In case it should be thought that an essay on marriage is an anomaly in a volume of studies devoted largely to the worlds of economic policy and business, let us begin with a remark on courtship in general made by the eminent American sociologist, W. J. Goode:

Few would deny that market systems come squarely within the province of the economic historian and there can be little doubt also that amongst the upper classes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England the bargaining was extremely open and explicit. Irrespective of the role of romance in either initiating or concluding courtship, marriage negotiations at this social level almost invariably took on eventually the appearance of business transactions. Negotiators corresponded on behalf of their courting clients like solemn commercial diplomats, agreements were eventually formalized in private treaties – the marriage contract – and financial considerations seem frequently to override sentiment. Pecuniary obsessions sometimes spilled over into the marriage itself. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the letter which Eliza Spencer wrote in 1610 to her husband of perhaps ten years' standing, William Lord Compton, who had just got his hands on the fortune of Eliza's father, city magnate Sir John Spencer, reputedly the richest commoner in England.