p. 41 Elizabeth also took more positive lessons from the reigns of her siblings. From both monarchs she learned much about the art of self-representation. Like Edward, she presented herself as a learned, godly protestant monarch, who was well versed in the classics and the scriptures. From Mary, she learned how to project authority and power while ‘circumcenting masculine stance and military symbols’. So for example, Elizabeth appropriated the images of the biblical women Deborah, Judith and Esther, who had previously been associated with her immediate predecessor. Furthermore, Elizabeth carried out royal rituals that had fallen into abeyance under the protestant Edward but had been restored by the Catholic Mary: the exchange of gifts on New Year’s Day; the touching for the king’s evil to cure scrofula; the royal washing of paupers’ feet on Maundy Thursday; and the celebration of the Feast of St George. Even though some protestants criticized these rituals as superstituous, Elizabeth continued them because they added to the charism of the monarchy. Protestant propagandists, however, would not admit to any borrowings from Mary. Instead, they worked hard to distance and disassociate the new queen from her half-sister.”

p. 42 “Extended networks of collateral relatives, neigbbours and friends also functioned as additional resources for ariscratic widows and wives in trouble. Lady Margaret Beaufort opened her great household at Collyweston to numberous women of this kind. Lady Anne Clifford, her half-brother’s daughter, and her two dughters found refuce with her when she separated from her husband, Henry, Lord Clifford. Elizabeth, Lady Scrope, lived at Collyweston after the death of her second husband, Sir Henry Westworth, in 1501. When her steopson, Sir Richard, disputed the terms of her marriage contract with his father, Lady Margaret intervened and forced him to sign heavy bonds in which he promised to accept the findings of an arbitration panel headed by her chamberlain. … Another of Margaret’s widowed friends, Cecily, Viscountess Welles, visited Collyweston frequently. When she died in 1506 Lady Margaret arranged for prayers to be said for her in her private chapel. Three years later, she bequeathed “a heart of hold with a fair sapphire” to Lady Powis’s daugher in her own will.”

p. 43 “A similar circle gathered around Elizabeth Mowbray, duchess of Norfolk, who retired to the Minories in London in 1488. … the group included her sister in law, Dame Jane Talbot, widow of Sir Humphrey, Elizabeth Brackenbury, coheir of Sir Robert, a follower of Richard III who had died at Bosworth, and Mary Tyrell, Anne Montgomery’s niece. Anne Montgomery died and was buried at the Minories in 1498. Subsequently both the duchess and Dame Talbot asked to be bured near her, a final tribute to the strength of their mutual ties.”

“Decades later, two high-ranking noblewomen, Elenaor, countess of Rutland, and Catherine, countess of Westmorland, who were connected by the marriage of their children, retired together to Haliwell, the London home of the Rutland heir, Hentry, the second earl. When they died in the early 1550s, they were both buried in the nearby church of St Leonard Shoreditch. Margaret, the second earl’s wife and the countess of Westmorland’s daughter, was also buried there in 1559. The internment of three countesses at St Leonard’s turned it into a mausoleum for members of the earl of Rutland’s family. Eventially two of Eleanor, countess of Rutland’s sons, Oliver and Sir Thomas, her daughter, Anne, and her granddaughter, Catherine Nevill, wife of Sir John Constable, were also duried there. Lady Constable’s sister, Lady Adeline Neville, built a monument in the church marking their tombs.”

