he writes that she is `far out of frame this midsommer moone'.57 On 8 September 1614, the Privy Council wrote to a Dr Fulton that Stuart `is of late fallen into some indisposition of body and mind' and needs someone `of gravity and learning' to offer comfort to a `Christian in cases of weakness and in®rmity',58 the ®rst time during these last years the court employed such sympathetic language. It would make no sense to send a minister to someone who lacked discernment. In the Tower Stuart was read through her illness, and in part silenced by it, as courtiers could suspect her words because she was `far out of frame'. Nonetheless, Stuart retained suf®cient authority that her every hinted accusation was investigated. For a year before her death on 25 September 1615, Stuart refused to allow a doctor to feel her pulse or examine her urine, a decision she was capable of enforcing, and a sensible choice if she had realised that medicines could provoke or increase her pain. The Venetian ambassador heard that her death was accompanied by a sudden tremor and weakness of the lower limbs; her aunt Mary Talbot said she had not been told of Stuart's renewed `weakness' until two days before Stuart's death.59 The ®nal contact between Stuart and Dr Moundford occurred after her death, when he and ®ve fellow physicians were ordered to conduct a postmortem. According to their report, she had been suffering from a growing cachexy [ill health and malnutrition] which day by day increased due not only to her own neglect and the refusal of remedies . . . but also to an extremely sore condition of her back from a prolonged period of lying in bed. . . . Thus she had induced a con®rmed indisposition of her liver and extreme emaciation of the body. From which conditions . . . we con®rm that death must necessarily follow.60
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
122 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
To physicians who may have resented being put aside and likely chose their words with care, Stuart `had induced' the conditions that led to death, a position congruent with James's opinion that she died `contumacious',61 or rebellious. Popular opinion held that she died of sorrow, with `griefe possest',62 a reading that has continued to the present; in a 1998 Tales from The Tower television episode Stuart is portrayed as having died of grief when her husband failed to write.63 In the reading of illness, and thus of Stuart's life and letters, one seemingly small adjustment can make an enormous difference in interpretation. Some of her contemporaries viewed the Lady Arbella Stuart with compassion, even though they saw her as a royal melancholic who needed more self-control; others considered her a political manipulator, an actor, a wilful woman, eventually a madwoman in the Tower. Insanity has long been the diagnosis for women who do not conform to their culture's de®nition of modest womanhood, as the Lady Arbella Stuart clearly did not. The evidence suggests Stuart's understandable need, in extraordinarily dif®cult circumstances, to take charge of her own life. If those circumstances were complicated by a recurrent illness, as they probably were, an intelligent woman coped impressively in the face of continual suspicion and scepticism. Reading Stuart's illness through the lens of acute intermittent porphyria means reconsidering her words and those of her readers. We might say, for example, that medical advances have given Thomas Moundford a small dose of what he prescribed: a cordial of humility. Although I do not mean to denigrate Moundford, who seems to have been a caring physician, there is something unsettling to modern ears about repeated requests to exercise self-command. More disturbing if we imagine recurrent attacks of pain is the amused detachment with which the Earl of Northampton writes of Stuart's `®ts'. The Lady Arbella Stuart's pain and weakness may have been quite genuine, however intelligently, even cannily, she may have used illness to her advantage. That she was capable of pretence, as in the creation of a ®ctional lover, makes interpretation of her writing more complex. Although she necessarily viewed what was happening to her in the context of seventeenth-century medicine, Stuart was aware of and rejected readings of her illness that denied its actuality. In the marginal note of that petition to James in which Stuart promises to travel north obediently, she writes `as thoughe I had made resistans . . . whereuppon I must confess I bely my selfe extreemely in this'.64 Stuart also was alert to the nuances of language and the process of reading while she shaped her prose with what she described in 1603 as a `travelling minde'. In her longest letter to Sir Henry Brounker, she did not want him to think for a
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Sara Jayne Steen 123
124 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Notes 1. Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 7. 2. In my edition of The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart (New York: OUP, 1994), pp. 96±100; references to Stuart's letters are indicated by L.A.S. and letter number. 3. Ida Macalpine, Richard Hunter and C. Rimington, `Porphyria in the Royal Houses of Stuart, Hanover, and Prussia: a Follow-up Study of George III's Illness', in Porphyria ± A Royal Malady: Articles Published in or Commissioned by the British Medical Journal (London: British Medical Association, 1968), p. 23. 4. Isabel Allende describes her daughter's death from porphyria in Paula, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (Thorndike, Maine: Hall, 1995). Allende imagines a sorcerer who has put a time bomb in a young girl's body that everyone forgets until she is 28 and it goes off, p. 82. 5. Attallah Kappas, Shigeru Sassa, Richard A. Galbraith and Yves Nordmann, `The Porphyrias', in The Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease, ed. Charles R. Scriver et al., (7th edn; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), vol. 2, pp. 2103±59; and Jennifer B. Jeans et al., `Mortality in Patients with Acute Intermittent Porphyria Requiring Hospitalization: a United States Case Series', American Journal of Medical Genetics, 65 (1996), 269±73. 6. On James and Henry, see Macalpine et al., pp. 26±35; on Elizabeth, I am indebted to John M. Opitz, MD. I am also grateful to physician Robert J. Flaherty, biologist Thomas Valente, and historians of science Monique Bourque and Pierce C. Mullen for conversations about AIP. 7. Patricia Hill Buchanan, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), p. 269; and Nancy Lenz Harvey, The Rose and the Thorn: the Lives of Mary and Margaret Tudor (New York: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 231±2. 8. Conversation with Dr John M. Opitz. 9. F. David Hoeniger, Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992); and Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: an Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 10. Grey's A Choice Manuall of Rare and Select Secrets in Physick and Chyrurgery (1653) and Talbot's Natura Exenterata (1655). 11. BL Add. MS 63543 ff.11±12. 12. (London; facsimile rpt. Amsterdam: Da Capo Press, 1969), pp. 2±3. 13. The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (1932; reprinted New York: Vintage Books, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 37, 250±2, 259, 302, 343±4, 383, 407±8; vol. 2, pp. 9, 30, 102±3, 109. Although Burton's work was published six years after Stuart's death, many ideas were current earlier. 14. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: CUP, 1981), pp. 150±60.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
moment that `my troubled wittes cannot discerne . . . how subject to interpretation . . . almost every word will be even to you'.65
15. Edward Jorden, A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (London: Windet, 1603), sigs. B1±H1. 16. See Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Malady: a Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to 1642 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1951); Elisabeth Bronfen, The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and its Discontents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: from Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Mark S. Micale, Approaching Hysteria: Disease and its Interpretations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Juliana Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Ilza Veith, Hysteria: the History of a Disease (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 17. L.A.S., 7. 18. Hat®eld House, Cecil Papers 135 f.150. 19. L.A.S., 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. 20. On a copy of L.A.S. 12, Cecil Papers 135 f.163. 21. Cecil Papers 135 ff.168±9. 22. Ibid., 92 f.1. 23. Ibid., 135, ff.114, 174, and 175. 24. Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus: Historic Facts Illustrative of the Labours and Sufferings of its Members in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Henry Foley, vol. 1 (London: Burns and Oates, 1877), p. 53. 25. For example, E.T. Bradley, Life of the Lady Arabella Stuart (London: Bentley, 1889), vol. 1, p. 143; B.C. Hardy, Arbella Stuart: a Biography (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 115±16; Ian McInnes, Arabella: the Life and Times of the Lady Arabella Seymour, 1575±1615 (London: Allen, 1968), pp. 112±14; and David N. Durant, Arbella Stuart: a Rival to the Queen (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), pp. 106±7. 26. L.A.S., 12. Word in brackets (<) represent additions or replace deletions in the MS. 27. Ibid., 14. 28. Ibid., 16. 29. LPL MS 709 f.86. 30. BL Trumbull Add. MS 36; see also University of London, Senate House, ULL MS 20 ff.145±50. 31. Macalpine, p. 37. 32. L.A.S., 93. 33. BL Add. MS 34727 f.12. 34. BL Harl. MS 7003 f.106. 35. Cordials, which often contained wine or laudanum, might have aggravated an attack of AIP. Moundford here distinguishes between cordials and physic, such as purgatives. 36. BL Harl. MS 7003 f.106. 37. Ibid., 7003 ff.114±15, 116±17. 38. Ibid., 7003 ff.116±17. Italics mine. 39. Cited in Marie Theresa (Villers) Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon (London: Murray, 1852), vol. 3, p. 155. 40. L.A.S., 82.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Sara Jayne Steen 125
41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.
Ibid., 94. Ibid., 97. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 95. BL Harl. MS 7003 f.107. Ibid., 7003 ff.118±19; BL Add. MS 34727 f.12; BL Harl. MS 7003 ff.120±1. L.A.S., 101. CSP Venetian, 12/168: 23 June 1611. BL Harl. MS 7003 f.140. George Clark, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 186. BL Add. MS 63543 ff.11±12; BL Add. MS 63543 ff.7±8. BL Add. MS 63543 ff.5±6. I am grateful to historian David Cherry for translation. BL Add. MS 63543 ff.11±12; BL Add. MS 63543 ff.3±4. BL Cott. MS Titus C VI f.89. I am grateful to historian Calvin F. Senning, who brought to my attention these Cotton manuscripts. Ibid., f.94. Ibid., f.99. The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N.E. McClure, 2 vols (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), 1, pp. 434, 437, 443, 546. Lewis, Lives of the Friends, vol. 2, p. 339. `Art. X', Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1896, p. 512; HMC, 11th Report, Appendix, Part 7, Manuscripts of Lord Hoth®eld, p. 83. 28 September 1615, College of Physicians `Third Book of the Annals of the College of Physicians of London from the Year 1608 to the Year 1647', p. 75. `Art. X', Edinburgh Review, p. 512. Beinecke Library, Osborn MS b197, p. 203: Epitaph in Tobias Alston's commonplace book. Ardent Productions with Eyemark Entertainment for The Learning Channel. L.A.S., 101. L.A.S., 16.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
126 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Tudor and Stuart Women: their Lives through their Letters Rosemary O'Day
In the light of recent debates concerning the role of women in early modern society and the possibility of historians `knowing' what this role was, the letters written by, to and about women seem full of potential as a source of appropriate knowledge. In this chapter I shall be concentrating upon letters from women while not contesting the importance of many other types of source material, such as diaries, journals, autobiographies and account books. Moreover, letters will not be (and should not be) regarded simply as isolated texts, ripe for critical exegesis. Rather, they are seen as forming parts of a present and often continuing dialogue, the boundaries of which they sometimes de®ne and incidentally reveal but oftentimes merely hint at in a tantalising manner. How useful are letters by, to and about women as windows on family, gender and domestic relations during the early modern period? This essay focuses upon women in gentle and aristocratic families. Correspondence was more successfully preserved in the record repositories of country houses than in the homes of the urban middle class who moved more frequently and had even more dif®culty establishing a `line'.1 Even when the Cokes of Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire decided to stop caring for their family papers they only consigned them to a damp and cold conservatory in hampers full of neatly tied bundles rather than to the rubbish tip, so that eventually the British Library might claim them. So it could well be that the survival rate of personal correspondence does not re¯ect accurately the level of activity in other social groups. Whether or not women of `the middling sort' also engaged in voluminous correspondence, the historian is forced to work with what survives. Letter-writing was regarded as a vital skill during the early modern period. Generations of schoolboys were in¯uenced by Erasmus's brilliant essay on the subject.2 Manuals on the subject of the content and form of letters appeared at 127
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
9
intervals during the Tudor and Stuart periods, echoing as it were the contemporaneous obsession with calligraphy.3 In the country houses of the time young boys followed a similar curriculum and their sisters frequently bene®ted. While women's letter-writing appears to have established particular conventions, these `forms' did not detract from the importance of expertise in written communication.4 As we shall see, the spatial distances placed between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, grandparents and grandchildren made letter-writing extremely necessary as a means of ensuring that day-to-day life ran reasonably smoothly. Within this communications network women's correspondence concentrated upon aspects of life which were not central to letters from men to men and they drew from their correspondents (frequently men) opinions and information relating to such topics. It would be far too simplistic to see this as a straightforward distinction between the `public' and the `private'. Yet, when we read women's letters we feel that we are privy to some of the most intimate moments in the lives of these women and their kin. An awareness of the conventions which governed correspondence just as it did face-to-face relations is essential for the historian analysing letters. These letters, like any other source, require handling with care but they are often forthcoming and provide us with enthralling texts. It is important to re¯ect upon the advantages and limitations of letters, in general, as a source. In letters we hear the voices of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century men and women; as in conversation, so in letters, the speaker has a speci®c audience in mind; the writer of a letter presents the contents to this audience and has perhaps had much longer to re¯ect on the content and the manner of its presentation than would have, in the normal course of events, a speaker. Letters were often drafted and corrected. There were many different kinds of letter: formal, informal, angry, affectionate, passionate, newsy, gossipy, frightened, desperate, dismissive, pleading, business-like, manipulative and playful. Letters were an active part of a relationship between speci®c people at a particular time. It is through them alone that we can be directly privy to the conversations of our forbears. Unfortunately, frequently the surviving letters pertain to only one party in this relationship, and to times when the correspondents were apart from one another, and our understanding of issues is inevitably punctuated and one-sided. However, unlike diaries, they are normally not retrospective (except in the context of a dialogue) and their audience is restricted: we are usually in no doubt as to the author and the addressee. The purpose of a letter is often explained by its context. Working with collections of correspondence, such as the Bacon-Townshend, Bagot,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
128 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Aston, Barrington and Ferrar manuscripts, can help us with this interpretation. Where there are also other forms of family documentation this can help to explain much of the context. Letters frequently discuss very mundane matters of a practical nature which makes them ideally suited to any study of `everyday life'. Yet, while letters perhaps seem to have been intended only for the recipient against a background of humdrum activity, we need to beware of assuming too readily that, in penning them, their author is guileless and the content `value-free'. The dangers are at their greatest when the correspondent seems most charmingly direct. There is some evidence that personal letters (especially as they frequently served as newsletters) were regarded as the common property of whole families or groups: they could have been read aloud or messages could have been conveyed to individuals other than the addressee; at the very least we (like the author) should bear in mind the possibility that other eyes than those intended could have had a sight of the contents. The writer of a letter was, in many cases, taking up a position and, in so doing, was constructing and presenting a case and/or an image or version of him or herself for the bene®t of the recipient.5 With rare exceptions, we cannot know which `version' represents `the true state of affairs'. On occasion this was perhaps a very self-conscious activity; at other times the composer of the letter perhaps wrote haphazardly and with little if any deliberate guile. Far from detracting from the usefulness of written correspondence to the scholar, these features actually enhance their value, because, with due care, we can determine what contemporaries understood of the conventions of relationships, of their manipulation, of their content. More serious is the problem that letters, despite their practical, everyday emphasis, do focus upon events which individuals considered of great importance ± for example, being in dire need, in serious debt, in pursuit of a suitor, in search of preferment, in a state of grief, or in need of a service. Because all these `states' are naturally attractive to the historian, there is an inherent risk that scholars will also disproportionately emphasise their signi®cance in the lives of individuals and families alike and also perhaps assume that the relationships between individuals were constant rather than altering subtly according to circumstance. We should observe these caveats and do what we can to compensate for these possible defects in the sources. We should be grateful that we are made privy to what contemporaries saw as important discussions. In fact, even when the letters themselves are occasioned by `events' they frequently contain incidental information about the `continuities of life' which can provide insights into the lives of women and their kin. This could lead us into a
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Rosemary O'Day 129
philosophical debate about the relative importance to the individuals concerned of `crises' and `change', on the one hand, and the `constant', `conventional' and `humdrum', on the other. This debate we shall eschew. Women's correspondence in the period 1560±1640 (and perhaps before and after) is indicative of the relationship between women and men in the family. Both the form and content of letters can provide clues in this regard. First, they demonstrate by their very existence that women were participants in family dialogue. The precise nature of this participation is more dif®cult to establish. Historians inevitably draw upon contextual clues to assist in this process. Correspondence itself provides some clues, however. Letters themselves show that the males of the family were regarded as having an obligation to look after their kin. Women expected such help but they were aware that they would have to seek it. Within the family setting females often approached their fathers and brothers as their `patrons'. This was the case whether the women were single, married or widowed. The way in which they expressed themselves might vary considerably from family to family and, perhaps, from time to time. Not all families were the same. But the level of participation was not only a gender issue. Women played differing roles within the family, according to their age and their civil state, for example. These variables affected both the vulnerability and the power of the individual woman within the family and the number of times they needed to seek assistance or felt able to ask for it. In the Bagot papers there are few examples of unmarried females corresponding with either parents or siblings, whereas married Bagot women did enter into correspondence. This could re¯ect the fact that it was the men of the family who preserved the records and that, as married men, they preserved only the letters of their own wives and of married daughters (who lived away from home) which appeared to have some importance. In the Ferrar household, on the other hand, where unmarried women had a place in household management and where decision-making involved women as well as men, spinsters engaged in written communication with Uncle Nicholas when he was absent from Little Gidding. Conventions also perhaps changed over time. The historian is faced with the almost insuperable dif®culty of determining where convention ends and individual differences begin. Consider, for example, the difference between a letter from the widowed Anne Clifton to her brother Henry Clifford, later earl of Cumberland, in 1518: Right wyrchypfull brodere, I hartyly recowmawnd me unto yow, besechyng yow to be gud brodere to me . . . evere gentylwoman
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
130 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Rosemary O'Day 131
and the much more informal tone of Anne and Lettice Bagot's correspondence with their brothers Walter and Anthony. These differences are possibly to be explained in chronological terms ± perhaps families wrote to one another more formally in the early than in the late sixteenth century ± or in class terms ± Anne Clifton belonged to the nobility, the Bagot sisters to the gentry ± or in terms of relationships in different families. Nonetheless, these letters all made explicit the expectation that these young women had of their male siblings. The greetings in these letters are in the form of an obeisance ± this does not necessarily indicate that the women concerned felt themselves to be subordinate but such `stroking' probably had the desired effect of galvanising brothers into ful®lling their obligations. Some of the letters between daughters and their fathers, or sisters and their brothers develop this theme of `assistance' in time of trouble. In extreme circumstances male kin would be asked to intervene and would act to protect a child or sibling in an unhappy marriage or at another time of vulnerability, widowhood. Such correspondence shows women as supplicants, as relatively weak individuals within the family. Other correspondence, however, demonstrates the strength of women by showing how active they were in the domestic setting. For instance, when the patriarch had not survived, his widow assumed his place as protector. Richard Ferrar, imprisoned for debt, beseeched his mother Mary for assistance in 1627 when his wife was pregnant: `I am at this time inforced (by my wife her grett belly) to beccome a petitioner to you (this beinge a tyme of some more then ordenary expence) for a payre of ould sheetes.'7 Another area in which women played such a role (even when their husbands were alive) was in the arrangement of marriages. Collections of correspondence indicate that this was a generally accepted role.8 Susanna Collett was deeply involved in the marriage plans for her children in the 1620s.9 Correspondence reveals that the women of several other families, including the Bacons, Barringtons and Bagots, were very much to the fore in seeking out and promoting suitable matches for their unmarried relatives. Nathaniel Bacon thought it perfectly normal to be dealing directly with the widowed Lady Jane Townshend in 1593 when her son John had, in person, proposed himself as a match for Bacon's eldest daughter. Bacon explained very precisely why he could not agree to her
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
myght hayfe trustyd to helpe of hyre broder . . . I pray you that ye and my sister wyll speke to gyder & take yowr beste counsell & advyce qwat ye cane do for me6
son's demands ± in a clear attempt to retain Lady Jane's goodwill and salvage this match.10 She responded suitably, both showing deference to Bacon and asserting her own in¯uence over her son: `Good Master Bacon, I hartely thanke you for your curteouse letter . . . and I praye you be not streyter lasedd herin towards him than heretofore so shall you ®nd me willenge to geve itt all good furderans I maye . . .'11 When, later in the month, hope of the match seemed to have faded Bacon proposed placing his daughter in Lady Bedford's household.12 Nathaniel Bacon sought his married daughter's advice concerning his daughter Winifred's future. She drew his attention to the slow progress of her sister Winifred's courtship with Mr Gaudy. Anne went one step further, disapproving of her father's plan to send Winifred to live with Lady Bedford and suggesting instead that he give her an annuity and the prospect of more money on his death so that she could secure a match then and there, but if yt shall please you to bestwoe sum reasonable portion of hir in mony, at the day of hir mariadge, or to putt over sum maner for hir portion and no dought but if you will euse sum good meanes you might compass the match of Mr Whitepole for hir, and I thinke as the case standes nowe yt is the beaste match.13 One senses here the extent to which daughters' opinions might be volunteered or even drawn upon by the patriarch where family issues were involved. Perhaps because she was now a married woman, Anne Townshend (neÂe Bacon) felt in a position to counsel her own father on her sister's situation. In 1610 Jane Throckmorton (neÂe Skipworth) entered a secret engagement with her cousin, Lewis Bagot. When his father found out and expressed his displeasure it was her step-mother, Lady Jane Skipworth, who persuaded Jane Throckmorton to end the relationship. Thus women, single, widowed and married, intervened to organise, promote and discourage matches. Of course, men also played a role in marriage negotiation, although it may have been a more formal, titular role than that played by females. Letters reveal, as no other source does, this in¯uential activity of women ± this way in which women also acted as `patrons' in the domestic sphere. Without the evidence of women's letters, marriages would appear to have been arranged and approved entirely by the patriarch. Beneath this level of `matriarchal' in¯uence on matrimony within the wider family, letters reveal the myriad ways in which other women acted. For instance, through correspondence we see how suitors frequently made
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
132 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
known their intentions to the young women concerned and ascertained their feelings before making formal approaches to the parents. Jane Throckmorton (neÂe Skipworth) discussed openly Walter Bagot's opposition to her marriage into the family in an exchange of letters with Lewis Bagot.14 It was not that the young couple had initiated the match nor that they were cousins to which father Bagot objected, but that she did not bring with her suf®cient money. Jane reasoned with Walter but ultimately accepted his verdict and that of her stepmother. This does not necessarily indicate weakness on her part nor lack of true commitment to Lewis but rather a certain realism and acceptance of the importance of family. None of the letters suggest that Jane was weak or afraid to express her own opinions: on the contrary. Young people bore in mind the desirability of having parental moral and material support in their marriages, just as parents sought the happiness of their children in a match that was congenial as well as comfortable. In the seventeenth century Herbert Aston from nearby Tixall was encouraged in his love match with Katherine Thimelby by his married sister Constance Fowler and by Katherine's own passionate pursuit.15 If, as it seems, married women in the family, whether they be the `matriarch' or other married relatives, were key to the brokerage of marriages (albeit within a network of both men and women), letters also indicate the involvement of many young women in this lifetime decision and a varying degree of acceptance on the part of their elders that this should be respected. There was a benign side to matriarchy (and patriarchy); but there was also a malign aspect if the letters of some women are to be believed. In her letters to her brother Walter, Lettice Bagot stated that her husband's mother was responsible for the deterioration of her relations with her husband Francis Kinnersley. Intriguingly, she made no complaint of her mother-in-law's authority, only of her abuse of it: `He wold never be halfe so ile, but for his mother, now her mayde usethe to stand at my dore to heare what I saye and then tels my mother in lawe and makes it more . . .' She knew that her husband would be reconciled to her but `she must have the overseete of all and then shall I not be able to stay'.16 Of course, such letters present statements of opinion and not necessarily of fact and they are extremely one-sided. Nevertheless, they permit us a detailed look at the expectations of the correspondents and how they were being met. They also reveal who they con®ded their problems to. Such airing of marital dif®culties was not mere gossip. The deteriorating relationships between spouses had as much signi®cance for the well-being of the wider family (in a material as well as an emotional context) as did the building up of such a relationship initially. Marriages brought not only money and
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Rosemary O'Day 133
land but also (and perhaps even more importantly) widening connections and patronage; if a family could not arrange marriages for its offspring it failed to expand its circle of connection; if a marriage collapsed then so did the connections it had established. It was small wonder that the preservation of existing `friendships' mattered more to most families negotiating marriage `treaties' than the particular matches they tried to engineer. A marriage which looked a failure from the outset was in no one's interest, least of all that of the bride's and groom's families. For once a marriage was made blood relatives were committed to preserving the interests of their close kin. A letter from Dorothy Bacon about the plight of her sister is indicative: And so I shold stay this my sistars extreordanary desier to be in safety, whoo too well knowes hir husbands erewellty [cruelty], and hir fear that this is but playne delayes, & heareng hir husbands gooeth to Sir Robert Crayes onward one his waye to London, or rather to shonne the beynd at home when hir frinds shall come for hir and then to obgeckt shee went frome him without his alowance and knowledg, and therby to gayne a pleye [plea] in lawe aginst hir to turne hir of with what petyanc [pittance] hee listeth. Now to prewent this, and to show the dewty of a sistar, I have intreted my husband to alowe me to gooe one Tewsdaye to my sistar and to walke planly, without exsepsyons, to tell him that I ame informed that my Lord Hubart hath very honarabelly wrytten to him that this parteng by consent of him and my sistar for a time to trye how God maye turne his hart towards hir, and that it shold be in all pesabell alowanc. Now how soune my brothars doth come to fech hir I know not, therfore I come to intreat his leve to lett me ingoye hir a whill at my house before hir departewar. Now yf his eill natewar denye me, yet then hee cannot saye but that some of hir kinderyed desired this pore kindnes from his goodlynes.17 English men and women often married for love, and, even when romantic love did not underlie the initial match, lived in the hope and expectation that it would be discovered during marriage. Few relished the prospect of living on terms of mutual hostility and the accounts of unhappy marriages communicated through letters are interesting because they frequently reveal that expectations were not being met. If there was a monarchy within the household it was expected to be benevolent. Lettice Bagot regaled her brother Walter, in September 1608, with the horrors of her married life at Tixall:
