Widows E-Book

Professor Maggie Andrews

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 362

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Historically seen as figures of pity and foreboding – poverty stricken receivers of charity, tragic figures dressed in black and even sometimes sexually voracious predators or witches – widows have been subject to powerful stereotypes that have endured for centuries. But for many women, widowhood unfolded into a vastly more complex story. From being property of men and housekeepers – the owners of nothing – they found themselves suddenly enfranchised, empowered and free to conduct themselves however they wished. From suffrage campaigners and politicians, to entrepreneurs and newly self-made women, the effect of widows' might can be seen throughout history. In Widows historians Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas pull together the stories of fascinating women, both famous and unknown, and their exploits after being widowed. They show how throughout history widows have carried on with everyday life in the face of poverty or isolation, their struggles for political power and the ways that many of them have contributed to improving the lives of women today.

Leseprobe

WIDOWS

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas, 2020

The right of Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9591 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1   Early Widows: Religion, Remarriage or a New Independence

2   Work and Workhouses

3   Respectability, Opportunities and Philanthropy

4   Sister Suffragettes

5   Poverty, Pensions and the Great War

6   Politics, Power and Influence

7   What Wonderful Women: Widows and the Women’s Movement

8   War Widows from the Spanish Civil War to the Falklands Wars and Beyond

Afterword: Jolly Dollies and Determined Dames

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Numerous people have made the writing of this book possible and our thanks go to them all, even if they are not mentioned here. Thanks to The History Press, who saw the potential of a book about the history of widowhood; suggestions and support from Paula Bartley and Lesley Spiers have also been appreciated, as have ideas about literary widows that Oliver Morgan provided. We have also been lucky enough to have some of the undergraduate and postgraduate history students at the University of Worcester sharing research and ideas with us; particular thanks go to Hayley Carter, Anna Muggeridge and Emil Tillander. The supportive environment provided by members of the Women’s History Network has also, as ever, inspired us.

Writing always disrupts domestic life, so many thanks are also owed to John and to Neil for their support, forbearance, shopping, cups of tea and numerous other forms of practical and emotional assistance. Please do not take us writing about widowhood as any kind of a gentle hint: we want you around for a whole lot longer. We are not widows but have a number of friends and relations who have become widows in recent years, this book is dedicated to all of them and to all those numerous other widows whom we do not know.

INTRODUCTION

This book, in telling the stories of a wide range of widows, introduces you to the lives of inspirational women. Some are famous, some are unknown; it is possible to discover a great deal about the lives of a few women, whilst for others there are only snippets and snatches of their experiences which may be mentioned in letters and newspapers. All of these women have at one time or another over the last 800 years had to rebuild their lives after the deaths of their husbands, or after the deaths of two or more husbands. Their heroism includes struggles to carry on with everyday life in the face of poverty or isolation, and determinedly ensuring the mundane but necessary task of earning a living. It is also about struggles for political power: a number of these widows were significant in improving the lives of other women.

We were stimulated to undertake the research for this book when we noticed, while writing about the British women’s suffrage movement, that all three leaders of the major British women’s suffrage organisations were widows. Was this, we wondered, something of a coincidence, or a more complex and common phenomenon? Now, eighteen months later, we have become aware of the immeasurable debt that the women’s movement in Britain owes to widows. Indeed, it is not too much to say that women’s progress towards gaining the vote, sitting in Parliament or the United States Congress, and becoming elected heads of state would have been much slower without the wonderfully resourceful and independent trailblazing widows that you will be introduced to in the pages of this book.

In the twenty-first century, widowhood is often associated with grief and sorrow, a time of mixed and perhaps contradictory emotions that include loss, shock, anger, tears, trauma and relief that a loved one’s pain is ended. For some it can mean the release from an abusive or controlling relationship. The emotions that Yvonne Vann described to the Daily Mail in 2014 will resonate with many women: ‘The emptiness I felt was unshakeable. It was as though my “to-do list”, which had been my guide through the dark days of Vic’s slow decline, had been whisked away with the wind. Three years on, I was alone, purposeless and missing him desperately.’1 The experiences of widows and wives in the past were very different. Historically, widows were often seen as figures of pity and foreboding, as poverty-stricken receivers of charity, occasionally as tragic figures dressed in black, and even sometimes as sexually voracious predators or witches. While such stereotypes do not necessarily occur without at least a trace of truth, this book seeks to explore a more complex and varied history of widows.

