The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women: A Social History

by Elizabeth Norton

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681774909
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	07/04/2017
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	488,830
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Elizabeth Norton is a historian specializing in the queens of England and the Tudor period. She is the author of several biographies on Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Parr. She lives in England.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

The First Age

1 Of babies and bellies: Elizabeth of York and the first Elizabeth Tudor 7

2 Of nurses and nurseries: Cecily Burbage, Elizabeth of York and the infant Elizabeth Tudor 20

3 Of toys and terminations: Elizabeth Tudor's brief life 33

The Second Age

4 Of young ladies and learning: The Countess of Surrey's girls, Jane Dormer, Lady Bryan and Margaret Beaufort 53

5 Of servants and masters: Elizabeth Barton, maidservant 73

The Third Age

6 Of love and marriage: Cecily Burbage and Elizabeth Boleyn 85

7 Of apprentices and aspirations: Katherine Fenkyll, wife and business partner 102

The Fourth Age

8 Of City trade and London life: Katherine Fenkyll, independent businesswoman 115

9 Of visions and revelations: Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent 131

10 Of mistresses and mystics: Catherine of Aragon, the Boleyns and Elizabeth Barton 142

11 Of politics and prophecies: Elizabeth Barton and Anne Boleyn 156

12 Of inquisitions and treasons: Elizabeth Barton and Anne Boleyn 170

The Fifth Age

13 Of pilgrimages and punishments: Margaret Cheyne, Lady Bulmer 191

14 Of bibles and burnings: Joan Bocher, Anne Askew and Catherine Parr 207

15 Of conscience and Catholics: Joan Bother, Princess Mary and Jane Grey 232

16 Of Protestants and pyres: Queen Mary, Rose Hickman, the Marian martyrs, Margaret Clitherow and the new Queen Elizabeth 253

The Sixth Age

17 Of settlements and proposals: Queen Elizabeth and Rose Hickman 271

The Seventh Age

18 Of wigs and witchcraft: Queen Elizabeth in her sixties, and the witches of England 291

19 Of frailties and finalities: Jane Dormer, 'Gloriana' and the poor women of England 305

Epilogue - Stuart women 328

Notes on the Text 330

Bibliography 376

Acknowledgements 394

Picture Credits 395

Index 397

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2017
In these absorbing and well-researched portraits, Norton (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor), an authority on the queens of England, juxtaposes the experiences of prominent and ordinary women across the social, economic, and religious spectra during the Tudor period (1485–1603). Norton frames her work with the lives of Henry VIII’s younger sister Elizabeth (1492–1495) and his younger daughter, Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603). She posits that women passed through Shakespeare’s “seven ages of man” in parallel fashion. This construct proves awkward, as for women there was no fourth or fifth age comparable to those of a soldier or man at the peak of his professional success. Thus, two of the book’s middle sections devolve into narratives about well-known, exceptional women caught up in the religious turmoil of the 1530s–1550s. The earlier and later ages more successfully encompass a broad range of experiences, including those of wet nurses, witches, the poor, servants, and widows. Readers will learn about cooking and medicine, church pews and contraception, ladies in waiting, rape and prostitution, ecclesiastical courts, Lady Jane Grey, cosmetics, and more. Despite occasionally stretching the material to suit her thesis, Norton weaves her stories with an expert hand and illuminates many rarely discussed aspects of daily life for Tudor women. Illus. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Tells an alternately fascinating and repugnant story of this exciting period."

New Criterion

"An absorbing look not only at the powerful women of that era, but everyday life for women throughout Tudor society."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Without romanticizing the era, Norton’s biography of the Tudor Everywoman weaves together the lives of well-known figures to lesser-known women. A captivating, inspiring and informative summer read not only for fans of Tudor England, but also those who are facing insurmountable obstacles themselves—and are looking to craft fulfilling lives for themselves."

Ms. Magazine

"Queens, servants, widows, nuns, harlots, and more are depicted in a rich tapestry of meticulous scholarship, historical detail, and insightful observations. Anyone interested in expanding and enriching her of his view of the Tudor era will enjoy Norton’s skillfully written study."

Booklist

"Thought-provoking. Norton tells the stories of her characters with tremendous energy, wonderfully fleshing out the details of how non-royal women made their way through life in a world entirely, legally dominated by men. The combination of the multi-part main lives of the book and all these fleshing-out digressions builds into something truly impressive, as broad and complete a picture of what it was like to be a woman in Tudor times as readers are likely to get with the documentary evidence we currently possess."

Open Letters Monthly

"Engrossing and charming. By uncovering all the tiny, painstaking day-to-day details of these varied existences, Norton has constructed something inspiring."

British Heritage Travel

"Queens, servants, widows, nuns, harlots, and more are depicted in a rich tapestry of meticulous scholarship, historical detail, and insightful observations. Anyone interested in expanding and enriching her of his view of the Tudor era will enjoy Norton’s skillfully written study."

Booklist

06/01/2017
Historian Norton (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor) looks at the social climate for women of the Tudor Dynasty (1485–1603), a period when women both held positions of power and struggled to survive. Using William Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" monolog from As You Like It as an influence, Norton chronicles the "Tudor Everywoman" from infancy to her final years and the struggles she encountered along the way. Each chapter features side notes that expand upon topics relevant to daily life. Readers will recognize several of the influential figures within these pages such as Catherine of Aragon and Elizabeth Barton. Yet, they will also find the lives of lesser-profiled women such as Katherine Fenkyll and Rose Hickman just as fascinating. While books such as Borman's The Private Lives of the Tudors delves into the lives of the main players in the Tudor court, here Norton builds upon established research by devoting equal time to women of upper and lower classes during the Tudor reign. VERDICT With her latest work, Norton provides further evidence of her position as a leading authority on Tudor history. Highly recommended for readers interested in the time period.—Katie McGaha, County of Los Angeles P.L.

Library Journal

2017-04-17
A portrait of "the diverse lives enjoyed—or endured—by women living in Tudor England, and together constituting a multifaceted impression of female humanity of the period."British historian Norton (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor: Elizabeth I, Thomas Seymour, and the Making of a Virgin Queen, 2015) delivers less a social history than a well-researched description of the lives of women in 16th-century Britain. Inevitably, archival documents emphasize rulers, the rich, and the lurid, so Norton has much to say about royalty, aristocrats, female entrepreneurs, criminals, and martyrs. Readers may squirm to learn how badly Tudor law, religion, and custom treated women; almost every woman accepted this, and only a small number prospered. The author has a predilection for namesakes, so she recounts the royal nursery routine of Elizabeth Tudor. Little of Queen Elizabeth I's life was hidden, but readers will learn perhaps more than they want to know about her relentless rejection of suitors and struggles against aging. Elizabeth Boleyn reached the top of the greasy pole of court politics, surviving even the infamous beheading of her daughter, Anne. Elizabeth Barton, the "Nun of Kent," was wildly popular in a time when religion was a matter of life and death. For almost a decade, she heard the voice of God until her execution by Henry VIII; her pronouncements opposed his wishes. Those in search of a genuine social history of this era should turn to Ian Mortimer's A Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England (2017). Norton occasionally digresses into subjects like Tudor diet, hygiene, and morals, but mostly she writes minibiographies of women who struggled with varying degrees of success in an unjust man's world. Readers with a low toleration for outrage will have a difficult time, but most will find this a satisfying series of historical vignettes.

Kirkus Reviews