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
134 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
upon satter day last my husband fel out with me for not haveing provision of beare: I told him of my want of mault abufe three weeked agoue but he would nether provid it him selfe nor allow me money. I borowed of my neghtbores as much as I cold yet for all that the falt was layd all upon me: with many bitter corsses and the charge of the house taken from mee, and commaunded to medle with nothing: but keepe my chamber: my servants discharged espeshally she that lookes to my children [i.e. nurse]: and is a bout my selfe.18 Other letters, such as that of Joan Barrington to her husband imprisoned in the Marchalsea declaring that `nothing but death shall part thee and me', bear testimony to the successful emotional and economic partnership between some couples.19 Women's letters demonstrate their importance in other parts of the domestic economy. This information is often complemented by diary sources but letters offer a fresh perspective. Because of constraints of space, we concentrate on one area here, that of provisioning a household, and one family, the Bacons. Keeping the proverbial wolf from the door was a real worry for householders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and letters show that women were responsible for this in a very active way. It did not involve only procuring supplies from the home farm or market but also assessing the household's needs, the available surpluses of some provisions and negotiating outside the nuclear household for fresh provisions, often on a seasonal basis, and using knowledge of the resources of the network of family, friends and connections to keep supplies on the table. While on one level letters describing the provisioning of a household tell us about the humdrum side of life, they can also help us to understand the key role which housewives played in the support of the patronage system within society as a whole. The letter (described above) from Lettice Bagot to Walter shows how humiliated she was when the management of the household was removed from her and she was treated like a naughty child. Being in charge (even if, on occasion, it was as the husband's delegate) mattered to a woman. There is an interesting set of letters in the years 1578±1583 in which Elizabeth Neville negotiates with her brother Nathaniel Bacon for large quantities of ®sh for her table. She offers to pay him by providing venison for anyone he names in the city ± in effect by giving him patronage to bestow. Sometimes the letters indicate the trials and tribulations of this system of provisioning: bad roads and weather conditions could mean that food, when it arrived at its destination, was inedible. In such circumstances
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Rosemary O'Day 135
the mistress of the household would replace the food with a new supply and take measures to placate the individual with whom she was negotiating. Connections had to be nurtured. They could also give her a form of patronage. As a woman of in¯uence, her friends asked her to obtain ®sh for themselves.20 Letters from Dorothy Bacon to her husband in the 1590s serve to illustrate the point that women used their relatives in town to search for supplies that were hard come by in the provinces: `I praye you let some of your menne locke to prowyde som grosery and spyse for Cresmas wich shall be nedfull for we have allmost none.'21 Women used the opportunity in their letters to explain in some detail the problems they were facing in maintaining the households that they ran while their husbands were absent. Dorothy Bacon complained bitterly that so many visitors sat at their table that household costs were as high as if her husband and his servants were at home. She was presumably anxious to explain why she was spending so much even when her husband and his retinue were not at home; the letter demonstrates how the woman, although mistress of the household and its head in her husband's absence, was held accountable for her actions to the man. The economic importance of women to the wider family is also evidenced in letters. Gentle families frequently drew upon the resources of female relatives and connections for help in money and in kind. For example, a letter from Frances Dayrell, sister of Richard Bagot's wife, Mary, in late November 1570 delivered an acquittance from their mother, Dorothy, for £30 of the £60 lent by her to Richard Bagot. But there was a symbiotic quality to such relationships to which the correspondence also testi®es: Dorothy Dayrell indirectly thanked her daughter Mary Bagot for a gift of venison; Frances Dayrell paid her sister 30s for obtaining some cloth for her.22 In some families women possessed a different kind of patronage. They lived an intense religious life and offered patronage to ministers of religion, whether as household or personal chaplains, or as incumbents of bene®ces. Correspondence between such women and the recipients of their patronage can be found in the Barrington papers. Such evidence does not surprise; it is redolent of the relationship, for example, of Lady Margaret Hoby and her chaplain, described in her diary. Taken together, however, the letters and the diaries suggest that such relationships played a more important part in the careers of clergymen than might have been suspected on the basis of diaries alone. Sometimes the position is made much clearer, as when Lady Dorothy Bacon made representations on behalf of the minister Mr Day for the bene®ce of Ranham.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
136 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Mr Barlow I send you a letar wich consarneth Mr Day, and I ®nd by my sistar that hee is a most fayer condesynded mane, and hir good report of his conversayon is returned by me to Sir Roger Tounsend. But yet seyng I ame in this bewsenes put in trust for it is a matar that all good mene and womeng ought to be carfull of in the choise of a menestor to our housses and pareshe, wherfore I thought ®ttest to make choise of you Sir as the chefest, that you I maye desier to wryt too or thre wordes of his scollarshep and suffecyency yf hee be such a one as you thinke ®tt to be as a chaplyen in Sir Rodgars house. For ashewredly yf so, then lyeth his prafarment near him, for Sir Rodgar hath Ranham now at his disposeng, yf not that many more to present unto as anye mane in Norfocke yf hee ®nd worth in the mene, and that hee doth fryely without the sinn of semony that our realme is infecked withall.23 Correspondence displays Tudor and Stuart women as carers. Both men and women were obsessed with health matters ± understandably as death was always beckoning ± but the special role of women in the medical sphere was recognised. Their knowledge and expertise in this area was rooted in the natural affection borne by one family member for another. Anne Bagot wrote to her brother Walter with advice about his health.24 The Bacon women's letters are strewn with the practical solicitude of these women for the welfare of their daughters, stepdaughters, cousins and sisters. Anne Townshend reported in detail to her father Nathaniel Bacon her treatment of Winifred Bacon's sore throat and general malaise: and nowe she came to Mealton, in my sister Knevetes absens, with an extreme coulde, and paine in hir throte, and I sente for a phisicion for hir, but he cured hir nothinge at all, and at last I remembered a medsen that Mr Doctor Mathias had taught me at Stuky for a palsy in the throte, and I ministred that unto hir, and I thanke God yt hath done hir greate good, and nowe she hath a purle gorwinge in one of hir ies, but I hope in God Mr Ashly shall cure yt.25 The very word correspondence underlines the two-way nature of the written conversation. Women wrote both to men and other women. Even where we have only one side of this conversation we do well to remind ourselves of the interaction between the parties involved. We are fortunate when we can piece together both sides from a collection. Some women's letters show their involvement in the education of the young. It was common for families to send their children to live for a while in another household, often that of a family member, whether close
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Rosemary O'Day 137
or more distant kin. Jane Tutoft was looking after Beti Wyndam, a cousin, and she relayed news about the child's precocity in a letter to Nathaniel Bacon in 1580: `And now I larn hur to sow & she doth lose al my nedels but she sayth whan the pedler com she wyl by me sum mor & so I trust hur of hur word . . .'.26 But women sometimes intervened to promote the education of a relative who was not in their care. For example, Lady Elizabeth Neville wrote to her brother Nathaniel Bacon in 1582: Yf my brother Woodhowse doth lyke to have his sone Francis to be a colliger of Eaton he maye for £10, for so have I obtayned of one of the Felows. His meat shall cost my brother nothinge and he hathe yerly a gowne of the colidge so as his chargis for his other apparill wilbe but smale. I praye yow procure his spedye answere here in. The boye wold be sent upp presentlye.27 The indications are that all was not well between the Nevilles and the Woodhouses and that Bacon was being used as an intermediary; perhaps Elizabeth's action on behalf of her nephew was by nature of a peace offering. She certainly called on Bacon to deliver adverse criticism of the Woodhouses' provision for their son at Eton, fearing to antagonise them still further. Elizabeth speaks of her `sister Woodhowshe' who has sent her `sone of late a bede with the furniture and a gowne': His tuter was of late with me who told me of the goune and semed to dislyke yt for the cost so that I am deteryned presently to make him sutche a one as gentill menes sonnes do usyall[y] were in that place. Surely gaye clothes be nothinge ®tt for Eaton scole: the cost ys but lost and a gayne but yf yt wold pleace my brother and sister to commit his sonnes garmentes to me I will doo there in as I wold to my owne and send them the billes from tyme to tyme. Yow most becarefull how you use this matter that they conceave not a dislycke of me for controlynge there delinges.28 Women's letters also serve to give us information about the informal side of intimate relationships. Both sons and daughters away from home kept in frequent contact with their parents. Their letters, especially those of daughters to their mothers, are informal and chatty by Tudor and Stuart lights. Anne Broughton, Margaret Trew and Lettice Kinnersley, daughters of Richard and Mary Bagot, wrote to their parents, sending small gifts and sometimes obtaining items for them on request. Their letters demonstrate that fathers as well as mothers were expected to be
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
138 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
interested in family matters: that Anthony Bagot has spent £3 on doublet and hose; that Margaret Bagot, staying with her sister in London, wanted to come home to Blith®eld; that Anne Broughton, for instance, was making `coats of buf®n' `for Lill and Wat'.29 If the Bagot sons were in any sense typical, however, youths away from home were expected to conduct regular correspondence with both parents. Mary Bagot exercised her own duty of care through correspondence as well as meetings, providing Walter with `shurtts' and garden seeds and making anxious inquiries about his and his brother Anthony's health. Walter fell short of her expectations as did Anthony: `Mother I am constrayned to take in hande to excuse my brothers negligence the which yf conveniently he might I am sure his good will shoulde not bee wantinge . . .'30 The relationship a child had with a mother probably differed in kind from that with a father but letters support the closeness of the maternal±child bond in many instances and suggest that both sons and daughters were as anxious to show themselves `obediente' to their mothers as to their fathers and to receive their `dayly blessinge'. Where a child had disappointed his or her parents the bond between them, while threatened, did not break. Richard Ferrar, the prodigal son, could still tug on his mother's heart strings even when he was married and far away. Sisters, married and unmarried, kept in touch, often in an affectionate way, with siblings. In their letters they might convey news about public affairs as well as family business and describe their day-to-day activities.31 When Dorothy Okeover (neÂe Bagot) was widowed, her sister Anne wrote offering to come to Blith®eld in Staffordshire to comfort her.32 Letters show that such bonds had been common through the generations and that they were maintained. Mary Bagot, Anne Broughton's mother, wrote letters to her married sisters and her half-brother. Her correspondence with George Saunders, her half-brother, shows that he was on terms of familiarity with her children.33 These are the relationships which the physical distance between family members has preserved for us. Anne Broughton, Margaret Trew and Lettice Kinnersley maintained their active relationship not only through letters but also through visits and gifts. Letters inform us about one (sometimes small) part of their relationships. Anne in particular corresponded with her family, possibly because she lived further away, was more useful as a `friend' to her kin because of the Essex connections of her husband, the lawyer and judge Richard Broughton, and also perhaps because she had shared companionship with Walter and Anthony when they were children together, practising their signatures and otherwise pestering their father, Richard. Lettice, who lived closest, presumably only
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Rosemary O'Day 139
felt the need to communicate by letter when she was held a prisoner in her own house by her awkward husband. Physical distance was important in determining whether or not individuals communicated by letter but it would be dangerous to assume that it was the sole determinant. Individuals then, as today, differed in the intensity of their familial relationships. In the case of the Fitton family it seems that both Edward Fitton and his wife Alice had a much warmer relationship with their daughter Anne (later Newdigate) than with her ¯irtatious sister, Mary, who was so carried away by her exciting life at court that she failed to correspond with her parents. Letters between the Fittons and Anne are couched affectionately in that odd combination of formality and familiarity characteristic of so much early modern correspondence. William Knollys was commissioned to supervise Mary while she acted as Elizabeth I's maid of honour. Nevertheless an appropriately worried Mistress Fitton begged Anne for news of her sister: `If you hear anything of your sister I pray let know, for I never heard from her since.' Almost as intriguing as Mary's neglect of her duty is her parents' assumption that such behaviour was both unexpected and reprehensible.34 Disappointed as they were by Mary's eventual disgrace, the Fittons and their daughter Anne stood by the young woman and helped her to reprieve herself by marrying reasonably well.35 Of course, there is no suggestion that women's letters are suf®cient in themselves for a history of women's lives in the period. But letters are different in kind from diaries, for example. A diary, in theory at least, has no audience other than the diarist. Letters have an audience ± certainly the person to whom they are written and perhaps others ± and point to current, actual and particular relationships. On many occasions, the female correspondents send messages to other relatives and friends via the addressee. A letter from Jane Tutoft to Nathaniel Bacon in May 1580, direct and charged with emotion as it appears to be, shows how effectively women conveyed their thoughts, feelings and wishes to their relatives, using their knowledge of the recipients to help them achieve the desired result. It also shows how one letter, mainly concerned with the unhappy progress of a marriage negotiation, is also used to convey considerable amounts of information both to the addressee and to his other relatives and acquaintances. The author describes pithily and punchily the basics of the marriage predicament. She uses references to the family relationship between the Bacons and herself, to Bacon's fatherly friendship and to his understanding and care for her own health and welfare to pull on the strings of his patronage. Bacon becomes acquainted with the state of mind of the mother, the daughter and the potential son-in-law; with the health
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
140 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
and education of young Betty and with the bad behaviour of the author's son; but the letter also is designed to involve the Bacons, man and wife, in the affairs of the Tutofts and obtain their help.36 As a result of having an audience, in one sense letters are possibly more inhibited than diary entries but in another sense they reveal more (in a three-dimensional way) about active and continuing relationships. They draw others into a two-way conversation which can be brief and practical in nature or lengthy and discursive, cool or passionate, informal or formal, intimate or remote. The wide range of correspondents is in itself interesting. To each of the recipients the writer presents a different persona. As a result of this range, therefore, the letters provide an entreÂe into the many different facets of women's lives. Because these are not isolated `texts' but parts of an ongoing dialogue, we must read the full correspondence in order to gain the full advantage of this perspective. As suggested above, it is the conversation documented by the letter and not simply the information which it carries that interests us. Although women appear to have used different handwriting from their menfolk and to have adopted differing conventions, women also displayed an interest in public affairs at a national and local level while men were often engaged in written conversations with their womenfolk and other males about `domestic matters'. Female letters were not in all respects different from the letters sent by men and this possibly underlines the interaction of male and female education and adult life at this level of society. But this is properly the subject for another essay! Women's correspondence, both with men and with other women, adds a depth and richness to our knowledge not only of family life and gender relations but also of social life of the period. Their letters allow us to explore some parts of contemporary life which wills and diaries, court depositions and autobiographies do not illuminate and which books of advice on conduct do not treat. All were privy and some were powerful communications ± revealing an otherwise secret side of women's lives and suggesting paths of further enquiry.
Notes 1. Ralph Houlbrooke, English Family Life, 1576±1716: an Anthology From Diaries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 7. 2. Desiderius Erasmus, De Conscribendis Epistolis (1522). 3. Angel Day, The English Secretorie (1579); Martin Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie (1618); Thomas Blount, The Academie of Eloquence (1654). See Jean Robertson, The Art of Letter-Writing: an Essay on the Handbooks Published in
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Rosemary O'Day 141
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.
England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Liverpool University Press, 1942). Jacques Du Bosque, The Secretary of Ladies (1638). Kim Walker, Women Writers of the English Renaissance (New York, Twayne Publishers, 1996), p. 27. A.G. Dickens, Clifford Letters of the Sixteenth Century (Surtees Society, 172, 1962), p. 93. Ferrar Papers, Magdalen College, Cambridge. See Sally Gosling, `Sex and Gender Roles in Gentle and Noble Families c.1575±1660' (Unpublished PhD thesis, Open University, 2000). Ferrar Papers: Susanna Collett to Thomas Collett, Jan. 1627. NRO RAY (3) 1. Ibid., (3) 2. Ibid., (3) 9. The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, 1556±1595, 3 vols (Norfolk Record Society, 46, 49 and 53, 1978±1988) eds A. Hassell Smith, G.M. Baker and R.W. Kenny, 3, pp. 279±80. Folger L.a. 852 (Bagot Papers). BL Add. MS 36452 (Aston Papers); I owe this point to my student Sally Gosling. Folger L.a. 598; see also L.a. 21. NRO RAY 491. Folger L.a. 598. BL Eg. MS 2644 f.251. The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, 2, pp. 17±19; see also BL Add. 41140 f.146. BL Add. MS 41140 ff.121±2. Folger L.a. 407. BL Add. MS 41654 ff.50±1. See also BL Coke MSS, Sir John Coke to his son, John Coke, 2 Jan. 1639/40; see Rosemary O'Day, `A Bishop, a Patron and Some Preachers: a Problem of Presentation' in Diana Woods, ed., Essays in SixteenthCentury Ecclesiastical History Dedicated to Claire Cross (Ecclesiastical History Society, 1999). Folger L.a. 231 The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, 3, pp. 279±80. Ibid., 2, p. 125. NRO BCH 27/9/74 I. BL Add. MS 41140 f.145. Folger L.a. 95, 222, 223. Ibid., L.a. 93. Ibid., L.a. 222, 223. Ibid., L.a. 230. Ibid., L.a. 2407, 777: letters from Mary Bagot. Lady Newdigate-Newdegate, Gossip from a Muniment Room (Nutt, 1897), pp. 8±9. The Bagot collection provides ample evidence that some individuals were more comfortable with letter-writing than were others. The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, 2, p. 125.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
142 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Patriarchy, Puritanism and Politics: the Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley (1598±1643) Jacqueline Eales
Writing in the old Dictionary of National Biography, Sidney Lee described Lady Brilliana Harley as a `letter-writer', and it is largely through the nineteenth-century edition of her letters, published by the Camden Society, that Lady Brilliana is still known today.1 The majority of the 205 letters in the Camden edition were written from her home of Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire to her eldest son Edward between 1638, when he went to Oxford University, and 1643, when his mother died. They have been widely cited as evidence of the maternal and religious concerns of a seventeenth-century puritan gentlewoman, and Lee described them as `chie¯y remarkable for their proofs of maternal affection. They abound in domestic gossip, religious re¯ections and sound homely advice.'2 Lee, however, underplayed the fact that a civil war was in the making when these letters were written. As a staunch puritan and parliamentarian, Lady Brilliana was engaged in the religious and political debates that led to warfare and, as I have remarked elsewhere, her letters `contain the most detailed information that we have about the outbreak of the civil war in Herefordshire'. They also record the active local political role that could be played by a woman during the civil war period.3 It was Lady Brilliana who organised the Harley family's response as local governors to national events during her husband's attendance at Parliament in the early 1640s. In the winter of 1640-41 she orchestrated the collection of information about the parish clergy in Herefordshire for the House of Commons committee for scandalous ministers and was described by the incumbent at Brampton as `very active in so great a busines'.4 In June 1642, on the instructions of her husband Sir Robert Harley, Lady Brilliana tried unsuccessfully to buy up arms from the royalist Croft family on behalf of the parliamentary commission for Irish 143
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
10
affairs.5 As the civil war progressed, she also played an active role in maintaining the Harley estates and family in¯uence in the county, including her successful resistance to the royalist siege of her home, which lasted for nearly seven weeks. Lady Brilliana's actions were a response to the demands of civil war in the mid seventeenth century, but they were also a long-standing part of the political and social role of elite women, which can be traced back to the later middle ages, if not earlier.6 In the context of Tudor politics, for example, Barbara Harris has shown how dynastic concerns and personal patronage gave aristocratic and gentry women the opportunity to intervene in national and local politics on behalf of their families in the sixteenth century. More speci®cally Caroline Bowden has demonstrated how women used letter-writing to participate in the early modern political process.7 Lady Brilliana's letters similarly demonstrate that she had a legitimate role to play as the senior representative of the Harley family in the county during her husband's absences in the early 1640s. This chapter will examine the rhetorical strategies employed in her letters by Lady Brilliana to justify that role in relation to three speci®c areas of contemporary debate: patriarchy, puritanism and the political divisions of the civil war. Early modern England was a patriarchal society in the sense that fathers as heads of households were endowed with particular social and political powers and women were almost entirely excluded from elected public of®ces. Male dominance was further reinforced by the commonly drawn analogy between fatherly and royal authority.8 Such patriarchal theories about monarchy were widely accepted, but they could be couched in terms of absolutism or in terms of limitations on the powers of the crown. As Lady Brilliana's parliamentarianism suggests, she clearly believed that royal power should be limited and in her commonplace book of 1622 she quoted William Perkins's description of tyrants as `publike foe' and `enimies to our countre'. One way in which royal power could theoretically be limited was through the agency of God and, as a puritan, Lady Brilliana endorsed religious beliefs and practices which con¯icted with Charles I's authority. In such cases of conscience it was the will of God that was to be preferred and, again citing Perkins, she noted in her commonplace book that `no man commandement or law can of it self, and by it owne sovereigne power, binde the consciens'.9 From November 1640, when the Long Parliament ®rst met, Lady Brilliana's religious beliefs played a central role in her commitment to the parliamentarian cause. Lady Brilliana's public responses to the state of war declared by Charles I in August 1642 were conditioned, as will be seen, both by her concerns for
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
144 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
the local power and wealth of the Harleys, and for the fortunes of the local puritan minority. More generally, the protection of family interests and the expression of religious scruples were the principal grounds which motivated women of all social groups to involve themselves in political affairs throughout the early modern period.10 The Reformation debates over religious observance and individual conscience served to extend the opportunities for women of all social groups to become involved in political protest in the sixteenth century. The popularity of nonconformist religious belief had a similar impact during the civil war years.11 The family and religion were also areas where there was a considerable overlap between personal and public concerns and this enabled women to act openly over such issues. Just before her death Lady Brilliana acknowledged in a self-justi®catory letter to her brother Edward, Viscount Conway, that `my Actions has relation to this publike differance'.12 Before analysing the contents of the letters more closely, however, it is ®rst necessary to consider their nature as an historical source. In writing about Lady Brilliana, Sidney Lee was in fact unaware of the survival of another 170 or so of her letters that were not printed in the Camden edition and of two of her commonplace books, dated 1622 and 1628.13 The letters were addressed for the most part to her husband, Sir Robert Harley, during the twenty years of their marriage from 1623. The letters to Sir Robert were written mainly during his absences as a member of Parliament in the late 1620s and early 1640s, but none of the replies that she received from him, or from Edward Harley, are known to have survived.14 If they are not now in private ownership, it is most likely that Lady Brilliana destroyed them in 1643, when her home at Brampton Bryan Castle was besieged by nearly 700 royalist soldiers. As an astute political observer, she would have been aware of the dangers of letting private letters from a member of the Long Parliament and his heir fall into the hands of their enemies. Also missing from the Camden edition was a series of letters addressed to the royalists in the county in 1643, in which Lady Brilliana publicly stated her position to the sheriff and other commissioners of array, as well as to royalist commanders. Later copies of these survive at Longleat and they were printed in full by the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1904.15 In communicating her religious and political opinions to Sir Robert and Edward Harley, Lady Brilliana was addressing members of her immediate family, who were fully persuaded of the right of her views. As civil war became inevitable, however, Lady Brilliana was forced to express these beliefs more widely to her neighbours and fellow gentry in Herefordshire and the Welsh border region, who
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jacqueline Eales 145
were not of the same persuasion, and here she was careful to select her arguments to in¯uence her audience. One of the most perverse readings of Lady Brilliana's letters was penned by Wallace Notestein in 1938 in a character study, in which he erroneously argued that she was a `woman of delicate health', who `would probably have spent most of her married years in bed'. Notestein painted an imaginative picture of a lonely and largely abandoned wife, whose letters to her husband `do not indicate intimacy between them or any long-standing correspondency of mind'. According to Notestein the advent of civil war provided a welcome diversion and he concluded patronisingly that `the more exciting conditions became, the more her health improved. It looked as if a civil war was what the physicians should have prescribed for her long since.'16 Amongst other failings, Notestein's assessment completely ignored Lady Brilliana's vital role in keeping her husband informed about local political events and her importance as an observer of the civil war, not only to contemporaries but also to later serious historians. As we might expect of a woman of her rank, her letters reveal Lady Brilliana to have been a literate woman, well read in contemporary religious works, by her own account more at ease with reading French than English, and able to teach her sons Latin when the schoolmaster proved unreliable. With her letters she dispensed medicines, advice about health to her family and gifts of food. She used her letters to pass on her own religious precepts to her children and as a vehicle for the transmission of news. There was undoubtedly a general increase in the availability of news in the civil war period since people at all social levels were keen to obtain such information.17 We know from Lady Brilliana's letters that she was keen to receive news reports and Sir Robert sent her copies of parliamentary speeches and letters containing political information. She also received newsbooks about continental and home affairs, as well as royalist and parliamentarian declarations and tracts.18 In recent years historians, such as Robert Scribner and Richard Cust, have emphasised the importance of the oral transmission of information in the early modern period.19 Immediately before and during the civil war there was, however, an enormous amount of inaccurate news in circulation in England, which spread both in print and by word of mouth. Lady Brilliana's letters show how local rumours could not compete for accuracy with letters from a member of the Long Parliament. She frequently referred to misinformation that she had heard, but noted she would not believe it until it had been con®rmed by a letter from her husband or son, who joined Sir Robert in London in late December 1640.20
