¹ Cassandra, Duchess of Chandos, The Continuation of the History of the Willoughby Family, being Vol. II of the Manuscript, ed. Wood, A.C. (Eton, 1958)Google Scholar, hereafter The Continuation of the History.

² Extensive excerpts were published in Stevenson, W.H. (ed.), Historical Manuscripts Commission Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton (London, 1911), 504–610Google Scholar, hereafter HMC Middleton. Among more recent uses of Cassandra's ‘Account’ (hereafter Account) is an article by Friedman, Alice, ‘Portrait of a marriage: The Willoughby letters of 1585–1586’, Signs, 11 (1986), 542–555CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and her House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago, 1989)Google Scholar; references to the Willoughbys in Daybell, James, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), esp. 78–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and an extended analysis of one of the vituperative letters from the Willoughbys in O'Callaghan, Michelle, ‘“An Uncivill Scurrilous Letter”, “Womanish Brabb[l]es”, and the Letter of Affront’, in Daybell, James and Gordon, Andrew (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia, PA, 2016), 174–177Google Scholar. There is also a brief mention in Jones, Norman, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age (Oxford, 1993), 112–114Google Scholar. O'Day's, Rosemary Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies (Abingdon, 2007)Google Scholar uses Cassandra Willoughby's notebooks, currently housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, which include an earlier draft of the Account. The materials in the Huntington Library, Stowe Brydges Collection are referenced herein as STB. STB 1 is Box 1, in which each document is catalogued in a separate folder. STB Box 2, folders 1 and 2 contain far more material. STB 2 (1) holds three notebooks of material, the first two of which are relevant to the present project.

³ Copies of original portraits of Francis and Elizabeth (Figures 2 and 3), dated 1573, now hang in Wollaton Hall. Francis is described as 26 years of age and Elizabeth as 27.

⁴ See Friedman, ‘Portrait of a marriage’, which includes four letters that have survived as part of the Burghley archives (BL, Lansdowne MS 46/30–33), a copy of only one of which, however, Cassandra seems to have seen and copied into her Account. The circumstances of the survival of this letter collection are similar to those attending the letters of John Holles which were copied down by his son. As in the Willoughby case, only one original letter of all the copied Holles letters has survived. P.R. Seddon (ed.), Letters of John Holles 1587–1637, 1, Thoroton Society Record Series (TSRS), XXXI (Nottingham, 1975), xi.

⁵ Marshall, Pamela, Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Nottingham, 1999), 11Google Scholar; in Chandos, The Continuation of the History, xvii n. 1, Wood gives the date as 1835.

⁶ Contemporary references to the Willoughbys of Wollaton generally follow the spelling that was common in the day: ‘Willughby’ rather than the more modern form of the family name ‘Willoughby’. This edition uses Willoughby throughout except where the primary sources use ‘Willughby’. Cassandra differentiated between the two branches of the family – those at Bore Place and those at Wollaton – by using different spellings; thus, when Bridget Willughby married Percival Willoughby, Cassandra changed her name to Bridget Willoughby. The names of the Wollaton family are doubled as ‘Willoughby (Willughby)’ in the index for ease of reference.

⁷ Information on the life of Cassandra Willoughby comes from Johnson, Joan, Excellent Cassandra: The Life and Times of the Duchess of Chandos (Gloucester, 1981)Google Scholar; O'Day, Rosemary (ed.), Cassandra Brydges (1670–1735), First Duchess of Chandos: Life and Letters (Woodbridge, 2007)Google Scholar; and Huntington Library, Stowe Temple Brydges Collection, STB, Boxes 1 and 2.

⁸ Emma Barnard was the third wife of Sir Josiah Child (c.1633–1699). Famous as a merchant and mercantile thinker, Child was a member of Parliament on and off from 1658 to 1685, a founding member of the Royal African Company, owner of over 1,000 acres in Jamaica and, due to his purchases of stock in the East India Company, a controlling presence in the East India Company in the 1680s and 1690s. ‘Contemporary notices of him are generally unfavourable’, as he was considered to be ‘vain, covetous and […] cunning’, The History of Parliament Online: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/search/site/Josiah%20Child. Perhaps Cassandra was drawn to the story of Francis Willoughby, as she and her brothers had also lost a parent very young and were forced to move. Her brothers were named Francis and Thomas, just as Margaret Willoughby's brothers were. Cassandra lost one of her brothers young, just as Margaret had. See Table 1. I thank Miranda Bethell for this insight.

⁹ For information relating to this fire and the damage to Wollaton Hall, see Cassandra Willoughby, ‘An Account of the Willughby's of Wollaton’, 2, Nottingham University Library MSS Collection, Middleton Collection (hereafter Mi), LM 27, fos 70–72; Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 66–68, and ‘The Wollaton Estate and the Civil War, 1643–1647’, in Hobson, J.H., Kennedy, P.A., and Walker, V.W. (eds), A Nottinghamshire Miscellany, TSRS, XXI (Nottingham, 1962), 3–4Google Scholar. Sir Percival Willoughby, Cassandra's great-grandfather, made only essential repairs, and the Hall remained virtually unoccupied by the family until Cassandra and her brother moved in. Percival Willoughby died at Wollaton in 1643.

¹⁰ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 125; Mi, LM 27, fo. 137; Johnson, Excellent Cassandra, 34.

¹¹ Johnson, Excellent Cassandra, 36.

¹² Charmantier, Isabelle, Johnston, Dorothy, and Smith, Paul J., ‘The Legacies of Francis Willughby’, in Birkhead, Tim (ed.), Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, FRS (1635–1672) (Leiden, 2016), 369–372Google Scholar.

¹³ Johnson, Excellent Cassandra, 38–40; Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 129–135, 137–138; Mi, LM 27, fos 142–149, 152–153.

¹⁴ Charmantier et al., ‘Legacies’, 366–368, 371. With Dr Thomas Man, Thomas continued the insect studies his father's death left unfinished (p. 371).

¹⁵ For his will, see TNA, PROB 11/414/320, fos 295–295v: ‘those Effects, the income of my Chambers etc which I have in Colledge, my books which have a place amongst Sir Thomas Willoughbys, I leave to Sir Thomas Willughby; and those written books or papers I desire may be read by him and what he thinks not for his vse be burnt’. Man's will also mentions the pupils he was teaching.

¹⁶ Johnson, Excellent Cassandra, 52–55.

¹⁷ Although Cassandra consistently refers to these papers as papers found at Wollaton, she may also have copied papers brought to Wollaton, along with the family library, from Middleton Hall where her father and mother had primarily lived. Many of the documents she saw had descriptions written by her father on them.

¹⁸ Cited in O'Day, Cassandra Brydges, 2 and n. 3. It is in two sections and focuses mainly on her travels. See Huntington Library STB, Box 2 (2), misc. uncatalogued papers and notebooks, and the Stoneleigh MSS, Gloucestershire Papers 20–21 at the SBTRO (DR 18/20/21/1).

¹⁹ The letter books are edited in O'Day, Cassandra Brydges; letter book I is in the Stoneleigh MSS collection at the SBTRO (DR 18/20/21/2). Letter book II is owned by the Governors of North London Collegiate School. The Huntington Library has a collection of letters to Cassandra and two poems written by her in the Stowe Temple Brydges Collection, STB 1 (file nos 1-47) and STB (2). Uncatalogued misc. papers; compiled family genealogies are in BL, Stowe MS 656 and in Huntington Library STB 2 (1) book 3, a genealogical notebook. Additional genealogical material is in Mi, LM 13.

²⁰ O'Day, Rosemary, ‘Family galleries: Women and art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71 (2008), 323–349CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The ‘amateur but expert’ assessment is on p. 323. Many of the paintings in the homes of James Brydges and Cassandra were unattributed and, according to their inventories, had no value. Most of them were quite likely done by Cassandra, whom Horace Walpole once called ‘a great artist’. See STB 1, no. 45, for a signed but undated and unfinished graphite drawing by Cassandra of Thoresby Hall. The sketch suggests that she lacked instruction in perspective drawing. O'Day, Cassandra Brydges, 342, fig. 13.

²¹ Ibid. 273, fig. 11.

²² O'Day, ‘Family galleries’, 331–332.

²³ O'Day, Cassandra Brydges, 334.

²⁴ Ibid. 12.

²⁵ Ibid. 324.

²⁶ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, xi.

²⁷ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 22; Mi, LM 27, fos 17–18.

