ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how never-married women, who were primarily members of the middle social and economic tier of society, experienced old age in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century England. Even more significantly, lifecycle single women made up between one-quarter to half of adult women in early modern England. Since women in this time period could enter menopause any time between the ages of 40 and 50, It can be said that old age for women in early modern England began as early as age 40 and more certainly by a woman's fiftieth birthday. The chapter examines the independent activity of such single women by looking at their residential and economic options, their social, religious and civic activities, and finally their social relationships. One of the primary ways in which an older single woman of even limited financial means could exercise her autonomy was by becoming a head of household.
