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THE COURTSHIP AND SINGLEHOOD OF ELIZABETH ISHAM, 1630–1634*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2008

ISAAC STEPHENS
ISAAC STEPHENS*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
*
1212 HMNSS Building, University of California, Riverside, 900 University Ave, CA, USAistep001@.ucr.edu
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Abstract

Scholars have long known of the proposed marriage in 1630 of John Dryden, grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, and Elizabeth Isham, eldest child of Sir John Isham. All knowledge of this proposed marriage came from correspondence revealing that, having reached a financial impasse, the two families aborted the proposed match. At first glance, such a case seems rather unremarkable, since similar stories abound of other contemporary families and in more detail. The Dryden–Isham match, however, takes on increased importance with the recent discovery of Elizabeth Isham's 60,000-word spiritual autobiography. Unlike the correspondence that mainly deals with the economic aspects of the match, Elizabeth's autobiography provides a more personal and emotional account, revealing the importance that familial love and honour played in the arrangement. In addition, the autobiography shows that the failed match caused Elizabeth to have a religious aversion to marriage, leading her to choose singlehood for the remainder of her life. Her experience forces scholars to recognize the significance that familial love, honour, and personal piety could have on marriage formation in the seventeenth century, and it illustrates the lasting impact that a failed match could have on a woman in early modern England.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Sir Erasmus Dryden to Sir John Isham, 22 Apr. 1630, Isham MSS, Northamptonshire Record Office (NRO), IC 184.

2 John Dryden I to Sir John Isham, 4 May 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 185.

3 John Dryden II to Elizabeth Isham, 25 Apr. 1631, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 199.

4 See Mary Finch, The wealth of five Northamptonshire families, 1540–1640 (Oxford, 1956), pp. 34–5; J. T. Cliffe, The puritan gentry: the great puritan families of early Stuart England (London, 1984), p. 67; Kate Aughterson, ‘Isham, Elizabeth’, in H. C. G. Mathew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford dictionary of national biography (DNB) (Oxford, 2004).

5 Elizabeth Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, the Robert Taylor Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, RTCO1 (no. 62).

6 The women are Ann Bathurst, Elizabeth Bury, Margaret Cavendish, Lady Anne Clifford, Lady Elizabeth Delaval, Elizabeth Egerton, Ann, Lady Fanshawe, Celia Fiennes, Elizabeth Freke, Mrs Goodal, Elizabeth Grymeston, Anne, Lady Halkett, Janet Hamilton, Anne, Lady Harcourt, Margaret, Lady Hoby, Lucy Hutchinson, Joyce Jefferies, Mary II, Queen of England, Grace, Lady Mildmay, Elizabeth Mordaunt, Mary Rich, Sarah Savage, Alice Thornton, Isabella, Lady Twysden, Elizabeth Walker, Mary Woodforde. Scholars have yet to identify the authors of two of the autobiographical writings. For discussion of women's autobiographical writings see Sharon Seelig, Autobiography and gender in early modern literature: reading women's lives, 1600–1680 (Cambridge, 2006); Effie Botonaki, Seventeenth-century English women's autobiographical writings: disclosing enclosures (Lampeter, 2004); S. H. Mendelson, ‘Stuart women's diaries and occasional memoirs’, in Mary Prior, ed., Women in English society, 1500–1800 (London, 1985), pp. 181–210.

7 Lawrence Stone, The family, sex, and marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York, 1977), pp. 86–91.

8 Diana O'Hara, Courtship and constraint: rethinking the making of marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2001), introduction, pp. 218–20, and conclusion.

9 Rushton, Peter, ‘Property, power and family networks: the problem of disputed marriage in early modern England’, Journal of Family History, 11 (1986), pp. 205–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 210.

10 Alan MacFarlane, Marriage and love in England, modes of reproduction 1300–1840 (New York, 1986), pp. 35–48, 174–208.

11 David Cressy, Birth, marriage, and death: ritual, religion, and the life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 261. See also chs. 10 and 11.

12 Keith Wrightson, English society, 1580–1680 (New Brunswick, 1982), pp. 80–6; Ralph Houlbrooke, The English family, 1450–1700 (London, 1984), p. 76.

13 Martin Ingram, Church courts, sex and marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 142.

14 O'Hara, Courtship and constraint, pp. 2–3, 218–20, and conclusion.

15 Bridget Hill, Woman alone: spinsters in England, 1660–1850 (New Haven, 2001), p. 1.

16 Amy Froide, Never married: singlewomen in early modern England (Oxford, 2005), pp. 182–216.

17 Sir Erasmus Dryden to Sir John Isham, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 184. See also Finch, Five Northamptonshire families, pp. 34–5 n. 9; Cliffe, The puritan gentry, p. 67.