In the past, as in the present, widowhood was both a private shift in a woman’s personal relationships and a change in their status in society. One newly widowed woman explained to me how this was brought home to her when she filled in an official form and realised it was no longer appropriate to tick the box saying she was married. Women striving to deal with the grief of losing their husbands also quickly become aware that they are encountering a new set of expectations about their behaviour, dress, emotions and social interactions. The nature of these expectations changes, it is culturally and historically determined. Much of this book is on widows in Britain, where in the twenty-first century no one will be offended if a widow does not dress in black clothes for two years, but there are always conventions widows are expected to comply with, wherever women become widows. Even at emotionally difficult moments, external pressures quickly impose themselves upon widows. Joyce Carol Oates described how she responded to hearing the news of her husband’s death for the New Yorker in December, 2010. Her depiction of her body’s reactions to the emotional shock included blood draining from her face and her eyes leaking tears. But she was also aware of the social expectations that surrounded widowhood – a sense that she should respond in a proper way to the situation that she was in, that she needed to find the right things to say or do despite her overwhelming grief.2

As the chapters that follow demonstrate, while some widows threw convention to the wind, other widows suffered when they were judged not to have complied with social conventions and the expectations others placed upon them.

Prior to the twentieth century, marriage was predominantly understood as first and foremost a practical and economic partnership, a liaison sometimes arranged for the couple by their families, rather than the emotionally intimate relationship it is expected to be today. Consequently, the most immediate, and sometimes long-term, concern of many widows was their economic position, how they, and their children, perhaps, would be able to survive financially; how they would avoid the downward slide towards poverty. In historical periods when the vast majority of property and power was in men’s hands, when men’s earning capacity was so much more than women’s, widows had to employ a multitude of ingenious strategies to survive. There were widows who ran smallholdings and farms, begged and borrowed, sewed and baked, became governesses and teachers, forged careers and held down mundane jobs to survive in a man’s world, without a man. In researching this book we also discovered stories of widows who did very much more that survive: widows who exercised power, who through multiple careful remarriages amassed fortunes or accumulated business empires, and widows who promoted their sons’ political interests to look after their own and their families’ welfare.

As ideas of marriage have changed, so too have ideas about who should be responsible for financially supporting widows. Poverty and fear of poverty has shaped many widows’ lives. Historically, they have often had to rely on their families and relations, charity, community support and the goodwill of a multitude of organisations to survive. But in Chapter 5 we explore how the torrent of war widows created by the carnage of the First World War became a stepping-stone in Britain towards the government acknowledging its responsibility to provide a minimum level of state support for widows, especially those whose husbands had died serving their country in the armed forces. War widows’ pensions, and then pensions for all widows, were introduced in the wake of the First World War.

In war and peace, class, social position and economic resources have shaped the experience of widowhood. But the stories of the widows that we discuss also demonstrate the resourcefulness of these women, who were not victims but made their own histories, even if they did so in circumstances that were not of their own choosing.3 Widows campaigned for women’s political rights, but war widows, as we discuss in Chapter 8, also campaigned for widows’ rights, equality and justice. They challenged government authority and they won.

The lexicon of attitudes, values and experiences that women encounter in widowhood has changed over time, but for all women, widowhood means readjustment, new responsibilities and more fluid gender roles within their household. Joy Taylor, a 70-year-old retired bank executive from Audlem, Cheshire, who lost her husband of over fifty years, describes:

On becoming a widow, I was suddenly struck by ‘things’ changing gender.

Things of which I was perfectly capable, had by long standing custom and practice become boys’ jobs. Suddenly my shoes had to be cleaned.

The washer bottle on the car stopped filling itself and the tyres stopped blowing themselves up, not to mention the battery and numerous other car related items stopped checking themselves.

The bins stopped wheeling themselves down the drive, the garden paths stopped sweeping themselves and horror of horrors the dog poo stopped picking itself up!!!

I was looking to buy something and was thinking I will buy that out of ‘joint’ funds and suddenly realised that money was no longer in his, hers and joint pots, it was all ‘her’ money, no joint existed.

Laundry was now all girl washing, with no gentleman’s smalls to consider, but it takes ages to make up a proper load when it’s all of the female gender.

