Gentle Companions: Single Women and their Letters in Late Stuart England

Abstract

The seventeenth-century women whom we know as letter-writers were usually wives, daughters, or widows of wealthy men. This is not surprising, for elite women had education and leisure, and their papers were most likely to survive. The personal correspondence of the Verney family, however, allows us to look at the letters of less well studied groups of single women who were cousins or ‘poor relations’. Some historians have described these women as females without a function, and they usually lacked descendants who would preserve their memorabilia. This chapter analyses the correspondence of several unmarried women. It argues that letters made a difference in their lives and played a broad range of roles. They were used instrumentally to preserve social networks, obtain financial support and to maintain a place of residence. Most important, they were a means to secure the all-important and desperately needed patronage of the male head of the family. On a different level they offered ways to secure self-expression, psychological support and approval from loved ones. The Verneys have been represented as an extremely patriarchal family.¹ Even so, unmarried Verney women found ways to express their dignity through letters.