When they began to develop into their modern form in the 1970s, histories of women, gender, and the family all took inspiration from pioneering studies of “history from below” and tended to focus on ordinary people more than on elites. Only relatively recently have the searchlights of these subdisciplines come to rest on women (and men) of the aristocracy. Nicola Clark's innovative monograph builds on the foundational work of scholars such as Barbara Harris (English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers [2002]) by attempting a collective biography of the Howard women. For much of the sixteenth century, the Howards were the most powerful dynasty in England, aside from the royal family, and, apart from the fortunes of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, historians’ attention has focused disproportionately on the Howard men. Clark's book offers a welcome corrective that uncovers the complexity of family and kin relationships while also showing how aristocratic women engaged with the political sphere “through patronage, literature, religion, and even rebellion” (2).
Chapter 1 looks at kinship relations and interactions, from marriage brokering to patronage and support, exposing the fine degrees of hierarchy that existed within the family, both between women and between women and men. Chapter 2 examines material culture and patronage and the influence women could exert through the clothing they gave, received, and wore; the hospitality and gifts they shared; the jewelry they designed and the fabrics they wove or embroidered; and the architecture and funerary monuments they commissioned. What is fascinating here is how often women created symbols that acknowledged both their natal and their marital families, putting their dual loyalties and affections on open display. Chapter 3 explores the disintegration of the marriages of Anne Howard/de Vere with Edward de Vere, Katherine Howard/ap Rhys/Daubeney with Henry, Lord Daubenay and Elizabeth Stafford/Howard with Thomas Howard, later the third Duke of Norfolk. Each woman turned first to close kin for assistance, which was not always forthcoming, and then petitioned crown officials (Thomas Wolsey or Thomas Cromwell), with varying degrees of success. While Anne Howard managed to interrupt her wayward husband's mismanagement of his estates, and Katherine Howard achieved a (rarely discussed) formal separation from bed and board and an adequate financial settlement, Elizabeth Stafford/Howard suffered ostracism and physical confinement for her refusal to accept her husband's brazen affair with Bess Holland.
In chapter 4, Clark traces the nature of Howard involvement at Court, both at the center and at the periphery of royal circles. In particular, she highlights instances when members’ loyalties to crown and family conflicted, such as when Henry VIII's affections lurched from one queen to the next. Chapter 5 confronts the serious crises the family faced when individual members instigated or became caught up in political rebellions or other acts that authorities considered treasonous. In addition to the infamous accusations of adultery leveled at Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, these included less publicized episodes, including the attempted rebellion Rhys ap Gruffuld and his wife Katherine Howard/ap Rhys incited in South Wales, beginning in 1529 and culminating in Rhys's execution in 1531. Henry VIII's reign witnessed multiple changes to the law of treason and Clark ponders the influence of women on this process, given how “many of the newly treasonous crimes were actions traditionally associated with women: unchastity, adultery, clandestine marriage, gossip, and slander” (141).
Chapter 6 looks at the religious affiliations of Howard women. The consensus among most historians is that the Howards were religiously conservative, based on the resistance to reform of Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk. Yet as Clark reminds us, Norfolk's daughter Mary Howard/Fitzroy, Duchess of Richmond, read the Bible in English in the 1540s, employed John Foxe as tutor to various Howard children, and facilitated his writing of what became the Book of Martyrs and his first contact with John Bale. In the late 1540s, she also helped publish reformist literature and actively sought licenses for evangelical preachers. Furthermore, hints about her religious outlook across her lifetime suggest a gradual warming to the reform movement rather than an immediate embrace. Other Howard women held a variety of beliefs, yet Clark documents how familial loyalty almost always overrode religious difference.
Making women the focus of study brings to light the autonomy many Howard females managed to achieve and the key roles they played in the family's survival and growth. For example, displays of matriarchal kinship at Court, where daughters followed mothers as maids of honor, assisted wider family strategies of securing patronage and exercising influence. At the same time, the disagreements and frictions between family members that Clark identifies, along with individual women's refusals to conform to the prescriptions of their “paterfamilias,” complicate easy assumptions about dynastic unity. As she observes, “contrary to much popular belief, there was no identifiably consistent strategy for political survival among the Howards” (4).
Clark's thematic approach works well, providing a fresh vision of the Howard family and its women, although it does produce a surprising amount of repetition between chapters. It is also a shame that she did not follow Barbara Harris's lead and put quotations into modern English. The availability of state papers online has facilitated this project, and attempting exact transcriptions is admirable, but some early sixteenth century quotes are difficult to grasp at first reading, and not all of Clark's transcriptions are accurate. There are also places where transcriptions from the originals (rather than from poorer quality reproductions) would have been preferable (18–19). These are minor quibbles, however, that do not detract from the originality of this fascinating study. It should prove of interest to historians of the family and gender and of politics and the English elites and provide a model for future examinations of aristocratic women's families.