In short, to my immense surprise all jobs became girl’s jobs!!!!4

The end of the joint account, or the housekeeping for the Victorian widow, brings into sharp relief the shifting gender roles of women who become widows, but as the chapters that follow demonstrate, it can also be a new beginning; it can place power in women’s hands.

Kathleen Rehl, who produced a website about her experiences of widowhood to help other women encountering grief, recalled how five years after her husband’s death she became aware that she was ‘more than a widow, that she had become an independent woman!’ She came to the realisation that she had entered the third stage of widowhood, involving transformation, that she had successfully navigated the initial phases of grief and growth. Interestingly she goes on to note that after the pain of widowhood, she found satisfaction in this new phase of grief.5 She was not alone in enjoying her new self-sufficiency; many women put their independence to good use. They enjoyed the advantages of having gained control of their own finances, and, as respectable widows who had acquired some freedom from a number of domestic responsibilities, they responded to the new opportunities that widowhood offered. They gained access to power and influence, and forged the way for all women to participate in politics.

Some of the multitudes of widows that are discussed in this book have described the emotional turmoil they experienced when their husbands died, and we have included some of these. However, widows’ grief and sorrow is not the main focus of our study. Rather, we seek to show the power and influence of all widows – whether they were determined suffrage campaigners, worked in the arts and the media or were dedicated to their careers in philanthropy, public service or politics, or were humanitarian campaigners seeking to improve the lives of others. The stories of these women and the women who carried on a heroic struggle to provide for themselves and their families are both uplifting and inspiring. We hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we enjoyed discovering them.

1

EARLY WIDOWS: RELIGION, REMARRIAGE OR A NEW INDEPENDENCE

Widows in the earliest period of our study, that is those who lived from the tenth to the eighteenth centuries, are very hard to identify. When historians examine archival records, poorer widows are predominantly ‘hidden from history’1 and it is difficult to distinguish between women whose husbands have died and those that have left them or moved away. Even as late as the twentieth century, many women chose to identify themselves as widows rather than face the stigma associated with being seen as having failed at marriage. Hundreds of years ago, in rather more socially conservative times, this practice was common. Widowhood was a varied and complex experience, thus ‘the state of widowhood can be considered as one of personal loss, encompassing everything from the immediate psychological impact of the loss of a partner to the material deprivation of an income’ and often also of a home.2 Widows might respond to such difficulties by seeking haven in a convent. Wealthier widows discovered that religious orders offered a space to exert power and influence. After her husband died in the middle of the fourteenth century, Bridget of Sweden founded a religious order, who were called the Brigittines. Guided by the visions that she claimed to have, she set up a house for monks and one for nuns, both of which were under the overall control of an abbess. The order stressed both piety and learning, and had a plentiful supply of books for the nuns to read. While such an institution seems to offer a rather appealing refuge from the world, as we will see, as the centuries passed religious affiliation was to become one of many dangerous terrains that widows had to navigate.

For women who lived in a time when the majority of power was in male hands and divorce or annulment of a marriage was exceptional, widowhood might come as a blessed relief. As the historian Timothy Elston has explained, widows could discover that ‘upon the death of their husbands, their legal status changed from … being the “junior partner” in a marriage relationship to being woman with their own legal rights’.3 Such a change could offer empowerment and hence the new ‘independent aristocratic widow, a woman who had enough power and stamina to assert her own will in various situations’ began to emerge.4 Many widows, however, found that their lives were shaped by the need to survive in a man’s world without a man. They could experience pressure from male relatives seeking to take over control of their finances, whatever their husbands had put in their wills. Consequently, widows featured strongly amongst the litigants before the Court of Requests in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although sometimes they were merely continuing lawsuits their husbands had begun prior to their death, most were pursuing their own litigation, seeking redress against men who wrongly assumed that as a woman and a widow they would not be able to control their own finances.5

