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Seeking connections between kinship and the law in early modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

LLOYD BONFIELD
LLOYD BONFIELD
Affiliation:
New York Law School.
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Abstract

This article observes the ways in which the law mediated kinship relations in early modern England in three contexts: inheritance, marital property law, and provisions for the financially distressed. An enquiry into statutory law adopted during the period indicates that Parliament was not active in legislating in the area of family law. The courts, however, were actively involved in determining the validity of property settlements, thereby setting their temporal bounds. Both the jurisprudence and the settlements themselves illustrate that families became more interested in providing maintenance within the nuclear family (for children and widows) than they were in fostering patrilineal continuity. Likewise, an obligation to support financially needy kin was required from only a relatively small universe of family members.

La loi et son traitement de la parenté dans l'angleterre de la période moderne

Cet article examine de quelle façon la loi a pu arbitrer des relations de parenté à l'époque moderne en Angleterre et cela sous trois angles différents: l'héritage, le statut légal des biens conjugaux et les dispositions prises en faveur des plus démunis. Une étude de la législation adoptée au cours de cette période montre que le Parlement n'a guère statué alors sur des questions de droit familial. Mais les tribunaux, eux, sont activement intervenus pour déterminer la validité ou non des transferts de propriété. Aussi bien la jurisprudence que les jugements eux-mêmes montrent que les familles étaient bien plus intéressées par le maintien des conditions de vie au sein de la famille nucléaire (pour la veuve et ses enfants) que par la continuité patrilinéaire. De même on n'obligeait qu'un assez petit groupe de la parentèle à porter assistance financière à un membre de leur famille se trouvant dans le besoin.

Auf der suche nach verbindungen zwischen verwandtschaft und recht im frühneuzeitlichen england

Dieser Beitrag untersucht, auf welche Weise im frühneuzeitlichen England das Recht die Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen in den drei Bereichen der Erbschaft, des ehelichen Güterrechts und der Versorgung finanzieller Notleidender beeinflusste. Untersucht man die im Untersuchungszeitraum erlassenen Gesetze, so ergibt sich, dass das Parlament in der Gesetzgebung im Bereich des Familienrechts nichts unternahm. Die Gerichte dagegen waren sehr damit beschäftigt, die Gültigkeit vermögensrechtlicher Vereinbarungen zu bestimmen. Sowohl die Justiz als auch die Vereinbarungen selbst zeigen, dass die Familien mehr daran interessiert waren, den Unterhalt innerhalb der Kernfamilie zu sichern (für Witwen und Kinder) als die partilineare Kontinuität zu fördern. Auch die Verpflichtungen zur Unterstützung finanziell notleidender Verwandter wurden nur einem kleinen Kreis von Familienmitgliedern auferlegt.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 25 , Special Issue 1: SPECIAL ISSUE ON KINSHIP IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND FROM THE EARLY MODERN TO THE PRESENT , May 2010 , pp. 49 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

ENDNOTES

1 The term ‘depth’ is used to denote the time periods (frequently generational), and the extent of lineal descents, that owners considered in transmitting property: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. ‘Breadth’ is the extent to which settlements passed property to collateral kin (issue of parents, grandparents).

2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the laws of England, facsimile of the first edition of 1765–1769, 4 vols. (Chicago, 1979), vol. 1, 47.

3 P. Laslett, ‘Demographic and microstructural history in relation to human adaptation: reflections on newly established evidence,’ in D. J. Ortner ed., How humans adapt: a biocultural odyssey (Washington, 1983), 343–70.

4 The term is borrowed from international law, and in particular European human rights law. ‘Margins of appreciation’ are the bounds or latitude allowed to states in conforming particular actions to an international norm. See, generally, Marc Janis, An introduction to international law, 4th edn (New York, 2003).

5 This is a ‘dworkinism’; see Ronald Dworkin, Law's empire (Cambridge, MA, 1983).

6 Bronisław Malinowski, Crime and custom in savage society (New York, 1926).

7 Ibid., 43, 36–8.

8 Ibid., 52.

9 2 & 3 Edw. VI c. 2 (1548).

10 5 & 6 W. & M. c. 21 (1694); 6 & 7 W. & M. c. 6 sec. 47 (1694); 6 & 7 W. & M. c. 6, sec. 47 (1694).

11 The most comprehensive treatment is in R. B. Outhwaite, Clandestine marriage in England 1500–1850 (London, 1995).

12 For a general discussion, see A. W. B. Simpson, A history of the land law, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1986), 62–3.

13 22 & 23 Car. II c.10 (1670–1671).

