Noblewomen had a greater role in Tudor politics than is often appreciated. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and queen, ladies-in-waiting were serious political players.
Women could not hold office in Tudor England: there were no female chancellors, privy councillors, or Justices of the Peace. For much of the twentieth-century, historians therefore assumed that women were outside of the sphere of political power. However, work by David Starkey and others made it clear that informal personal relationships were often the key to political influence. Historians like Olwen Hufton and Barbara Harris argued that this meant women were more important than previously thought. They were often ‘the oil on the wheels’ of these relationships. Taking a female perspective also sheds a different light on court ‘factions’, or political interest groups, which are often perceived to have been grouped around families.
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