Single women in early modern England: attitudes and expectations

Abstract

In 1584, fearing death, Eleanor Cumpayne, a single woman in the parish of Halesowen (Worcestershire), commended her soul to almighty God and her body to the earth, divided her sheep and money amongst her godchildren, relatives and friends, and placed particular trust in her cousin, Margery Cumpayne, who, amongst other duties, was to bestow the sum of 20s at her funeral. Unlike most testators, Eleanor Cumpayne survived this fearful illness, dying in the summer eight years later. Eleanor is also unusual because the detailed provisions establishing her as a single woman that were made 25 years before her death also survive. In his will her father, George, bequeathed to her for her natural life a chamber next to the fire in his house in Hill, a garden, an acre of land, 3s 4d annually, a cow called Fillpayle, a mare, bedding, the best pot and pan, six sheep which were to be kept with the rest of the family's sheep and also, at the death of her mother, a pasture. The experience of Eleanor Cumpayne, living semi-independently as a single woman with the assistance of her family, suggests that the idea that early modern society expected all women to marry needs closer examination. Such a view can indeed be found in prescriptive literature. The author of The law's resolutions of women's rights (1632) stated without hesitation that all women ‘are understood either married or to be married’. For him women were defined by their marital status, and marriage was the natural expectation for all women.

Contemporary authors based their ideas of the necessity of marriage for women on two main arguments: first, that marriage was natural and demanded by scripture, particularly as a consequence of the Fall, which imposed on women the twin obligations of childbearing and subjection to the authority of a husband; and second, that marriage was an economic necessity, a notion encapsulated in the well-known adage that ‘To thrive one must wive.’ The strength of these arguments in preventing remaining unmarried from seeming to be a viable and attractive option for early modern women is the subject of this article. In particular, I shall concentrate on the second argument, the economic dimension, since it was in this respect, as the experience of Eleanor Cumpayne suggests, that social attitudes did most to encourage the possibility of women remaining unmarried.