Title: WOMEN IN LATER MEDIEVAL ENGLISH ARCHIVES

Author(s): Goldberg, Jeremy

Source: Journal of the Society of Archivists, 1994, Vol. 15, Iss. 1, p. 59-71
Language: English
Abstract: Examines the variety of the more common archival sources for
women in later medieval English society, and assesses their uses, the
problems they present in terms of records and interpretation, and the
way in which they reflect different aspects of women's lives such as
work, the law, life cycle, and devotion. [Entry ©2002 ABC-Clio
Inc.].
Time Period: 14c-15c
Subjects: Women; England; Daily Life; Archives
Publication Type: Article
ISSN: 0037-9816
Accession Number: 00379816199415159Gol

Database: World History FullTEXT

WOMEN IN LATER MEDIEVAL ENGLISH

ARCHIVES
There exists a considerable variety of sources for women in later medieval English society,
but, as so often with historical documents, few record women's lives directly and all present
their own problems of interpretation. Some aspects of women's lives are better documented
than others. Paid employment or death bed piety is comparatively well recorded, education,
recreation, beliefs, and emotions scarcely at all. Certain groups of women are likewise more
conspicuous than others. The aristocracy and well-to-do townswomen are readily observed,
but the poor, the young, and the married are harder to identify outside certain limited
contexts. My concern here is not to present a synopsis of current historical knowledge, but
a brief guide to the uses of some of the more common archival sources for medieval
women, their problems, and how they may be used to illustrate a variety of facets of
women's lives. The following broad categories will be adopted, viz work, the law, life
cycle, and devotion. This can hardly claim to be a comprehensive list, but it is a way of
imposing some order on what may otherwise appear a rather miscellaneous range of source
material.

Work

The range of work-related activities in which women are known to have engaged can best
be considered under two broad heads, viz town and country. For both it is paid
employment, which generates records of payments and of disputes over terms of contract,
that is illuminated. Work performed as part of the household or familial economy
(including child rearing, cooking, and other 'housework'), and thus without formal payment,
is much harder to detect, yet this probably collectively accounted for a far larger share of
women's time. Here it is necessary to assume some correlation between those tasks some
women performed for wages and those others performed within the context of the familial
economy without wage. Other work-related activities may be noted because they are the
cause of dispute or breach local law. Certain activities such as petty trading or prostitution
consequently feature prominently in the record. Here again activities conducted lawfully
and in a manner that causes no offence are probably under-recorded.

Two activities - the brewing of ale and the baking of bread -common to both town and
country are especially well documented because they were subject to formal price
regulation under the Assizes of Ale and of Bread. Lists of persons fined for breach of these
assizes are found in the records of both borough and manorial courts under view of
frankpledge and leet jurisdiction. The leet court rolls for Norwich, for example, include
extensive lists of brewing fines. It is likely that such fines were levied by way of licensing
commercial brewing and baking. Women are conspicuous among those so fined, especially
in respect of ale fines. It may even be that, outside very large towns and before beer brewed
with hops became common from the late fifteenth century, brewing was almost exclusively
a female concern and that men only appear in the records because legally responsible for
their wives' debts.[1]

Manor account rolls may include payments for a variety of agricultural and building works,
but individuals are seldom named and groups of workers will invariably be described as
'men' unless exclusively composed of women. Thus women may be found, for example,
washing and shearing sheep, weeding, carrying turves, or assisting thatchers.[2] Payments
to dairymaids as part of the lord's permanent staff (or famuli) may also be noted. Manor
court rolls are less informative about work, though women are often presented for taking
wood, nuts, berries, etc, illegal gleaning (supposedly reserved for poor women), allowing
livestock to stray or graze illegally, or using hand-mills to the detriment of the lord's mill.

For the later fourteenth century and earlier part of the fifteenth the enforcement of the
Statute of Labourers (1351) has resulted in numbers of women's names recorded in Peace
Sessions' rolls for allegedly receiving 'excess' wages (ie above the level of 1346), taking
work outside the vill, or charging excessive prices. Most women were presented in respect
of seasonal work, viz reaping or work in autumn, i.e. harvest, when labour would have been
particularly stretched and hence women could command good wages, or for spinning and
weaving.[3] Coroners' rolls have also been used as a source for work since many accidental
deaths occurred whilst women were engaged in work-related activities, notably fetching
water, brewing, and cooking. The very considerable range of other tasks involving women
are, however, scarcely noticed because they were not inherently hazardous.[4]

A more substantial source for women's work in the countryside is the lay poll tax returns
for 1379 and 1381.[5] Relatively few nominative listings survive for 1377 and those that do
fail to record occupations. In 1379, however, a graduated tax imposed higher rates on
persons assessed as artisans (and still higher rates on merchants, farmers of manors, the
aristocracy, etc) and in some returns such persons, including women, were specifically
identified by occupation. This was not a requirement in 1381, but many returns do record
occupations, in a few instances more freely than in 1379 since this information was not tied
to the level of tax. In Oxford, for example, spinsters, shepsters (dressmakers), hucksters,
and laundresses are specifically designated, although women may be found with similar
occupational surnames in other returns.[6] Women are also noted more generally as
labourers, ie employees, and as servants. These last were sometimes listed alongside their
employers and, together with wives and daughters, provide some clues as to the structure of
the household as an economic unit.[7]

