Women of Fortune

Women of Fortune tells the compelling story of mercantile wealth arranged marriages and merchant heiresses who asserted their rights despite loss imprisonment and murder. Following three generations of the Bennet and Morewood families who made their fortune in Crown finance the East Indies the Americas and moneylending Linda Levy Peck explores the changing society economy and culture of early modern England. The heiresses - curious intrepid entrepreneurial scholarly - married into the aristocracy fought for their property and wrote philosophy. One spent years on the Grand Tour. Her life in Europe despite the outbreak of war is vividly documented. Another''s husband went to debtors'' prison. She recovered the fortune and bought shares. Husbands sons and contemporaries challenged their independence legally financially even violently but new forms of wealth education and the law enabled these heiresses to insist on their own agency create their own identities and provide examples for later generations.