10 - The Worth of Married Women in the English Church Courts, c.1550–1730

Summary

When Joanna Remesbury and her husband Richard appeared as witnesses before the bishop of Salisbury's consistory court in 1599, they were both asked to provide an estimate of their net moveable estate. Richard, a shepherd, appears to have declared himself worth £20 in goods, ‘every man being paid’, before revising this estimate to the more modest sum of £10. Joanna, by contrast, responded that she did not know her worth ‘bycause shee is a married woman & therefore during the life of her husband her goodes are at his disposing’. In response to a further question enquiring about how they got a living, they both declared simply that Richard had a copyhold worth £5 per annum in the nearby parish of Purton. Joanna and Richard Remesbury were responding to questions routinely posed to witnesses in the church courts that were designed to test bias and to assess their creditworthiness both concerning the cause in dispute and more widely. As part of these efforts to assess the ‘persons’ of witnesses as well as their ‘sayings’, deponents were commonly asked for an account of their net worth in goods and how they maintained themselves. Such questions were usually asked indiscriminately of all witnesses appearing on behalf of a particular litigant, so that when posed to married women they contravened common law conventions that wives possessed no moveable property and that they should be maintained by their husbands.