For urban society the ordinances of craft guilds, often surviving as part of borough rather
than guild archives, sometimes make reference to the brothers and sisters of the craft, ie
guild masters or employers, and to women working within the craft, ie as employees. Very
occasionally women, presumably widows continuing to run workshops, are named as
assenting to guild ordinances.[8] Women are also sometimes found among records of
persons admitted to the franchise, ie as burgesses (or in the case of cities as citizens)
exempt from tolls and licensed to keep shop and employ labour. Such women may be
identified, as at York, by occupation.[9] Rather larger numbers of women are so identified
among records of persons licensed to trade by the year. These may be recorded among the
chamberlains' accounts. Such lists survive, for example, at Canterbury and (for a few years)
at Nottingham. Chamberlains' accounts, (but not the summary rolls of account), may also
record payments to individual women for miscellaneous works. Aulnage accounts of cloth
produced for sale vary markedly in quality, but at best can provide valuable lists of female
traders and of the extent of their participation in the market. It is probable that these are the
names of cloth traders and only sometimes represent actual weavers.[10] Some women are
likewise noticed in customs accounts trading overseas in cloth, hides, and other goods.
Most appear only briefly and can invariably be identified as recent widows accounting for
business already begun whilst their husbands were still living, though a few widows
remained active merchants over a number of years.[11]

Borough court records, which include leet or wardmote courts, mayors' courts, mayors'
tourns, etc, throw some light on female traders both in respect of debt litigation and for
breach of borough ordinances. Analysis of debts, debtors, and creditors can provide some
information on levels of female involvement in trade in addition to providing names of
women traders.[12] Numbers of women were presented for a variety of trading offences,
notably forestailing (buying goods up before they reached the official market) and regrating
(selling goods in small, non-standard quantities), using false measures, selling goods
deceitfully, and selling reheated pies.[13] Many of these offences related to foodstuffs. As
is reflected in borough ordinances, this was an area of particular concern to civic
authorities, a part of a general policy to restrain prices and hence wages. Civic ordinances
also attempted to protect spinsters from exploitation by demanding that employers used
lawful weights and paid wages in cash, though the repetition of such ordinances suggests
that they were widely flouted.[14]

Two other sources that survive for rural and urban areas in respect of women's work are
wills and depositions from litigation in the church courts, but both tend to be more
informative for urban women. Wills survive in considerable numbers, especially from the
end of the fourteenth century, but usually as registered copies rather than original
documents. The aristocracy and better-off elements of urban society are especially well
represented. Most surviving wills are contained within diocesan or other ecclesiastical
probate collections, but some, particularly where property was involved, were registered in
borough courts. This is true, for example, of the London hustings' court wills, wills proved
in the city court at Norwich, or wills contained in the Hull bench books. Women appear not
infrequently as testators, though the numbers of single women leaving wills is always very
small and the numbers of married women leaving wills declines markedly during the
fifteenth century.[15] The wills of widows sometimes include bequests of craft tools, stock,
and provisions for apprentices, all of which indicate that they were continuing to run
workshops. Similarly the wills of some men make provision for widows to take over
workshops. Female (and male) servants are also regularly noted in wills and, as from poll
tax evidence, it is possible to detect something of the patterns of employment within
particular workshops and between different crafts.[16]

Depositions made before the church courts are a comparatively rare source before the early
modern era and little is known to survive outside Canterbury, London, and York. Women,
including female servants, appear as deponents in cases concerning disputed marriages,
defamation, breach of faith (invariably debt litigation), and testamentary disputes.
Sometimes their testimony bears upon work or work-related activities. One York action, for
example, concerns a woman chandler who was brought to court for allegedly failing to pay
for a quantity of candlewick she had purchased.[17] Act books are a more common
survival, but they often provide only the baldest indication of business within the church
courts. Sometimes, however, they provide names of persons presented for fornication and
adultery. Since the names of certain women may be noted on numerous occasions, it is
possible to identify these as prostitutes. A few are specifically described as such. The
regulation of prostitution may also be noted in borough ordinances and sometimes in
borough court records.[18]

