ABSTRACT
This chapter takes as its point of departure John Watkins’ After Lavinia and suggests that the figure of Lavinia's mother has been neglected, not just in literature but in history. It focuses on church court records from the fifteenth century in both England and Ireland to show the key role that mothers were understood to play in the formation of their daughters’ marriages below the level of the nobility, whether as widows or as part of a family strategy with the bride's father. The stories told in court testimony did not always correspond to what actually took place, but they did correspond to the horizon of expectations within the socio-legal system.