p. 53 “both rhetoric and pragmatics encourage us to attend to context. They offer concepts of decorum of appropriateness, the fit of the words to the audience and the occasiona, as a critical measure for the value of the verbal performance as social activity. How strongly aware Elizabethan writers were of the adequacy of that fit is suggested when a copy of Lady Catherine Grey’s petition for the Queen’s forgiveness regarding her illicit marriage to the earl of Hertford is sent by her uncle in advance of her advice to Sir William Cecil to guard against there being “onni faute foud with onni word theerin wrytten”. Politeness analysis, as developed within pragmatics, can help to show that how a gentlewoman frames a request depends to a very large extend on the power relations obtaining in the situation. For example, consider the verbal complexity of Elizabeth Cavendish’s request to her mother, the countess of Shrewsbury, that her mother should neither believe nor spread lies about her – “I myght be so bould as to crave at your Ladyships hands that it wold please you to exteme (esteem) shuch falce bruts [rumours]… as lightly as you have don when others were in the like cas”. The complicated redundancy in the framing of the request reflects the power difference between them and the daughter’s corresponding estimation of the repair work required to counter the risk implicit in making the difficult request… Pragmatics is not wholly responsive to the discourse conditions of the Elizabethan political scene, in which a noblewoman’s social rank, marital status, property holdings, relationship to a patron or favoured faction, accompanying gratuity, previous expense laid out for a New Year’s gift for the Queen, all may affect the reception and efficiacy of a supplicatory letter as much as the virtuosity or decorum of its style. In this essay I will eventually draw upon Pierre Bourdieu’s economic model of linguistic exchange, which regards linguistic skill as only one among other forms of symbolic capital affecting how an utterance is received in any field or market.”

p. 212 “one of the manuscripts I am going to discuss describes a kind of sub-university for women in the 1630s made up of women who were sent to be educated by the wife of the Principal of New Inn Hall, Dr Rogers. Another mentions a kind of Nonconformist academy for the daughters of Dissenting families, run by a Mr Hill in Godmersham in Kent in 1671.”

p. 212 “Attitudes to female publication are shown in Robery Boyle’s dedication of his book, Occasional Reflections, to Katherine Ranelagh. Although she was ‘so great a Mistress of Wit, and Eloquence’, and encouraged him to publish his writing, she refused herself to publish anything at all: “her Modesty did … confine her pen to Excellent Letters.”… Katherine Ranelagh joins the list of early modern literary figures who thought Margaret Cavendish seriously deranged – “I am resolved she scapes Bedlam onely by being too rich to {be} sent thereto” she wrote in 1657.”

p. 31 “Lalande’s depiction of rag-pickers – female, itinerant and consigned to the background – encapsulates the identity, activity and cultural status of rag-collectors in Europe in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 18th century. .. In Nuremberg, where the first paper-mill north of the Alps was established in 1390, one early twentieth-century commentator notes more explicitly that “collecting rags frm early days [was] the perogative of women”. .. the low end of the textile trades, a broad range of already low-prestige tasks related to the manufacture, upkeep and reuse of cloth and clothing, which often fell to women.”

p. 35 In 1588, John Spilman, jeweller to Queen Elizabeth, established a successful paper-mill in Dartford, Kent, having acquired a monoloply on rag-collection and the production of paper. A letter of complaint about Spilman dated 21 May 1601, written by the Lord Mayor William Rider and the Aldermen to the Privy Council…[Spliman “began to offer wrong to the charter of the city by authorizing great numberts of poor people, especially girls and vagrant women, to collect rags etc within the city and liberties, who under the pretence of that service, ranged abroad in every street, begging at men’s doors, whereby the discipline of the city was weakened”

p. 39 Rag-pickers feature in two short anonymous plays printed after the closure of the theatres in 1642, The New Brawl (1654) and The Gossips’ Brawl (1655) embed these rag-women in a wider labour force of marginalised women. The Gossips’ Brawl portrays .. the rag-raker Jone Ruggles, the fishwife Doll Crabbe, the tub-woman Megg Lant-Ale and the hostess Bess Bungole – as vulgar, drunk and quarrelsome.”

p. 50 Arguably the most influential account of widow stationers was put forward by Edward Arber in 1894. In the introduction to his fifth and final volume of his monumental Transcript of the Stationers’ Registers, Aerber attempts to “trace the career of a London stationer from his boyhood to his death”… Aerber suggested that an apprentice could marry the daughter of the master printer for whom he worked .. if that did not work out, the young stationer could opt to ‘marry a Printers’ widow”… repeated in the most important studies of women stationers, including those by Pearl Hogrefe, who surmuses that “even the ugliest and most vile-tempered woman in London could have found an ambitious man ready to take her – and her print shop”. .. but the fundamental problem with the story is that very few stationers – and no apprentices – became master printers by marrying a widow. .. overwhelmingly did so by purchasing a printing house and its equipment or by inheriting them”

p. 52 “Remarriage enabled widow printers to remain active in the book trade and to continue to be involved in running a printing house… widow printers who remarried other stationers are thus almost always among the women who printed and published editions themselves”.

