Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T14:35:35.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Widow's Tale: Male Myths and Female Reality in 16th and 17th Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Charles Carlton
Get access

Extract

Soon after her husband of thirty-three years died leaving her a wealthy widow of sixty-two with an estate worth some £6,000, Anne Elsdon met Tobias Audley, a widower of twenty-five and keeper of a tobacco shop, whom one witness later described as “a most lewd person, and of no worth.” On July 21, 1624, Audley took the Widow Elsdon and her friend, Martha Jackson, to the Greyhound Tavern in London, where they met Mary Spencer, Margery Terry, Frances Holiday, and Nicholas Cartmell. The first two were common prostitutes, the second two ministers, though, presumably, not of the burning puritan brand. For the next three days all of them plied the Widow Elsdon with some £25 worth of liquor, staggering from tavern to tavern and eventually ending up at the Nags Head in Cheapside. In that appropriately named hostelry Anne consented to marry Tobias Audley. A special license was hurriedly obtained, but not before Widow Elsdon had passed out. So, after trying to revive her with slaps around the face, Mary Spencer, the common whore, said the marriage vows for her. The Reverend Cartmell pronounced Tobias and Anne man and wife, and off the widow was carried to a Blackfriars tavern for her wedding night. After stripping her, Tobias Audley proceeded to strip her estate. He took plate from her house worth £140, and bonds and deeds valued at £3,000, and largely as a result of her traumatic experiences the widow died two years later.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 1978 , pp. 118 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Sisson, Charles, Keep the Widow Waking; a lost play by Dekker (London, 1927)Google Scholar. All quotations have been modernized.

2 For example see Pinchbeck, Ivy and Hewitt, Margaret, Children in English Society, 2 volumes (London, 1969), I: 63Google Scholar, and Elton, G. R., Reform and Renewal (Cambridge, 1973), p. 127Google Scholar.

3 Boyle, Francis, Shannon, Viscount, Discourses and Essays … (1696), p. 98Google Scholar.

4 Hoccleve, T., Works (Early English Text Society, Extra Series 61), pp. 220–1Google Scholar.

5 Corporation of London Record Office, Journal XVI, pp. 143-5. Coke, Edward, Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628–1644), L: 8Google Scholar. Latimer, Hugh, Sermons (London, 1844–1845), I: 548Google Scholar. Taylor, Jeremy, Rule … Holy Dying (London, 1910), p. 329Google Scholar.

6 Fuller, Thomas, Gnomologia (orig. 1732: 1816 ed.), No. 4231Google Scholar.

7 Jonson, Ben, Fletcher, John and Middleton, Thomas, The Widdow: a Comedie (London, 1652), p. 7Google Scholar. A similar point is made by Peacham, Henry in The Mastive, or a Young-Whelpe of the Olde-Dogge (1615), npGoogle Scholar.

8 Act IV, scene 2.

9 Suckling, John, Works (New York, 1910), I: 156Google Scholar. Rogers, Timothy, The Character of a Good Woman both in a Single and Marry'd State (1697), dedicationGoogle Scholar. Dekker, Thomas, trans., The Batchelars Banquet (1603), ch. XIIIGoogle Scholar.

10 Donne, John, Sermons, ed., Potter, G.R. and Simpson, W.E. (Berkeley, 1973), III: 249Google Scholar. Fuller, Thomas, Holy and Profane State (1642)Google Scholar.

11 Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R. H., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII (London, 1862–1932), IX: 725 (ii)Google Scholar.

12 Hartland remarriage rates agree with Colyton's. My thanks to The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure for the Colyton and Hartland figures.

13 Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard, Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Glass, D. V., “Socio-economic status and occupation in London at the end of the 17th century,” in Studies in London History Presented to P.E. Jones, ed. Hollaender, A.E.J. and Kellaway, William (London, 1969), p. 380Google Scholar.

