The compelling story of the unlikely, clandestine c. 1582 marriage of Elizabeth Jerningham and Charles Forth and its disastrous consequences survives in exceptional detail in two cases in the Court of Requests. In order to contextualize these complex cases, Ralph Houlbrooke assiduously reconstructs the background of each family. He delves deeply into the details of the young Forths’ marital dysfunction, using their lot as the basis for a microhistory that enhances our understanding of the history of the family, women, and marriage in early modern England.

The Jerningham-Forth union really never should have occurred at all. The families had virtually nothing in common and the couple appears barely to have known one another at the time of their marriage. The Jerninghams of Suffolk were a gentry dynasty who had married into the Bedingfield, Scrope, and Kingston families. They had an enduring association with Mary Tudor that culminated in Henry Jerningham I's appointment as a privy councilor. During her reign, the Jerninghams’ landholdings increased and lucrative offices, leases, and annuities enriched them. Upon her death, the Jerninghams’ sphere of influence became that of a regionally significant family, largely off the stage of national politics but prominent on lists of recusants. This success of the family's cadet line in the Marian era was not matched by the senior line of the family established at Somerleyton. The ill fortune of the “ruined” John Jerningham, the last male of this senior line, was of central importance to the story of his daughter Elizabeth. Plagued by chronic indebtedness during the course of his “disastrous career” (50), he was imprisoned, heavily fined, and ultimately pardoned for his marginal involvement in the 1570 Norfolk plot, which aimed in part at reestablishing Catholicism and killing Queen Elizabeth. An impecunious, deceptive, and litigious figure, he went into self-imposed exile in the southern Netherlands, where for a time he spied for England. Having sold many of his familial lands, John left his estranged wife, Katherine, and their daughters in a precarious financial position that probably drove the attempt to contract Elizabeth's marriage into the eminently respectable, albeit socially inferior, Forth family of Butley, Suffolk. In contrast to the Jerninghams’ significant connections to recusancy, the Forths—wealthy cloth merchants who had risen to the status of landed gentry—were staunchly Protestant.

The circumstances of the Jerningham-Forth marriage are murky. In 1579-80 Robert Forth sent his son, Charles, to Norwich to study with the clergyman Henry Birde. Without the knowledge of his family, Charles secretly married Elizabeth Jerningham, c. 1582. Robert Forth blamed the nefariousness of Elizabeth and her mother for having “enticed” sixteen-year-old Charles into deception and consequent failure in his filial duty. Notably, no one questioned the legitimacy of the marriage, despite its clandestine nature and the claim that a mysterious man in a blue coat, perhaps a priest, had conducted the ceremony.

The saga that followed is worthy of a major motion picture. Robert accepted the pair into his home contingent on Elizabeth's dutiful behavior, which was not forthcoming. She chafed at living with Charles's parents and yearned to establish an independent household. But rumor, ill will, Robert's ham-fisted refusal of her portion (an affront to the Jerninghams’ honor), and apparent disagreements over jointure led the couple into total marital breakdown. Elizabeth allegedly had multiple meetings with an unnamed man in the woods. She repeatedly left Butley—one time for more than three-and-a-half years—in order to live with her sisters. She gave birth two times—without notifying her in-laws of her pregnancy on either occasion. Charles alleged that she treated him with contempt and ultimately refused to sleep with him. Convinced (probably correctly) that he was not the father of her children, he begged Robert to provide him with only an annuity for life, essentially disinheriting him in favor of his brother so that in the event of his death Elizabeth and her children would receive nothing. Duly disinherited, he fled overseas and died in 1593, in circumstances that remain unclear.

Two ensuing court decisions (1593–1597) required Robert Forth to repay Elizabeth's 300-pound portion, which apparently, at least in part, had found its way to Charles. He also had to reimburse her for living expenses incurred during the periods that she and Charles were apart.

Houlbrooke's analysis of the marriage and litigation is evenhanded. In particular, he is at pains to give voice to Elizabeth, even though only very limited information from her perspective survives. He is at his best in carefully and sympathetically hypothesizing about the answers to questions that ultimately remain unanswerable: Why did Charles Forth agree to the marriage? Why did the Court agree with Elizabeth's argument that Charles repeatedly had abandoned her, when there seems to be ample evidence that she initiated her departures from the familial home? Why did Robert Forth's legal cause fail so spectacularly, despite the involvement of Edward Coke as counsel?

Houlbrooke argues that the story of the Jerningham-Forth marriage serves as a “case study in the micro-politics of family, gender, and religion” (231). His assessment of the case underscores the centrality of kin networks in the world of early modern elites, the roles of women in arranging and supporting marriages, and the practical limitations of a patriarch's power. In the realm of religion, the results are more surprising. Given that Elizabeth's father was a religiously tainted ne'er-do-well of rebellious inclinations and that her recusant brother-in-law Henry Jerningham II actively supported her legal causes, it is striking that there was no overt discussion of her family's religious leanings (or her own) in the recorded statements of her critical Protestant father-in-law and his supporters. Although explicit religious tensions do not emerge from the documents, the couple's divergent backgrounds likely contributed to the bleak trajectory of their contentious union, which Houlbrooke's book charts so adeptly.