ABSTRACT
Although the patrilineal structures of the early modern period favored keeping wealth in the hands of men, there were many women who amassed considerable fortunes, either through inheritance from parents or husbands, or through their own adept handling of finances. Many wealthy women then turned that money to businesses or to grand building projects that marked some of the architectural triumphs of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England. For others, lower in the socioeconomic hierarchy, economic necessity drove entrepreneurship. Widows often took over their husbands’ businesses; other women – widowed, married, or single – found opportunities in the domestic arts, especially midwifery. That this category includes both a milkmaid and one of the wealthiest women in England attests to the entrepreneurial spirit and resourcefulness many women had even when legal systems were not always designed to support such success.