The law

Women are much less conspicuous than men in most legal records. They often appear as
victims and the records themselves suggest women were less likely than men to succeed
when bringing litigation.[19] Legal records can, therefore, present a very negative
impression of women's lot in late medieval society. This needs, however, some
qualification. The business of medieval courts was not a simple mirror of society. A
woman's standing before the law, moreover, depended on her legal status, viz free or
servile, her marital status, and the nature of the jurisdiction and the law, viz customary law,
common law, borough law, statute law, or canon law. Customary law, ie the law of the
customary or manorial courts, and borough law varied from place to place and even over
time; the practice in any one place can only be determined from surviving customaries or
ordinances and from the records of the courts themselves. It is also apparent that the
procedure of courts changed over time.[20] Generalisations are thus hazardous, but some
observations may be offered. The records of those royal courts that were normally based in
Westminster, viz. King's Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer, Chancery, etc, have been
excluded from this present discussion, though a proportion of cases, which were invariably
initiated in lower courts, do concern women. Appeals in respect of murder of husbands or
for rape were, for example, brought by women in King's Bench.[21]

Medieval law distinguished between the most serious offences, including homicide, arson,
rape, robbery, and grand larceny (ie theft of goods valued in excess of a shilling), which
were classed as felonies, and other lesser offences or trespasses. Felonies were reserved to
the royal courts and were punishable by death, hence the frequent reluctance of juries to
convict. Royal justice claimed no monopoly, however, in respect of trespass and at the level
of servile peasant society trespasses were part of the regular business of the customary or
manorial court. Only bond tenants of the lord were formally obliged to attend (ie owed suit
at) the regular sessions of the court. This effectively meant that of the female population of
the medieval manor, only some widows owed suit of court. Widows are indeed sometimes
recorded as making excuse (essoin) or being fined (amerced) for failure to attend court.
Similarly some few widows are found acting as pledges (guarantors that fines will be paid
or persons will be present in court, etc), but most pledges were males.[22] The business of
the court fell into three broad categories, viz presentments for transgressions under
customary law, land transactions, and 'private' litigation between peasants. From the later
thirteenth century presentments for transgressions were regularly made by a jury of (male)
villeins -usually substantial tenants - and it is unlikely that they always acted impartially.
The same may be true of juries of inquest appointed in effect to decide between the
conflicting claims of parties engaged in litigation. These observations may have some
bearing upon the way women, and perhaps particularly single women, were treated by the
court.[23]

Women appear in Peace Sessions' rolls primarily in respect of presentments for various
kinds of assault including homicide (a felony) and battery (a trespass), theft (including petty
larceny, a felony), and, after 1359 when Justices of the Peace took over the work of Justices
of Labourers, violation of the Statute of Labourers (1351) in respect of wages, prices, and
terms of employment. Women most frequently occur as the alleged victims rather than as
the perpetrators of assaults. The circumstances behind such assaults are, however,
unrecorded and the extent of the injuries inflicted may be exaggerated. Sometimes a related
series of presentments, including those for rape, suggests some kind of feud. The medieval
law in respect of rape (a felony) was seriously defective and, given the unwillingness of
juries to convict alleged rapists, it may be that some alleged assaults were in fact rapes.[24]
Equally it is likely that women would take extra-judicial means to punish rapists.[25]
Women are found as both the victims and as the committers of theft of various kinds, but
are more likely than men to be associated with the theft of food or clothing. Women were
also presented for receiving stolen goods and giving shelter to criminals. The numbers of
women presented for breach of the Statute of Labourers varies markedly from roll to roll. It
has been suggested that this may represent a greater willingness on the part of some jurors
to present women in order to enforce wage differentials, but it may simply reflect differing
levels of female participation in paid employment within differing agrarian economies.
Numbers of women were presented for going outside their vill to take work at higher
wages. Some evidence for patterns of mobility may be derived where the name of the place
of work is recorded as well as that of the home vill.[26]

The variety of courts and names of courts found in boroughs permits only the crudest
generalisation. Three broad levels of jurisdiction may often be identified. At the lowest
level were the leer or ward courts. The business of these seems to have been eroded over
the course of the later Middle Ages and they were increasingly concerned only with such
matters as eavesdroppers or the obstructing of ways with dung. Debt, petty misdemeanours,
and private plaints tended to fall within the jurisdiction of the sheriff's court. More serious
matters relating to trade, law and order, and real estate was the business of the mayor's
court. The ways in which women were presented in borough courts for trading offences or
breach of the Assizes of Bread and Ale have already been noted, but women traders are
also noted in relation to debt litigation. Often the sums involved were very small and
women appear more frequently as debtors than as creditors, though some women,
especially widows, probably acted as moneylenders.[27] Actions alleging assault,
defamation, gaming, or prostitution are not infrequently found, though the two last seem to
have been matters of particular concern in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries
and again from the later fifteenth century. Numbers of women were presented for receiving
other men's servants (together with stolen goods) and permitting them to game or drink
illicitly. Others were presented for petty theft, for prostitution, for scolding, and for using
defamatory words.