18 Finch, Five Northamptonshire families, pp. 4–36.

19 John Fielding, ‘Conformists, puritans, and the church courts: the diocese of Peterborough, 1603–1642’ (Ph.D. thesis, Birmingham, 1989) ch. 1, especially pp. 13–17; Cliffe, The puritan gentry, pp. 37, 113, 178–81; Tom Webster, Godly clergy in early Stuart England: the Caroline puritan movement, c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 25; Oliver Garnett, Canons Ashby: Northamptonshire (London, 2001), pp. 32–6.

20 Sir Erasmus Dryden to Sir John Isham, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 184.

21 Sir John Isham to Richard Knightley, 4 Aug. 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 188.

22 Finch, Five Northamptonshire families, pp. 34–5 n. 9, 132, 153. The families are the Spencers, Treshams, Fitzwilliams, Brudenells, and Ishams.

23 Sir John Isham to Richard Knightley, 4 Aug. 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 188.

24 Richard Knightley to Sir John Isham, Aug. 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 3666.

25 John Dryden to Sir John Isham, 11 Aug. 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 3683.

26 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fos. 11v–12r, 13r–15r, 19r.

27 John Dod to Sir John Isham, 22 September 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 193.

28 Sir Erasmus Dryden to Sir John Isham, 28 September 1630, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 194.

29 Richard Knightley to Edward Shagborough, 24 March 1630/31, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 3435.

30 Christopher Sherland to Robert Tanfield, 8 April 1631, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 196.

31 John Dryden to Sir John Isham, 8 April 1631, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 197.

32 Robert Tanfield to Sir John Isham, 20 April 1631, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 198.

33 John Dryden to Sir John Isham, 26 May 1631, Isham MSS, IC 200.

34 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fos. 5r, 15v. See also Robin Priestly, ‘Isham, Justinian’, in DNB; Gyles Isham, ed., The correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham, 1650–1660 (Northampton, 1955).

35 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fos. 11v–12r, 13r–15r, 19r.

36 Elizabeth Isham's listing of events in her life, Isham MSS, NRO, IL 3365.

37 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fo. 2r.

38 Michael Mascuch, Origins of the individualist self, autobiography and self-identity in England, 1591–1791 (Stanford, 1996), prologue, ch. 3, pp. 117–18; McKay, Elaine, ‘English diarists: gender, geography, and occupation, 1500–1700’, History (2005), pp. 191–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 191–2. For further methodological discussion of autobiography see Seelig, Autobiography, pp. 1–14, 154–9; Botonaki, English women's autobiographical writings, pp. 32–42.

39 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fo. 1r. Only the last line of this passage is by Elizabeth Isham, with the rest lifted from Nicholas Breton, The passion of a discontented minde (London, 1601).

40 Ibid., fo. 20v.

41 Susan Whyman, Sociability and power in late-Stuart England: the cultural worlds of the Verneys, 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 124–39; Vivienne Larminie, Wealth, kinship and culture: the seventeenth-century Newdigates of Arbury and their world (Woodridge, 1995), pp. 117–18.

42 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fo. 21r.

43 Ibid., fo. 20v.

44 Ibid., fo. 21r.

45 Ibid., fo. 21v.

46 Ibid., fo. 23r.

47 Ibid., fo. 23v.

48 Ibid., fo. 21v.

49 Ibid., fo. 23r.

50 John Dryden II to Elizabeth Isham, 25 Apr. 1631, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 199.

51 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fo. 23v.

52 Ibid., fo. 23r.

53 Ibid., fo. 23v.

54 Ibid., fo. 24r.

55 Ibid., fo. 4r.

56 Ibid., fos. 4v, 26r, 31v.

57 Ibid., fo. 24v.

58 Ibid., fo. 32r.

59 Ibid., fo. 32v.

60 Ibid., fo. 26v.

61 Ibid., fo. 27r.

62 Ibid., fo. 28r.

63 Isham MSS, NRO, IL 1256. See also Finch, Five Northamptonshire families, pp. 34–5.

64 Isham MSS, NRO, IL 3220. See also Finch, Five Northamptonshire families, pp. 34–5.

65 Elizabeth Isham to Justinian Isham, 1644, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 3274; Justinian Isham to Elizabeth Isham, 1644, Isham MSS, NRO, IC 3275.

66 Isham, ed., Duppa and Isham, pp. xxix–xliv; Elizabeth Isham's listing of events in her life, Isham MSS, NRO, IL 3365; Aughterson, ‘Isham, Elizabeth’, in DNB; Priestly, ‘Isham, Justinian’, in DNB.

67 Stone, Family, sex, marriage, pp. 86–91, 180–91.

68 MacFarlane, Marriage and love, ch. 7; Cressy, Birth, marriage, and death, pp. 252–60.

69 Isham, ‘My booke of rememenberance’, fo. 29r.

70 Ibid., fo. 28r.

71 Ibid., fo. 29r.

72 Ibid., fo. 29v.