Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare (1295–1360): Household and Other Records ed. by Jennifer Ward (review)

Married at thirteen, a mother at seventeen, widowed at eighteen, Elizabeth was married a second time at twenty-one and became a mother and widow again all in the same year. Married for the third time at twenty-two, she became a mother yet again (her three children thus having three different fathers) and was widowed for the third and final time at twenty-six. Then she lived the life of a very rich lady for a further thirty-nine years. These splendidly edited accounts give us the details of such a life in the fourteenth century. The reader has to pick and choose according to taste and interest. I put in my thumb and pulled out a few plums: garters, for instance, and shoes (the lady had at least twenty-two pairs), or the coach she rode in (like the one in the Luttrell Psalter, the editor suggests), which she bequeathed to a daughter, and the gowns (rated from 1 to 6 in order of quality). It is easy to be swamped by the number of bullocks, cows, and oxen; coursing hounds, greyhounds, and hunting dogs; goats, pigs, and sheep; rabbits, spaniels, and moles; peacocks, partridges, and pheasants; or by the quantities of beer and bread consumed by her household of a hundred persons; or (let us summarize) by the sheer materiality of what is put before us. This reader is unsure how to resist being pulled under: he finds nothing to hang onto (besides those garters, shoes, and frocks). Lady Clare seems not to have played any games (no dice, playing cards, or tennis rackets are itemized in the index). She was generous to the poor and founded Clare College, Cambridge—but what else did she do with her free time, all thirty-nine years of it? Was she idle as well as rich?