The Language of Abuse

The Language of Abuse

Later Medieval Europe Managing Editor

Douglas Biggs Waldorf College

Editorial Board Members

Kelly DeVries Loyola College

William Chester Jordan Princeton University

Cynthia J. Neville Dalhousie University

Kathryn L. Reyerson University of Minnesota

VOLUME 2

The Language of Abuse Marital Violence in Later Medieval England

By

Sara M. Butler

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

On the cover: ‘Woman beating a man with her distaff ’, (Detail) Right hand margin Luttrell Psalter f.60, England (East Anglia); circa 1325-1335 (Shelfmark: Add. 42130). By kind permission of The British Library. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN: 1872-7875 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15634 0 ISBN-10: 90 04 15634 8 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

To my children, Cade and Genevieve, for giving me so much to look forward to.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...................................................................... List of Illustrations .................................................................... List of Abbreviations ..................................................................

ix xi xiii

Introduction ................................................................................

1

Chapter One: Setting the Scene: Discourses of Passivity and Violence ..................................................................................

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Chapter Two: Types and Frequency of Abuse in the Medieval Law Courts ............................................................

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Chapter Three: Causes of Marital Tension ............................

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Chapter Four: The Acceptability of Marital Violence: Six Case Studies .................................................................... 131 Chapter Five: Regulating Marital Violence: The Family and the Community ...................................................................... 184 Chapter Six: Scolds, Personal Liability, and Marital Violence .................................................................................. 226 Conclusion .................................................................................. 258 Works Cited ................................................................................ 267 Index .......................................................................................... 281

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Soon after I made the decision to undertake a study of spousal abuse in the context of late medieval England I awoke to the sudden realisation that it was not going to be an easy task to complete from Halifax, Nova Scotia. In fact, without the industrious assistance of Gwyneth Pace and Marlyn McCann of the Document Delivery department at Killam Memorial Library (Dalhousie University), I might still be writing this book. I am indebted as well to both the University of Western Michigan and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for microfilm generously sent northwards for my use. No book on British History can be researched entirely from the comfort of a Canadian home, however. Thus, I would also like to thank the staffs of The National Archives at Kew, the Canterbury Cathedral Archives and the London Metropolitan Archives for their assistance and patience. I am also indebted to a number of bodies for their financial support. I am grateful foremost to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada without whom the writing of this book would have taken place under much less enjoyable (and perhaps less healthy) circumstances. I would like to extend my thanks to the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, the History department of Dalhousie University, the Peter Fraser fund for British historians, and the History department at Saint Mary’s University. This work owes much to the intellectual contributions of a variety of scholars. Many thanks go to Charles Donahue, Jr., Melissa Furrow, Shannon McSheffrey, Patricia Orr and Tim Stretton for reading various drafts, offering many useful suggestions and helping me to refocus my arguments. My gratitude goes to Shannon McSheffrey for generously providing me with transcriptions of relevant cases of spousal abuse from the diocese of London (which included the county of Essex), specifically LMA MS DL/C/205, GL MS 9064/1–8 and 9065, saving me much time in the London archives. Much of the credit for the existence of this book has to go also to my doctoral advisor, Cynthia Neville, whose generosity, kindness and encouragement helped to keep me going even when I thought I was ready to give up. Cynthia has been a true inspiration for me and I only hope

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that I will someday be half the scholar that she already is. For references, advice, support and inspiration I am indebted to many. A short, but not exhaustive list must include: Deanne Baker, Aki Beam, Siobhain Bly Calkin, Ian Gentles, Ann Higgins, Louis Knafla, Krista Kesselring, Ruth McClelland-Nugent, Marjorie McIntosh, Suzanne Sheffield, Brian Shipley, Arlene Sindelar and Shirley Tillotson. And, of course, thanks to my parents, Carol and Brian Butler, who nurtured my love of history from a very early age and gave me the confidence to pursue a doctoral degree. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Mark LaBine, whose patience, support and kind heart kept my spirits high throughout this process, despite some setbacks. My debt to him is both emotional and intellectual. He rescued me from a monstrous pile of cue cards recording thousands of cases by tailoring a database to my exact specifications. Without his ingenuity, creativity and hours of hard work this book simply would not have been possible. Parts of this book have appeared in previous publications, although in much different forms. Some of the central ideas and case material in Chapter Five appear in my “Spousal Abuse in FourteenthCentury Yorkshire: What can we learn from the Coroners’ Rolls?” Florilegium 18.2 (2001): 61–78. It is reprinted here with kind permission of the Canadian Society of Medievalists / Société canadienne des médiévistes. Also, three of the case studies in Chapter Four are discussed in my “Lies, Damned Lies, and the Life of Saint Lucy: Three Cases of Judicial Separation from the Late Medieval Court of York,” in Trompe(-)l’œil: Imitation & Falsification, ed. P. Romanski and A. Sy-Wonyu (Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 2002), 1–16. Please note: the spelling of all Middle English quotations has been modernised in order to make this work more accessible to the readers.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

