Family: Marriage Patterns and Family Life from 1500 to 1690

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Marriage Patterns and Family Life from 1500 to 1690

In 1500 Irish customs in marriage and family life can be distinguished by ethnicity, law, and economic status. Practices in Gaelic Ireland differed from those in areas where English law was observed; and within both regions, wealthy families viewed marriage differently from poorer families.

The legal differences in marriage practices in Gaelic and Anglo-Irish Ireland should not, however, be exaggerated. In the two societies canon law formed the basis for the recognition of a valid marriage. Under church law a marriage was created when both partners freely expressed their consent to the union. Neither public ceremony nor consummation was necessary, although throughout the medieval period, the church tried, with only limited success, to promote the public solemnization of nuptials. The church also asserted the permanent nature of the marriage bond and prohibited unions between persons who were related to one another up to the degree of third cousin.

In Gaelic Ireland canon law on marriage was observed selectively. At the upper levels of society marriage was exploited as a valuable political asset. Marriages often coincided with political alliances and lasted only as long as it was politically convenient for the families of both partners. As networks and connections between families shifted and changed, so too new marriage partners were selected and old ones abandoned. Most aristocratic men and women in Gaelic Ireland married several times and usually in the lifetime of former spouses. Shane O'Neill, lord of Tyrone, for example, married four times and clearly changed his marriage partners to suit his political circumstances.

The political pressure to select a marriage partner from within the small pool of Gaelic aristocratic families meant that marriage of kinsfolk within the prohibited third degree was common. The regular petitions for papal dispensations from such unions suggest some concern to keep within the confines of canon law. The fact that dispensations were sought years after the marriage had been consummated also indicates, however, that papal church approval was not considered a matter of great urgency.

We have far less information about the duration of marriages among families outside the aristocratic elite, but the surviving records of the Armagh ecclesiastical court document women from less well-off Gaelic backgrounds complaining of their abandonment by husbands who had taken new wives. Clandestine marriages also continued to be consummated into the seventeenth century, although by that time they were mainly to be found within the landless section of society.

In Anglo-Irish society marriage was normally only dissolved on death, but given the prevalence of war in sixteenth-century Ireland and generally high mortality rates, most people married more than once. A study of marriage patterns among the landed families of the Pale in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries revealed that many women in that community married three or four times. Few, however, matched the record of Genet Sarsfield from County Meath, who had six husbands.

By 1500 the payment of a dowry to the groom was customary in both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish families. Among wealthy Gaelic families dowries were usually calculated in cattle, but in the 1560s and 1570s, Scottish women also brought attractive dowries of mercenary soldiers and weaponry to their new chieftain husbands in Ulster. In the more anglicized parts of Ireland, a woman's marriage portion usually consisted of cash, animal stock, and household goods. In the towns a merchant could also offer a prospective son-in-law admission as a freeman of the city or membership of a trade guild—both passageways into the closed commercial world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Irish towns. At the lowest levels of rural society the bride made a valuable economic contribution to the establishment of the home of the new couple. She provided the animal stock for the land and the household utensils, such as a brass pan and a griddle iron that she would use for cooking and brewing beer.

Old English and Gaelic society also cemented social and political alliances through the fostering of children. The bond between foster parents and the foster child was strong and was often said to be stronger than that between the child and his or her natural parents. Dame Janet Eustace, who was foster mother to Thomas Fitzgerald, tenth earl of Kildare, was alleged to have had a strong influence over him, particularly at the time of his rebellion in 1534.

Gaelic society traditionally made no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, and the determination of the paternity of a child lay with the mother. The most famous example of this phenomenon was that of Alison Kelly who claimed in the 1530s that her son, Mathew, by then a young teenager, had been conceived following a night spent with Conn O'Neill, first Earl of Tyrone. Conn liked the boy and not only accepted him as his son, but also nominated him as his heir in the agreement that he made with the English administration in 1542, much to the dismay of his legitimate sons—particularly Shane, who refused to recognize Matthew as his father's heir.

In Old English society, only children conceived within marriage were entitled to inherit their father's property and title. Primogeniture was also universally observed by Old English families, although daughters could inherit the family property if a man had no sons. Under Gaelic law daughters were prohibited from inheriting land. In practice, however, the difference between the two systems was less stark. Many Old English families entailed their estates to male heirs only, thus effectively excluding women from landownership.

Changes in the religious and legal structure of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ireland had an impact on marriage customs and family life in a number of ways. First, the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response strengthened the necessity for a formally solemnized marriage ceremony in a church. In addition, the Council of Trent asserted Catholic doctrine on the sacramental nature of marriage. The marriage of partners from different religious denominations resulted in a public discourse in the seventeenth century on what constituted a valid marriage. This was a debate that was to become increasingly bitter in the 1690s, when the Penal Laws imposed severe penalties on Protestant landowners who married Catholic or Dissenting spouses.

The triumph of English law over Gaelic custom meant the eradication of Gaelic-style divorce and the dominance of primogeniture. The replacement of Old English and Gaelic landed families by new English estate owners brought other changes. There was, for example, a noticeable increase in the number of female heiresses in seventeenth-century Ireland; and espousal to an heiress was an important means by which the large landed estates of the "Protestant Ascendancy" were created and consolidated in the late seventeenth century. Within the craft families of the new British tenancies in Munster towns, male heads of household also demonstrated a willingness to divide their goods equitably among surviving widows and children.

The legal documentation which accompanied marriage ceremonies became increasingly complex in the course of the seventeenth century, particularly among the landed elite. Marriage settlements, deeds, and wills were drawn up, often before the marriage took place, in order to ensure jointures for widows, marriage dowries for daughters, and livelihoods for younger sons. Jointures, by which land was held jointly for the use of husband and wife, replaced dowries as a means of providing for widows; and increasingly the jointure was in the form of a cash annuity rather than, as in the dowry, a specified portion of the family estate. There was also a steady increase in the amount required for marriage dowries, with cash amounts of £2,000 to £3,000 replacing the cattle and household goods of earlier times among the wealthier families. The growing tendency of Irish peerage families to look for spouses from English peerage families also exerted inflationary pressure on the cost of marriage.

SEE ALSO Burial Customs and Popular Religion from 1500 to 1690; Primary Documents: Act of Uniformity (1560)