LHMP #262 Spicksley 2003 To Be or Not to Be Married

This is a fairly extensive research paper in two parts. The first looks at the demographics of singlewomen in Late Tudor and Stuart England, along with some of the social forces that affected women’s inclination and ability to avoid marriage. The second part looks specifically at the occupation of money-lender as an option for women to support themselves or to supplement other forms of income.

Demographic studies indicate that the percentage of never-married women in England during the period in question ranged from 10% (the cohort born in 1566) to 22% (the cohort born in 1641). Contemporary literature indicates anxiety about a “man shortage” as a contributing cause. Society was structured around the expectation of monogamous heterosexual marriage, but increasingly there was a perception that marriage was in decline. This perception was of particular concern in the context of considering an increase of population as a desirable goal. Marriage was, in theory, an expected life stage for all women, and male-authored literature depicted women as strongly desiring marriage and aiming to achieve it at a relatively young age.

Because of these attitudes, female singlehood was viewed as being due to a situational lack of opportunity, e.g., as a result of male mortality during the English Civil War, due to greater male participation in emigration, and due to plague. Other concerns focused on male choice not to marry and blamed that, in turn, on women’s behavior. The atmosphere of sexual license in the Restoration court was felt to encourage men to decline marriage in favor of less formal arrangements. This perception led to legal measures to encourage marriage with special taxes on bachelors and childless widowers. There was little discussion at the time of women who were single by choice, although some hint of this concern appears in satirical attacks on spinsters.

But moral literature around marriage also recognized that not all people were suited to marriage, especially those who were not able or disinclined to procreate. Some individuals were advised (or chose) not to marry due to not being suited to the physical and emotional demands of marriage. In other cases, an individual might remain single to to being unable to convince their family of the suitability of their chosen partner.

The most widely accepted reason for not marrying was financial. The north-western European marriage pattern involved formation of a new, independent household on marriage. This required an accumulation of goods and capital, as well as stable employment. A woman’s “marriage portion” was considered an essential contribution for the economic success of the match.

Women of the lower classes acquired this portion from work, legacies, gifts, or charity. Such women generally worked outside the home from their mid-teens until marriage. But work opportunities were contracting in the 17th century. Charity offered to women often took the form of money or goods to enable marriage. Legal regulation of marriage often targeted foreigners or internal migrants who were felt to be “competing” with local women for marriage opportunities. Other statutes were aimed at delaying marriage, such as apprenticeship regulations that required an unmarried state.

Overall, the result was a significant population of mobile, unmarried poor. For example, rural servants were highly mobile. Gender-related differences in migration patterns also affected marriage opportunities. Curiously, disease also contributed to a “surplus” of unmarried women, with men being twice as likely to contract the plague and five times as likely to die from it, though the data is not entirely clear on this point. Similarly, emigration strongly favored men. The next part of the article focuses on an overlooked demographic: women who remained single by choice. [Note: the author identifies them as women who remained “celibate” by choice, but that’s a different question.]

What factors drove this? The 17th century saw increased freedom of choice in marriage partners. There was a general shift from a focus on marriage as a community-oriented action to marriage as an individual action, with an emphasis on personal autonomy and individual happiness. That individual happiness was not necessarily tied up in marriage. For example, Blanche Perry, a maid to Queen Elizabeth I, chose to remain single in order to devote herself to Elizabeth’s service. In other cases, women related their chosen singlehood to the inability to marry a specific preferred partner. In other cases, they ascribed singlehood to “God’s will.”

Popular literature of the day often humorously debated the joys of a single life as contrasted with marriage. This was more typically focused on men, but in the later 17th century the debate was engaged in more seriously by women who were focused on religious celibacy both within formal ecclesiastical institutions and as lay women. Women writers such as Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Jane Barker wrote of “single” life in the context of female friendship or as a positive state in the face of negative attitudes toward “spinsters.”

The choice to remain single required financial stability. Demographic data from the middle ages shows a link between women’s marriage rates and economic autonomy. The labor shortages of the late 14th and early 15th centuries were paralleled by an expansion of unmarried women working outside their household of birth, especially in towns. This included a sharp increase in the rate of never-married women. Even for those who married, marriage might be delayed later in life.

While women’s labor was often marginal and badly paid, the article now focuses on one economic opportunity available to some women: the profession of money-lending.

In England, lending money for interest (with a statutory rate of 10%) was legalized in 1571 (though it occurred on a less regulated basis earlier). It was part of a complex system of many types of financial arrangements, making details hard to track. Female moneylenders are also often not mentioned in the historic records of the time, therefore the field is researched primarily in the context of a small number of prominent and wealthy women. This article expands that data to a wider demographic by use of probate inventories that note lending arrangements that were outstanding at the time of death. While these records show that 40% of all persons were engaged in lending, singlewomen were over-represented with 50-60% engaging in moneylending. This holds across all income levels. Income from loan interest often supplemented other income sources available to singlewomen, such as spinning.

The interest return on a sum equivalent to a woman’s typical marriage portion was roughly similar to the typical wages for the same economic class, although wages were generally supplemented by room and board. But lending did not preclude other economic activities. The singlewomen in this study also engaged in farming, renting out animals, dairying, textile production and processing, along with more poorly paid manual labor. It’s unclear to what extent singlewomen chose this path deliberately, but if chosen, it was a sustainable lifestyle. Most loans were within their own community and class, and served as a communal financial resource against economic fluctuations.

Women whose fathers had died had legal control of their inherited marriage portion either at marriage or at majority. And with marriage typically occurring after the age of majority and a higher male death rate, this meant that many singlewomen were in a position to control their assets. Wills typically left cash to daughters more often than to sons (sons being more likely to get real estate and goods). [Note: but see Staples 2011 for counter-evidence to the claim that sons were more likely than daughters to get real estate.]

As married women’s property came under the legal control of her husband (unless there was a special provision in the marriage contract -- a case only typical for widows), singlewomen had more ability to serve as lenders than married women did. This legal situation also provided a motivation to remain single if they wanted to keep control of their property.

The economic independence of moneylending may have given singlewomen more control over the timing and choice of marriage, or as a way to avoid marriage entirely. Women also sometimes viewed moneylending as a type of charitable activity.