²⁸ On Cassandra's practice in preparing the family history, see O'Day, Cassandra Brydges, 49, where O'Day notes that she edited and re-edited her history, searched out facts (e.g. in parish registers), and talked about her work with her brother and others. See the untidy early draft of her family history in the Huntington Library, STB 2 (1), 3 notebooks.

²⁹ Cassandra Willoughby, Account, Mi, LM 26, fo. 58 (hereafter Mi, LM 26, or the Account): see p. 91 below.

³⁰ Mi, LM 26, fo. 70: see pp. 103–104 below.

³¹ BL, Lansdowne MS 46/31; Friedman, in ‘Portrait of a marriage’, edits the letter on pp. 550–552.

³² Mi, LM 26, fos 126–127: see pp. 59–63, 157–158 below.

³³ Mi, LM 26, fo. 90: see p. 123 below.

³⁴ STB Box 2 (1), books 1 and 2.

³⁵ STB Box 2 (1), book 1, fo. 22v.

³⁶ Mi, LM 26, fo. 92: see p. 125 below.

³⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 63: see p. 94 below. Cassandra notes that ‘The date of the year, is not writ to any of these letters from Lady Arundell.’ See also Mi, LM 26, fo. 106: see p. 137 below.

³⁸ See her transcriptions of her father's paper volume of memoirs and observations taken out of old muniments, which are also accurately done, with only an occasional omission, addition, or correction. Mi, LM 13, summarized in small part in HMC Middleton, 269–271. See Mi, LM 26, fos 4–6 and 8–13, where she transcribes fos 47–61 of her father's account of the Marmion family in the period after the Conquest and his account of the Montforts and the Barons’ revolt of 1264–1267. She gives credit to her father's MS ‘which gives an account of some Antiquities of our Family’.

³⁹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 35v: see p. 68 below; HMC Middleton, 517–518. Mi, C 10; Mary A. Welch (ed.), ‘Willoughby letters of the first half of the sixteenth century’, TSRS, XXIV (Nottingham, 1967), 4. As Welch notes, in editing the letter to John Willoughby, ‘The wording of this letter is almost identical with that copied by Cassandra apart from the variation in a phrase and the omission of another word.’ Welch concludes that these were identical letters sent to the Willoughby brothers with scribal variants from a master draft.

⁴⁰ Thomas, Margaret, and Francis: see below, pp. 27–28.

⁴¹ Mi, Medley Account books A 31, 32; Mi, LM 26, fos 40–55. (Mi, A 32 has duplicate pagination. Initially the folios were numbered; at some later time page numbers were added.) W.H. Stevenson also copied down extracts from these account books. HMC Middleton, 397–414.

⁴² Mi, LM 26, fo. 40: see pp. 70–71 below; Mi, A 32, fo. 1, p. 1; also quoted in HMC Middleton, 399. On Tilty, located in Essex, see the edited text (hereafter ‘Text’), Text n. 12.

⁴³ Mi, A 32, fo. 25, p. 47; HMC Middleton, 409.

⁴⁴ Mi, A 32, fos 25–25v, pp. 47–48.

⁴⁵ Mi, A 31; some of the expenses are transcribed in HMC Middleton, 397–399.

⁴⁶ Mi, LM 26, fo. 50: see p. 82 below; Mi, A 31, fo. 11, p. 21; HMC Middleton, 398. The date for this account is 1553. Another example of her accuracy is evident in Text n. 67, where she transcribed information from Mi, A 31, fo. 10. Further, she also reports correctly the sum total of expenses calculated at the very end of Mi, A 31, fo. 26v. See Text n. 76. For further references to her accuracy in transcribing information from the Account Books, see pp. 70–73, 74–85 (esp. nn. 40, 54–55, 78) and 162 (esp. n. 284), 168 (esp. n. 313). of the edited text below.

⁴⁷ HMC Middleton, 452–456; Mi, A 69/1–2, fos 1–13v, 19.

⁴⁸ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 30–32; Richard S. Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton 1500–1643 with special reference to early mining in Nottinghamshire, 1500–1643’, PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 1964, 96. See Mi, Ac 49: ‘A note of all the changes of the Cole booke since Jo. Speed entred that is from the ii of October tell the xxvii^th of Auguste 1597. List of various expenses add up to 915^li—4^s—5^d. The whole gets from the daye abovesaid to the daye aforesaid is 6631 rookes of coles the value of them is: 1105^li—3^s—4^d.’

⁴⁹ Mi, LM 26, fos 133–133v: see p. 172 below.

⁵⁰ ‘being ga’ crossed out.

⁵¹ Mi, C 18/1; HMC Middleton, 158–159. The date of this letter is 21 Aug. 1588. John Adams goes on to write that the two women were pregnant, and that one of them miscarried ten weeks later as a consequence of her mistreatment: ‘the cyrcumstances did aggravat the offence, first the punishment without any fault in specially the hasty proceeding, the whipping of weomen, maryed gent[elweomen] with child, crying on there knees for mercy, wipte by a man, in the sight of men, and rejoyseing, whereby proceeded untymely chyld birthe (and the chyld as they sayd borne a live, died) and this chanced within x weekes after’.

⁵² Mi, LM 26, fo. 157: see pp. 198–199 below. The draft original, copied down by Stevenson, reads: ‘R[ight] ho[nourable] my humble dutie remembred; I make myself ^bolde (humbly craving pardon) to implore the honourable contynuaunce of your Lordship's favour in recommending my former suite to Mr. Secretarie, towching the wardship of the landes of Sir Fraunces Wyllughbyes yongest daughter; being the rather incited thereunto, for that I finde the nowe Ladie Wharton, the mother thereof, to be my ernest competitour therein, suggesting many thinges alltogether untrue, to withholde the same from me, and thereby to procure it unto herself; which if your honourable Lordship doo not helpe to prevente, my estate is farre more miserable then ever it was, I shall hardlye be able ever to free my poore estate, or to make any dewe satisfaction to Sir Fra[ncis's] many creditors. For she, which was so unkynde a wyfe, to so over loving a husbande, as having absolutely contryved and gotten to herself and ^her heires the greatest parte of his landes, colde not afforde his dead corps the leaste parte of those duties rightes and obsequies which weare due to suche a man; and hath bin so harde a stepmother to his children, as firste to withdrawe his fatherly affeccion from theim in his lyfe tyme, to be a straunger, or rather an enemy, unto theim since his deathe, and nowe of late ^{by Sir My[c]hell Molins meanes} to invegle the yongest of them with faire promises of advauncement to come up to London, and within theis iiii^or or fyve dayes to bestowe her in marriage upon an apprentice or petti merchant of lytle worthe; she that hath in so many thinges (not unknowen to the worlde) since her firste meeting with Sir Fraunces soughte the subvercion and overthrowe of his howse and name: What I may then looke for att her handes (if I be ^{should be any waye} subjecte to her ^malice[whom whe holdeth her professed enemy] your Lordship in your honourable wysdome and consideracion may easily conjecture. And therefore humbly craving your Lordship's honourable care of my [word crossed out] releise herein, doo still rest your Lordship's in all dutie and devocion and so righte humbly take my leave.’ Mi, F 10/32; HMC Middleton, 620–621.

⁵³ Mi, LM 26, fo. 87: see p. 119 below. This assessment is echoed by comments made by Thomas Stanhope, a close associate of the Willoughbys and one of the leading gentry in Nottinghamshire: ‘he [Sir Francis] is […] a very sweet-natured man and not greatly followed, yet easily governed’. Centre for Kentish Studies U 1590 C 2/3, cited in Beryl Cobbing and Pamela Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford: Local Life in Elizabethan Times (Radcliffe-on-Trent, 2003), 188.

⁵⁴ STB (2) 2, Uncatalogued half-sheet of paper signed ‘Rob^t Barnard Vic^r ’: see below, Introduction n. 202.

⁵⁵ Mi, 7/180/5/1, fo. 2.

⁵⁶ Mi, LM 26, fo. 135: see p. 174 below.

⁵⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 133v: see p. 173 below.

⁵⁸ O'Day, Cassandra Brydges, 243.

⁵⁹ For an analysis of women's letter writing that elaborates on these points, see Laura E. Thomason, The Matrimonial Trap (Lewisburg, PA, 2014), 12–14, although her focus is on English women letter-writers in the 18th century. See also Daybell and Gordon (eds), Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain.

⁶⁰ Mi, LM 26, fo. 194v: see p. 251 below.

⁶¹ Mi, C 29; The remainder of this letter and a second letter from Montague Wood full of similar complaints, are included as part of the edited text below, pp. 251–253. These letters are included by the kind permission of Lord Middleton.

