The answer to this probably varies from time to time and place to place, but I’m interested in any relevant comments.
How did noble families in Europe decide who their daughters should marry? What benefits were they looking for?
In general, the parents made the decision. Women were expected to marry at least their equal, so as big a title as possible. Most wealth was on land, so they were also looking for huge tracts of land. For men it was much more socially acceptable to marry somewhat below their own rank, so marrying land was even more common.
Land, political advantage/alliance and family line were the big ones.
*Don’t like her? What’s wrong with her? She’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s got huge… tracts of land. *
How did marrying a daughter from family A into family B gain family A any land?
Because the reason for marrying her was the land thrown in with daughter.
In addition, it meant that your grandchildren would inherit the land eventually.
It doesn’t gain family A any land, the land is gained by family B. However, via a bride price, family A could gain money or titles.
In Navarra, there was a custom called “go seeing”, which often but not always was used by our nobility and royals.
The way it worked for most people was the parents would arrange for the kids to meet (for example, the two families would go to a pilgrimage feastday halfway from both their homes); if they liked each other, great; if they didn’t, no hard feelings. Of course it didn’t always go so smoothly, but that’s human nature for you, we like complicating things. Many times the kids found themselves and it was all dandy, sometimes they found themselves but the parents decided to be idiots about it, sometimes one of the parties wanted but the other did not.
For royals and nobility who followed the custom, the bride would move to her intended’s household but they wouldn’t marry yet, they’d have a period (normally a year) to decide whether they did indeed want to marry or not. If not, again, no hard feelings.
The “go seeing” system was still in place in the early 20th century, it was just our local name for a mixture between arranged marriages and modern matchmaking. Similar systems cropped up in much of the NE quadrant of Spain, from Santander to Valencia.
Even allowing for local variations, the standard deal was that the daughter did not bring land with her to the marriage. Instead what she brought was cash, in the form of the dowry. The whole point of most marriage settlements was that they represented a balance between the cash paid up front by the bride’s family and the promises of future income by the groom’s family in the form of immediate grants of land for the groom, the expectation of land he might inherit in due course and the provision of temporary dower lands for the bride if she survived her new husband. That’s because most families were anxious to keep any land within the male line (although, depending on local custom, that might mean just the eldest son or an equal division between sons). In other words, neither family A nor family B would gain any land through the marriage.
The big exception to this was, of course, those cases in which a father left only daughters, who then became his heiresses. Which is what made heiresses so attractive as potential partners. But that attractiveness was based on the fact that heiresses were not the norm.
And the benefits? Kinship ties with a family who might be useful to you now or in the future. Or who might impress your neighbours. Or who might be your neighbours.
Inheritance customs did indeed vary greatly. Just in Spain, the NW (Galicia is the worst for this) divided any land or property between all children, leading to minifundismo, “minifarms”, thus you get lots of people whose land isn’t even enough to support a family but who feel tied to it; in the SW (Andalusia, Extremadura) everything went to the firstborn male, thus you get latifundismo, huge tracts of land, and a lot of second sons who have no options for jobs other than enter the priesthood or become soldiers. The daughters’ options in the SW (not just for nobility, for farmers with decent holdings as well) were get married to whomever their parents had picked or become nuns.
Thanks for the additional info. What I was referring to did apply to a lack of make heirs. And as RealityChuck noted, the inheritance was the goal, and insurance for dad that there would be progeny.
You seem to be thinking of a different question than the one I’m asking. I’m not asking, why marry the daughter? I’m asking, why have the daughter marry the man?
I’m not asking what motivation there was for marrying into the daughter’s family. I’m asking what motivation there was for marrying the daughter out. What did the daughter’s family get out of it?
So the basic picture I’m getting is:
For the male’s family, at stake was the possibility of progeny to carry on the family line.
For the female’s family, at stake was political connections.
Is this broadly accurate in a large category of typical cases?
I did get your meaning wrong.
For the female’s family there was the need for male heirs if they had none already.
In this system, daughters are a burden on their family’s resources. One thing the family gets out of marrying a daughter into a rich family is relief from that burden.
There’s also prestige, connections, that sort of thing.
In a well landed family is a daughter that much of a burden?
Emphasis added.
No, they could often be assets. Louis the German for example didn’t marry his daughters out, but instead sent them to the Church and endowed them with rich convents. This prevented them from becoming power foci for noble families. Instead they became local agents of royal authority, using their wealth and power to advance dynastic concerns, while at the same time performing important symbolic functions as living examples of royal sanctity.
But the primary use of well-connected daughters was in the formation of political alliances. That function alone made them valuable, if less valuable than sons ( usually ).
Notice the wonderful web of relational entanglements at the heart of the War of the Roses. As the English crown was fumbled through the Thirty Years’ Scrum, succeedingly more tenuous claims were made through marriages, aunts, sisters, etc. Similarly, by the time William and Mary (of Orange) were selected as rulers, the connection was again based (mainly) on marriage to a woman. Plus, maybe you would get better treatment at court if the King was your cousin, uncle, or nephew. Connections counted for a lot back then.
A single woman was a liability - you never knew when she might discover the joys of something with the stableboy that could disgrace your name. If she was hot, you would have a rich neighbour forever grateful for your largesse if you let him marry her. Remember too, that “rich” is a relative term. Many of the nobles were perpetually in debt to finanance a pretentious courtly lifestyle, especially if times and tithes were lean - so the difference between supporting several whiny old maids with a dozen servants, who wanted to dress to the nines, versus having another relative you could hit up for a loan, was also an easy choice.
Why would any father nowadays not want his daughter to marry unless the prospective son-in-law is a loser? Same back then.
Getting rid of her. Seriously.
And of course, it was the custom, which meant that your son got something nice for marrying someone elses daughter.
An excellent example of this was King Stephen of England. His mother was Adela, the daughter of William I, a formidable woman of considerable ability. By marrying her to the Count of Blois, Chartres, Meaux, Troyes, Champagne and assorted other territories, William secured himself a major ally on the Continent. All the more so when Stephen’s father died young and Adela virtually ran the House of Blois until her second son’s majority, even disinheriting her eldest son on grounds of incompetence.
Moreover while Stephen’s elder brother Theobald inherited essentially all of his father’s lands, young Stephen was sent to Henry I’s court and owed virtually all of his rise to landed status to his uncle. Henry gave him land and a comital title in Normandy ( Mortain ) and extensive estates in England ( Honours of Lancaster and Eye ). Henry I also arranged his marriage to Matilda of Boulogne, which brought a further comital title ( Boulogne, technically subject to Flanders, but de facto in the Anglo-Norman sphere ) and yet more lands in England ( the Honour of Boulogne ).
So Stephen went from landless younger brother to probably the greatest landholder in the Anglo-Norman realm almost entirely due to patronage through his mother’s family connections ( also to be fair through his own consistently dedicated service to his uncle ). He then went on to use that status to help pole-vault his way onto the throne.