‘Here every dust would make history’: the dowager countess of Derby and constructing a legacy in Reformation England

The dowager countess of Derby prepared for her 1637 death by actively blending rituals and rites to construct her legacy. Scholars have long studied the changing nature of death rituals during the English Reformation but have focused on either an in‐depth examination of a single practice or a broad study emphasizing trends in death rituals and their change over time. An analysis of the way a single countess prepared for death reveals that the seventeenth‐century aristocracy could express themselves in diverse ways and allowed peers new and nuanced ways to dictate how they wanted to be remembered.