It’s that time of the year. Time to talk about love. And marriage. Let’s talk about how the Tudors got married. Arranged marriages. Courting. Vows. Negotiations. And more specific Tudor weddings we have record of.
Happy V-Day – hope you’re getting some lovely snuggle time with your favorite snuggle buddy this weekend.
This is an episode for Jess, who contributed to last year’s IndieGoGo at a level where she got her own episode. And since she’s getting married this year, she said she’d like something on Tudor weddings. Thank you, Jess, and congratulations!
Book Recommendation:
The Tudor Housewife by Alison Sim
Want to know more about Tudor weddings?
Here’s the Tudor Times section about it.
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Transcript: Tudor Weddings
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is episode 162, and it’s an episode for Jess, who contributed to the Tudor Planner IndieGoGo last year. Her contribution level got her her own personal episode, and given that she’s getting married this year, she wanted an episode on Tudor weddings. And it’s the perfect time of year to talk about Tudor Weddings, isn’t it?
The Tudor Planner sold out for 2021, but in a few months I’ll be doing the IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to fund the 2022 printing costs, so you can get in on that to ensure you aren’t disappointed this time next year! So Jess, thank you so much for your contribution. Congratulations on your wedding. Hopefully we’ll all meet at Tudorcon this year!
Tudor weddings. I’ve done some episodes on courtship and Valentine’s and that stuff, but never an episode specifically looking at weddings. So what we’re going to do is look at marriage and weddings in general, and then check out a few specific weddings that we have records of.
Marriages during the Tudor Period
Let’s talk about marriage generally, shall we? First off, we in the 21st century have this sort of post-Victorian romantic ideal about marriage which our Tudor friends would not have shared with us. Marriages were essentially economic contracts, even within the poorer people.
Because life expectancy was shorter for various reasons including maternal mortality and war, the idea of a single lifelong marriage was unusual. Most people would have married several times for shorter periods, especially for the upper classes who married younger. Three or four marriages was not uncommon.
When a woman died leaving a man a widower, he would generally marry again within weeks so that he could have help running the home and caring for the children. Women would marry again, often, like Katherine Fenkyll who was a widow of a business owner in the drapers guild. They would marry a colleague or apprentice of their husband, and keep the business going.
Aspects of Marriages
Marriages had two aspects to them – what we would call the religious and the civil parts. Even today, for most people there is the civil work of registering for a marriage certificate, and then there is the religious ceremony. So that part hasn’t changed.
For the upper classes’, marriage was a way to move land around and ensure that it stayed in the right hands. For poorer people, the civil part was ensuring that both spouses would be able to survive, and hopefully leave things better for their children.
While the wealthy would negotiate large dowries and landholdings, poorer people would look for someone who might have some savings, who had good prospects, was healthy, and might even come into an inheritance. Poorer people had more say over their marriage choices, but even then the idea of romantic love wasn’t taken into consideration.
Spouses were encouraged to love each other, but it was assumed to come after the wedding itself, and be built on mutual respect and friendship. No one wanted a loveless marriage for their children, but they also frowned on romantic love before marriage because it could lead to sinful behavior.
Between the ages of seven to fourteen, the children of the poor often left home to find jobs or training. This was usually in the form of domestic servants, living-in laborers, or apprenticeships, in which individuals would serve a master within a specific trade.
After having accumulated sufficient funds that would maintain a family, they were able to make their own decisions regarding their choice of spouse. But this resulted in the prospect of marriage being delayed, as it prolonged the necessity to stay within a trade and complete a term of apprenticeship. This saw the median age for marriage among the poor to be during their late twenties. It allowed couples to be financially equipped to establish a household.
Women were required to support their husbands with their occupation and some even continued to work themselves as servants or wet nurses. The expectation was that the woman would run the household in the absence of the husband and bear his children. It was also vital for women to be equipped with domestic skills, as that saw them fulfilling the duties of an obedient wife.
Marriage and Social Classes
Although interest in marriage among the wealthy was of great importance to family, the incentive to interfere was limited among the lower classes. This was because the crucial component in controlling and arranging marriages required some form of exchange in property or other means of wealth. It meant that lower classes were not concerned with the custom of providing dowries and jointures, since contributions would be limited.
Consequently, this lack of economic leverages allowed marriages among the poor to reflect a more personal affair, rather than a socially concentrated decision involving family and kin. Wealthier people would have their marriages arranged for them, and the mother would take an active role in planning the marriage match – giving her a greater say in the lives of her children than in any other area of life. The marriage was designed to bring together the property and other interests of both families.
