Abstract
Despite overwhelming social pressure, several well-born widows in Tudor Britain chose to marry well below themselves in terms of rank on their subsequent marriages. Their reasons for taking these decisions, which could be both socially and politically disastrous, are varied. For some it was as simple as romantic inclination, while others reached out for help to available and loyal men in times of acute personal crisis. Understanding these marriages and the circumstances surrounding these noble women’s decisions opens a window onto the nature of female agency in Tudor Britain.
Frances Brandon, herself the daughter of the scandalous defiant match between Mary Tudor, Dowager Queen of France and the upstart Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, made a perfectly respectable first marriage to Henry Grey, the Marquis of Dorset. 1 They are most famous as the parents of the ill-fated Nine-Days’ Queen, Lady Jane Grey. Both Frances and Henry were arrested for complicity in the plots and risings surrounding the bid to put that young woman on the throne in the place of her Catholic cousin Mary I in 1553. Grey was executed for his part in the matter (as was Jane somewhat later), while Frances was left to salvage what she could for herself and her remaining two daughters. About a year later, on March 1, 1555, she married her handsome, red-haired, equerry or master of the horse, Adrian Stokes. She was about thirty-eight years old while he was significantly younger at twenty-two; this age difference, coupled with the disparity in social position, elicited quite a lot of salacious comment among contemporaries, especially since Frances was reputed to be a difficult woman. William Camden in his Annales charged her with “forgetting her lineage” when she married this “mean gentleman.” 2 Despite this, the marriage does appear to have been a success. Surprisingly, the Duchess remained on good terms with Queen Mary I and managed to place her daughters from her first marriage at court. She made her will on November 7, 1559, and died on the 21st, leaving her husband all of her goods, a life interest in most of her lands, and most importantly, an acknowledged social position which he used to make a profitable second marriage and to gain election to the House of Commons. 3
Frances Brandon’s marital history, while certainly not typical for elite women of the Tudor era, was not unique. As one looks at the marriage patterns of these women, it is difficult not to be struck by the relatively large number who, upon their subsequent marriage, married mates outside of their social rank. While the reasons for these choices are likely to be as numerous as the women who made them, some generalizations can be made. These generalizations provide a window through which attitudes toward social rank and female roles during the sixteenth century can be viewed. It is my aim to use the phenomenon of subsequent marriages by women whose father held the title of Baron or above to men to men who held no title (i.e., an exogamous or out marriage) as a lens through which to examine attitudes toward rank and gender, particularly the level of agency that such women could exercise. This project focuses on those aristocratic women who entered into marriages with men below them on the social scale at the time of their subsequent unions. It is easier to see the workings of agency in actions that society and elite families tended to consider transgressive rather than in those actions, such as marrying within their rank, that were considered appropriate by society, though there is no question that many chose to marry well.
Aristocratic women 4 in sixteenth-century Britain 5 got married. That is as close to an historical truism as you can get. Beyond that simple statement, however, the matter becomes a bit more complicated. It is also true that women in early modern Britain were generally held to be subordinate to men and that their marriages were intended to further the social and economic well-being of their families. For the overwhelming majority of noble women, their first marriages certainly fit this model; and for most of them, their subsequent marriages did as well. There were, however, a number of these elite women who married “out” on their subsequent marriages; that is, they married men who either did not hold a title themselves or their father held no title.
Ideally, widows 6 were to either remain single or to make another profitable marriage. Certainly, many did follow the societal strictures, either by choice or due to compulsion, and exercised their agency to make a profitable career for themselves in the marriage market. The best known woman to fit this model was Elizabeth Hardwick and her career illustrates what many women sought from marriage. Her first husband, Robert Barlow, a minor country squire, died when she was only twenty. She then married the prominent courtier Sir William Cavendish as his third wife. Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset hosted the wedding at his home, a sign of the social prominence of the couple. With debts and a large family to raise after Sir William Cavendish died, 7 Elizabeth Hardwick carefully considered the choice for her next husband, settling on George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury 8 in 1568. 9 With each marriage, she climbed the ladder of rank and property. There were, though, women from the highest levels of society whose subsequent husbands were far below them on the social and financial scale, and were very often also quite a lot younger. It seems likely that this phenomenon out subsequent marriages is a place/event where it is possible to locate agency on the part of elite women in the sixteenth century. It is important to note that it is nearly certain that many elite women exercised their agency in the opposite direction, by choosing to marry in ways that were deemed socially acceptable. The benefits of an elite marriage were not lost on these women. In much of their lives, these women were not able to operate as individuals or to follow their own wants and desires; however, in the freedom afforded by widowhood, there was a window of opportunity for individualistic action. This opportunity was sometimes used to contract a marriage that was not perceived as being socially acceptable. The choice that these women made to enter into such unions can be illustrative of the attitudes toward rank and gender at work in the sixteenth century.