The customary or manorial court catered for three broad types of business, viz 'private'
litigation, mostly trespass actions, between peasants, presentments for transgressions
against customary law, and land transactions. Women feature under each of these heads,
though the record of the court is heavily weighted towards the activities of adult male
tenants.[28] Women may be noted under all three heads, though widows, who enjoyed a
legal capacity similar to adult men and even sometimes acted as pledges or guarantors for
others, are most conspicuous. Married women, so far as they appear at all, are invariably
associated with their husbands. Widows as holders of dower lands may be noticed in
disputes relating to the holding and subletting of land or over their dower rights. Court rolls
may sometimes record maintenance agreements that provided for the women both as the
wives of landholding peasants at retirement and as widows.[29] Married women and
widows, as has been noted before, were regularly presented for breach of the Assizes of Ale
and of Bread. A few women were presented for illegal gleaning, presumably because they
were not considered sufficiently poor to be allowed to glean licitly. Younger women,
invariably identified as daughters, were presented for taking wood or nuts without
permission. Unmarried women are also found in connection with merchet (marriage) or
legerwite or leyrwite (fornication) fines. These last may be associated with prior
presentments before the church courts as shall be seen shortly.[30]

Women had access to the church courts regardless of their marital status if of free status
and full age. (Under canon law women achieved their majority at twelve, men at fourteen.)
They could initiate litigation (known as instance actions) in such matters as marital and
testamentary disputes, defamation, and breach of promise, all areas over which the church
had jurisdiction. Instance cases were conducted by the interrogation of witnesses of either
sex according to a series of questions drawn up in advance. Written depositions were
compiled from these answers and these sometimes survive. Before the fifteenth century,
however, depositions were invariably recorded in Latin, although the actual questioning
was conducted in the vernacular. There seems to have been some prejudice against female
witnesses and this may have been more marked by the end of our period.[31] The questions
posed, moreover, were focused on points pertinent to the law and may only tangentially
illuminate the actual circumstances behind the case. This is particularly true of marriage
litigation where the court was primarily interested in the words used and whether there
were any canonical impediments standing between the parties, although the historian may
well be more interested in how and why the action came to court and what it has to say
about marriage practice.[32] Verdicts only sometimes survive, but they are never explained.
Where only act books survive it is even harder to reconstruct the circumstances behind an
action, though some are very much more informative than others.[33]

Women could also be cited before the church courts at the instigation of the head of the
court or Official for a variety of sins, notably fornication, adultery, slander, using spells
(though it should be noted that accusations of witchcraft are hardly found before the end of
the fifteenth century), failure to attend church, or working on Sundays or other festival
days. These are known as ex officio actions and were the regular business of ruridecanal
and other lesser courts. Sometimes these matters would become known as a consequence of
an episcopal visitation. A few presentments for fornication could lead to instance actions if
one of the parties alleged that they were in fact married, but this was denied by the other.
Where children were born of illicit unions, the court could order the man to pay
maintenance for the support of the child in infancy.

Life cycle

As legal minors youngsters of either sex are hard to find in medieval sources. For the
aristocracy proofs of age will sometimes provide evidence relating to the births of heirs.
Similarly a disputed marriage case in the York consistory provides a range of depositions
relating to the birth of one Elena de Rouclif as well as a number of village children.[34]
Such evidence throws light on the 'ceremony' of childbirth, on baptism, the churching of the
mother, and the associated celebrations among kin, friends, and even tenants. Children and
infants also feature as victims within coroners' rolls. Many accidental deaths were no doubt
associated with play or lack of proper supervision, but it may be unwise to draw
conclusions about the quality of childrearing from such a loaded source. Accidental deaths
of girls are, moreover, less commonly recorded than boys, probably because accidental
deaths of girls were less likely to be reported to the coroner than that they were less
vulnerable than their brothers; although all accidental and unnatural deaths were supposed
to be reported, it is likely that the deaths of women and minors (and particularly female
minors) would only be reported where these were sufficiently publicised or sufficiently
suspicious that the community needed to make use of the proper channels in order to
protect itself from suspicion of wrongdoing? It has already been remarked that older girls,
described as the daughters of a named parent, were sometimes presented in manor court
rolls for collecting wood, nuts, or berries. Young women are also noted as servants in court
rolls, poll tax returns, wills, and depositions. These suggest that female servants were rather
more common in town than village society and in the era following the Black Death than
before, though pre-plague evidence is much less satisfactory. Bequests to servants in wills
further show that servants were not infrequently related to their employers. Servants are
also sometimes identified by marital status and age when making depositions and from this
some conclusions can be drawn about the ages at which young women (and men)
commonly engaged in service.[36]

