Matthew Jewell
Although Dianne Dugaw gathered the one hundred and thirteen Warrior Women ballads of Appendix I around the common theme of female-to-male crossdressing, several of her selected ballads associate the donning of masculine clothing with a transformation of class identity and status. A quick search of our project’s database reveals that at least thirty-five of the Warrior Women ballads contain socioeconomic terminology of some sort. Of these ballads, most narrative arcs which involve a change in class status portray considerable conflict between individuals of different class standings. The class-dressing motif and the social discomfort surrounding it are most obvious in the ballads of “Parental Intervention in a Courtship,”[1] where the only daughters and heiresses of gentleman or wealthy merchants often fall in love with young men of the laborer class. Though knights, squires, or rich gallants would better suit women of their social standing, these Warrior Women desire only to elope with young sailors, farmers, carpenters, and servants,[2] thus willingly setting aside the extravagant trappings and social expectations of their merchant or gentry class lives. Here enter the fathers of the Warrior Women, the primary antagonists of the ballads and the staunch defenders of English social hierarchies. Fearing the public embarrassment an interclass marriage would bring upon themselves and the loss of familial control this “deviant” behavior signifies, the fathers engage in several methods of separating the two lovers: imprisoning their daughters in their rooms,[3] wielding their wide-ranging social influence in an effort to “press” the young men to war,[4] and openly threatening the lives of all individuals involved.[5] As a result of their fathers’ cruelty and oppressiveness, the Warrior Women remove their feminine clothing and disguise themselves as sailors or soldiers, thereby descending several rungs of the British “social ladder” in order to pursue the men they love.
At first glance, the act of class-dressing exposes the vulnerabilities of the early modern British social order, a system which the Warrior Women subvert despite their fathers’ best efforts to subdue their agency. From this perspective, Warrior Women emerge as formidable repudiators of patriarchal power, class status, and class performance. Simultaneously, their relationship with lower-class men, which results in the men’s social ascent and class dressing of their own, presents a favorable image of socioeconomic mobility during a time when the rise of the merchant class indicates a greater (albeit slight) possibility for the economic advancement of English commoners. Yet the conclusions of the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads, which deviate between far-fetched “happily-ever-after” endings and utterly tragic circumstances, undermine these optimistic interpretations. Ballads such as “Isle of Wight”[6] close with the couple surviving the battlefield, returning home, and earning the marital blessings of once aggressive but now fully repentant fathers. Even then, the outcomes of these ballads are circumstantial. For instance, the male lover’s entry into a different social class is only possible because of the emotional reaction of the Warrior Woman’s father, a man so relieved to learn his daughter is alive that he hurriedly agrees to an interclass marriage. This change of heart can only occur by way of the ballads’ dramatic turn of events; he would rather bestow his blessing upon the couple than lose his daughter a second time. Therefore, I will demonstrate in the first part of this essay that the positive endings of the Warrior Women class dressing ballads promote fantasies of social mobility, a grand-scale advancement of socioeconomic status generally not possible[7] for the predominantly lower-class audience of English street literature.[8]
Meanwhile, in works such as “The Tragical Ballad,”[9] the Warrior Woman’s class-dressing results in significant consequences for the main characters of each ballad. While these works also depict the Warrior Woman’s escape from confinement and often allow for her reunion with her lover, they culminate in the deaths of the Warrior Woman, her male lover, and even her father. These demises occur in several different ways: characters may commit suicide in despair over the loss of someone else, they may be mortally wounded on the battlefield by another soldier, or they may be killed by each other, sometimes in a fit of rage or by mistake. Considering these motifs, I will suggest in the second part of this essay that Warrior Women class-dressing ballads with negative endings depict the sanctioning of individuals who attempt to transcend social hierarchies. Here, the Warrior Women ballads become allegorical “tall-tales” which counterbalance the fantasy of class mobility with their hidden messaging that class boundaries should not be tested and that any attempt to do so comes with potentially dire consequences. Considering their unrealistic depictions of upward class mobility and the penalties often associated with the attempt to overcome socioeconomic boundaries, I argue that the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads uphold and reproduce English social hierarchies, systems which the lower-class audience of the ballads cannot hope to easily transcend given the social constraints present in early modern British society.[10]
Part I: A False Positive Ending: The Fantasy of Upward Mobility in “Isle of Wight”