As most elite women married and found their roles within the family, it is not surprising that many scholars focus on those women’s roles within the family and the power structures inherent within it. This is a theme found in much of the work of Barbara Harris, the most active and important scholar working on this group of women. In her examinations of the marriage of Elizabeth Stafford 10 and the second marriage of Mary Tudor, 11 Harris dissects the structures and expectations of marriages in this social class. It has generally been argued that women were willing, or at least passive, participants in the double standard of the arranged marriage that placed little importance on the emotional well-being of the woman. The breakdown of Elizabeth Stafford’s marriage calls this assumption into question. Elizabeth protested strenuously when her husband, Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, openly committed adultery. She caused so many problems about the situation that eventually he sent her away. Her surviving correspondence speaks eloquently of her refusal to be quietly humiliated, no matter what society might expect of her. Using this case, Harris has called into question the assumptions of scholars like Lawrence Stone and Peter Laslett who posit an emotional “coolness” in the arranged marriages of this group. She also uses this case to vividly illustrate “ . . . the powerlessness of women within the Tudor noble family. They might occasionally act on the public stage, particularly when crises occurred in their husbands’ absence, but they had no meaningful control over their personal lives.” 12
Aristocratic marriage was not usually a matter for individual choice in the sixteenth century. Noble families took many considerations into account when determining who constituted an appropriate mate; however, personal preference on the part of the couple was not a primary consideration. The younger the couple, not surprisingly, the less influence they had. Girls who were married early inevitably did so at the behest of their families and they had no say at all in the choice of spouse. This did not mean that an elite Tudor woman was destined to live her entire life with a mate that she had no say in choosing; due to the prevalence of early death, over 33 percent of all first marriages among the elite lasted less than fifteen years. In most cases, the surviving spouse remarried and created a new family. 13 Thus, in the late sixteenth century, approximately 25 percent of all marriages were remarriages for either the husband or the wife. 14 Based on the demographic information collected for this study, it appears that men undertook the vast majority of those remarriages. 15 Of the 995 marriages of British noble women surveyed for this study, 171 or 17.19 percent were subsequent unions; or, looking at it another way, of the 824 women whose marriages have been recorded 147 (17.84 percent) married more than once. For those women who married more than once, there was in contracting those subsequent marriages an opportunity to at least influence the choice of mate.
A great deal of literature was produced in the sixteenth century outlining the ideal union between a man and a woman. In this union, the wife was to be the submissive partner. Personal documents such as diaries and letters often show a different picture of the relationship. 16 There is reason to believe that the ideal was often not fulfilled, certainly it was called into question in cases of exogamy. Elite women who married men well below them on the social scale were able to wield more power within that relationship than was socially acceptable and thus bypass the patriarchal nature of marriage in which the man was expected to exercise the ultimate authority. 17 This could well be one reason why society was so disapproving of these unions. As Harris argues, there is some reason to believe that many elite women did not passively accept the patriarchal system. 18 Again the prevalence of out marriage among the women who were free to make their own choices does call their commitment to the socially mandated system into question. Table 1 gives the breakdown of the marriage patterns of these elite women at their first and subsequent unions. They married hypogamously, that is, they matched themselves to knights, less frequently on their subsequent marriages, but married exogamously, totally outside of titled ranks, significantly more often on their subsequent unions. It is these exogamous unions that are the focus of this study.
Marriage Patterns of Aristocratic British Women, 1485-1603.
