The Marriages of the English Earls in the Thirteenth Century: a Social Perspective

Summary

The marriages of the English higher aristocracy in the later Middle Ages have been looked at from a variety of angles in recent years. Joel Rosenthal, for example, examined the motives of earls and barons for marrying and the quality of the personal relationship of the spouses between 1350 and 1500. Scott Waugh analysed the exercise of royal lordship by scrutinizing the marriages of wards in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. A third perspective was taken by Simon Payling, who has studied closely the economics of marriages and the fate of heiresses from the thirteenth up to the sixteenth century. The present paper takes yet another approach: it focuses on the rank of the spouses of the earls and their children in the thirteenth century.

The search for spouses in thirteenth-century England was framed by a number of parameters. Canon law provided rules as to how closely bride and groom could be related. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council prohibited marriages within the fourth degree of kinship. In practice this was not absolutely imperative. Papal dispensations could be obtained and were readily granted for couples related in the third or fourth degrees. Marriages between close cousins, however, were the exception not the rule. Common law set further regulations. Widows and underage children of tenants-in-chief were in the king's gift. He decided on their marriages. Common law also determined the inheritance rights and thus the status of the earl's offspring.