Chapter 11 - Relations with daughters from birth to marriage

Summary

The Stowe Temple papers provide evidence for the marriages of several generations but are richest for the daughters of John and Susan Temple, and for the children of Thomas and Hester Temple. The focus is on the arrangement of daughters’ marriages. Historians have studied arranged marriages from a number of perspectives, from detailed examining of individual cases to the collection and analysis of mass data relating to particular social groups and geographical areas. There is general agreement that marriages normally were arranged by family members. The way in which they were arranged is thought to have followed a pattern, common at least to most elite families. Some authors have identified what they call ‘a London marriage market’. Some believe that the women of the family played a prominent part in the process of matchmaking. There is disagreement about whether this process changed over time within the early modern period. Historians do differ in the emphasis they lay upon the participation of the young couple themselves: did they just exercise a negative veto or could they play a more positive role? Many historians have focused upon the arrangement of the marriages of sons and especially firstborn sons. They have been somewhat dismissive of the bride's side. Was it, as Lawrence Stone claimed, simply a matter of ensuring the least possible drain upon the parents’ estate, and maintaining family status, or were there other deeper motives at work? As historians produce more and more work indicative of the important role elite and middling-sort women played in building and cementing family networks, it seems that choosing the appropriate groom for one's daughters was crucial (and, conversely, that selecting the right sort of bride for one's sons was much more than simply an issue of acquiring or securing property).

Historical demographers suggest that early marriage was encouraged among the females of the property-owing classes of early modern England in order to achieve the longest possible period of reproduction. This would give the young women concerned a reproductive life of about twenty years, during which she could give birth to ten or more live children. Much of the evidence points to different reasons: the desire to keep the young woman pure before her marriage and to train her to be the right sort of wife and mother.