These images are reproduced here with permission from: Ayers Bagley “Misericords & Choir Stall Carvings: Education, Imagery and Satire in Medieval Choirs,” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999), http://education.umn.edu/EdPA/iconics/misericord/misericords_text.htm. 1: A misericord from Stratford-upon-Avon illustrating the mundus inversus. A wife pulls her husband’s beard and prepares to hit him with a pot. ..........................................

66

2: A misericord from Stratford-upon-Avon depicting marital strife. ........................................................................................

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3: A misericord from Westminster Abbey’s Henry VII Chapel. A wife beats her cowering husband with a distaff. ......................................................................................

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4: A misericord from Westminster Abbey’s Henry VII Chapel. A woman birches her husband’s bottom. This imagery is reminiscent of a schoolmaster’s punishment of a disobedient boy. ..................................................................

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Cons. AB CPR D/C AB DL ERO GL LMA TNA YBI CP. E

Consistory Court Act book Calendar of Patent Rolls Dean and Chapter Act book Diocese of London Essex Record Office Guildhall Library, London London Metropolitan Archives The National Archives, Kew, Surrey York Cause Papers for the fourteenth century, preserved at the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research YBI CP. F York Cause Papers for the fifteenth century, preserved at the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research York M records of York Minster

INTRODUCTION

Since the emergence of feminist history in the 1970s, scholars have employed social perceptions of the acceptability of spousal abuse as a tool of historical analysis to evaluate male-female relations within both the family and the community at large. Inspired by current sociological trends, women’s historians have stormed the past hunting for evidence of women’s daily lives in order to determine the actual status of women in earlier societies and cultures. Despite the pertinence of the inferences drawn from a study of attitudes towards, and incidents of, spousal abuse within an historical setting, this area of research has been plagued with unbridled speculation and anachronistic projection of views onto the past. This plight is especially true in respect of pre-modern societies such as medieval England. From Lawrence Stone’s depiction of married life in the Middle Ages as “brutal and often hostile, with little communication, [and] much wife-beating” to Eileen Power’s vision of “rough and ready equality,” historians have produced a great diversity of conflicting visions of spousal abuse within medieval society.1 Bearing in mind that a woman’s place in the family very much reflects the role society permits and expects her to play, these conclusions can be misleading. Stone’s understanding of medieval life imagines a world that accorded few rights to women in theory and in practice; Power, on the other hand, would argue in favour of a broad gap between the two in which the reality of medieval English life confirmed a much wider range of options for participation by women in medieval culture.2 Given

1 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 117; Eileen Power, Medieval Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 34. 2 While Stone and Power represent the earlier proponents of these beliefs, many later scholars have adopted their perspectives. For example, much like Stone, Judith Bennett has argued that “[t]he wife’s duty to obey, and the husband’s right to ensure that she did, was a cornerstone of the ideal of marriage.” See Judith M. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock Before the Plague (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 6. Power’s more optimistic perspective has attracted many historians. Among others, see Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), chapter thirteen who argues in favour of marriage as a “partnership”;

