So we know about the plague and how it affected millions of people across Europe, but today we will be looking at how the great historical figures dealt with the disease. When sickness kills people in their thousands, it can’t help but have some effect. So, we have already mentioned the Royalty and doctors, but how did some of history’s most famous people react to the plague?
As is evident but the mass exodus of anyone with money, not many people stuck around to witness the decay, but a few notables suffered terribly.
William Shakespeare was a particularly sad case, losing many family members to the plague, including his baby sisters Margaret and Joan, another younger sister, Anne, and his brother Edmund. He also lost his only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, when the boy was just eleven years old.
Scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who featured in The Dresskeeper, was in Cambridge lecturing at the university, but it wasn’t long before the effects of the disease reached him there. When the plague hit Cambridge, Newton promptly left for Lincolnshire. This wasn’t a bad thing, though, because he credited 1665-66 as the "prime age of [his] invention".
Sir Christopher Wren (famous architect, among many other things, who featured heavily in The Dresskeeper) was travelling around Europe at the time and escaped the worst of the disease. When the plague hit London in 1665, he was in Paris, absorbing the French architecture.
The Black Death of 1348 saw the death of a young royal. Joan (sometimes known as Joanna) of England was the favourite daughter of King Edward III. She was betrothed to marry King Pedro of Castille, the son of Alfonso XI and Maria of Portugal, and set off from England, no expense spared on her transportation. She travelled through France to get to her new home, and was apparently looking forward to her marriage when she was struck down by the plague. In the 1340s, the disease had yet to reach England, but was virulent in France. The poor teenage princess never made it to the alter and died alone in Bayonne.
That’s it for this time, but before I go, I just want to send a quick hello to all those people who have reviewed The Dresskeeper for Goodreads and Amazon, and for all your kind comments. I hope you like The Plaguemaker just as much.
All the best,
Mary.
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Monday, 15 February 2010
‘I will never marry you, you nutjob,’ I spit, but it doesn’t have the desired effect.
‘Luckily, I don’t need your permission.’
‘Yes you do.’
He grins. All I need is my friend, a minister at Fleet, to do the honours. And we are on the way there now.’ He leans I again. Once it’s done it can never be undone. That’s the law.’
Oh dear, that sounds grim, doesn’t it. Yet in the 17th century, marriage cost a lot of money, and it was the girl, or her father, who paid. In effect, it was a deal or business transaction, organised by the father and the prospective groom. A young girl who’s father was able to provide a big enough dowry on her behalf would be married – though not necessarily to a man she loved. And worse still, if the groom thought that the payment was not enough then he could change his mind and conduct his ‘business’ elsewhere. The prospective wife, usually a girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen, had little or no say.
Still, the phrase “until death do us part” meant a lot more then. Divorces were difficult to obtain and besides, they were not really necessary. This was not because Londoners in 1685 were better at making marriages stick. Thanks to the high mortality rates, particularly in childbirth, and life expectancy hovering at around 35 to 40, married couples would not stay married for long. Nevertheless, the women at the time managed to encounter many problems during their short married lives.
The society was hierachical and men made the rules and subsequently enjoyed all the rights.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature tells us that this power was claimed as it related to God and King (both being male) and their respective rule over their kingdoms. A husband’s position of power was obvious from the get-go, reflected in the vow “Love, honour and obey.” Nowadays, we have a choice whether or not to recite this vow, but for the 1685 woman, it was a legally binding agreement. Obey applied to all areas of marriage, including the bedroom, where a woman’s “I do” was an implied consent for the man to do whatever pleased him.
Even worse, women of the time had no right to property, money and or even to her own children. Everything that she owned prior to marriage became the property of her husband. The only way a woman could have some say in how she lived her life would be if she became a widow – as long as her husband’s heirs didn’t throw her onto the street.
As I’ve said, divorce was available, in the form of an annulment, but only the very rich were able to have their marriages annulled, because proving to the church and court that a marriage was not legal in the first place was both expensive and time-consuming. A man’s infidelity was not a reason to divorce, but not surprisingly, a woman’s was. According to The History of Women, a woman found guilty of adultery, or the deliciously named ‘criminal conversation’, would promptly be stripped of her status, money and children, without recourse.
And if that seems unfair, read on. Another way of getting a rid of a woman was to sell her. Click on this link to see an image of woman on a platform with a noose around her neck held by her husband. Although the image is from 200 years later than my story, the ritual began far earlier. The act of selling involved the man paying a toll to sell merchandise in the market, following which he would parade his spouse around and sell her off to the highest bidder. Check out this website
for news clippings, one dating back to 1692, of market sales of women. Supposedly these were carried out by a mutual consent, and it wasn’t until the late 19th century that it became socially unacceptable to sell a woman at market.
Have a great week, thanks for tuning in.
Mary.
‘Luckily, I don’t need your permission.’
‘Yes you do.’
He grins. All I need is my friend, a minister at Fleet, to do the honours. And we are on the way there now.’ He leans I again. Once it’s done it can never be undone. That’s the law.’
Oh dear, that sounds grim, doesn’t it. Yet in the 17th century, marriage cost a lot of money, and it was the girl, or her father, who paid. In effect, it was a deal or business transaction, organised by the father and the prospective groom. A young girl who’s father was able to provide a big enough dowry on her behalf would be married – though not necessarily to a man she loved. And worse still, if the groom thought that the payment was not enough then he could change his mind and conduct his ‘business’ elsewhere. The prospective wife, usually a girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen, had little or no say.
Still, the phrase “until death do us part” meant a lot more then. Divorces were difficult to obtain and besides, they were not really necessary. This was not because Londoners in 1685 were better at making marriages stick. Thanks to the high mortality rates, particularly in childbirth, and life expectancy hovering at around 35 to 40, married couples would not stay married for long. Nevertheless, the women at the time managed to encounter many problems during their short married lives.
The society was hierachical and men made the rules and subsequently enjoyed all the rights.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature tells us that this power was claimed as it related to God and King (both being male) and their respective rule over their kingdoms. A husband’s position of power was obvious from the get-go, reflected in the vow “Love, honour and obey.” Nowadays, we have a choice whether or not to recite this vow, but for the 1685 woman, it was a legally binding agreement. Obey applied to all areas of marriage, including the bedroom, where a woman’s “I do” was an implied consent for the man to do whatever pleased him.
Even worse, women of the time had no right to property, money and or even to her own children. Everything that she owned prior to marriage became the property of her husband. The only way a woman could have some say in how she lived her life would be if she became a widow – as long as her husband’s heirs didn’t throw her onto the street.
As I’ve said, divorce was available, in the form of an annulment, but only the very rich were able to have their marriages annulled, because proving to the church and court that a marriage was not legal in the first place was both expensive and time-consuming. A man’s infidelity was not a reason to divorce, but not surprisingly, a woman’s was. According to The History of Women, a woman found guilty of adultery, or the deliciously named ‘criminal conversation’, would promptly be stripped of her status, money and children, without recourse.
And if that seems unfair, read on. Another way of getting a rid of a woman was to sell her. Click on this link to see an image of woman on a platform with a noose around her neck held by her husband. Although the image is from 200 years later than my story, the ritual began far earlier. The act of selling involved the man paying a toll to sell merchandise in the market, following which he would parade his spouse around and sell her off to the highest bidder. Check out this website
for news clippings, one dating back to 1692, of market sales of women. Supposedly these were carried out by a mutual consent, and it wasn’t until the late 19th century that it became socially unacceptable to sell a woman at market.
Have a great week, thanks for tuning in.
Mary.
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