⁶² Mi, LM 26, fo. 168: see 211–212 below.

⁶³ Mi, LM 27, fos 21–22; Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 26. In a letter to Bridget Willoughby she wrote, ‘her Husband does not care she should goe journeys from him […] but must sit mopeing at home by her fire side, turning apples – and may goe to Church to pray for her friends’.

⁶⁴ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 26–29, 46–47, 62, 69–86, 89–92, and passim; Mi, LM 27, fos 21–24, 42–43, 64, 74–95v, 99–101, and passim. She ends her account with her first sight of her brother's wife: ‘The first sight which I had of that Lady which my Brother was to marry, struck me with such a lively impression of my eldest Brothers face (who had been dead two years and a half) that it was very hard for me to recover the great surprise which it gave me.’ Chandos, The Continuation of the History, 141; Mi, LM 27, fo. 156.

⁶⁵ Chandos, Continuation, xvii–xviii.

⁶⁶ O'Day, Cassandra Brydges, 14.

⁶⁷ See other genealogical writings in BL, Stowe MS 656 and STB 2 (1) book 3.

⁶⁸ Mi, LM 13, a volume of memoirs and observations taken out of old muniments. See Introduction n. 38.

⁶⁹ Smith, Richard S., ‘A woad growing project at Wollaton in the 1580s’, TTS, 65 (1961), 27–46Google Scholar; Smith, R.S., ‘Sir Francis Willoughby's ironworks, 1570–1610’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 11 (1967), 90–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pelham, R.A., ‘The establishment of the Willoughby ironworks in north Warwickshire in the sixteenth century’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 4 (1953–1954), 18–29Google Scholar. Francis was also trying to expand coal production and the market for coal, and he was considering funding a paper mill.

⁷⁰ Airs, M., The Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A Building History (Stroud, 1995)Google Scholar; Friedman, House and Household; Girouard, Mark, Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Strauss, Sheila M., Wollaton and Wollaton Hall: A Short History (Nottingham, 1989)Google Scholar; Marshall, Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family; Pevsner, Nikolaus, ‘Double profile: A reconsideration of the Elizabethan style as seen at Wollaton’, The Architectural Review, 107 (1950), 147–158Google Scholar; and a number of articles in TTS, Vols 6, 72, and 76. See also John Kelly Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton, 1547–1596’, PhD thesis, University of Virginia, 1991.

⁷¹ Smith, ‘Willoughbys of Wollaton’, chs 7–11; Smith, Richard S., Early Coal-Mining around Nottingham 1500–1650 (Nottingham, 1989), 22–23Google Scholar. Cassandra does include some receipts from coal for 1596–1599 in the 2nd vol. of her Account, Chandos, Continuation, 30–32.

⁷² Sir Dugdale, William, The Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1656)Google Scholar, only carried the family's origins back to Sir Hugh Willoughby temp. Henry VI (p. 757b), but Robert Thoroton, The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (London, 1677), 35, traced the family back to Ralph Bugge, his son Richard Bugge and grandson Richard de Willoughby, knight. Cassandra traces the Willoughby origins to William Willoughby in the reign of Edward I. This is due to a mistake in the family pedigree at Birdsall House drawn up in 1573. HMC Middleton, 504 n. 2. Cassandra's father Francis Willoughby's genealogical notes frequently mention Richard and Ralph Bugge, references that Cassandra did not pursue. Mi, LM 13, 39, 44, 69, 85, 97, 133, 134. The Birdsall House genealogy was probably taken from William Flower, The Visitations of the County of Nottingham in the Years 1569 and 1614, Harleian Society, IV (London, 1871), 145, where he begins with William Willoughby temp. Edward 1.

⁷³ The earliest evidence of Ralph Bugge owning property in Willoughby is from a charter dated sometime between 1209 and 1233 in which he bought a mill and two acres of land in Willoughby-on-the Wolds. See Holt, J.C., ‘Willoughby Deeds’, in Barnes, Patricia M. and Slade, C.F. (eds), A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, Pipe Roll Society, ns XXXVI (London, 1962), 181Google Scholar; and Michael R. Bloom, ‘The careers of Sir Richard II de Wiloughby and Sir Richard III de Willoughby, chief justice of the king's bench (1338–1340); and the rise of the Willoughbys of Nottinghamshire’, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1985, ch. 1, for further information on Ralph Bugge's accumulated holdings.

⁷⁴ See HMC Middleton, 735, for over 30 different spellings of the name.

⁷⁵ For the lands of Richard Willoughby d.1362/3 (Mar. 14), see the Inquisitiones Post Mortem relating to Nottinghamshire, II, TSRS, IV (Nottingham, 1914), 256, taken at the time of his death in 1362/3. H.L. Gray has calculated, from the income tax returns for 1436, that the average income for lay barons was £882, while that of the greater knights was £208. This places Richard de Willoughby's income at the high end of the greater knights. Gray, H.L., ‘Incomes from land in England in 1436’, English Historical Review, 49 (1934), 630Google Scholar. HMC Middleton, 99; Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 59 n. 21; the information regarding the lands in nineteen counties comes from Simon Payling, ‘Sir Richard Willoughby (c.1290–1362), justice’, ODNB.

⁷⁶ Payling, Simon, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 2, table 1.1.

⁷⁷ This editor is preparing an extended article on the rise of the Willoughbys from the 13th into the 16th century.

⁷⁸ The family survived several minorities, such as that of Richard de Willoughby the senior at the end of the 13th century, and that of Sir Francis Willoughby himself in the 1550s. On several occasions the inheritance descended to a younger brother or half-brother.

⁷⁹ Payling, Political Society, 66.

⁸⁰ On Sir Henry Willoughby, see Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 26–36; and Cameron, Alan, ‘Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton’, TTS, LXXIV (1970), 10–21Google Scholar.

⁸¹ By his first wife Margaret, the daughter of Sir Robert Markham, he had two sons and three daughters, and by his third wife, Helen, the daughter of John Egerton, he had another son and daughter.

⁸² See Dunham, W.H., Lord Hastings Indenture Retainers, 1461–1483 (New Haven, CT, 1955), 129Google Scholar.

⁸³ Calendar of the Fine Rolls, Vol. XXII: Henry VII, 1485–1509 (London, 1962), sub nomine; Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Henry VII, 1485–1509, 2 vols (London, 1914–1916), sub nomine. See also HMC Middleton, 123, 131, 141, 508, 512, 514; Cameron, ‘Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton’, 18.

⁸⁴ Ibid. 17.

⁸⁵ HMC Middleton, 124, 137–140. See Mi, F 1/4 for a letter of fraternity from the Cistercian Abbey of Chalons for Henry Willoughby and his wife Elizabeth, at the intercession of the abbot of Fountains Abbey, York, offering all the privileges of the order, dated c.1500. See also Mi, F 1/7, dated 1512, for a letter of fraternity from Frater Robert, provincial prior, from the Carmelite order at Coventry for Henry ‘Willolowz’ and his wife Helena.

⁸⁶ HMC Middleton, 124, 127, 137, 330–387; Cameron, ‘Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton’, 19. He was also granted participation in the prayers of the Observant Friars.

⁸⁷ Ibid. 11.

⁸⁸ Henry engaged in enclosing his lands on a significant scale. ‘The Domesday of inclosures for Nottinghamshire, 1517’, TSRS, II (Nottingham, 1904), 39.

⁸⁹ Cameron, ‘Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton’, 11–12, 20; see table 1 in Cameron. Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’, 11, estimates that Henry's income from the coalfields in 1515–1516 and 1520–1521 was at least £325 annually.

⁹⁰ HMC Middleton, 115–120; Cameron, ‘Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton’, 14–16.

⁹¹ HMC Middleton, 131, 141.

⁹² Mi, F 6/5 (1489), 6/22 (1497), 6/2 (1512), 6/24 (1508), 6/25 (1513), 6/28 (1528); HMC Middleton, 121–122, 123, 126, 128, 130. See North Country Wills: Being Abstracts of Wills Relating to York, Nottingham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland 1383 to 1558, Surtees Society, CXVI (London and Durham, 1908), 121–123, for his 1528 will.

⁹³ An example of the care that Sir Henry took over marriage arrangements can be seen in a letter relating to negotiations in 1515 over the marriage of Thomas Gresley. HMC Middleton, 513 and Mi, 5/168/46.

⁹⁴ For the exact date of Thomas Willoughby's death, see p. 30 below.

⁹⁵ Initially Sir Francis Knollys held the wardship of Francis Willoughby. See below, pp. 32–33, for the negotiations concerning this wardship.

