Allies, Accomplices, Avengers: The Alliances of Non-Elite Women in Seventeenth-Century England

This dissertation examines the alliances of non-elite women in England in the decades between 1630 and 1700. It is the first scholarly work to focus on the positive interactions of plebeian women and the important role which female networks played in their lives, both as a part of ordinary sociability and in times of need. Using ecclesiastical and secular judicial records, it shows that non-elite women formed a wide variety of legal and illegal alliances as a means to mitigate their social, legal, physical, and economic vulnerabilities in this period. These alliances hinged on the sites and issues that early modern women were associated with in daily life, namely the female body and the expectations ascribed to it—motherhood, feminized labour within and outside the home, and beliefs, both negative and positive, about the ‘natural’ moral roles of women. Although female alliances and sociability were viewed negatively in early modern popular culture, including scripture, law and medicine, this dissertation shows that women needed female allies and, in fact, were expected to have them. Seventeenth-century patterns of labour and sociability encouraged the formation of female alliances. The rituals of childbirth reveal networks of women, as do trials for slander, illicit pregnancy, divorce, and infanticide. Central to these alliances was the female body. Ordinary women wielded considerable authority, socially and legally, as the only true experts on their bodies. They provided important evidence for the prosecution and punishment of crimes ranging from defamation to murder. In some of these cases, female allies contributed towards life-or-death decisions. Furthermore, this dissertation shows that the body connected women’s legal and illegal alliances. The likelihood of experiencing poverty, unwanted pregnancies, damaged reputations, and violence encouraged the formation of emotional communities among some women. Sometimes this involved competing alliances, or a collective against an individual, as in bastardy cases. In the end, few women were truly without allies in this period.