Tudor Women Had No Financial Rights. So Why Are Their Names All Over the Account Books?

Under Tudor law, a married woman didn't legally exist as a financial person. Everything she owned became her husband's the moment she married. She couldn't sign a contract, collect a debt, or run a business in her own name.

And yet the account books survive. And they are full of women.

Today we're looking at how Tudor women actually managed money in a world that officially pretended they weren't — from Bess of Hardwick knowing to the penny what her glazier charged her, to the mercer's wife who knew cloth better than her husband and they both knew it.

The math was never the problem. They had the math covered.

Sources and further reading: The Lisle Letters, ed. Muriel St. Clare Byrne Margaret Hoby, The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth

Katherine Fenkyll episode: https://youtu.be/QggqaYpPbe4

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