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‘Teach her to live under obedience’: the making of women in the upper ranks of early modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Linda Pollock
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Continuity and Change , Volume 4 , Special Issue 2: SPECIAL ISSUE: THE CHILD IN HISTORY , August 1989 , pp. 231 - 258
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

ENDNOTES

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24 Salter, M., Family life in the seventeenth century. The Verneys of Claydon house (London, 1984) 136 (1647).Google Scholar

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27 The principle of obedience was instilled in both sexes, ‘Love, obedience, and respect of children for their parents is conducive to the publicke peace of the country’ was the maxim in force in the Papillon family, Northampton Record Office, Northampton (hereafter NRO), Papillon MSS P(L), vol. 224, fo. 69 (1698)Google Scholar. The religious principles passed on to offspring and the stress on the necessity of preparing for salvation also do not seem to be differentiated according to sex or birth order. Anne Montagu, in common with many parents of these ranks, compiled one set of instructions for all her family: ‘My deare children I have often tymes had a desier in my harte and thoughts to write somewhat to you which might bee som guide or rule to walke in a holy and Christian lyfe as may be pleasing to God and everlasting comfort to your owne soules.’ NRO, Montagu of Boughton MSS, vol. 3, fo. 235 (1640s).Google Scholar

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30 Cited in O'Day, R., Education and society 1500–1800. The social foundations of education in early modern Britain (London and New York, 1982) 184Google Scholar. John Dugdale sent similar instructions to the household in which his daughter was residing: WRO, Dugdale MSS, in the possession of Sir William Dugdale, documents in the horsehair trunk, bundle 4, Sir John Dugdale to his father, 16 Dec. 1684.

31 NRO, IC 348 (1654).Google Scholar

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33 A university education fitted students for a career in public service: Stone, L., The crisis of the aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965) 673Google Scholar. Although many heirs attended the inns of court, they were unlikely to pick up sufficient knowledge to aid them in land or other litigious disputes. For an explanation, see Prest, W., The inns of court under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts 1590–1640 (London, 1972) 141–53.Google Scholar

34 See, for example, ‘About menaging an estate’, compiled by Justinian Isham, NRO, IC 528 (1663). Thirsk, J., ‘Agricultural innovations and their diffusion’, in Thirsk, J., ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales (Cambridge, 1985), vol. 5, part 2Google Scholar, surveys the agricultural textbooks available for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

35 Gardiner, D., ed., The Oxinden and Peyton letters 1642–1670 (London, 1937) 154 (1649).Google Scholar

36 Justinian Isham cited scriptural proverbs when advising his daughters how to comport themselves, NRO IC 3415 (1642). See too Gataker, T., A good wife God's gift: and, a wife indeed. Two marriage sermons (London, 1623)Google Scholar and, for Robert Filmer's anxiety about the implications of viewing a good wife as God's gift, see Ezell, M., ‘Sir Robert Filmer and the English patriarch’, Seventeenth-century News, winter (1984) 63.Google Scholar

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38 For examples of the high value placed on outward unity, see BL, Add. MSS 23212, fo. 13; LPL, Shrewsbury and Talbot papers, MS 3199, vol. H, fo. 345; Townshend, D., The life and letters of Mr Endymion Porter: sometime gentleman of the bedchamber to King Charles the First (London, 1897) 74.Google Scholar

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51 This finding contradicts the claim of Professor Slater that ‘the lower intellectual goals which were set for girls provided some convenient financial relief for parents’, Slater, , Family life, 136–7Google Scholar. See also the conference paper of Amy Erikson in which she concludes from her analysis of probate accounts dealing with the middling sort that the annual maintenance and education costs for girls were slightly more expensive than those for boys: £5 5s. 0d. for the former and £5 0s. 0d. for the latter; ‘The expense of children and maternal management in early modern England’ (ESRC Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, C/1847, 1986). It may be that the fees of the more exclusive public schools for boys were greater than those of the more expensive girls' schools: Stone, L., The crisis of the aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965) 686.Google Scholar

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74 BL, Add. MSS 45199 (Brockman papers), 1674, NRO, FH 4321 (1678). It should be noted that there was a general revulsion against education after the Restoration, as revealed by the curtailment of educational provision for the poor as well as by the decline in the numbers of the upper ranks attending university. Stone, L., ‘Literacy and education in England 1640–1900’, Past and Present 139, (1969)Google Scholar. Women may have been only one case in this overall scenario. Nevertheless the choice of subject from which they were being excluded is significant.

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108 SRO, MF 9/L.a.486 (c. 1610). Mary and Elizabeth Isham also refused prospective bridegrooms approved of by their parents, NRO, IC 524 (1661); IC 1008 (1677).

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129 Slater, , Family life, 66Google Scholar, notes that, during the civil war, wives were often used to present their husband's case to avoid sequestration since it was thought that the committee for compounding would be more indulgent to weak women.

130 Gardiner, , ed., The Oxinden and Peyton letters, 121 (1647)Google Scholar; Gardiner, , ed., The Oxinden letters 1607–1642, 111 (1641).Google Scholar

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