Women's Mausoleums Imagined: Reformation, Text and Tomb C.1550
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ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Women’s mausoleums imagined: reformation, text and tomb c.1550-1650 https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40413/ Version: Full Version Citation: Lauenstein, Eva-Maria (2019) Women’s mausoleums imag- ined: reformation, text and tomb c.1550-1650. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Women’s Mausoleums Imagined: Reformation, Text and Tomb c. 1550-1650 Eva-Maria Lauenstein Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English and Humanities Birkbeck, University of London This declaration confirms that the work presented in this thesis is the candidate’s own. 1 Abstract This thesis argues that the funeral monument provided women with a literal and figurative place to participate in the writing of the English Protestant Reformation. Recent literary scholarship has fruitfully explored the tomb in the early modern imagination by bringing commemorative practices into dialogue with textual production. While such studies have uncovered the cultural significance of the funeral monument as a literary motif in creative encounters with remembrance and grief, and memory and posterity, little has been said about the tomb’s religiosity, and how it functioned to formulate the religious break with Rome in literary and cultural productions. This study reads the written and built funeral monuments of, or to, Katherine Willoughby Brandon Bertie, Duchess of Suffolk, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Anna Mountfort Bill, and Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle in the context of contemporary religious texts to find the ways that women’s monuments created narratives of English Protestant selfhood. The doctrinal and religious significance of the tombs of women are approached from two angles. On the one hand, the chronological framework of this thesis allows us to gain different synchronic sights of women’s tombs as sites for the affirmation of religious belief at key moments when the potential for religious unity in England was seriously jeopardised. On the other, it provides a diachronic view of female tombs in the cultural imagination of the period, showing that they persistently articulated new beliefs in relation to the fabric of medieval ecclesiastical space and the religious structures that had gone before. Thus, this thesis argues that the commemoration of women played a significant role in shaping the character of English Protestantism. In turn, commemorative building allowed women to shape the religiopolitical fabric of England by bringing their own interpretations of official 2 government documentation, authorised bibles, sermons, conduct books, devotional texts and antiquarian writing to an audience of contemporary viewers and readers. 3 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to the staff at the British Library, the National Art Library, Senate House Library, the Warburg Institute and Library, Birkbeck Library, Lincolnshire Archives, the National Archives and Westminster Abbey Library and Archives for their invaluable expertise and answering countless questions during the research process. A special thank you to Jane Howsam at St James, Spilsby and the church community at St Mary and St Laurence, Bolsover for a warm welcome and facilitating my access to the Willoughby and Cavendish chapels, respectively. Thank you to my supervisors, Isabel Davis and Susan Wiseman for their expertise, guidance, honesty, support and time. For providing constructive feedback on chapters, articles, reports, conference papers and random thoughts, I would also like to thank Stephen Clucas, Linda Grant, Vanessa Harding, Lisa Hopkins, Judith Hudson, Nicole Mennell, Tom Rutter, Adam Smyth, Will Tosh, Susan Wabuda, Micheline White and Gillian Woods. Thank you, Louise Horton, for introducing me to Katherine Willoughby and for many great conversations and shared conference and reading group visits that continually shaped my work for the better. I am also grateful for the input of, and the countless wonderful chats with, Jennifer Allport Reid, Sarah Birt, Steven Breeze, Matt Clancy, Jennifer Edwards, Nuria Gisbert, Catrin Griffiths, Catja Hamilton, Beth Hodgett, Sue Jones, Sarah O’Malley, Semane Parsons, Moniza Rizzini Ansari, Victoria Sparrow, Robert Stearn, Barbara Taylor, Rebecca Tomlin and Calum Wright. My thanks to everyone at the the Birkbeck Department of English and Humanities, the Birkbeck Medieval and Early Modern Reading Group, Shakespeare’s Globe, the London Renaissance Seminar, the Birkbeck Institute of Humanities and Birkbeck Institute of Social Research and the 4 Women’s Studies Group. Special thank you to Anthony Shepherd for all his reassuring emails and to Sarah Hart for being a fantastic independent vival panel chair. Thank you to my examiners Patricia Phillippy and Mihoko Suzuki for all the inspiring feedback on my work. For their patience and moral support, I would like to thank Sarah Beard, Maria Chadwick, Sarah Cochrane, Binita Dave, Donna Davison, Aistė Griciūtė, Tori Harrison, Pascal Hürlimann, Adam Kaye, Cat Lees, Liz McClenan, Isabel McNeil- Watson, Nick Mortimer, Sally Osborne, Laura Rae, Laurie and Tom Wallace and Miki Webb. Thank you to Lisa Lauenstein for listening to all my thoughts, good and bad. Thank you to Dylan Herzog for being there. Mami, danke für alles. 5 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 1 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................ 3 Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... 6 Notes on Text ............................................................................................................... 7 List of Plates ................................................................................................................. 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 12 Chapter 1 Katherine Willoughby: Women, Tombs and the Parish Church ............... 39 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 39 1. Katherine Willoughby and the Visual Language of Reform at Spilsby in Lincolnshire ............................................................................................................ 44 2. The ‘Lively Stones’: Women in the Reformed Parish Church ....................... 76 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 97 Chapter 2 Mary Sidney Herbert: Entombment, Marriage and the State .................. 101 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 101 1. Interring Love: Mary Sidney Herbert’s Antonius ......................................... 107 2. Marital love and Protestant identity: The Cecil tombs of St Nicholas, Westminster Abbey .............................................................................................. 140 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 158 Chapter 3 Monumental Text: The Funeral Book of Anna Mountfort Bill ............... 162 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 162 1. The Monument in Text and Space ................................................................ 168 2. The Funeral Sermon and the Female Voice .................................................. 202 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 221 Chapter 4 Peace, War and the Monument: Margaret Cavendish’s ‘Bell in Campo’226 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 226 1. The Garden and Creative Ownership of Space ............................................. 231 2. Order and Unity: Building Medieval Space .................................................. 249 3. The Family Patriarch: Expressing Unity Through the Funeral Monument .. 260 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 287 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 290 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 307 Image Appendix ....................................................................................................... 350 6 Abbreviations BB Bishops’ Bible (1568) BHO British History Online BL British Library CCEd Clergy of the Church of England Database CUP Cambridge University Press DRB Douay-Rheims Bible ELH Journal of English Literary History GEN Geneva Bible (1560) KJV King James Version of the Bible (1611) LV Latin Vulgate MED Middle English Dictionary MHRA Modern Humanities Research Association NA National Archives NADFAS National Association of Decorative and