Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603
Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603

Author: Susan E. James

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 113478094X

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Contributing an original dimension to the significant body of published scholarship on women in 16th-century England, this study examines the largest corpus of women’s private writings available to historians: their wills. In these, female voices speak out, commenting on their daily lives, on identity, gender, status, familial relationships and social engagement. Wills show women to have been active participants in a civil society, well aware of their personal authority and potential influence, whose committed actions during life and charitable strategies after death could and did impact the health of that society. From an intensive analysis of more than 1200 wills, this pioneering work focuses on women from all parts of the country and all strata of society, revealing an entire population of articulate, opportunistic, and capable individuals who found the spaces between the lines of the law and used those spaces to achieve personal goals. Author Susan James demonstrates how wills describe strategies for end-of-life care, create platforms of remembrance, and offer insights into the myriad occupational endeavors in which women were engaged. James illuminates how these documents were not simply instruments of bequest and inheritance, but were statements of power and control, catalogues of material culture from which we are able to gauge a woman’s understanding of her own reality and the context that formed her environment. Wills were tools and the way in which women wielded these tools offers new ways to look at England in the 16th century and reveals the seminal role women played in its development.

Women's Lives in the Tudor Era
Women's Lives in the Tudor Era

Author: Amy McElroy

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2024-05-16

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1399042025

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Women in the Tudor age are often overshadowed by their male counterparts. Even those of royalty were deemed inferior to males. while women may have been classed as the inferior gender, women played a vital role in Tudor society. As daughters, mothers and wives they were expected to be obedient to the man of the household, but how effective would those households be without the influence of women? Many opportunities including much formal education and professions were closed to women, their early years spent imitating their mothers before learning to run a household in preparation for marriage. Once married their responsibilities would vary greatly according to their social status and rank. Widowhood left some in vulnerable conditions while for others it enabled them to make a life for themselves and become independent in a largely patriarchal society. Women’s Lives in the Tudor Era aims to look at the roles of women across all backgrounds and how expectations of them differed during the various stages of life.

New Worlds, Lost Worlds
New Worlds, Lost Worlds

Author: Susan Brigden

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2002-09-24

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1101563990

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No period in British history has more resonance and mystery today than the sixteenth century. New Worlds, Lost Worlds brings the atmosphere and events of this great epoch to life. Exploring the underlying religious motivations for the savage violence and turbulence of the period-from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the overwhelming threat of the Spanish Armada-Susan Brigden investigates the actions and influences of such near-mythical figures as Elizabeth I, Thomas More, Bloody Mary, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Authoritative and accessible, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, the latest in the Penguin History of Britain series, provides a superb introduction to one of the most important, compelling, and intriguing periods in the history of the Western world.

Black Tudors
Black Tudors

Author: Miranda Kaufmann

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-10-05

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1786071851

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A new, transformative history – in Tudor times there were Black people living and working in Britain, and they were free ‘This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth.’ David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. The untold stories of the Black Tudors, dazzlingly brought to life by Kaufmann, will transform how we see this most intriguing period of history. *** Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer ‘That rare thing: a book about the 16th century that said something new.’ Evening Standard, Books of the Year ‘Splendid… a cracking contribution to the field.’ Dan Jones, Sunday Times ‘Consistently fascinating, historically invaluable… the narrative is pacy... Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in the same light again.’ Daily Mail

The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature
The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature

Author: Mike Pincombe

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 864

ISBN-13: 0191607177

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This is the first major collection of essays to look at the literature of the entire Tudor period, from the reign of Henry VII to death of Elizabeth I. It pays particularly attention to the years before 1580. Those decades saw, amongst other things, the establishment of print culture and growth of a reading public; the various phases of the English Reformation and process of political centralization that enabled and accompanied them; the increasing emulation of Continental and classical literatures under the influence of humanism; the self-conscious emergence of English as a literary language and determined creation of a native literary canon; the beginnings of English empire and the consolidation of a sense of nationhood. However, study of Tudor literature prior to 1580 is not only of worth as a context, or foundation, for an Elizabethan 'golden age'. As this much-needed volume will show, it is also of artistic, intellectual, and cultural merit in its own right. Written by experts from Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom, the forty-five chapters in The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature recover some of the distinctive voices of sixteenth-century writing, its energy, variety, and inventiveness. As well as essays on well-known writers, such as Philip Sidney or Thomas Wyatt, the volume contains the first extensive treatment in print of some of the Tudor era's most original voices.

Tudor Rule and Revolution
Tudor Rule and Revolution

Author: Delloyd J. Guth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-11-27

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 9780521091275

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The work of G. R. Elton has inspired its own 'Tudor Revolution' in the historiography of Tudor and Stuart government and society. In this volume a distinguished gathering of eighteen historians, all now resident in North America, pay tribute to Professor Elton's broad influence in shaping modern interpretations of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century constitution. Each contributor to this volume has addressed, directly or indirectly, some aspect of that tempestuous age which has been dubbed 'Elton's era', and each of the sections relates directly to particular problems or topics which have figured prominently in Professor Elton's own work. Most extend his findings in new directions and with new evidence from archival researches. Others take issue with some of his tentative conclusions, though admitting the extent to which his work has made such advances possible.

The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women
The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women

Author: Elizabeth Norton

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-07-04

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1681774909

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The turbulent Tudor Age never fails to capture the imagination. But what was it truly like to be a woman during this era? The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress; of palace intrigue and dramatic politics. But if you were a woman, it was also a time when death during childbirth was rife; when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education you could hope to receive was minimal at best. Yet the Tudor century was also dominated by powerful and dynamic women in a way that no era had been before. Historian Elizabeth Norton explores the life cycle of the Tudor woman, from childhood to old age, through the diverging examples of women such as Elizabeth Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister; Cecily Burbage, Elizabeth's wet nurse; Mary Howard, widowed but influential at court; Elizabeth Boleyn, mother of a controversial queen; and Elizabeth Barton, a peasant girl who would be lauded as a prophetess. Their stories are interwoven with studies of topics ranging from Tudor toys to contraception to witchcraft, painting a portrait of the lives of queens and serving maids, nuns and harlots, widows and chaperones. Norton brings this vibrant period to colorful life in an evocative and insightful social history.

Bess of Hardwick: Myths & Realities
Bess of Hardwick: Myths & Realities

Author: Terry Kilburn

Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers

Published: 2024-06-21

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 103584432X

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Unravel the complexities of Bess of Hardwick, a figure shrouded in myths and misconceptions since the 17th century. Bess of Hardwick: Myths and Realities takes an unconventional approach to biography, meticulously separating fact from fiction through rigorous research and probing questions. Did Bess really meet her first husband in London when in service to Lady Zouche? Was her second husband compelled to relocate north because she missed her Derbyshire roots? Was she born in 1527 and what about the mysterious lead coffin said to house her body for three months post-mortem? Does the famed ‘Eglantine Table’ in Hardwick Hall truly commemorate three marriages? Explore these questions and more, including the compelling enigma of Bess’s granddaughter, Arbella Stuart, and her claim to Elizabeth I’s throne. Was Bess a unique dynastic powerhouse, or was she simply a woman of her time? Ideal for both newcomers and those already acquainted with Bess’s story, this illuminating book also contains an Appendix that suggests Hardwick Hall may harbour an unidentified portrait of Sir Thomas More.