Archbishop Matthew Parker had a library at Lambeth, but only a dozen nonclerics seem to have owned more than 100 books at any time during the sixteenth century. Some booksellers kept exceptionally large stocks. Roger Ward of Shrewsbury had 2,500 volumes in 1585. John Foster of York had some 3,000 in 1616. This is not so surprising considering the number of books printed in England every year—259 separate titles are listed in 1600, 577 in 1640. In 1623 the total of 309 included 120 religious works, eighty-nine books on current events, and 100 volumes on other topics. Among the other large private libraries were those of Lord Burghley (more than 1000 books), Sir William More at Loseley, Surrey, whose collection numbered over 400 in 1556, and John Dee at Mortlake. At his death in 1618, Sir Thomas Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, had 1,400 volumes in five languages.
In the earl’s closet at Petworth there were forty-four books in folio, twenty-eight books in vellum, thirty-three pamphlets, and a wainscot box containing maps and other writings. The library contained fifty-two chests of books and enough books to fill another twelve small chests. Also in the room were a cupboard with mathematical instruments, one large globe and two small ones, antique pictures of the emperors of Rome (purchased in 1586 for £24), a table with a folding frame, two little wainscot tables, and a bedstead.
Furniture makers did not come up with the concept of the bookcase until the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth, most books were stored in chests. If they were kept out because they were being used, rather than because they had jeweled bindings their owners wished to display, the titles were written on the edges of the pages, so the books were stacked spine in for easy of identification. The leather bindings were considered too valuable to deface with ink or embossed titles.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Diagram Group. Musical Instruments of the World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. New York: Paddington Press, 1976.
Edwards, Ralph and L.G.G. Ramsey. The Connoisseur’s Complete Period Guide to the Houses, Decoration, Furnishing and Chattels of the Classic Periods. New York: Bonanza Books, 1968.
Strong, Roy. The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
CHAPTER FIVE: MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
From 1536, parishes were required to keep records of christenings, marriages, and deaths. A variety of scholarly studies of these and of extant wills and inventories have yielded the statistics given in this chapter.
BIRTH
Lying-in
A tradition among those who could afford it, the mother’s lying-in was as impressive as she could manage. Friends, called gossips, who came to visit during the lying-in brought gifts, often of money. They might also be saying final farewells, since three-quarters of gentry wives who died within ten years of marriage did so in childbirth.
Birthrooms were kept warm, dark, and snug. Women knew enough to put on clean sheets and remove rings but the benefit of washing hands was not understood. The midwife brought with her a stool or chair, a knife, a sponge, and binders. Oil of lilies or oil of almonds, warmed, was used to anoint the womb of the laboring woman and the midwife's hands. The midwife might employ clysters, purges, liniments, poultices, ointments, and herbal infusions.
After the birth, the midwife washed, dressed, and prayed over both her patients. She cut the umbilical cord and extracted and buried the placenta. After the navel was dressed with astringent powder of aloes and frankincense, the newborn was bathed in warm water or in a lukewarm mixture of ten parts water and one part milk to which mallow and salad oil or sweet butter had been added. Afterward the child's body was anointed with oil of acorns or with an ointment made of rue, myrrh, linseed, fenugreek, and barley meal.
Once the baby was swaddled, it was placed on its mother's left side (near the heart). In Catholic practice, the child would be crossed after swaddling and sprinkled with protective salt. A coin would be placed in the baby's cradle or hand. Sixpence on the baby's buttocks was believed to drive the devil away.
The swaddled child was presented to its father by the midwife with a traditional formula: “Father, see there is your child. God give you much joy with it, or take it speedily to his bliss.”
In upper-class households, the mother was kept for three days after the birth in a darkened room where it was warmth and quiet. She was given restorative drinks and treated with plasters, dressings, ointments, and salves to quell bleeding and reduce inflammation.
Footing time was when the mother first got up. Also called upsitting, it might be marked by another gathering of gossips.
Churching
In Catholic homes, husband and wife were supposed to abstain from conjugal relations during pregnancy and for a period of forty days after childbirth (and during Lent). Women were churched after giving birth. This service of thanksgiving was a prerequisite for renewed participation in church rituals and services. At the churching, the midwife was a principal supporter and attendant to the mother.
Christenings and Baptisms
Done as quickly as possible in this age of high infant mortality, these ceremonies began with the midwife carrying the child into the church on a cushion. The father named the child, usually selecting the name from the Bible, the family, or the royal family. Godparents were essential, to look out for the child if the parents died. A feast generally followed the ceremony, traditionally featuring sugar and biscuits, comfits, marmalade, marchpane, and sweet suckets. Each guest brought a gift for the child.
