The custom of the year’s ‘doole’ after the death of husband or wife was just at this period breaking down.  In 1488 Edward IV declined a new marriage for his sister, Margaret of York, the new-made widow of Charles the Bold, on the ground that ’after the usage of our realms no estate or person honourable communeth of marriage within the year of their dool’.  But Tudor practice was very different.  For Mary, Queen of France, who married her Duke of Suffolk as soon as her six weeks of white mourning were out, there was some excuse of urgency; Henry, too, in his rapid marriage with Jane Seymour had special reasons.  But Katherine Parr, when her turn to marry him came, was but a few months a widow; and later, in being on with her old love, Thomas Seymour, when her grim master was only just dead, she had no motive beyond the wishes of lovers long delayed.  The Princess Mary, however, considered this latter action highly improper.

John Oporinus (Herbst), the Basle printer (1507-68), had a varied experience; taking four widows to wife.  At the age of 20 he married—­almost, it seems, out of a sense of duty—­the widow of his teacher, Xylotectus of Lucerne; an elderly lady who persecuted him sorely, and once in a passion threw dirty water over him.  After eight years, two of which he had spent roving through Germany with Paracelsus, she died, leaving her property to relations.  Oporinus’ next widow had three children, girls, who grew up to share their mother’s expensive tastes.  For nearly thirty years their extravagance vexed him, though his wife had tact enough to keep from open quarrels.  Then one day he returned from the Frankfort fair to find her dead of the plague.  The same visitation, 1564, by carrying off first John Herwagen the younger and then Ulrich Iselin, Professor of Law at Basle, made two more widows, successively to bear Oporinus’ name.  Herwagen’s widow, Elizabeth Holzach, was a sweet woman, but died in the fourth month of her new marriage, 17 July 1565.  Iselin’s was Faustina, daughter of Boniface Amerbach, born in 1530.  To her seven children by Iselin, she added one for Oporinus, Emmanuel, born 25 Jan. 1568; but the father of 60 did not live six months to have pleasure in his firstborn.

With such frequent changes the marriage-tie cannot have given the same personal attachment that is possible at the present day:  indeed such unions can scarcely have seemed more lasting than the temporary associations of friends.  One need only recall the bargainings that occur in the Paston Letters to realize that there was not much romance about their marriages, at any rate beforehand.  Thus wrote Sir John Paston in 1473 of a suitor for his sister Anne:  ’As for Yelverton, he said but late that he would have her if she had her money; and else not.’