Although several of the Warrior Women ballads which feature class-dressing end with the successful marriage of the heiress and her male love interest, the behavior of the characters and the circumstances surrounding their eventual union strain credulity. This includes the Warrior Woman’s sudden interest in a man of the laborer class (a romance sparked by simply passing by each other on the street),[11] her successful subversion of patriarchal power (when she would have been the legal property of her father and thus largely restricted from demonstrating such acts of agency), and her father’s abruptly remorseful behavior at the conclusion (a notable departure from his original rage at his daughter’s “deception”). Noting several of the same motifs across early modern street literature, scholars have advanced wide-ranging interpretations of the social hierarchies which influence and direct the behaviors of the ballads’ characters. For instance, Dugaw resists the notion that the Warrior Women serve as the fantasies of male soldiers and sailors, particularly for sexual purposes: “The Female Warrior does not appear nearly so far-fetched when we look at her in terms of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century activities and concerns. Seen against the backdrop of her own context, she emerges—by contrast—a surprisingly accurate, if conventionalized, reading of lower-class experience.”[12] In contrast with Dugaw’s more optimistic reading[13], Patricia Fumerton reveals that ballads offer consolatory messages which are intentionally contrary to the harsh “truths” of lower-class early modern life. From her standpoint, the ballads appeal to individuals who are susceptible to displacement by depicting lower-class characters as “settled and secure,” even if economic stability was difficult or nearly impossible to achieve in Renaissance-era England.[14] Fumerton’s take explains the relatively “happy” endings of several of the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads: in contrast with the displacement, transience, and instability of city life,[15] the ballads intentionally circumvent class boundaries in an effort to present a desirable image of upward mobility. Through this lens, the ballad, functioning in its role as an accessible form of cheap entertainment, operates as a vehicle of escapism for its predominantly lower-class audience, a fantasy mirror of sorts in which they could glimpse an image of a better life for themselves, however unrealistic it may be.
“Isle of Wight”[16] relates the tale of an unnamed French maiden, the “daughter of a knight” (25) and thus a woman of nobility, who falls in love with “a brisk seaman poor” (39) named Will. The Warrior Woman of the ballad first meets Will while he “was bound, guarded thro’ our town, / Taken prisoner by our privateer” (15-6) for an unspecified crime. After casting her eyes on Will, the maiden informs her chambermaid, “Oh! how I could love that Englishman!” (20). This is the first indication of the ballad’s fictionalized narrative of class mobility: that a French woman of noble birth would instantly fall in love with a young English man bound in chains and being led to prison is a highly improbable turn of events. Furthermore, the ballad’s subtitle, “The Outlandish Lady’s Love to an English Sailor in the Isle of Wight,” betrays the ballad’s true disposition toward interclass relationships, particularly those involving lovers of different nationalities. In considering her “outlandish,” the ballad labels our Warrior Woman both foreign[17] and bizarre, an individual whose social behaviors are abnormal. While the anonymous author of the ballad might have employed such language in an attempt to describe the phenomenon of her crossdressing, this scenario may also serve as a negative assessment of the Warrior Woman’s affections for a lower-class and possible criminal man. Therefore, a fully positive reading of the events which unfold thereafter would be imprecise.
The dialogue shared between the Warrior Woman of “Isle of Wight” and Will conveys the couple’s awareness of social hierarchies and the penalties associated with their attempt to supersede class structure. Here, the ballad shifts toward a more realistic depiction of early modern socioeconomics, even as truly extraordinary events unfold in Part II of the song. In her letter to Will penned shortly after seeing him for the first time, the knight’s heiress acknowledges, “If my father knew, then we both should rue, / And in a passion kill us both, I fear” (29-30). Will’s correspondence, which reveals his literacy in a period when seamen were often unable to read or write, fully echoes her concerns: “You an heiress great born to a vast estate, / I am a man that’s born of mean degree… If your father knew he would hang me” (41-2, 44). Both letters mention deadly consequences associated with their love, an interclass relationship they know will not be tolerated by the upper-class patriarch of the ballad. As the maiden and Will predict, the father’s response to their professed love is indeed severe:
And in a passion he his rapier drew;
But her mother she came immediately,
Or else he would have run her thro’-and-thro’
But this was her doom, to be shut in her room,
Like a prisoner there for to remain. (88-92)
Here, the father directs his threats and savagery primarily toward his daughter, an individual he assumes is always already under his control and whom he punishes for operating outside the boundaries of both social class and gender roles. His actions defend and reproduce social hierarchies, “correcting” a relationship which challenges the social status quo by ensuring that his daughter is safely confined within her bedchambers away from the influence of lower-class men. This forced confinement also signifies the father’s fear of his daughter’s emerging sexuality, something he wishes to keep locked away permanently. The father then escalates his cruelty by acquiring the corpse of an unknown hanged man, cutting off his head, and presenting the mutilated body to his daughter. In the presence of his now despondent daughter, he sneers, “Here come now and take your English dear” (98), a parody of the epithet the Warrior Woman uses for Will elsewhere in the ballad. Buoyed by her handmaiden’s assurances that Will is still alive, the Warrior Woman resolves to escape from her father’s home, cross dress by donning the clothing of a sailor, and travel the world looking for her lost love.