The financial and political parts were the key considerations in choosing a spouse for higher classes. It was a customary practice for noble families to sign contracts which betrothed their children in advance. This ensures a suitable match, which allowed for strategic advancements in society. However, these negotiations for marriage were not done in isolation.
It was a matter of wider concern that involved the collective decisions of the family, relatives, and community. This was due to the concept of lineage and preservation of status, which emphasized increasing and transmitting inheritance from one generation to another.
Such example includes the case of Sir William Locke, where he would only allow a prospective suitor to marry his daughter after providing his account books, that indicated his economic worth was of value[2].
Marriage and Practices
The announcement of a marriage was preceded by negotiations regarding the practice of dowry. This concerned the contribution of cash and goods provided by the father of the bride. It also involved an exchange by the groom’s father of a jointure, which acted as a pension guaranteeing money, property and goods that would secure the maintenance of the bride if she were to become widowed. This financial security was in addition to what the husband would leave his wife in the will.
In a society that followed primogeniture, a distinction was made between the first-born sons and their younger brothers. This was because the eldest son was the heir apparent and had the responsibility of ensuring the continuum of the lineage. It meant first-born sons married in their early twenties and saw them inherit the family’s wealth.
On some occasions, the inheritance would be divided among the children, however, the younger siblings would receive a significantly less proportion. This often resulted in a considerably late marriage for the younger brothers, as they were required to accumulate income through individual efforts.
Roles of Women
Despite their rank, women were seen as the submissive sex. Women were expected to marry and perform their primary roles of being obedient wives and child bearers. As they were restricted to marriage and motherhood, women relied heavily on their husband for financial support and economic security was deeply sought. Such an example includes Elizabeth Howard, whose father-in-law agreed to settle several manors as her jointure.
The fifth commandment “Honour thy father and mother”, reiterated this social value which saw children accepting marriage arrangements by their parents without much objection. The idea of consent was crucial to medieval and Tudor marriages, and if a person could later prove that the marriage had taken place without their consent, it could be annulled.
But given that the idea of honoring your mother and father was so ingrained, very few people actually objected to a marriage that their parents had set up for them. This carried through even when a parent had died, and it would be specified in their will.
According to a primary account in 1558, the will of Michael Wentworth detailed that a significantly lower dowry would be provided to disobedient daughter who were not “advised by my executors, but of their own fantastical brain bestow themselves lightly upon a light person”.
Despite children being required to obey their parents and remain loyal to the family, evidence suggestion that there were cases where disobedience would occur. Such as in the example of Thomas Thynne of Longleat and Maria Tuchet, who in 1594 married in secret despite their fathers being bitter enemies. A real-life Romeo and Juliet, though it didn’t end in the same tragedy.
The Act of Marriage
Religiously, the Church did not regulate marriage officially. All it took to be married was a public vow from both people, and no priest was needed. But it did try its best to put all sorts of restrictions and rules around marriage. Marriage was seen by the church as a poor second choice to celibacy, and was entered into simply to avoid the sin of sex outside of marriage, and to make babies. Though interestingly, almost a third of Elizabethan brides were pregnant when they got married.
A marriage could be entered based on the contract of “per verba de prasenti“. This involved the mutual exchange of present consent between a man and woman (“I take thee as wife/ husband”). It was an indissoluble commitment, as regarded under ecclesiastical law.
The second type of contract that made a marriage legally binding was per “verba de futuro“. This was based on the mutual exchange of future consent made by two capable parties (“I promise to take thee as wife/ husband”).
If this promise was then followed by consummation, that marriage would become legitimate. However, if this consent was not followed by consummation, the marriage could be considered null and void. For this contract to be broken, both individuals must mutually agree to dissolve the marriage.
It was essential for contracts to be witnessed, in order for the courts and civil lawyers to recognize a couple as legally married. A witness had to be present during the oral commitment, and in the case of ‘future consent’, must be able provide a testimony that sexual intercourse had taken place.
While the priest wasn’t necessary to have a marriage, issues within the marriage were handled according to canon law. And the church courts were likely filled with young mothers who believed that they had been married, but couldn’t provide the adequate proof when the so-called husband denied it. If the marriage could not be proven, but there was no doubt about who the father was, he would have to pay for the upkeep of the child.