Many widows chose, or were pushed by the dynastic concerns of their families into, the treacherous path to remarriage. While this enabled Bess of Hardwick, who is discussed later in the chapter, to amass a large fortune after being widowed four times, it was not always such a beneficial arrangement. Wary, cautious and wise widows frequently entered into their new marriages with a strong sense of the value of any property they brought to the partnership and a clear expectation of the lifestyle that their new husband should ensure that they could enjoy.6 However, for the majority of widows, with little in the way of money or property, the struggle to survive was much more precarious. Marginalised by society, they could become reliant on charity or have to live in institutions such as St John’s in Reading, where they spent their time ‘praying day and night’.7 Poorer widows might have to resort to begging, become a wise women or face accusations that they were a witch.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most influential widows of the medieval period; and is often regarded as the most powerful and wealthy woman in Western Europe during the twelfth century. Her marriage to Louis VII had made her queen consort of France, but despite accompanying him on Crusades and bearing him two children, the marriage was annulled. The excuse was that Louis and Eleanor were distantly related, but in reality it was because their children were both female. Eleanor was blamed for failing to produce a male heir. In 1154, she next married the Duke of Normandy, who became Henry II of England and with whom she had eight children, five of whom were sons. This marriage was somewhat tempestuous, and by 1167 the couple were separated and Eleanor went to live in Poitiers in France for five years. A political intriguer in every way, she supported her sons’ plots and revolts against Henry, which led to her being brought back to England and imprisoned for the next sixteen years. Henry’s death in 1189 made Eleanor a widow and heralded a renaissance in her power and influence. She was released from imprisonment when her eldest surviving son became King Richard I. As he was not married, she took to signing herself ‘Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England’. She exercised significant authority when Richard was absent for long periods fighting in the Holy Land, and she took a major role in raising the ransom to secure his release when he was imprisoned by Henry VI of France on his way back from his third Crusade. Eleanor outlived Richard and continued to be influential when the next of her sons, John, became king, travelling to Castile to help facilitate a royal marriage as part of the truce between King Philip II of Spain and King John.

Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine were married for over thirty years, an unusually long time in medieval society, when widowhood was a much more common phenomenon than it is now. The image and status of widows was, as Henrietta Leyser has pointed out, full of variation, contradiction and ambivalence at this era of history.8 Widows were seen as worthy of respect and charity while simultaneously often seen as lustful, sexual predators who targeted younger men. The Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century, encapsulated this:

He was, I trowe, twenty winter old,

And I was fourty, if I shal seye sooth;

But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth. (606-608)9

The ‘lusty widow’ remained a cultural trope for many years, a stock character even in Jacobean and Restoration comedy. Widows were, however, quite capable of subverting social expectations, stereotypes and legal structures to their own and their children’s advantage. They often took control of their own destinies. The Wife of Bath married five times, and indeed, in a patriarchal society where power and property was in the hands of men, a number of women felt that their economic survival was best served by remarriage.

Margaret Beaufort was of the opinion that a second marriage would offer her both protection and security when her husband Edmund Tudor died of the plague in 1456. These were dangerous and turbulent times; the Wars of the Roses were raging and Edmund was being held captive when he died. Margaret, was now a 13-year-old widow and seven months pregnant. Little wonder, then, that two years later she chose to marry Sir Henry Stafford. However, these nuptials did not lead to a happily-ever-after scenario. In 1471, Stafford also died, at only 28 years old, as a result of the wounds he sustained during the Battle of Barnet. Margaret was a widow once again. The following year, keen to strengthen her own and her son’s position, she married Thomas Stanley, Lord High Constable and King of Mann. This marriage gave her access to the royal court, enabling her to plot and scheme to advance her son’s cause. Indeed, it was her final husband who placed the crown on the head of Margaret’s son, when he became Henry VII after defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Margaret’s auspicious and careful remarriages had made her the mother of a king.

Not all widows who sought to advance their son’s cause were so lucky. Edmund Mortimer’s widow, Margaret de Finnes, found herself very much out of favour when her son, Roger, aligned himself, politically and possibly sexually, with Queen Isabella, the wife of Edward II. Both Roger and Isabella were seen to have been involved in the murder of the king in 1327. When Edward III came to the throne, Roger Mortimer was executed and his poor widowed mother spent the rest of her days being closely guarded. She was regarded, justifiably perhaps, with some suspicion.10 Her end was at least marginally better than that of the widows of Scottish rebels, who, during the reign on Edward I, were ‘caged and displayed for public scorn’.11

