Such Daughters and Such a Mother": The Countess of Derby and her Three Daughters, 1560-1647 (original) (raw)

This dissertation focuses on the lives of Alice Spencer Stanley Egerton, the dowager countess of Derby (1559-1637), and her three daughters: Anne Stanley Brydges Touchet, Lady Chandos and then dowager countess of Castlehaven (1581-1647), Frances Stanley Egerton, countess of Bridgewater (1583-1636), and Elizabeth Stanley Hastings, countess of Huntingdon (1587-1634). This work contributes to the fields of early modern English history, gender history, women's history, and family history. My primary sources include, correspondence, household accounts, legal records, contracts, leases, literary dedications, masques, literature, personal prayer books, tombs, almshouses, household inventories, wills, personal papers, and cheap print. The remarkable quantity and quality of sources by and about the Stanley women make it possible to re-examine their various life experiences by melding empirical research and gender theory. In 1631, the countess of Castlehaven accused her husband and one of...