Royal Historical Society Camden Fifth Series

An Account of an Elizabethan Family: the Willoughbys of Wollaton by Cassandra Willoughby, 1670–1735, edited by Jo Ann H. Moran Cruz

Volume 55. This Account of an Elizabethan upper-gentry family provides revealing insights into the personal, and often strained, relationships of the Willoughbys of Wollaton. Composed by a descendant, Cassandra Willoughby, at the start of the eighteenth century, it includes fair copies, synopses, and selections of no longer extant letters and household accounts. Of particular interest is the role of female letter-writers and the insight their letters provide into transgressive dynamics and their consequences within a patriarchal society. This is the first complete edition of the manuscript now held in the University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections’ Middleton archives; it is supplemented by excerpts from early drafts of the account in the Huntington Library. The introduction details the context in which this account was written and provides background information on the lives of family members and friends of the Willoughby family. This volume will be useful to scholars studying early modern childhood and education, the social dynamics of Elizabethan marriage, the roles of wives, daughters, husbands and fathers, the activities of servants and the functions of a large Elizabethan household with an extended social network.