p. 57 The most prolific widow publisher from 1540 to 1640 was Anne Griffin, who brought out a total of 68 editions from 1622 to 1649… p 59 “instrumental in the formation of a loose network of widows who printed and published together from 1634 to 1638… widow printers were hiring widow booksellers… while widow booksellers were hiring widow publishers to produce the editions the booksellers had decided to bring out. This network was composed of the printers Mary Dawson, Anne Griffin and Elizabeth Purslowe (but not Elizabeth Allde) and the booksellers Anne Boler, Anne Moore, John Newbery, |Joyce Norton, Anne Vincent and Joan Man (but not Mary Allett). All together, they collaborated in the publication of 26 editions from 1634-1638, 18 of which involved Griffin.”

p. 146 Isabella Whitney “It has been suggested that most of her work was influenced by the prevailing modes and content of 1560s and 1570s poetry; as I will demonstrate, they were perhaps more immediately inspired by a number of titles that were readily available through Jones. In short, Jones’s bookshop appears to have been a familiar haven for Whitney, one that afforded he a library of London’s newest print offerings.”

p. 148 “she may have also had some relationship with John Allde, William Howe and/or Thomas Colwell. In the 1560s, these four bookmen, either singly or cooperatively, brought out a significant number of ballads; indeed Jones and Colwell were particularly preoccupied with financing and distributing verse broadsides as part of a general publishing strategy.. a significant portion of their output… had to do with the occupations of women and/or relationships between men and women, and a significant subset of these appear to address a female audience from the perspective of a woman. All of these ballads have literally been read out of existence, but the Stationers’ Register records a large number of titles that could have been written by Whitney between 1563 and 1571.”

p. 154 ‘Will and Testament’ was yet another product of time spent in Jones’s bookshop; Whitney appears to have composed the oem after erusing The Will of the Devil. The anonymous pamphley appears to have been first brought to press by the printer Humphrey Powell in the late 1540s and its short length, virulent anti-Catholicism and satiric tone were fashioned for England’s first generation of middling Anglican-Protestant book buyters. The bulk of it is dedicated to the ‘Testament and lasy Wyll” of Belseebub”, which consistens of the demi-devil distributing the rituals, articles and suns of his followers back to his followers. These devotees consist of Catholic clergymen, reprobates like usurers and knaves, and a large host of tradesmen, professionals and townswomen. Jones acquired the satiric pamplet in the mid-1560s. Repinted in the late 1560s and in an expanded edition in the early 1580s, it proved to be one of his most popular early offerings and was undoubtedly part of the ‘ware’ that Whitney advertises in her ‘Will and Testament’.”

M. O’Callaghan, 2019, mt Printer must ue somwhat to his share’ Isabella Whitney, Richard Jones and Crafting Books,’ Women’s Writing 26 (1), pp. 15-34.

Page 60  in the summer of 1520 Catherine of Aragon had to navigate one of the most difficult ceremonial events of her political career,  the Field of Cloth of Gold. this famous meeting of the English and French monarchs and their royal Courts in a field in Northern France  was designed by Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, to cement the Anglo-French alliance that formed the heart of his planning for a European-wide peace.  Catherine however the meeting with the French as a threat to English friendship with her own dynasty, headed by her nephew Charles V King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor.  As queen, she could not publicly oppose her husband’s intentions to meet the French, so she had to work within the ritual framework of court spectacle in order to express her opposition and propose an alternative alliance …  clothing and appearance took on a heightened importance during this event, especially as the French and English courts to outdo each other by displaying their taste, wealth and ingenuity.”

