Abstract
ABSTRACTThe strange circumstances of the hasty clandestine wedding of Thomas Thynne and Maria Audley in 1594 raise questions about possible motives for it. He was the teenage heir to a rich Wiltshire gentleman, and she was a young attendant of Queen Elizabeth, but their families were divided by political faction. Private correspondence afterwards and contentious court of Arches proceedings lasting to 1601 reveal the tactics adopted on the one hand by her family to try to prove consent of both bride and groom to marriage, on the other the countering tactics of the Thynnes to disprove it. The parents exploited ecclesiastical court procedure, and attempted to influence witnesses and judge. This case shows attitudes to marriage making, beliefs about rituals and tokens, and conceptions of the law of marriage in Elizabethan England.
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