Marriage in Tudor England

Marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn

The common belief about marriage in Tudor England is that people married at extremely young ages and had no choice. Surprisingly, this was not typically the case. Studies show that in Elizabethan times, the average age for women to marry was 26 years old and for men- between the ages of 27 and 29 years old. This was because the average family had to save up money for the newly wedded couple to rent a house and for basic necessities. However 1 in 6 people were not married in their forties and it is likely that they never married after that.

Wealthy families married their children into other wealthy families; it was a need for them to have good connections. The parents had more control over there lives and if a girl was to marry, she just had to have a dowry. A dowry is a sum of money that is paid by the bride and her family to the groom and his family. Rich children could expect to have their spouse chosen for them by their parents. Unfortunately, there were cases where girls refused to marry their parents choice, at which point they were bullied. For example: Elizabeth Paston, a girl in the mid 1400s, was reportedly beaten by her mother at least twice a week if not twice a day because she refused to marry her chosen husband. Also it was common for girls from nobility to marry men much older than themselves. For instance, a Parisian, who was sixty, married a fifteen year old girl. We know this because he wrote a guide for her about housework! 

Royalty were normally betrothed as an infant to another royal icon of the 16th century! Mary Tudor was two when her father Henry VIII had her betrothed to the French Dauphin. Fortunately the marriage never actually happened and she chose to marry Philip II of Spain in 1554. 

Parents in the working class usually had barely anything if not nothing leave their children as an inheritance and so they were free to live their own life. But that daughters with the chance of never marrying and if they did, then there was the risk that they could be deserted by their husband in tough times.