Life expectancy was much shorter then than now. Michael Reed, in The Age of Exuberance 1550-1700 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), estimates that a quarter of all children died before their first birthday and gives the average life expectancy as forty years. But statistics also show that children born between 1566 and 1586 actually lived longer than those of any other generation until the nineteenth century. Between 1588 and 1640 up to 50% of all children died before reaching adulthood. In one parish, St. Leonard’s, Eastcheap (in London), a record of 190 burials between 1602 and 1611 lists the age at death for 171 persons. Leaving out deaths due to plague, 30% died before reaching age one, 44% were dead before age ten, and 59% died before reaching twenty-one. Although the average life expectancy at birth for a child born in the 1640s was only thirty-two, any of those children who lived to see the age of four would probably survive childhood.
Treatment of Babies and Young Children
Perhaps because so many children died young, one theory asserts that there was little overt affection between parents and their offspring in this era. Another disagrees. Family size averaged five to six children of whom three to five survived past early childhood. Most families sent children away from home during their teens if not before, either to school, to apprenticeships, or to live with foster families.
Since people were aware that suckling a baby inhibited conception, many mothers breast-fed their own children. They also did so to prevent the child from sucking in evil. Milk was believed to transfer the qualities of the nurse. Some of those who did not nurse their own children sent them out to a wet nurse while others had the nurse live in. Infants were rarely weaned earlier than one year and many continued to nurse as long as two years. They were not toilet trained very early, either, as this was not considered important.
Those children who survived infancy had toys, including dolls, hoops, and balls. Just as children today use rhymes to jump rope, Renaissance children also chanted verses. A typical children’s rhyme of 1632 went as follows: “Tell-tale, tit! / Thy tongue shall be slit, / And every dog in the town / Shall have a little bit.”
MARRIAGE
Only about 13% of the population (a 1590 figure) never married at all. The average age of marriage in England during the period from 1536 to 1650 was twenty-seven for men and twenty-six for women. One study shows that early in the period, only one in six men and one in four women married before the age of twenty. Another, for the seventeenth century, reveals that it was one in twelve for men and one in fifteen for women. Men were
usually two to three years older than their brides.
The nobility did tend to marry earlier in order to safeguard inheritances, but even among the upper classes there were few child marriages during this period. The son and heir was expected to put in a few years at university, perhaps spend a few at the Inns of Court, and tour the Continent before he married in his early twenties. Younger sons married even later, often not until their thirties. The brides usually reached the age of twenty before they wed. We know about exceptions primarily because they were events exceptional enough to be recorded for posterity.
The age of consent for marriage was much younger than the age at which most actual marriages took place. A girl could agree to an espousal at seven, could receive a dowry at nine, and at twelve could confirm or deny prior consent to marry. If she confirmed consent, she was bound forever to the arranged match. Boys were required to be fourteen to consent to marriage. Twenty-one was full age to make a will or sign a contract.
Courtship
The ideal was a well-planned love match. Parents had a duty to provide their children with a good marriage, which meant one which was economically sound. Among apprentices and servants, marriages were discouraged. Even when they were not, the parties frequently put the wedding off until they had money saved.
There was no one pattern of courtship, but a record from Yorkshire in 1641 is indicative. First a man wrote to a maid’s father to ask permission to court his daughter. If she was willing, he gave her a ring on his first visit. On the second visit, he gave her gloves, and each time he called thereafter he brought some toy or novelty until the wedding. The parents set the date and arranged the dowry. Once the parents of both agreed, the betrothal took place, with the wedding soon after.
Affinity and Consanguinity
The major obstacles to marriage involved the church’s rules on affinity and consanguinity. From 1215 on, no one was allowed to marry a person within the fourth degree of consanguinity. That meant that great-grandchildren of a common ancestor were forbidden to marry. Each degree of consanguinity had a corresponding degree of affinity, acquired by marriage. Thus a widow could not marry anyone related to her late husband up to the fourth degree of consanguinity. Affinity resulted from illicit as well as marital relations, which meant that a woman who had been one man’s mistress was not permitted to marry his brother, cousin, second cousin or third cousin. Spiritual consanguinity extended the ban to godparents. Until the Reformation, a papal dispensation could be obtained for a fee.
Types of Marriage
By the sixteenth century, there were five distinct and necessary steps to achieve a legal marriage. First was a written contract between the parents of the bride and groom, setting up financial arrangements. Then the spousals (betrothal ceremony) occurred, a formal exchange of oral promises before witnesses. Next there was public proclamation, the reading of banns in church on three successive Sundays or holy days. This procedure was intended to allow claims to be made of precontract (a previous betrothal to someone else) or any other impediment to the marriage. Banns could be omitted with a special license. Step four was the church wedding. Step five was sexual consummation.
There were a few specific places exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, where a couple could go to he married without going through all the steps or obtaining a special license. These included Lincoln’s Inn, Southwark Mint, and Newgate Prison. The Anglican Church also recognized a contract without a wedding as a marriage, making any sort of exchange of promises before witnesses a valid marriage, even though it wasn’t “legal” in the strictest sense. Under English law irregular marriages committed the participants for life, but they carried with them no legal guarantee that a surviving spouse or children would have any rights to inherit the deceased party’s property, since civil courts recognized only church weddings.