Female servants, being young and unmarried, again appear prominently in matrimonial
litigation noted in act books and depositions. These church court records provide some
insight into the process of marriage formation in medieval society. Different patterns of
litigation alleging variously unconsummated future contracts, consummated future
contracts, contracts using words of present consent, and multiparty contracts (where one
party is allegedly contracted to two or more other parties) may suggest different levels of
personal initiative or parental control in the making of marriages. Depositions provide more
clues and may make reference to marriage tokens, viz rings, gloves, sums of money etc, the
words used, the witnesses, and the location, be it the parental home, the church porch, or
the middle of a field. Further, where the ages and marital status of deponents are recorded,
it may be possible to draw some conclusions about customary age at marriage.[37]
The way in which this minority of disputed marriage cases reflects more general trends is
of course problematic. For the aristocracy evidence of parental involvement in the bringing
together of young people in marriage is apparent from the formality of marriage
negotiations culminating in the drawing up of contracts. It is also reflected in pleas for
dispensations to marry despite ties of consanguinity or affinity sometimes recorded in
bishops' registers. A more mundane source for marriage within peasant society exists in the
record of marriage fines or merchets in manor court rolls and account rolls. Although it is
apparent that only a proportion of villein marriages resulted in a merchet payment, and that
the levy of merchet declined markedly after the Black Death, the record of fines may again
provide some clues as to marriage formation. That some women are recorded as paying
their own fines may suggest personal initiative, but equally the many fines paid by fathers
(or sometimes mothers) may signify parental involvement. Often the record distinguishes
marriages within the manor from marriages outside it.[38] An attempt has been made to
calculate age at marriage by observing the number of years elapsing between the first
recorded appearance of a father in the court rolls and his daughter's subsequent merchet
payment, but this method has not commanded universal acceptance.[39] Some manor court
rolls also record legerwite or fines for fornication by villein women. A few distinguish
these from childwire, i.e. fines for actually giving birth outside wedlock. These again may
provide a clue to a less regulated pattern of marriage formation, particularly as it appears
that daughters from poorer peasant families are much more likely to be so fined than their
more prosperous sisters.

The lives of married women, beyond the evidence already discussed in respect of work, are
not easy to reconstruct. For the lesser aristocracy and merchant classes of the fifteenth
century there is of course material to be gleaned from the Paston, Stonor, Plumpton, and
Cely correspondence. Husbands and wives occasionally used terms of endearment towards
their spouses in their wills. More practically, husbands regularly named wives among their
executors. Husbands and wives often asked to be buried beside their predeceased spouses.
Against these more positive indicators may be set some other pieces of evidence. Act books
and depositions indicate that some women lived apart from their husbands. A few
attempted to regularise this and gain maintenance by obtaining judicial separation a mensa
eta thoro (from bed and board) on grounds of cruelty or adultery.

Not all women married. Rentals allow tenants to be identified, although it is not always
possible to distinguish lessees from residents who may be subtenants. Numbers of single
female tenants are sometimes noted living in close proximity; a phenomenon that has been
termed (misleadingly) spinster clustering. Such a pattern can also be found in some
nominative poll tax listings. This is a clue to economic topography since such areas were
invariably poor. They are also the sorts of location liable to be noted in act books in respect
of presentments of prostitutes and their clients. The surnames of such women, such as
Spinster, Kempster, or Huckster, may also provide a clue to their marginal economic
circumstances.[40] Act books also present couples for cohabiting and some women lived
with priests, sometimes the cause of complaint by parishioners to the bishop at visitation
(noted in bishops' registers). A few mistresses and illegitimate children are remembered in
wills.

Questions relating to contraception, pregnancy, childrearing, and household management

are not easily answered from conventional archive sources. So much must have been learnt
from experience and handed down by word of mouth, hence generating no written record.
Recreation is occasionally glimpsed from deposition evidence, but more usually from
literary rather than archival sources. The impression gained from these last is that women
often built up friendship networks amongst their own sex. This is reflected in women's wills
which are often characterised by numbers of small bequests to women, both kin and non-
kin.

Old age is not much better served by the surviving records. For peasant society manor court
rolls indicate some of the mechanisms used to provide the elderly and widows in particular
with some degree of economic security. Under common law widows of free tenants had a
right to dower of one third of their late husbands' holdings. For villein widows customary
dower rights were often more generous. Manor court rolls demonstrate, however, that
widows sometimes had difficulty defending these rights and had in any case to pay entry
fines. Not all couples chose to rely upon custom. Men may be found surrendering their land
in the customary court in order to receive it back jointly with their wives, hence giving their
widows full and automatic possession of the land on their decease. Elderly couples and
widows are also found entering into maintenance agreements whereby holdings were
surrendered to the lord and immediately regranted to another party on condition that the
incoming tenant provided for the original tenant. Often the incomer was unrelated to the
former tenant; it may be that similar arrangements with children or other close kin, where
dispute was not anticipated, were not always recorded. The arrangements, which include
provision for food, clothing, and accommodation, were often spelt out in some detail.[41]