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
146 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
In April 1641 Lady Brilliana thus informed Edward that `in the cuntry they had broken the parlament and beheaded my lord Straford', but she noted wryly that these two occurrences `would not well hange togeather'.21 Strafford, of course, was executed in May as a result of a parliamentary act of attainder and Lady Brilliana's sharp political sense was well demonstrated by her scepticism on this and other occasions. Sir Robert, too, could rely on his wife's letters for accurate news about the development of parliamentarian and royalist parties in Herefordshire, the constituency that he represented in the Long Parliament, and in the bordering counties. In 1642 Lady Brilliana carefully recorded, for example, the names of local gentry who supported a Herefordshire petition in favour of episcopacy and later that year she noted the names of the most active royalist commissioners of array in the county.22 Lady Brilliana's letters can be compared to the memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson, Lady Anne Fanshawe and Lady Anne Halkett, which similarly show the active involvement of women in civil war politics.23 As an historical source Lady Brilliana's letters have an advantage over these memoirs of not having been written with hindsight. The letters contain Lady Brilliana's immediate re¯ections and also illustrate the day by day development of local political allegiances in the civil war period. As the daughter of Sir Edward Conway, a diplomat, courtier, and privy councillor, Lady Brilliana was also aware of the need at times to be guarded in what she committed to paper. This is ®rst apparent in her letters in the late 1630s, when Charles I embarked on war against his Scottish subjects. The Harleys disapproved of this con¯ict, as it was aimed against fellow Calvinists, and in October 1638, at the start of Edward Harley's studies in Oxford, Lady Brilliana advised him, `when you rwite by the carrier, rwite nothing but what any may see, for many times the letters miscarry'. The fear of disclosure meant that Lady Brilliana, like many of her contemporaries, often related items of news as statements of fact with little personal opinion. Thus, when she informed Edward of local preparations for the war against the Scots in March 1639, she noted that `if you weare with me, I could tell you more of my minde'. At times her letters might be carried by servants and local gentlemen, some of whom were relatives. Although this meant that letters were less likely to go astray, it did not necessarily mean that the contents were secure. Information sent with letters also had to be shared carefully and in May 1639 Lady Brilliana sent Edward a copy of a Scottish sermon with the admonition `you must take care whoo sees it, you neuer read such a peace'. A few weeks earlier she had made veiled reference to the need to use a code, `I haue toold you if you remember of a paper that some
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jacqueline Eales 147
statemen make use of, when they would not haue knowne what they riwit of. Rwite me worde wheather you vnderstand what I meane'. There is evidence in four letters written early in March 1643 to Edward that Lady Brilliana did make use of a code by using a sheet of paper with cutouts through which the sense of a letter could be written. When the top sheet was removed the gaps could be ®lled in with random words in order to create an apparently meaningless document. The letter could be decoded by placing a copy of the cutout sheet over the letter. Brilliana explained how the sheet should be aligned you must pin that end of the paper, that has the cors made in incke, vpon the littell cros on the end of this letter; when you would write to me, make vse of it, and giue the other to your sister Brill.24 The vast majority of her surviving letters were not, however, written in code. Together with other surviving personal documentation, particularly the commonplace books, Lady Brilliana's letters illustrate her position as a gentlewoman, a puritan and a parliamentarian in a largely royalist county; the rest of this chapter will address these issues more fully. Lady Brilliana was highly conscious of the public role of the Harley family as members of the gentry elite. In 1626 she hoped that the Parliament would end in time for Sir Robert to return home for the birth of his second child. As this proved impossible, she wrote to him that, `as the publike good is to be prefered befor prievet ends so at this time I must shewe that indeed I loue that better than my owne good'. Here we can see the in¯uence of her reading of Seneca's letters, which she cited in her commonplace book of 1622.25 In 1625 her husband reported that she and `little Neds nurse' were of the opinion that even if Ned was dressed in beggar's clothes, `he would suer be taken for a gentlemans childe'. When Ned departed for university, Lady Brilliana advised him `allways chuse the best company to be with, rather thos aboue you then belowe you, yet dispise not your inferiours'.26 In her letters to Edward at Oxford, later in London and as a commander in the parliamentarians' forces, there is a clear understanding that she was preparing him to be a gentleman and a local governor. As a mother, as a woman, she still had a part to play in fashioning her son for his future role as a patriarch. Lady Brilliana was also aware of her own social status, not just that of her family. As the wife of a Knight of the Order of the Bath, she took precedence over her oldest sister until their father was ennobled in 1625, when he commented with evident relief that `the strife is taken away from
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
148 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
them for place'. Lady Brilliana's social position was entirely dependent on that of her male relatives, and this relationship was encapsulated by the words of the Herefordshire royalist, Sir William Croft, when he visited her in August 1642 and commended her as `my Lord Conways daughter my Lord Conway sister and Sr Robert Harleys wife, and a woman of a greate spirit'.27 These episodes illustrate an application of early modern patriarchal codes and values, with which Lady Brilliana fully agreed. Her acceptance of patriarchal relationships is demonstrated in her letters to her husband, in which she never failed to address him as `Sir' or `Deare Sir', and invariably signed herself as `your most affectinate wife, Brilliana Harley'. The letter to her brother Edward, Viscount Conway, was similarly signed in 1643 `your Lordshp Most Affectinat sister Brilliana Harley'.28 Brilliana was Sir Robert's third wife and there was an age gap of nearly 20 years between them. This may account for the impression given by the letters that initially, at least, we are not witnessing a marriage of equals, such as the marriages of the Thynne family described by Alison Wall.29 This is not to say that there was no love or affection between the Harleys. Lady Brilliana's letters to her husband were undoubtedly love letters, which she delighted in writing, sometimes twice a day. In 1626 she wrote: I am so much pleased with this silent discoursing with you that as I spent part of the morning in this kinde of being with you, so nowe I begine the night with it, and in theas lines reseaue the remembrance of my love of which you have not a part but all. Fifteen years later Lady Brilliana wrote to Sir Robert that she longed to see him `and doo not blame me for you are the comfort of my life of all the things heare belowe'.30 Although Harley's replies have not survived, his letters to other members of the family describe Lady Brilliana as `my dear Brill', or `my dear heart' and talk of his `dear affection to her'.31 When Harley was attending Parliament for several weeks or months at a time in the 1620s and early 1640s, Lady Brilliana kept him informed about the family, the estates and local affairs. In the matter of the day-to-day running of the estates she took the advice of Sir Robert and her father-inlaw (until his death in 1631), as well as the stewards, before taking any decision. Lady Brilliana acted as Sir Robert's representative in such matters and there is little sign of independent action in her letters.32 Although she frequently requested Harley to let her know his mind, she also offered him advice, but strategically she was careful not to encroach on his authority. During the dif®cult economic circumstances of late 1641, for example, she advised her husband to abate rents in order to encourage the tenants
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jacqueline Eales 149
to pay something. This was a course of action that landlords across the country adopted in 1641 and 1642, but Lady Brilliana prefaced her opinion by noting, `I hope you will not be displeesed if I tell you what I thinke.'33 Her refusal to act without Sir Robert's direction was to be used to good effect during the siege of Brampton Bryan, as we shall see, but although this might appear to be a rhetorical device, it was no ®ction. This was demonstrated at the by-election held for the county in 1641 when she informed Sir Robert that none of his tenants went to vote, because `I had no order from you for whoo they should goo'.34 This is in stark contrast to her enthusiastic and independently-run campaign the following summer for the by-election for Hereford, when the Harleys promoted the candidacy of their son Edward. In this Lady Brilliana was not atypical. Linda Pollock has demonstrated that the upbringing of early modern elite girls was intended to ensure that women were deferential to men, but they were still trained to exercise `independent thought or action' should the necessity arise. In May 1642 there was no hint in her letters that Lady Brilliana was acting on instructions when she wrote to a number of Harley kinsman in the county to canvass votes and she clearly knew where to apply political pressure. Moreover, on hearing of a rival candidate, who had better connections with the town, she halted the campaign and informed Edward that `I sent to Heariford to let them know...I did not further desire it for you'. 35 Lady Brilliana was well aware that Harley family prestige would be damaged if her son lost a contested election.36 The need to maintain the family's in¯uence also lay behind the decision that Lady Brilliana should remain at Brampton once war had broken out. From November 1641, when there were fears of a Catholic rebellion in England as well as in Ireland, she repeatedly suggested to her husband that it would be safer if she took her younger children to the refuge of a town. In the ®rst half of 1642 Lady Brilliana also feared a popular rising against `puretains and rounde heads', but Sir Robert was convinced that she would be secure at Brampton. Although she accepted her husband's judgement, her letters of 1642 and 1643 made continual reference to the weakness of Brampton and her unease at remaining in Herefordshire.37 In the event, it was her judgement on the spot that was to prove correct. For Lady Brilliana then, the implications of patriarchy within the family and her own gendered role as a wife were not contested areas. Her letters show that it was her religious and political beliefs, which she shared fully with her husband and eldest son, that were contentious. Her puritanism underpinned her relationship with Sir Robert and it was informed by
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
150 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
family tradition, particularly that of her mother's family, the Tracys of Toddington in Gloucestershire, and by the in¯uence of godly preachers. The Bible and Calvin's Institutes formed the basis of her devotional reading, and she was also familiar with some of the most popular works of practical piety of the day, including books by William Perkins and Nathaniel Cole, as well as Continental reformers.38 There is, in fact, little reference in her letters and commonplace books to any reading material other than religious books and news. As a puritan, her letters lay great stress on personal piety and the search for signs of election. Whilst orthodox theologians argued that predestination was an unfathomable mystery, puritans were often involved in a constant search for security through signs of their own salvation. Lady Brilliana's 1622 commonplace book was, for example, almost entirely devoted to the issues of predestination and election. It was also possible to identify signs of election in others, as Lady Brilliana advised Edward when he went to Oxford: `ther are thos whoo are borne of God and they are the smalest number. Let them be your companions.'39 In the late 1630s her letters to Edward at Oxford reveal her disapproval of the Laudian innovations in ceremonial and church decorations when she warned him not to bow to the altar. The debates of the Long Parliament encouraged Lady Brilliana to believe that the Church would ®nally be fully reformed. In June 1641, for example, she rejoiced at the reading in the House of Commons of the `root and branch' bill to abolish episcopacy in preparation for the introduction of a presbyterian system in England. In a letter to Edward she observed `I trust in God they [the bishops] will be inacted against, which I longe to heare; and I pray God take all thos thinges away which haue so longe offended.' Lady Brilliana's opposition to the Caroline regime in the early 1640s was based ®rmly on her desire for further religious reforms and on the belief that Charles I was at the centre of a Catholic plot to introduce tyranny into both the Church and State. As the Crown and Parliament drew further apart in 1641 and 1642, Lady Brilliana believed that it was imperative that Parliament should press ahead with religious reforms and remove evil councillors, such as the earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud, who had drawn the King along this path. As war became imminent her letters demonstrate that Lady Brilliana interpreted the political con¯ict as a religious struggle, in which she would suffer for her religious beliefs. In July 1642 she informed Edward Harley that `nowe, the intention is, to route out all that feare God, and surely the Lord will arise to healpe vs'.40 Lady Brilliana's earlier tone of obedience to her husband now contrasted strongly with the forthright political advice she offered to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jacqueline Eales 151
Sir Robert about what means Parliament should adopt in order to counter the activities of the royalists in the county. She advised him that Parliament should expedite the execution of the militia ordinance in Herefordshire and she twice suggested that some MPs should be sent to the country for that purpose. Later she urged that Parliament should choose some moderate gentlemen as deputy-lieutenants and warned him that `if you chuse men of littell estats and thos that are of littell valiue it will make them odieous to the cuntrye as it did Mr Braghton in makeing him a Justice of Peace'.41 Once war had been declared by Charles I in late August, Herefordshire remained largely under royalist control and Lady Brilliana was faced with the need to protect her family and dependents from royalist hostility. Following the arrest of two of her servants and a tenant in December, she wrote to viscount Scudamore, a moderate royalist, for help to secure their release. She drew particular attention to the patriarchal bonds that the gentlemen of the county shared with Sir Robert Harley, based on `blood and some with alianence and all with his long profesed and reall friendshp'. In the same letter she described the `common curtesy' that should be shown to her as `a stranger brought into theare cuntry'.42 In March 1643 Lady Brilliana received the ®rst formal demand from the sheriff to surrender the `ffort & castle of Brompton Brian wth all armes [and] amunition' to the royalists, which she refused. She informed the sheriff that the arms were no more than were needed `to defend my howse' and pointedly referred to recent royal propaganda, with which she was very familiar, in which the king had promised to maintain the laws and liberties of the kingdom, `by which I have as good right to what is mine as any one'. As a result, rumours raged that Brampton would be reduced by force, but military circumstances prevented the onset of any formal siege until late July.43 The siege was commenced under the command of Sir William Vavasour, a Lincolnshire gentleman, who had no personal or local ties with the Harleys. In contrast, Lady Brilliana received an initial summons from three local royalist gentlemen, the sheriff Henry Lingen, Sir Walter Pye and William Smallman, in which they emphasised that their relationship to her made them considerate of her position, but if she remained obstinate then `we cannot promise and expect those conditions for you that are ®t for your quality' particularly since Lady Aubigny had been `so ill-treated by the Parliament'. Lady Aubigny had recently been imprisoned following the discovery of Waller's Plot against Parliament, although she was soon to escape and continued her activities as a royalist agent until her death in exile in 1649. Drawing once again on the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
152 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Jacqueline Eales 153
give a command to take away anything from his loyal subjects and much less to take away my house . . . I must endeavour to keep what is mine as well as I can, in which I have the law of nature, of reason, and of the land on my side and you none to take it from me.44 Throughout the siege Lady Brilliana conducted a series of negotiations by letter, parley and a petition to the king, in which she maintained that she and her family were `the King's most faithful subjects', and that Vavasour should withdraw. She scorned the suggestion that he should place guards in Brampton, since `I would become a prisoner in my own house'. She also took refuge in her position as a woman and argued that she could not accept such a plan, because she could only act on her husband's instructions and would not take such a decision herself, as `I will never voluntarily betray the trust my husband reposes in me'. In her petition to the king she argued that she had never offended `your majesty, or ever take up arms against your majesty, or any man of mine, or any by my appointment was in actual rebellion against your sacred Majesty'.45 These protestations were not entirely truthful, since Lady Brilliana had arranged for the delivery of two horses and £500 worth of family plate to London for the parliamentarian war effort in the summer of 1642. In June 1643 her two elder sons, Edward and Robert, had joined Sir William Waller's forces in the west of England and Lady Brilliana had encouraged local recruits to join them, furnishing one man with a horse worth £8. Although she hoped that as a soldier Edward would `hate all plundering and vnmercifullness', she also trusted that God would make him `victorious' as the commander of his regiment.46 Lady Brilliana had also offered refuge at Brampton to fellow parliamentarians and in advance of the siege she had taken some 50 soldiers into the house ostensibly for her own defence, but in effect turning it into a garrison.47 Lady Brilliana's strategy of spinning out the negotiations was successful and in early September Vavasour's men were called away to the siege of Gloucester. Sir Robert then advised his wife to leave Brampton, but she was unwilling to do so without a guarantee of safe conduct or the safety of a parliamentarian convoy. Lady Brilliana now took decisive action to forestall a renewal of the siege. The parliamentarian troops under her command compelled her fearful tenants to level the earthworks raised by the royalists. Neighbours who had been active supporters of the siege were plundered for `necessities' and Lady Brilliana
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
language of the Crown's own statements, Lady Brilliana replied that she could not believe that the king would
ordered 40 of her soldiers to attack a nearby royalist camp four miles distant at Knighton.48 In one of her last letters to her husband, before her death in October, she described the foundation of her resistance to the royalists as the desire to defend Harley property and to preserve the in¯uence of the godly in Herefordshire. In this private letter to her husband Lady Brilliana drew on the twin themes of defence of the family and of religious conscience, which have already been described above as the principal motives which encouraged and legitimated female participation in political affairs in the period: God has made me . . . an instruement to keepe possestion of your howes that it has not fallen in to the hands of spoylers, and to keepe to geather a handfull of such as feared the Lord . . . so that his word has yet had an a bideing in theas parts, which if the Lord remoufe Hearifordscheare is misrabell, in this worke I have not thought my life deare, neather shall I.49 She died a month later from what eye-witnesses described as `apoplexy', but which may well have been pneumonia.50 As we have seen, Lady Brilliana conformed to the conventional contemporary image of the dutiful wife and godly mother, but her letters also demonstrate her active involvement in the religious and political disputes of the civil war. The need to preserve the property and position of the Harley family, along with the conviction of her puritan beliefs, persuaded Lady Brilliana of her right to resist the local royalist governors, military commanders and the king himself. This is clear from the letters she wrote to her immediate family, but in her letters to her opponents she chose to justify her actions more simply as a defence of personal property and as a matter of duty to her husband. She carefully avoided references to her religious beliefs, which would have been a source of con¯ict with the royalists. Contemporaries portrayed her as an exceptional woman. In an account of the siege, Priam Davies, the captain of the parliamentarian guard defending Brampton in 1643, made it clear that Lady Brilliana `commanded in chief' and described her `masculine bravery, both for religion, resolution, wisdom and warlike policy, that her equal I never yet saw'.51 Lady Brilliana was certainly courageous and she presented a clearly argued political rationale for her actions. Yet we should not see her behaviour during the civil war as the reaction of an extraordinary woman with a uniquely masculine courage. There are, of course, other examples of women resisting sieges of their homes during the period, including Lady Blanche Arundell at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, Lady Mary Bankes
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
154 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
at Corfe Castle in Dorset and the countess of Derby at Lathom House in Derbyshire, all of whom were royalists.52 Rather we should interpret Lady Brilliana's activities as the logical extension of her concern to preserve her family's ®nancial, social and political position, in time of war as well as in time of peace. Within the patriarchal political and social system of early Stuart England, this was a concern shared by all members of the governing elite, by men and women, and by parliamentarians and royalists alike.53 Lady Brilliana was suf®ciently astute to know how to use that concern to her own advantage. By representing her resistance to the royalists not as a matter of religious or political ideology, but as her duty to her husband and his family, she was able to draw on considerable reserves of sympathy from the royalists. The decision to besiege Brampton was repeatedly delayed and once the siege was underway it was certainly not prosecuted with the utmost severity. Lady Brilliana was also twice offered a free pardon, if she surrendered Brampton Castle to the royalists. In his reply to her petition the king emphasised that he was moved to make this offer in consideration of her `sex and condition [i.e. rank]'. The inhabitants of Brampton were not in fact forced to surrender until the onset of a second siege in 1644, after Lady Brilliana's death.54 The lenient treatment of the Harley stronghold is apparent with hindsight, but Lady Harley was convinced that she and her dependants would suffer if they capitulated. In their letter of summons Lingen, Pye and Smallman had argued that if Lady Brilliana resisted them, then they would not be able to offer `any quarter for those that are with you, who must further look for all extremity upon their families and substance forthwith'. In her petition to the king Lady Brilliana described the bombardment of the castle `with ®ve or six cannons battering the walls, and almost every day assaulted by small shot'. At the height of the siege Lady Brilliana wrote to Edward Harley and asked him to `pray for me that the Lord in mercy may presarue me from my cruell and blood thirsty enemys'. Writing to her brother after the siege had been lifted, Lady Brilliana stated that she had taken musketeers into the house `knoweing the violence that Common soulders did use to sheawe upon many plases'. She also rejected his suggestion that she had resisted `with all Extremity' and argued that `I beleeue if I fall into theaire Hands I should suffer much.'55 The crisis of the 1640s undoubtedly forced Lady Brilliana, and other women, to perform unaccustomed acts of bravery, but her actions should not be interpreted as a challenge to the patriarchal system. Rather they were based on long-standing, traditional patriarchal values, which the royalist governors of the county accepted and, as we have seen, with
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jacqueline Eales 155
which Lady Brilliana fully concurred. In addressing the royalists, the contradictions between Lady Brilliana's acceptance of patriarchy and her opposition to the king were skilfully concealed by her choices of language. In choosing to emphasise the patriarchal power of her husband, rather than that of the king, she played into a powerful and persuasive rhetoric that simultaneously gave her a legitimate public role and made it hard for her opponents to act against her. The debates of the civil war prompted a number of political theorists to query the parallel between royal and paternal power. This analogy was challenged by republican writers, such as James Harrington, in the 1650s and was most effectively disputed by John Locke in his Two Treatises of Government (1690).56 Locke and later writers did not, however, abandon the belief that fathers were the natural heads of households. Similarly, it was possible for Lady Brilliana to challenge royal power and to champion the autonomy of the individual conscience without any perceived threat to patriarchal power within the household. Her letters demonstrate that during the English civil war women could take a recognised political role as representatives of their families. In this respect Lady Brilliana's stance was conditioned by the contingencies of warfare, but it was also recognisably part of an older tradition of political action undertaken by elite women, which was rooted in the patronage networks of late medieval and early Tudor society, and which had been further stimulated by the continued disputes of the Reformation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.
Notes 1. I am grateful to those who have commented on earlier drafts of this essay, which was ®rst delivered at the Fourth International Literature and History Conference at the University of Reading in July 1998 and subsequently at the Trinity/Trent Colloquium held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, in February 1999. I am also enormously grateful to Dr Christopher Wright of the British Library Manuscripts Department for his expert help and advice over a number of years. T.T. Lewis, ed., Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley (Camden Society, 1st series, 58, 1854). 2. See for example A. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500±1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 158±9, 188; and Jacqueline Eales, Women in Early Modern England, 1500±1700 (University College London Press, 1998), pp. 57±8, 64±70, 95. 3. Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), p. 4 and passim. 4. BL Add. MS 70105, letter from Stanley Gower, 23 Jan. 1640/1. 5. BL Add. MS 70003 f.251r; see also Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 142±3.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
156 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
6. See for example J. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1992); M. Jones and M. Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: CUP, 1992); P. Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 1000±1500 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998). 7. B. Harris, `Women and Politics in Early Tudor England', HJ, 33 (1990), 259±81; C. Bowden, `Women as Intermediaries: an Example of the Use of Literacy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries', History of Education, 22 (1993), 215±23. See also C. Bowden, `Female Education in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries in England and Wales: a Study of Attitudes and Practice' (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London, 1996). 8. G. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought: the Authoritarian Family and Political Speculation and Attitudes Especially in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Basic Books, 1975). See also S. Amussen, An Ordered Society: Family and Village in England, 1560±1725 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). 9. NUL, Portland MSS, London Collection, Lady Harley's Commonplace Book 1622, ff.126r, 85r. See also P. Crawford, `Public Duty, Conscience, and Women in Early Modern England', in J. Morrill, P. Slack and D. Woolf, eds, Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 57±76. 10. Eales, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 47±59, 86±97, 111. 11. See for example P. Crawford, Women and Religion in England, 1500±1720 (London: Routledge, 1993). 12. PRO SP 16/498/9. 13. Lady Harley's commonplace book for 1622 is at Nottingham University Library see above n. 9. Her commonplace book for 1628 is currently in private ownership and I am grateful to the owner for allowing me access to this document. 14. Lady Harley's letters to her husband can be found in BL Add. MSS 70001, 70003, 70004, 70110. Part of this collection was poorly calendared in HMC, Fourteenth Report, Appendix Part 2, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland Preserved at Welbeck Abbey, vol. 3 (1894), pp. 17±117 passim. I am currently preparing an edition of this and other unpublished material for publication by the Camden Society. 15. HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Bath Preserved at Longleat, Wiltshire, 1 (1904), pp. 1±39 passim. 16. W. Notestein, English Folk: a Book of Characters (1938), pp. 273±308. 17. R. Cust, `News and Politics in Early-Seventeenth-Century England', P&P, 102 (1986), 60±90. 18. Lewis, op. cit. pp. 20, 27, 31, 52, 14, 137; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 27±8, 36, 51±2, 92±5, 116±18, 125±7. 19. R. Scribner, `Oral Culture and the Diffusion of the Reformation Ideas', in Scribner, ed., Popular Culture and Popular Movements in the Reformation Germany (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), pp. 49±69; Cust, `News and Politics'. 20. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 117±18. 21. Lewis, op. cit. p. 126. 22. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 130, 152±6. 23. J. Sutherland, ed., Lucy Hutchinson: Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson with the Fragment of an Autobiography of Mrs Hutchinson (Oxford: OUP, 1973); J. Loftis, ed., The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe (Oxford: OUP, 1979).