14 Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Family structures and inheritance customs in sixteenth century France’, in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson eds., Family and inheritance: rural society in Western Europe 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), 37–70.

15 The term ‘settlement’ employed hereafter means a conveyance made by a landholder which created interests in the land, usually a combination of present possessory interests and future interests in either the settler and/or others, generally specified descendants or heirs. See generally Simpson, History of the land law, 233–41.

16 Habakkuk, H. J., ‘Marriage settlements in the eighteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 32 (1950), 15–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 The time period in which a settlement could limit the free alienation in successors was a matter of controversy in the courts. See generally Simpson, History of the land law, 208–29.

18 Alan Macfarlane, The origins of English individualism (Oxford, 1979).

19 Poos, L. R. and Bonfield, L., ‘Law and individualism in medieval England’, Social History 11 (1986), 287–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 I have worked extensively on testamentary litigation in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and am preparing a volume for publication.

21 See Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. 1, 46.

22 Private acts of Parliament that may have had an impact on succession to the estates of landed families, a study of which I am undertaking at present, are excluded.

23 21 Hen. VIII c.8 (1529).

24 5 and 6 Edw. VI c. 23 (1551–1552).

25 8 Eliz. c. 22 (1566).

26 14 Car. II c. 13 (1662).

27 6 Anne c. 72 (1707).

28 The source is the printed volumes of the Statutes of the Realm. For the earlier years in the period, both private and public acts were printed in full. Thereafter only the titles of private acts are printed in the Table of Contents. All printed acts, public and private, have been included in the count here.

29 14 & 15 Hen. VIII c. 8 (1523).

30 2 Hen. VIII c. 38 (1540). Earlier statutes specifically denied the church the power to dispense with ‘God's lawes’, but specified very limited prohibitions. See 25 Hen. VIII c. 22 (1533–1534), sec. 2, and 28 Hen. VIII c. 38 (1536), sec. 4. For a discussion of ‘curtesy’ see below, Section 5.

31 2 & 3 Edw. 6 c. 21 (1548). The ban on clerical marriage was retained during the reign of Henry VIII for those who professed after age 21; see 31 Hen. VIII c. 6 (1539); 31 Hen. VII. c. 14 (1539); 32 Hen. VIII c.10 (1540).

32 5 & 6 Edw. VI c. 12 (1551–1552), sec. 1. Previously, Parliament had recognized the right of clerics to hold land in their own right, and to have their heirs succeed to their real property; see 31 Hen. VIII c. 6 (1539).

33 Ibid., sec. 2.

34 1 Jac. I c. 11 (1604–1604). Another criminal statute was adopted during the reign of James I which provided that a woman who concealed the death of her bastard infant child committed felony, and the act was to be treated as murder unless the mother could prove by at least one witness that the child was born dead; see 21 Jac. I c. 27 (1623–1624).

35 12 Car II. c. 33 (1660).

36 Marriages were considered clandestine if the union proceeded without either a licence being obtained or banns called in the parish church in which the couple were required to marry.

37 5 & 6 Wm & M. c. 21 (1694).

38 6 & 7 Wm. & M. c. 6 sec. 47 (1694).

39 7 & 8 Wm. III c. 35 (1695–1696), which also dealt with the registration of births and burials.

40 Ibid., sec. 3.

41 1 Edw. VI c. 3 (1539), sec. 3; 3 & 4 Edw. VI. c. 16 (1549–1550) sec. 12. Although a statute of the reign of Henry VII allowed children aged between 5 and 14 to be bound over as apprentices in crafts and husbandry, it did not specifically allow for the removal of children from parents; see 27 Hen. VIII c. 25 (1535–1536), sec. 6.

42 The terms of both Edwardian acts allowed for the temporary enslavement of the poor if some individual was prepared to maintain the poor person, and the practice of binding them over to those willing to provide for them in return for services was extended to the children of the poor.

43 1 Edw. VI c. 3 (1539), sec. 3; 3 & 4 Edw. VI. c. 16 (1549–1550), sec. 12.

44 14 Eliz. c. 5 (1572), sec. 24.

45 For a discussion see, amongst others, Paul Slack, The English poor law 1531–1782 (Basingstoke, 1990).

46 12 Car. II c. 26 (1660); 32 Hen. VIII c. 46 (1540).

47 See Joel Hurstfield, The Queen's wards (London, 1973).

48 12 Car. II c. 26 (1660), sec. 8. These provisions did not apply in London and Berwick upon Tweed; see sec. 9. Londoners were governed by the Court of Orphans (5 & 6 W. & M. c. 10 (1694)). See Charles Carlton, The Court of Orphans (Leicester, 1974), and Horwitz, Henry, ‘Testamentary practice, family strategies, and the last phases of the custom of London’, Law and History Review 2 (1984), 223–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Earlier naturalization acts can be found, for example 33 Hen. VIII c. 25 (1541–1542), but they appear to be more like private acts.