Page 73  Henry VIII and James IV were masters of royal spectacle and the reigns were high points for the participation of women in court entertainment and sociability.  while both promoted royal power through magnificence spectacle and pageantry the most successful expressions of majesty required the Queen to be by their side…..  as young active monarchs both kings were frequently at the centre of these entertainment often featuring in pageants, dances and tournaments designed to exhibit the kings’ own skill as well as  entertain ambassadors and noble visitors at their courts. Catherine and Margaret participated in these revels as the honoured audience for their husbands’ exploits, and the rivers were important in forming a strong royal partnership.

page 74  in May 1517 Katherine and Margaret performed a public and deliberately staged into session before Henry VIII when they pleaded for the lives of a group of London Apprentice Boys who were about to be executed for the part in the evil May Day riots full stop this act may have earned Catherine lasting Fame as a champion of the London poor,  and it was certainly a calculated decision by Catherine and Margaret to adopt a more active role on this occasion. years earlier, Margaret had repeatedly tried to intervene with her husband before the Battle of Flodden, pleading with him not to lead his forces in person. Both Queen’s understood how to modulate their public roles- active and passive –  to suit their own agenda

page 75 the adoption of the Burgundian-style tournaments in England and Scotland  in the later years of the 15th century been became important opportunities for queens like Catherine or Margaret to contribute to the magnificence of their husbands’ monarchy.  in particular, the fashion for a lovely stage tournament requires a new degree of participation by the Queen and her ladies. developed at the courts of Rene of Anjou and the dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth century,  tournaments featuring a dramatic plot and elaborate costumes were favoured by monarchs across Europe, including Henry VII, Henry VIII and James IV. Above all, these Productions require the presence of a lady (the queen)  in order to fulfill their dramatic plots, which were ‘ a predetermined romantic Saga which was always to find its hero and heroine in the King and his consort’.

page 76  Catherine’s important role is the inspiration and validation of her husband’s chivalric prowess was publicly noted and celebrated at the English court.  a Tudor Carol written in Catherine voice proclaims the Kings prowess in the tournament and demonstrates the relationship between between the Queen and her Lord in the chivalric tradition:…  although the author of the lyrics and the census of its performance is unknown, the addressee of the poem is the King and the speaker is Catherine. the song may have been performed as part of the festivities after the tournament perhaps even by Catherine or,  more likely, buy one of her ladies.”

Page 81  the Queen and her ladies …  it was crucial that they understood how to participate in games of courtly love and chivalric play. … lack of participation in such events,  either through disinterest or misunderstanding, could seriously damage the relationship between the King and his wife. Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves got off to a rocky start when he visited her in disguise before the wedding,  and she ignored him. During his marriage to Catherine, Henry frequently wore a mask to hide his identity while participating in court entertainments, and Catherine’s correct identification of him as the king proved his natural superiority.”

Page 100  in pre-modern Europe queens had access to patronage available through their own not in substantial resources and through the relationship with their husbands.  for instance, Anne of Brittany, independent ruler of Brittany and queen consort of France, is an extreme example of the dual opportunities available to Queen’s as patrons,  Esso patronage could be accomplished through the independent Resources as Duchess of Brittany or who royal access as Queen of France…. in the 17th century Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I of England,  collaborated with her husband over the artistic patronage for which he is famous.

Page 112  Catherine and Margaret also use gifts of clothing to reward members of their husbands’ households.  Margaret seems to have been particularly fond of William Dunbar, James’s court poet who celebrated her marriage in 1503 with the poem “The Thrissil and the Rois”.   Many of Dunbar’s poems are set in the Queen’s chamber or in the company of the Queen, and they paint a lively picture of life in the Queen’s household. it is therefore unsurprising that Margaret would wish to reward the poet with the gift of a doublet from her Wardrobe.

