Seventeenth Century Scandal & Female Heiresses. The 1674...

Hammer

£2,500

Seventeenth Century Scandal & Female Heiresses. The 1674 'Kidnapping' and Coerced Marriage of the Heiress Bridget Hyde (1662-1734; later Duchess of Leeds), an important contemporary transcript of legal documents, possibly an official court record, dated 1674-75, but presumably 1680, English, with some occasional legal Latin, scrivened by several distinct hands, ink manuscript on paper, marginal glosses, paginated, complete and collating: 935, [8]pp (tables), the whole illustrative of the case, i.e. the charge that Hyde's earlier marriage, aged 12, to her first-cousin John Emerton of Middle Temple in 1674 was still valid and that her coerced marriage, following her scandalous abduction by him, to Peregrine Osborne, then Viscount Dunblane (1659-1729; later 2nd Duke of Leeds), was bigamous (which the jury ruled, thus exacerbating the cause célèbre), resulting in Dunblane's father, then the Earl of Danby, being forced to buy off the Emertons to prevent further prosecution, the text with precis of witness depositions and evidence, including various aristocrats and members of the gentry, demonstrating not only Bridget's familial and social connections, - as well as Emerton's - but also her importance as a 'prize' in the contemporary marriage market, being both an heiress of land and capital (reputedly worth £100,000), in addition to its historic importance, the manuscript affords interesting insights into the conventions of a woman's roll and the extent of its influence in engagement and marriage in the later 17th c, and other pre-matrimonial customs, including the ring: ' Bridgett laying in her said Chamber called [...] to her saying Grace [Millington] come hither did you ever see my Ring showing [...] a Diaming Ring in fashion of a heart that was on her finger [...], contemporary blind-panelled vellum over boards, splat spine titled and indistinctly numbered in manuscript: Mr John Emerton's Case, folio (36.5 x 23.5cm)


Provenance: By indirect descent from the Emerton family, via the Byron and later the Seymour families, at Thrumpton Hall, Nottinghamshire.


This and similar cases, of what was becoming a familiar result of inheritance and the lack of a male heir, was topically satirised in Aphra Benn's drama The City-Heiress (1682).