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Jacqueline Eales 157
24. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 11, 37, 55, 40, 191±9. 25. BL Add. MS 70001, letter dated 21 Apr. 1626. For the commonplace book see above n. 9. 26. PRO SP16/521/92; BL Add. MS 70118, undated advice from Lady Harley to Edward Harley c.1638. 27. BL Add. MS 70001, letter from Sir Edward Conway, 9 Sept. 1625, 70004 f.43r. 28. PRO SP 16/498/9. 29. See Chapter 6 of this volume and A. Wall, `Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice: the Thynne Family of Longleat', History, 75 (1990), 23±38. 30. BL Add. MS 70110, letter dated 28 April 1626, 70003 f.192r. 31. PRO SP16/41/25, 70/22, 320/13, 334/41. 32. See for example BL Add. MS 70110 ff.8r±v, 70001 letter dated 10 Mar. 1625/6, 70003 ff.78r±79r. 33. BL Add. MS 70003 f.180v. 34. BL Add MS 70003 f.173r. 35. L. Pollock, ` ``Teach Her to Live Under Obedience'': the Making of Women in the Upper Ranks of Early Modern England', Continuity and Change, 4, (1989), 231±58 (p. 250); Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 141±2; Lewis, op. cit., p. 166. 36. For the context of parliamentary elections in the period see M. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 1986). 37. BL Add. MS 70110, undated letter (internal evidence suggests a date of midJune 1642). See also Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 118±77 passim. 38. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 22, 49±52. 39. NUL, Portland MSS, Lady Harley's Commonplace Book 1622; BL Add. MS 70118, undated advice from Lady Harley to Edward Harley c.1638. 40. Lewis, op. cit. pp. 96±7, 132±3, 181. See also Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 104±5. 41. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, p. 154; BL Add. MS 70004 f.45r. 42. PRO C115/N2/8521. 43. BL Add. MS 70004 f.101r. For the siege see Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 165±77. 44. HMC Bath, 1, p. 8. For Lady Aubigny see W. Dunn Macray, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by Edward, Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888) vol. 3, pp. 43, 45, 46, 50, vol. 5, pp. 19±20, 23. 45. Ibid., pp. 8±22. 46. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 146, 168±9; Lewis, op. cit., pp. 206, 209. 47. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, pp. 168±9. 48. HMC Bath, 1, pp. 172±3. 49. BL Add. MS 70110, f.92r. 50. BL Add. MS 70004 f.150r. 51. HMC Bath, 1, p. 27. 52. See DNB under Arundell, Lady Blanche; G. Bankes, The Story of Corfe Castle (1853); E. Halsall, A Journal of the Siege of Lathom House (1902). 53. For the general history of the family during the civil war period see C. Durston, The Family in the English Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). 54. HMC Bath, 1, pp. 14, 17±18. 55. Ibid., p. 8; Lewis, op. cit., p. 208; PRO SP 16/498/9. 56. Schochet, op. cit., pp. 159±78, 244±67.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
158 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
`Doe not supose me a well mortifyed Nun dead to the world': Letter-Writing in Early Modern English Convents Claire Walker
Doe not supose me a well mortifyed Nun dead to the world for alas tis not so, I am alive and . . . as nearly concern'd for thos I love as if I had never left them and must shar in all ther fortunes wither good or bad.1 Thus wrote Winefrid Thimelby, prioress of the English Augustinian cloister of St Monica's in Louvain, to Herbert Aston, her brother-in-law in the 1660s. Thimelby had been corresponding regularly with her family since the mid 1650s, and she remained in contact with her kin until her death in 1690. Her letters keenly sought information about the health and activities of her nieces and nephews, as well as details of the family's fortunes in the turbulent political climate of the late seventeenth century. In return she related bulletins concerning relatives abroad, a number of whom had entered the various English convents and seminaries in France and the Low Countries, and she professed constant affection and prayers for her kin in England. On the surface her letters are entirely focused upon family concerns. Yet the Thimelby letters, and those of other religious women on the Continent, offer a unique window into the daily workings of the exiled convents, and a clear insight into the more complex issue of the nuns' strong sense of their identity and mission as English Catholics. Letters articulate women's ideas and expression, which are commonly absent in medieval and early modern literature, and accordingly they have increasingly attracted scholarly attention.2 As the essays in this collection explain, women's correspondence identi®es the kinds of power women wielded both within their family and local community and on the wider political stage, as well as the ways they used it.3 But research to date has focused almost entirely upon the secular writings of aristocratic and gentlewomen. It all but ignores the epistles of nuns, who as comparatively 159
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
11
learned women, wrote extensively. Their letters were often of a spiritual orientation, but not exclusively so.4 As the letters of Winefrid Thimelby indicate, many early modern nuns wrote proli®cally to family and friends for more worldly reasons. Some of this post-Reformation monastic correspondence has appeared in editions of family letters and in Catholic serials.5 But scholars have only recently begun to analyse these letters' signi®cance as women's writing.6 The nuns' letters examined here cover the full gamut of themes identi®ed in the existing literature. In this sense, the issues are little different to those dealt with by the other female letter-writers in this collection. The religious women exchanged news, discussed the settlement of kin, negotiated dowries, pursued creditors and sought patronage. Yet there was a great distance between the nuns and their secular contemporaries. Most obvious, as the nuns were in exile in France and the Low Countries, was the geographic divide. There was also the spiritual split into Protestant and Catholic, which gave rise to their separate status as married or marriageable women and those who were vowed to God. So, while religious women dealt with ostensibly the same topics as laywomen, they wrote from a very different perspective. They were Catholic exiles who were responsible for their own monastic households. These factors underpin their correspondence, which I will argue can greatly assist our understanding of Catholic strategies, and indeed the ways by which women conducted family and business affairs outside their traditional sphere of the secular household. To understand the issues raised in the correspondence, and what motivated the religious women to write, I will address ®rstly the situation of the cloisters abroad, and the constraints the nuns faced in their effort to maintain monasticism in exile. Then I will discuss their letters within three broad contexts: monastic business, family news and patronage. Inevitably these areas overlap, but by analysing them separately, it is possible to identify the nuns' particular concerns and their methods of dealing with them.
Identity of the nuns Post-Reformation monasteries for English women were established in France and the Low Countries from 1598, when the ®rst Benedictine community began at Brussels.7 The early decades of the seventeenth century witnessed tremendous growth in both vocations and new foundations and, by 1700, there were twenty-two contemplative cloisters.8 Signi®cantly, these convents recruited almost solely from
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
160 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
among their own countrywomen. They were positioned in towns with sizeable expatriate English populations, and drew pupils for their schools and women for their noviciates from among these exiles. However, they attracted most of their inmates from England itself. Such biased recruitment patterns determined the insular nature of the cloisters, some of which actively discouraged local townswomen, described as `foreigners', from joining. This exclusivity re¯ected the nuns' close identi®cation with the plight of their co-religionists in England. Founded by the female relatives of Elizabethan and early Stuart Catholic stalwarts and martyrs and populated by the daughters of the recusant gentry, the religious institutions were established in preparation for the inevitable toleration of Catholicism, upon which they would return the monastic tradition to England's shores. Expectations of this happy event ¯uctuated wildly during the seventeenth century, from eager anticipation in 1603, 1660 and 1685, to the depths of despair in 1649 and 1688. In the meantime, the nuns saw their roles as the preservation of the English Catholic tradition, and the education of the next generation of Catholic wives and mothers. To ful®l these objectives, the nuns required open channels for communication between their cloisters and England. However, in the reformed Catholic Church of the seventeenth century, this proved dif®cult. In 1563, the Council of Trent had imposed strict monastic enclosure upon all communities of religious women, which meant that once a nun made her solemn vows, she had to `die to the world'.9 This shedding of secular ties operated broadly at two levels. First, it entailed physical separation from society within the monastic enclosure, which no nun could leave without a special dispensation and no lay person could enter at will. Secondly, the religious woman quit the world psychologically, in the sense that she had to shun all earthly ties and focus her mind and will entirely upon God. Monastic rules and statutes devoted lengthy sections to the preservation of enclosure, which could be threatened even by indiscriminate correspondence. Letters not only brought news of worldly affairs into the cloister, they discouraged nuns from breaking emotional ties with their kin. The 1613 statutes of the Brussels Benedictine nuns noted that contact with families should be restricted because `a Religious parson ought to be very sparinge in this kinde, as beeinge one deade to e world, & t desireth only to live to Christ alone'.10 Likewise, the 1641 statutes of the third order Franciscan nuns at Nieuport banned inordinate correspondence, citing `the Conservation of the peace tranquilitie and honour of Religion' as justi®cation.11 When limited contact with kin was permitted, abbesses were required to censor all mail leaving and entering their house to ensure that it was discreet and edifying.12
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 161
Many nuns apparently ignored these of®cial regulations. In 1668, Richard White, the confessor of the Augustinian canonesses at Louvain, provided the newly elected prioress, Winefrid Thimelby, with his advice for good governance, entitled `Instructions for a Religious Superior'. In the preface, White noted that high among the disorders which required remedy stood great breaches of the house's enclosure statutes.13 Guidelines regarding appropriate letter-writing were included in the ®nal section. There the confessor warned that to `seek unnecessary correspondence with any is far from a religious spirit, & so esteemed by all truly religious'. In his view, the prioress could write to kin once or twice a year, if her family so desired; her nuns were permitted only one such letter. White cited the preservation of clausura as justi®cation, writing darkly that `no time is more unpro®tably spent, nor no greater occasion of distraction, then in idle correspondence of unnecessary letters'.14 The particular attention in the `Instructions' to the evils of excessive correspondence suggests that prohibitions concerning letter-writing were more pertinent to the exiled English cloisters, like St Monica's, than to Continental religious houses, populated by local inhabitants, where the danger lay more in the intrusion of secular visitors. In spite of this pressure to preserve strict clausura, the nuns showed little desire to distance themselves from their co-religionists in England. This reluctance to cut ties is most obvious in the annals and obituaries of each cloister, which carefully recorded the triumphs and tragedies of martyrs, priests and lay folk, who were often the nuns' kin, in the struggle against the `Protestant heresy'. The annalist of St Monica's illustrated the convent's own happenings with detailed genealogies of prominent nuns and heroic tales of relatives who had suffered for the faith.15 Richard White might have construed this con¯ation of the convent's and the nuns' family histories as undue attachment to the world, but it cemented the exiled nuns' sense that they were part of a wider English Catholic community. In the various cloisters, women were encouraged to tell of their struggles for the faith, bringing the horrors of individual and collective persecution into the enclosure.16 Their personal experience was supplemented by news gleaned from visitors at the grate, and through letters. On the eve of the Gunpowder Plot, the Jesuit, Henry Garnet, reported in a letter to the Louvain cloister, where his sisters were nuns, how a group of Essex recusants had celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi under the watchful gaze of Protestant authorities.17 Likewise, in 1679, during the Oates Plot, the Cambrai Benedictines received news of the trial of the ®ve accused Jesuits.18 More cheering was Lady Nithsdale's letter to her sister, Prioress Lucy Herbert of the Bruges Augustinians, detailing her
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
162 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Jacobite husband's thrilling escape from the Tower of London in 1716, which she had engineered.19 The religious communities eagerly sought such stories. They served to remind the exiled nuns of the continuing struggles for the faith, in which they were intimately involved through kinship and their own efforts to keep the English monastic ¯ame alight. Solidarity with the Catholic cause was one incentive for maintaining regular correspondence, but there was also the more practical element of economic survival. By aligning themselves so closely to the English Catholic community, the nuns were heavily dependent upon family and friends across the Channel for recruits, dowries and donations. The convents' weak economic foundation and their lack of substantial holdings of real estate meant that they relied principally upon income from their members' portions and the charity of benefactors. Each cloister had associates in England who acted on its behalf. These procurators channelled prospective novices to the Continent, and collected dowries and gifts. However, abbesses could not leave all business in the hands of these assistants, and they often negotiated directly with creditors and potential patrons via correspondence. The business letters of abbesses reveal how the economic reality of running a monastic household forced them to disobey their statutes and confessors.
Monastic business The most common monastic business centred upon the recruitment of novices, negotiations regarding their portion, and payment of the agreed sum. The economic security of a cloister depended upon success in all three areas. A woman who entered without an adequate dowry could become a burden upon a house's usually meagre resources, so there were minimum fees which abbesses were bound to uphold. Even successful agreements did not always ensure payment. Many dowries comprised an initial down-payment in cash, supplemented by rents and annuities to be paid during the nun's lifetime. For various reasons the additional monies often failed, and abbesses had to pursue lost revenue from reluctant kin. While monastic procurators in England became the nuns' debt collectors, the religious women themselves were often best placed to persuade families to honour ®nancial obligations. Letters were essential to this task, and indeed to the entire process of dowry negotiation. The nuns' clerical overseers reluctantly acknowledged the importance of letter-writing in monastic business. But to guard against the danger this communication with the world posed to those in the enclosure, Richard White warned that such epistles should `be as brief as may be, without any
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 163
super¯uous words'.20 Moreover, only the abbess and the procuratrix, who was responsible for monastic ®nances, were to conduct the correspondence. In reality, the advice failed to recognise the dif®culties in compelling kin to acquiesce. As letters constituted virtually their sole mechanism for negotiation with the outside world, nuns had to employ a wide range of styles and rhetorical strategies to cajole, plead and even bully reluctant creditors to meet their obligations to the cloister. Furthermore, convent of®cials, who were not personally acquainted with their nuns' families, often lacked the moral clout to pressure them successfully. In many circumstances it made more sense to employ the woman concerned as correspondent. In 1699, Prioress Mary Wright of the Bruges Augustinians wrote to the Jacobite peer, Lord Caryll, regarding the acceptance of his great-niece as a postulant. There had been some misunderstanding over the terms of Mary Ann Caryll's vocation, and the prioress defended the girl's precipitous entry. Mary Wright claimed that John Caryll had sanctioned the act in a previous letter and, as the convent was satis®ed that the girl was old enough and that her portion was suf®cient, it had proceeded with her formal entrance. Created a peer by James II in about 1697, John's position at the exiled court at St Germain-en-Laye, made him a powerful intercessor for many of the English cloisters, so the prioress was at pains not to antagonise him. Yet she was determined to justify her position. Wright hinted that the dowry arrangements for his great-niece, although adequate, were not particularly lucrative for the house. She further declared that the cloister was full, so Mary Ann was in fact super¯uous to its needs. But she counterbalanced these disclaimers with professions of respect for the Caryll family, and in particular for his deceased sisters, Frances and Barbara, who had both been canonesses at Bruges. She also emphasised the general concurrence that his great-niece's vocation was truly a calling from God, noting that her temperament seemed appropriate for the cloistered life.21 The prioress's tactics were not immediately successful. Mary Ann Caryll was apparently removed from Bruges by her relatives, after negotiations regarding her settlement collapsed. It was not until 1712, the year after John Caryll's death, that she ®nally became a nun there.22 However, Mary Wright's epistle represents an excellent illustration of strategic letter-writing. Many superiors trod a ®ne line between defence of their convent's interests and alienation of potential allies. If they wrote too stridently, they might risk any chance of securing the matter at hand. Accordingly, like Wright, they had to achieve a painstaking balance between deference and righteous indignation.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
164 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
One woman who perfected this skill was Abbess Mary Caryll of the Dunkirk Benedictines. Mary, who was the sister of John Caryll, had been professed in 1650 at the Ghent Benedictine cloister. She was sent to establish a daughter-house at Dunkirk in 1662, and was elected its abbess in 1663, ruling until her death in 1712. The abbess and her wellconnected brother feature prominently in surviving monastic correspondence. Both were at the centre of family patronage networks, and several relatives entered the exiled cloisters in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I will discuss various aspects of their correspondence throughout the chapter. But the importance of style, tactics and authorship of business letters is exempli®ed in Mary Caryll's effort to extract a suitable portion from Sir Thomas Clifton of Lytham in Lancashire, the recalcitrant father of one of her novices. Like Prioress Wright, Mary Caryll had to contend ®rst with the issue of Ann Clifton's entrance. In 1674, Ann, who had been educated in another convent, asked to enter the cloister, apparently without her father's prior knowledge or consent. The abbess was therefore at pains to insist that she had not in¯uenced the woman's decision in any way, and to assure Sir Thomas that Ann was content with her choice and most suited to the contemplative vocation. More importantly, and with greater dif®culty, Mary Caryll also had to bargain with him over Ann's dowry and other expenses. Sir Thomas questioned the fees required by the house, suggesting that other cloisters were cheaper. Abbess Caryll's letters reveal that she was prepared to negotiate the substance of the dowry, but she was adamant that the sum should re¯ect Ann's social status.23 When they had ®nally settled upon the cloister's £500 standard fee in the form of £300 initially and a £20 annuity during Ann's life, the abbess declared herself satis®ed. However, she could not resist pointing out the paucity of Sir Thomas's settlement, noting that it was `contrary to what I should have expec[t]ed from my owne parents, for I should have much resented [it] had they not taken the same care of me in Religion as if I had betaken my self to the world'.24 Here, and in her other letters, a polite concern for his daughter's well-being and a wily deference to his social position masks her subtle indictment of Sir Thomas's stinginess. Moreover, she was not quite ready to accept defeat. On the eve of her religious profession, Ann Clifton, who evidently felt slighted by her father, launched the ®nal epistolary assault herself, writing: I was in hopes deere Father to have come with greater advantage to the monastery then only the full portion because I cannot but know had I bine in the world my fortune would have bine answerable to my
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 165
166 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
The fact that Ann did not intervene in the negotiations until the crucial juncture of 25 June 1676 suggests that Caryll had a carefully worked out strategy for pressuring parents. This was within weeks of the day upon which Ann would profess her solemn vows (10 August 1676) and thereby renounce the world, so her plea was all the more poignant. Furthermore, Ann's argument implies that her information about other nuns' dowries had come from Mary Caryll in an effort to persuade her, and thus also her father, that his penny-pinching was a slur upon her status in the community and discredited the family name. Although even this tactic failed to sway the intractable Clifton, it says much about the nuns' appeal to worldly values in the quest to make ends meet. Moreover, the skills used by monastic women to negotiate adequate dowries were commonly put to the test when it came to actual payment. Debt collection exercised a great deal of Abbess Caryll's energy and ingenuity, and she used her quill and ink, and presumably those of the nuns concerned, to pursue reluctant creditors. When these efforts failed, she generally turned to her brother for assistance, claiming that his connections gave him suf®cient authority to compel parents to settle.26 But by the 1700s, when John was suffering the ®nancial penalties of Jacobitism, he was unable to meet his own ®nancial commitments to several cloisters, let alone persuade others to pay outstanding monies. In 1710 the abbess bemoaned the pitiful state of her convent's ®nances, gently pointing out the failure of even her own annuity.27 The family's fortunes declined further after the deaths of Mary and John. By 1725, the portion of their great-niece, Mary Ann Caryll, at Bruges had fallen into arrears, and it remained unpaid up to her death in 1736. Prioress Lucy Herbert, who was the aunt by marriage of John Baptist, the third (lord) Caryll, wrote persistently to her nephew and other family members, seeking reparation.28 The Augustinian prioress carefully addressed her pleas for recompense among requests for family news and harrowing tales of her ®nancial dif®culties. She met with varying degrees of success, ultimately securing part of the debt. Throughout the eighteenth century, John Caryll's heirs were bombarded relentlessly by those he had endowed for the religious life, whose portions were in arrears. One of the more insistent correspondents was his great-niece Arabella (Dame Benedicta) Caryll at Dunkirk. Like the Bruges
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
quality and therefore have[ing] dedicated my selfe to almighty god I was very desirous to bring at least an equale shar with those that has as I shall doe relinquisht much which was due to them in the world and yet brought with them more then 6 or 700 li . . . sometimes a thousand.25
nuns, the Dunkirk Benedictines were in debt in the eighteenth century because of diminishing recruits and the failure of several annuities from England. Abbess Benedicta Fleetwood followed the precedent established by Mary Caryll, employing Benedicta Caryll to lobby her relatives for the lost revenue. Like her great-aunt, the former abbess, Benedicta did not mince her words when she felt family honour was at stake. Initially her letters to John Baptist simply detailed the nuns' dif®cult ®nancial position and listed the outstanding payments. When this approach failed, she applied moral pressure, writing in February 1740, I'm sensible Dr Nephew & mortify'd to come so heavy upon you, but as justice is a Christian vertue, & must be practis'd by all that hopes for eternall life, tis my Dutty to expose you to this affair, as tis yours to execute it.29 When even this hint that his immortal soul was in danger failed, and John Baptist's debts further proliferated, his disgruntled aunt accused him of betraying the family's revered position as patrons of her cloister. In 1647 she chided his continued neglect to repair the debts, observing that `as this house was begun by our Name [it is] a hard stroke to me to live to see you help to bring it down'.30 Finally, in 1749, her nephew promised to settle his account with the new abbess of Dunkirk, Mary Frances Fermor.31 Thus, the nuns' business letters make it clear that, although technically `dead to the world', they could not cut ties with kin who were so essential to their economic security. Abbesses negotiated the ®nancial terms of their novices' admission and profession, and they enlisted the epistolary support of the women themselves when their own endeavours to secure money failed. In this correspondence, the nuns inevitably employed writing styles commensurate with the task at hand. They ¯attered their creditors, and they were not averse to using sarcasm and threats when necessary. The letters accordingly constituted not simply the physical, but also the psychological breach of clausura. Their subject matter and tactics highlight the intrusion of worldly matters and values within the cloister, where the religious women continued to be conscious of their former social status, re¯ected by both their dowry amount and its actual payment. But there was also a gender dimension to this rupture of `psychological' enclosure. As early modern women, the nuns had been socialised to believe that their principal sphere of concern was that of the family. So despite leaving their natural kin for membership of a religious
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 167
168 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
family, many nuns were unable to disengage from the affairs of loved ones.
Winefrid Thimelby understood the value of preserving kinship bonds in the post-Reformation Catholic Church. Thimelby, of Irnham in Staffordshire, was professed an Augustinian canoness at Louvain in 1635. In 1668 she was unanimously elected prioress of the community and remained in of®ce until her death in 1690. Letters to her sister, Catherine Thimelby Aston, and after Catherine's death to Herbert Aston, her brother-in-law, encapsulate her inability to cut ties with her relatives. She was painfully aware of the professed nun's need to sti¯e worldly affection, but nonetheless in letters she joyously embraced her kin. For example, in 1674 she wrote to Herbert Aston: Really I wod faine love nothing but God, but all you at Bellamour are notorious theefs, y[ou]r selfe the Captaine, and steal or rather openly Rob of that poor interest I should pay only to heaven. Whensoever therefore you write to me pray for mee, that I may not sincke in that stream of pleasure, but that it may cary me on to the maine Ocean wher we all may happily drown together.32 Indeed much of her correspondence with Aston almost reads like love letters, but its tone becomes more comprehensible if considered within a familial context. Several of the Aston clan wrote poetry, and the highly emotive style in their correspondence re¯ects this literary bent.33 However, although passionate discourse was common among her kin, it was hardly sentiment or language suitable in a nun, especially in the nun who had received Richard White's careful instructions about letterwriting. Thimelby's attachment to her relations also challenged the confessor's efforts to reform the intrusion of worldly concerns into her convent. She acknowledged this, telling Aston, I am too gross a desembler if I confess not y[ou]r Corishpondence has a better relish with my appetite, then any other, but this secures not but it may be unholsom, not by its owne nature but by my intemperance.34 Yet while her correspondence irrefutably breached clausura, it had signi®cant spiritual and temporal bene®ts for both her kin and her cloister.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Family ties
The prioress was not only committed to her family. Her letters consistently expressed her intense love for God, and a ®rm con®dence in her ultimate salvation. Noting that her death might not be far off, Thimelby wrote to her brother-in-law that `mercy onely is my trust, and without that life is more dangerous then death'.35 She characteristically drew solace from the prospect of spending eternity with her beloved relations, af®rming that she and Herbert Aston were `both walking towards each other, and certaynely shall meet att last . . . our harbenger [Catherine Thimelby Aston] went longe agoe, to provide us a place'.36 Likewise, she comforted her niece, Gertrude Aston, that they would `meet att our rasses [race's] end, what matter though we see not one another runne'.37 Moreover, despite the prioress's obvious attachment to the world, her letters consistently enunciated an overwhelming satisfaction with her monastic life. Reminding Gertrude Aston of the bene®ts of a religious vocation, she advised her to `drinck full draughts at the fountayne head of true and lasting joys such as ¯ow in religion'. Then, fearing that she was applying undue pressure, she added, `forgive me my chyld I cannot forbear to say this, my hart is so topfull of desyre to have thee as hapy as my self'.38 Winefrid Thimelby's obvious spiritual contentment casts doubt upon her confessor's assertion that persistent attachment to kin would `draw both your mind and practise from God'.39 In contrast, the prioress sought to bring her loved ones closer to God through her letters. She wrote to Gertrude Aston that they were united through her prayer: I make a shift to meete thee in a Corner every night after Mattins wher though I can not speake with thee I am allowed to speake for thee as much and as longe as I will and if it prove not so pleasing, yet I know tis more pro®table, ther I negotiat all thy affayers ther Ile present all thy concernes ther Ile petition all thats good for thee.40 Indeed Thimelby's expressions of love for God and her vocation could be interpreted as an attempt to proselytise. In the reformed Catholic Church, which had imposed strict enclosure upon nuns, the missionary apostolate was closed to women. Yet from the enclosure, Thimelby's letters promoted the spiritual bene®ts of Catholicism generally and monasticism speci®cally, and they enticed more than one relative to partake of her happiness. In earlier letters to her sister, Catherine Thimelby Aston, she had broached the subject of her nieces being educated in Louvain in the hope that they might discover a religious vocation.41 In the years following her sister's death, Thimelby pleaded with Herbert Aston to ful®l
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 169
this wish. Subsequently, both Katharine and Gertrude Aston were sent to pension at St Monica's in the 1660s. Thimelby's letters to her brother-inlaw during this period re¯ected her ¯uctuating hopes regarding their vocations.42 Obviously their father was keen to settle them within the cloister. Aware of the prioress's desire to have the girls, he even attempted to persuade his sister-in-law to accept Gertrude for less than the usual dowry.43 Ultimately, Katharine was professed in 1668. But Gertrude, despite pressure from her aunt, sister and members of the Louvain convent, chose not to become a nun. In four poignant letters the disappointed aunt sought to reassure her niece that she would love her no less for her choice to settle in the world.44 Thus, Thimelby sustained recusant piety among her kin, as well as keeping alive the monastic ideal. There are obvious connections between these familial communications and monastic business. Prioress Thimelby's letters clearly bene®ted St Monica's. By advertising her own contentment, she implied that the cloister could be a haven for others. Her brother's widow, Gertrude Aston Thimelby, took the veil at Louvain in 1657.45 In the 1680s, another bereaved relative, Mary Tateman Aston, joined the LieÁge Sepulchrine convent, apparently through her in¯uence.46 Similar endorsements can be found in the correspondence of other nuns. In a letter of 1655 to her mother, Catherine (Dame Justina) Gascoigne of the recently founded Benedictine cloister in Paris asked that her sister, Frances, be sent from England `to make a triall with us'.47 In 1717, Prioress Lucy Herbert congratulated a relative upon the safe delivery of a daughter, who even at this early age was obviously destined for the Bruges cloister's school, if not novitiate.48 Mary Caryll likewise did all that she could to promote her convent to her many female relatives. Hence no letter may be classi®ed simply as family news; each served a personal, spiritual and practical purpose. The ambiguity permitted the nuns to ignore their statutes and confessors, and maintain epistolary contact with the world. But casting off the shackles of clausura in this instance had much wider repercussions. The nuns' commitment to furthering the interests of family and cloister, inevitably drew them both physically and psychologically from the enclosure into the world of seventeenth-century politics.
