ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationships between sisters and sisters-in-law, and the crucial part they played in creating and sustaining the horizontal connections between aristocratic families. Studying sisters and sisters-in-law is particularly rewarding because they have received relatively little attention from historians of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century women or the family. The chapter concentrates on two related family groups, where close ties between married women and their sisters, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-laws, nieces and nephews existed over long periods of time: first, the nine daughters of Sir Richard Scrope of Bentley, a younger brother of John, Lord Scrope of Bolton. Second Anne, Lady Scrope, John Lord Scrope's third wife. The Scrope sisters are an ideal choice for this study because there were so many sisters and sisters-in-law, three of them wrote surviving wills, and their relations continued for decades after their marriages. They also appear in their step-brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Wyndham's, will after their sister, his wife died.
