A great history of women that you won’t know about it. A
three-year study into a set of manuscripts compiled and written by one of
Britain's earliest feminist figures has revealed new insights into how women
challenged male authority in the 17th century.
Dr Jessica Malay has painstakingly transcribed Lady Anne
Clifford's 600,000-word Great Books of Record, which documents the trials and
triumphs of the female aristocrat's family dynasty over six centuries and her
bitter battle to inherit castles and villages across northern England.
Lady Anne, who lived from 1590 to 1676, was, in her
childhood, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Her father died when she was 15
but contrary to an agreement that stretched back to the time of Edward II --
that the Clifford's vast estates in Cumbria and Yorkshire should pass to the
eldest heir whether male or female--the lands were handed over to her uncle.
Following an epic legal struggle in which she defied her
father, both her husbands, King James I and Oliver Cromwell, Lady Anne finally
took possession of the estates, which included the five castles of Skipton,
where she was born, Brougham, Brough, Pendragon and Appleby, aged 53.
Malay, a Reader in English Literature at the University
of Huddersfield, is set to publish a new, complete edition of Lady Anne's Great
Books of Record, which contains rich narrative evidence of how women
circumvented male authority in order to participate more fully in society.
Malay said: "Lady Anne's Great Books of Record
challenge the notion that women in the 16th and 17th centuries lacked any power
or control over their own lives.
"There is this misplaced idea that the feminist
movement is predominantly a 1960s invention but debates and campaigns over
women's rights and equality stretch back to the Middle Ages."
The Great Books of Record comprise three volumes, the
last of which came up for auction in 2003. The Cumbria Archives bought the
third set and now house all three. In 2010, Malay secured a £158,000 grant from
the Leverhulme Trust to study the texts.
Malay said: "Virginia Woolf argued that a woman with
Shakespeare's gifts during the Renaissance Period would have been denied the
opportunity to develop her talents due to the social barriers restricting
women.
"But Lady Anne is regarded as a literary figure in
her own right and when I started studying the Great Books of Record I realised
there is a lot more to her writing than we were led to believe.
"I was struck by how much they revealed about the
role of women, the importance of family networks and the interaction between
lords and tenants over 500 years of social and political life in Britain."
In her Great Books of Record, Lady Anne presents the case
for women to be accepted as inheritors of wealth, by drawing on both
documentary evidence and biographies of her female ancestors to reveal that the
Clifford lands of the North were brought to them through marriage.
She argued that since many men in the 16th and 17th
centuries had inherited their titles of honour from their mothers or
grandmothers, it was only right that titles of honour could be passed down to
female heirs.
She also contended that women were well suited to the
title of Baron since a key duty of office was to provide counsel in Parliament,
where women were not allowed. While men were better at fighting wars, women
excelled in giving measured advice, she wrote.
Malay said: "Lady Anne appropriates historical
texts, arranging and intervening in these in such a way as to prove her
inevitable and just rights as heir.
"Her foregrounding of the key contributions of the
female to the success of the Clifford dynasty work to support both her own
claims to the lands of her inheritance and her decision to resist cultural
imperatives that demanded female subservience to male authority.
"Elizabeth I was a strong role model for Lady Anne
in her youth. While she was monarch, women had a level of access to the royal
court that men could only dream of, which spawned a new sense of confidence
among aristocratic women."
Malay's research into the Great Books of Record, which
contain material from the early 12th century to the early 18th century, reveals
the importance of family alliances in forming influential political networks.
It shows that women were integral to the construction of
these networks, both regionally and nationally.
Malay said: "The Great Books explain the legal
avenues open to women. Married women could call on male friends to act on their
behalf. As part of marriage settlements many women had trusts set up to allow
them access to their own money which they could in turn use in a variety of
business enterprises or to help develop a wide network of social contacts.
"Men would often rely on their wives to access wider
familial networks, leading to wives gaining higher prestige in the
family."
Lady Anne was married twice and widowed twice. After her
second husband died she moved back to the North and, as hereditary High
Sherriff of Westmorland, set about restoring dilapidated castles, almshouses
and churches.
Malay said: "Widows enjoyed the same legal rights as
men. While the husband was alive then the wife would require his permission to
do anything. Widows were free to act on their own without any male
guardianship."
The Great Books also provide a valuable insight into
Medieval and Renaissance society, with one document describing a six-year-old
girl from the Clifford family being carried to the chapel at Skipton on her
wedding day.
Lady Anne also recounted her father's voyages to the
Caribbean and she kept a diary of her own life, which includes summaries of
each year from her birth until her death at the age of 86 in 1676.
Malay said: "The books are full of all sorts of life
over 600 years, which is what is so exciting about them."
Malay's Anne Clifford Project, the Great Books of Record
was the catalyst for an exhibition of the Great Books of Record, which are, for
the first time, being exhibited in public alongsideThe Great Picture at the
Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal.
The Great Picture is a huge (so huge a window of the
gallery had to be removed to accommodate its arrival) triptych that marks Lady
Anne's succession to her inheritance.
The left panel depicts Lady Anne at 15, when she was
disinherited. The right panel shows Lady Anne in middle age when she finally
regained the Clifford estates. The central panel depicts Lady Anne's parents
with her older brothers shortly after Lady Anne had been conceived.
Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1087378
Post a Comment