While the father’s behaviors in “Isle of Wight” are absurd, his censorship of his daughter’s activities is not all that far removed from the patriarchal oppression women faced in the early modern period. From the father’s standpoint, his daughter’s marriage is an opportunity for his own social and political advancement; she is a commodity to be passed from his hands to a man of equal or even higher wealth or prestige,[18] and her interest in a lower-class man obstructs the father’s perception of the “natural social order” and his ability to set in place a match he desires. Although Dugaw’s optimistic reading would likely highlight her prowess and celebrate her escape from her father, and that is indeed a feasible interpretative lens, the Warrior Woman’s elopement and complete circumvention of her father’s power would not be a possibility for a majority of gentry-class early modern women.[19] Even though she is at one point a bachelorette on-the-run, a situation in which she possesses agency in having removed herself from the oppressiveness of her father, the Warrior Woman’s story always points toward marriage, the moment a man of a lower-class subsumes her father’s status, wealth, and property through the practice of coverture.[20] Furthermore, the father’s behaviors echo real-life anxieties in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regarding class difference in England.[21] Indeed, the early modern poor viewed the threats of the gentry class as actions instigating and sustaining their impoverishment while the upper reaches of society feared that their “subordinates [secretly] plotted their destruction.”[22] While this certainly does not excuse the behavior of the father in the ballad, this information helps contextualize his actions amongst the real-life early modern gentry. His confinement of his daughter and intimidation of an undesirable male suitor correspond with the actual behaviors of upper-class men who forced their will upon individuals of a lower social standing. In summation, the father’s rage and oppressive actions, however disproportionate to the offense, are far more realistic in the context of the early modern period than his daughter’s successful evasion of his influence.
“Isle of Wight” concludes with the marriage of the couple and their subsequent return to the father of the Warrior Woman, a series of events which once again reveals the highly fictionalized nature of the ballad’s positive ending. Still “Dress’d in man’s array” (141), the Warrior Woman confronts her father at his home, informing him that she saw his “daughter bright, in the Isle of Wight” (151) but that she will not return out of concern that he “Will have us both hanged up” (158). Blaming heaven’s “decree” for his actions, the father exclaims, “For joy they live guineas I will give, / To enjoy them both I now do swear” (161-2). It is only after mentioning money, which could be interpreted as a dowry, that the Warrior Woman reveals her true identity. The father’s reaction is surprising:
So her father then took her by the hand,
And embraced her, and thus did cry,
Since you my blessing crave you shall it have
I will own you both until I die. (171-4)
The father’s shift in character from an obstinate patriarch willing to kill his daughter for pursuing a man outside of her class to a remorseful old man now amenable to the same relationship seems hardly plausible. Though we could interpret the father’s repentance as indicative of his folly, and thus consider the ballad as a critique of British social structure and of the gentry class, the ballad’s circumstantial conclusion does not at all indicate an erasure or deconstruction of the social hierarchies inherent in the song and in English society. The male lover’s entrance into the family only occurs as a result of the father’s joy in recovering his relationship with his daughter and not because the father suddenly agrees that interclass relationships and marriages are appropriate. Only in the imagined world of the ballad would a lower-class man be able to gain a fortune simply by attracting the interests of a wealthy woman and out-maneuvering her father. Though it attempts to undermine social hierarchies as a way of mocking upper-class authority,[23] “Isle of Wight” advances a sensationalized image of socioeconomic mobility, a message which may appeal to the lower-class members of the ballads’ audience but does not offer a sustained resistance to social boundaries.
