The editing of primary source material for the medieval and early modern periods is important. Edited by Jo Ann Moran Cruz, An Account of an Elizabethan Family is an excellent contribution, and it will be of value to historians and literary scholars of Elizabethan England, particularly those interested in family life, gender relations, and estate management. Those concerned with high politics or religion will find less immediately relevant within these pages; such is the nature of the source material. Cassandra Willoughby's account of her ancestors, compiled during the early eighteenth century, includes entertaining episodes and family dynamics that may be familiar to those who have studied the landed elite of the period, but slightly more surprising may be the role played by women here.
Willoughby wrote her account while living in the family seat of Wollaton Hall, where she had access to its study and the family's letters, account books, and miscellaneous papers, all but one of which were apparently later thrown away, in about 1832. Accordingly, the account, now preserved at the University of Nottingham, affords the only available glimpse of the family's trials and tribulations over multiple generations. Moran Cruz's very helpful and detailed introduction discusses how Willoughby handled her sources by paraphrasing, quoting, and truncating the material, but it notes also how she was generally accurate in the account (in so far as verification has been possible). As an editor, Willoughby appears to have had difficulty sometimes due to the condition of the papers, but she also noted that she tried her best to remain faithful to her sources while also refraining from painting her ancestors in too negative of a light—a tall order given the personalities. Much of the account details the very unhappy marriage of Francis and Elizabeth Willoughby (née Lyttleton), their many children (of twelve, six daughters survived to adulthood), and their suspicious servants in the household. Frequently does the reader find that Elizabeth Willoughby was of a “turbulent spirit,” with “ungovernable passions” and “very vexatious,” writing often to her husband “unhandsome speeches” that mirrored her “uneasie temper, and the severity” with which she treated her daughters, who grieved little upon her death (119, 127, 130, 181). Given what Willoughby has passed down to us regarding Elizabeth's less admirable qualities, one may wonder what she thought too unbecoming to report regarding her great-great-grandmother. Personal difficulties between Francis and Elizabeth led the latter to leave her husband for Coventry and London between 1578 and 1588, when Francis took on staggering amounts of debt to build the magnificent Wollaton Hall; Elizabeth did, however, come to enjoy the new home and gardens for the last six or so years of her life. Some degree of reconciliation appears to have come with Elizabeth's death, but Willoughby notes that the daughters did not uniformly experience happiness afterwards, and the reader gets the sense that, despite the idyllic environs of Wollaton, Francis and the daughters had difficulty finding peace. Alongside the many letters used and reproduced in part by Willoughby to chronicle the family history and genealogy, many of the family's account books provided her account with valuable financial details, while printed volumes in the family study also appear to have been useful (e.g., Georg Agricola's De Re Metallica Libri XII [orig. 1556] and the Journal of the House of Lords for 1621). Accordingly, the reader with commercial or otherwise economic concerns may find interesting the range of luxury goods available to the family, and the mining activity across the Willoughbys’ lands.
Apart from the valuable insights provided by Willoughby's account, Moran Cruz is to be congratulated here for the edition, as are Kate Sampsell, for her accuracy in checking transcriptions in the original manuscript, and Miranda Bethell, for her characteristically excellent copyediting. The volume's introduction sets the account in the contexts of both Willoughby's day and the Elizabethan (and Jacobean) period, but it also explains the Willoughby family tree and the original (now lost) source material. The text of Willoughby's already very informative account is further strengthened by additional source material gathered by Moran Cruz from a range of other archives, including Willoughby's own working notes, now at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The apparatus criticus throughout the volume is meticulous and thorough if at times slightly laborious reading (e.g., 116–17n177, which runs to 31 lines). The convenient footnotes contrast with the endnotes, the reason for the inclusion of which may elude some readers.
On 5 September 2019, Moran Cruz gave a talk about Willoughby's account of the strong-willed if ill-tempered Willoughby women and their caring if controlling husbands. With enthusiasm and verve appropriate to the subject, she answered the humor of her audience, who knew a little something about the family fortunes. The talk offered more than a summary of this volume. It was in many ways the cherry on top. The venue was the great hall of Wollaton Hall, and I swear that I could still hear the yelling, the badgering, and the dysfunction of over four hundred years ago still echoing around that stately home and grounds.
