Spousal Power Dynamics

In her overview of the letters of medieval elite women, Anne Crawford has concluded that ‘a working partnership’ was typical.¹ Frequently, the surviving historical evidence of medieval marriages obscures and silences the political power of women in relation to their husbands’ and their husbands’ political power. Yet, as Heather Tanner has shown, exceptionalism fails as a framing for the repeated appearance of politically impactful queens in the Middle Ages.² Further interrogating the frameworks for undertanding women’s power in the Middle Ages, Marie Kelleher has exposed the flaws of the informal/formal binary and has drawn attention to the multiplicty of manifestations of women’s power.³ These theoretical foundations allow us to better contextualize the interactions documented in archival records and in material objects.

The Paston Letters offer a revealing starting point for observing the dynamics of elite women’s power within spousal relationships. When her husband stayed in London for Parliament, or was thrown in prison, Margaret Paston conducted business as her husband’s main representative in Norfolk.⁴ On January 3, 1459, Elizabeth Poynings wrote to her mother, Agnes Paston, reminding her of several large sums of money due to Robert Poynings, her husband.⁵ The fact that dowry payments at times came long after the wedding date would grant women leverage against a husband, even as it might introduce frustrations into the spousal relationship and larger family dynamics. Possibly the fact that money remained due to Robert gave Elizabeth additional leverage in their marriage, for the moment. These two examples illustrate ways that women used their positions in relation to their husbands economically.

Another set of letters, from the Stonor family in late medieval England offer viewpoints into spousal power dynamics. As an unexpected reversal of traditional parenting roles, a letter from Elizabeth Stonor hints at how childrearing might have been more of a shared responsibility among the elite than modern observers might assume. In 1476, Elizabeth Stonor, the wife of a powerful aristocrat at the time of the War of the Roses, she left the children with her husband so that she could journey to London on business matters.⁶ Stonor’s husband awaited her instructions regarding his continued caretaking of the children.

On this website, two letters from different archival sources offer another viewpoint into spousal power dynamics. The letter from Joan I of Aragon to his wife Violant de Bar comes from the Archive of the Crown of Aragon’s Royal Chancery. This letter, one among thousands of royal family correspondences copied into the chancery registers, survives due to its status as one small part of that much larger project of the preservation of royal patrimony. The content of the letter reveals Joan’s high affection for Violant. The letter also demonstrates her large influence in his political decision-making, an influence that incurred severe social sanction from the bourgeois leadership of city councils and cultural commentators like Francesc Eiximenis.⁷ The second letter, written by Margherita Datini to her husband, also survives in a state archive, but not as part of a project of fashioning royal authority. Instead, the Datini firm preserved letters and financial records to ensure contract fulfillment and to retain information helpful to improving profits. These large-scale record-keeping practices ended up including letters even when their content lacked obvious long-term financial utility. The specific letter included on this website reveals a marriage less harmonious than that of Joan and Violant. Margherita, in this letter and others, castigates Francesco for his affairs and for his neglect of her economic needs. At the same time, she demonstrates high business acumen and handles dealings in Prato as the firm’s principle authority in Prato. The less than pleasant marriage in some ways allowed Margherita to expand her exercise of power as an agent of the Datini firm. It is likely that she leveraged Francesco’s misbehavior in order to increase her authority.

The most acrimonious marriage represented on this website, that of Catherine of Cleves, provides an example of how an elite marriage could intertwine with political strife. Having borne an heir to the Duchy of Guelders, Catherine engineered the replacement of her husband with her child as the political authority.⁸ This move, as a direct contest to her spouse’s power, illustrates the extent to which a marriage might provide the foundation for a coup. The material object that emerged from this, however, only hints at the strife through the absence of any representation of Catherine’s husband in the Book of Hours she commissioned. This raises questions as to other material objects commissioned by wives that lack representation of their husbands. Such absences should merit closer attention, in order to investigate the possibility of an acrimonious marriage with interesting spousal power dynamics at play.