Working the Early Modern Archive: The Search for Lady Ingram

Abstract

This paper is part of a Literature Compass cluster arising from a panel entitled ‘Working the Early Modern Archive’, originally presented at the 2005 MLA conference held in Washington DC. This session, arranged by the MLA Division on Methods of Literary Research, was chaired by Elizabeth Hageman (University of New Hampshire) and included papers by Jennifer Summit (Stanford University) on readers and medieval manuscripts, Lena Cowen Orlin (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) using a case study of archival research and the discovery and recovery of missing 16th-century materials, and Robert J. Griffin (Texas A&M University) on the relationship between archival research and theoretical approaches. The two pieces included in this Literature Compass special panel cluster highlight the different ways in which archival research continues to shape and to invigorate 16th- and 17th-century literary studies: ‘Working the Early Modern Archive: The Search for Lady Ingram’, Lena Cowen Orlin, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00425.x ‘Working with Anonymity: A Theory of Theory vs. Archive’, Robert J. Griffin, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00426.x ‘The Search for Lady Ingram’ introduces the subjects of one of the first family group portraits from England. A 1557 panel long misidentified as ‘Lady Ingram and Her Two Boys Martin and Steven’ is revealed to represent instead Alice Barnham and her two sons. Early modern archives are generally held to be uninforming about women, especially of Alice Barnham's merchant class, but in this case the records of the London parishes of St. Mildred Poultry and St. Clement Eastcheap, the London Drapers’ Company, the London Court of Aldermen, St. Thomas's Hospital, and the Court of Bridewell yield up a rich biography. They also provide some insight into a Tudor woman's private life as a committed Protestant during the reign of Mary I, as mother of a deceased third child, and as commissioner of an early and remarkable painting. These documents and a family memoir written by her grandson also go against the grain of prevailing narratives about patriarchy, to suggest that Alice Barnham was a woman of considerable independence of means and of spirit.