Part II: Triple Punishments and Deaths: The Sanctioning of Class Dressing in “The Tragical Ballad”
While the positive resolutions of the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads are unquestionably dubious in their meaning, songs which end in the deaths of each of their major characters convey a far more direct message regarding social hierarchies, namely, individuals who attempt to undermine class structure by class dressing will experience harsh penalties for their socially deviant behaviors. Though their punishment may not have been as severe as death or execution, early modern British men and women faced social sanctions of their own for impersonating individuals of a different class. British Sumptuary Laws, which lasted well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, authorized fines for lower-class citizens imitating the social elite.[24] In a class-segregated society like early modern England, these laws maintained social boundaries and represented clear attempts to restrict class mobility. Furthermore, richly embroidered clothing would have been a way of demonstrating the social authority of the gentry class.[25] Such laws provide context for the reasons the Warrior Women and her male lover do not survive in “The Tragical Ballad.”
Though the world of the ballad certainly punishes the Warrior Woman for relinquishing her class status, the true violation of social hierarchies rests with her lower-class male lover. His efforts at upward class mobility, which coincide with his own class dressing upon his entry into the Warrior Woman’s family, blur the line between commoner and nobleman, threatening to destabilize the very essence of class identity. The male lover’s impressment to war and eventual death are methods of correcting his unnatural and threatening behavior from an upper-class perspective. Though admittedly exaggerated, the conclusions of “The Tragical Ballad” is reminiscent of Sumptuary Laws. Both engage in the project of maintaining social boundaries, ensuring upper-class and lower-class individuals remain segregated from each other. Thus, the negative resolutions of the Warrior Women class dressing ballads validate and uphold English laws which maintained the divisions between social classes, serving as cautionary messages which reprove lower-class hopes of social mobility.
“The Tragical Ballad,”[26] which resolves in truly gruesome fashion, is a prime example of a class mobility ballad that highlights the consequences an early modern audience might have associated with an interclass relationship. The ballad portrays the tale of a “young lady bright” (13) who pursues “a servant-man” (9) named John. It is clear in Part I of the song that the Warrior Woman is conscious of class boundaries and the penalties involved with loving a lower-class man. Love-sick and despairing, the Warrior Women asks herself, “Why was I born so high, / To live in misery… I wish I was as poor, / As the man whom I adore” (23-4, 32-3). Her dialogue suggests an awareness that she cannot hope to pursue John because of their class difference, thoughts which obviously prefigure her cross dressing and simultaneous renouncement of her gentry-class life. Before she has the opportunity to marry John, the Warrior Woman mistakenly confides in Betty, her servant-maid who reveals, “I am in the same case, / I love his charming face” (61-2). The formation of this love triangle is significant because of the socioeconomic implications found therein: while the Warrior Woman’s interests in John violate social boundaries and are thus problematic, Betty’s interests in him do not commit the same violation. Betty is of the “same case” (or situation) because she is in love with John, but she and John are also of the “same class.” When Betty informs the father of the Warrior Woman, “Master… you’ll ruin’d be, / Your daughter doth agree / To marry John” (121-4), she reifies social hierarchies which place her in a servant role while prompting the punishment the Warrior Woman and John will receive.
As in “Isle of Wight,” the deceptive father of “The Tragical Ballad” serves as a protector of class boundaries in ensuring that his daughter and John are unable to elope and marry. First, he lures the couple into a trap by informing his daughter, “I will provide. / A place you need not fear, / Both for you and your dear” (140-2). When John arrives, the father unveils his true intentions: “He shall to prison go, / And I’ll confine also / You to your room” (150-2). Unsatisfied with John’s imprisonment, the father doles out a second wave of disciplinary action akin to a death sentence: “He sent him over to sea, / A soldier there to be, / Against the enemy” (161-3). This double punishment suggests that John is a greater threat to the father than the Warrior Woman, for it is John who undermines the father’s authority over his daughter, while simultaneously exposing the vulnerabilities of class structure. Knowing that John is unlikely to return from war, the father’s actions stabilize the social boundaries of the ballad, ensuring that his daughter is back under his control and that her lower-class male lover is unable to reach her. Though the ballad does not celebrate the actions of the father nor of Betty, who apparently ends up in “Bedlam” for her treachery (172), “The Tragical Ballad” nevertheless relates the consequences associated with the attempt to undermine class structure.
