Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Mistress of the Robes with Dr Sarah Bendall

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, is best known as an ambitious political climber who rose through the ranks of late seventeenth-century England to become the favourite of Queen Anne in the early eighteenth century. Her role as confident, possible lover and political power player has been well documented in historical analysis, biography, fiction and even film, owing to the wealth of surviving correspondence between Sarah and Anne that survives. However, Sarah's position as Mistress of the Robes in the Office of the Robes, an administrative sub-department of the royal household responsible for managing some of the queens’ most valuable resources—her clothing and accessories—is less well studied.

This talk discusses Sarah's work as an astute household manager with a discerning eye for fashion who reformed the queen's Office of the Robes at the last Stuart court. It argues that Sarah saw her role as ‘management’ and later used her reputation for good administration to defend herself against her critics when her relationship with Anne deteriorated, showing the importance of work and identity to elite women in early modern England. 

Dr Sarah A. Bendall is a Senior Lecturer at the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. She is a material culture historian whose research examines the roles of gender in the production, trade and consumption of global commodities and fashionable consumer goods between 1500-1800. She is author of Shaping Femininity (Bloomsbury, 2021) and currently writing her next book The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens (Bloombury). She is also Co-investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK grant, The Making Historical Dress Network, which examines recreative and experimental methods in dress history.

Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the presentation, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.

This event is presented on-site at The Johnston Collection. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our exhibition-house, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.

This event is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

Image: Charles Jervas, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744), Politician and Courtier, c.1700. Marlborough House, London.