Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Dowry

A dowry, which was also referred to as a marriage gift, was “the money or property the wife brings her husband” (1) to add to the economics of the marriage; it was the transfer of goods which became the woman’s property. (2) It was a gift, usually from a father to his daughter, not to the new husband, and it carried with it the expectation of a permanent alliance between the two families. (3) The dowry was a necessary component in order for a marriage. It was assumed, by both the daughter and the new husband, that a dowry would be paid and that it would provide economic assistance to the new family unit. (4) The size of the dowry was important because it determined whom a woman would be able to seek as a husband, as well as her future condition, because marriage was the only way for females to better themselves at the time. (5) As the dowry increased in size, the daughter was more able, and likely, to obtain marriage with a man holding a high status. There was a tremendous economic strain on the daughter’s family to come up with a substantial dowry, which could lead to their financial ruin. (6) However, an unmarried woman was an even greater strain on the family's finances. (7) The money required to support a single woman would never lead to any profitable outcome, whereas money put into a dowry was meant to lead to children and secure a valuable alliance with another family. After the woman was married, her husband was responsible for paying for her upkeep, and his family continued to bear that responsibility in the event of his death. (8)

The practice of dowry-giving was not reserved for the rich; rather, it was practiced at almost all levels of society. (10) The contents of dowries differed according to the family’s status. The following examples were from Wales, where the people were less wealthy than the English, but they provide an idea as to what things were given as dowries. (8) Typically, daughters of the gentry class would receive cash as their dowry, daughters of families holding a yeoman title could receive stock and goods as well as money (if their families were wealthier), and the poorer families may only have been able to provide livestock or household goods. (11)

Major gentry families would provide anywhere from £20-£900 as a dowry. (12) The amount given depended on the wealth of the family and how many daughters they had; if they had many daughters the oldest daughters would receive a larger dowry. (13) Other gentry families with less available money provided farm stock and household goods as dowries. These might include sheep, cattle, featherbeds, pots and pans or candlesticks. (14) The decision to give farm stock rather than money may have been based on the limited availability of cash at the time. Other families, instead of paying the cash up front, worked on an IOU system, either because of insufficient available cash or because their wealth was tied up in land. (15)

Daughters of yeoman families would typically receive household goods ranging from pots and pans to sheets and wedding clothes. Some families may have also provided smaller sums of money depending of their wealth. (16)

Poorer families without titles or land might have owned very little themselves and therefore did not have much to provide for their daughters' dowries. Even though these families had very little, they still tried to give their daughters something. In one case, the daughter received only a pot and a coffer. (17) Often poorer families would allot more than their family owned or could afford to give as dowries. Even thought this would create a very large burden, they did so because they were “proud of their genealogy and hopeful for their children.” (18)

As part of the negotiations surrounding a marriage, the families involved agreed upon two financial arrangements called the portion and the jointure. The bride's father paid a cash sum, the portion, to the groom's father. The groom's family arranged the jointure, which was an annuity or piece of land that would be paid to the bride if her husband predeceased her. A long and involved negotiation was often required before the portion and jointure could be fixed upon. (19) During the initial negotiation, "marriage portions were provided for the unborn children of the prospective bride and groom (so-called contingent remainders)..." (20) The bride's father appointed members of his extended family to be feoffes in trust, or trustees, of the portions; it was the responsibility of these men to represent the woman and to ensure that the money was administered correctly. (21) The portion system could easily be abused. Thomas Verney married his wife, Joyce, in order to receive her marriage portion and so pay his debts (since his father was deceased, the money went directly to him). He abandoned Joyce, now pregnant, after only a few months. (22)

1.Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “dowry.”

2.Duran Bell, “Wealth Transfers Occasioned by Marriage: A Comparative Reconsideration,” in Kinship, Network, and Exchange, ed. Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 198.

3.Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. White, “Revitalizing the Study of Kinship and Exchange with Network Approaches,” in Kinship, Networks, and Exchange, ed. Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3.

4.Gerald Morgan, “Dowries for Daughters in West Wales, 1500-1700,” Welsh History Review 17, no. 4 (1995): 534.

5.Ibid., 534.

6.Ibid., 549.

7. Miriam Slater, "The Weightiest Business: Marriage in an Upper-Gentry Family in Seventeenth-Century England," Past and Present, 72 (Aug.1976), 46.

8. Ibid.

9.Ibid., 534.

10.Ibid., 536.

11.Ibid., 537-547.

12.Ibid., 538.

13.Ibid., 540.

14.Ibid., 540.

15.Ibid., 538.

16.Ibid., 540.

17.Ibid., 547.

18.Ibid., 543.

19. Slater, 28.

20. Slater, 29.

22. Slater, 41.