⁹⁶ HMC Middleton, 121. Anne's dowry was a modest 700 marks. Mi, D 4804.

⁹⁷ Cameron, Alan, ‘Some social consequences of the dissolution of the monasteries in Nottinghamshire’, TTS, 79 (1975), 50–59Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’, 18, citing Mi, M 145/6.

⁹⁹ Mi, F 1/5 1505; Mi, C 8/2.

¹⁰⁰ HMC Middleton, 132, 136; see Mi, F 10/13 for the signet letter from Henry VIII for a safe conduct for his pilgrimage to St James of Compostela, dated 22 Feb. 9 Henry VIII.

¹⁰¹ See a letter to John from Henry VIII raging against Rome. HMC Middleton, 509.

¹⁰² Cameron, ‘Some social consequences’, 50–59, esp. 53–54.

¹⁰³ For his will of 20 Dec. 1548, see Mi, 6/179/30–31; North Country Wills, 1383 to 1558, 201–203.

¹⁰⁴ The marquis was a frequent guest at the house of Henry Willoughby in late 1524 to 1525. HMC Middleton, 377–380, 384, 141, 514; Welch, ‘Willoughby Letters’, 51–53, 76–77; Mi, 7/180/30–31; Mi, C 11/2. For the 1528 marriage settlement, see Mi, 6/170/146–148.

¹⁰⁵ HMC Middleton, 519; Mi, LM 26, fos 37–38.

¹⁰⁶ Mi, LM 26, fo. 39: see p. 69 below. There is an epitaph of Henry Willoughby in Francis Willoughby's handwriting in Hebrew, English, Latin, and Greek, estimated written c.1575. Mi, F 10/2; HMC Middleton, 155–156.

¹⁰⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 39: see p. 69 below. John Hall was the bailiff at Middleton; George Medley was half-brother to Anne Grey and her brother Henry Grey. His mother, Margaret Wotton, was the second wife of Thomas Grey, 2nd marquis of Dorset. As a result, George Medley was an uncle [or a half-uncle] to Thomas, Margaret, and Francis Willoughby. The other executors were Gabriel Barwyke and Henry Marmion, servants to the Willoughbys. The supervisors of Henry's will were Henry Grey and Sir John Markham. Mi, 6/179/35/1–2; HMC Middleton, 149, 396.

¹⁰⁸ CPR 1550, Edward VI, iv, 11 gives to Henry Grey the wardship and marriage of Thomas Willoughby with an annuity of £40. According to the will, Francis was to receive £10 a year. At 16 Margaret was to receive 600 marks and Francis was to have £20 per year for clothing and learning until he came of age.

¹⁰⁹ The name is derived from the precinct in London that had housed the abbey of the Minoresses of St Mary of the Order of St Clare.

¹¹⁰ ‘Mrs.’ was the abbreviation for Mistress.

¹¹¹ Mi, LM 26, fos 39–40: see pp. 70–71 below; Mi, A 32, fos 1, 4, pp. 1, 7; HMC Middleton, 399, 402. Thomas was in Cambridge by 1550. He then boarded at Tilty for 20 weeks (23 May to 10 Oct.) in 1551 ‘when the greate swett was in Cambrydge and other placez’. Mi, A 32, fo. 5, p. 9; HMC Middleton, 404.

¹¹² See HMC Middleton, 474–477, for excerpts from a 1550 inventory of things at Wollaton Hall in George Medley's hand, including ‘Naperier and Lynen, with other stuffe sent to my cousin Maister Thomas Willoughbye at Cambridge’. See Venn, J.A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, IV (Cambridge, 1922), 423Google Scholar, who places Thomas at Magdalene College in 1551. He places him at Lincoln's Inn in 1558.

¹¹³ CPR 1554, Philip and Mary I, i. 238–239. Lord Paget received an annuity of £100 in addition to custody and the marriage of Thomas until he reached full age or Lord Paget obtained the effect of his marriage.

¹¹⁴ Taylor, James D. Jr., Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger c.1521–1554 and Wyatt's Rebellion (New York, 2013), 92Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ HMC Middleton, 521; Mi, LM 26, fo. 45: see pp. 75–76 below.

¹¹⁶ HMC Middleton, 521 n. 1.

¹¹⁷ The only uncle on the Grey side to survive in the wake of Wyatt's Rebellion was John Grey, the youngest son in the family. Although imprisoned, he was ultimately released and regained land and reputation under Queen Elizabeth. Francis Willoughby was to consult John, Lord Grey of Pirgo, when he engaged himself in marriage to Elizabeth Lyttleton (see below, p. 37).

¹¹⁸ Mi, 6/171/10 is a parchment document that describes the estate and wardship of Francis Willoughby, dated 1 July 1560. It notes that Thomas Willoughby esquire was deceased ‘the xvith day of August anno primo Elizabeth Queen’. It continues by noting that, at Thomas's death, Francis Willoughby was 12 years 30 weeks and 2 days old. This would put his birth date at about 17 Jan. 1546/7.

¹¹⁹ HMC Middleton, 400–402; Mi, A 32, fos 2, 3, pp. 3, 5.

¹²⁰ HMC Middleton, 406–407; Mi, A 32, fos 8,10, pp. 15, 19. This last bill, dated 1553, was written up by Margaret ‘wrytten with her owne hande’ when she was presumably about ten years of age. The subsequent bills were also written up by Margaret, as she mentions ‘Mystris Lenton for teaching and lokyng to my brother Fraunces and me […] to Clarke for teaching me to playe upon the virginalles’. She was apparently keeping a book of her bills.

¹²¹ HMC Middleton, 406; Mi, A 32, fos 8, 10–10v, pp. 15, 19–19b.

¹²² HMC Middleton, 408; Mi, A 32, fo. 17v, p. 32b.

¹²³ Mi, A 32, fo. 22, p. 41; HMC Middleton, 409.

¹²⁴ Mi, A 32, fo. 25, p. 47; HMC Middleton, 409.

¹²⁵ Mi, A 32, fos 22, 25, 28v–29, pp. 41, 47, 54–55; also cited in Friedman, House and Household, 19. The account book includes payments for schooling at St Anthony's from January to mid June 1556. On 15 Sept. 1556 Medley‘s account book records 3s 4d to the schoolmaster at Saffron Walden for teaching Francis for one quarter (fo. 28v, p. 54). HMC Middleton, 409–411.

¹²⁶ HMC Middleton, 406–414; Mi, A 32, fos 28v–30, 34, pp. 54–57, 65. For Francis Willoughby's schooling, see Baldwin, T.W., William Shakespeare's small Latine and lesse Greeke, 1 (Urbana, IL, 1944), 375–379Google Scholar. See also Charlton, Kenneth, Education in Renaissance England (London, 1965)Google Scholar, 93 ff.; and more recently Green, Ian, Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education (Farnham, 2009)Google Scholar, passim, although he does not cite specific school curricula or Sir Francis. See also Friedman, House and Household, 19.

¹²⁷ Mi, A 32, fo. 28v, p. 54; HMC Middleton, 411.

¹²⁸ Mi, A 32, fos 34–34v, pp. 65–66; HMC Middleton, 413. Stevenson dates this 1557, but the very next entry mentions 16 Apr. 1558.

¹²⁹ Mi, A 32, fos 12, 18, 18v, 20; pp. 22, 33, 34, 37; see HMC Middleton, 407–408, 412–413, for more notations on Francis's musical education. We know very little about the education Margaret received beyond the two French books mentioned earlier, that Mrs Lenton was teaching her along with Francis, that she was writing up bills at the age of ten, and that she shared, with Francis, their musical education. That it was advanced is suggested by a reference in Cassandra's account of Margaret discussing astronomical texts in Italian with a family servant. Mi, LM 26, fo. 70.

¹³⁰ Mi, A 32, fos 32v, 34v, pp. 62, 66; HMC Middleton, 412–413.

¹³¹ Friedman, House and Household, 32.

¹³² Mi, A 32, fo. 35v, p. 68; HMC Middleton, 413–414. In 1559 he was still ‘at docketer Carrez in Cambridge’. Mi, A 32, fo. 37, p. 71; HMC Middleton, 414. This was perhaps Dr Nicholas Carr at Trinity College, although Francis Willoughby's later close associations were with Jesus College. Francis was perhaps 13 years of age at the time.