50 29 Car. II, c. 6 (1677).

51 9 Wm. III c. 20 (1697–1698).

52 11 Wm. III c. 6 (1698–1699).

53 7 Anne c. 5 (1708). Section 3 of the act dealt specifically with the children born of naturalized parents, recognizing them also as natural subjects, and it also extended the process to those who would settle in Ireland.

54 For a discussion, see Simpson, History of the land law, 21, 276.

55 31 Hen. VIII c. 3 (1539).

56 34 & 35 Hen. VIII c. 26 sec. 36 (1542–1543). An earlier statute which incorporated Wales into England did not mention gavelkind, but merely extended English inheritance laws to Wales ‘without division or partition’; see 27 Hen. VIII c. 26 (1535–1536).

57 York: 4 W & M. c. 2 (1692); Wales: 7 & 8 Wm. III c. 38 (1695–1696).

58 1 Anne c. 24 (1702).

59 The trustees held legal title to the estate and were empowered to act should the tenant in possession deal with the property in such a manner as to destroy future estates limited in the property settlement.

60 10 Wm. III c. 22 (1698).

61 22 & 23 Car. II c. 10 (1670).

62 Nigel Goose and Nesta Evans, ‘Wills as an historical source’, in Tom Arkell, Nesta Evans and Nigel Goose, When death do us part: understanding and interpreting the probate records of early modern England (Oxford, 2000), 38–43.

63 Current New York law tracts it very closely, except for its provisions for surviving spouses; see New York Estates, Powers, and Trusts Law, sec. 4.1.1.

64 27 Hen. VIII c. 10 (1536) and 32 Hen. VIII c. 1 (1540) respectively.

65 For a general discussion, see Simpson, History of the land law, 173–98.

66 The distinction is recognized as early as in Glanvill; see G. D. G. Hall ed., The treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of England, commonly called Glanvill, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1993), Book VII.

67 Simpson, History of the land law, 191–2.

68 Ibid., 160–5.

69 21 Hen. VIII c. 5 (1529). Earlier statutes are 3 Hen. V stat. 1 c. 8 (1421), and 31 Ed. III c. 4 (1357).

70 See, for example, 21 Hen. VII c. 5, sec. 1 (1529).

71 Ibid., sec. 2.

72 See the full discussion of lineal and collateral descent in Richard Burn, The ecclesiastical law, 9th edn (London, 1842), vol. 4, 70.

73 Estates Acts were private bills introduced into the House of Lords, through which the terms of settlements could be altered.

74 See the Lord Chief Justice's manuscript reports (currently being edited by me for the Selden Society) held in both Lincoln's Inn Library (A487–94) and the Harvard Law Library (MS 1113). The pages are numbered consecutively. Three examples are Nicholson v. Russell et al., 37; Philips v. Harrison, 44; and Ferran v. Pearson, 52.

75 A number of cases dealt with marine insurance (7); incomplete stock transfers (4); and even a disputed wager (1). Examples (one for each genre) are Stewart et al. v. Herring, 26–7; Conset v. Warren, 229–30; and Minshall v. John Earl of Bristol, 195–200.

76 For a contemporary treatment, see Simpson, History of the land law, 208–41, and for my own interpretation see Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage settlements 1660–1740 (Cambridge, 1982), 22–45. For a modern American treatment, see Singer, Introduction to property, 2nd edn (New York, 2005), 317–27.

77 A good recent treatment is Galantis, T. P., ‘The future of future interests’, Washington and Lee Law Review 60 (2003), 513–75Google Scholar.

78 13 Edw. I c. 1 (1285).

79 For a general discussion, see Simpson, History of the land law, 208–41; Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 22–45.

80 Eileen Spring, Law, land and family: aristocratic inheritance in England, 1300–1800 (Chapel Hill, 1993).

81 For a general discussion of the developments discussed in this paragraph, see Simpson, History of the land law, 132–8.

82 Bonfield, Marriage settlements, 124–5.

83 For the story told in this paragraph see ibid., 55–80.

84 Bonfield, See Lloyd, ‘Marriage, property and the affective family’, Law and History Review 1 (1983), 297–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Ibid.

86 Bonfield, Marriage settlements, 102–20.

87 Habakkuk, H. J., ‘English landownership 1680–1740’, Economic History Review 10 (1940), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Bonfield, ‘Marriage, property and the affective family’.

