The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (91 page)

Chapter 4: The Pain and the Peril

1
See Schücking,
Puritan Family
, p.67.

2
Hookes,
Amanda
, p.1.

3
Walker,
Holy Life
, pp.44, 33.

4
See Appendix, ‘A Chronology of Sir Richard Fanshawe’,
Halkett and Fanshawe
, pp.95–9.

5
Hieron,
Helpe unto Devotion
, p.148; I Timothy, 2, VS. 14–15.

6
Hieron,
Helpe unto Devotion
, p.148.

7
Halkett and Fanshawe
, p.22.

8
Sermon,
Ladies Companion
, p.7.

9
Cust Family Records
, series II, p.97;
Pepys Diary
, V, p.222.

10
Grant,
Margaret the First
, p.96; Newcastle,
CCXI Letters
, p.94.

11
Sackville-West,
Clifford
, p.107; Newcastle,
CCXI Letters
, p.95.

12
Heywood Autobiography
, I, p.70.

13
Mordaunt Private Diarie
, p.21.

14
Mordaunt Private Diarie
, p.3; Clarendon,
History of the Rebellion
, VI, p.59.

15
HMC, Salisbury MSS, 1612–88, p.433; see Fraser,
Cromwell
, pp.478–82.

16
Mordaunt Private Diarie
, pp.28, 38, 152, 183.

17
Himes,
Contraception
, pp.168–70, 183, 191–2;
Pepys Diary
, VIII, p.318.

18
See Schnucker, ‘Elizabethan Birth Control’; ‘New Bill in Reply to the Ladies and Batchelors’, p.449.

19
Defoe,
Conjugal Lewdness
, p.155; Capp,
Astrology
, p.122.

20
Capp,
Astrology
, p.122; Schnucker, ‘Elizabethan Birth Control’, p.657.

21
Schnucker, ‘Elizabethan Birth Control’, pp.657–9; Eccles,
Obstetrics in Stuart England
, pp.26–32.

22
Macfarlane,
Josselin
, p.201.

23
cit. Wrigley, ‘Family Limitation’, p.105, note 3.

24
See Wrigley, ‘Family Limitation’; Henry,
Anciennes Familles Genevoises
.

25
Warwick Autobiography
, p.32.

26
Josceline, ‘Mothers Legacy’, BL Add MSS, 27, 467; Reynolds,
Learned Lady
, p.29.

27
Josceline, ‘Mothers Legacy’, BL Add MSS, 27, 467: Reynolds,
Learned Lady
, p.29.

28
Sharp,
Midwives Book
, p.170; Newcastle,
CCXI Letters
, p.189.

29
Harcourt Papers
, I, p.106; Pilkington,
Celebrated Female Characters
, p.199.

30
See Evelyn,
Mrs Godolphin
, for her story; esp. pp.79, 144–51.

31
Black,
Folk-Medicine
, pp.162–3;
Pepys Diary
, IV, p.339 and note 2; Eccles,
Obstetrics in Stuart England
, p.20.

32
Evelyn,
Mrs Godolphin
, p.156.

33
Hartmann,
King’s Friend
, p.205.

34
Hieron,
Helpe unto Devotion
, p.270; Cartwright,
Sacharissa
, p.74.

35
Gardiner,
History of England
, IX, p.80; Higgins, ‘Women in the Civil War’, p.50.

36
See Stone,
Family, Sex and Marriage
, esp. pp. 105–14; MacDonald,
Mystical Bedlam
, pp.77–82.

37
Verney Memoirs
, II, p.296;
Heywood Autobiography
, I, p.45; Souars,
Orinda
, p.89.

38
Cholmley Memoirs
, p.31.

39
Clarke,
Lives of Eminent Persons
, p.158.

40
Duncon,
Vi-Countess Falkland
, p.175; Sidney,
Diary
, I, p. lxxxv.

41
Cust Family Records
, series II, p.120; see Stone,
Family, Sex and Marriage
, p.60 for ‘an average family’ of four, five, or six children of whom two or three would die young.

42
Thornton Autobiography
, p.126.

43
Thornton Autobiography
, p.94.

44
Thornton Autobiography
, p.145.

45
Peter Laslett, in
World we have lost
(1983), p.129; cit. Illick,
Child-Rearing
, p.305 and note 10, p.333; Stone,
Crisis of the Aristocracy
, p.619.

46
See McLaren, ‘Nature’s Contraceptive’.

47
Stout Autobiography
, p.14; McLaren, ‘Nature’s Contraceptive’, p.432.

48
Ross,
Margaret Fell
, p.335;
Collins’ Peerage
, II, p.81;
Conway Letters
, p.124.

49
Fildes, ‘Infant Feeding Practices’, seminar.

50
Sharp,
Midwives Book
, pp.349, 365;
Verney Memoirs
, II. p.94.

51
Heywood Autobiography
, I, p.58; Clark,
Working Life
, p.27; CSP Domestic, 1661–2, p.221; ‘Farthing affidavit’,
Notes and Queries
, V, 11th series, 1912, p.508; Fildes, ‘Infant Feeding Practices’, seminar.

52
McLaren, ‘Nature’s Contraceptive’, p.433.

53
Schnucker,
Puritans and Pregnancy
, p.648; Sharp,
Midwives Book
, p.353.

54
Newdegate,
Muniment Room
, pp.20, 88.

55
See ‘Lincoln’s Nursery’, esp. pp.25, 27, 205, 31.

Chapter 5: Are You Widows?

