Initials, Goods and Buildings: Marriage as a Material and Social Practice in Early Modern England

Dated initials commemorating married couples were common in early modern England, present upon personal possessions, household goods and carved into the fixtures, fittings and façades of people’s homes. Initials on buildings have traditionally been explored by architectural historians, while initialled objects have generally been considered by historians of material culture. Overcoming this division and considering the built environment as another form of material culture, this thesis examines the meanings invested in inscriptions in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. It analyses homes engraved with marital commemoration in two case study communities in Lancashire and Cheshire, using extensive archival research to trace the couples who inscribed them and investigate their reasons for doing so. This thesis also uses quantitative and qualitative methods to situate, compare and analyse inscribing couples within their communities; examines contemporary printed texts to understand perceptions of inscription in wider society; and scrutinises the visual vocabulary used in inscriptions in both areas through an art historical and anthropological lens.

This thesis contends that inscription was a social and cultural practice entangled with religion, superstition, wealth and status, to which individual couples attached deep emotional meaning. Couples inscribed their homes when secure in their tenure, upon the birth of their children, and to reinforce their bond as marriage partners, demonstrating and celebrating their commitment to each other, their family and their home. This research underscores the central role of materiality in people’s emotional and social lives in early modern England. It demonstrates that objects and buildings were important tools for self-understanding and meaning making and shows that inscriptions further magnified the power of material culture in mediating and reinforcing personal and interpersonal experiences. It highlights the necessity of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to understanding early modern relationships with goods and the built environment and shows the value of contextualising individual homes within a wider community-based study.