Wife and Widow in Medieval England

Wife and Widow in Medieval England PDF Author: Sue Sheridan Walker
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472104154
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the role of women in medieval law and society

Wife and Widow in Medieval England

Wife and Widow in Medieval England PDF Author: Sue Sheridan Walker
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472104154
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the role of women in medieval law and society

The Wealth of Wives

The Wealth of Wives PDF Author: Barbara A. Hanawalt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198042604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
London became an international center for import and export trade in the late Middle Ages. The export of wool, the development of luxury crafts and the redistribution of goods from the continent made London one of the leading commercial cities of Europe. While capital for these ventures came from a variety of sources, the recirculation of wealth through London women was important in providing both material and social capital for the growth of London's economy. A shrewd Venetian visiting England around 1500 commented about the concentration of wealth and property in women's hands. He reported that London law divided a testator's property three ways allowing a third to the wife for her life use, a third for immediate inheritance of the heirs, and a third for burial and the benefit of the testator's soul. Women inherited equally with men and widows had custody of the wealth of minor children. In a society in which marriage was assumed to be a natural state for women, London women married and remarried. Their wealth followed them in their marriages and was it was administered by subsequent husbands. This study, based on extensive use of primary source materials, shows that London's economic growth was in part due to the substantial wealth that women transmitted through marriage. The Italian visitor observed that London men, unlike Venetians, did not seek to establish long patrilineages discouraging women to remarry, but instead preferred to recirculate wealth through women. London's social structure, therefore, was horizontal, spreading wealth among guilds rather than lineages. The liquidity of wealth was important to a growing commercial society and women brought not only wealth but social prestige and trade skills as well into their marriages. But marriage was not the only economic activity of women. London law permitted women to trade in their own right as femmes soles and a number of women, many of them immigrants from the countryside, served as wage laborers. But London's archives confirm women's chief economic impact was felt in the capital and skill they brought with them to marriages, rather than their profits as independent traders or wage laborers.

Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500

Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500 PDF Author: Caroline Barron
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826421822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500 shows that it is possible to expand the repertoire of examples of medieval women with personalities and individuality beyond the well-known triad of Margaret Paston, Margery Kempe and the Wife of Bath. The rich documentation of London records allows these women to speak for themselves. They do so largely through their wills, which themselves exemplify the ability of widows to make choices and to order their lives.

Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London

Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London PDF Author: Shannon McSheffrey
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
Awarded honorable mention for the 2007 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association How were marital and sexual relationships woven into the fabric of late medieval society, and what form did these relationships take? Using extensive documentary evidence from both the ecclesiastical court system and the records of city and royal government, as well as advice manuals, chronicles, moral tales, and liturgical texts, Shannon McSheffrey focuses her study on England's largest city in the second half of the fifteenth century. Marriage was a religious union—one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and imbued with deep spiritual significance—but the marital unit of husband and wife was also the fundamental domestic, social, political, and economic unit of medieval society. As such, marriage created political alliances at all levels, from the arena of international politics to local neighborhoods. Sexual relationships outside marriage were even more complicated. McSheffrey notes that medieval Londoners saw them as variously attributable to female seduction or to male lustfulness, as irrelevant or deeply damaging to society and to the body politic, as economically productive or wasteful of resources. Yet, like marriage, sexual relationships were also subject to control and influence from parents, relatives, neighbors, civic officials, parish priests, and ecclesiastical judges. Although by medieval canon law a marriage was irrevocable from the moment a man and a woman exchanged vows of consent before two witnesses, in practice marriage was usually a socially complicated process involving many people. McSheffrey looks more broadly at sex, governance, and civic morality to show how medieval patriarchy extended a far wider reach than a father's governance over his biological offspring. By focusing on a particular time and place, she not only elucidates the culture of England's metropolitan center but also contributes generally to our understanding of the social mechanisms through which premodern European people negotiated their lives.

Marriage in Medieval England

Marriage in Medieval England PDF Author: Conor McCarthy
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843831020
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
A survey of attitudes to marriage as represented in medieval legal and literary texts. Medieval marriage has been widely discussed, and this book gives a brief and accessible overview of an important subject. It covers the entire medieval period, and engages with a wide range of primary sources, both legal and literary. It draws particular attention to local English legislation and practice, and offers some new readings of medieval English literary texts, including Beowulf, the works of Chaucer, Langland's Piers Plowman, the Book of Margery Kempe and the Paston Letters. Focusing on a number of key themes important across the period, individual chapters discuss the themes of consent, property, alliance, love, sex, family, divorce and widowhood. CONOR MCCARTHY gained his PhD from Trinity College Dublin.

Daughters of London

Daughters of London PDF Author: Kate Kelsey Staples
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004203117
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
From an examination of medieval London's Husting wills, Daughters of London offers a new framework for considering urban women’s experiences as daughters. The wills reveal daughters equipped with economic opportunities through bequests of real estate and movable property.

Stolen Women in Medieval England

Stolen Women in Medieval England PDF Author: Caroline Dunn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107017009
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first comprehensive exploration of women's multifaceted experiences of forced and consensual ravishment in medieval England.

Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Sandra Cavallo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317882768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
This new collection of essays brings together brand new research on widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the Editors which looks generally at the conditions and constructions of widowhood in this period. This is followed by a range of essays which illuminate different dimensions of widowhood across Europe - in England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. A particular attraction of the volume is the attention given to widowers, and the comparisons made between the male and female experience of widowhood. It is an exciting reinterpretation of the subject which will do much to undo the traditional stereotype of the widow. Contributing to the volume are: Jodi Bilinkoff, Giulia Calvi, Sandra Cavallo, Isabelle Chabot, Julia Crick, Amy Erikson, Dagmar Freist, Elizabeth Foyster, Margaret Pelling, Pamela Sharpe,Tim Stretton, Barbara Todd, and Lyndan Warner.

Medieval Women

Medieval Women PDF Author: Eileen Power
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107650151
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book Here

Book Description
An accessible and clear snapshot of the life and work of women in medieval times from the nunnery to the town to the castle.

Widows in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Britain

Widows in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Britain PDF Author: Marie-Françoise Alamichel
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039114047
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume provides a comprehensive study of widowhood in Medieval Britain based on literary and historical sources from the seventh to the 15th centuries. It devotes much attention to family structures and to the legal and social aspects of inheritance.