For the landless old age was undoubtedly more precarious, but here it is even harder to
identify individuals. The poor are often noted in wills as the beneficiaries of doles of
money, food, or clothing, often, but by no means always at the time of the testator's funeral.
Members of the aristocracy often provided for their poor tenants, though clearly such
provision would not aid those without land. Hospitals and almshouses (commonly called
maisonsdieu) provided for the old and bedridden, but probably not in great number. Some
may also have provided a limited quantity of outdoor relief. Such institutions are noticed in
wills and were sometimes subject to visitation recorded in bishops' registers. These last
may also record rules and ordinances for some foundations and for a few hospitals
cartularies, accounts, and other such records survive, but little that relates to the individuals
accommodated in them. The impression is that some aristocratic foundations primarily
housed former servants and that the poor who lacked such patronage were passed over. The
same may not have been so true of urban society where civic and mercantile foundations
were more common. Some hospitals and nunneries provided corrodies, effectively sheltered
housing, for a price, but, as is apparent from entries in the patent and close rolls, the king
sometimes provided for former servants by awarding them corrodies at such places.
Provision for the old and the poor was not, however, confined to institutions. Numbers of
poor must have depended on their neighbours for alms or shelter. This is apparent from
some cases noted in coroners' rolls, but wills also provide evidence of individuals providing
regular food doles at their door, beds for poor persons, or specific bequests to named
paupers.[42]

Devotion

The material manifestations of the piety of women from those sections of society that
regularly left wills is documented in the wills they left. Wills, however, are highly formal
documents. Often they were made near and always in anticipation of death and are
consequently focused on the needs of death, hence the proper concern for burial, funeral
doles, the provision of prayers and masses, and other works of piety. The relation of such
death-bed piety to life-time practices and priorities is difficult to establish, though certain
clues may be derived from a reading of wills of both men and women. Women's wills
reflect a greater interest in practical charity as an extension of their household
responsibilities and, by implication, something women may have done whilst living. This is
most strikingly demonstrated by the number of bequests of fuel for the poor in winter.[43]
Devotion to particular saints is also reflected in bequests to images, lights, or particular
guilds. A few women specifically requested burial before or left their rings or prayer beads
to be placed on the image of a particular saint. How far certain saints, for example St Anne
or St Sitha (Zita), were more popular with women than with men has yet to be properly
explored.

Only some women left wills and the proportion of women will-makers declines over the
period; by the later fifteenth century virtually all female testators were widows. Outside the
ranks of the gentry and, in an urban context, of merchants and substantial artisans, very few
women appear to have made wills. Other levels of society are much more difficult to
observe. Women were members of religious guilds (or confraternities). This is apparent
from the surviving guild returns of 1389.[44] For a few individual guilds accounts, deeds,
and membership lists variously survive. These last are particularly valuable in determining
the nature of the guild, the extent of its appeal, and the class of women that were among its
members. Numbers of guilds, however, were probably too poor and too transitory to have
left any record, especially for areas where few or no medieval wills survive.
Churchwardens accounts may note the names of numbers of women as benefactors of the
church, again a phenomenon not confined to testamentary piety. They also provide
evidence for maidens' guilds, parallel to young men's guilds, and married women's guilds
within the parish church.[45]

Guilds were sometimes associated with religious drama of which the celebrated Corpus
Christi cycles of Chester, Coventry and York, performed in these instances by craft guilds,
are the best known examples. These are regularly noticed in civic records. Other religious
guilds also performed plays in honour of their patron saints, but beyond the few surviving
play texts there is little to indicate how far, if at all, women participated as guild members
in performances. That women participated in pilgrimage is well known from literary
sources, but is also glimpsed from some York depositions.[46] Pilgrimage is noted in wills
in that some testators, women and men alike, left money for pilgrimages to be undertaken
vicariously for the benefit of their souls. This provides tangential evidence regarding the
popularity of various shrines. In a few instances accounts of benefactions to individual
shrines survive.

Nuns, (invariably the daughters of men of gentry rank or, less frequently, well-to-do
townsfolk), and nunneries are sometimes noticed in wills. More substantial evidence for
individual houses may be contained in visitation returns and injunctions recorded in
bishops' registers. Such records focus on what was deemed unsatisfactory about the state of
the house, such as the failure to observe appropriate sobriety of dress, excessive contact
with outsiders, dissensions within the community, even the practice of sleeping two to a
bed. They thus present a somewhat one-sided view of convent life, but are a more lively
source than the occasional collections of deeds and rentals. For a few nunneries account
rolls are extant and these can provide an illuminating insight into the convent economy.[47]
Some women, usually of gentry rank and almost always widows, preferred to follow a
devout life without retiring into a nunnery by taking vows of chastity before their bishop.
These are consequently recorded in bishops' registers. Anchoresses, ie women living within
the enclosure of an anchorhold but available to offer spiritual direction to the wider
community, may also be noticed in bishops' registers, but are more commonly found as
beneficiaries in wills.[48]

This has been a necessarily patchy survey that makes no claim to discuss every source
found in local archive offices that might be used for the study of medieval women.
Cartularies and miscellaneous family deposits, for example, may include numbers of deeds
relating to land that might sometimes be held by women. A variety of tax records, which
again may survive locally, may identify numbers of women (presumably invariably
widows) as taxpayers and hence throw light on their economic status. The main purpose of
this survey, however, has been to show that there exists both a wide range of sources that
have some bearing on the history of women in the later Middle Ages and that even
relatively mundane sources, such as rentals or account rolls, may often be of considerable
value.[49] Although references have been given to only a part of the more pertinent
secondary literature that has made use of particular sources, it will be apparent that some
sources are better known or have been more thoroughly trawled than others. Historical
scholarship will perhaps be best served by more thorough analysis of the full range of
sources available than by repeated generalisation from a limited number of more obvious
sources. The question researchers might usefully ask of archivists then is 'what sources do
you have?' rather than 'do you have X or Y?' To the researcher who asks 'do you have
anything to do with medieval women?' the archivist's reply, so long as the collection
includes some medieval material, should be 'almost certainly, but what aspects of women's
lives and at what period are you interested?'