Aristocratic women were clearly aware of the advantages to be had from the wealth and social position of their fathers and their husbands. Thus, though some women may have had quarrels with the men in their families, there is no indication that there was any idea that as a group their interests were distinct from their male kin. By the same token, there is no evidence that their desires for themselves were incompatible with their familial duties. Certainly, in return for their acquiescence to the patriarchal system, they were rewarded with a significant level of social prestige. This was a prestige that many of them were eager to retain, even if their subsequent marriages did not provide it. As subsequent unions tended to be hypogamous and exogamous more frequently than were first marriages, this loss of status posed a potential problem for the women concerned. Frequently, aristocratic women maintained the titles of their first husbands if those titles were more exalted than the titles held by their subsequent husbands. This desire to preserve the higher titular status indicates a strong element of rank consciousness. For example, Henry VIII’s sister Mary continued to use title the French Queen even after her marriage to the Duke of Suffolk. 19 Lady Margaret Bourchier kept her title as Lady Bryan following her subsequent marriage to David Souche, as did Lady Jane (Joan) Poynings, Lady Clinton, when she became the wife of Sir Robert Wingfield. 20 This retention of the previous title permitted women to maintain the status garnered from their first, endogamous, marriages even when they entered into subsequent, exogamous and hypogamous, matches.
All of these concerns about family status and patriarchy were theoretically still in place when the issue of subsequent marriages was on the table for elite women. However, looking at the statistics it does appear that something happened to make it less likely for noble women to make socially advantageous subsequent matches. It is my argument that the distinction between first and subsequent marriages was the exercise of agency on the part of these elite women made possible by the relative freedom afforded widows in sixteenth-century Britain. The number of women marrying within their own rank or up the social hierarchy changes significantly when one looks at subsequent marriages; here, the number of women marrying outside of the titled ranks rises significantly. In the statistical pool of 995 total marriages contracted by women of the titled nobility in the Tudor era, 171 were subsequent unions; 37.43 percent of these subsequent marriages were out. This compares with a 25.34 percent rate of exogamy at first marriages. 21
It was noted by commentators of the time that widows were disturbingly prone to out marriage; thus, widows who chose not to remarry were frequently praised extravagantly. The biographer of the Viscountess Montague 22 acclaimed her for not remarrying after her husband’s death, “This example is not ordinary in England, in this so corrupt an age, where sometimes women of honour, after the death of their husbands, not finding others equal to themselves in dignity, do marry, even their servants, or men of meane condition.” 23 There was a consensus that these marriages to men of “meane condition” were disruptive to the social order and so the women who refrained from such unions were supporting God-ordained hierarchy.
For elite Tudor women, widowhood was the period of their greatest independence, both legally and often socially. 24 Widows, more than any other group of women were free to choose their spouses for themselves. 25 According to Tim Stretton, “[o]n the day a Tudor or Stuart woman lost her husband, she shed the restrictive bonds imposed by coverture and regained her independent legal status. Now she could own property, enter into contracts, make a will . . . ” 26 Widows were legally entitled to administer their husband’s will; this was the only time that they had legal standing in regard to their husband’s property. 27 This independence is expressed clearly by a female member of the Verney family who was marrying for the second time. Her family did not approve of her choice of second husband and her response was “tis true she is my mother and I shall give her what satisfaction as is fit, but I consider my own freedom in my choice . . . for what fortune I have, I have had it from my [deceased husband] and a widow is free.” 28 Early modern writers on widowhood echoed those sentiments, repeatedly stating that widowhood was a period of “liberty” for a woman. 29 In this period of “liberty,” women could find an opportunity to exercise agency in the ordering of their lives, including at times, choices concerning subsequent marriages.