¹³³ See Mi, 6/171/10 for the grant of custody, wardship and marriage of Francis Willoughby to Sir Francis Knollys, dated 1 July 1560. It describes a list of all the ‘extent and clere yerelye value of all the mannors landes and hereditaments’ of Thomas Willoughby who died 16 Aug. 1559. See Mi, A 31, fo. 24v for the costs (£10) of delivering Francis to Sir Francis Knollys at London and for staying there to conclude the agreement in 1560. Friedman, House and Household, 20. On Sir Francis Knollys, see Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘Sir Francis Knollys and His Progeny: Court and Country in the Thames Valley’, in Jones, Norman L. and Woolf, Daniel (eds), Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (New York, 2007), 131–155CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For George Medley's will and codicil in 1562, see Mi, 7/183/12.

¹³⁴ Mi, 6/171/10. See also 6/171/11–12, 14; CPR 1560–1563, Elizabeth I, ii, 180, dated 28 Feb. 1560/1.

¹³⁵ See Mi, 6/178/49 for the indenture of the release, signed by Knollys, Francis Willoughby, Matthew Arundell, and Margaret Arundell, and also Mi, 6/171/15, 17–18, for a licence to assign custody of the ward. The estate had to reimburse Knollys £1,500 for the losses he would sustain as a result of this transfer. Some of this £1,500 was paid by Margaret, his sister, and her husband Matthew Arundell, a point that Margaret makes in a letter to Francis about the time of Francis's marriage with Elizabeth Lyttleton. See also Friedman, House and Household, 21.

¹³⁶ Elizabeth Knollys did not marry until she was 29 years of age – a late age at the time – at which time (1578) she married Sir Thomas Leighton of Feckenham, Worcs. He served as Governor of Jersey and Guernsey.

¹³⁷ Friedman, House and Household, 21. Court life ‘required him to enter a world which thwarted his independence and ambition’. One also needs to keep in mind that, by then, he had lost his elder brother and George Medley, his uncle, who died in 1562 and who had taken care of him since his parents’ death. It may not have been independence, so much as stability and perhaps family that he desired. states, R.S. Smith, ‘There is only one record of his ever having visited Court.’ Smith, R.S., Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton Hall (Nottingham, 1988), 16Google Scholar.

¹³⁸ There may have been other reasons for his lack of interest in the life at court. Many years later (in 1626), one of Francis's sons-in-law, Montague Wood, writing to his brother-in-law Percival Willoughby, recalled that ‘olde Sir Francis when he came of yeares and had been brede a greate scholler, his officers […] bringinge in ther severall accomptes both of mony and landes he sawe that it was too muche for him to manage himselfe, he wished he had bene lefte one hundrethe powndes by the yeare and his bookes’. Mi, 2/76/3–16, cited in Friedman, House and Household, 37; and in Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’, 69.

¹³⁹ The Lytteltons were an established Worcestershire family whose prominence was due, in large part, to the family fortunes founded by Sir Thomas Lyttleton (1422–1481), Judge of the Common Pleas and author of ‘Lyttleton's Tenures’. Lyttleton is the spelling used by the senior (Frankley) branch of the family. John Lyttleton II, the father of Elizabeth, inherited a substantial estate that was widely scattered. Between 1531 and 1565 he enlarged and consolidated his holdings and from then until his death in 1590, he concentrated on managing his estate and establishing a political name for himself among the north Worcestershire gentry, becoming an MP in 1553, justice of the peace and, by 1556, high sheriff of Worcestershire. J.M.J. Tonks, ‘The Lyttletons of Frankley and their Estates’, MLitt thesis, University of Oxford, 1978, 7, 15–22, 39–41.

¹⁴⁰ According to a portrait copy that now hangs in Wollaton Hall, originally painted in 1573, Elizabeth Willoughby was then 27 years of age. This suggests that she was 18 years of age in 1564, at the date of their marriage. If, as has been suggested above, Introduction n. 118, Francis Willoughby was born Jan. 1546/7, he was a year younger. His portrait copy in Wollaton Hall, painted at the same time, lists his age as 26; he was probably 17 when they married.

In her study of courtship patterns in Kent, Diana O'Hara finds that ‘restraints upon too early marriages were internalized by the parties themselves’. O'Hara, Diana, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000), 159Google Scholar. She cites Martin Ingram, who found, in Wiltshire court cases, some antagonism towards the marriage plans of inexperienced adolescents. These studies, however, focus on ecclesiastical court records and village families. See Macfarlane, Alan, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840 (Oxford, 1986), 211–216Google Scholar, for evidence that it was commonly assumed that men matured only after 25 and women only after 20. Cook, Ann Jennalie, Making a Match: Courtship in Shakespeare and his Society (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 17–38Google Scholar, cites marital ages of 17–22 for women and 20–25 for men. Reconstitutive evidence supports the theory that early modern England fits the north-west European demographic formation pattern of later marriages between partners of similar ages, although early marriage was more common in the aristocracy and squirearchy. O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 165. Women were often given their portion of parental bequests at the age of 18 or 21, although sometimes the age of 16 or at the time of marriage was stipulated. According to the data from wills compiled by O'Hara, expectations of ‘age of marriage’ ‘being of age’ or ‘lawful age’ – the age at which property transfers were defined – increased significantly from the late 15th century to 1575–1599, with 80.6% of all wills giving the age for men as 20–24 and 64.2% specifying age 21, while the age of women fell largely between 15 and 24. O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 175–177. Based on this, while Elizabeth Lyttleton may have been considered of age to marry, Francis was on the young side. See Mi, 5/167/154 for Francis's coming of age and an indenture from Robert Penruddoke detailing records of his estates in 1568.

¹⁴¹ See Tonks, ‘The Lyttletons of Frankley’, 33–34, for information on the mineral holdings and investments of the Lyttletons.

¹⁴² Mi, LM 26, fos 55v and 60: see pp. 88, 91–92 below; for the settlement documents, see Mi, 7/ 183/19–25, dated Nov. 1564. The arrangements would appear to have been extraordinarily generous on the bride's side. In wealthy families, settlements would sometimes include the maintenance of the couple for a period of years; normally this was an offer made by the groom's family rather than the bride's. Erickson, Amy Louise, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London and New York, 1993), 93Google Scholar.

¹⁴³ Mi, LM 26, fo. 60, p. 92 below.

¹⁴⁴ Mi, LM 26, fo. 55v, p. 88 below.

¹⁴⁵ In 1558 Margaret had married Matthew Arundell, of Wardour Castle, Wilts. (knighted in 1574). Her dowry was a modest one of £300. Earlier, from 1450 to 1550, the median dowry for knights’ daughters was 200 to 300 marks, a pound being 20 shillings and a mark 13s 4d or ⅔ of a pound. Harris, Barbara J., English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550 (Oxford, 2002), 46–47Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ He was the surviving son of the duke of Northumberland who had been executed in the wake of the Jane Grey debacle.

¹⁴⁷ Mi, LM 26, fos 55v, 59–60: see pp. 87–88, 91–92 below. John, Lord Grey of Pirgo, died 19 Nov. 1564, one day prior to the date of the marriage settlement.

¹⁴⁸ George was the illegitimate half-brother of the father of Margaret and Francis and, apparently, a recusant at the end of his life. See Mi, LM 26, fo. 43 and Text n. 27. In a letter dated, most probably, in the early 1540s, Henry Grey, 3rd marquis of Dorset writes to Sir John Willoughby, noting that Henry Willoughby was willing to send his illegitimate half-brother George to study abroad: ‘I understand that my Brother Wyllughbye [Henry] is wyllyng to send George your kynsman, a yonge man in my opinion moche desyrous of learnyng, to some universytye beyonde the seas ther tarme [to arm] hym sylfe as well wyth good learnyng as the knoledge of foran cuntryes: yow wyll, and that the rather at my requeste, helpe the yonge man in thys hys honeste and godlye travayle wyth some monye yerlye towardes hys exhybytyon, for the tyme he shall ther tarrye, wherunto I truste, (my requeste sett aparte) verye naturall love and the vertuous desyre of the yonge man, wyth consideratyon had how the habylytye of my brother Wyllughbye wyll not stretche suffycyentlye wythout your helpe and others to fynd hym ther wull be a suffycyent spure to prycke yow, besides that ther can be no more godlye thynge done than to helpe forwarde those that be studyous’. Welch, ‘Willoughby Letters’, 66–67, no. 42; Mi, 7/180/1. In 1546/7 Sir John was giving George Willoughby an annuity of 20s. Welch, ‘Willoughby Letters’, 66 n. 3. The will of Henry Willoughby gave the Inne called the Castle in Holborne to George Willoughby alias Fox, his bastard brother, and to the heirs of his body. For the will, see Mi, 6/179/35/1–2. For George Willoughby, see Thoroton, Robert, The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (London, 1677), 223Google Scholar. For more on George Willoughby (Fox), see Mi, 6/171/28, a letter dated 1570 between Francis and John Lyttleton regarding land that George held. George Willoughby had two sons and a stepson named Richard Repington, a lawyer employed by Francis (Mi, LM 26, fo. 66 and see Text n. 125).

