widow

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Spotlight on “Charred Hope” in Love’s Perilous Road

 

Charred Hope, by Caroline Warfield

Major Titus Brannock believes the charred painting that he had tossed into his trunk might be valuable to its owner. With the wars over, he lives with his brother, the earl, and has little direction in his life. He decides to track the woman down and return her miniature.

Tessa Fleming’s late husband lost interest in her soon after the first fires of marriage faded. She followed the army across Spain anyway. Now she lives in a small cottage and supports her son with a widow’s pension. She is determined not to trust another man, certainly not a stranger that knocks on her door.

Will a stranger’s kindness rekindle hope? Perhaps Titus has found his lost purpose in the bargain.

The Hero

Titus Flavius Brannock is the younger son an earl. Like many younger sons, he took a military career, and much prefers Major Brannock as a form of address over “The Honorable Titus Brannock,” the former being rightly earned. With the wars over, he haunts the family home at loose ends and without purpose. He decides impulsively to seek out a war widow he barely remembers and return a damaged miniature that came into his possession during the war.

The Heroine

Tessa Reynolds Fleming grew up in a cold manor in Lincolnshire with stern parents and little joy. Her father, Baron Wolfecliff, disowned her when she ran off to marry a junior officer with nothing to his name. When her husband died, the old man informed her she wasn’t welcome home and could expect nothing. Left with only her widow’s pension, she manages somehow for herself and her son in a small cottage in the South Downs.

An Excerpt from Charred Hope

He knocked again. She ignored him again. The third knock was louder.

When she didn’t respond, a deep voice rumbled through the door, “Mrs. Fleming, I don’t know if you are in there or not, but I mean you no harm.”

So you say… “What do you want?” she demanded through the door.

“I— That is, I knew Lieutenant Fleming in Spain. I brought you something.”

After a moment she lifted the bar, unable to imagine who it could be. She’d heard from none of Rob’s colleagues in the years since she came here.

“Who are you?” she asked through a narrow crack.

“Titus Brannock,” he replied.

The name meant nothing to her, but something in the gentle voice that vibrated through her reassured her. She opened the door a bit wider. “I don’t know you. Again, what do you want?”

The tall stranger, hat in hand, gazed down at her with eyes the rusty brown color of oak leaves in winter. A shaft of sunlight splashed his brown hair with chestnut highlights. She held her breath.

“It is something of yours that came into my possession when you shipped home. It may be a trifle, but I think you might want it.” His voice wrapped around her like a warm quilt, a treasure she hadn’t had since her grandmother’s passing.

Don’t be a ninny Tessa, you know better than to go soft over a man. She held her ground.

“I’ve come a long way to bring it, and I have a long way home,” he went on. She thought he sounded hopeful.

She opened the door to face him, but if he thought she would invite him in, he was mistaken. She stepped out and pulled the door behind her. “I’m not in the habit of entertaining strangers, but you may leave this ‘trifle’ with me and be on your way,” she said.

He studied her long and hard as if she were a mystery to solve. It took strength but she met that piercing gaze. She peered back up at him experiencing a flicker of recognition, one that wouldn’t come into focus.

This one is a soldier for certain. It is in his bearing. In his confident determination. He wasn’t dressed like one; he wasn’t dressed like a poor man either.

At last, he nodded and tapped his hat back on his head. He reached into his fashionably tailored coat and pulled out an object wrapped in dark cloth and held it out to her.

When she took it, their hands touched briefly, and a jolt of feeling went up her arm to lodge somewhere in her center. She yanked her hand away.

At her gesture his lips quirked and he touched his hat. “I’ll leave you in peace. If you have questions for me, I’ll be at the inn in Normanton the rest of today. I’m leaving tomorrow.” He turned and left her murmuring belated thanks.

Tessa took the object to her kitchen table and unwrapped it. What she saw made her throat thicken. Tears, unanticipated and unwelcome, overtook her.

The miniature. The one I had made for Rob. The one he tossed aside so carelessly. As he did me.

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The widow’s portion

This is Part 3 of a series I began ages ago and never finished.

Part 1 was about entails

Part 2 was about wills

In this part, I want to look at dowries, jointures, and dowers. (I’ve avoided the term portion, because it is used for both dowries and jointures.

Dowries and dowers

Women of the propertied classes expected to have a dowry — land, or at least a sum of cash. The theory was that the dowry a woman brought with her into marriage provided  the income for the cost of keeping her in the same comfort as she’d enjoyed before the marriage. The principal (or the land) was often part of the dowry paid when her daughters married. In theory at least, the woman had to be party to anything done with her dowry, and could claim the dowry back when her husband died. Of course, if the land had been sold or the money all spent, that wasn’t going to go down so well.

A dower was originally the wife’s right to a third of her husband’s estate when he died. From at least the 12th century, the right to ‘thirds’ or the ‘dower’ was common law, and that continued to be the practice when the man left no will. It wasn’t hers outright, but she had it for life or until she married again. By the 19th century, in the propertied classes, the remnant of this practice was land and buildings known as the dower property or dower house.

Jointures

In time, the payment of a jointure came to replace the dower. The couple made an agreement (a settlement) that exempted the estate from the dower in return for stating how much the woman would receive if she survived her husband, as well as what would go to the children. The jointure was usually anchored on the dowry, and was generally paid out by the heir as a yearly amount (or its cash value, if the dowry was in land). The heir would need to pay the yearly amount (typically 10% of the dowry) until the woman’s death, at which point the principal was divided up among her surviving children.

The arrangement was generally regarded as providing more security for all parties. The estate didn’t need to come up with a large sum of money all at once, which might be impossible. If the heir couldn’t pay, he might lose everything and so would the widow. On the other hand, if widow lived long enough, a dowry might run out, but the jointure would continue.

Marriage settlements

The settlements contained more that the financial details about providing for a widow. They specified what was to be done with the wife’s dowry, what her discretionary income (pin money) would be, and what part of her dowry would go to her children, as well as her income after her husband’s death. The law said a husband had to provide his wife with a home, clothing, and food. Pin money was meant to allow her a little extra she could spend on luxuries without answering to her husband.

The father might also settle funds on the children from his estate, and the settlement would state the total amount.

Settlements for the landed and wealthy could be very complex. At this higher level of society, the sum of money for the wife’s use was paid to a third party. Settlements among the simpler folk tended to be much simpler. Dr Amy Erikson found that up to 10% of probate accounts included marriage settlements, and a quarter of these were for less than thirteen pounds. The two types of settlement found in these less complex situations both specified lump sums; one to be paid to the woman if she survived the husband, and one to the children of a wife’s former marriage.

As an aside

I’ve found another research rabbit hole in investigating Dr Erikson. Here’s the abstract for an article I need to get hold of: Coverture and Capitalism.

Most capital in this period was both accumulated and transferred by means of marriage and inheritance, so it stands to reason that the laws governing marriage and inheritance played a role in structuring the economy. English property law was distinctive in two respects: first, married women under coverture were even more restricted than in the rest of Europe; second, single women enjoyed a position unique in Europe as legal individuals in their own right, with no requirement for a male guardian. I suggest these peculiarities had two consequences for the development of capitalism. First, the draconian nature of coverture necessitated the early development of complex private contracts and financial arrangements, accustoming people to complicated legal and financial concepts and establishing a climate in which the concept of legal security for notional concepts of property (the bedrock of capitalism) became commonplace. Second, without the inhibiting effect of legal guardianship, England had up to fifty per cent more people able to move capital purely because that market included the unmarried half of the female population in addition to the male population. [Erikson: 2005]