Not only were widows free, they were often quite wealthy as well. A great deal of time and effort was taken in crafting marriage contracts that would provide adequately for the woman in the case of widowhood. Failure to come to an agreement about the amount of the jointure could scuttle marriage negotiations. In 1534, the future Queen Catherine Parr’s mother Mabel ended marriage negotiations for a match between Catherine and the heir of Henry Lord Scrope because Scrope was not being generous enough in the matter of the jointure. 30 Traditionally, widows were entitled to their dower which was generally a life interest in one-third of their husband’s freehold lands, their jointure which was “a life-interest in land, or a money equivalent in the form of an annuity, pre-arranged at the time of marriage,” and the widow’s estate which was “customary rights to between one-third and the whole of the interests a husband held by customary tenure, for life or for widowhood.” 31 Many of these property rights were lost if a woman remarried, especially if she married a man of her social class or above; it was customary and even legally mandated that a married woman’s property became her husband’s at the time of marriage. Widows with young children frequently took this loss of control over property into account when making choices about subsequent marriage as they carried the responsibility for safeguarding the rights of those children. 32 One way that women who were remarrying within their class or up safeguarded their property was to negotiate the sixteenth-century version of the pre-nup. For example, in 1561, when Elizabeth Hardwick married her fourth husband, George Talbot, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, she negotiated a marriage contract whereby she retained control of the property that she brought with her into the marriage and if Talbot died before her she would gain control of his estates. This is an arrangement that is very similar to what she worked out for her third marriage to William St. Loe in 1559. 33 In so doing, Bess was working within a long-standing tradition in England that encouraged widows to remain heads of their own households, either independently or in the context of a new marriage. There was not the tradition that placed her under the control of another male relative. 34
Because widows did often have significant property they were valued on the marriage market. 35 There were some sixteenth-century men who greatly enriched themselves and increased their status through strategic marriages to well-off widows. The courtier Francis Bryan married two wealthy widows and he was not the only well-placed gentleman to exploit the financial desirability of widows. 36 The most important of Bryan’s wives was Joan FitzGerald, the heiress-general of James Fitzgerald, the tenth Earl of Desmond and the widow of James Stewart, the ninth Earl of Ormonde. Joan’s subsequent marriages illustrate the pressure sometimes placed on a widow in the matter of her remarriage and the possibility of exercising agency in the same matter. In the summer of 1547, she received a summons to England. According to Lord Chancellor Allen, it was because there were rumors that she intended to marry Gerald, the heir of the fourteenth Earl of Desmond. 37 The union would have created a possible juggernaut in South Ireland when her dower lands combined with his holdings. 38 To prevent the Desmond union, the Lord Chancellor strongly encouraged Jane to marry the prominent courtier, and faithful subject of the English crown, Francis Bryan. 39 This she did and the government appointed Bryan Lord Chief Justice of Ireland on behalf of Edward VI. The marriage was nothing more than one of convenience and it seems that Joan never forgot about Gerald (though he was approximately twenty years her junior). When Bryan fell ill, rumors circulated that Joan had renewed her pursuit of Gerald even as her second husband lay dying. Joan was determined not to lose her chance again. Bryan died in February 1550. By May of that year, she and Gerald married, creating what proved to be a very happy union. 40
This mercenary attitude exhibited by men such as Bryan shocked some contemporaries and there was a significant amount of popular literature attacking the idea of remarriage among widows and encouraging such women to remain single.
41
The remarrying widow was a stock character in many early modern plays where she was generally an object of derision.
42
Widows were encouraged by preachers to spend the rest of their lives honoring the memory of their husbands.
43
Men who married widows were shown in popular tracts as being of lesser status than their wives; it was implied that they were marrying only for money. Popular literature portrayed widows as entering into marriage with younger men due to their insatiable lust.
44
Contemporary proverbs provide examples: He that woos a maid, must fain lie and flatter. But he that woos a widow, must down with his breeches and at her. He that woos a maid, must come seldom in her sight. But he that woos a widow must woo her day and night. The rich widow weeps with one eye and casts glances with the other.
