Marriage Choice and Kinship among the English Catholic Elite, 1680–1730

Abstract

Historians of marriage have long debated an individual choice versus kin-based marriage strategy, emphasizing financial gain, patronage, and political alliance as the primary goals of kin. This article challenges the dominance of a Protestant evidence base and a failure to recognize religious motivations in the history of marriage. Examining a Catholic recusant family, it argues that the preservation of Catholicism was a primary imperative that increased kin control over marriage. Marriage was utilized as part of a survival strategy, in response to the chronic insecurity faced by the English elite Catholic community in this period.