Patronage Early modern women could exercise in¯uence in the public domain by their participation in patronage networks. Through kinship, social intercourse and positions in high ranking households, aristocratic and gentry women had access to powerful people whom they could lobby on
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
170 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
behalf of family and acquaintances. This was possible because securing and maintaining patrons entailed a complex combination of hospitality, gift-giving and correspondence, all of which lay within the province of women's domestic tasks. As daughters of the gentry and aristocracy, the nuns understood the importance of patronage for their households, and they were well-equipped with the necessary skills and contacts. Obviously their opportunity to entertain guests was limited, so letter-writing assumed particular importance in the quest to garner benefactors. Moreover, in return for aid, they could proffer a gift which did not con¯ict with their religious vows. Writing to her brother, Sir Thomas Gascoigne, in 1655, Abbess Catherine Gascoigne of the Cambrai Benedictines, reassured him that `my prayers (w[hi]ch is all in my power) shall not be wanting for you and yours'.49 Likewise, in 1694, Abbess Mary Knatchbull of the Ghent Benedictine community assured John Caryll of her daily prayers, and expressed her desire to remain `warm in yor memory'.50 On occasions nuns offered more than prayerful intercession. In 1688, Mary Wigmore of the Carmelite convent at Antwerp sent Queen Mary of Modena a relic of St Teresa, comprising `a peece of her ¯esh', to ensure the safe delivery of the `soe much wished & prayed for' Prince of Wales.51 And several convents expanded their effort to secure patrons beyond Catholic circles. In 1660, various abbesses informed Charles II and his chief ministers of the apparent ef®cacy of their prayers during the 1650s, promising further spiritual assistance.52 Thus, the nuns were at pains to advertise their spiritual patronage, in the hope that its recipients would offer temporal assistance when required. However, prayer was not the sole service provided by the religious women. Although their letters so often depict them as clients, certain nuns became important brokers, and even patrons. Mary Caryll was highly regarded by her kin as someone with in¯uence over her brother. Therefore many relatives relied on her brokerage. Those who could not afford to dower their daughters appealed to her to petition John Caryll on their behalf. If she could not settle these nieces and cousins in her own cloister, the abbess acted as a broker between her kin and other monasteries. For example, she negotiated possible portions for her two young nieces, Catherine and Barbara Caryll, with Prioress Margaret Mostyn Fettiplace of the English Carmelites at Lierre.53 Other impecunious relatives used her to plead their case, or to seek preferment at the exiled court at St Germain.54 Winefrid Thimelby performed a similar role in the Aston±Thimelby clan. When Walter, Lord Aston provided his widowed aunt, Mary Tateman Aston, with a portion to enter the LieÁge Sepulchrines, Winefrid Thimelby acted as an intermediary.55 In 1650,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 171
Anne (Dame Clementina) Cary, a Benedictine nun at Cambrai, appealed to Sir Edward Hyde to ®nd a position in either the exiled royalist camp or at the Spanish court for her youngest brother, Patrick, who had fallen upon hard times after the collapse of his income from Italy, where he had been residing. The eldest daughter of the controversial Viscountess Falkland, Anne, a former maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, sought Hyde's aid on the strength of his friendship with another brother, Lucius, Viscount Falkland, who had died ®ghting for Charles I. Hyde responded warmly to her letters and expressed his desire to assist her in any way he could, although he was able to procure little more than advice for Patrick.56 Despite the ultimate failure of the suit, by approaching Hyde initially through his sister, Patrick pointed to her stature in the Catholic branch of the Cary clan. Although she had renounced Protestantism and left the world for the cloister, Anne's family connections and former position at court had endowed her with in¯uence which she could employ to advance her brother's cause. Therefore the nuns, like secular gentlewomen, largely achieved status as patrons through their worldly social status and patronage networks centred upon their kin. However, a few seventeenth-century nuns stepped beyond these domestic parameters into the political sphere. During the 1650s the Ghent Benedictines and Bruges Augustinians, among other cloisters, provided the exiled Charles II with money and hospitality. Indeed the Benedictines rendered even more valuable assistance. Their careful postal networks built to secure the vital exchange of news and money from families in England were made available to the king. From July 1656, Abbess Mary Knatchbull of Ghent arranged the transport of the royalists' mail to and from England, as well as between locations in Flanders and France. She also gathered news of English political events for them from her many correspondents across the Channel. As a result of her association with the royalists, Abbess Knatchbull became a much soughtafter patron within her cloister's circle of friends, who recognised that the king would grant her requests in return for her aid to his cause. The abbess likewise understood the credit she had attained. In the aftermath of the Restoration, she pressed the king's obligations to her in an effort to advance the cause of her convent.57 Knatchbull's example suggests the potency of letter-writing for the exiled nuns. Her stature as a patron was achieved through her indefatigable zeal for correspondence, which she understood was essential to her community's future. When she became Ghent's abbess in 1650, the convent required the intervention of patrons to solve its weak ®nancial position. Accordingly, Knatchbull built an impressive epistolary patronage
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
172 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
network to achieve this goal. Hence, in the 1650s, she was able to place her considerable resources at the disposal of the royalists. Obviously she hoped that if he was restored the king would patronise her nuns. However, Mary Knatchbull's letters imply that she had broader political aims too. She assisted Charles because she believed, once restored, he would advance the cause of Catholic toleration. Therefore just as Winefrid Thimelby and Mary Caryll could further the interests of their secular and religious families, Mary Knatchbull's letters reached beyond the immediate concerns of her cloister's ®nancial woes, to assist her co-religionists and compatriots in England. And her letters reveal that she had still higher ambitions. Through her loyal assistance and prayers, she evidently hoped to convert the king and his ministers. Buoyed by the deathbed conversion of the former, in 1686 she urged the duke of Ormonde to follow suit. Professing herself `very un®tt in this waighty affaire', she nonetheless pointed to the example of the king, the earl of Arlington and other converts, writing `thinke on this matter as a thinge of most importance in the world and for all Eternity to you, and . . . Harden not yor hart against his holy Inspirations by any delay or dif®culty w[ha]tsoever'.58 Ormonde was not swayed by her proselytising, but the letter points to her missionary intentions. Mary Knatchbull refused to be constrained by enclosure and, through her letters, she sought to participate in the wider world of secular and spiritual politics. Without letter-writing the English cloisters would not have maintained the vital channels of communication essential to their existence. Had they adhered to the Church's strictest de®nition of monastic enclosure, which prohibited even this relatively indirect infringement of clausura, they would have lacked suf®cient means to negotiate the terms of their cloister's business. Yet the letters operated in a dimension beyond the temporal concerns of the convent. Mary Caryll and Winefrid Thimelby remained intimately involved with their kin, using letters to keep in touch with loved ones, to advance family interests and to bolster recusant piety. Moreover, the example of Mary Knatchbull shows how letter-writing empowered certain nuns to surpass women's typical locus of family and household and to tread brie¯y upon the political stage. She and others also intruded into the missionary realm by seeking to convert Protestants and to advertise the merits of monasticism. Thus, through their correspondence, the nuns' keen perception of religious and political affairs in their homeland and the signi®cant role they allotted themselves becomes evident. We gain a sense of their complex identity as English Catholic exiles, and their determination to preserve the monastic tradition for the inevitable (as they saw it) toleration of
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 173
174 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Notes Thanks to Trish Crawford and David Lemmings for suggestions and corrections, and to the superiors and archivists of the religious communities for allowing me to cite their manuscripts. 1. BL Add. MS 36 452 f.78. 2. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, `Authority, Authenticity, and the Publication of Letters by Women', in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, ed. (London: Pinter Publishers, 1989), pp. 46±59; Helen Wilcox, `Private Writing and Public Function: Autobiographical Texts by Renaissance Englishwomen', in Gloriana's Face: Women, Public and Private in the English Renaissance, eds S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1992), pp. 47±62; Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds, Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). 3. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, `Writing Resistance in Letters: Arbella Stuart and the Rhetoric of Disguise and De®ance', in Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 67±92; C. Bowden, `Women as Intermediaries: an Example of the Use of Literacy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries', History of Education, 22 (1993), 215±23; Alison Wall, `Elizabethan Precept and Feminine Practice: the Thynne Family of Longleat', History, 75 (1990), 23±38. 4. Debra L. Stoudt, `The Production and Preservation of Letters by FourteenthCentury Dominican Nuns', Mediaeval Studies, 53 (1991), 309±26. 5. Tixall Letters: or the Correspondence of the Aston Family, and their Friends during the Seventeenth Century, ed. Arthur Clifford (1815); Dom Justin McCann OSB, `Some Benedictine Letters in The Bodleian', The Downside Review, 30 (1931), 465±81; Michael J. Galgano, `Negotiations for a Nun's Dowry: Restoration Letters of Mary Caryll, OSB and Ann Clifton, OSB', American Benedictine Review, 24 (1973), 278±98; Margaret J. Mason, `Nuns of the Jerningham Letters: Elizabeth Jerningham (1727±1807) and Frances Henrietta Jerningham (1745±1824), Augustinian Canonesses of Bruges', RH, 22 (1995), 350±69; Margaret J. Mason, `Nuns of the Jerningham Letters: the Hon. Catherine Dillon (1752±1797) and Anne Neville (1754±1824), Benedictines at Bodney Hall', RH, 23 (1996), 34±78. 6. Isobel Grundy, `Women's History? Writings by English Nuns', in Women, Writing, History 1640±1740, eds Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman (London: Batsford, 1992), pp. 134±5; Dorothy L. Latz, `Neglected Writings by Recusant Women', in Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th±17th Centuries, International Medieval Congress. Recusant Sessions (1990±1994): Western È r Anglistik und Americkanistik, Michigan University (Salzburg: Institut fu
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Catholicism in England. Indeed their letters con®rm that far from `dying to the world', the English nuns clung to it for personal, practical and political reasons.
7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14. 15. 16.
17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.
1997), pp. 28±33; C. Bowden, `The Abbess and Mrs Brown: Lady Mary Knatchbull and Royalist Politics in Flanders in the late 1650s', RH, 24 (1999), 288±308. For a detailed discussion of foundation patterns and the reasons for establishing the cloisters, see my forthcoming book, Gender and Politics in Seventeenth-Century English Convents (Basingstoke: Palgrave). These ®gures relate only to the contemplative cloisters which survived the seventeenth century. Houses belonging to Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary are not included. The policy of strict enclosure is often referred to as clausura. Bodl. MS Rawlinson A. 442 f.36: `Statutes of the English Convent of St Mary, 1613'. Poor Clare Convent, Arundel, Franciscan MS 6b f.52: `Statutes 1641'. Bodl. MS Rawlinson A. 442 f.36; Poor Clare Convent Franciscan MS 6b f.52; Priory of Our Lady, Sayers Common, St Monica's MS E4 f.9: `Constitutions of the English Canonesses . . . of St Monica Louvain, 1609'; St Augustine, Rule . . . Together with the Constitutions of the English Canonesse Regular's of our B. Ladyes of Sion in Paris (Paris, 1636), p. 317. Priory of Our Lady, St. Monica's MS Qu2 f.3: Richard White, `Instructions for a Religious Superior', 1668. Ibid., ff.92±3. The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses . . . at St Monica's in Louvain, 2 vols, ed. Adam Hamilton (Sands, 1904, 1906); Isobel Grundy discusses the links between families and nuns in `Writings by English Nuns', pp. 135±7. For example, `The English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris', ed. Joseph Hanson, in Miscellanea VII (Catholic Record Society, 1911), pp. 339±40, 350±3, 365±6, 372±3; `Obituary Notices of the English Benedictine Nuns of Ghent', in Miscellanea XI (Catholic Record Society, 1917), pp. 13±14, 16±17, 47±9, 54±5; C.S. Durrant, A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs (London: Burns, Oats and Washbourne, 1925), pp. 271±306. Cited in Edward S. Worrall, `Henry Garnet and White Webbs House', Essex Recusant, 8 (1966), 108. Hugh Bowler, `The Caryll Letter', The Month, 161 (1933), 265±71. Durrant, Flemish Mystics, pp. 317±24. Priory of Our Lady, St. Monica's MS Qu2 f.92. BL Add. MS 28 226, f.115. Priory of Our Lady, Bruges MS `Professions and Obits'. Galgano, `Negotiations', p. 286. Ibid., p. 292. Ibid., p. 296. Her reference to worldly dowries here was particularly acute. In 1685, in stark contrast to her own £500, Sir Thomas settled £5000 upon her sister Mary when she married Thomas, Lord Petre. Lancashire Record Of®ce, MS DDCl/793. BL Add. MS 28 226 ff.113±14, 117±18, 121±2, 128. Ibid., f.138. Ibid., Add. MS 28 227 ff.393±4, 428; Add. MS 28 229 ff.260±1, 319±20, 48±9. Ibid., Add. MS 28 230 f.97. Ibid., f.454. Ibid., Add. MS 28 231 ff.48±9.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Claire Walker 175
32. Ibid., Add. MS 36 452 f.100. 33. See the letters of Catherine Aston and Constantia Fowler in Tixall Letters. This point is discussed brie¯y by Patricia Crawford in `Friendship and Love between Women in Early Modern England' in Venus and Mars: Engendering Love and War in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds Andrew Lynch and Philippa Maddern (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1995), p. 53. For a fuller discussion of the Aston Thimelby correspondence, see Julie Sanders, `Tixall Revisited: the Coterie Writings of the Astons and the Thimelbys in Seventeenth-Century Staffordshire', Staffordshire Studies (forthcoming). 34. BL Add. MS 36 452 f.100. 35. Ibid. 36. BL Add. MS 36 452 f.87. 37. Ibid., f.95. 38. Ibid., f.93. 39. Priory of Our Lady, St Monica's MS Qu2 f.92. 40. BL Add. MS 36 452 f.95. 41. Ibid., ff.62, 63. 42. Ibid., ff.66, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76, 78, 88, 90. 43. Ibid., f.89. 44. Ibid., ff.92±5. 45. Ibid., f.70. 46. Ibid., f.204. 47. Bodl. Rawlinson MS A.36 f.79. 48. BL Add. MS 28 227 f.428. 49. Bodl. Rawlinson MS A.36 f.77. 50. BL Add MS 28 227 f.9. 51. Ibid., Add MS 28 225 f.276. 52. Bodl. Clarendon MS 77 f.179; Carte MS 31 ff.28, 157; Carte MS 214, f.253. 53. BL Add. MS 28 226 ff.124, 125. 54. Ibid., ff.124, 129, 130, 132, 139. 55. Ibid., Add. MS 36 452 f.204; `Records of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at LieÁge, Now at New Hall, 1652±1793', ed. Richard Trappes-Lomax, in Miscellanea X (Catholic Record Society, 1915), p. 191. 56. Bodl. Clarendon MS 39 ff.75±6, 92±4, 160, 162, 200; Clarendon MS 40 ff.13, 169±70, 188. 57. See Bowden, `Abbess and Mrs Brown'; and my `Prayer, Patronage and Political Conspiracy: English Nuns and the Restoration', HJ, 43, 1 (2000), 1±23. 58. Oulton Abbey Archives, MS G.16 ff.153±4.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
176 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Gentle Companions: Single Women and their Letters in Late Stuart England Susan Whyman
The seventeenth-century women whom we know as letter-writers were usually wives, daughters, or widows of wealthy men. This is not surprising, for elite women had education and leisure, and their papers were most likely to survive. The personal correspondence of the Verney family, however, allows us to look at the letters of less well studied groups of single women who were cousins or `poor relations'. Some historians have described these women as females without a function, and they usually lacked descendants who would preserve their memorabilia. This chapter analyses the correspondence of several unmarried women. It argues that letters made a difference in their lives and played a broad range of roles. They were used instrumentally to preserve social networks, obtain ®nancial support and to maintain a place of residence. Most important, they were a means to secure the all-important and desperately needed patronage of the male head of the family. On a different level they offered ways to secure self-expression, psychological support and approval from loved ones. The Verneys have been represented as an extremely patriarchal family.1 Even so, unmarried Verney women found ways to express their dignity through letters. One might assume that in a society in which marriage determined status, there would be few single women. But if we include women who were single before marriage and add them to `never-married' women and widows, their numbers are considerable. Single men and women reached a peak of almost 27 per cent in late seventeenth-century England, due to a complex combination of demographic trends, sex ratios and economic ¯uctuations.2 At the same time, letter-writing was expanding along with literacy and communications and the rise of a polite, print culture.3 In fact, there are
177
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
12
hundreds of letters from articulate single women in the Verney papers of the late seventeenth century. The Verneys were an upper-gentry family of Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire. Under the direction of Sir Ralph Verney (1613±96), they amassed one of the largest continuous archives for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Over 100 000 items spanning 12 generations include more than 30 000 personal letters from the 1630s to the mid-eighteenth century. The collection was expanded and further organised by Sir Ralph's younger son John (1640±1717). John spent twenty-two years as a London merchant, but in 1696 he inherited Sir Ralph's estate and baronetcy, after the unexpected deaths of his elder brother Edmund and Edmund's two sons.4 As the Verney letters clearly show, single Verney women were as literate and well bred as their married kin. Most of them, however, lacked dowries and had little means of support. Because an occupation or domestic service threatened their gentle status, their options were greatly restricted, as calls for women's education and access to a livelihood show.5 In fact, how did gentle seventeenth-century spinsters survive in a society which authorised few spaces for independent women? The Verney archive shows that they were kept by other women as companions, often at the express command of the family head. This arrangement was part of the patriarchal structure and thus provides us with an example of how patriarchy actually worked. It also demonstrates the importance of women's letter-writing for companions, their mistresses and the patriarch himself. The family head received letters from companions on a regular basis, as he did those of his steward and housekeeper. In practice, companions sent him valuable information that he could not obtain elsewhere according to pre-arranged instructions. As argued below, patriarchs received various bene®ts from their correspondence. For companions, however, constant and persuasive letter-writing was not just helpful ± it was crucial for survival. Without fathers or brothers to provide them with a home, spinsters needed patriarchal patronage. Letterwriting was their best and often only way to achieve this goal, and they developed it into an art. Individual companions adopted different epistolary strategies and techniques; some were more successful than others. But all of their letters had a two-fold effect: in their overtly dutiful and submissive aspects, they humbly supported the patriarchal order; yet even the most dependent Verney women felt entitled to self-expression and had access to the family head through letters. Under the cloak of humility, letter-writing gave companions the opportunity to make complaints, arguments and demands that challenged patriarchal conventions. When treated poorly, they used their correspondence to express
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
178 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
a sense of self-worth. Where possible, they carved niches in the small spaces allotted them by sending valuable social and political information. Far from lacking a function, some were given heavy family responsibilities. This chapter examines the correspondence of unmarried companions with the women who employed them, and with the family head. It also provides sketches of their daily lives as revealed by their letters. First, the chapter considers the physical format and conventions of the Verney letters. Normally, paper was coarse with untrimmed edges. Handwriting was bold and clear. Writers left one side blank, apparently for social effect, but they turned the page sideways and crammed farewells into the margin. The paper was then folded, sealed and addressed. Letters received by the family head were saved and docketed, according to date, name and topic. Generally, the Verneys wrote in three basic modes: they could be candid with trusted intimates, sociable to friends and acquaintances and contrived or arti®cial regarding patronage.6 In practice, their writings were a blend of all three, depending upon the letter's speci®c context and the relationship of writer and recipient. Companions carefully constructed letters to the family head, sometimes hiding true feelings, but found cathartic release on other occasions. As a group, the letters of Sir Ralph's sisters and cousins, who reached marriageable age during the 1640s, differed radically from those of their male kin in spelling, grammar and presentation. Mistresses and their companions wrote phonetically and often sprawled their thoughts in a large `untutored' hand. Nevertheless both groups expressed themselves as articulately as men, and both sexes sent `humble services' according to epistolary conventions. The gap between male and female letter-writers diminished in the next generation of women who form the focus of this study. Neither mistresses nor their companions received formal education; their epistolary skills were learned from contact with brothers and their tutors, as well as strict parental discipline. At an early age, boys and girls regularly wrote letters of compliment to various family members who commented upon their progress to the family head. As a result, women's spelling, penmanship, structural approach and physical presentation became more disciplined. More signi®cant change came in the eighteenth century, when elegant letters from young women showed signs of in¯uence by writing masters or boarding schools, as well as the effect of time spent in London.7 This third generation wrote with more ease and natural politeness, avoiding stiff French formality. Four of Sir Ralph's spinster nieces have been selected here as case studies from a database of the Verney letters from 1692 to 1717: Pen and Cary
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Susan Whyman 179
Stewkeley, Peg Adams and Mary Lloyd. Their widowed mothers were deceased or impoverished and unable to provide them with a home. Moreover, the Verneys practised primogeniture and Sir Ralph left no legacies to his sisters' children. The only alternative available was for them to serve as companions in other people's homes. All were accomplished letter-writers; between them they wrote at least 329 letters to Sir Ralph and his son John. The Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century describes these spinsters as `permanent and welcome members of the ®reside circle', but the letters tell a different story. They show the desperate reality of their lives, as they were `carried' from family to family with no security and often little regard. As one companion, Pen Stewkely, starkly put it: `I had rather serve hogs.'8 Despite her negative feelings, however, Pen (b.1657) led a more af¯uent life than her fellow poor relations. She was the second of ®ve daughters born to Sir Ralph's poverty-stricken sister Cary (1626±1704) and her second husband John Stewkeley. Although Cary had lived comfortably in Hampshire while her husband was alive, after his death she existed precariously in Islington on a tiny annuity from Sir Ralph. None of her many daughters had portions, and none were married by the 1680s. Pretty, gregarious Pen was waiting on a wealthy Warwickshire relative, Lady Katherine Shuckburgh, whose husband, Sir Charles, a baronet, later became a member of Parliament.9 Pen was a true companion, not merely a glori®ed servant. This was unusual in the late seventeenth century, in contrast to the previous generation of Verney women. Pen's position bore marks of earlier exchanges of children among noble families, where young people learned courtly manners, pay was not expected, and newcomers came with clothes and money.10 Pen's assertive personality helped her to cope with the problems of living in someone else's house, but her greatest asset was her intimate relationship and long-standing correspondence with her cousin John Verney. The database contains over 71 letters from Pen, including 44 to John and 24 to Sir Ralph. In these letters, Pen expressed her anxiety about the uncertainty of her position, the competition she faced from other women, and the problems her attractiveness caused in relations with male employers. `I do not ®nd as yet any cause for any thoughts of going hence', she wrote, for Lady Shuckburgh `often says I shall never go away from her'. Yet Pen knew that Sir Charles Shuckburgh was `a little ®ckle in his temper'. `All things are so changeable in this world', she admitted, `that there is nothing to be trusted.' Her most pressing problem, however, was ®nancial: she had no money remaining, and Lady Shuckburgh had failed to deliver the expected cash and presents. It
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
180 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
