Women of Fortune

Abstract

How did you make a fortune in early modern England? The Bennet family began making their money by importing luxury textiles under Queen Elizabeth and then moved into Crown finance under James I. They later diversified into trade to Virginia and the East Indies, real estate, moneylending, and stocks. They spent their capital on country and city property, the largest of which was Kensington House, now Kensington Palace. One member of the family made the most important donation to University College, Oxford, since . Most important, the Bennets invested in large marriage portions that ensured their entrée into the Stuart social elite in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Bennet women married into the aristocracy and nobility and charted paths of independence for themselves and their children. The Bennets' story reveals the world of trade, credit, consumption, and changing social roles in which they constructed their networks and relationships. This chapter opens with the founder of the Bennet fortune, a younger son of minor provincial gentry, Thomas Bennet, who became Lord Mayor of London in .Lord Mayors' funerals celebrated achievement in this life and sought salvation in the next. On March , , a large procession wound its way from St. Olave Old Jewry to Cheapside, the greatest thoroughfare in the City of London and site of important public spectacles. Two conductors with black staves led formal groups of participants: eighty-six poor men in gowns, great City merchants and Crown financiers preceded by their servants in cloaks; City alderman and their wives; family mourners and Francis White, Bishop of Carlisle and Royal Almoner in his vestments. With penons raised, they escorted the body of Sir Thomas Bennet, mercer, alderman, and Lord Mayor, to his final rest in the Mercers' Chapel on the north side of Cheapside.This splendid London funeral, a solemn City ritual for one of its much admired officials, displayed both the City elite and major elements of the Jacobean economy, the international cloth trade, the Crown's customs 