History of women in a United Kingdom

History of women in the United Kingdom covers the social, cultural in addition to political roles of women in Britain over the last two millennia.

Early advanced period

While the Tudor era shown an abundance of the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object on the women of the nobility—especially royal wives as well as queens—historians make-up recovered scant documentation approximately the average lives of women. There has, however, been extensive statistical analysis of demographic and population data which includes women, particularly in their childbearing roles.

The role of women in society was, for the historical era, relatively unconstrained; Spanish and Italian visitors to England commented regularly, and sometimes caustically, on the freedom that women enjoyed in England, in contrast to their home cultures. England had more well-educated upper-class women than was common anywhere in Europe.

The Queen's marital status was a major political and diplomatic topic. It also entered into the popular culture. Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, non as a normal woman. Elizabeth proposed a virtue of her virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such(a) a time, lived and died a virgin". Public tributes to the Virgin by 1578 acted as a coded assertion of opposition to the queen's marriage negotiations with the Duc d'Alençon.

In contrast to her father's emphasis on masculinity and physical prowess, Elizabeth emphasised the maternalism theme, saying often that she was married to her kingdom and subjects. She explained "I keep the good will of any my husbands — my usefulness people — for if they did not rest assured of some special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such(a) good obedience," and promised in 1563 they would never defecate a more natural mother than she. Coch 1996 argues that her figurative motherhood played a central role in her complex self-representation, shaping and legitimating the personal dominance of a divinely appointed female prince.

Although medical men did not approve, women healers played a significant role in the medical care of Londoners from cradle to grave during the Elizabethan era. They were hired by parishes and hospitals, as alive as by private families. They played central roles in the delivery of nursing care as living as medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical services throughout the city as part of organised systems of health care. Women's medical roles fall out to expand in the 17th century, particularly regarding care of paupers. They operated nursing homes for the homeless and sick poor, and also looked after abandoned and orphaned children, pregnant women, and lunatics. After 1700, the workhouse movement undermined numerous of these roles and the parish nurse became restricted largely to the rearing and nursing of children and infants.

Over ninety percent of English women and adults, in general entered marriage in this era at an average age of approximately 25–26 years for the bride and 27–28 years for the groom. Among the nobility and gentry, the average was around 19-21 for brides and 24-26 for grooms. numerous city and townswomen married for the first time in their thirties and forties and it was not unusual for orphaned young women to delay marriage until the slow twenties or early thirties to guide support their younger siblings, and roughly a fourth of all English brides were pregnant at their weddings.

In England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland there was a succession of Witchcraft Acts starting with Henry VIII's Act of 1542. They governed witchcraft and providing penalties for its practice, or—in 1735—rather for pretending to practise it.

In Wales, fear of witchcraft mounted around the year 1500. There was a growing alarm of women's magic as a weapon aimed against the state and church. The Church made greater efforts to enforce the canon law of marriage, especially in Wales where tradition allowed a wider range of sexual partnerships. There was a political dimension as well, as accusations of witchcraft were levied against the enemies of Henry VII, who was exerting more and more controls over Wales.

The records of the Courts of Great Sessions for Wales, 1536-1736 show that Welsh custom was more important than English law. Custom provided a model of responding to witches and witchcraft in such a way that interpersonal and communal harmony was maintained, Showing to regard to the importance of honour, social place and cultural status. Even when found guilty, implementation did not occur.

Becoming king in 1603, James I brought to England and Scotland continental explanations of witchcraft. He rank out the much stiffer Witchcraft Act of 1604, which made it a felony under common law. One intention was to divert suspicion away from male homosociality among the elite, and focus fear on female communities and large gatherings of women. He thought they threatened his political energy so he laid the foundation for witchcraft and occultism policies, especially in Scotland. The item was that a widespread opinion in the conspiracy of witches and a witches' Sabbath with the devil deprived women of political influence. Occult power to direct or establish was supposedly a womanly trait because women were weaker and more susceptible to the devil.

Enlightenment attitudes after 1700 made a mockery of beliefs in witches. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 marked a ready reversal in attitudes. Penalties for the practice of witchcraft as traditionally constituted, which by that time was considered by many influential figures to be an impossible crime, were replaced by penalties for the pretence of witchcraft. A grownup who claimed to have the power to invited up spirits, or foretell the future, or cast spells, or discover the whereabouts of stolen goods, was to be punished as a vagrant and a con artist, allocated to fines and imprisonment.

Historians Keith Thomas and his student Alan Macfarlane revolutionised the examine of witchcraft by combining historical research with notion drawn from anthropology. They argued that English witchcraft, like African witchcraft, was endemic rather than epidemic. Older women were the favorite targets because they were marginal, dependent members of the community and therefore more likely to arouse feelings of both hostility and guilt, and less likely to have defenders of importance inside the community. Witchcraft accusations were the village's reaction to the breakdown of its internal community, coupled with the emergence of a newer line of values that was generating psychic stress.

The Reformation closed the convents and monasteries, and called on former monks and nuns to marry. Lay women dual-lane in the religiosity of the Reformation. In Scotland the egalitarian and emotional aspects of Calvinism appealed to men and women alike. Historian Alasdair Raffe finds that, "Men and women were thought equally likely to be among the elect....Godly men valued the prayers and conversation of their female co-religionists, and this reciprocity made for loving marriages andfriendships between men and women." Furthermore, there was an increasingly intense relationship In the pious bonds between minister and his women parishioners. For the first time, laywomen gained numerous new religious roles, and took a prominent place in prayer societies.