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Coverture and the Marital Partnership in Late Medieval Nottingham: Women's Litigation at the Borough Court, ca. 1300–ca.1500

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2019

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Abstract

Women engaged in litigation in Nottingham's borough court as both plaintiffs and defendants for a variety of reasons relating to trade, household provisioning, misbehavior and interpersonal disputes. This article examines how women's litigation was determined by the doctrine of coverture and the way that women's marital status shaped and defined their experience of the law. In doing so, it explores how these pleas reveal the workings of the marital partnership within a late medieval English town. In order to contextualize the experiences of women “under coverture,” the article first traces the ways in which all manner of female marital and household identities were documented in the court records, analyzing the descriptors that court scribes attached to individual women's names. The article highlights inconsistency in the way that women's identities were recorded and in the way that the marital partnership was represented through the litigation of spouses in the borough court. The dual focus of this article not only adds new evidence to ongoing discussions of the nature of medieval coverture but also interrogates how we identify coverture and women's marital statuses based on the evidence of court records.

Type
Original Manuscript
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 58 , Special Issue 4: Women Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice in Britain, 1300–1700 , October 2019 , pp. 768 - 786
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2019 

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References

1 CA1278, rot. 22, Nottinghamshire Archives (hereafter NA). Eleven shillings would have paid for a substantial amount of fish: in South Staffordshire in 1461, herring cost 1/4d. each, so 11s. equates to 528 herring. See Dyer, Christopher, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London, 1994), 106Google Scholar. This sum was also greater than the annual rent of 8s. for a messuage (a house and its associated buildings and land) in the town in 1374. CA1278, rot. 17, NA.

2 On coverture, see Stretton, Tim and Kesselring, Krista, “Introduction: Coverture and Continuity,” in Married Women and the Law: Coverture in the Common Law World, ed. Stretton, Tim and Kesselring, Krista J. (London, 2013), 3–23Google Scholar; Stretton, Tim, “Coverture and Unity of Persons in Blackstone's Commentaries,” in Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History, ed. Prest, Wilfred (Oxford, 2009), 111–28Google Scholar; Stretton, Tim, “The Legal Identity of Married Women in England and Europe 1500–1700,” in Europa und seine Regionen: 2000 Jahre Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Bauer, Andreas and Welker, Karl H. L. (Cologne, 2006), 309–22Google Scholar; Sara M. Butler, “Discourse on the Nature of Coverture in the Later Medieval Courtroom,” in Stretton and Kesselring, Married Women and the Law, 24–44; Beattie, Cordelia, “Married Women, Contracts and Coverture in Late Medieval England,” in Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe, ed. Beattie, Cordelia and Stevens, Matthew Frank (Woodbridge, 2013), 133–54Google Scholar.

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17 These samples have been selected at intervals across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where the court records are relatively complete in order to provide the most accurate overview of all female names recorded each year. A small number of women in each sample have been counted under multiple categories where they were described using more than one term, for example by name alone and as daughter or widow.

18 Beattie, Medieval Single Women, 3.

19 CA1262, CA 1279, CA1296, CA1322/I, CA1374, NA.

20 CA1370, NA.

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24 CA1291, rots. 4d, 5, NA. Matilda and Hugh agreed with permission of the court, and Hugh was amerced 3d.

25 CA1291, rot. 13d, NA.

26 John de Rossyngton v. Margaret de Stapulton; John de Lyndeby v. Margaret de Stapulton. CA1291, rot. 26, NA.

27 CA 1294, rot. 1, CA 1295/I, rots. 4, 5, 5d, 7d, NA.

28 CA1374, NA.

29 CA1258a, rot. 16, NA.

30 CA1258a, rots. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, NA.

31 CA1374, rot. 90, NA.

32 Stretton, “Widows at Law,” 199–200.

33 For daughters of burgesses, this was understood to have been when they became capable of carrying out the tasks required by a woman of her station, probably between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. See Phillips, Kim M., Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, c.1270–c.1540 (Manchester, 2003), 32–33Google Scholar.

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35 CA1262, rot. 12, NA.

36 CA1262, rot. 13, NA.

37 For example, Margery of Quarndon v. John son of Henry le Meirman—debt of 4s. 8d. for service. CA 1262, rot. 16, NA.

38 In medieval Douai, 70 percent of women described as daughters were acting independently. Kittell, “Women's Social Identity in Medieval Douai,” 222.

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40 CA1375 106, NA.

41 CA1377 13, NA.

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43 Joan Litster de Baceford, singlewoman, presented for buying and selling grain at illegal measures. Stevenson, W. H., Records of the Borough of Nottingham, vol. 3 (London, 1889), 36Google Scholar. In York, the descriptor singlewoman also appeared from the 1480s onwards; Beattie, Single Women, 131–32. London women were also described as singlewomen slightly earlier in the sheriffs’ court records of 1461–62; Stevens, Matthew Frank, “London Women, the Courts and the ‘Golden Age’: A Quantitative Analysis of Female Litigants in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” London Journal 37, no. 2, (July 2012): 67–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 78.