¹⁴⁹ It is notable that the negotiations conducted around the marriage of Francis and Elizabeth were done by men in the family. Erickson has noted that marriage negotiations in the upper classes in early modern England were largely carried out by women. Erickson, Women and Property, 93. Perhaps this was another reason for the negative views that Margaret Arundell held regarding the marriage.

¹⁵⁰ Forty years after Francis's marriage, by which time he was dead, his Lyttleton nephew, Humphrey, was arrested for protecting fugitives implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, while another Lyttleton, probably Humphrey's nephew, Stephen, was the tenant of the only place (Holbeche House in Staffordshire) where any gunpowder exploded. Both of these Lyttletons were executed as co-conspirators in the plot.

¹⁵¹ Questier, Michael C., Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵² Cassandra's assessment of this situation was that Lady Arundell was in the habit of governing her younger brother and was highly offended that he had taken the decision to marry Elizabeth Lyttleton without consulting her. ‘She writes that she marvels much that his hast should be so great, and his estimation of her so little, as never to consult her in the matter’. Mi, LM 26, fo. 56: see p. 89 below. Margaret rebutted any accusation that she was against his marriage in the expectation that she might enjoy Francis's estate. Mi, LM 26, fos 58–59: see p. 91 below. The marriage was particularly troubled by the poor relationship between Elizabeth and Margaret Arundell, who, herself may have married when she was only 15 while her husband Matthew was perhaps 25–27 years of age.

¹⁵³ Mi, LM 26, fo. 60: see p. 92 below; Mi, 7/183/19.

¹⁵⁴ J.P. Cooper's study of knightly families in the 16th century finds an average portion of £286 in the first half of the century and £859 in the latter half. By the early 17th century, in upper gentry families, portions ranged from £1,000 to £5,000. Cooper, J.P., ‘Patterns of inheritance and settlement by great landowners from the 15th to the 18th centuries’, in Goody, J., Thirsk, J. and Thompson, E.P. (eds), Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 192–327Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁵ The Lyttleton family seems to have been contentious. See a letter from Hugh Willoughby, uncle to Francis Willoughby, regarding all his debts where he states that he owes Edward Lytleton £16 and has no ‘grayte trust in hym but that he wyll sowe [sue] his oblygacion’. Mi, 6/135/32; Welch, ‘Willoughby Letters’, 79–82. There is a complicated marriage settlement in 1564 that appears to be in the Lyttleton favour made between John Lyttleton and Richard Smyth regarding the marriage of William, youngest son of John Lyttleton, with Margaret Smyth, sole heiress of Richard Smyth, in which John Lyttleton agrees to a payment of £1,300 and maintenance of the couple; the couple will receive Richard Smyth's estate on the death of Richard and his wife Frances. In default of any issue from William and Margaret, the estate would devolve to William and any other heirs of his body. Mi, 6/176/156 and 6/176/158–159. The estate appears to have conveyed to the Lyttletons in 1575/76. Mi, 6/176/160. See below, pp. 90–91 and Text n. 97.

¹⁵⁶ In 1568, just after coming of age, a ‘receipt was made out in the form of an indenture between Francis and Robert Penruddoke, the chief steward for the Dorset estates, detailing the court rolls, accounts and other evidences then being handed over by Penruddoke to Francis’. Welch, ‘Willoughby Letters’, 6; Mi, 5/167/154. Francis received licence to enter into his inheritance on 10 May 1568. CPR 1566–1569 Elizabeth I, iv, 150.

¹⁵⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 63: see p. 95 below.

¹⁵⁸ Mi, LM 26, fo. 67: see p. 99 below.

¹⁵⁹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 68: see p. 99 below.

¹⁶⁰ Mi, LM 26, fo. 72: see p. 105 below.

¹⁶¹ O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint, ch. 3.

¹⁶² Mi, LM 26, fo. 67: see p. 99 below.

¹⁶³ A pamphlet written for Middleton Hall describes the marriage as ‘one of the worst marriages ever recorded in any detail’.

¹⁶⁴ Mi, LM 26, fo. 59: see p. 91 below where Margaret writes that they were marrying ‘more in hast then they needed’.

¹⁶⁵ Francis, d. Dec. 1580; in Feb. 1578 Elizabeth reported that she was pregnant. In Dec. 1579 she was in need of a nurse for her son. It is likely that Francis was born in the late summer or early fall of the year in 1578. He was therefore perhaps two years old when he died.

¹⁶⁶ Mi, LM 26, fo. 67: see p. 99 below.

¹⁶⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 98: see p. 130 below.

¹⁶⁸ Mi, LM 26, fo. 67: see p. 99 below.

¹⁶⁹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 68: see p. 100 below.

¹⁷⁰ Mi, LM 26, fos 72–73: see pp. 105–106 below.

¹⁷¹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 69: see pp. 101–102 below. These ‘servants' were often younger, unlanded sons of gentry families who served in the household.

¹⁷² Mi, LM 26, fos 70-72: see pp. 103–105 below and Text n. 141.

¹⁷³ Mi, LM 26, fos 71–72: p. 105 below.

¹⁷⁴ In a ‘Liber Concessionum’, dated 1573/4 there is a list of leases up for renewal; the fines listed as paid were £2,600. Smith, Sir Francis Willoughby, 17. Smith notes that the rents were unrealistically low. Therefore any profits derived from the lands came from fines which, if land was lent out for three lives, would have been levied after decades rather than years.

¹⁷⁵ Ibid. 15, where he mentions the rise in coal revenues in the 1560s and 1570s, ‘though the need to install horse–driven pumps in the Wollaton coalfield for the first time in 1573 foreshadowed the difficulties to come’. See also Smith, Richard S., Early Coal-Mining around Nottingham 1500–1650 (Nottingham, 1989)Google Scholar.

¹⁷⁶ Ibid. 12; Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’, 36–37.

¹⁷⁷ Mi, A 57, fos 8–93; excerpts in HMC Middleton, 421–451

¹⁷⁸ No monthly tallies were given in 1574.

¹⁷⁹ Marshall, Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family, 22; see also Mi, A 57; HMC Middleton, 421–451.

¹⁸⁰ Mi LM 26, fos 72–72v, 74, 85: see pp. 105–108, 117 below.

¹⁸¹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 74: see p. 108 below.

¹⁸² Mi, LM 26, fo. 85: see p. 118 below.

¹⁸³ Mi, LM 26, fo. 85: see p. 118 below.

¹⁸⁴ See, for example, Mi, LM 26, fos 74, 75: see pp. 108–109 below.

¹⁸⁵ Mi, LM 26, fos 74–75: see p. 108 below.

¹⁸⁶ Buxton was a fashionable spa and resort in Derbyshire frequented by Burghley, Leicester, and Mary, Queen of Scots, among others. See fo.74 and Text n. 148.

¹⁸⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 75: see pp. 108–109 below.

¹⁸⁸ Mi, LM 26, fo. 76: see p. 110 below. Nichols, John, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823), xviiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸⁹ Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (Amherst, 1999), 188; see also Text n. 106.

¹⁹⁰ Mi, LM 26, fos 86–87: see p. 119 below.

¹⁹¹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 85: see p. 117 below.

¹⁹² Mi, LM 26, fo. 85: see p. 118 below.

¹⁹³ Mi, LM 26, fos 89–90: see pp. 122–123 below. Barbara J. Todd notes that there were two exceptions in the common law to a wife's subservience to her husband. One was with regard to her own soul and the second was ‘the acknowledgement that all women, including wives, bore personal allegiance to their sovereign under common law’. Todd, Barbara J., ‘Written in her heart: Married women's separate allegiance in English law’, in Stretton, Tim and Kesselring, Krista J. (eds), Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law World (London, 2013), 163–191Google Scholar. Todd documents the challenge to this principle in the 17th century and later.

¹⁹⁴ Mi, LM 26, fo. 90: see p. 123 below.

¹⁹⁵ This claim was not included in Cassandra's final copy, but it is included in her draft copy. STB Box 2(1), book 1, fo. 22v. On Joahn, see Text n. 200.