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the larger implications of rates of spousal abuse, an accurate understanding of women’s place in medieval English society rests on a sharper awareness of medieval attitudes towards violence in marriage. The difficulty of such an endeavour, of course, is the subject itself. Today, spousal abuse is not the stuff of polite conversation: despite the increasing number of governmental and charitable agencies, as well as a growing body of legislation, developed to cope with violence in the home, individuals and communities in general still seem to labour under the impression that spousal abuse is a matter best left to the family. Consequently, many cases of abuse go undetected by both officers of law enforcement and the courts. The records of medieval England offer this same impression. In the medieval era, only egregious cases of abuse that were beyond the control of both family and neighbours appeared before the courts. This perception undoubtedly is compounded by the fact that many court records have perished or been discarded since the Middle Ages. As a result, we cannot possibly expect surviving records to offer a precise reflection of actual rates of marital violence in the medieval period. The veil of secrecy about abuse simultaneously exacerbates a study of medieval attitudes towards marital violence. Keeping in mind that writing in the Middle Ages was regarded primarily as a tool of commerce by the peasantry and a vehicle for instruction by the elite, the documents do not offer much evidence regarding familial sentiment, let alone contemporary understandings of abuse. Beliefs about marital violence, then, must be ferreted out of some rather unexpected sources; and it is only after an examination of a very broad number of documents and artefacts that we may feel comfortable delineating medieval perceptions of the limits of abuse. Another obvious problem is the very term ‘violence’ itself. Modern perceptions of the word have hindered studies of violence in the medieval context. Societies define ‘violence’ according to their ethical and cultural standards, and thus the concept is historically and regionally variable.3 What is excessive force in modern terms might then have been seen as compulsory discipline. For example, today

Caroline M. Barron’s “The ‘Golden Age’ of Women in Medieval London,” Reading Medieval Studies 15 (1989): 33–58 who argues that married women retained a high degree of independence. 3 Philippa C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), chapter three.

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spanking a child is considered criminal in some areas of the Western world; in medieval Europe, it was considered an act of piety.4 One cannot rely on a modern definition of violence, but must reconstruct the medieval understanding of what constitutes a violent act. In examining the medieval family, then, we need to cast off traditional notions of primitivism, linearity and intrinsic barbarity, and attempt to unravel the medieval experience of familial affection and the intertwined power relations. In light of Richard Helmholz’s work on parent-child violence in late medieval England, this approach seems particularly pertinent. Helmholz notes that not only did canon law encourage vigorous punishment of children, but in practise, charges of abuse were levelled against children rather than parents. For example, Helmholz describes the case of John Goldache in the court of the archdeacon of Canterbury in 1503, accused of having “on several occasions thrown beer and milk into the face of his father, against the natural disposition of a son and contra bonos mores.”5 Helmholz records numerous other cases of children cited as having “laid violent hands” on their parents.6 This approach to family violence is sufficiently far removed from ours today, that, inevitably, we must force ourselves to shuffle off our modern coils and view the evidence with an open mind. More important still, while today we might expect a woman to leave behind an abusive husband, this is a modern perception that cannot reasonably be imposed on the past. Because medieval wives anticipated some degree of physical force in marriage, they were more willing to tolerate what we today would see as abuse. This expectation itself may have had a profound influence on the very nature of the marital relationship, and may have made it more difficult for medieval wives to recognise instances of excessive violence. Furthermore, while women’s shelters, welfare organisations, social workers and a wide variety of charitable groups today encourage victims of abuse to abandon violent marriages, medieval society was bereft of these forms of social assistance. A mistreated wife in the Middle Ages

4 Emil Friedberg, ed., Decretum Gratiana (Leipzig: University of Leipzig, 1879), C. 5 q. 5 c. 3. 5 R.H. Helmholz, “And were there children’s rights in early modern England? The canon law and ‘intra-family violence’ in England, 1400–1640,” The International Journal of Children’s Rights 1 (1993): 27. 6 Helmholz, “And were there children’s rights,” 27–9.

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might have few options for support available to her, making desertion an unfeasible (and possibly shameful) alternative. The same woman that we today would see as a victim of abuse then might well have considered herself a discontented, but otherwise typical, wife. To write a history of violence against women in any context is no easy task; violence of a gendered nature implicitly involves notions of power and identity that require careful consideration. The difficulty, as John Tosh and Michael Roper remind us, is to avoid setting up what seems like a constant victim/victimiser dichotomy. Too often men are seen merely as agents of oppression, and “[w]ithout a more complete understanding of why men sought to control and exploit women, we risk returning to theories of an inherent male tendency towards domination,” and in turn establishing an innate female willingness to be subordinated.7 The history of violence against women is not merely a history of women as victims. In order to elucidate medieval attitudes towards spousal abuse, it is necessary to shed all notions of intrinsic masculinity or femininity and instead to understand how both men and women participated, even challenged, and transformed the discourse through indifference, acceptance and rebellion. The goal of this study, then, is to uncover the multiple layers within medieval English understandings of the acceptability of marital violence and their reflection in recorded rates of abuse.

