ABSTRACT
Aristocratic women commissioned chapels and tombs in their parish churches to secure prayers for their souls and to create permanent memorials of their wealth and status. But they were also cognizant of their responsibilities to the communities they and their families dominated. In addition to projects for their personal benefit, they therefore funded repairs and additions to the naves, aisles, roofs, and chancels of their parish churches, projects that benefited their villages as a whole. The women’s marriages, single or multiple, their residences, their birthplaces, and their connections to manors they inherited or held as part of their jointures all influenced their legacies to their churches. The specificity of their gifts indicates that they thought about them carefully and had considerable knowledge of the institutions they were benefitting. Their bequests also demonstrate the breadth of their landownership: many of them had ties to more than one parish and many of them to more than one county. As a result, they often extended this kind of patronage to churches outside the parish in which their chief residences were located.