15 In frontier communities, such as 17th century New England, where there was a dearth of women, remarriage rates for men were several times lower than in old England. None-the-less the New England men were still half as likely to remarry than women. Demos, John, A Little Commonwealth (Oxford, 1970), pp. 66–7, 194Google Scholar.

16 Hollingsworth, T. H., The Demography of the British Peerage (London, 1965), p.21Google Scholar.

17 Corporation of London Record Office, Repertory XX: 314.

18 Finch, M. A., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1540-1640 (London, 1956), pp. 6–7, 14–15Google Scholar.

19 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Gaudy, X: 172Google Scholar.

20 Freud, Sigmund, “Jokes and their relation to the unconscious,” Standard Edition (London, 1958), VIII: 91–101, 221–36Google Scholar. Importance of Being Ernest, Act I.

21 For example see Henry Denn's (1619), Exeter City Archives, Orphan's Court Proceedings, II, 12V, Sir Abraham Reynardson's (1661), Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1661, 163, and Edward Sym's (1662), ibid, Juxton, 7.

22 Wright, L. B., Advice to a Son (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), p. 22Google Scholar.

23 Vives, J. L., Instruction of a Christian Woman (1540). 2Google Scholar. Eramus, , Christian State of Matrimony (1542)Google Scholar. Becon, Thomas, Book on Matrimony (1564)Google Scholar. Dod, John and Clever, Robert, A Godly Form of Household Government (1630)Google Scholar.

24 Ramsey, William, Conjugium Conjurgium (1673), p. 25Google Scholar. Same point made with greater delicacy in Anon, A Discourse of Women (1662), p. 25Google Scholar.

25 Betterton, Thomas, The Amorous Old Widow (First performed 1668, published 1706)Google Scholar.

26 Saltonstall, Wye, Picturae Loquentes (1631), pp. 22–3Google Scholar.

27 Boyle, p. 107.

28 British Library, Lands MSS 1075, 41v. Corporation of London Record Office, Repertory XIII, 548, XV, 391.

29 Clark, Alice, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1919), pp. 25, 31, 205Google Scholar.

30 Vives, Instruction, book III, chapter I, and Office and Dutie of an Husband (1553?), np.

31 Fisher, F. J., “The development of London as a center for conspicious consumption in the 16th and 17th centuries,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, XXX (1968): 37–50Google Scholar. Cioni, Maria, “Women and Law in Elizabethan England with Particular Reference to the Court of Cancery,” Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1975Google Scholar.

32 Public Record Office, Wards 9/423/202-2.

33 Freud, S., “Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a case of Paranoia,” Collected Papers (London, 1925), III: 429–30Google Scholar. Segal, Hanna, An Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

34 This for instance is the theme of the play by J. B., , The Intriguing Widow: or the Honest Wife (1705)Google Scholar.

35 Smith, Nathaniel, Quakers Spiritual Court (1669), p. 13Google Scholar.

36 Mead to Stuteville, 22 November and 5 December, 1628, in Birch, T., Fourt and Times of Charles I (London, 1868), I: 436, 443Google Scholar. Today similar assumptions are sometimes made about victims of rape.

37 Sharpe, R. R., Calendar of Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London (London, 1889–1890), I: xviGoogle Scholar.

38 Betterton, Amorous Widow, William Congreve, The Way of the World.

39 J. L. Vives, Instructions, book III, Chapter 6.

40 Boyle.

41 Niccholes, Alex, A Discourse on Money and Wiving (1615)Google Scholar.

42 Wright, , Advice to a Son, p. 68Google Scholar.

43 Lifton, R. J., Death in Life (New York, 1970), pp. 266–7Google Scholar.

44 Raine, James, A Selection of Wills from … York (Surtees Society, XLV, 1865): 311–75Google Scholar. Clark, A., ed., Lincoln Diocese Documents, 1450-1544 (Early English Text Society, CLXIX, 1914)Google Scholar.

45 Latimer, , Sermons, II: 392Google Scholar.

46 Act II, scene 7.