¹⁹⁶ Mi, LM 26, fos 92–93, pp. 125–126 below.

¹⁹⁷ Coventry was perhaps 20 miles from Kingsbury, while Middleton was perhaps 4 miles from Kingsbury in the opposite direction.

¹⁹⁸ It is possible that this case came through the court of requests, which functioned as an equity court under the Privy Seal. This court, as did chancery, functioned alongside the common law courts. The power exercised in the court of requests was an extension of the monarch's prerogative right to hear and determine subjects’ complaints. Stretton, Tim (ed.), Marital Litigation in the Court of Requests 1542–1642, Camden 5th ser., 32 (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar, 8. See also Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England. A number of disputes between spouses came to this court, which was an important avenue for married women to receive more equitable treatment than they would have received at common law. The records, however, as reported by Tim Stretton in 2008, are in disrepair and difficult to use. The finding aids are also insufficient. The current handwritten catalogue in the National Archives does not list the over 300 bundles of cases chronologically or alphabetically.

¹⁹⁹ Mi, LM 26, fos 103–104: see p. 135 below.

²⁰⁰ BL, Lansdowne MS 101/41, quoted in Friedman, House and Household, 64

²⁰¹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 104: see p. 136 below. Elizabeth could, potentially, also have requested maintenance from the ecclesiastical courts. In 1610 members of Parliament complained about the Ecclesiastical Commission granting alimony to separated wives ‘to the great encouragement of wives to be disobedient and contemptuous against their husbands’, Foster, E.R. (ed.), Acts of Proceedings in Parliament 1610, II (New Haven, CT, 1966), 265Google Scholar, cited in Palliser, D.M., The Age of Elizabeth: England under the Later Tudors 1547–1603, 2nd edn (New York, 1992), 74Google Scholar.

²⁰² STB Box 2(2), Uncatalogued half-sheet of paper signed ‘Rob^t Barnard Vic^r’. According to this paper, found in Cassandra's notes to her history in the Huntington Library, by 1584/5 Sir Francis had fathered an illegitimate son. The note reads: ‘William Deverell alias Willoughby son of Katharine Deverell and as she has confess'd him, the son of Sir Francis Willoughby Knt of Nottinghamshire Baptized the 4^th day of March 1584. This is a tru copy taken out of the Register of Laughton in the morthing [Laughton-en-le-Morthen] in the County of York, and attested by Robert Barnard Vicar.’ For a William Willoughby recorded in Yorkshire early in the 17th century, see Text n. 281.

²⁰³ Mi, LM 26, fos 134, 136: see pp. 173–174, 176 of the edited text.

²⁰⁴ On the date of Elizabeth Willoughby's death, see fo. 141: see Text n. 353.

²⁰⁵ For this, see Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, esp. ch. 4; Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’; Smith, ‘A woad growing project’, 27–46.

²⁰⁶ Sir Francis received commissions relating to musters in the counties of Kent, Warwick and Nottingham, in 1577, 1580, 1589, 1591, and 1594. He was made high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1579 and in 1588–1589: see a 1588 letter of John Adams to Percival Willoughby: ‘I am sory Sir Frauncis is made shiryf this yeare. Let his under-shiryfe take heed for his yeare to come. All the judges of the Comon Plees have taken order to oversee all the offences of undershirifes to be duely and severely punished and also hathe appointed on to followe the informations against them. Lett him therefore beware.’ Mi, C 18/1; HMC Middleton, 158. He must have been made sheriff again in 1593/4 as there is an acquittance of the Pipe for him as sheriff of Nottingham. He was also justice of the peace at the Quarter Session in 1580, as his rulings for that year have survived in the Willoughby MS collection. See the range of materials in Mi, O. In 1592 Francis received a commission to administer the oath of supremacy within the county of Nottingham.

²⁰⁷ HMC Middleton, 538; Mi, LM 26, fo. 76: see p. 109 below.

²⁰⁸ Smith, Sir Francis Willoughby, 19.

²⁰⁹ The best description of the financial difficulties Francis (and subsequently his son-in-law Percival Willoughby) endured is in Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’, 46–70.

²¹⁰ Smith, Sir Francis Willoughby, 22 notes that ‘One of the mysteries of Sir Francis's ever deeper involvement in debt is that he could not bring himself to sell land on a sufficient scale to clear himself from debt’. See also Smith, ‘The Willoughbys of Wollaton’, 48.

²¹¹ Ibid. 51, citing Mi, 6/170/132.

²¹² HMC Middleton, 566 and n. 1; Mi, LM 26, fo. 129.

²¹³ P.E. Rossell, ‘The Building of Wollaton Hall, 1580–1588’, 2 vols, MA thesis, University of Sheffield, 1957, cited in Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 192.

²¹⁴ Mi, LM 26, fo. 129: see Text n. 295.

²¹⁵ O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 211. Three of his daughters married in the 1580s. Bridget received a dowry of only 2,000 marks, perhaps because of expectations that the bulk of the estates would be settled on her and Percival. Mi, 5/168/74–76; Mi, 1/7/3, dating between 1581 and Nov. 1584. The wedding expenses in 1580 amounted to £1,213 2s 4d: Mi, A 60/2, fo. 1; see also HMC Middleton, 555. Total expenses for 1580–1585 were over £13,400, including £4,737 3s 5d in lands purchased. Mi, A 60/2, fos 2–2v. See a letter written by Francis to Thomas Willoughby (Mi, 2/76/3/4) relating to debts. Francis continued to buy, not selling sufficient lands to pay his debts. Smith, Sir Francis Willoughby, 22–26. For the marriage of Dorothy Willoughby with Henry Hastings, Francis agreed to settle land worth £200 per annum on the couple and to give £2,000 with his daughter in 1585. Mi, 6/170/127. Cf. also Mi, 6/170/131.2 and Mi, 2/76/3/7. For Margaret Willoughby's marriage to Robert Spencer in 1587, see M.E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1540–1640, Northamptonshire Record Society, XIX (1956), 54. For the marriage settlement document, see Mi, 6/178/86. See also Mi, 6/178/88–94. Margaret's dowry was £4,000, and Robert had hopes that Francis would settle part of his estate on them in the future.

²¹⁶ Dorothy Colby Tamworth (1565–5 Apr. 1621) was the daughter of Thomas Colby (c.1530–5 Mar. 1588), of Sherfield-upon-Ludden, Hampshire (Hants), a ‘puritan west country lawyer’ (http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/colby-thomas-i-1530-88) of Grey's Inn and Elizabeth Gilbert, daughter of Edward Gilbert, alderman of London. She was named her father's heir at an Inquisition post mortem held on 11 Dec. 1588. She married her first husband, John Tamworth of Leake, Lancs (1562–18 Feb. 1594), in 1583. He was a squire of the body to Queen Elizabeth. Less than two years after Dorothy was widowed, she received a visit from William Russell, steward in the employ of Sir Francis who was under orders to find Francis Willoughby a new wife.

²¹⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 145: see pp. 185–186 below.

²¹⁸ Mi, LM 26, fos 145–46: see p. 186 below.

²¹⁹ Mi, LM 26, fo. 184: see p. 236 below.

²²⁰ Mi, LM 26, fo. 156: see p. 197 below.

²²¹ See the parish register for St Giles Cripplegate, London Metropolitan Archives A/002/MSO6419/001, under 16 Nov. 1596.

²²² Mi, LM 26, fo. 157v: see p. 199 below.

²²³ Mi, LM 26, fos 159–160: see pp. 201–202 below.

²²⁴ Mi LM 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Hanna, Ralph and Turville-Petre, Thorlac (eds), The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers (York, 2010)Google Scholar describe various medieval MSS in the Willoughby archives, a number of which are legal, devotional or liturgical in character.

²²⁵ Mi, LM 26, fo. 160: see p. 202 below. ‘This Sir Francis was a man of great piety and learning. There is still remaining a collection which he made of the most valuable books of his time, and many notes and remarks upon them writ with his own hand. There is also in the Library severall other little manuscripts writ by himself upon divine subjects some of which seem to have been heads of sermons for his chaplains to preach upon.’

²²⁶ The Lute Book of Francis Willoughby, c.1575, facs. edn, with introduction by Jeffrey Alexander and Robert Spencer (Kilkenny, Ireland, 1978); Mi, LM 16.

²²⁷ Mi, X 2/5. The surviving portion deals with the problem of flooding in the mines and of pumping, an issue for the Wolloughby mines as they dug deeper for coal.

²²⁸ Mi, LP 1–10.

