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Cassandra Brydges, née Willoughby (1670-1735), was a remarkable woman; through her marriage at the age of 43 to the immensely wealthy and influential James Brydges (later the first duke of Chandos), she was connected to many of the most important members of society at the time. Unusually for the period, much of her writing survives, including an extensive collection of correspondence, and it is therefore possible to gain a richer picture of her life. This book presents all the known extant letters of the duchess. They reveal a woman engaged in a very wide range of activities - from managing family and the family fortunes, investing on the stock market, socialising with a wide range of important and influential people, to matchmaking, expressing views on social conduct, painting, and researching family history. They are accompanied by an introduction, providing an overview of her life, and full notes. Professor ROSEMARY O'DAY teaches in the Department of History at the Open University.
This volume is an invaluable portrait of family, kinship, regional and national dynamics in the Tudor and early Stuart period. Based on letters and papers that Cassandra Willoughby found in the family library, her Account focuses on the women of the family, and offers insight into sixteenth-century family dynamics, gentry culture and court connections.
Through an analysis of the marriage patterns of thousands of aristocratic women as well as an examination of diaries, letters, and memoirs, this book demonstrates that the sense of rank identity as manifested in these women's marriages remained remarkably stable for centuries, until it was finally shattered by the First World War.
This is the first comprehensive biography of a major, but neglected, figure of his age. John Theophilus Desaguliers made his mark on the eighteenth century in several diverse ways. He was an assistant to Sir Isaac Newton and later elucidated the difficult concepts of Newtonian physics in private lectures. He was a member of the Royal Society, and was presented with the Society's highest honour, the Copley Medal, no less than three times. He was a pioneering engineer: the water supply of Edinburgh, the ventilation of the Houses of Parliament and the first Westminster Bridge all owed him a debt. In a different sphere, Desaguliers became the third Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons which was founded in 1717. He is remembered worldwide for his seminal influence during those early days of Freemasonry. He also wrote poetry and had an influential circle of patrons, including George I and Frederick, Prince of Wales (whom he initiated as a Mason at a specially convened lodge at Kew). This biography, based on original research, describes a charismatic character who was a major figure of his age.
Silent Partners restores women to their place in the story of England's Financial Revolution. Women were active participants in London's first stock market beginning in the 1690s and continuing through the eighteenth century. Whether playing the state lottery, investing in government funds for retirement, or speculating in company stocks, women regularly comprised between a fifth and a third of public investors. These female investors ranged from London servants to middling tradeswomen, up to provincial gentlewomen and peeresses of the realm. Amy Froide finds that there was no single female investor type, rather some women ran risks and speculated in stocks while others sought out low-risk, low-return options for their retirement years. Not only did women invest for themselves, their financial knowledge and ability meant that family members often relied on wives, sisters, and aunts to act as their investing agents. Moreover, women's investing not only benefitted themselves and their families, it also aided the nation. Women's capital was a critical component of Britain's rise to economic, military, and colonial dominance in the eighteenth century. Focusing on the period between 1690 and 1750, and utilizing women's account books and financial correspondence, as well as the records of joint stock companies, the Bank of England, and the Exchequer, Silent Partners provides the first comprehensive overview of the significant role women played in the birth of financial capitalism in Britain.
A broad-ranging exploration of the everyday lives of women—from social calls to medical needs—during one of English history’s most fascinating periods. Maids, wives, and widows were the official classifications of women according to English law in the early modern era, immediately following the medieval period. In this fascinating study of the time, historian Sara Read shows “how varied, rich, joyous, and sociable early modern women’s lives were, not to mention just how busy or difficult they could be” (Read, from the introduction). Read delves into how these women filled their days, including vivid details of what they liked to eat and drink, what jobs they held, and how they raised their children. With chapters devoted to beauty regimes, fashion, and literature, the book examines the cultural and domestic aspects of life, as well as how women understood and dealt with their monthly periods and what it was like to give birth in a time before modern obstetric care was available. Maids, Wives, Widows also highlights key moments in women’s history such as the 1671 publication of the first midwifery guide by Jane Sharp; the turmoil caused by the Civil Wars of the 1640s; the various new religious sects in which women participated to a surprising extent; and many others. Also scrutinized are cases of notorious criminals such as murderer Sarah Malcolm and confidence trickster Mary Toft who pretended to give birth to rabbits.
By the early eighteenth century, the rapid expansion of the British empire had created a technological problem: communication and networking became increasingly vital yet harder to maintain. As colonial possessions and populations grew and more individuals moved around the globe, Britons both at home and abroad required a constant and reliable means of communication to conduct business, plumb intellectual concerns, discuss family matters, run distant estates, and exchange news. As face-to-face communication became more intermittent, men and women across the early modern British world relied on letters. In The Opened Letter, historian Lindsay O'Neill explores the importance and impact of networking via letter-writing among the members of the elite from England, Ireland, and the colonies. Combining extensive archival research with social network digital technology, The Opened Letter captures the dynamic associations that created a vibrant, expansive, and elaborate web of communication. The author examined more than 10,000 letters produced by such figures as Virginia planters William Byrd I and his son William Byrd II; the Anglo-Irish nobleman John Perceval; the newly minted Duke of Chandos, James Brydges, and his wife Cassandra Brydges; and Sir Hans Sloane, the president of the Royal Society, and his colleague Peter Collinson. She also mined letters from the likes of Nicholas Blundell, a Catholic member of the Lancashire gentry, and James Eliot, a London merchant and ardent Quaker. The Opened Letter reassembles and presents the vital individual and interlocking epistolary webs constructed by disparate groups of letter writers. These early social networks illuminate the structural, social, and geographic workings of the British world as the nation was becoming a dominant global power.
The British Embassy in Istanbul was unique among other diplomatic missions in the long eighteenth century in being financed by a private commercial monopoly, the Levant Company. In this detailed study, Michael Talbot shows how the intimate relation between commercial interest and diplomatic practice played out across the period, from the arrival of an ambassador from the restored British crown in 1661 to the sudden evacuation of his successor and the outbreak of the first Ottoman War in 1807. Using a rich variety of sources in English, Ottoman Turkish and Italian, some of them never before examined, including legal documents, financial ledgers and first-hand accounts from participants, he reconstructs the detail of diplomatic practice in rituals of gift-giving and hospitality within the Ottoman court; examines the at times very different meanings that they held for the British and Ottoman participants; and traces the ways in which the declining fortunes of the Levant company directly affected the ability of the embassy to perform effectively within Ottoman conventions, at a time when rising levels of British violence in and around the Ottoman realm marked the journey towards British imperialism in the region. MICHAEL TALBOT is Lecturer in History at the University of Greenwich.
The letters of Lady Anne Bacon, mother of Francis Bacon, which shed light on Elizabethan politics from a female perspective.
Although the idea of excess has often been used to degrade, many of the essays in this collection demonstrate how it has also been used as a strategy for self-fashioning and empowerment, particularly by women and queer subjects. This volume examines a range of material - including ceramics, paintings, caricatures, interior design and theatrical performances - in various global contexts. Each case study sheds new light on how excess has been perceived and constructed, revealing how beliefs about excess have changed over time.