The Historiography of Spousal Abuse Although many historians have made use of the idea of violence in medieval marriages, spousal abuse rarely has been the focus of medieval historical research. In fact, Barbara A. Hanawalt is the only medieval historian to have attempted systematic investigation of the subject of violence against spouses.8 Her work, which focuses on

7

Michael Roper and John Tosh, “Introduction: Historians and the politics of masculinity,” in Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, ed. John Tosh and Michael Roper (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 10. 8 Hanawalt’s most important work on this subject can be found in chapter five of Crime and Conflict in English Communities 1300–1348 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); however, this is not the only work she has written in this area. See also chapter ten of The Ties that Bound; “The Peasant Family and Crime in FourteenthCentury England,” Journal of British Studies 13 (1974), 1–18; and “Women before the Law: Females as Felons and Prey in Fourteenth-Century England,” in Women

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the most severe form of domestic violence, spousal homicide, is fundamental to any study of abuse in medieval England. Using records of the royal courts to produce a statistical analysis of the occurrence, her findings indicate that relationships between husbands and wives produced few homicides in medieval England, in stark contrast with modern statistics. Hanawalt has proposed two explanations for this low rate of intra-familial homicide: either families were so tightly knit that disputes were resolved within the group and not permitted to escalate or, conversely, families were simply a “loose grouping” of individuals, and tensions rarely developed because relationships were so casual.9 The nature of such an intensely agricultural lifestyle has caused Hanawalt to side with the former explanation, proposing that marriage was a “partnership” in every sense of the word. Hanawalt’s hypothesis seems both reasonable and idyllic, harkening back to the day when the phrase ‘family values’ had real meaning. Given our current social and political climate, this vision is both refreshing and encouraging. Today’s media would have us believe that violence is rife, not only on a political level with unparalleled acts of terrorism, but also in our daily lives, highlighting schoolroom hijackings, highway snipers, and fatal child abductions. In this light, the cohesive family and community of earlier times is an appealing image to reassure ourselves that violence is not an integral part of human society. Nevertheless, this vision of the medieval family is somewhat limited and may not reflect a realistic perspective of medieval society. Hanawalt’s statistical analysis rests exclusively on the findings of gaol delivery rolls.10 These documents relate only to people who came to trial on indictments of felony before justices of assize. They do not relate to other alleged felonies, including those tried before justices of the peace or royal justices in the King’s Bench, nor do they address non-felonious violence dealt with outside royal

and the Law: A Social Historical Perspective, ed. D.K. Weisberg (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1982), 1.165–95. A more recent summary of this work can be seen in her “Violence in the Domestic Milieu of Late Medieval England,” in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 197–214. 9 Hanawalt, “The Peasant Family and Crime,” 5. 10 Her statistical analysis is based exclusively on gaol delivery rolls from Essex, Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, Somerset, Surrey and Yorkshire, during the period 1300 to 1348. She also uses examples from coroners’ rolls of the same counties and manorial court records from Wakefield to illustrate her conclusions.

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courts. On their own, then, gaol delivery rolls do not provide the ‘total picture.’ Moreover, these documents give us a very poor sampling of society. The upper ranks of medieval English society do not appear in gaol delivery records, since their status more or less exempted them from such venues.11 To uncover the violent acts of the upper ranks, then, we need new strategies. Additionally, no matter how tempting it is, Hanawalt’s conclusions remind us that we cannot offer accurate comparisons with modern statistics. The disparity in levels of reliable documentation makes such a comparison untenable. While modern police records are usually quite extensive, we do not know just how complete or incomplete medieval records actually are, and thus should not attempt to generate solid conclusions from divergent statistics. Further, some historians have painted a grisly picture of levels of violence in medieval England. J.B. Given concludes that “it is possible that every person in England in the thirteenth century, if he did not personally witness a murder, knew or knew of someone who had been killed.”12 Barbara Hanawalt herself argues that the rates of urban violence were so extreme that “in medieval London or Oxford, the man in the street ran more of a risk of dying at the hands of a fellow citizen than he did from an accident.”13 If these statements accurately reflect real levels of violence, the small percentage of domestic homicides in medieval England, in actual numbers, may translate to a higher figure than do today’s spouse-murders. Even so, Hanawalt’s seminal work lays an important foundation for all future studies of domestic violence. Hanawalt is not the only medieval historian to have explored the subject of spousal abuse. Richard Helmholz’s investigation of marriage litigation also delves into the field of marital tensions played out in violence.14 In his work, he takes a much different approach