Despite the allure of protection that remarriage might have offered, it has been estimated that 10 per cent of households in medieval England were in the charge of widows. Both the Catholic Church and families sometimes put pressure on widows to take a vow of celibacy, an action that was seen as a means to stop unwanted or undesirable suitors. Juan Luis Vives, who wrote De Institutione Feminae Christianae (The Education of a Christian Woman) in 1523, suggested that widows should maintain their chastity to safeguard their late husbands’ reputations. For women such as Alice, wife of Robert Clairvaux of Eyeworth, the terms of their husbands’ wills were intended to make remarriage undesirable. Robert left his wife, ‘his house, land, leases, 100 marks and all his household goods’ but if she remarried she would have only £40 and ten marks of household stuff.12 Alice was not alone in finding that widowhood offered a degree of economic independence, something she had not previously experienced. This was because there was an expectation amongst the wealthy that on marriage a woman would bring a share of her own family’s inheritance, the dower, which would then form the basis of the wife’s settlement if she were widowed. Widows were also expected to inherit one third of their husband’s property. Another third went to the children and the remainder was often allocated for religious expenditure to benefit the dead man’s soul. This paid, among other things, for religious masses to be said for the deceased. However, evidence from numerous court cases suggests that everything did not always go as planned. Sons and other members of the family could cause problems, whilst if wealthy, a young widow could become a ward of court. This enabled the sovereign to collect a fine if she married. Consequently, kings sometimes regarded underage widows as a profitable asset to be exploited for their own financial gain; the 1185 Register of Rich Widows and of Orphaned Heirs and Heiresses could easily be mistaken for a sales catalogue. Little wonder, then, that both the coronation charter of Henry I and Magna Carta sought to curtail royalty’s privilege to make money out of widows.13

A less well-off widow in medieval England might take over her husband’s lands, farms, tenancy or businesses after his death. In the rural areas of this feudal society, such arrangements could be permanent, or temporary until a man’s sons came of age. However, any failure to comply with the obligations of a tenancy could lead to a brush with the law and fines. In 1247, Lucy Rede was taken to court for allowing her cattle to stray onto the lord’s land, while Alice Alte Dame got into difficulties in 1299 due to her failure to repair her house and outbuildings.14 For others, widowhood was precarious. Wills were not common prior to the fifteenth century, and many women had to rely upon help from formal and informal networks of friends and charities in the struggle to survive. For older widows there was an expectation that their children would look after them; this was not always comfortably or willingly fulfilled.

In cities such as London, widows could inherit their husband’s businesses, at the cost of immediately becoming the object of attention from suitors whose intentions were not always entirely honourable. Margarey Ryan, a young widow with healthy finances, thanks to her brief marriage to a London draper, was mercilessly pursued by and then married George Cely, a London merchant whose finances were significantly improved by the match. When Martha Wheeler‘s husband, a goldsmith with premises in Fleet Street, died, one of his apprentices stepped into the breach, married Martha and took over the business.15 Not all widows succumbed to male suitors. Emma Huntyngton was widowed in 1362, inheriting a house and apothecary shop which she continued to run unaided for many years. It has been suggested that only 3 per cent of London wills stipulated that widows should not remarry, and it seems that as many as 50 per cent of widows did.16 One skinner left instructions that his wife should run the business herself; if she was not able to do so, she should remarry within three years.17 A number of butchers’ widows were expected to keep their husbands’ businesses going until their sons were able to take it over. Widows ran all manner of enterprises – manufacturing bricks, trading cloth, managing streets of tenanted houses – but as Henrietta Leyser points out, ‘It is not known whether they necessarily took over their husband’s trades willingly: in many cases this may have been a duty, not a choice, the work a chore rather than a pleasure.’18 Some, like Katherine Fenkyll, a widow and successful businesswoman at the very beginning of the sixteenth century, seem to have revelled in the opportunities that widowhood offered them.