45
Many of the elite women who married exogamously on their subsequent marriages 47 chose much younger and less financially stable partners than themselves. Status and wealth permitted noble widows to make marital choices that fulfilled their own personal needs and desires rather than conforming to the expectations of society. In truth, the subsequent marriages that many of these women made had little practical benefit for the women. For example, Marjory Golding’s deceased husband, John de Vere, the sixteenth Earl of Oxford left her certain estates with the statement that they were “in part of recompense for all such dowry as she may demand out of my lands.” Exactly what this meant is somewhat unclear since as his widow the law entitled her to one-third of his estates as her dower. However, as the widow of a nobleman, she was under the nominal power of the Court of Wards and that court could revoke her right to dower had she married without the consent of the monarch and the payment of a fine (the purchase price for remarriage). Quite soon after the Earl died in 1562, Marjory married Charles Tyrell a member of her husband’s household. Possibly, she did not claim her dower rights, instead choosing to live on the estates left to her by Oxford’s will. This would have freed her to marry as she chose with no legal ramifications. It is also possible that she did claim her dower and married without permission braving the possible repercussions from the Court of Wards. Her will has not survived and that of Tyrell (who outlived her) does not clarify the status of her property. Marjory experienced a loss of social status due to her second marriage, but she did not suffer financially. She had a house as part of her jointure and her remarriage had no effect on her annual income of about £400. Despite this, she was reluctant to appear at court, uncertain perhaps of the welcome that she and her second husband would receive. 48 In this case, Marjory did not profit either financially or socially by this marriage. Indeed, it seems very likely that the marriage to Tyrell adversely affected her in both of these areas. The fact that she likely had to waive certain of her financial rights to enter into this union is an indication of the use of money to try to control these elite women. It is also telling that she feared that she and her husband would not be welcome at court. What she had done was outside the bounds of acceptable behavior, thus it seems likely that she made her own choice.
In the story of Anne Savage, Lady Berkeley illustrates many of the stereotypes concerning widow remarriage. The widow of a peer, Anne’s subsequent marriage interested Henry VIII and his minister Thomas Cromwell. In 1536, they decided she should marry Edward Sutton,
49
the son and heir of John, Lord Dudley. Sutton, chronically short of money, showed great enthusiasm for the match to a widow of means and began the process of wooing Anne. Writing to the King’s Council, however, he had to admit an important obstacle:
She hath made to me a very light answer that she is not minded to marry . . . The truth is, she entertained me after the most loving sort as my first coming to her as I could desire; for, when she was in her chamber sewing, she would suffer me lie in her lap, with many other as familiar fashions as I could desire . . . But at my coming with the King’s letters [recommending the marriage] I was nothing so well welcomed, but where it was so familiar before, it was much stranger since my coming last . . .
Some of these women were in a position of real crisis at the time of their husbands’ deaths, due to the fact that the men had been executed and the full punitive weight of the Tudor treason law fell on the entire family. When a court convicted a person of treason in sixteenth-century England, not only did the convicted person suffer; under the law, the entire blood family was tainted by his or her wrongdoing. The government confiscated lands and property and rescinded titles. Families had to undergo a long legal struggle to reverse these effects. 51 The wives and widows of men imprisoned or executed by the state often found themselves fighting for the rights of their children. 52 The number of married elite men executed during the Tudor era was actually quite small. In the group of twenty-eight such men identified for this study, twenty 53 of their widows did not remarry. Of the eight who did remarry following the execution of their husband, only three married within the titular nobility, while the rest married men from the knighthood or below. 54 It clearly was not the norm for these women to remarry, and if they did remarry, they tended to marry outside of titled ranks.
Among the group of women who married out following the execution of their husbands were Frances de Vere, Frances Brandon, and Anne Stanhope, three women from the highest ranks of the Tudor elite, if not by birth, certainly by virtue of their first marriages. Frances de Vere was the daughter of the fifteenth Earl of Oxford and the widow of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Frances Brandon was the daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s younger sister; she was the widow of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk (in right of his wife). Anne Stanhope was the widow of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who had been Lord Protector during the first years of Edward VI’s reign, thus making her the leading lady of the realm. All of these women lost their husbands to the executioner during the political uncertainty of the years 1547–59: Howard, the eldest son of the third Duke of Norfolk, was executed for allegedly plotting to claim the throne when Henry VIII died; Seymour was executed in 1552 in a palace coup that brought John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland to power; while Grey died in 1559 as a result of his plots to put his eldest daughter, Jane, on the throne instead of Mary I. All of their widows married men well below them on the social scale shortly after the death of their first husband.