11 Of course, only the peers of the realm had the privilege of being tried in what was to become the House of Lords; nevertheless, the nobility rarely appeared in the records of normal criminal processes because medieval juries were hesitant to indict their social superiors. Intimidation, then, worked to ensure that the crimes of the upper ranks of medieval society would be underrepresented in the records of the court. 12 J.B. Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 40. 13 Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Violent Death in Fourteenth- and Early FifteenthCentury England,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 18 (1976): 302. 14 R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (New York; Cambridge University Press, 1974), 100–107. Domestic violence is only a minor aspect of this

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from that of Hanawalt. Looking instead at the records of the church courts, he focuses on clerical precautions undertaken in order to reconcile the couple without fear of further physical abuse. His findings define the role of ecclesiastical judges in promoting marital bliss, placing them firmly in favour of upholding the sacraments whenever possible. Helmholz also identifies a significant gap between ecclesiastical prescription and secular practice: while the medieval church sought to play the role of moral police, their teachings sometimes fell on deaf ears. Without a viable means of enforcing their beliefs, then, the church courts practiced a much different sense of morality than did the laity. Marital violence, however, is only a tiny fraction of this much greater project, and Helmholz’s evidence relies on a small number of cases. His treatment of the subject, then, acts as a call for more research, while at the same time demonstrates that any study of domestic violence in the medieval period must include the records of the medieval church. Studies of both probity and violence on a larger scale have also made some valuable contributions to a fuller understanding of community life in the later Middle Ages. In particular, historians have identified the fourteenth century as a pivotal moment in the development of a medieval moral code. Increasingly, notions of personal liability were becoming central to an overall sense of social wellbeing. As long ago as 1973, Richard Kaeuper described fourteenth-century England as experiencing a “contemporary sense of crisis,” resulting from an “outbreak of violence and illegality which stands out even when viewed against the background of disorder endemic in medieval society.”15 Responses to this crisis were widespread and varied, but all focused on the central notion of personal liability. Marjorie McIntosh examines the reaction of social elites from the viewpoint of mounting concerns over social misbehaviour. She argues that, out

study. Helmholz is interested primarily in the church’s approach in dealing with marital disputes of all kinds, and only briefly discusses the issues of inter-spousal violence, spouse repudiation and marital disharmony. 15 R.W. Kaeuper, “Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: the Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer,” Speculum 54 (1979): 1. Whether rates of violence were actually increasing, is not at issue, however. As Kaueper notes, “the language of disorder quickly becomes formulaic” and may well represent an exaggeration of disorder “as a means of emphasizing the virtue of whatever royal action” was being proposed (736). Irrespective of actual rates, there was a strong sense of a crisis in law and order.

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of a desire to preserve respectability, local leaders joined together to prosecute scolds, sexual deviants, gamblers, drunkards, vagrants, eavesdroppers and others whose conduct did not conform rigorously to the models of their social superiors.16 Shannon McSheffrey observes a similar change in moral regulation. Concern about sexual misbehaviour prompted senior men, as the patriarchs of the community, to police relationships, encouraging them to break into homes at all hours of the night in order to put a stop to fornication and adultery.17 S.F.C. Milsom notes that this same period witnessed the rise of trespass litigation and the birth of case law: two fundamental tools designed to lay blame where blame is due.18 An emerging sense of accountability for one’s own misconduct unites all of these changes in legal practice and social mores, with a firm awareness that private actions have public ramifications. Although spousal abuse often occurred in the privacy of a couple’s home, this violence had a significant impact on the social fabric of medieval life. Bearing in mind fourteenth-century England’s turn to civility, local leaders may also have targeted spousal abuse as a social misbehaviour in need of correction. Community studies focused on the role played by social hierarchy in the late medieval period reinforce the legal perspective. Despite the havoc and upheaval of the Black Death, the works of a number of historians claim that this calamity only strengthened community values across England. For example, Christopher Dyer argues, “the apparent growth in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in organizations and occasions which celebrated the unity of the village— the parish guilds, the church ales, and so on—owes something to their deliberate promotion by the village elite in order to foster a community spirit in danger of being eroded by economic realities.”