In the 1490s, Katherine became the second wife of Sir Fenkyll, a successful businessman in the City of London; his transactions and clients included the royal household. His main trade appears to have been selling, exporting and importing cloth, but there are indications of other trading such as importing sweet wine from Europe. During their short marriage his wife seems to have learnt all about his business. On his death, Katherine was left a wealthy widow who did not need to work. She chose to continue working, growing the international drapery concern she had inherited and taking on apprentices. Despite many years of independence, she married again to a Thomas Cremor, whose first wife had also been a wealthy widow. When Katherine was widowed for the second time, and was once again well provided for, she had to fight to protect her financial interests and to fend off eager suitors. In her second widowhood she was financially very comfortable and after over thirty years in trade she was held in high esteem in the City of London. She even sat at the top table at the Draper’s Company Election Feast in 1527.19

For women with royal connections, the Tudor period seems to have been an equally perilous time to be a widow. Henry VII’s eldest son Arthur was already in poor health when he was married at the age of 15 to his young Spanish bride, Catherine of Aragon. The young couple were escorted to their bedchamber on their wedding night, but Catherine later insisted the marriage was never consummated. Ludlow Castle, close to the Welsh border in Shropshire, became the couple’s home, and there, within five months of the marriage, they both became ill with what was known at the time as the sweating sickness. Arthur died while Catherine recovered and found herself a teenage widow in a foreign country. Catherine was a devout Catholic, but because her marriage was not consummated she did not feel the need to espouse celibacy, nor did she really see herself as a widow. Her marriage to Arthur’s younger brother, who had by then succeeded to the throne as Henry VIII, nevertheless required a papal dispensation. This marriage enabled Catherine to have the future she had been expecting, as the Queen of England.

Twenty-four years, one daughter and many unsuccessful pregnancies later, Henry VIII questioned the legitimacy of his marriage to his brother’s widow. He blamed the couple’s failure to produce a male heir on his religious transgression in marrying his brother’s widow. Whilst the Pope did not accept Henry’s claim, rather obligingly, Archbishop Cranmer annulled the royal couple’s marriage, and Henry established the Church of England. The king issued a royal proclamation announcing that from now on Catherine was be addressed not as queen but as Dowager Princess of Wales. It was as if Catherine of Aragon had been widowed for a second time.20 Catherine, however, refused to acknowledge her new title and in this she was supported by many of Henry’s subjects. In the remaining years of her life, Catherine’s behaviour conformed to many of the expectations of widowhood, but also to those of a queen. She was known for both her piety and her commitment to philanthropic work. As a skilled needlewoman, she supported the lacemaking industry in Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas, where it is still believed she introduced the art of lacemaking in the early 1530s. Catherine also took part in the annual ritual of washing the feet and giving of coins to a few, carefully selected, poor women on Maundy Thursday each year. Despite such behaviour, when Catherine died in 1536, she was buried at the abbey in Peterborough. The stone that marked her grave described her as ‘Dowager Princess of Wales’, the status she had acquired when Prince Arthur died.

Following Catherine’s demise, controversy over what was appropriate behaviour for widows continued. Catholicism, which understood the rationale for marriage to be the procreation of children, expected older widows to remain celibate and focus their energies on any children they already had. But the frequent portrayal of widows in the cultural output of the era was more complex, as Dorothea Kehler’s study of Shakespeare’s plays has demonstrated.21 Older widows predominantly remained single and chaste unless economic necessity propelled them to the altar. Notable exceptions include Mistress Quickly in Henry V1 Part 2 and Henry V and Gertrude in Hamlet. Her ‘o’er hasty marriage’ after her husband’s murder is usually regarded as evidence of her shallowness and rather dubious sensuality.22 In Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, whilst the heroine is perceived by her brothers as a ‘lusty widow’, her character is of a more sympathetic widow who seeks a sexually fulfilling married life.23 Whilst such plays suggest the anxieties and tensions around widowhood in the period, the everyday lives of widows was often shaped by the mundane need for economic survival.

For widows who felt that their financial security necessitated remarriage, the choice of husband was important. Some aristocratic women used widowhood and a series of carefully undertaken remarriages to improve their social status and acquire wealth for themselves and their children. Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr, had already been widowed twice before she became the object of Henry’s attentions. Catherine’s own mother, Maud Parr, was herself a widow after her husband Thomas died of the plague in 1517. Maud, an ambitious and wealthy independent woman, chose not to remarry and instead pursued her own career in the court of Henry VIII as one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies. This was a role that allowed her to advance the positions of her children, marrying William to the only child of the Earl of Essex, while her daughter was married to Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire in 1528.24