Frances de Vere, the daughter of one of the oldest families in the Tudor peerage, married Henry Howard suddenly in February 1532 when both were quite young. It is likely that politics lay behind the speed of these negotiations. At this time, Henry VIII was in love with Anne Boleyn and as a result, he lavished political preferment on her faction. A leading figure in the faction was Howard’s father, the third Duke of Norfolk, who was also Anne’s uncle. Relations within the group were sometimes fraught, as Anne felt that her uncle Norfolk overstepped his bounds on occasion. In early 1532, rumors circulated there that Norfolk intended to marry his son Henry Howard to Henry VIII’s daughter Mary. Anne disapproved of this move and it may well be that the match with Frances de Vere took place in order to appease her. The couple married in the spring of 1532, though they were young enough 55 that they did not immediately cohabitate. 56 Certainly, no one took the wishes of Frances and Henry into account in the planning of this union. The union was perhaps not wholly satisfactory to either partner. He spent most of his time at the court and she apparently preferred to live a quiet life in the country. In 1546, a factional struggle within the dying Henry VIII’s court resulted in the arrest on charges of treason of both Frances’ husband, now Earl of Surrey, and her father-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk. Their assumption that as the highest nobles in the land they should play a leading role in whatever government followed the death of Henry VIII led political rivals to move decisively against them. Their trials resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for both. In the waning days of the King’s life, Surrey went to the scaffold (the death of the King spared the Duke). As a convicted traitor, all of Surrey’s property and titles were forfeit and Frances and her children left destitute. Not unusually, after some time the government (now of the boy–king Edward VI) returned some of the property (and eventually the rights to the family titles as well) including the manor of Earl Soham to Frances. By 1553, she remarried, choosing to wed the younger son of a west-country gentleman, Thomas Steyning. It is not clear how the couple came to meet and marry, but they retired to a relatively quiet life at Earl Soham, living on the proceeds of that manor as well as the nine other manors (worth an annual rent of £353) given to them by her former father-in-law the Duke of Norfolk. Living quietly in the country apparently contented Frances, she only went to court for important events like marriages or christenings. Steyning, on the other hand, began to live in a manner appropriate to his newly elevated status, taking on a political role in the countryside that eventually brought him a seat in the House of Commons. Frances had two children with her second husband and died in 1577 (after seeing her eldest son, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, beheaded for plotting with Mary Queen of Scots). Upon her death, the Howard family reclaimed her and buried her in their church of St Michael Framlingham. 57
Frances Brandon, whose marital career is described at the beginning of this article, is another good example of a woman remarrying under trying circumstances. The execution of both her husband and her eldest daughter left her in a very vulnerable position. Commentators recognized this vulnerability; William Camden, whose comments about the marriage have already been quoted, went on to state that she contracted the marriage “for her security.” 58 Despite this, Frances’ marriage with Adrian Stokes was a success for both partners. The marriage produced a child and Brandon left enough property and social cache to ensure that Stokes had a successful Parliamentary career.
Anne Stanhope was the daughter of minor gentry, but through her marriage to the brother of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, she rose to the highest levels in Tudor society. In 1547, upon Henry’s death, Edward Seymour became the head of the government 59 under his nephew, the minor King Edward VI, thereby making Anne the first lady of the realm, a position she reputedly enjoyed. This great position did not last long as John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (Lady Jane Grey’s father-in-law), out-maneuvered Seymour who ultimately ended up on the scaffold. The Seymours’ steward, Francis Newdigate, was associated closely enough with the family to have his property confiscated when the Protector fell (the government returned it nine months after the execution). 60 Anne suffered imprisonment for a short time during her husband’s trial and execution leaving Newdigate to protect as much of her property as possible. Perhaps, this loyalty in her service attracted her to him. The couple married by 1558 and lived on her manor of Haworth. Anne worked hard to secure preferment for her new husband. Within a few months of the marriage, she procured a seat in the House of Commons for him. Throughout his political career, she used her position and wealth to his benefit, a situation he acknowledged in his will (made May 31, 1580) in which he stated that he owed all of his position in the world to her so it was only fitting that he leave her all of his (her) property, making her his sole executrix. 61
Despite social expectations of widows, in the cases of these three elite women, it seems their decisions to remarry, even exogamously, did not place these women outside of the bounds of polite society. However, William Camden’s rather pointed comment about Frances Brandon “forgetting her lineage” does indicate that concerns about rank remained. In the case of Frances de Vere, perhaps, the most interesting aspect of her remarriage is the fact that her former father-in-law provided manors for her support following her subsequent union (and his own release from the Tower of London). This indicates a level of acceptance of this exogamous marriage by the head of one of the most important families in England. Her burial in the Howard family church is also a sign that she had not unforgivably transgressed the strictures governing appropriate behavior with her remarriage.