To add to the confusion, there were two kinds of spousals. “Per verba de futuro” was a promise to marry in the future and was not binding unless the couple consummated their relationship, at which time it became binding for life. The other type was “per verba de praesenti,” which was regarded, under ecclesiastical law, as an irrevocable commitment. The revelation of this kind of pre-contract would nullify a later church wedding to someone else.
Premarital Sex
Between one-fifth and one-third of all brides were pregnant on their wedding day. A child born between troth plight and marriage was considered legitimate. The main objection to premarital sexual activity seems to have been practical rather than religious. The birth of a bastard created an expense for the community. About one in forty babies were born illegitimate, most because the mother had been seduced by her employer or because a betrothal had fallen through.
The case of William Shakespeare is illustrative. In November 1582, at age eighteen, he obtained a special license to marry three-months-pregnant Anne Hathaway. There was no time for the banns to be called three times before the beginning of Advent, one of the prohibited seasons for marriage. He paid his fee to the local bishop’s officials at Worcester, gave his bond to pay £40 if the requirements for a lawful marriage were not satisfied, and swore an oath that he’d told the truth in statements concerning his name, residence, and occupation, and those of the bride and both their parents, and the reasons for seeking the license. They then married, after the banns were called only once.
Knowledge of methods of birth control was limited. Popular belief held “hard pissing” after sex to be effective. Although a description of a linen condom was published in Italy in 1563 (the word does not appear in print until 1665), such protective sheaths were in wide use only after 1844. The abortifacient properties of the herb savin, however, were widely known, as were those of tansy, willow leaves, ivy, and the bark of white poplar. The use of abortion as a means of birth control may have been made more acceptable by the contemporary belief that the fetus did not acquire a soul until eighty days after conception.
Wedding Customs
Weddings were normally held between eight and noon, a requirement which became law after 1604. The usual place for a wedding was at the church door, where the bride (dressed in white or russet, her hair loose) was given away by her father or by friends. There was a formal grant of dowry by the bridegroom and pennies were set aside for the poor. Promises were exchanged, the ring was blessed, and the groom placed it on three successive fingers of the bride, to protect her from demons, before leaving it on the third finger of her left hand. Before the Reformation, a nuptial mass was then said inside the church. A sermon was substituted in the Anglican Church.
Puritans preferred weddings to take place on Sundays before the entire congregation and encouraged the use of plain gold rings. Until about 1650, however, most wedding rings were elaborate. In some cases a gimmal ring, consisting of two rings that could be separated, was divided at the betrothal ceremony and rejoined at the wedding. It was not yet the fashion for the groom to receive a wedding ring.
A chaplet was a circlet set with gems that was sometimes worn by brides. Bride laces were lengths of blue ribbon binding sprigs of rosemary. Tied to the bride’s arm, these were pulled off by male wedding guests after the ceremony as wedding favors and worn in their hats. Men also wore nosegays in their hats at weddings in the late sixteenth century.
The wedding party feasted after the ceremony. Later the bridal chamber was blessed and the bride and groom were put to bed by all their friends. A great deal of ribaldry accompanied this traditional “bedding” ceremony. One custom which had not yet evolved was the honeymoon. Newlyweds usually spent the first few weeks with her family and then went to his home to set up housekeeping.
A Forced Marriage
In 1617, Sir Edward Coke, hoping to win royal approval, insisted his fifteen-year-old daughter Frances marry Sir John Villiers (later Viscount Purbeck), older brother of King James’s favorite, the duke of Buckingham. Her mother (who still called herself Lady Hatton, her title from her first marriage) attempted to prevent the marriage by spiriting F
rances away, but Coke found them hiding in a closet and abducted his daughter. Lady Hatton pursued them in a coach until it lost a wheel. Frances was eventually coerced into going through with the wedding, but the match was not a happy one. In 1624 she was convicted of adultery, imprisoned, and ordered to do penance, barefoot and wearing a white sheet, in the Church of the Savoy. She later escaped from prison, wearing male attire, and joined her lover in Shropshire. When she made the mistake of returning to London, she was caught and returned to prison. Following a second escape, Frances went into self-imposed exile in France.
Divorce
Marital infidelity was fairly common in England during this period. In 1604, running out on a family was made a felony. Divorce, however, was not an option in an unhappy marriage. Because of England’s peculiar laws on marriage, combined with the break with Rome, it became impossible to set aside one spouse and remarry. Unless there were grounds for annulment, the best one could do was to obtain a legal separation, unless one spouse was absent beyond the seas (out of the country) for more than seven years. In that case, the spouse was presumed dead and the husband or wife at home was exempted from any penalty for remarriage.
A nullity could be granted for incest (common because of affinity and consanguinity), because of a pre-contract, because of lunacy or male impotence (which prevented intercourse and therefore took away the official reason for marriage, the production of heirs), in cases of bigamy, or in the case of the kidnapping and marriage of an heiress by the use of force (a criminal offense).
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