The practice of exchanging gifts and tokens throughout the period of courting demonstrates the social importance of the stages leading towards marriage. Gifts accompanied courtship in the form of a man proving coins, trinkets or clothing to the woman he is trying to woo. These items represented not only personal matters but defined socially public relations, as these gifts of tokens were often brought by intermediaries who acted as witnesses to the ordeal.
This is displayed in the case of William Hanwell, who assigned two pennies to an intermediary that would hand the gift over to his partner. It ensured if any form of contract were to take place, there would be a reliable witness that could properly testify.
It was common for couples to express a form of acceptance towards each other, however, this could often lead to unintentional marriages arriving from courtship. According to the Records of Matrimonial Contract Litigation, in 1519 William Hanwell and his partner exchanged present consent. This was a form of contract that made the couple married instantaneously. It is evident from the records that the woman later challenged this marriage. However, two witnesses which were present during the consent were able to testify, which made the marriage legally binding.
One example of this is in the Paston family, who went to extraordinary lengths to break up a marriage of their daughter with their steward. She was beaten, but could not be forced to deny her marriage, even after the local Bishop threatened her. Eventually the family had to accept the match and content themselves with casting her off.
Finalizing a Marriage
There were a few stages to finalizing a marriage. The first was an agreement between the families that their children would get married, and then they would negotiate the financial aspects. Then the children agreed to marry in the future, but did not consummate the match. This was the betrothal, or in Northern English and Scots, the “handfasting”, as the couple joined or shook hands to signify agreement.
A couple wishing to conduct a church ceremony would have to announce their intention to marry by ‘crying the banns’ on three consecutive Sundays. This process allowed anyone with objections to come forth and declare reasons why the union should not proceed. A common reason involved a ‘pre-contract’, where one of the partners was already promised to another person. If there were no obstacles, the Church provided its blessing, allowing the couple to pursue the wedding.
The wedding day proceeded with the arrival of the couple outside the church door, where the priest would initiate the service. During the ceremony, the couple took each other in marriage and promised to hold their vows until death do they part in both sickness and health.
The woman additionally undertook an oath to obey her husband. Then the man would place the ring on the Bible, where it was blessed, before putting it on the woman’s right hand, on the fourth finger. After the couple received a blessing from the priest, they are pronounced husband and wife.
Afterwards, the couple enters the church for nuptial mass to be performed. The couple would be kneeling before an altar, with a veil placed over their heads. The priest would then recite prayers over them and after finishing, would remove the veil. This meant the couple was officially married.
The day would continue with celebrations, which included a wedding dinner and festive dancing. For couples that derived from lower classes, guests made gifts and could contribute to the ‘bride ale’ and entertainment. In order for a marriage to be considered legally binding, it had to be consummated.
This could involve the couple being accompanied to bed by the priest and other witnesses. It ensured a testimony could be provided if someone challenged the marriage later. They would then be left alone and have their privacy.
The Husband and the Wife
A Devon gentleman farmer, Robert Furse (d 1593) left his heirs careful advice about the choice of a wife. Looks, wealth, and connections were all desirable, but most important were upbringing; reputation; personal qualities such as sobriety, wisdom, discretion, gentleness, modesty, chastity; and the ability to manage a household.
The husband was the head of the household, but his rule had to be discreet. Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77), writer on English government and society, saw the family household not as a monarchy, but an aristocracy “where a few and the best do govern, and where not one always: but sometime and in some thing one, and sometime and some thing another doth bear the rule”.
John Fitzherbert, author of an early Tudor agricultural manual, envisaged the husband’s and wife’s roles on the family farm (then the commonest sort of economic unit) as broadly complementary. The wife largely worked in the house and garden, but she might have to join in the heavier labour in the fields. Nor was she a stay at home: she was to go to the mill, and to buy and sell in the market.
No wonder there was an old saying ‘that seldom doth the husband thrive without leave of his wife’. Robert Furse strongly echoed this sentiment: in his view, a good housewife was even more necessary to a household than a good husband.
Fitzherbert emphasised that when either partner went to market, they must make a “true reckoning and account” to the other. If one deceived the other, he deceived himself, and was unlikely to prosper. They must be true to each other.
Surviving family correspondence reveals the close partnership of some husbands and wives. Engaged in a struggle to recover lands at law, Sir Robert Plumpton depended on his wife Agnes to defend his manor of Plumpton and raise money for him, though she urged him to end the ruinous litigation. He addressed her in a 1502 letter as his “dear heart”, describing himself as “your own lover”.