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Extracts from the Norwich leet rolls were published in W. Hudson (ed.) Leer Jurisdiction
in the City of Norwich, Selden Society, vol 5 (1892). For a discussion of brewing see H.
Graham, ' "A Woman's Work . . . ": Labour and Gender in the Late Medieval Countryside',
in P. J.P. Goldberg (ed.), Woman is a Worthy Wight (Stroud, 1992), pp 136-144.

2. J. E. T. Rogers made use inter alia of this class of record to construct his A History of
Agriculture and Prices in England, 8 vols (Oxford, 1866-1902). It should be remembered
that these and other tasks would be performed by women without payment in the context of
the family holding and the familial economy, but these will not enter the record. Equally
works performed for the lord as customary, and hence unpaid, labour services will likewise
go unrecorded.

3. This source has been used to good effect in S. A. C. Penn, 'Female Wage-Earners in Late
Fourteenth-Century England', Agricultural History Review, vol 35 (1987), pp 1-14.

4. The most substantial use of this source is B. A. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant
Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986). For a fuller discussion of the difficulties
posed by this source see P. J. P. Goldberg, 'The Public and the Private: Women in the Pre-
Plague Economy', in P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (ed.), Thirteenth Century England III,
(Woodbridge, 1991), pp 75-89.
5. Children and the very poor were not liable to the poll tax, which in 1379 was imposed on
persons aged sixteen or more and in 1381 on persons aged fifteen or more. It appears that in
practice many more, and especially the unmarried and women, were omitted from the
returns. This is particularly true of the 1381 tax.

6. The Oxford returns have been printed in J. E. T. Rogers (ed.), Oxford City Documents,
1268-1665, Oxford Historical Society, vol 18 (1891).

7. See for example P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval
Economy (Oxford, 1992), pp 186-194.

8. Eg the late fourteenth-century ordinances of the York dyers, glovers, and parchment-
makers respectively: M. Sellers (ed.), York Memorandum Book i, Surtees Society, vol 120
(1912), pp 50, 82, 112.

9. York was unusual in admitting women to the franchise in any number, but even there
they constituted only a tiny proportion of all persons enfranchised. F. Collins (ed.), Register
of Freemen of the City of York i, Surtees Society, vol 96 (1896).

10. Eg Emma Erie noted in late fourteenth-century aulnage accounts for Wakefield was
clearly an entrepreneur of some importance. For her and numbers of other female traders
see J. Lister (ed.), The Early Yorkshire Woollen Trade, Yorkshire Archaeological Society
Rec. Ser., vol 64 (1928).

11. For some examples drawn from the later fifteenth-century customs accounts for Hull
see P. J. P. Goldberg, 'Women's Work, Women's Role in the Late-Medieval North', in M.
A. Hicks (ed.), Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England (Gloucester,
1990), pp 45-46; W. R. Childs (ed.), The Customs Accounts of Hull, 1453-1490, Yorkshire
Archaeological Society Rec. Ser., vol 144 (1986).

12. The most useful recent analysis of women and debt is M. Kowaleski, 'Women's Work
in a Market Town: Exeter in the Late Fourteenth Century', in B. A. Hanawalt (ed.), Women
and Work in Preindustrial Europe, (Bloomington, IN, 1986), pp 149-159.

13. This is a reflection of women's marginal position within the economy; disadvantaged in
their access to more secure forms of employment, numbers of women found themselves
attempting to make a livelihood in areas that regularly brought them in conflict with
borough law. This source alone, however, offers a very distorted view of the role of women
traders.

14. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 117-120, 144-145.

15. Wills registered in borough courts tend to be primarily concerned with bequests of
property and may well omit most other bequests. Registered wills, as copies, may
sometimes contain clerical errors. It appears, moreover, that a higher proportion of women
made wills than there were women's wills actually registered. The virtual elimination of
currently married female testators by about the middle of the fifteenth century means that
by the later fifteenth century nearly all female will-makers were widows.
16. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 194-200.

17. Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, CP.F.174.

18. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 149-157.

19. This is what Bennett found for the manor of Brigstock: J. M. Bennett, Women in the
Medieval English Countryside (New York, 1987), pp 28-31, 76-78.

20. R. M. Smith, 'Some Thoughts on "Hereditary" and "Proprietary" Rights in Land under
Customary Law in Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century England', Law and History
Review, vol 1 (1983), pp 95-128; Goldberg, 'The Public and the Private', pp 83-87.