44 CA1374 12, 1491-2; CA1375 10, 1494-5, all NA.

45 For example, John Misterton gentilman; Thomas Stevens de Horlay husbondman. CA1375, 1494-5, NA.

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49 She sued John Smyth de Langley in 1492 for a debt of 4s. CA1374 136, NA.

50 CA1370 137, NA.

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52 On Nottingham women in court, see Phipps, Teresa, “Gendered Justice? Women, Law and Community in Fourteenth-Century Nottingham,” Transactions of the Thoroton Society, no. 118 (2014): 79–92Google Scholar.

53 For more on women and credit, see Phipps, Teresa, “Creditworthy Women and Town Courts in Late Medieval England” in Women and Credit in Predindustrial Europe, ed. Dermineur, Elise (Turnhout, 2018), 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 These statistics were calculated from full year samples of 1323–24, 1375–76, and 1394–95, drawing on a total of 965 suits. See Teresa Phipps, “Urban Women and Local Justice: Gender, Society and Litigation in Fourteenth-Century England” (PhD diss., University of Nottingham, 2015), 113. On women and debt in other towns, see Stevens, “London Women,” 67–88; Stevens, “London's Married Women”; Spence, “‘For His Interest’?”; Kowaleski, “Women's Work in a Market Town.”

56 Phipps, “Urban Women and Local Justice,” 120. On the marital partnership, see Hanawalt, Barbara A., Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London (Oxford, 2007), 197–98Google Scholar.

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64 Hanawalt, Wealth of Wives, 278–81. Married women registered as femme sole (as if single) could trade independently of their husbands.

65 CA1291, rot. 13d, NA.

66 CA1268, rot. 2, NA.

67 CA1292, rot. 13, NA. Motley cloth probably referred to cloth woven from threads of multiple colors. See The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing, http://lexissearch.arts.manchester.ac.uk/entry.aspx?id=3321 Accessed 10 August 2019. Richard Plattes was a regular figure in the court and served as bailiff in 1389–90.

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69 CA1328, rot. 3d, NA.

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71 CA1299, rot. 13, NA.

72 CA1299, rot. 2, NA.

73 CA1279, rot. 9, NA.

74 CA3492, rot. 3, NA. Wives were rarely named individually for brewing against the assize at Nottingham.

75 CA1291, rot. 22, NA.

76 CA1292, rot. 16d, NA.

77 CA1296/I, rot. 12, NA.

78 Stretton, Women Waging Law, 135–37.

79 Stevens, “London's Married Women,” 118–19, 129.

80 T. E., The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights (London, 1632), 213.

81 CA1374 107, NA: “Et postea predictus Thomas Copeland cepit in uxorem predictam Margeriam per quod action accrevit eisdem Thomae et Margeriae ad habendas et exigendas de prefato Thoma Hygyn et Joan exore sua predictas parcellas etc.”

82 CA1384 58, NA.

83 Butler, “Medieval Singlewomen,” 64, 67.

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85 CA1276a, rot. 12d, NA.

86 CA1268, rot. 1d, NA.

87 CA 1304/I, rot. 23, NA.

88 On women and trespass litigation, see Phipps, Teresa, “Misbehaving Women: Trespass and Honor in Late Medieval English Towns,” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 43, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 62–76Google Scholar.

89 CA1274, rot. 4d, NA.

90 CA1274, rot. 1d, NA.

91 CA1297, rot. 3, rot. 8, rot. 10d, NA.

92 CA1321/I, rot. 6d, NA.

93 CA1321/I, rot. 8, NA.

94 CA1262, rot. 2, NA.

95 CA1261, rot. 5, NA. This absence may mean that they only reported Henry guilty of the attack on Agatha, or that the scribe may have chosen only to record one part of the verdict.

96 “Despexit verbis contumelicis necnon.” CA1297, rot. 23, NA. John Drapur also separately sued William Asshewe for detinue of twelve pounds of woolen thread that he was meant to dye for him. This was presumably what Alice Drapur had gone to collect from Asshewe's house, called “his place” (“ad locu”).

97 CA1259, rot. 8, NA.

98 CA1262, rot. 1, NA.

99 CA1324, rot. 7, NA.

100 CA1374, 81, NA.

101 CA1375, 79, NA. Thomas Orbney was reported not guilty.

102 CA1375, 80, NA.

103 Stretton, Women Waging Law, 129–35.

104 CA1296/I, rot. 21, NA.

105 CA1290, NA. On the legal career of Agnes Halum, see Phipps, Teresa, “Female Litigants and the Borough Court: Status and Strategy in the Case of Agnes Halum of Nottingham,” in Town Courts and Urban Society in Late Medieval England, ed. Goddard, Richard and Phipps, Teresa (Woodbridge, 2019), 77–92Google Scholar.

106 Muldrew, “Women, Debt, Litigation and Contract,” 53.