In the 1540s, John Johnson, merchant of the Staple in Calais, largely relied on his wife, Sabine, to manage his affairs in England while he was in Calais working as a wool merchant. They signed their letters as ‘loving husband’ or ‘loving wife’, and John concluded one by wishing that Sabine was in his bed.
John Thynne, who inherited Longleat in 1580, received advice from his wife, Joan, on matters ranging from his behaviour towards other family members to his ultimately successful efforts to obtain a knighthood. She managed his estates during his absences in London.
One must not paint too rosy a picture of Tudor marriage, however. ‘An Homily of the State of Matrimony’ (1563), intended to be read in church, remarked, no doubt with some exaggeration, how few marriages there were “without chidings, brawlings, tauntings, repentings, bitter cursings, and fightings”.
The homily’s main message was that husband and wife needed to treat each other with patience, understanding, and self-restraint. Once love had been banished, they still had to live together.
The homilist was not quite right: even though the church courts could not decree divorces of the sort common today, they did grant separations on grounds of cruelty, adultery, or continual quarrels. However, these were uncommon. In reality, death was the only sure release from unhappy marriage.
Life expectancy was far lower than it is today. Sadly, death all too often cut short happy marriages rather than unhappy ones.
The Concept of Divorce
Divorce, as a concept, did not exist before the Reformation. If you did not want to be married to your spouse any more, you had to prove that the marriage had never been valid in the first place and persuade the Church to annul the union. To do this you would have to show one of the following grounds:
a lack of consent;
a level of consanguinity or affinity without a dispensation
a pre-contract by one party to someone else;
non-consummation; or
that one of the parties was insane at the time of the marriage.
This kept a lot of canon lawyers in business. Most people were too poor to go through the legal hoops necessary, but it was a fairly common practice amongst royalty and nobility. There were a couple of other options:
if a spouse joined a convent or monastery, the other could remarry – Louis XII of France used this to rid himself of his first wife and grab the heiress Anne of Brittany; or
you could persuade the local bishop to give you a separation from bed and board. You were still married, and could not marry anyone else, but you were permitted to live apart.
Tudor Wedding Traditions
And now, to finish up, some traditions that we still do today, which originated with the Tudors:
The tradition of tying old shoes to the back of the couple’s car, for example, stems from Tudor times when guests would throw shoes at the bride & groom, with great luck being bestowed on them if they were hit!
Flowers have always been a part of weddings. This stems from the medieval tradition of a Knight wearing his Lady’s colours, as a declaration of his love. Each flower has its own meaning and can display a special message. Orange Blossom, for instance, signifies chastity, purity and loveliness.
The Wedding Cake was originally lots of little wheat cakes that were broken over the Bride’s head to bestow good luck and fertility.
Interestingly until the 1900s, brides hardly ever bought a special wedding dress, opting for their best outfit instead. Green was always avoided, as it was though to be unlucky. To say a girl ‘had a green gown’ also implied that she was of loose morals, because her dress would be grass-stained due to rolling around in the fields! Hence ‘Marry in Green, ashamed to be seen’. White Dresses were made popular by Queen Victoria, who broke the tradition of royals marrying in Silver.
One wedding superstition about the wedding veil is that it was once thought that brides were very vulnerable to evil spirits and many customs were originated to fight off these evil spirits for the bride. The bride’s veil was an attempt to disguise her face to fool the evil spirits.
Another way to ward off evil spirits from the bride was to play pranks on the newlyweds. Friends of the couple would play a joke on the couple in hopes the evil spirits would see this and feel sorry for the couple and leave them alone. The tradition of the wedding party wearing the same thing is also an attempt to fool the evil spirits.
A mystical significance was also attached to precious stones, with which, in Tudor times and for many years after, it was customary to enrich the wedding ring. The practice was really borrowed from the Church of Rome, which had ascribed to each gem a special meaning eg. ruby indicated its glory, emerald its tranquillity and happiness, crystal simplicity and purity, diamond invulnerable faith, sapphire hope, onyx sincerity, and amethyst humility.
‘So that’s it for this week. I don’t have one specific book to recommend this week, but there are a ton of papers, blog articles, and sources I used which are all in the show notes at englandcast.com/weddings. Let me know what you thought about this episode.
You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or join the new Tudor Learning Circle, which is a free social network just for Tudor history nerds. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you’re having a joyful advent season!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]