would be impossible, she feared to live on the £20 a year paid to her by her kinsman, Sir Hugh Stewkeley.11 Pen's letters to her `deare cousin John' gave her the opportunity to defend her expenses and to make a case for future loans of money. Every disbursement, she insisted, was required to maintain her position and meet social obligations. Indeed, she had already spent over £6 on `necessary gifts' to Sir Charles, his lady, the maids, the doctor, the groom, the workmen, the poor at Christmas, and for the carriage of her goods. But the 13 shillings that she lost playing cards caused her the most anxiety. Sir Charles, she admitted `does not know the nearness of my fortune, nor I do not care he should . . . for he talks of most things public'. To make matters worse, her mistress intended to `carry' her on a hectic three-week round of visiting. `Tis true I have what the world calls pleasures' she moaned, `but when I consider I have not a purse to bear it out, it is quite contrary to me.' Her letters were her only outlet for grievances that as a companion she had to repress. Pen's regular correspondence with John also helped her to maintain Sir Ralph's favour, though she was out of sight. `I now desire you to read this to my uncle', she wrote boldly, so that he could see the state of her ®nances. Then she prudently professed intense devotion to Sir Ralph, thus softening the tone of her demands. She also used her letter to obtain John's advocacy in dealing with family members with whom she competed. His cousin Nancy Nicholas, she warned, was `not my friend'. Pen often sent her best titbits with requests to keep them secret from the Nicholases. Her letters reveal long-standing feuds that allow historians to detect arti®ce and strategies of letter-writers. In later correspondence, Pen asked John to invest her money, for he handled her ®nances in London when she was in the country.12 These letters combine ¯attery and modesty with appeals to their common interests and long friendship. Pen also employed letters to strengthen her tenuous position as a companion. `I should be glad if my Uncle, your father, would be pleased to write a letter to my Lady', she wrote. `I should not venture to beg, but I know it would be much to my advantage, because I ®nd my Lady takes great notice at the countenance he is pleased to show me.' Sir Ralph was one of the most important landowners in Buckinghamshire and Pen's letters marked her place in his network. Pen concluded with fears that she had `suf®ciently punished' John with `this long scrawl', and signed herself `your poor absent cousin, who while she lives will be ever your most affectionate cousin and servant'. These apologies were not a sign of humility, but an indication that she knew how to write a proper letter and successfully
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Susan Whyman 181
obtain his patronage. `The con®dence I have in your friendship', she explained, `makes me give you the trouble of knowing all my concerns.' Only through her letters, however, could she furnish him with the details. Sir Ralph and John usually complied with Pen's requests, because they too bene®ted from her political news, gossip and scandal. Unlike servants, Pen dined and socialised as an equal and was privy to many secrets. This was important in a society based upon patronage, where interactions were cloaked in polite conventions. Operating almost as a domestic spy, she kept records of visitors, reported who `stands very fair' and noted broken alliances. In every letter she stressed her loyalty to the Verneys. Although Sir Charles showed her `as much kindness and respect as he shows to any that is no nearer related to him', she knew she was `a stranger'.13 A great deal of Pen's success in life stemmed from her ability to write persuasive letters to her male relations. The Verneys clearly prized Pen's letters, and arranged secret ways of receiving them. I have written to you `in the way my uncle bid me', Pen wrote to John, `for it is much the safest'. If Sir Ralph was away, she cautioned John to `send it [the letter] in the old way and when read by him and you, then burn it, I pray'. The Verneys' actions to safeguard Pen's letters indicate they recognised the political import of her correspondence. Such prudence is understandable, in light of the fact that nosy gentry families like the Shuckburghs were known to `open all letters that comes to their hands'.14 Moreover, letters were passed from person to person to satisfy hunger for news. The impact of a letter continued long after its journey, and the perils of the post caused anxiety. Less likely to be intercepted were letters written by Pen to her sisters, for `none of them were watched'. Pen's exalted social life, however, was uncommon and certainly not experienced by Peg Adams (b.1665), another of Sir Ralph's nieces. Peg's mother, Elizabeth Adams (1633±1721), was the youngest of Sir Ralph's six sisters. In 1662 she married a struggling clergyman, Charles Adams (d.1683), of Great Baddow, Essex. In the 1690s, she lived on a tiny annuity from Sir Ralph on a back street behind Covent Garden. She could not afford to `keep' her two daughters, who were therefore forced to wait upon their Verney kin. Peg was an intelligent, capable woman `with a gracious dignity about her which no ill fortune could subdue'. The database includes 84 carefully constructed letters from Peg, 23 to Sir Ralph and 61 to John. These letters show an empathy for others and a great deal of nursing skill. Aged 31, she bore the awesome responsibility of tending Sir Ralph on his death bed. But she herself was `lean as pharoah's lean
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
182 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Susan Whyman 183
I must never expect to be free from them as long as I am in this world, and as for anybody falling in love with me, I can't expect that [having] . . . none of that which all the world values; I mean money.15 Although Peg had desirable skills, in 1692 she was abruptly dismissed from her position as companion to Sir Ralph's cousin, Nancy Nicholas. This event provoked a vigorous exchange of 13 letters from 2 June to 14 June 1692 and 11 more by early July between the participants: Peg, the companion; Nancy, her `keeper'; John, a close friend of Nancy's; and Sir Ralph, the reigning patriarch, who had arranged for Peg to live with the Nicholases in Covent Garden and St Albans. The correspondence constructs a narrative with four main characters, a plot and a conclusion. But because the players wrote in ways that would best display their gentle breeding, it is not until the seventeenth and eighteenth letters that we discover the economic and social reasons that led to Peg's dismissal. Peg's story is told through an elaborate exchange of letters that reveal hidden social relationships. They demonstrate how family members competed with each other through correspondence for a place in Sir Ralph's networks. Indeed women's letters from rival factions highlight family power structures. In the case of Peg's dismissal, Sir Ralph's sister Elizabeth Adams and his cousin Nancy Nicholas represented two feuding family factions. In age and kinship, Elizabeth outranked Nancy, the daughter of a close friend and kinsman of Sir Ralph's. Nancy hoped to extend her father's intimacy into the next generation through letters with her cousin John. Unlike Sir Ralph's impoverished sisters with their unmarried, portionless daughters, Nancy's husband George was a member of Parliament, held a custom-house place, and offered the Verneys large loans. Thus, the Nicholases had much to offer. They threatened Sir Ralph's sisters, who existed precariously upon his annuities, and after John inherited, the sisters would become dependent on him.16 The incident began on 4 June 1692 with news that Peg's mother, Elizabeth, had smallpox. Peg left the Nicholases in Essex at two in the morning and hurried to Covent Garden. Soon after, Nancy informed Peg that she would no longer `keep anybody settled in her house for a companion', though Peg had done no wrong. Peg immediately wrote to Sir Ralph for assistance, for he had asked her to live with Nancy: `I could not forbear troubling you with an account of anything which happens to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
kine' and her doctor predicted consumption. Noting her poverty and illnesses, she admitted:
me in my little affairs since you have been pleased to give me the freedom of doing it.' Though deferential in her letter, Peg knew she had been a `®ne companion' and refused to lose her dignity: `I would not do anything rude neither would I willingly pin myself upon her.'17 Lacking income, Peg desperately needed Sir Ralph's approval in order to survive. Her letter gave her the opportunity to defend her reputation, maintain her place in his network, and enlist his aid with Nancy. On 13 June Nancy wrote to Sir Ralph with her side of the story: `I have never done anything of moment without acquainting you with it.' She defended her action, calling it her Christian duty, for though Peg had served her faithfully, `her mother has had many an unquiet hour for the want of her'. However, her letter to Sir Ralph was enclosed inside a frank, angry letter to her trusted cousin John. `I truly believe I shall now be your Aunt Adamses best cousin for . . . my letting her have [Peg] home again . . . Though perhaps I may have many a hard word behind my back . . . [having] had my share of that number in my life.' His aunts, she insisted, were `none of my friends', and she urged him `to say what you think on my behalf' to his father.18 She not only presented herself differently to Sir Ralph and John, but also encouraged family divisions with her letter. A third comment about the incident was sent that day by Sir Ralph to John. `I would not have it known yet that I know anything of it', he con®ded, but `it will be a great charge to her mother to keep her at home.' Then he added another layer to the narrative by summarising the contents on the back of each letter. An expanding conversation with multiple inputs and feedback was being constructed through correspondence, with different faces presented to different people. On 19 June, Sir Ralph conveyed his thoughts more fully in three additional letters. He addressed his 52-year-old son as `child', Peg as `good niece' and Nancy as `deare cousin', expressing his relationship with each person. To John he con®ded that he saw no hope. In his draft to Nancy, however, he sternly conveyed his displeasure: `For you very well know how much and how earnestly I desired that my niece Adams should continue under your conduct . . . and I am still of the same mind.' He made negative comments about women's inconstancy and put inserts in every sentence, re¯ecting the anger with which the draft was penned.19 His letter to Peg was equally authoritative, but less harsh in tone. He asked that she carry it with as much respect and kindness to my cousin Nicholas, and her husband, as you can, for I think their former kindnesses deserve it
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
184 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Susan Whyman 185
from you. I confess I have expected this a great while. Had I been in their circumstances, I should have done it sooner.
You have been pleased to speak your mind so freely to me about this affair. I hope also you will give me leave to say . . . that I rather think my Cousin apprehended my mother in a dangerous condition . . . Therefore she dismissed me before her death, that I might not look upon her house as a habitation . . . I must own myself to be very well satis®ed with the change; rather than to be burthensome to any friend with my company when they do not desire it. Despite her dependence, Peg did not mince words about Nancy's lack of compassion when writing to their mutual patron.20 Nancy's next letter to Sir Ralph con®rmed Peg's suspicion. Deftly appealing to Sir Ralph's frugal nature, Nancy claimed she was merely `following the wise precepts which you have often given me; that since taxes are so great and everybody's estates much lessening, tis not a time for us now to increase our family when everybody else retrenches'. `I never put pen to paper', she confessed, with so much concern in all my life as now, for you are a person that I have that real love and kindness for, as well as many obligations. I humbly beg and beseech you not to take this ill of me, that is my misfortune, but not my fault. Although she signed herself `your most dutiful child and humble servant', she refused to admit wrong-doing and would not give in to the family patriarch.21 The letters of Peg and Nancy demonstrate how complaints and arguments were politely camou¯aged by traditional forms of reverence. Both mistresses and companions had been trained to do this artlessly, and their letters were thus polite. After many subsequent letters, Sir Ralph not only forgave Nancy, but also urged Peg `upon all occasions to acknowledge her former favours'. Because the Verneys had been bred to be courteous, everyone's letters employed the language of a patriarchal patronage system based upon favour and service, indeed, `humble services' from `obedient servants'. They re¯ected Sir Ralph's needs to literally `paper over' tensions within the family in order to preserve peace. In fact, a breach in family harmony
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
The last sentence alludes to an as yet unmentioned reason for her dismissal. Peg's response was circumspect but not submissive:
had serious implications. For Sir Ralph and his father Sir Edmund had taken different sides during Charles I's quarrel with Parliament. `Family disputes resemble civil wars, wherein all sides may have reason to complain', wrote Sir Ralph. As patriarch, he consciously used letters to maintain family order. Peg wisely realised that Sir Ralph's support was more important than ever. Nevertheless, a few years later she wrote to Sir Ralph to say that she would not wait on Nancy's daughter until Nancy had left the house. However, Peg prudently added: `I have writ in ordinary paper...purely to show my obedience in this small thing which I would ever perform in greater.'22 She chose to express loyalty in the way she wrote her letters, but refused to give up her dignity in them. Peg's dismissal was, on the surface, a trivial event. But it shows how social and economic change affected real individuals and families. It also reveals hidden motivations and cultural change that cannot be seen in other types of sources. Peg's story indicates that expensive foreign wars, rising taxes and falling agricultural prices directly affected attitudes towards kinship. As gentry families cut back their servant establishments, the plight of unmarried women became increasingly apparent. Thus in 1693, Sir Ralph's sister Cary noted: `Many has put away women as formerly kept them, since too great taxes has been paid and lessened their servants in all places . . . I think there was never more gentlewomen wanted service than now.'23 At the same time, a growing desire for privacy caused Nancy to revel in the seclusion of her nuclear family. The Verney letters show the effect of this cultural shift on kinship responsibility from many points of view. The letters also demonstrate the importance of looking at relationships between different types of women, not just at the treatment they received from men. A woman could be `kept' or let go, not only as a man's mistress. She was similarly disposable as a woman's companion. The verbs `keep', `dispose' and `carry' used in relation to single women underline this point. Furthermore, under conventional language of humble services and servility lay a tradition of regarding the sexuality of single women as suspicious, if not wanton. As recent research has shown, single women posed threats to traditional ways of thinking about virginity and sex. Without male protectors, moral standards might be in danger.24 The story of Peg's dismissal also reconstructs the process of how individuals `self-fashioned' or presented themselves to different people in different ways through letters. Poor relations, as well as mistresses, had command of epistolary conventions, but companions had to be continually on guard. They became particularly adept at constructing
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
186 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
polite letters, with little to rely upon except their own reputations and characters. In response to dependency, they developed life-coping strategies through letter-writing and drew their epistolary self-portraits as they wished to be seen by others. The self that they presented, however, varied with recipient.25 To Nancy Nicholas and other female competitors, companions wrote with scrupulous courtesy, though feuds had existed for generations. To mothers and sisters, they scribbled with frankness and even anger. But the face that poor relations presented to the family head was especially important. Thus, Pen used both her letters and her attractiveness to manipulate the men in her life, presenting herself as an interesting and adventurous ally, capable of offering valuable information. Peg, however, stressed her rationality, steadiness, and ability to help family members. In 1710, Peg ®nally had a marriage offer from a man she loved, but her mother forbade the match. Not only was it below her rank, but also Peg had no portion.26 Peg appealed to John, now head of the family, but after one attempt to intervene on her behalf, he told her to obey her mother. Peg's letters show that ideas about gentility, though contested in wider society, often hampered elite women. Her prophecy that `poor I must live and die an old maid' came true.27 In contrast to Pen Stewkeley, Peg had fewer comforts and more aggravation from feuding relations. Both women, however, used letters to retain the patronage of the family head. Without other sources of ®nancial support, it was crucial to stay in his favour. Both Peg and Pen were able to do this through constant and persuasive letter-writing. Neither Pen nor Peg bore the responsibilities and stress of Pen's eldest sister Cary Stewkeley (b.1655) who regularly wrote long reports to Sir Ralph. During the 1680s and 1690s, Cary tended Sir Ralph's daughter-inlaw Mary Abel (1641±1715) in neighbouring East Claydon. The Abels continually caused problems in the village, and Cary played the role of a trusted, local informer. She also assumed the duties of helping the parish poor, tending the sick, and coordinating watchers at death-beds. Mary Abel needed Cary's care because of her mental illness, which arose after her forced marriage to Sir Ralph's eldest son Edmund (1636±88). Their union brought the Verneys adjacent lands worth £700 to £800 per year, but since Edmund and her three children had died prematurely, Mary Abel's estate would revert back to the Abels at her death. Sir Ralph's steward in East Claydon was old and weak, and the Verneys were subjected to constant lawsuits. It was vital to have a loyal informed person on the spot, especially since Sir Ralph was spending up to nine months a year in London.28
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Susan Whyman 187
188 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
to cast my careful eye on my cousin, your sister, which I always did: ever since your brother brought me . . . into his house, for that was his desire of me to do so, and also his son: and your good father desired me still to do the same. In fact, Cary's 170 letters in the database, including 99 to Sir Ralph and 67 to John, represent only a fraction of her total output. She sent important news about political elections and was the ®rst to report the death of Sir Philip Wharton, whose son, the Whig county leader, opposed the Tory Verneys. But Cary's most valuable information was about the legal activities of Mary's kin and allies, who were trying to prove that Sir Ralph had mismanaged Mary's estate in hopes of getting their hands on her rents.29 Fortunately for the Verneys, they failed in this attempt. Cary's long, detailed letters helped to protect the family estate. As a gentlewoman, Cary was able to obtain this type of information, for while Sir Ralph and John were in London she socialised with the gentry. In 1696, for example, she was one of 30 guests in the Pigott's great parlour. In her description of this occasion, she noted that there were three groaning tables and two ®ddlers, and that Sir Thomas led her to her coach and said `I was the lady of his feast.' In fact, Cary needed her letters to the Verneys as much as they did, for in them she justi®ed her usefulness and self-worth. Letters were an escape valve for her stress and a chance to maintain a favoured place within the family. Thus, when Sir Ralph died, she reminded John to invite her to the funeral `for it would look ill if I was not there, as has been at all the private funerals past'.30 Each new employer had to be wooed through letters in order to re-establish a companion's place. Letters also allowed Cary to clarify her own genteel position to herself and to the Verneys. Because she had responsibility without real authority, her status was particularly ambiguous. Unlike her sister Pen, Cary was a glori®ed servant, neither ®sh nor fowl. She bore the brunt of the anger of other servants, with whom she constantly fought, but her letters to and from kin reminded her of her gentle birth.31 At Sir Ralph's death, Cary expected `a swinging legacy', but in fact she received nothing. A few years earlier, however, Cary had asked Sir Ralph and John to invest £100 that she and her sisters had hoarded from legacies. She wished them to place it in a government fund which would give them an annual annuity of £14. The Verneys were already investing in these funds and were willing to help dependants to become more
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
When Sir Ralph died, John ordered Cary to continue her letter-writing. In response, she promised
self-suf®cient. I will `trust to providence for the continuance of the Government', Cary wrote, `since I see so many wise men takes these ways to improve what they have'. Her letters enabled her to request and receive ®nancial help from the Verneys. The survival of this correspondence indicates that far from being passive, unwordly spinsters, Cary and her sisters were informed about London's `®nancial revolution'.32 After their mother's death in 1704, the four unmarried Stewkeley sisters lived together in London in an early form of `spinster clustering'. When they wrote to John for his assistance, however, he refused to give them a monthly allowance, as his father had done for their mother.33 Cary's spirited response gives us insights into the lives of single women that can only be gleaned from personal correspondence: We are all as uneasy to run into debt as your Lordship, we knowing the misery of it, but then what can we do? If we were all to go to service, who would take us? For I see how service is to be got. Then to work for our livings, I see how hard it is to get bread to put into [our] mouths . . . My cousin Ruth Lloyd had her health so ill in service, that she was forced to quit it. Although they raised enough money from other kin, the sisters were almost forced to move into two garrets in 1705. In 1708, however, they were still living together, and with the help of a huge legacy from her godmother, Pen eventually married.34 By contrast, Mary Lloyd (b.1666) and her sister Ruth (d.1725) were not as lucky as the Stewkeleys. Their mother, Sir Ralph's sister Mary (1628±84), had disgraced the family by becoming pregnant and then marrying their steward. Mary's eldest son Humphrey died in 1715 and her younger son Verney served in Flanders, but neither of the brothers were willing to help support their sisters. There are only four letters from Mary in the database, but other letter-writers discuss her situation. She had at least eight changes of employment between 1692 and 1717. In 1694, she waited on Lady Katharine Fitzgerald. But unlike her early seventeenthcentury kin, Mary was now paid wages, which clearly indicated her loss of gentility. What is more, she received only six pounds a year, which was less than that received by some ladies' maids.35 Letters describing Mary's plight display the relationships of companions with women of different social and marital status. They also help us to speculate about long-term changes in the status of Verney companions. In 1695, Sir Ralph's sister Cary praised Mary, ®nding her `desirous to do all things as her mother's friends do approve of and to endeavour to get a
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Susan Whyman 189
livelihood to keep her like a gentlewoman'. She hoped that Mary's salary would prevent her from `perishing for want'. `God keep all my relations from that unspeakable af¯iction', she added, revealing the intense anxiety that hung over dependent women.36 But Sir Ralph had a very different opinion of Mary: `No place will please her long', he complained. The letters show two distinctly gendered opinions of spinsters by Sir Ralph and Cary. In 1713 after many jobs and the deaths of her employers, Mary was again left homeless. John's wife Elizabeth now kept her as a companion, and the Verney Letters assure us that Mary was `a member of the Claydon family party'.37 The letters themselves though show that this was not so: in April, John threatened to dismiss Mary because of the expense. `It will look very unkind', chided Elizabeth. `She is your cousin . . . which nothing could be closer but brothers and sisters. And really, if we can not expect some compassion from them which are so nearly related, who must we from?' Mary's predicament was not an isolated incident. It was characteristic of a society whose households were headed by men, and whose women ideally were protected, not independent. `I think women are like young birds which ¯y out but cannot ®nd the way home unless the old ones come to be their guide', wrote a friend.38 A home for a spinster, however, was becoming increasingly dif®cult to ®nd. The letters to and from these four companions reveal the attitudes and values of the Verneys. Case studies of the previous generation of companions reveal the same problems, but show a greater integration into family life. The correspondence suggests that civil war interrupted the exchange of children between elite families, where they learned manners and made marriage contacts. By the eighteenth century, places were competitively fought for and sometimes commanded a small wage. Although the Verneys might give lip-service to gentility, conduct literature now included them as a category of domestic help. In practice, Mary Lloyd was little more than a servant. New educational and occupational alternatives were not yet available for women, as they were for younger sons. Furthermore, economic specialisation diminished a spinster's value to households that now desired privacy. The letters challenge the rosy view of family memoirs, but they con®rm demographic data about late marriages, unequal sex ratios and soaring marriage portions.39 They suggest that the fragile threads of kinship were being stretched thin in an increasingly market-based society. As the Verneys penned their letters, we can see power relationships between patriarch and kin, men and women, and between women of different ages, ranks, kinship ties and marital status. We observe how
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
190 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
single women coped with life by developing epistolary strategies, in the face of both support and disloyalty from other women. Elizabeth Verney's defence of Mary Lloyd and Pen's huge legacy indicate that women were often able to help each other. But the power of letter-writing as a means of survival should not be overlooked. Instrumentally, correspondence enabled isolated women to maintain life-supporting links with their more powerful kin in every sphere of life ± socially, ®nancially, culturally and politically. In fact, sometimes letter-writing was their only available means of interaction. As we read companions' letters and tell their stories we see how patriarchy worked for the Verneys and how letter-writing con®rmed and strengthened it. But letter-writing also challenged gender, class and patriarchal conventions. By conducting correspondence, even the most dependent women in an extremely patriarchal family were able to obtain self-expression, psychological support and assistance from kin. Moreover, their literacy and writing skills would enable them to take part in the print culture of the eighteenth century. Single women may have lacked adoring relatives and homes of their own. But they too had letters to keep them company. The ones they sent linked them to kinship networks; those they received brought proof that they were not alone in the world. This is not to minimise their poverty and restricted horizons. In the privacy of their closets, however, they possessed the same pen and paper as their mistresses. In the end, letters were themselves gentle companions to women forced to survive by their own wits and abilities.
Notes I thank Caroline Bowden, Betsy Brown, Bridget Hill, Margaret Hunt, Moshe Sluhovsky and Alison Wall for helpful comments. 1. M. Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: the Verneys of Claydon House (London: Routledge, 1984), generally and p. 84. 2. J. Bennett and A. Froide, `A Singular Past' and M. Kowaleski, `Singlewomen in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: the Demographic Perspective', in J. Bennett and A. Froide, eds, Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250±1800 (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1999), pp. 2±4, 38±81, 325±44 (hereafter SW). 3. H. Anderson and I. Ehrenpreis, eds, The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1966); R. Day, Told in Letters (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1966). 4. S. Whyman, Sociability and Power: the Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660±1720 (Oxford: OUP, 1999) pp. 3±7 (hereafter S&P). I thank Sir Ralph Verney for permission to use his family papers. References to the Verney Letters (VL) refer
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Susan Whyman 191
5.
6. 7. 8.