²²⁹ Mi, F 15/1–15. It was sold from the Willoughby collection in 1883.

²³⁰ Mi, O 16/1.

²³¹ Friedman, House and Household, 30; for a description of the late 17th-century shelf list, see Poole, William, ‘The Willughby Library at the Time of Francis the Naturalist’, in Birkhead, Tim (ed.), Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635–1672) (Leiden, 2016), 227–243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³² STC 10443; printed by Richard Grafton with a preface by William Tyndal, in English; currently at the Folger Library.

²³³ Friedman, House and Household, 30. See Mi, O 16/7/1, which is a copy, in Francis Willoughby's hand, of excerpts from Foxe.

²³⁴ HMC Middleton, 621–622.

²³⁵ Friedman, House and Household, 30–33 provides a much more detailed description of some of these books. She assumes, however, that the 16th-century imprints in the surviving library catalogue of c.1690 were included in the 16th-century library. The catalogue is Mi, I 17/1/1. In addition, there is a surviving Forest Book, relating to Sherwood Forest, in the Middleton MSS Collection. Mi, L 3/ 1 & 2. It is the earliest extant version in English of a forest book for Sherwood Forest, written in a late 15th-century hand and, in the latter part, in a late 16th-century hand. See Boulton, Helen E. (ed.), The Sherwood Forest Book, TSRS, XXIII (Nottingham, 1965), 12–17Google Scholar.

²³⁶ Poole, ‘The Willoughby Library’, 228.

²³⁷ HMC Middleton, 284; Mi, O 16/6, 16/9, 16/14, 2/2/5, all dated c.1580; Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, ch. 5.

²³⁸ Mi, O 16/6; Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 160–165.

²³⁹ Mi, O 16/14; Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 166.

²⁴⁰ Mi, O 16/9; Levin, Carole, Propaganda in the English Reformation: Heroic and Villainous Images of King John (Lewiston, NY, 1988), 107Google Scholar. She describes the 16th-century heroic image of King John used to de-legitimize any idea of rebellion.

²⁴¹ On the Catholic sympathies of Thomas Markham's family, particularly his wife and three of his sons, see below, pp. 55–56 and n. 259.

²⁴² Mi, O 2/2/6; Acts of the Privy Council, XXIII (1592), pp. 253–261; Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 168–169.

²⁴³ Similarly the Wollaton library catalogue from 1690 is ‘almost barren of patristic authors or of any scholarly contributions to the endless confessional polemics of the day’, although it did include devotional literature and sermons. Poole, ‘The Willoughby Library’, 240.

²⁴⁴ On this issue in Elizabethan England, see Greaves, Richard, Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, MN, 1981)Google Scholar; Bearman, Peter S., Relations into Rhetoric: Local Elite Social Structure in Norfolk, 1540–1640 (Rutgers, NJ, 1993)Google Scholar; Jones, Norman, Governing by Virtue: Lord Burghley and the Management of Elizabethan England (Oxford, 2015), 6–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Nottinghamshire, as opposed to Monmouthshire, Lancashire, Durham and Warwickshire, there appear to have been few Catholics. And this may help explain the absence of religious concerns.

²⁴⁵ On the Arundells and their Catholic network, see Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England.

²⁴⁶ See p. 55 below.

²⁴⁷ Tonks, ‘The Lyttletons of Frankley’, 17.

²⁴⁸ Ibid. 41.

²⁴⁹ Willis-Bund, J.W. and Page, William (eds), A History of the County of Worcester: II, VCH (London, 1971), 214Google Scholar.

²⁵⁰ Morey, Adrian, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (London and Boston, and Totowa, NJ, 1978), 136Google Scholar.

²⁵¹ Tonks, ‘The Lytteltons of Frankley’, 40, 48; see also Bowler, H. (ed.), Recusant Roll No. 2 (1593–1594), Catholic Record Society, 57 (1965), 149–150Google Scholar.

²⁵² ‘that by pryde ye do atribute nothing unto your selves, but do discretely consyder, that the thynge whiche ye have, ye have it by the fre goodnes of God in Jesu Christ, & not by your owne merites & deseruynes, but by fayth whiche ye have for to helpe them which have nede of it’. Folger Library, STC 10443

²⁵³ Mi, 1/13/4–4a.

²⁵⁴ Mi, 1/13/10–11.

²⁵⁵ Hayden, ‘Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton’, 168.

²⁵⁶ Mi, LM 26 fos 174–180: see pp. 220–230 below.

²⁵⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 180: see pp. 229–230 below. Griffin Markham was exiled from England in 1605 for his recusancy and involvement in the Bye and Main Plots against James I. While in the Low Countries he was appointed lieutenant of the English army by Thomas Arundell, the son of Margaret Willoughby and Matthew Arundell. Questier, Catholicism and Community, 89. Griffin Markham married Anne Roos, the daughter of Peter Roos, Esq., of Laxton, in 1592. Bridenbaugh notes that ‘Lady Markham, wife of Sir Griffin, appeared at [Paul's Cross] in 1618 to do penance for marrying one of her servants while her husband was still alive. She had to stand again at other places and pay a fine of £1000’. Bridenbaugh, Carl, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1580–1642 (Oxford, 1968), 372Google Scholar.

²⁵⁸ Mi, LM 26, fo. 180v: see p. 230 below.

²⁵⁹ Mary Markham came from a staunchly Catholic family, although her husband, Thomas Markham, seems to have conformed. Their sons, however, remained Catholic, with Robert fleeing to Rome, Griffin as noted above, and his two brothers, Charles and Thomas, involved in treasonous activities in the 1603 plots. Their daughter married Nicholas Longford, a Derbyshire recusant. ‘Markhams’ house at Ollerton became a centre for Catholicism for many years.’ Cobbing and Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford, 198. See also Tighe, W.J., ‘A Nottinghamshire gentleman in court and country: The career of Thomas Markham of Ollerton (1530–1607)’, TTS, 90 (1986), 30–45Google Scholar; Markham, D.F., History of the Markham Family (London, 1854)Google Scholar; and Nicholls, Mark, ‘Treason's reward: The punishment of conspirators in the Bye Plot of 1603’, The Historical Journal, 38 (1995), 821–842CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶⁰ See Mi, 5/168/80 – a copy of a draft and undated marriage settlement between Sir Francis Willoughby and Thomas Markham, Esq., 1585/6, 28 Elizabeth.

²⁶¹ See the Inquisition post mortem for Francis Willoughby, 4 September 1597, that says that Margaret Spencer died prior to the date of the Inquisition. Mi, 1/2/2/1.

²⁶² Mi, LM 26, fos 162–165, pp. 204–208 below. The marriage took place 9 July 1587.

²⁶³ Mi, LM 26, fo. 164: see pp. 205–206 below.

²⁶⁴ Mi, LM 26, fo. 168: see p. 211 below.

²⁶⁵ Mi, LM 26, fos 170–173v: see pp. 214–220 below.

²⁶⁶ Mi, LM 26, fo. 173v: see p. 220 below.

²⁶⁷ Mi, LM 26, fo. 185: see p. 237 below.

²⁶⁸ Mi, LM 26, fo. 186: see p. 239 below.

²⁶⁹ Mi, LM 26, fos 193v–194, pp. 249–250 n. 488 below. This marriage of Frances and Montague Wood is mentioned in Percival Willoughby's draft letter to Lord Burghley in 1597 where he accuses Francis Willoughby's second wife of inveigling the youngest daughter to marry an apprentice or ‘petti merchant of lytle worthe’. See Introduction n. 52.

²⁷⁰ John Drake, Esq., of Ashe and Mount Drake, Devon (c.1560–1628), was, in 1595, captain of a militia in Devon. He later became an active member of Parliament from 1614–1626. Drake appears, however, to have been married to Dorothy Button and to already have two children in 1595. See Mi, 2/75/2/8/1-4 for the High Commissioner for Ecclesiastical Causes documents.

²⁷¹ Stone, Lawrence, Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 8 on ‘The Companionate Marriage’.

²⁷² Although David Underdown has argued that the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods were a time of strained gender relations, Alison Wall has concluded, based on her study of the letters of the sisters Joan and Maria Thynne, that such strained gender relations are more apparent than real and based largely on the greater availability of court records for historians to study. Cited in Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth, 75.

²⁷³ BL, Lansdowne 46/31, fos 61–62v; Mi, LM 26, fo. 126: see below pp. 157–158; Friedman, ‘Portrait of a marriage’, 550–551.

²⁷⁴ Cassandra writes, ‘Which suspicion had been bruted, greatly to her discredit’.