Page 117 as the New King Henry VIII wrote to his new father-in-law Ferdinand,  it was ‘ very desirable’ to unite English and Spanish families through marriage.  Henry was referring to The Marriage of one of Catherine’s ladies, Ines de Vanegas( sometimes anglicised to Agnes),  who married William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, in 1509.Ines had served Catherine since 1500, and probably knew the Queen for far longer through her mother,  who has been Catherine’s nurse since 1495. … she was likely an asset to Mountjoy in his diplomatic service to Spain.”

p. 50 Gabrielle Suchon was born in Semur (in Burgundy, not far from Dijon), her parents were of minor gentry and there were numerous jurists in the family. Her father died when she was 13. At a certain point, she entered a convent, and at some other point she left it. Upon leaving the convent, she supported herself as a teacher while living with her mother, and led what has been described as a studious life. She died in 703 at 72…. In each of her major works, she inveighs against the institution of marriage and the harm marriage brings to women, so it might well be that she refused to marry. But she also attacks the oppressive conditions of convents, especially for those without vocation.

p. 51 Such authored two major works: 1 Treatise on Ethics and Politics Divided into Three Parts: Freedom, Knowledge and Authority, where it is shown that person of the [female] sex have a natural capacity that enables them to exercise these three prerogatives now denied them. It was originally published in 1693 under the pseudonym ‘GS Aristophile’ then reprinted in 1694, with a slightly modified title. And 2. On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen, or Life without Commitments was published in 1700 under her own name. The latter work was reviewed in print, and so, we can assume, read by others, if not widely read. Both works are striking in demonstrating a pointed concern with the situation and status of women, even while they aim to develop an ethical and political theory. That is, Suchon’s theoretical aspirations are intimately tied to her concern for liberating – this is, ensuring genuine freedom for – women.”

“… there are unanswered questions about Suchon’s influence on those who followed her. In her The Sex of Knowing, Michele Le Doueff suggested that perhaps Rousseau plagiarized Suchon. There are passages that support this suggestion. In the Treatise on Ethics and Politics, Suchon talks of women as essentially free, but constrained by chains which they have helped to forge by unthinkingly accepting the institutions and conventions which prescribe their conduct. Rousseau’s oft-quoted opening to The Social Contract that ‘man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains’ echoes Suchon’s language. However, Rebecca Wilkin and Sonja Ruud have found no evidence that either Roussea or Madame Duplin, a woman for whom Rousseau served as secretary while she was writing her Ouvrage sur les femmes, concerning the equality of the sexes, reach Suchon… it might be possible for a thinker to have import without there being a well-established direct causal impact.”

p. 86 “In Hamburg, as the impact of the revolution in France led to civil unrest, Elise Reimarus published a pamphlet, Freihart, which was intended to demonstrate that genuine liberty is only available to those subject to civil law. … A little later, in Naples, the journal of the short-lived republican government of 1799, Il Monitore napoletano, edited by Eleanor Fonseca Pimental, declared: “Freedom consist in this, that every citizen can do whatever is not prohibited by law, and which does not harm others.”

p. 109 “Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 distinction between negative and positive right, which, upon examination, prefigures the famous distinction between positive and negative liberty.”

p.122 “Because Berlin only had an eye for the ‘fathers’ of the tradition, he failed to live up to the inclusive spirit that is characteristic of liberalism at its best. By ignoring De Grouchy, he failed to give the mothers of this tradition – De Grouchy and her friends Olympe de Gouges, Harriet Taylor, and so on – their due. This is not just a matter of accurate record keeping and historical justice. When the sons and daughters of a tradition are told only about the fathers, their (moral) education gives them not only a skewed narrative of reality, it also limits the possibilities available to the play of their imaginations.”

p. 141 Margaret Cavendish “Her natural philosophy shows the same creativity and willingness to go against the grain of her contemporaries’ views. For example, Hobbes, Descartes, Robert Boyle and other natural philosophers of the 17^th century conceived of matter as naturally inert, capable of moving only when moved by some external force. In their view, the motions of this matter are governed by various deterministic laws of nature .. the corporeal world is fundamentally law-governed and predictable… For Cavendish, Nature is one fully continuous, infinite entity, composed of three intermixed types, or ‘degrees’ of matter. Two of these – the ‘rational’ matter and the ‘sensitive’ matter – are intrinsically self-moving, which Cavendish claims entails that they are also perceptive and knowing. The third type, ‘dull’ matter, lacks self-motion; it moves only because it is blended with self-moving matter. The three degrees of matter are completely intermixed, so that every part of Nature, no matter how small, will contain all three types of matter.”