#21: The demands of Lady Elizabeth Compton

One woman's bottomless list for JUSTICE (and finery)

The past few years, our cultural conversation has finally begun to shift. There’s less of an expectation that women to play by the rules of men in order to be taken seriously¹. Women and femme bbs are pretty much over the fiction we’ve been fed: that to be intellectual, to be worthy of rights, to deserve to be taken seriously, you’d better not be caught dead in a flower crown or dressed like Elle Woods.

Maybe it’s because the world has become more terrifying and cruel with each passing year, but lately it seems like more and more folks are rejecting the myth that masculinity = intellect. As a collective, we’re saying, “Yeah, yeah, whatever, I’m turning on Practical Magic and applying my hot pink eyeshadow and later I’m gonna write music that isn’t designed for your approval, and if you got a problem with that you can eat a curb.”

As someone who waxes philosophical in a fluffy pink sweater², it’s about fucking time.

For most of European and European-influenced history, women have sucked breadcrumbs from the feast of men’s power. While other cultures were grooving along to equal rights for women and nonbinary folks without a second thought, England was brave enough to ask, “Why do that, when I can be an asshole - and spread said assholery around the globe?”

But in 1618, Lady Elizabeth Compton gave a very 2023 shrug and said, “K - but what if I had my happy ending and some pretty shit, instead?”

Lady Elizabeth Compton was born filthy frickin’ rich. Think 1% in fancy gowns. But despite her family’s wealth, she had a turbulent and abusive upbringing. The details I scrounged are vague, but one thing we know for certain is that her father treated her so badly, Elizabeth Compton’s lover and future husband Lord Compton got her dad temporarily thrown in prison over her mistreatment.

Look. If burning women alive at the stake for murder wasn’t abolished abolished til 1656 (and it was still okay to burn them at the stake for adultery), then her father must have royally sucked. Rich or not, she didn’t exactly have it easy in the home. Soon after, the Comptons got hitched and, likely still spicy over the whole arrest thing, her father gave Elizabeth no dowry for the marriage. She relied on the money of her husband alone.

Fast forward past the birth of some grandchildren and a tense father-daughter reconciliation, all the way to Lord Spencer’s death in 1610.

Do you want to guess how much of his money went to her when he died?

Nada. Instead, her father’s vast riches went to Lord Compton, her husband.

After what she’d been through, she deserved the pretty things that money could buy. Too bad Lord Compton felt differently; apparently, the sum inherited was so wildly high that Lord Compton went on a bender/spending spree that lasted eight whole years.

And so, in 1618, when Lord Compton finally got his shit together, Lady Elizabeth Compton decided it was high time she had her due - and she penned him an infamous list of demands that is now known as the “Also…” letter.

Here’s how it begins:

My Sweet Life, [off to a strong start]

Now I have declared to you my mind for the settling of your state, I supposed that it were best for me to bethink or consider with myself what allowance were meetest for me. For, considering what care I have had of your estate, and how respectfully I dealt with those, which both by the laws of God and nature, and of civil polity, wit, religion, government, you, my dear, are bound to, I pray, and beseech you to grant me, your most kind and loving wife, the sum of £26,000 per annum, quarterly to be paid.

For those of you wondering, that’s about £6.6 million dollars³.

But that’s just the beginning of her list:

Also, I would have £600 added yearly for the performance of charitable works, and those things I would not, neither will be, accountable for.

Again, that’s £150k. Gotta love how aggressively vague she is about what charitable works are, and the suggestion that she won’t be held accountable for them.

Her requests get pretty specific after that:

Also, I will have three horses for my own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow: none lend but I, none borrow but you.

Also, I would have two gentlewomen, lest one should be sick, or have some other let.

Also believe that it is an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand mumping alone, when God hath blessed their Lord and Lady with a good estate.

Also, when I ride a hunting, or hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have them attending me; so for either of these said women, I must and will have for either of them a horse.

Translation: give me two women to be my companions and make sure they have everything they need, too.

Also, I will have six or eight gentlemen: and I will have my two coaches; one lined with velvet to myself, with four very fair horses; and a coach for my women, lined with sweet cloth, and laced with gold: the other with scarlet and laced with silver, with four good horses.

What gets me there is how specific her daydreams are. At this point, Lady Compton has had a whole fucking decade to stew after her abusive father died. Her husband has been galavanting around with money that should’ve been hers. And she’s ready to cash in.