9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27.
to Princeton University Library micro®lm and include reel number and sequential number of the document on that reel. Spelling and dates are modernized. For a complete list of Verney papers see NRA 21959, S. Ranson, The Verney Papers Catalogued for the Claydon House Trust (1994). B. Hill, `A Refuge from Men: the Idea of a Protestant Nunnery', P&P, 117 (1987), 107±32; Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies [1694], ed. Patricia Springborg (London: Pickering and Chatto,1997); P. Earle, `Female Labour Market in London . . .', EcHR, 2nd ser., 42 (1989), p. 344 suggests that only mantuamaker, milliner and sempstress were deemed respectable occupations for women. S. Whyman, ` ``Paper Visits'': the Post-Restoration Letter as Seen through the Verney Family Archive', in R. Earle, ed., Epistolary Selves (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 15±36 (p. 18). VL49±407, VL50±440, cf. VL48±18. M. Verney, ed., The Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century from the MSS. at Claydon House, 2 vols (Benn, 1930) 2, p. 167 (hereafter Letters); VL34±17. The database containing 7018 records includes every document on reels 46 to 56 of the Verney papers. Over 2000 letters from earlier reels were also included in this study. F.P. and M.M. Verney, Memoirs of the Verney Family, 4 vols (Longmans Green, 1892±9) 3, pp. 109±10, 229, 434 (hereafter Memoirs); Letters, 1, pp. 63±7. Cary had additional unmarried daughters from her ®rst marriage. I thank Drs Caroline Bowden and Frances Harris for sharing their research on this point. For quotations in the following case study see VL34±17 and VL35±73, unless otherwise cited. VL54±190. S&P, p. 99. VL36±29. VL54±169, VL47±124; Letters, 2, pp. 163±4; Memoirs, 4, pp. 98, 458. S&P, p. 68. VL45±03, VL45±09. VL45±011, VL45±010. VL45±012, VL45±014, 015. VL45±016, VL45±017. VL45±018. VL46±5, VL26±8, VL48±290. VL46±70; Hill, `A Refuge from Men'. VL45±012, VL47±151, VL51±63; R.M. Karras `Sex and the Singlewoman' in SW, pp. 127±45; The Ladies Remonstrance (1659). See OED for de®nitions under `servant' and `service' dealing with sex. Examples of this approach are found in the play Rashomon, in J. Goodman, ed., Stories of Scottsboro (NY: Pantheon Books, 1994), and Jonathan Swift's introduction to Letters written by Sir W. Temple . . ., vol. 1, (Tonson and Churchill, 1700), A3r. VL52±703. Letters, 2, p. 169; S. Lanser, `Singular Politics: the Rise of the British Nation and the Production of the Old Maid', in SW, pp. 297±323; E. Brophy, Women's Lives and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Tampa, Florida: University of South
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
192 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.
35.
36. 37. 38. 39.
Florida Press, 1991), p. 199; Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies [1694], ed. Patricia Springborg, p. 160. VL49±89, VL47±492, VL49±116; S&P, pp. 14, 115±17. VL49±277, VL49±12, VL49±145, VL49±197. VL49±29, VL49±277. VL47±515. VL49±377, VL49±511, VL47±374; P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England (London: Macmillan, 1967). VL52±643, VL52±642. VL48±426, VL52±658, VL52±707, VL53±35; O. Hufton, `Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of Family History, Winter (1984), 355±73; B. Rizzo, Companions without Vows: Relationships among Eighteenth-Century British Women (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1994); Lady Barbara Montagu [and Sarah Scott], A Description of Millenium Hall (Newbury, 1762). Memoirs, 4, pp. 456±7; Slater, Family Life, pp. 84±9; VL48±82; J.J. Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1956), pp. 61±2; H. Wolley, The Compleat Servantmaid . . . (1685); E. Donoghue, Passions between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668±1801 (London: Scarlet Press, 1993). VL48±84, VL48±621. Letters, 2, p. 163. VL55±108, VL53±430. J. Swift, Directions to Servants in General (1745); S&P, ch. ®ve.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Susan Whyman 193
`Begging pardon for all mistakes or errors in this writeing I being a woman & doing itt myselfe': Family Narratives in some Early Eighteenth-Century Letters Anne Laurence
This chapter is concerned with a group of women's letters written in the early eighteenth century, a period which falls awkwardly between the scholarship on Renaissance letters (and on form and convention in epistolary style) and that on the letters of the eighteenth century with its concern with ®ction and the rise of the epistolary novel, on the one hand, and with the `familiar', personal and candid letter, on the other. These letters also lie in that contested ground between public and private that characterises the letters of women. They contain the protestations of modesty and inadequacy to the task so commonly found in women's letters, but it is not clear that they are restricted to particularly feminine genres.1 They show women engaged with a particularly female concern, reputation; in this case the desire to set the record straight about their forebears' role in the dif®cult years of the 1640s and 1650s. But they also display two other features, of a less typically feminine kind: a concern for the historical record and an interest in contemporary politics. There are ®ve letters written by daughters, grand-daughters or wives of clergymen, retailing the history of their families in the period of the civil war and the Interregnum and concerned with the reputation of their relatives, the motive for their writing. A further three letters from women contain details of clergymen's lives, but the writers were not apparently related to the people of whom they wrote. In composing and sending their letters, these women were participating in a masculine world of information exchange beyond household and family, rather than the 194
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
13
world of the kind of personal communication that is often taken to characterise women's letters. The letters form part of the collection of some 700 or 800 in the John Walker manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. All the letters were written between 1704 and 1708 to supply information about the sufferings of royalist clergymen and their families in the 1640s and 1650s, when those clergy who expressed support for the king or who continued to use the Book of Common Prayer were ejected from their livings.2 The women's letters are substantial pieces of composition; one is over two thousand words long. Authors were conscious of the fact that they were writing at unusual length: one woman apologised for the fact that her letter had `soe much exceeded the just bounds and limmitts of a letter that it is extended to the length of 3 large Ballads'.3 Another wrote of `giving you the troubl of this Long Letter'.4 The collection is an extremely unusual one, not least because of the women's letters, but the very speci®c circumstances in which the letters were composed make reading and construing their form and content the more challenging. These circumstances arise from the history of the collection and the use for which the correspondence was originally intended; they create layers of narrative through which we need to read the letters.
The Walker papers In the later seventeenth century interest was awakened in the fates of members of the clergy during the period of the civil war, the Interregnum and Restoration. In part, this arose from contemporary concerns within the Church of England. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, the acceptance of the throne by William and Mary, and the Toleration Act of 1689 resulted in six bishops and 400 clergy of the Church of England declining to acknowledge William and Mary as monarchs and thus being excluded from the established Church. Matters were compounded by the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695, which effectively allowed the uncensored publication of religious views of the most unorthodox complexion. The emergence of a new High Church party (not completely coincident with the Tory party) and the debates around occasional conformity all created a sense of insecurity. Thus both nonconformists and Anglicans sought historical justi®cations and parallels for their present situation, looking back to the civil war for the origins of their differences. Walker's chief spur to action was the publication in 1702 of Edmund Calamy's collection of biographies of clergy who had held bene®ces in the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Anne Laurence 195
1640s and 1650s but who had lost their church livings at the Restoration. Calamy followed this collection with revisions and additions in 1713 and 1727 (the last in reply to Walker).5 Some 900 ministers were ejected from their posts when they refused to subscribe to the Act of Uniformity in 1662.6 Calamy stated that his intention was to commemorate the hardships endured by those who suffered for the cause of their consciences.7 Walker, a Tory high churchman, was enraged by this, believing that those who complained so vociferously about persecution had, when they had had the power to do so, caused the episcopal clergy greater suffering than they had themselves endured.8 He was a man with a mission both to compute the numbers of sufferers and to chronicle their sufferings.9 He aimed to confute Calamy by setting down the case for the greater suffering of Anglicans. Walker was not concerned with mere polemics. He had genuine historical interests and recognised that opportunities for collecting information about events that had taken place 60 years earlier were rapidly diminishing. In 1704 he started to accumulate material on the royalist clergy from records and libraries and he corresponded with a number of noted antiquaries. He put an advertisement in the Gazette, and in March 1704 sent out printed `Queries for the Clergy', asking members of the clergy to enquire in your Parish, Whether your then Predecessor might not be one of those very many Sufferers . . . And if you ®nd he was so; to bring or Transmit his Name and Degree (together with the Name and Value of the place, the County in which it lies; as also whether a Rectory or Vicaridge) either to your Archdeacon or his Register . . . at the next Visitation.10 He asked clergymen to ®nd out about the experiences of previous incumbents and he asked descendants of clergymen to recount what they knew of ancestors who had been ejected from bene®ces in the 1640s and 1650s. He speci®cally requested information about the nature of ministers' sufferings, the characters of the men and of the intruders who replaced them, and whether any relevant papers survived. Responses to his queries were to be returned to a London bookseller, Robert Clavell. In November 1704 he sent out an appeal to archdeacons to distribute the queries to their clergy at their next visitation, saying that he was short of original materials from the period.11 He also sent out a questionnaire to the clergy in his own diocese of Exeter; this asked for details of the families as well as of the ministers' own lives.12 In 1706 he renewed his request to
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
196 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
archdeacons to use their visitations to collect information, enclosing copies of his `Queries' to be distributed among the clergy.13 These appeals for information produced a large and unique accumulation of material which Walker left to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. There are letters from people with historical interests who had original materials of the period, as well as transcripts of records. There are also accounts of events testi®ed to by witnesses, either relatives or local residents, which were forwarded to Walker. The most interesting items in the collection, however, are the letters he received in response to his questions; of these, the most rewarding narratives are letters from Anglican incumbents writing about their predecessors and those from members of clergy families concerning their relatives, usually parents and grandparents, but also uncles, cousins and relatives by marriage. Some correspondents had witnessed the events they described, though usually only as small children; commonly they recounted episodes that had taken place before they were born. They relayed well-rehearsed family stories of the most important happenings of their lives, sometimes corroborated with documents. When Walker ®nally published his book in 1714, he did so in the usual eighteenth-century fashion, by subscription.14 The vast majority of the 1300 subscribers were members of the clergy; only nine were women and none of them were from Walker's correspondents. The long delay between the ®rst announcement of the project and its actual appearance as a book gave rise to mockery, and Walker's plans for a sequel came to nothing.15 Walker made extensive use in the book of the accounts he received by letter, paraphrasing some passages, quoting others verbatim, sometimes supplementing them with materials provided either by his correspondents or from his own researches. In the introduction he listed the materials he had used and explained his editorial method. His manuscript draft had been criticised by an anonymous correspondent who commented on his faulty orthography and `peculiar ways of expressing your self', and said that he seemed `often hastily to have joynd together your several accounts of any Person, without regarding the length of the sentences, & the frequent repetition of the same relative or Particles of connection'.16 Walker replied in print to these criticisms, saying, `The Stile of the Work . . . I am sensible, is in many places so very ¯at and mean, and so perplex'd throughout with Parentheses and tedious Periods, that I am quite asham's of it.'17 But, he continued, `being desirous, as far as I might, to give the more material parts of the Relations in the very words of the Informants themselves, I was continually oblig'd to conform myself,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Anne Laurence 197
as it were, to their notions'.18 Consequently, the great variety of styles gives `a very odd Turn to many of the Paragraphs'.19 Though Walker often quoted long passages from letters, he rarely identi®ed the author, evidently feeling that there was no need to authenticate his sources in that way. There is no evidence from the book that he valued men's accounts more highly than women's. Indeed, he used the account of Dr Manby's life sent to him by Manby's daughter, Mrs Frances King, as a model for the lives of other members of the clergy, saying that, the Barbarities and Oppressions, under which very many others of the Clergy laboured, were not, as is easie to be gathered, any whit less than those under which Dr Manby suffered: Only the particulars of the Former are lost, whilst those of Dr Manby happen'd to be preserved.20 Apart from Frances King's account, Walker used Elizabeth Bentham's material extensively. She had written, in a letter to her son, Samuel Burton, of the lives of her father and father-in-law. Burton forwarded this letter to Walker saying that he would be `very glad if you can pick any thing out of it which may be of use to your design', evidently feeling that his mother's contribution was unlikely to be of much signi®cance.21
The writers and their writing Walker's female correspondents expressed the dif®dence found so commonly in women's writing, an example of which appears in the title of this chapter. There were apologies for the length of letters and for the form of expression, `For such errors as you may ®nde in reading itt; I must humbly beg your favourable construction', wrote one woman.22 Samuel Burton took the liberty of apologising for his mother's writing: `If it had been more perfect I would have thought it no trouble to transcribe it for your sake, I hope the good Intention of the writer will make amends for false spelling.'23 Several women apologised for the quality of the information they were able to provide. What was it that prompted these women to set down such long accounts? Most were not responding directly to Walker's `Queries' which seem largely to have circulated among the clergy. Frances King said she had seen an item in the Gazette reporting that someone was preparing an account of the royalist clergy; Elizabeth Bentham replied to a letter from her clergyman son (presumably he had received a copy of the `Queries'). Only Elizabeth Trosse of Dawlish seems actually to have seen one of
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
198 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Walker's papers, probably the more detailed queries he sent to the Devon clergy; she also had a personal letter from Walker. Walker had apparently approached her on the strength of a letter she had written to a friend, after two men had enquired in the parish about the careers of various civil war clergy.24 Perhaps the most important reason for these women to record for Walker the histories of their families was a sense of duty: `I thought I was in duty obleiged to indeavoure to preserve the memory of my deare father, whoe was a deepe sufferer, in those callamitous times', wrote Frances King, providing Walker with a model description.25 King authenticated her account by saying that she had heard these matters from the mouths of her father (Dr Manby), mother, servants, aunt, uncle and neighbours, and she added her own recollections as a child. At the Restoration, Dr Manby commenced a legal suit to regain possession of his living from the intruded minister. Frances King appended to her letter the breviat written by her father about this, requesting its return as it was the only paper she had in her father's own hand, a favour evidently not carried out by Walker for it remains amongst his papers. Much of the detail in Frances King's letter is not borne out by of®cial documents, but she provided a much more coherent narrative of her family's experiences than most other correspondents did. Walker even used her account of her persecution when a child: she told of an episode in which she was ostracised by other children in the village, and another in the school playground when a boy hit her on the head with a fork `the scarse I have yett to be seen'. Walker adapted this to `the scars of which remain to this very day, if the gentlewoman be still living, as a visible testimony of the hereditary malice which descends upon the very children of these people'.26 Elizabeth Bentham, who wrote her ®rst account for her son, later corresponded directly with Walker. She entered into the political spirit of the endeavour, expressing her desire that his book `may doe good butt some that wish well to the Church fear that such truths will In¯ame the desenters & doe the Church no good'.27 She took seriously her responsibilities as a reporter, having an interest in the fate of clergy beyond the members of her own and her husband's families, providing details of a number of other clergymen, and commenting that her husband had told her that two-thirds of the Hertfordshire clergy were sequestered in the civil war, though Sir Harry Chauncey noticed `but a few' in his Antiquities of Hertfordshire.28 In her second letter she passed on an account from another vicar's daughter `who is a very good woman who I have known many years and she had it from her mother who she says
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Anne Laurence 199
knows would not say anything that was not true'.29 Elizabeth Bentham understood the need to authenticate her accounts, though in the event she was often not actually able to do so. She explained that she could not provide corroboration for she could not reach the relevant papers because they were in a room occupied by a sick relative. She commended the royalist newsbook Mercurius Rusticus, which she regretted not having to hand, for its many `sad but trew relations', some of which `sad storyes' her husband knew to be accurate.30 Her statements were otherwise validated by such phrases as `I have heard my mother say', `as my husband told me' and `I know his daughter very well'. Another woman, Alice Comber, had collected historical material for J. Goodall which was passed on to Walker.31 There are earlier instances of women gathering information for antiquaries, though writing history was not necessarily regarded as a suitable pursuit for women.32 Church and religious matters were clearly believed to be within women's competence (providing that they remained well clear of theological controversy), but above all, these accounts are concerned with the recording of family.33 They were concerned with what D.R. Woolf calls `the ``social circulation'' of historical knowledge' and in these letters we have a sense of the traditional, oral past to which he refers.34 The women who wrote these letters showed a sense of connection with that past, and especially with its religion and politics, which Natalie Zemon Davis identi®es as a prerequisite for women writing on historical subjects.35 These writers were engaged suf®ciently with the politics of the 1640s and 1650s to be certain of the injustices done to their relatives. But the letters also touch upon a genre which Davis identi®es as of interest to women writing on historical subjects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, family history, though the cases she cites were written for the interest of the family itself rather than for publication. One correspondent, Elizabeth Trosse, had a mercenary reason for an interest in her father's sufferings, namely that it was credibly reported in the countrey . . . that the queen [Anne] has given bettween 16 and 17 thousand pound (which is all the ®rst fruits since shee came to the crown) to the famalies of the clergy that suffered in the cause of King Charles the ®rst; & in order to an equall distribution there are enquierys sent out after the famalies of such suffering clergymen. If there be any reality in itt I am sure my present circumstances ar such as need the beni®tt of her majesties bounty as much as any person livinge.36
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
200 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
She seems to have confused Walker's queries with the surveys of livings which followed the enactment in 1704 of the ®rst provisions for Queen Anne's Bounty (the scheme under which the queen surrendered the clerical taxes of First Fruits and Tenths to augment incomes of poorer clergy).37 However, she was content to provide Walker with a biographical account of her father's sufferings. Although it is long and full of circumstantial detail, he made less use of it in his own narrative than of the other women's letters. The content of the letters, describing the process of ejection and the hardships suffered thereafter by clergymen and their families, is familiar enough both from civil war writings and from the larger genre of writings about atrocities (though it is unusual to ®nd such detailed accounts of the lives of women and children in the active phase of the civil war). But the readings that these letters may be given is problematic, not least because few comparable women's letters exist. Although most of the letters were not a direct response to Walker's questionnaire, their form was, nevertheless, partly dictated by the information that he had requested. However, the stories told in the letters were plainly family narratives, told in families over two generations, ritualised both by the need of the original narrator to make sense of traumatic experiences, and by retelling over the generations. These narratives relied upon speci®c devices to make them memorable, often using everyday objects and occurrences to provide the circumstantial detail. References to food, clothing, beds and shelter are used to emphasise poverty, hardship and loss of status, and to provide, for an audience removed from these events by 70 years, a vivid picture of their forebears' lives and their sufferings in the interests of loyalty. Narratives of suffering had long and honourable antecedents in martyrological literature, where the tribulations of the persecuted were recounted for the edi®cation and encouragement of the community of the faithful. Apart from John Foxe's Acts and Monuments and its popular successors, such as Samuel Clarke's Martyrologie, there were accounts of the sufferings of French Protestants on St Batholomew's eve and of Protestants caught up in the Irish rebellion of 1641.38 The literature had been reinforced by the publication in the 1680s of descriptions of the tribulations of the Huguenots in France.39 The origins of these letters, then, mean that we are reading accounts of events that had been passed on to children and grandchildren in the form of stories told within families, then recalled and written down in response to John Walker's advertisements and questionnaires. But writers' motives were mixed. Several letter writers refer to their desire to support Walker's
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Anne Laurence 201
larger endeavour (though it is not clear to what extent they wished simply to contradict Calamy or whether they subscribed to Walker's broader political interests). Other correspondents were more interested in achieving public recognition for the sufferings endured by a relative on account of his loyalty to the monarchy, perhaps more a matter of family pride than of public duty. We have seen how the motives of the individual women correspondents differed, from the woman who hoped to bene®t from Queen Anne's Bounty, to the woman with antiquarian interests.
Reading the letters These narratives present modern readers with a peculiar set of problems, perhaps more commonly encountered in oral history than in other historical sub-disciplines. Diane Purkiss has criticised historians for the inadequacy of their readings of complex narratives, their deafness to methodological questions, and their failure to come to grips with theoretical challenges in the context of witchcraft studies.40 She quotes Lyndal Roper on the dif®culty historians have in assessing documents which they do not believe to be factual.41 In certain respects all the letters in the collection have some similarities with accounts of witchcraft: they are all second hand; they contain narratives of fear and rejection and a sense of impotence in the face of forces of which the subject is not in control. The very repetition of the same themes makes them seem less persuasive to the twentieth-century reader. A striking device to emphasise persecution and betrayal was to make much of the way in which clergy and their families were insulted by former parishioners of humble origins. Soldiers or sequestrators (sent out to assess the value of ecclesiastical bene®ces or even to seize them) were seen to be turning the tables on people they had previously had to regard as their social superiors. These letters are not simple communications between individuals. They are complex narratives in which correspondents responded to a request for speci®c information. The principal subject was a man, though Walker invited correspondents to give details of his income and family and physical, and domestic circumstances. In the main, male correspondents responded by treating the subject as the clergyman (and they were not wrong to do so, without the clergy there was no reason to write the letter in the ®rst place). Members of the clergy wrote about events told them by their predecessors or parishioners. They dwelt upon the career and character of an ejected clergyman, his experience of adversity and saintly forbearance, rather than on the misfortunes of the whole family or the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
202 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
economic hardships they all endured. Ill treatment of the family simply provided corroborative detail. While clergymen tended to emphasise the professional vicissitudes of their predecessors, family members gave greater weight to sufferings of wives and children.42 In the letters from daughters the role of other family members is given greater prominence and the concept of suffering is less martyrological than social and economic. Their stories were concerned with the events of the ejection, visits by sequestrators, being turned out of their houses, and with the practical details of survival thereafter. The same kinds of devices were used over and over again to give force to the narratives: violence against women and children, people being cast out of their beds, clothing being seized, food being taken from people's mouths, clergymen and their families having to take up menial jobs to sustain a living. Such family stories are a well-recognised way for people to make sense of the world and of their place in it. Whilst there is plenty of corroborative detail for the truth or untruth of the stories, it is much harder for the historian to understand the ways in which these stories helped to make the lives of the tellers understandable, especially since they were 60 years removed from the original events.
Men's letters and women's letters There is one important respect in which the women's letters differ from many of the men's in Walker's collection. The women's letters were not, for the most part, written in response either to the questionnaire sent to the clergy of Exeter diocese, or to the questionnaire sent to archdeacons, whose contents were to be conveyed by them to the clergy of their archdeaconry. Thus, many of the men's letters follow more of the form of the questionnaires, answering the questions directly rather than constructing a narrative as the women's letters do. The women's letters dwell more on the actual story than upon Walker's request for precise information on such matters as the value of the living. Some of the women's letters show signs that the writer was using words perhaps more familiar in speech than in writing. Elizabeth Trosse, for example, had problems with the word `varying', ending up with a much crossed-out word and then the spelling `v-a-r-i-e-i-n-g', but even then having evidently tried to change it.43 Men's letters are more likely to apologise for the lack of information than for anything to do with expression or length, as the women's do. The women writers seem to have been aware of the masculine view of women which conceivably in¯uenced the way in which their writing was received.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Anne Laurence 203
204 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Conclusion Eight women's letters amongst a collection of hundreds from men is not statistically signi®cant. But they are of particular interest for the fact that they deal with precisely the same subject matter as the men's letters. The women's letters tell a similar story from a different point of view, regarding the suffering as an experience central to the family. For male correspondents the main subject was the clergyman, his sufferings were merely corroborated by an account of his family's experience (the suffering in some men's accounts is taken as a diminution of the man's status). But by the very fact of writing these accounts, female letter-writers were participating in a male world, in a world in which information about public matters was the subject of letters, rather than a private world of personal communication. These were women at the periphery of the political and religious debates of the early eighteenth century as much as bearers of their family's memories from the 1640s and 1650s. But they were also engaged in a very characteristically feminine practice: asserting pride in family, seeking to rehabilitate a damaged reputation, something which seems to be an extremely powerful motive force for many women's actions.
Notes 1. Thomas O. Beebee, Epistolary Fiction in Europe 1500±1850 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), pp. 105, 109. 2. On the narratives as a source for the history of clergy families in the civil war period, see Anne Laurence, ` ``This sad and deplorable condition'': an Attempt Towards Recovering an Account of the Sufferings of Northern Clergy Families in the 1640s and 1650s', in Diana Wood, ed., Life and Thought in the Northern Church c.1100±c.1700: Essays in Honour of Claire Cross (Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 12, 1999), pp. 465±88. 3. Bodl. MS J. Walker, c.2 f.341. 4. Ibid., c.2 f.458. 5. Edmund Calamy, An Abridgement of Mr Baxter's History of his Life and Times. With an Account of Many Others of those Worthy Ministers Who Were Ejected, after the
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Walker's male correspondents were more likely to report on what their predecessors told them, to go out and interview people, to get reports from old people in their parishes than were the women writers. Their accounts pay more attention to the contemporary setting and to the world of the clergy as a profession than do the women's accounts.
6. 7. 8.
9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.
