Description
Book SynopsisAn intriguing insight into the politics of gender, family and religion in Elizabethan England. The marriage of Charles and Elizabeth Forth (c. 1582-1593) offers an intriguing insight into the politics of gender, family and religion in Elizabethan England. In this story, resourceful women play leading roles, sometimes circumventing or subverting patriarchal authority, qualifying our accepted image of the Elizabethan propertied family. Elizabeth's impoverished Catholic father took no part in making her marriage. Instead, Elizabeth and her mother seemingly enticed Charles, sixteen-year-old heir of a solidly Protestant Suffolk JP, into a clandestine match. When the marriage began to fail, Elizabeth turned to her mother and sisters as her principal sources of support and showed greater guile, determination and resilience than her husband in what became a protracted contest. Charles, convinced of his wife's infidelity, finally left England to travel as a voluntary exile, only to die abroad. Elizabeth and her kinsman Henry Jerningham emerged as victors in subsequent prolonged litigation with Charles's father. Drawing on extensive testimony and decrees in the most fully recorded case of its kind heard by the Court of Requests, as well as a wide range of other material from local record offices and the National Archives, this readable micro-history unravels the tangled story of two very different young people. It establishes the background of the marriage and its failure in the contrasting histories of the families involved and sets the story in its larger political and religious contexts. Anyone with an interest in Elizabethan politics, law and religion, or the family, women and gender, will find it fascinating. RALPH HOULBROOKE is Professor Emeritus at the University of Reading.
Trade ReviewHoulbrooke has followed an awesome number of threads (and manuscript souces), tracking family ties and giving full attention to social, political, and economic ones, as well. . . . This book is a very good study of complex and important matters, with Houlbrooke as a reliable and learned guide through the thickets. * SIXTEENTH CENTURY JOURNAL *
The story has had more than thirty years at the back of [the author's] mind, before he tackled it head on and, with massive grasp and thought, explicated its significance as he does here. Thus is the best history, the most intelligent history, often made. * HISTORY *
An exercise in mastery. It contains a world of understanding about early modern family life and combines razorsharp analysis with exemplary archival research and a richly-textured narrative..In treating Catholics as a natural part of English society, Houlbrooke does readers within and without the field [of Catholic history] a great service. * BRITISH CATHOLIC HISTORY *
Written so as to be accessible for undergraduate readers, [this book] brings Houlbrooke's deep archival research to a wide audience, providing a richly detailed and moving account. * N-NET *
Houlbrooke has elucidated complex strands in the daily life of upper-class families in Elizabethan England. Recommended. * CHOICE *
Houlbrooke's analysis of the marriage and litigation is evenhanded. In particular, he is at pains to give voice to Elizabeth, even though only very limited information from her perspective survives. He is at his best in carefully and sympathetically hypothesizing about the answers to questions that ultimately remain unanswerable. -- Colleen M. Seguin * Journal of British Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction The Jerninghams: Land, Court, and Catholicism 'A Very Lose Dealer': The Downfall of John Jerningham of Somerleyton The Forths: From Clothiers to Landed Gentry A Clandestine Marriage The End of the Marriage Two Cases in the Court of Requests Aftermath Conclusions, Reflections, and Speculations