Frances de Vere, Frances Brandon, and Anne Stanhope all made socially scandalous subsequent marriages to men they chose for themselves, apparently without thought for the usual characteristics that women of their rank were to seek in a spouse. They did so, however, in the wake of traumatic personal experiences. These powerful women, who stood to lose everything, sought male companions and chose men whom they trusted—specifically men who had done them good service in their time of trouble. Because these women were the more powerful partners, they had greater control over the circumstances of their lives and their property, which might not have been the case, had they married within their own rank. The behavior of other women in similar circumstances underscores the fact that widows often had greater agency. In 1536, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, was executed as part of the plot that destroyed his sister Queen Anne Boleyn. His widow, Jane Parker, did not remarry, retaining her position at court as an attendant upon Henry VIII’s subsequent queens until her own execution in 1541 for her complicity in the bad behavior of Henry’s fifth wife Katherine Howard. In Elizabeth’s reign, Frances Walsingham, the widow of Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex married Richard Bourke, the fourth Earl of Clanricard soon after her husband’s execution. The scandal that tainted the families of convicted traitors did not render their widows damaged goods. Many of them, such as Jane Parker, continued to serve in prominent positions at court and several made advantageous marriages. Stanhope, Brandon, and de Vere each exercised the freedom of their widowhood and chose to marry well outside of their social rank. The fact that they did not pay a heavy price is likely a reflection of the privileges of being an elite widow.
Crises of other sorts also seem to have encouraged aristocratic widows to marry exogamously. A classic example of this is Katherine Willoughby, the widow of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. 62 A great heiress in her own right, she had come to the Suffolk household when her father died. At fourteen, she married the aging Duke and following Brandon’s death in 1545 she controlled a great deal of wealth. Katherine was also a firm Protestant, which made her situation difficult in 1553 when the Catholic Mary I took the throne. Like many others, Katherine decided to leave England for safer shores on the Continent. A family account records, “When this lady went beyond the sea [in the reign of Mary I], her chief servant of trust that went with her was Richard Bertie, esq. who, by tradition in our family, was her Gentleman of the Horse. He had the character of being a gentleman of merit, and I believe he was very serviceable to her in those troublesome times, and that he thereby rendered himself so pleasing to her that she took him to be her second husband . . . ” 63 Bertie was of good, though not exalted, birth and well educated. 64 Though Katherine’s social inferior (a fact that he was very aware of, he once signed a letter husband to the Lady Katherine Suffolk), 65 Bertie attempted to claim the title Willoughby de Eresby in right of his wife. The legal wrangling surrounding this claim exposed his family background to scrutiny, so that even his wife, who supported his suit, admitted that he was “meanly born.” 66 Persisting in their suit, Katherine wrote to Elizabeth I on July 29, 1570, to try to convince the Queen to summon Bertie to Parliament as Lord Willoughby de Eresby stating, “It is to God to rule all, and by His good means [those] as meanly born as [my] husband have been advanced by prince’s gifts to greater honour than [we] challenge as [our] due.” 67 Eventually, Bertie received his summons, and the couple’s son Peregrine Bertie 68 became one of the leading members of the peerage in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, a sure sign of the family’s inclusion in the elite ranks. 69 Katherine worked hard to ensure that the children from her second marriage enjoyed as many of the same privileges as had her sons from her first union. 70 For women of the status of Katherine Willoughby, a hypogamous marriage might cause a bit of a scandal but it was not social suicide and her exalted status and wealth could be transferred to the children of her less-than-exalted husband.