Restauration of King Charles II (1702), An Account of the Ministers . . . Who Were Ejected or Silenced, 2nd edn (1713), A Continuation of the Account (1727). Susan Doran and Christopher Durston, Princes, Pastors and People: the Church and Religion in England 1529±1689 (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 156, 158. Calamy, An Abridgement, Preface. Walker, An Attempt towards Recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England (1714), 2 parts [sic], 1, pp. 1±2. For a discussion of the royalist clergy's sufferings, see Ian Green, `The Persecution of ``Scandalous'' and ``Malignant'' Parish Clergy during the English Civil War', EHR, 94 (1979), 507±31. A.G. Matthews, Walker Revised: Being a Revision of John Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy during the Great Rebellion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), pp. xiii±xvi. MS J. Walker, c.1 f.316. Ibid., c.10 f.26. Ibid., c.8 f.66. Bodl. MS Rawlinson, J.48 2 f.10b. As counted by Matthews, Walker Revised, p. viii. Ibid., pp. viii±ix. MS J. Walker, c.4 f.142. Walker, Attempt, 1, pp. xxxvii (These words are very similar to the letter in MS J. Walker c.4 f.142). Ibid., 1, p. xxxvii Ibid. Ibid., 2, p. 304. MS J. Walker, c.2 f.97. Ibid., c.2 f.341. Ibid., c.2 f.97. Ibid., c.2 f.401. Ibid., c.1 f.26. Walker, Attempt, 2, p. 304. MS J. Walker c.2 f.97. Ibid.; Sir Henry Chauncey, The Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (1700). Ibid., c.2 f.456. Mercurius Rusticus had ®rst appeared in 1643±4 as a newsbook, specialising in accounts of parliamentarian atrocities against royalists, and especially those involving churchmen or gallant royalist women. It was republished in a single volume in 1648 and then again in 1685. It provided a standard for the description of acts against members of the clergy. MS J. Walker, c.1 f.335. D.R. Woolf, `A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500±1800', American Historical Review, 103 (1997), 654±79 (pp. 652±3). Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds, Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 10. Woolf, `A Feminine Past?', pp. 647, 651. Natalie Zemon Davis, `Gender and Genre: Women as Historical Writers, 1400±1820', in Patricia Labalme, ed., Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York: New York University Press, 1980), p. 155. MS J. Walker c.2 f.401.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Anne Laurence 205
37. John H. Pruett, The Parish Clergy under the Later Stuarts: the Leicestershire Experience (Urbana: University of Illinious Press, 1979), pp. 81, 98; Ian Green, `The First Years of Queen Anne's Bounty', in Rosemary O'Day and Felicity Heal, eds, Princes and Paupers in the English Church 1500±1800 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981), p. 235. 38. John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1563); Samuel Clarke, A Generall Martyrologie, Containing a Collection of all the Greatest Persecutions Which Have Befallen the Church of Christ . . . (1651). 39. A number of works about the effects of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes appeared in French, published in Amsterdam and Cologne; from 1686 they appeared in English, published in London and Dublin. 40. `The Witch in the Hands of Historians: a Tale of Prejudice and Fear', in which she takes English historians to task, in general terms, for lack of theoretical rigour, and for their `torpor' and deafness to methodological questions, ch. 3 of Dianne Purkis, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 59, 60. 41. Misquoted as `addressing', The Witch in History, p. 60. 42. A variant on a point made by Natalie Zemon Davis who observes that women writing family histories were more likely than men to organise their material around a life cycle than around a career. Davis, `Gender and Genre', p. 162. 43. MS J. Walker, c.2 f.341.
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
206 Early Modern Women's Letter-Writing, 1450±1700
Abel, Mary, 187 Adams, Elizabeth, 182, 183 Adams, Peg, 180, 182, 183±6, 187 Alleyn, Audrey, 65 Alleyn, Joan, 70 Arbury, Warwickshire, 95±6, 101, 103 ars dictaminis, 6, 17±18, 49±50, 55 Arundel, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, 33, 37, 38 Arundell, Dame Katherine, 43, 44 Arundell, Lady Blanche, 154 Ashburnham, Elizabeth, Lady, 97 Aston, Catherine Thimelby, 168, 169 Aston, Gertrude, 169, 170 Aston, Herbert, 133, 159, 168, 169 Aston manuscripts, 129 Aston, Mary Tateman, 170, 171 Aston, Walter Lord, 171 Aubigny, Lady, 152 Audley, Lady, 30, 31, 34 Bacon, Anne (neÂe Gresham), 85 Bacon family, 131, 135, 137, 140, 141 Bacon, Jane, 80 Bacon, Lady Anne (neÂe Cooke), 10, 62, 68, 69 Bacon, Lady Dorothy, 134, 136±7 Bacon, Nathaniel, 80, 85, 131±2, 135, 137, 138, 140 Bacon-Townshend manuscripts, 128 Bacon, Winifred, 132, 137 Bagot, Anne, 131, 137, 139 Bagot, Anthony, 131, 139 Bagot, Lettice, 131, 133, 134±5, 139±40 Bagot, Lewis, 132, 133 Bagot, Margaret, 139 Bagot, Mary, 136, 138, 139 Bagot papers, 7, 13, 28, 130, 131 Bagot, Richard, 136, 138, 139 Bagot, Walter, 131, 133, 134±5, 137, 139 Bankes, Lady Mary, 154 Baptist, John, Lord Caryll, 166, 167
Barantyne, Mary, 43, 44 Barrington, Joan, 135 Barrington letters, 129, 131, 136 Baskerville, Lady Mary, 66 Baskerville, Sir Thomas, 66 Basset, Anne, 69 Beauchamp, Joan, Lady Abergavenny, 37 Beauchamp, Margaret, Countess of Warwick, 36±7 Beaumont, Francis, 100, 102 Bentham, Elizabeth, 198, 199, 200 Betson, Thomas, 44, 45, 49, 52, 53 Billingsley, Martin, 68 The Pen's Excellencie, 70 Bohun, Joan de, Countess of Hereford, 31, 33, 37, 38 Bore, John, Elizabeth, Lady Zouche's London agent, 30, 35 Boteler, Lady Anne, 30, 31, 33, 34 Boteler, Sir Edward, 30, 34 Bourchier, John, Earl of Bath, 66, 70 Bourchier, Margaret, Countess of Bath (Long), 66, 70 Bourchier, Sir William, Count of Eu, 38±9 Bourne, Elizabeth, 8, 61, 66 Bradshaw, Anne, 115, 116 Brampton Bryan, Herefordshire, 143, 145, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155 breastfeeding, maternal, 8, 100 Bright, Timothy, Treatise of Melancholy, 112 Broughton, Anne, 138, 139 Brounker, Sir Henry, 113, 114, 123 Bruges, 162, 164, 167, 172 Bryene, Lady Alice de, 30 Burton, Richard, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 112 Byrne, Muriel, St Clare, 60 Caesar, Sir Julius, 68 Calais, 9, 34
207
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Index
Calle, Richard, bailiff to the Pastons, 3 Calamy, Edmund, 195±6 Calvin, Jean, Institutes, 151 Caryll, Arabella (Dame Benedicta), 167 Caryll, Barbara, 171 Caryll, Catherine, 171 Caryll family, 164 Caryll, John Lord, 164, 165, 166, 171 Caryll, Mary, Abbess, 165, 166, 167, 170, 171, 173 Caryll, Mary Anne, 164, 165, 166 Cary, Anne (Dame Clementina), 172 Cary, Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland, 172 Cary, Lucius, Viscount Falkland, 172 Carye, Henry, 96, 105 Catholicism, Roman, 12, 120, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 168, 173 Caus Castle, 78, 84 Cave, Martha, 95 Cecil, Sir Robert, 63, 65, 100, 101, 113, 114, 115, 118 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 62, 63, 65, 67, 69±70, 95 Cely letters, 30, 42, 45 Cely, Margaret, 7 Chamberlain, John, 122 Charles I, 144, 147, 151, 152, 155, 156, 172, 186, 200 Charles II, 13, 171, 172, 173 Chaucer, Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, 43, 44, 50, 52 Cleaver, Robert, 82 Clarke, Samuel, Martyrologie, 201 Clifford, Henry, Earl of Cumberland, 130±1 Clifford, Lady Anne, 80, 81 Clifford, Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, 64, 67 Clifford papers, 7 Clifton, Anne, (¯. 1518), 130±1 Clifton, Anne, (¯. 1674), 165±6 Clifton, Sir Thomas, 165±6 Coke family, 127 Coldingham Priory, 32 Colles, Alexander, 70 Collett, Susanna, 131 Comber, Alice, 200 Conway, Edward, Viscount, 145, 149
Conway, Lady Eleanor, 8, 61 Conway, Sir Edward, 147 Conway, Sir John, 66 Coote, Edmund, The English School Maister, 61 Courtenay, Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, 69 Courtney, Margaret, 43 Croft family, 143 Croft, Sir James, 84, 116, 117, 119 Croft, Sir William, 149 Cromwell, Thomas Lord, 68 Cust, Richard, 146 d'Allerthorpe, Laurence, cleric, 31, 37±8 Dacre, Lady Anne, 63 Daubeney, Lady Catherine, 68 Davies, Eleanor, 81 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 200 Davis, Norman, 16, 52 Day, Angel, 79 The English Secretorie (1596), 7 Dayrell, Dorothy, 136 Dayrell, Frances, 136 deference, 9, 10, 11, 54, 62, 77±82, 84, 87, 89, 90, 100, 101, 104, 106, 131, 132, 139, 150, 151, 165, 181, 185, 186, 198 Denny Abbey, 33 Despenser, Constance, Lady, 32, 33, 37 Despenser, Eleanor, 43 Despenser family, 30, 32 Despenser, Henry, Bishop of Norwich, 32, 33±4, 35, 36, 37, 38 Despenser, Thomas, Lord, 32, 38 Devereux, Frances, Countess of Essex, 63 Devereux, John, the younger, 34 Devereux, Philippa, 34 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 63, 64, 114 Digby, Lettice, Baroness Offaly, 97 Dudley, Anne, Countess of Warwick, 64 Dudley, Lettice, Countess of Leicester, 64 Dutton, Mistress, 85 education, of women, 2, 4, 5, 11, 13, 16, 29, 43, 50, 61, 62, 68, 69, 72, 73, 94, 137±8, 146, 150, 161, 165, 169,
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
208 Index
Index 209
family, 3, 6, 7, 12, 64, 69, 128, 129, 159, 162, 164, 165, 194, 197, 203 nature of family relationships, 2, 6, 7, 11, 12, 32, 33, 35, 43, 72, 78, 82±3, 85±90, 98, 129±30, 133, 139, 140, 168±70, 177±8, 183, 185, 186, 190±1 duty towards, 12, 23, 49, 67, 69, 70, 131, 148, 179, 199, 200, 202, 204 interests of, 25, 34, 48, 65, 95, 99, 102±4, 135, 145, 150, 154, 155, 171, 173 see also kinship, marriage, maternity Fanshawe, Lady Anne, 147 Fermor, Mary Frances, 167 Ferrar family, 13, 129, 130 Ferrar, Mary, 131 Ferrar, Nicholas, 130 Ferrar, Richard, 131, 139 Ferrers, Lady, 34 Fettiplace, Margaret Mostyn, Prioress, 171 Fitton, Alice, 140 Fitton, Anne, 96 Fitton, Francis, 95, 96, 106 Fitton, Mary, 95, 97, 98, 140 Fitton, Sir Edward, 95, 97, 140 Fitz Alan, Richard, Earl of Arundel, 33 Fitz Alan, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, 34 Fitzgerald, Lady Katherine, 189 Fitzroy, Mary, Countess of Richmond, 64 Fleetwood, Benedicta, Abbess, 167 Flemming, Abraham, 79
Fowler, Constance, 133 Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments, 201 Fullwood, William, 79 Fulton, Dr, 122 Gamage, John, 70 Gascoigne, Catherine (Dame Justina), 170, 171 Gascoigne, Sir Thomas, 171 Gawdy, Philip, 61 gender codes, 5, 9, 45, 62, 77, 81, 112, 186, 191 Glenham, Lady Anne, 68 Gloys, James, chaplain to the Pastons, 20 Gouge, Elizabeth, 77 Gouge, William, 77 Gray, Douglas, 17 Gresham, Lady Anne, 85 Greville, Sir Fulke, 98±9, 100, 106 Grey, Elizabeth, (neÂe Talbot), Countess of Kent, 69, 111 Grey, Elizabeth, Lady, 97 Grey, Susan, Countess of Kent, 63 Halkett, Lady Anne, 147 Hammond, Dr John, 117 Hampden, Margery, 43, 44 Harding, Mary, 60 Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, 113, 114 Harley, Lady Brilliana, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 143±56 Harley, Sir Edward, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 155 Harley, Sir Robert, 9, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156 Harris, Barbara, 144 Hastings, Lady, 69 Hastings, Sir Francis, 69 Hatton, Elizabeth, 66 Henry IV, 32, 34, 36, 38 Henry Prince of Wales, 111, 117 Henshawe, William, 105 Herbert, Lucy, Prioress, 162, 166, 170 Hevingham, John, 19±20 Hicks, Sir Michael, 65 Hobart, Sir John, 61, 66, 68 Hoby, Lady Margaret, 97, 136
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
170, 177, 179, 190, 199 governesses, 4, 67, 94 tutors, 4, 94, 138, 179 Egerton, Frances, Lady Brackley, 97 Elizabeth I, 66, 81, 82, 84, 113, 140 Elmham, Elizabeth, 35 Erasmus, Desiderius, 67±8, 70, 127 Erskine, Frances Countess of Mar, 1±2 Essex, Dorothy, 65 estate and household management, 5, 9, 12, 13, 21±2, 23, 35, 36, 43, 48±9, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72±3, 78±9, 82, 84, 89, 94, 95, 99, 101, 102, 104, 106, 130, 134, 135±6, 144, 149
Holcroft, Alice, 95 Holcroft, Mary, 69 Holland, Alice, Countess of Kent, 34, 37 Holland, Thomas, Earl of Kent, 37 Homily on Marriage, 77, 81 Houlbrooke, Ralph, 6 Howard, Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, 60 Howard, Henry, Earl of Northampton, 120, 121±2, 123 Howard, Katherine, 71 humanism, 6, 64, 67±8 Hungerford, Anne Lady, 65 Hutchinson, Lucy, 147 Idle, Alice, 43 illness, 8, 47, 63, 70, 71, 109±24, 137, 183 acute intermittent porphyria (AIP), 110±11, 115±16, 120 hysteria, 112, 113 re¯ex sympathetic dystrophy, 109 James VI and I, 81, 109, 110±11, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123 Jorden, Edward, A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother, 112 Kemp, Bartholomew, clerk of the Great Seal, 62 King, Frances, 198, 199 Kingsford, C.L., 44 Kinnersley, Francis, 133 Kinnersley, Lettice, 138, 139 kinship, 11, 12, 33, 38, 98, 99, 103, 128, 129, 133, 134, 139, 150, 159, 161, 162, 167, 168±9, 170, 171, 173, 178, 179, 182, 183, 186, 188, 190, 191 Kitson, Elizabeth, 61 Knatchbull, Mary, Abbess, 13, 171, 172±3 Knollys, Sir William, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 105, 140 Lanthony Secunda Priory, Gloucestershire, 38±9 Latin, women's use of, 59, 81, 146 Lee, Sidney, 143, 145
letters and letter writing, amanuenses, clerks, scribes, secretaries, 3, 4, 6, 7, 16, 29, 30, 32, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64±5, 67, 68, 69, 70±1, 72±3, 100 colloquialisms, 2, 6, 16, 17, 20, 52, 53±4 conventions, epistolary, 2, 3, 6, 7, 18, 20, 29, 30±1, 32, 33, 34, 46, 49±50, 51, 53, 59, 128, 186, 194 delivery, bearers, 5, 17, 33, 35, 36, 65, 147, 172, 184 dictation, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 45, 48, 50, 51, 52, 55, 67±8 drafting, 8, 66, 100, 118±19,128 epistolary privacy, 3, 6, 7, 32, 43±4, 45, 54, 67±8, 70±1, 72, 191 functions, 8, 22, 29±30, 35, 36, 48, 70, 72±3, 94, 96, 97, 105, 106, 128, 129, 147, 149, 163±4, 167, 172±4, 177, 179, 181, 191, 194, 204 handwriting, 2, 3, 4, 44, 45, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71, 78, 92 ns.45 and 47, 100, 119, 139, 179, 181, 198, 199 letter writing manuals, see also ars dictaminis and humanism, 6, 7, 50, 53, 79, 127 love letters, 10, 80±1, 149 men's letters, 3±4, 6, 10, 30, 44±5, 47±8, 50±1, 52, 53±4, 55, 62, 70, 79±80, 84, 128, 141, 179, 203±4 oral quality of letters, 6, 16, 20, 22, 52, 53, 128, 141, 203 postscripts, 7, 43, 45, 54, 60, 67 seals, 87, 179 secret codes, 5, 147±8 spelling, 4, 6, 48, 51, 53, 60±1, 203 Leveson, Anne (Fitton), 98 Leveson, Sir Richard, 98 Lingen, Henry, 152, 155 Lisle, Arthur, Viscount, 9, 70 Lisle, Honor, Lady, 9, 60, 69, 70±1 literacy, 2, 3, 4±5, 7, 10, 13, 29, 32, 44, 45, 54, 59±73, 146, 177, 191 Lloyd, Mary, 180, 189±90, 191 Lloyd, Ruth, 189
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
210 Index
Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, 156 London, 24, 30, 31, 34, 45, 46, 52, 62, 80, 82, 85, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 116, 134, 146, 148, 153, 178, 179, 181, 187, 188 Longleat, 10, 61, 79, 82, 84, 85, 89, 145 Lovell, Robert, 30, 31 Lovell, William, 48 Maccles®eld, Lady, 97 MacDonald, Michael, 112 Mainwaring, Philip, 99, 100, 103 Manby, Dr, 198, 199 Manners, Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, 60 marriage, 39, 54, 102, 115, 130, 160, 166, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 187, 189, 190, 197 arrangement of, 11, 83±4, 95, 99, 103±5, 106, 131±3, 134, 140, 187 experience of, 1±2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 20, 33, 34, 35, 37, 43±4, 45±8, 52, 66±7, 70±1, 77±81, 83, 87±9, 95±6, 131, 133, 134±5, 136, 146, 148, 149, 150±1, 153 Marshal, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, 36 Marvin, Sir James, 88±9 Mary Queen of Scots, 109, 111, 116 maternity, 7, 11, 24, 26, 34, 37, 47, 69, 104, 139, 148 see also breastfeeding and pregnancy Mayerne, Sir Theodore, Turquet de, physician, 110 Maxey, Mildred, Lady, 97 modes of address, 6±7, 10, 31, 50, 77±8, 79±80, 84, 87, 89, 98, 120, 149, 184, 185 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 1±2 Moundford, Dr Thomas, 111, 116, 117, 119, 120±1, 122, 123 Napier, Richard, 112 Neville, Joan, Countess of Westmorland, 36±7 Neville, Lady Elizabeth, 135, 138 Newdigate, John (`Jack'), 99, 101, 103±5
Newdigate, Lady Anne (neÂe Fitton), 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 65, 94±106, 140 Newdigate, Mary, 103 Newdigate, Richard, 98, 100 Newdigate, Sir John, 95±6, 98, 99 Nicholas, Nancy, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187 Nithsdale, Lady, 162 Notestein, Wallace, 146 nuns, 12±13, 159±74 Augustinian nuns, 159, 162, 166, 168, 172 Benedictine nuns, Cambrai, 162, 171 Benedictine nuns, Dunkirk, 165, 167 Benedictine nuns, Ghent, 13, 165, 171, 172 Carmelite nuns, Antwerp, 171 Carmelite nuns, Lierre, 171 enclosure, 12, 161, 162, 163±4, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173 Franciscan nuns, Nieuport, 161 statutes and rules, 12, 161, 162 O'Mara, V.M., 16 Okeover, Dorothy (neÂe Bagot), 139 Paget papers, 64 Paget, Thomas Lord, 65 Paston, Agnes, 12, 16, 18±19, 21, 25 Paston, John I, 1, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23±4, 25 Paston, John II, 21, 22, 23±4 Paston, John III, 18, 24 Paston letters, 10, 16±26, 42, 48 Paston, Margaret, 1±3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 16±17, 18, 19, 20, 21±6, 42 patriarchalism, political, 144, 150, 155±6 patronage, women and, 5, 11, 13, 35, 36±7, 64, 65, 67, 72, 78, 94±8, 106, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136±7, 140, 144, 156, 160, 165, 167, 170±3, 177, 178, 179, 182 Paulet, Winifred, dowager Marchioness of Winchester, 63 Percy, Dorothy, Countess of Northumberland, 64 Percy, Lucy, 95 Perkins, William, 144, 151
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Index 211
Philippa, Queen of Portugal, 34, 35, 36, 38 Pisan, Christine de, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 49 Plumpton letters, 30, 42 Pole, William de la, Duke of Suffolk, 18, 23 Pollock, Linda, 70, 150 pregnancy, 34, 85, 115, 131, 148, 189 Puckering, Sir John, 69 Puritanism, 9, 12, 143, 144, 146, 150±1, 154 Purkiss, Diane, 202 Pye, Sir Walter, 152, 155 Rich, Lady Penelope, 64, 68 Richard II, 32, 34, 36 Roper, Lyndal, 202 Russell, Lady Elizabeth (neÂe Cooke), 68, 69±70 Ryche, Thomas, 45 St John, Lucy (neÂe Cecil), 62 St Monica's, Louvain, 159, 162, 170 Sackville, Richard, Earl of Dorset, 80, 81 Scribner, Robert, 146 Scudamore, Viscount, 152 Seneca, 7, 148 Seymour, Edward, Earl of Hertford, 71 Seymour, William, 115, 118, 121 Shelton, Elizabeth, 72 Shuckburgh, Sir Charles, 180, 181, 182 Shuckburgh, Lady Katherine, 180 Sidney, Lady Barbara, 67, 69, 79 Sidney, Lady Mary (Herbert, Countess of Pembroke), 67 Sidney, Lady Mary (Wroth), 69 Sidney, Sir Robert, 67, 69, 79±80 single women, 13, 130, 132, 139, 177±91 Skipworth, Lady Jane, 132 Slingsby, Sir Henry, 103±5 Smallman, William, 152, 155 Smith, Sir Thomas, 64 Somerset, Edward, Earl of Worcester, 120 Stafford, Anne, Countess of, 38±9 Stafford, Henry Lord, 60 Standith, Christopher, 36±7
Standith, Margaret, 36±7 Stanhope, Sir John, 113 Stanley, Alice, Countess of Derby, 65 Stanley, Margaret, Countess of Derby (neÂe Clifford), 86 Stewkeley, Cary, 179±80, 187, 188, 189±90 Stewkeley, John, 180 Stewkeley, Pen, 179, 180±81, 187, 191 Stewkeley, Sir Hugh, 181 Stonor, Agnes (Wydeslade), 43, 44, 52, 54 Stonor, Alice, 48 Stonor, Anne, (neÂe Neville), 43, 44 Stonor, Elizabeth, 43, 44, 45±7, 48, 49, 51±2, 53, 54 Stonor, Jane, 43, 44, 47±8, 52 Stonor letters, 10, 30, 42±55 Stonor, Thomas, 47±8, 49, 50, 52 Stonor, William, 43, 45±7, 48, 49, 50, 51±2, 54 Stuart, Charles, Earl of Lennox, 111 Stuart, Lady Arbella, 3, 8, 95, 109±24 Sudeley, Alice, Lady, 43, 44, 50, 52, 54 Sutton, Lady Elizabeth, 60, 70 Talbot, Alethea, Countess of Arundel, 111 Talbot, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick), 63, 66, 69, 71, 81, 113 Talbot, George, Earl of Shrewsbury, 66, 71, 81 Talbot, Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, 115, 116, 117 Talbot, Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury, 111, 120, 121, 122 Thimelby, Katherine, 133 Thimelby, Winefrid, Prioress, 159, 160, 162, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173 Throckmorton, Jane (neÂe Skipworth), 132, 133 Thynne, Dorothy, 82±3 Thynne family, 8, 77±90, 149 Thynne, Gresham, 82 Thynne, Joan, 9, 10, 11, 61±2, 70, 71, 77±8, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85±6, 87±8, 89 Thynne, John, 9, 10, 70, 71, 80, 82, 84, 85±6, 89
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
212 Index
Vavasour, Sir William, 152, 153 Vere, Elizabeth, 95 Verney, Edmund, 178, 187 Verney family, 4, 8, 13, 177±91 Verney, Lady Elizabeth, 190, 191 Verney, Mary, 189 Verney, Sir Edmund, 186 Verney, Sir John, 178, 180, 181, 182, 184, 187, 188, 190 Verney, Sir Ralph, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184±6, 187, 188, 189, 190 Vives, Juan Luis, 64
Walker, John, 9, 195±6, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201±2, 203, 204 wardship, 8, 11, 48, 67, 95, 99±101, 105, 106 Ware, Henry, clerk, 33 Warren, Elizabeth, 82 Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford, 151 wet-nursing, 98, 148 Whately, William, 82 White, Richard, 162, 163, 168 Whitehall, William, 99, 100, 101 widowhood, 11, 20, 26, 32, 35, 49, 62, 63, 68, 84, 96, 100, 103, 130, 131, 132, 177, 180 Wigmore, Mary, 171 Willoughby, Lady Elizabeth, 68, 81 Willoughby, Sir Francis, 81 Wilton, Abbess of, 37 witchcraft, 9, 202 Withypoll, Frances, 68 Woodville, Elizabeth, 43, 47, 49, 54 Woolf, D.R., 200 Wright, Mary, Prioress, 164 writing masters, 4, 68, 179 Wyndam, Betty (`Beti'), 138, 141
Waad, Sir William, Lieutenant of the Tower, 120
Zouche, Lady Eleanor, 69 Zouche, Lady Elizabeth, 29, 30±1, 35
Thynne, Lady Dorothy, 85±6 Thynne, Maria, 5, 7, 9, 10, 61±2, 71, 78, 79, 80±1, 83±4, 86±7, 88, 89, 90 Thynne, Thomas, 10, 71, 80±1, 82, 83±4, 87±9 Touchet, George, Lord Audley, 83 Touchet, Lucy, Lady Audley, 83±4, 87, 88 Townshend, Anne (neÂe Bacon), 132, 137 Townshend, John, 131±2 Townshend, Lady Jane, 131±2 Trew, Margaret, 138, 139 Trosse, Elizabeth, 198±9, 200, 203 Tutoft, Jane, 138, 140
10.1057/9780230598669 - Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700, Edited by James Daybell
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-19
Index 213