Catherine Parr’s first marriage was short-lived. By 1532 she had become a widow and her mother had also died. She had no home to return to and little in the way of income or prospects. Catherine’s survival rested upon a mixture of her taking control of her destiny and good luck. There is little evidence of where exactly she spent the next few years, but it seems probable that for much of the time she stayed as a guest with relations, an arrangement that saved on living expenses and enabled her to meet new acquaintances and possible marriage partners. Her various residences included Sizergh Castle in Cumbria, where she passed the time with the widow of her former husband’s uncle. Catherine Parr, as a Protestant, was well disposed towards remarriage and within little more than a year she had made an advantageous second marriage to John Neville, Baron Latimer, of Snape Castle in Yorkshire. Catherine’s new husband was a widower, older than her and with children to whom Catherine became a stepmother. This marriage seems to have been contented, though the couple found themselves caught up in the religious and political turmoil of the era. In 1536, a rebellion rose up against Henry VIII and his religious reforms, including the dissolution of the monasteries. Rebels surrounded Snape Castle. Lord Latimer was captured and, under duress, appeared to provide support for them. In the years that followed, Lord Latimer struggled to regain royal favour. Catherine supported him loyally, and was rewarded in his will when he died in 1543. Catherine became a very comfortably-off widow with income from two of her second husband’s manors. But she had little time to enjoy her newfound financial independence.

Henry VIII, who had already been married five times and had beheaded two of his wives, did not make an ideal suitor for the twice-widowed Catherine, despite his royal status. She had her sights set on the younger and more charming Thomas Seymour. But a proposal from Henry felt rather more like a command than a request. On 12 July 1543, Catherine married Henry at Hampton Court Palace; in doing so, she also acquired three royal stepchildren. Catherine seems to have performed the role of queen well, enjoying the wealth, privilege and ability to promote the interests of the Parr family. The marriage has often been mythologised as one of relative calm and peace, in which Catherine nursed Henry in his last years. Elizabeth Norton’s biography of Catherine paints a different and more complex picture of their life together.25 Initially, Catherine seems to have been well regarded by Henry and to have got on well with his children; she acted as regent when Henry set off to war in France in 1544. However, political intrigue and tensions over Catherine’s commitment to religious reform led to the threat that she would be arrested. Despite a reconciliation between the couple, Catherine was not with Henry when he died, less than four years after they had married.

It might be expected that Catherine’s third period of widowhood, as the dowager queen, would have been her most financially stable and powerful. However, a new will drafted shortly before Henry’s death left Catherine wealthy but without any power in the kingdom when her 9-year-old stepson ascended to the throne and became King Edward VI. As a dowager queen, Catherine was expected to leave court, taking up residence in a palace at Chelsea; she was not permitted to play any further role in Edward’s upbringing, though she continued to be involved with Henry’s daughters, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Despite the financial security Catherine now had, she once again remarried, this time to her former beau Thomas Seymour. It was a marriage undertaken in greater haste than many thought appropriate. In this final marriage, Catherine’s heart seems to have ruled her head, but it brought her limited happiness. Princess Mary was furious; so was Seymour’s brother, who was by then acting as protector (a kind of regent) to the young king, and he created difficulties for Catherine as she sought to claim all of her inheritance from Henry VIII. And despite his obvious charm and good looks, faithfulness wasn’t one of Seymour’s attributes. Catherine, who became pregnant for the first time in her life in her mid-30s, died soon after the birth of their daughter in 1547.

Bess of Hardwick’s widowhood and astute remarriages were rather more successful. They took her from being the daughter of a small Derbyshire landowner to become the wealthiest woman in England. Bess was born around 1527, into a family whose finances suffered after the early death of her father when she was still very young. Some of her father’s wealth reverted to the Crown, under the control of the office of the Master of Wards, until her eldest brother reached 21. It taught Bess a valuable lesson: in adulthood she took care to protect her wealth by ensuring, very unusually, that money and property were placed in her own name, even though she was a woman. This also enabled Bess to accumulate incredible wealth from the deaths of her husbands.