89 10 Wm. III c. 22 (1698).

90 Donahue, Charles ‘What causes fundamental legal ideas? Marital property in England and France in the thirteenth century’, Michigan Law Review 78 (1979), 59–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91 For the English system, see Simpson, History of the land law, 68–70; for France see the sources cited in Donahue, ‘What causes’, 62–4. See also Lloyd Bonfield, ‘Developments in European family law,’ in David Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli eds., Family life in early modern times 1500–1789 (New Haven, 2001), 113–20.

92 This argument comports well with his view of familial control of marriage partners; in a separate series of articles, he argued that familial control of marriage partners may have been stronger in France than in England in the later Middle Ages; he made this argument in ‘English and French marriage cases in the later Middle Ages: might differences be explained by differences in property law?’, in L. Bonfield ed., Marriage, property and succession (Berlin, 1992), 339–66.

93 Glanvill notes the process; see Hall ed., Treatise, 58–60.

94 Singer, Introduction to property, 379–90.

95 For a sketch of the modern community property system in the United States, see J. Dukeminier, S. Johanson, J. Lindgren, and R. Sitkoff, Wills, trusts and estates, 7th edn (New York, 2005), 455–62.

96 The argument must proceed circumspectly, because there is probably a greater societal interest in fobbing off the poor onto their better-off relations than in creating inheritance patterns. Thus fiscal concerns might press a government to create as extensive a notion of the breadth of obligations as could be justified, with intensive monitoring to ensure that, wherever possible, kin rather than the state undertook the required obligation of support.

97 The obligation to support ascendants and descendants in need originally appeared in the French Civil Code's Article 205, and in Louisiana law it currently remains in the part devoted to family law, Article 229, in the book on persons and in the chapter on parental authority.

98 This was so ordered in a recently reported Italian case.

99 The closest provision in French Civil code was Article 757, which only implies the child's right to heirship by implication, where the remaining spouse gets ownership of a quarter of the deceased's property with the rest to go to the children. The Louisiana's Code's Articles 1493–1495 define ‘forced heirs’ and how much they inherit. A recent revision of the code retains forced heirship, but limits its application to children under the age of 22 and disabled children.

100 The term ‘common law jurisdictions’ is a term of art in Louisiana legal circles; it means the other 49 states, whose private law is derived from the English common law.

101 Marcel Planoil, Traité élémentaire de driot civil, 12th edn (Paris, 1939), vol. 1, pt 1, 397–8.

102 1 Strange 190, 93 Eng. Rep. 465 (1719).

103 The first iteration of the Elizabethan poor law, 39 Eliz. c. 3 (1597–1598), extends the obligation to parents, but the second, 43 Eliz. c. 2 (1601), reaches a generation further, obligating grandparents to support children. That obligation was not reciprocal, perhaps because Parliament did not regard it as a likely demographic reality that a grandparent would have grandchildren of working age.

104 E.g. Fritz Schulz, Classical Roman law (Oxford, 1951), 156–7, 160.

105 S. P. Scott trans., The civil law (Cincinnati, 1932); Code of Justinian, sec. 5.25.1–4.

106 Peter Birks and Grant McLeod trans., Justinian's Institutes (Ithaca, 1987) sec. 1.9.

107 Saller, Richard, ‘European family history and Roman law’, Continuity and Change 6 (1991), 335–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 See Birks and McLeod trans., Institutes; C. F. Colbert trans. The Digest of Roman law (London, 1959).

109 See James Brundage, Medieval canon law (New York, 1996).

110 Codex Juris Canonici (London, 1983) ch. 111, sec. 1; ch. 226, sec. 2.

111 Ibid., ch. 222, sec. 2 does elaborate upon a duty to support the poor from the faithful's own resources.

112 Or at least in the traditional view; see Katherine Fisher Drew trans., The Lombard laws (Philadelphia, 185), 6–7. This reality did begin to break down even amongst the Lombards (pp. 31–5).

113 The printed codes consulted include: Katherine Drew trans., The Burgundian Code: Books of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad (Philadelphia, 1949); Theodore Rivers trans., Laws of the Alamans and Bavarians (Philadelphia, 1977); S. P. Scott trans., The Visigothic Code (Boston, 1910).

114 Thomson, David, ‘“I am not my father's keeper”’: families and the elderly in nineteenth-century England', Law and History Review 2, (1984), 265–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 Ibid., 271–2.

116 Michael Dalton, The countrey justice (1st publ. London, 1662; Arno Press, 1972), 81–9.

117 Thomson, ‘“I am not my father's keeper”’, 268–70.

118 Ibid., 276–85.

119 Ibid., 285.