For other elite widows, the impetus toward an exogamous remarriage appears to have been more personal, even romantic. 71 They married endogamously initially, as society expected them to, but seized the opportunity afforded by their widowhood to make an emotionally satisfying subsequent match. Those who did so acted against the accepted wisdom of the age that held that marriages based on romance or love were not likely to succeed. 72 Despite this conventional wisdom, some Tudor women did associate romantic love with marriage.
In the mid-1530s, Mary Boleyn, the elder sister of Henry’s second wife Anne, and the King’s former mistress entered into a wholly romantic second marriage. In 1520, she married a relatively unimportant gentleman of the privy chamber, William Carey, who died of the sweating sickness leaving Mary an apparently lonely and neglected widow. As her family rose to dizzying heights on her sister’s skirts, Mary was essentially left behind and she does seem to have resented this marginalization. In 1534/1535, Mary contracted a secret marriage with a court hanger-on, William Stafford; the union came to light when she became visibly pregnant. The Queen was not pleased that her somewhat scandalous sister had married so far below the family’s hard-won dignity and banished the couple from court. Mary wrote to the King’s Secretary Thomas Cromwell asking him to intercede with the King and Queen on her behalf.
73
Her poignant letter puts a very human face on the position of people surrounding the high court politics of the 1530s, revealing that emotion sometimes overruled all other concerns:
I am sure it is not unknown to you the high displeasure both he [her husband, William Stafford] and I have, both of the king’s highness and the queen’s grace, by reason of our marriage without their knowledge, wherein we both do yield ourselves faulty and do acknowledge that we did not well to be so hasty nor so bold. But one thing, good master secretary, consider, that he was young, and love overcame reason; and for my part I saw so much honesty in him, that I loved him as well as he did me, and was in bondage and glad I was to be at liberty: so that, for my part, I saw that all the world did set so little by me, and he so much, that I thought I could take no better way but to take him and to forsake all other ways, and live a poor, honest life with him . . . For well I might have had a greater man of birth and a higher, but I assure you I could never have had one that should have loved me so well, nor a more honest man; and besides that, he is both come of an ancient stock, and again as meet . . . to do the king’s service as any young gentleman in his court.
Elite Tudor women were expected subjugate their own personal desires to the needs of their family. One of the primary ways in which this requirement made itself felt in their lives was in the matter of their marriages. These women were expected to marry a man either of their own rank or above them and thus bring honor and (hopefully) financial gain to their natal family. People understood marriage at the aristocratic level to be a matter of concern beyond the immediate families involved. The nuclear family in sixteenth-century Britain occupied the center of a large and complex network of kin and patronage relationships. The higher in rank the family, the more power the kin group exercised over the workings of the nuclear family itself since the higher the rank, the more was at stake in terms of property and prestige. When a family worked to procure a good marriage for one of its members, it did so with the interests of the whole of the network in mind. Families did not forget that these marriages served to transmit both the property and the lineage of the whole kinship group. The older, richer, and more influential the family the more important the needs of the entire group were. 76 In the words of Lawrence Stone, “Marriage among the property-owning classes in sixteenth-century England was, therefore, a collective decision of family and kin, not an individual one. Past lineage associations, political patronage, extension of lineage connections, and property preservation and accumulation were the principal considerations.” 77 Thus, marriage among the elite of sixteenth-century Britain involved more than an individual decision. This choice vitally concerned the larger kin group and was undertaken with the preservation and improvement (if possible) of landed interests and patronage connections in mind. 78 Statistics indicate that the majority of these women did fulfill those expectations, certainly on their first marriages. It is the women who did not fulfill these assumptions when marrying for the second or third time with which this article has been concerned. Widowhood opened a window of opportunity to exercise agency through which a significant proportion of elite women climbed. These women chose to marry men who were well below them on the social scale and their reasons for doing so are as varied as were the circumstances and the women themselves. For some a level of crisis in their life appears to have prompted their socially questionable remarriage, while for others it was as simple as falling in love. Through a closer examination of the women who made these choices, I contend that the issues of social rank and gender expectations, including female agency, can be clarified.