Also, I will have two coachmen; one for my own coach, the other for my women

Also, at any time when I travel, I will be allowed not only carriages and spare horses for me and my women, but I will have such carriages as shall be fitting for all, orderly, not pestering my things with my women's, nor theirs with chambermaids, nor theirs with wash maids

Also, for laundresses when I travel, I will have them sent away before with the carriages, to see all safe; and the chamber-maids I will have go before, that the chambers may be ready, sweet and clean.

Also, that it is indecent to crowd up myself with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him to have a convenient horse to attend me, either in town or country. And I must have two footmen; and my desire is, that you defray all the charges for me.

Translation: I am hiring a thousand people to have private luxury wherever I go and bring my own cleaning crew - and you’re gonna foot the bill every time.

Also, for myself, besides my yearly allowance, I would have twenty gowns of apparel: six of them excellent good ones, eight of them for the country, and six other of them very excellent good ones.

What distinguishes “excellent good” quality from “very excellent good?”

Also, I would have you to put in my purse £2000, and so for you to pay my debts.

Also, I would have £6000 to buy me jewels, and £4000 to buy me a pearl-chain.

That’s £512k for her purse, £1.5 million for jewels, and a cool £1 mil for a pearl-chain.

Also, seeing as I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you, I pray you do find my children apparel, and their schooling; and also my servants, men and women, their wages.

He must’ve really fucked up in those eight years.

Also, I will have all my houses furnished; and my lodging chambers to be suited with all such furniture as shall be fit; as beds, stools, chairs, suitable cushions, carpets, silver warming-pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings, and such like: so for my drawing chambers in all houses, I will have them delicately furnished, both with hangings, couch, canopy, glass, carpets, chairs, cushions, and all things thereunto belonging.

Again, Lady Compton has had yeeeears to build her dream home(s) in her head. She ain’t passing the opportunity up.

Also, my desire is, that you would pay all my debts, build up Ashby House, and purchase lands; and lend no money to the Lord Chamberlain, who would have perhaps your life from you. Remember his son my Lord Walden, what entertainment he gave me, when you were at jousting. If you were dead, he said, he would be a husband, a father, a brother, and he said he would marry me. I protest I grieve to see the poor man have so little wit and honesty to use his friend so vilely.

So now that I have declared to you what I would have, and what it is I would not have; I pray that when you be an Earl, to allow me £2000 more than I now desire, and double attendance.

Your loving Wife,
Eliza Compton

I love how casually she includes that another man offered to treat her wonderfully - and all she’s asking for instead are these simple things, including a final additional £512k just ‘cause.

If you want to hear this letter come to life, listen to Olivia Colman’s spot-on reading. Her delivery had me laughing out loud:

(If you want a copy of the letter, buy the book Letters of Note, a collection of fantastic letters in history.)

Tl;dr: give a lady her pretty horses and jewels in this harsh-ass world.

To this day, we tend to write women off as materialistic and vapid, taking them seriously only when they conform to men’s prescribed notions of maturity. Femininity as an aesthetic is inherently less serious to us - see homophobia, see transphobia, see women wearing suits just fine but rampant hatred rearing its head whenever a man or anyone not assigned female at birth wears something pretty, see men not crossing their legs, see men not eating bananas, see…

But also, I would like for a woman to do what she pleases with her own dang money.

Also, I would like for her to own as many shiny things as she wants.

Also, I would like for her to be free.

An update

I’m restructuring my Substack. You may have noticed it hasn’t been weekly. I’m working to craft something cohesive for y’all that also has the potential to grow, and I’ve reimagined Snail Mail Sweethearts in a really dope way:

• You’ll get two emails monthly - one featuring historical mail, and one with microfiction.

• The microfiction will be connected thematically to the historical mail. This letter might be from the POV of Lady Compton’s annoyed chamber maid, her father’s cellmate in prison, or the prettiest horse she owns. Who knows!

• In addition to the prompt, paid subscribers will now get to vote on what historical mail we explore the following month.

• Paid subscribers will receive a zine every January featuring all the microfiction from the year before, mailed to ya from France.

These changes feel great to me; I think you’ll agree once you see them in action.

Do you have a favorite request Lady Compton made? What do you think about the restructuring? Let me know in a comment!

As always, thanks for snailin’ and mailin’.

Love,

Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart

1. Y’all know I love to talk queer theory. There’s a lot to unpack regarding nonbinary life in a “man’s” world/how cis-het people misconstrue androgyny/nonbinary identities with just looking vaguely masc, but that’s a different convo. For now, we’re talking about womanhood - and everyone who’s in that identity’s embrace.

2. Dear reader, I am currently wearing a pink fluffy sweater.

3. All sums were found through this currency converter.