Introduction Hester and Thomas Temple: their partnership, c. 1585–1637

Summary

If patriarchy was once seen as the strict model according to which early modern society in general and families in particular were organized, recent historians have shown that, while it was certainly promoted by many, it was highly contested both in theory and in practice. Laura Gowing, for example, has shown that many women were far from submissive. Even when they did not overtly resist their fathers and husbands, women found ways to bypass such ‘authority’.

In this part, rather than concentrating on the debate about patriarchy as such, I have chosen to explore the Temples’ marriage. Here there is a wide-ranging discussion of the roles and relationships of both Hester and Thomas Temple. There is no attempt to look in great detail at Thomas's public life or, indeed, his management of the family estates, although these are discussed. The focus instead is upon Hester's activities and how these compared to and interacted with those of her husband. Relatively few scholars have considered the workings of the marital partnership, generally emphasizing instead patriarchy in theory or in practice. Ask the man or woman in the street what role the wife played in pre-modern marriages and the answer would probably tally with that voiced by Miriam Slater in the mid 1970s: ‘This unusual opportunity for propertied women to prove their usefulness was due to the extraordinary circumstances imposed by the [Civil] war. But even an upheaval of that magnitude was insufficient to reverse male opinion on the subject of women's innate inferiority or to shake their confidence in the idea that women were largely incapable of dealing with any matter of genuine importance.’ Yet contemporary teaching about marriage stressed the partnership between husband and wife. These chapters seek to throw light upon how such a partnership operated in this particular elite family.

The author is far from dewy eyed about the Temples› marriage or in denial about the reality of its acknowledgement of patriarchy. A micro-historical approach, however, demonstrates the interplay between patriarchy and other forces within a marriage, whether these be those of unpredictable life events, those of the life cycle, or those of personality, capability, patronage, natural affection, emotion or fortune. Students of patriarchy may see this simply as evidence of the adaptability of the patriarchal system.