Bess’s first arranged marriage was to Robert Barlow, when she was about 15 and Robert was 13. It is thought the marriage was never consummated, as Robert died within two years, on Christmas Eve, 1544. Bess inherited very little, around £8 15s per year. However, by 1547 Bess had made a highly advantageous second marriage.26 It is unclear exactly how a 20-year-old widow of minor gentry came to marry Sir William Cavendish, a very wealthy man with an important position at court as Treasurer of the King’s Chamber. He had already been married twice and was around twenty years older than Bess. Nevertheless, their marriage appears to have been successful and loving. It was certainly a step up the social scale for Bess: William’s income from rents in 1549 was £250 a year, while annuities brought in another £400 a year.27 In June 1549, William and Bess bought the Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire for £600, whilst also keeping a house in London where they lived in great style. In the ten years of their marriage Bess gave birth to eight children, six of whom survived infancy. At the time of William’s death in 1557, he was under investigation over the little matter of £5,000 that was missing from the crown accounts; worry over this may have exacerbated his illness and led to his death.

Bess was now a 30-year-old widow, with her own six young children and two stepdaughters from William’s first marriage to support. She found herself in a precarious position, exasperated by the difficulty of having to repay the enormous debt to the Crown her husband’s indiscretions had left her with. Rather than selling land to alleviate her financial problems, Bess chose a very different course.

She made up her mind to build on what her husband William Cavendish had begun, a great dynasty of Cavendishes founded on such wealth that it could be swept away only with difficulty; it was to be a dynasty which would be involved in all the future glories of the English nation.28

Bess looked around for a new husband, and within two years married Sir William St Loe in 1559, the year that Elizabeth I was crowned. Sir William had been loyal to the princess before her coronation and was rewarded by being appointed the Chief Butler of England. William therefore brought wealth into his marriage to Bess, and sorted out Bess’s outstanding debts from her previous husband.29 William’s position required him to stay at court, close to the monarch, while Bess lived with her children and supervised the building of a new mansion at Chatsworth. Being so much apart seems to have been a great sadness to William, whose letters suggest he was extremely fond of his wife. William’s admiration led him to create an indenture making Bess joint owner of his lands. Such an action resulted in accusations from William’s brother that Bess was enriching herself at the expense of William’s family.30 Early in 1565, after just six years of marriage, Bess became a widow once again. She left Chatsworth and went to London, where she became a Lady of the Privy Chamber at the queen’s court. Bess’s income was recorded as £1,600 a year in 1566 (equivalent to more that £600,000 now) and as a wealthy widow in her late 30s she was now well positioned to find a new husband. Like Catherine Parr before her, she was regarded as a good catch.

Bess’s next match was even more advantageous for her. George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, was one of the richest, most powerful men in the country and one of Elizabeth I’s most loyal courtiers. He had become a widower in 1566, and married Bess the following year making her Countess of Shrewsbury. The earl’s lands bordered on Bess’s own property in Derbyshire, and the two families, in line with Bess’s dynastic ambitions, were consolidated when Bess and George married two of his children to two of hers. When in 1569, Elizabeth had Mary, Queen of Scots arrested, it was decided that she should be detained in the custody of the earl and countess. This was a double-edged sword: although considered an honour, it was a massive and hugely expensive undertaking. The money Elizabeth was prepared to pay for her cousin’s upkeep did not cover the true cost of accommodating both Mary and her retinue in the style befitting a queen. Even the earl’s deep pockets were being heavily depleted and his pleas for more money were unsuccessful. Mary and Bess initially became close friends, spending time embroidering together, but their friendship became strained over the next sixteen years. Mary was originally taken to Tutbury Castle, a remote and easily fortified hunting lodge that was also damp, cold and poorly furnished. When plots to free her and letters detailing the various intrigues she was involved in were uncovered, the queen had to be moved to another of the earl’s houses, Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire. Such a move entailed a huge amount of organisation and expense, as one way or another there were up to 200 people in Mary’s court or guarding the Scottish queen.

Although initially the earl appeared very fond of his wife Bess, he eventually turned against her, probably because he regretted a deed of gift made in 1572 that gave ownership of property Bess had brought to the marriage to her two sons, William and Charles Cavendish. These lands were worth over £1,000 a year, and during her lifetime Bess controlled them. The earl unsuccessfully tried to repudiate the deed and his frustration over his failure to do so transformed into a hatred for his wife, with whom he spent little time. Despite Bess’s protestations and pleas for a reconciliation, he described her as ‘my wicked and malicious wife’ and said that she had cajoled him into settling lands on herself and her children. Even the queen got involved and instructed Shrewsbury to resume living with his wife, but he continued to resist.31