While the cross-dressing of the Warrior Woman in “The Tragical Ballad” disrupts the social order her father strives to maintain, the song concludes with the deaths of each major character, an ultimate penalty (however overstated and sensationalized) for individuals who disrupt class structure. Unlike many ballads which celebrate the military prowess of the Warrior Women, the maiden of “The Tragical Ballad,” who follows John onto the battlefield in the guise of a soldier, quickly becomes a casualty: “The first that wounded were, / Was this young lady fair” (193-4). Lacking the proto-feminist leanings of other street literature, “The Tragical Ballad” demonstrates that the Warrior Woman is in a place she does not belong amongst people of a different social status; as such, she is unable to resume her relationship with John and loses her life. The Warrior Woman’s death is followed by a double-suicide: first, John takes his own life by “piercing his body thro’” (203); second, the Warrior Woman’s father resolves to “end my days” (212) upon receiving word of his daughter’s death. Unable to remain within the confines of his own class and set aside his affections for an upper-class woman, John dies having failed to achieve social mobility. His death demonstrates the censorship advanced by a hierarchized social order, a system powerful enough to resist his efforts to transcend social boundaries. However, the suicide of the Warrior Woman’s father complicates my interpretation of “The Tragical Ballad”; indeed, it is the father who indirectly causes the death of his daughter, and the ballad’s conclusion certainly highlights his folly. Though the father may die at the end of the song, I maintain that his attempts to dismantle the interclass relationship between his daughter and John and restore the social order of the ballad’s world succeed. For the predominantly lower-class audience of street literature, “The Tragical Ballad’s” conclusion relates the social sanctions in play with any attempt to undermine the social order, a phenomenon which dissuades the socially deviant behavior of class dressing.
Conclusions
Despite the formidable personas of the Warrior Women and their attempts to marry men of a lower social standing, several ballads in the Dugaw catalogue uphold English social hierarchies by advancing fantasies of class mobility and portraying the social sanctioning of class-dressing. In this essay, I have demonstrated that both positive and negative conclusions, though certainly variable in their content and themes, reveal the illusionary nature of upward class mobility in early modern street literature. In the first part of this essay, I argued that the questionable circumstances surrounding the love of the Warrior Woman and Will in “Isle of Wight,” including her instantaneous infatuation with him and her father’s dramatic transformation from a near-murderer to a penitent man, amplify the incredulousness of a positive ending. As forms of cheap street literature written for the purposes of entertainment and targeting a predominantly lower-class audience, ballads such as “Isle of Wight” provide an escape from the harsh realities of early modern life. While the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads offer amusing voyeuristic scenarios, they should not be read as evidence that class mobility was an easy feat in the early modern period. As I explained in Part II of this essay, class-dressing and the attempt to supersede class boundaries would likely have resulted in social sanctions of some sort. In Renaissance England, Sumptuary Laws authorized small fines for those engaging in class dressing; in the world of “The Tragical Ballad,” such actions result in imprisonment and death. Though obviously dramatized for effect, the negative endings of the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads reveal real anxieties associated with any attempt to overcome social boundaries. In this case, the harsh penalties experienced by the Warrior Women and her lower-class male lover operate as a method of correcting behavior which challenges social norms. With both positive and negatives endings considered, we discover that the Warrior Women class-dressing ballads do not dismantle social hierarchies; instead, they suggest that class identity and status are the cornerstones of human social order, a foundation which can be laid bare but never easily overruled.
Bibliography
Carbonara, Erika. “‘My Body You May […] Confine’: Depictions of Female Confinement and Crossdressing in Early Modern Broadside Ballads.” The Warrior Women Project.
Carbonara, Erika. “Pressed to War: Depictions of Wartime Nonconsent.” The Warrior Women Project.
Churches, Christine. “Women and property in early modern England: a case-study.” Social History, vol. 23, no. 2, May 1998, 165-180.
Dugaw, Dianne. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Erickson, Amy Louise. Women and Property in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 1993.
Fumerton, Patricia. Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Hailwood, Mark. “Broadside Ballads and Occupational Identity in Early Modern England.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2, Summer 2016, 187-200.
Hanson, Paige L. “Renaissance Clothing and Sumptuary Laws.” Shakespeare and Renaissance England Resources, University of Michigan-Dearborn, 14 September 2010.
