Courtship and Constraint - Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Hardcover)

Courtship was a vitally important process in early modern England. It was a period of private and public negotiation, often fraught with anxiety. If completed successfully it brought respectability, the privileges of marriage and adulthood, and a stable union between socially, economically and emotionally compatible couples. This book represents the first major study of courtship in early modern England. Using Kent church court and probate material dating from the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, it blends historical with anthropological perspectives to suggest novel and exciting approaches to the making of marriage.