English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450-1550 is the first comprehensive study of Yorkist and early Tudor aristocratic women's role in the flowering of religious art—architecture, sculpture, stained glass, engraving, textiles, and plate ornaments—that transformed English churches in the century before the break with Rome. They enlarged, restored, and decorated their parish churches and other favorite religious institutions; built tombs, stained-glass windows, chantry chapels, and altars; endowed almshouses and schools to perform works of charity and pray for their souls; and donated many priceless and luxurious textiles, jeweled objects, and plate to adorn the celebration of the Mass. The vast majority of these women's projects were designated for the parish churches where their principal manors or castles were located, the parish being the community that formed the basis of their social, economic, and political position. As members of a community's leading family, these women expected and received the deference of the community's inhabitants, a high proportion of whom were their tenants and servants. In return, they built, restored, and beautified their parish churches, the sole public buildings in the majority of these communities, while their commissions were the only art most of their neighbors ever encountered.

Whatever projects they commissioned, the religious purpose of their patronage was the same: to secure perpetual prayers for their souls and the souls of their closest kin. All the evidence indicates that members of the aristocracy continued to believe in the doctrine of Purgatory and to trust in the efficacy of prayers for the dead throughout the 1530s and into the 1540s. Only the intervention of the state interrupted and finally stopped their gifts, providing yet further confirmation of the revisionist argument that widespread, often active, support for the Church and religious status quo existed in the generation or two before Henry VIII's break with Rome. As we shall see, however, the tombs and buildings that aristocratic women built served equally important secular purposes. They consciously planned their monuments, chapels, and additions to their parish churches to proclaim their and their families’ status and wealth, and to represent their dominant position in their villages. In a culture that believed that the social and political hierarchy formed part of the divine order of creation, they saw no contradiction in projects that embodied both worldly and spiritual aspirations.