16 Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370 –1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 17 Shannon McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), 250–1. Other leading historians who have made similar observations concerning a change in social mores in the fourteenth century are: Barbara A. Hanawalt, “ ‘Good Governance’ in the Medieval and Early Modern Context,” Journal of British Studies 37 (1998): 246–257; Robert C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: a Transformation of Governance and Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 18 S.F.C. Milsom, Studies in the History of the Common Law (London: Ronceverte, 1985), 80–1.

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Thus, it is not “mere illusion that the community was more active in the later Middle Ages,” but a glaring reality.19 Historians have tended to shy away from such intense studies of community interaction because, as Gervase Rosser has argued, they find “the communitarian emphasis” to be “unrealistic and, perhaps, faintly embarrassing.”20 Nevertheless, village communities had their “own internal priorities,”21 and respectability and cohesion were foremost among their concerns. A well-ordered social hierarchy provided the base for this social unity, and historians have acknowledged “the important role of the peasant elite in maintaining internal cohesion in the medieval village, whether by coercion or by other means.”22 The law was merely a tool to achieve these ends. As Rosser has claimed in his study of sanctuary in the later Middle Ages, “the collective behaviour of neighbours, whether in village or town, was a crucial determinant,” permitting the neighbourhood to assume the role of “mitigator or critic of the policies of government.”23 Through their work as village administrators, jurors, church elders and guild members, community leaders imposed their views of respectability, founded on a strong sense of place, on the society in which they lived. Thus, domestic violence, which frequently presented a threat to both social and gender hierarchies, may have become a greater source of unease in this period. To date, early modernists, such as Lawrence Stone, have carried out most of the research undertaken in the English context of domestic violence. While their findings cannot be imposed on later medieval England, their methodologies nevertheless provide models for the 19 Christopher Dyer, “The English Medieval Village Community and its Decline,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994): 428–9. Other recent works that emphasise the importance of the village community in the late Middle Ages are: Z. Razi, “Family, Land and Village Community in Later Medieval England,” Past and Present 93 (1981): 3–36; M.K. McIntosh, Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); L.R. Poos, A rural society after the Black Death, Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Mavis E. Mate, Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350–1535 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998); Barbara A. Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill Repute: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 20 Gervase Rosser, “Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994): 430. 21 Dyer, 409. 22 Maryanne Kowaleski, “Introduction,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994): 338. 23 Gervase Rosser, “Sanctuary and social negotiation in medieval England,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 60 and 79.

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study of this subject in the setting of the Middle Ages and their findings hint at possible medieval antecedents. For example, focusing specifically on representations of spousal abuse as reflected in ballads and broadsheets, Frances Dolan uncovers a significant pattern in general perceptions of what English people understood as domestic violence and how these interpretations were internalised. She remarks that popular concerns regarding domestic violence shifted from an emphasis on overbearing women in the sixteenth century to tyrannical men in the eighteenth. The value of Dolan’s critical approach is to demonstrate that, even if we cannot base a history of spousal abuse firmly in the study of rates of homicide, it is still possible to chart changes in meaning and means of regulation in the context of spousal violence. Despite differences of experience owing to rank, age and region, the people Dolan examines shared an internalisation of social constructs regarding spousal abuse. In the process of exploring representations of spousal abuse in early modern England, she shows that it is possible to uncover a multitude of social perceptions concerning male-female relations, family dynamics, social welfare, and the role of women in society.24 Similarly, Laura Gowing’s research into defamation and marriage litigation in the ecclesiastical courts of early modern London demonstrates the value of witness depositions to a study of abuse. She sees in these testimonies layers of cultural meanings; sifting through these one is made more aware of the various understandings of ‘woman,’ ‘wife’ and ‘marriage’ peculiar to London at this time. Moreover, she argues that women’s sexual morality was necessary to the gender order and thus to marital and social order; this thesis finds some resonance in medieval gender expectations. Her conclusions, then, among others “while women’s adultery was the epitome of dishonesty, men’s violence could be argued to be ‘honest’,” may reflect a developing ideal originating in late medieval England.25

24 Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550 –1700 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). 25 Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 219.