1
‘Warwicke Specialities’, BL Add MSS, 27, 357.

2
Duncon,
Returns of Spiritual Comfort
; Clarke,
Lives of Eminent Persons
, II, p.148.

3
Newdegate,
Muniment Room
, pp.86, 156, 126.

4
Macfarlane,
Marital and Sexual Relationships
, pp.120, 213.

5
Herbert Autobiography
, pp.xix, 10 and note 3.

6
See Cartwright,
Sacharissa
, for the story of Dorothy Sidney;
Waller Poems
, I, p.128; Cartwright,
Sacharissa
, p.74.

7
Cartwright,
Sacharissa
, pp.104–6.

8
Osborne Letters
, p.44.

9
Pepys Diary
, I, p.60.

10
Laslett,
World we have lost
(1983), Table 10, p.108, gives 38.1 in 1601, declining to 35.7 in 1661 and 32.5 in 1721.

11
Stone,
Family, Sex and Marriage
, p.56.

12
Verney Memoirs
, I, p.242,

13
Verney Memoirs
, I, p.257.

14
Verney Memoirs
, I, pp.265, 268.

15
Verney Memoirs
, I, p.274;
Warwick Autobiography
, p.27.

16
Fell Smith,
Warwick
, p.11.

17
Fell Smith,
Warwick
, pp.109–10.

18
Herbert Autobiography
, pp.46–7.

19
Blundell,
Cavalier’s Notebook
, p.242; Brailsford,
Quaker Women
, p.137;
Harley Letters
, p. 117.

20
Notestein,
English Woman
, p. 107, note 16.

21
Osborne Letters
, p.123.

22
Kirkman,
Unlucky Citizen
, p.163.

23
Price,
London Bankers
, pp.151, 31; Price,
Marygold
, p.23.

24
See Lang, ‘Greater Merchants of London’, Chapter V;
Chamberlain Letters
, II, pp.572, 576;
Pepys Diary
, VI, p.215.

25
See the Rev. L.B. Larking in
Proceedings, Principally in the County of Kent, In Connection with the Parliaments called in 1640
, for the story of the Widow Bennett.

26
Philip Massinger,
City Madam
, Act IV, scene IV.

27
John Webster,
Duchess of Malfi
, Act I, scene I; Swetnam,
Arraignment of Women
, p.31.

28
Larking,
Proceedings
, p.xxxiii.

29
See
Verney Papers
, pp.199–223 for the second marriage of Margaret Poulteney.

30
Verney Papers
, p.221.

31
Allestree,
Ladies Calling
, p.42.

32
‘Twysden Notebooks’, BL Add MSS, 34, 163, fo. 211.

33
‘Twysden Notebooks’, BL Add MSS, 34, 163, fo. 211.

34
‘Twysden Notebooks’, BL Add MSS, 34, 163, fo. 210, 28.

35
G.E.C.,
Complete Peerage
, XII/2, p.775, note D.

36
Sackville-West,
Clifford
, p.xxxviii; Rowse,
Shakespeare’s Dark Lady
, p.139.

37
Notestein,
Four Worthies
, p.128; Sackville-West,
Clifford
, p.28.

38
Sackville-West,
Clifford
, p.xxxix; Whitaker,
History of Craven
, p.277; Cocke, ‘Clifford’.

39
Notestein,
Four Worthies
, p.149; cit. Ballard,
Memoirs of Several Ladies
, p.317.

40
Notestein,
Four Worthies
, p.154; see Ballard,
Memoirs of Several Ladies
, p.314, writing within living memory of Lady Anne.

41
Even if these rights, up till the end of the seventeenth century, were only effective in practice in the City of London, the province of York and Wales (see Stone,
Family, Sex and Marriage
, pp.195–6).

42
Thornton Autobiography
, p.247.

43
See Stenton,
English Woman
, pp.100–105.

44
See Clark,
Working Life
, pp.10, 150, 104.

45
Clark,
Working Life
, pp.20–31, 233, 215; cit. Thompson,
Women in Stuart England
, p.217, note 86.

46
Stenton,
English Woman
, p.219; Clark,
Working Life
, p.161.

47
Brathwaite,
English Gentlewoman
, p.332.

Chapter 6: Poor and Atrabilious

1
HMC, Hastings MSS, IV, p.325; the third Earl of Warwick was the proposed bridegroom, cit. Fell Smith,
Warwick
, p.145.

2
See Laslett,
World we have lost
(1983), pp.90–98; Thomas,
Religion
, pp.560–67.

3
Pearl, ‘Social Policy’, p.129.

4
cit. Smith, ‘Growing Old in Early Stuart England’, p.127.

5
Ballard,
Memoirs of Several Ladies
, p.361;
Collins’ Peerage
, IV, p.106; Smith, ‘Growing Old in Early Stuart England’, p.127.

6
John Milton,
Comus
, l. 453; John Ford,
’Tis Pity She’s a Whore
, Act II, scene V;
Hic Mulier: Or, The Man-Woman
.

7
cit. Thomas,
Religion
, p.464.

8
Perkins,
Discourse of the Damned Art
, p.168; Burton,
Anatomy of Melancholy
, I, p.210; Quaife,
Wanton Wenches
, p.152.

9
See Ewen,
Witchcraft
, Index (Marks); also Macfarlane,
Witchcraft
, p.19 for increasing stress placed on marks at trial; Thomas,
Religion
, pp.445–6.