Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England

Courtship was a vitally important process in early modern England. It was a period of private and public negotiation, often fraught with anxiety. If completed successfully, it brought respectability, the priveleges of marriage and adulthood and a stable union between socially, economically and emotionally compatible couples. This book is a study of courtship in early modern England. Using Kent church court and probate material dating from the 15th to the end of the 16th century, it blends historical with anthropological perspectives to suggest approaches to the making of marriage. The author finds that marriage was usually too important to be left to the couple themselves. Neighbours, relatives and the local community all put varying degrees of pressure on courting couples. Courting was a structured activity, often conducted in particular places, and within restriced geographical areas. Go-betweens conveyed fits and messages or acted as proxy negotiators. Here was a veritable language of giving, where tokes exvhagned carried meaning sanctified by popular custom. Finding a mate was goverened too by social andcultural preconcetions about suitable marriage ages. Perhaps the strongest criterion was the dowry. The book argues that even at the most humble level, choice was usually influenced by material calculation rather than personal attraction.