Lyon, Karen. “Wooing and Wedding: Courtship and Marriage in Early Modern England.” Folger Magazine, 8 June 2018.
Slack, Paul. Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England. New York Longman, 1988.
Wood, Andy. “Fear, Hatred and the Hidden Injuries of Class in Early Modern England.” Journal of Science History, vol. 39, no. 3, Spring 2006, 803-826.
“Isle of Wight.” The Dugaw Catalogue, 565-569.
“outlandish, adj. and n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019.
“The Tragical Ballad.” The Dugaw Catalogue, 586-590.
[1] Dugaw separates her Warrior Women Catalogue into six different classifications, one of them being “Ballads of Parental Intervention in a Courtship.” “Isle of Wight” and “The Tragical Ballad” can be found there. I will also examine “London Merchant” in this essay, a selection from “The Ballads of Accompanying and Pursuing.”
[2] Mark Hailwood offers a compelling argument that ballads stereotyped these lower-class professions and that these stereotypes often become an organizing feature: “Broadside Ballads and Occupational Identity in Early Modern England.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2, Summer 2016, 187-200.
[3] For more on the themes of confinement, see Erika Carbonara, “‘My Body You May […] Confine’: Depictions of Female Confinement and Crossdressing in Early Modern Broadside Ballads.” The Warrior Women Project.
[4] For more on the topic of “impressment” in early modern balladry, see Erika Carbonara, “Pressed to War: Depictions of Wartime Nonconsent.” The Warrior Women Project.
[5] There are, of course, several other motifs associated with the narrative climaxes of the Warrior Women ballads.
[6] Though I will focus on this ballad alone in Part I of this essay, ballads with positive endings such as “The Loyal Lovers Garland” (Dugaw Catalogue, pp. 580-4), “The Constant Lover of Worcestershire” (pp. 606-8), “The London Heiress” (pp. 611-2), “The Constant Lovers” (638-45), and “The Rose of Britain’s Isle” (pp. 646-9) also fit my argumentative framework. Of course, this list is not exhaustive.
[7] Paul Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England. New York: Longman, 1988.
[8] While many scholars have noted that ballads would have been read by individuals of all social standings, Patricia Fumerton argues that the simple language, straight-forward narrative structures, abundant woodcuts, common tunes, and black-letter print indicate that street literature would have been primarily for a lower-class audience. See Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Work Poor in Early Modern England. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. 133.
[9] Other possible choices for negative endings include “Jack Munroe” (Dugaw Catalogue, pp. 613-8), “London Merchant” (pp.692-3), and “The Dublin Tragedy” (pp. 752-6).
[10] Of course, there are many other ballads outside of the Dugaw catalogue which fully promote utopian fantasies, perhaps without some of the negative endings or connotations I address in this essay.
[11] This is also a notable inversion of Petrarchan conventions: whereas it is often the man who falls in love instantly with a passing woman, the Warrior Women ballads reverse the roles.
[12] Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 122.
[13] Dugaw also notes the vigor of lower-class women of the 17th-century as opposed to earlier time periods. See Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, p. 124.
[14] Fumerton, Unsettled, p. 137.
[15] Fumerton, Unsettled, p. 12.
[16] Dugaw Catalogue, pp. 565-9.
[17] See the first and second definitions of “outlandish, adj. and n.” in the Oxford English Dictionary.
[18] See Amy Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 1993. 92.
[19] Karen Lyon, “Wooing and Wedding: Courtship and Marriage in Early Modern England.” Folger Magazine 8 June 2018.
[20] Erickson, p. 19. See also Christine Churches’ discussion of English Common Law in “Women and property in early modern England: a case-study.” Social History, vol.23, no.2, May 1998, 165-80.
[21] Fumerton, Unsettled, p. xxi.
[22] For an overview of lower-class complainants who expressed such fears regarding the gentry in the English central courts, see Andy Wood, “Fear, Hatred and the Hidden Injuries of Class in Early Modern England.” Journal of Science History, vol.39, no.3, Spring 2006, 813.
[23] Wood, p. 816
[24] For more on British Sumptuary Laws, see Paige L. Hanson, “Renaissance Clothing and Sumptuary Laws.” University of Michigan-Dearborn. 14 September 2010.
[25] Wood, p. 816
[26] Dugaw Catalogue, pp. 586-90