21. Systematic analysis of later medieval royal judicial material is still limited, though P. C.
Maddem, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422-1442 (Oxford, 1992), has some
useful discussion relating to women.

22. Bennett, Women in the Medieval Countryside, pp 25, 152-155, 193-195.

23. Cf L. R. Poos and R. M. Smith, ' "Legal Windows onto Historical Populations"? Recent
Research on Demography and the Manor Court in England', Law and History Review, vol
2 (1984), pp 149150.

24. J. B. Post, 'Ravishment of Women and the Statutes of Westminster', in J. H. Baker,

(ed.), Legal Records and the Historian (London, 1978), pp 150-164. The only monograph
on the subject, viz. J. M. Carter, Rape in Medieval England, (Lanham, MD, 1985), is sadly
flawed.

25. This is suggested by the castration of one Roger de Pulesdon by Isabella Gronowessone
and her two daughters in 1405: E.G. Kimball (ed.), The Shropshire Peace Roll 1400-1414
(Shrewsbury, 1959), p 75.

26. Penn, 'Female Wage-Earners', pp 1-14.

27. R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), pp 103-
104.

28. Goldberg, 'The Public and the Private', pp 82-83.

29. See below.

30. North has suggested a direct link between legerwite and presentments for fornication.
His argument rests on the presumption that women would fine to avoid doing penances for
fornication in person, but this is not supported by church court evidence: T. North,
'Legerwite in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries', Past and Present, vol 111 (1986), pp
3-16.

31. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 221-222.

32. The definitive discussion of marriage cases before the church courts is R. H. Helmholz,
Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1974).

33. Important studies using act book evidence are M. M. Sheehan, 'The Formation and
Stability of Marriage in Fourteenth-Century England: Evidence of an Ely Register',
Medieval Studies, vol 33, (1971), pp 228-63, and A. Finch, 'Parental Authority and the
Problem of Clandestine Marriage in the Later Middle Ages', Law and History Review, vol
8 (1990), pp 189-201.

34. Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, CP.E.89.

35. Goldberg, 'The Public and the Private', pp 78-80.

36. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 168-173.

37. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 217-266.

38. J. M. Bennett, 'Medieval Peasant Marriage: An Examination of Marriage Licence Fines

in the Liber Gersumarum', in J. A. Raftis (ed.), Pathways to Medieval Peasants (Toronto,
1981), pp 193-246.

39. Z. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish (Cambridge, 1980). See also
Poos and Smith, ' "Legal Windows" ', pp 128-152 and the subsequent debate with Razi in
the pages of Law and History Review.

40. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle, pp 305-318.

41. R. M. Smith, 'Women's Property Rights Under Customary Law: Some Developments in
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol
36 (1986), pp 165-194; R. M. Smith, 'Coping with Uncertainty: Women's Tenure of
Customary land in England c. 1370-1430', in J. I. Kermode (ed.), Enterprise and Individuals
in Fifteenth-Century England (Stroud, 1991), pp 43-67; E. Clark, 'Some Aspects of Social
Security in Medieval England', Journal of Family History, vol 7 (1982), pp 307-320; C.
Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, (Cambridge, 1989), pp 153-154.

42. P. H. Cullum, '"And Hir Name was Charitc": Charitable Giving by and for Women in
Late Medieval Yorkshire', in Goldberg (ed.), Woman is a Worthy Wight, pp 182-211.

43. P. H. Cullum ' "And Hir Name . . . " ', pp 196-197.

44. For an edition of some of this material see J. T. Smith (ed.), English Gilds, Early
English Text Society, vol 40 (1870).

45. E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven and London, 1992), pp 147-148.

46. P. J. P. Goldberg, 'Pilgrims and Pilgrimage: Some Late Medieval Evidence', Medieval
Yorkshire, vol 21 (1992), pp 2-6.
47. Eg J. H. Tillotson, Marrick Priory: A Nunnery in Late Medieval Yorkshire, Borthwick
Paper 75 (York, 1989). The most substantial discussion of nunneries remains E. Power,
Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275-1535 (Cambridge, 1922).

48. For vowesses see P. H. Cullum, 'Vowesses and Vieled Widows: Female Lay Piety in
the Late Medieval Province of York', (forthcoming). For anchoresses see A. Warren,
Anchorites and their Patrons in Late Medieval England (Berkeley, 1985).

49. Valuable use has, for example, been made of household accounts to write about noble
women and noble households. See J. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages
(Harlow, 1992); K. Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250-1600 (Oxford, 1988). The
most thorough introduction to this source is C. M. Woolgar, Household Accounts from
Medieval England, 2 vols. Records of Social and Economic History vols 17-18 (1992-93).

~~~~~~~~

By JEREMY GOLDBERG

University of York

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Source: Journal of the Society of Archivists, 1994, Vol. 15, Iss. 1, p. 59-71
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