AbstractsWomens Studies

Women held many kinds of important facilitating roles in early modern society which have been obscured by male-focused historiographies; specifically within the court, ladies-in-waiting were ideally placed to dispense patronage because of their privileged access to the monarch. This thesis sets out to show the operations of private-sphere female patronage by studying the patronage activities of one of Queen Henrietta Maria’s Ladies of the Bedchamber, the Countess of Carlisle, who was one of the most influential ladies-in-waiting during the seventeenth century.