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The Legal Process and Sources While it seems likely that many cases of abuse did not make it into the courts, some did, perhaps even many more than today, although the spotty survival of medieval records prohibits us from drawing any such comparisons. Nonetheless, medieval England was an extraordinarily litigious society. The English people were accustomed to appearing in court to protect and defend their rights, even as a preventative measure and spousal abuse was no exception to this rule. The nature of the subject, however, invariably requires the historian to cast a wide net. In part, such an approach is essential because no one jurisdiction might lay claim to the resolution of disputes arising from marital violence. In theory, the ecclesiastical courts were responsible for addressing marriage-related issues, and thus one would expect most cases to have appeared there. Similarly, all homiciderelated cases belonged to the purview of the king’s courts. Even so, the jurisdictions and power structure of the two court systems were simply not that clear-cut.26 The church courts often dealt with matters that rightfully should have come before the secular courts as felonies, misdemeanours or civil suits; however, as W.R. Jones has argued, much of the difficulty is that “[n]either the clergy nor the laity were united among themselves in defending one jurisdiction or the other. Both laymen and clerks of all ranks took their legal problems to whomever could solve them regardless of rival claims and pretensions.”27 Because of the failure of contemporaries to recognise any rigid distinction in jurisdictions, even cases of assault or homicide sometimes made their way into the venue of the church courts. Take for example the case of the 1397 purgation of Idonea, widow of William Pynder of Bainton, before the rector at Bainton on the charge of complicity in the death of her husband. A memorandum copied into the archbishop of York’s register notes that William

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For a good discussion of the interaction between secular and ecclesiastical judicial systems, see, W.R. Jones, “Relations of the Two Jurisdictions: Conflict and Cooperation in England during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, v. 7, ed. W. Bowsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 77–210; R.H. Helmholz, Canon Law and English Common Law (London: Selden Society, 1983), and his “Crime, Compurgation and the Courts of the Medieval Church,” Law and History Review 1 (1983): 1–26. 27 Jones, 88.

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received the fatal wound not from his wife, but from an unknown assailant. Yet, neighbours believed his wife consented to his death and “planned it by placing a long tent into William’s head as far as the brain and by removing four bones from his head.”28 The appearance of this case in an archbishop’s register, at first, is hard to explain, however a subsequent memorandum makes it clear that this is not a case of murder, but defamation. In response to the rector’s complaint, the archbishop sent a letter to the rector commanding him to begin the process of excommunication against persons guilty of defaming Idonea in the death of her husband.29 Richard Helmholz has argued that this was a relatively frequent occurrence. Men and women rumoured to be felons sometimes appeared in England’s church courts to protect their reputations; and more often than not, these rumours revolved around complicity in the death of a loved one.30 This finding is not altogether surprising. When a person died and the cause of death was unknown or misunderstood, a recent fight with a family member may have seemed like the logical explanation. In Idonea’s case, her neighbours may have misinterpreted an attempt to save his life. The word tentum in this context means “[a] roll or pledget, usually of soft absorbent material, often medicated, or sometimes of a medicinal substance, formerly much used to search and cleanse a wound or to keep open or distend a wound, sore or natural orifice.”31 Unless Idonea was dabbling in some form of illicit medieval voodoo, it seems plausible that she was trying to save her husband’s life by removing debris from his crushed skull and cleansing the wound. The court’s decision to sentence in her favour would seem to corroborate this hypothesis. Neighbours and friends unsure of the validity of this medical procedure, however, 28 David M. Smith, ed., A Calendar of the Register of Robert Waldby Archbishop of York, 1397 (Borthwick Texts and Calendars, v. 2, 1974), 11. 29 Smith, 12. 30 Helmholz, “Crime, compurgation and the courts,” 10. A number of cases of this type appear in the Commissary Court Act books for the diocese of London. For example, in the year 1471 Symon Hervy accused John Euilyn of hiring his servant, John Hervy, to poison his wife Joan whom he had treated poorly on a number of occasions (GL MS 9064/1, fo. 106v). Also, in a case from the year 1486, William Asker and his wife defamed Joan Pollard by saying that she kept a knife at the head of her bed with the intention of slitting her husband’s throat. This accusation was so loaded that Joan’s husband threw her out of their home. (GL MS 9064/2, fo. 156r). 31 Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press) vol. 17, 2nd edition, 785. Also, see Smith, 11n.

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spread their uncertainty in rumour, compelling Idonea to respond with proof of her innocence. Her appearance in the courts Christian to defend herself against accusations of an admittedly secular crime demonstrates that a thorough investigation of marital violence requires an examination of a variety of courts, because medieval litigants sometimes used the courts in unexpected and creative ways. Families, friends and neighbours were heavily involved in addressing most medieval cases of spousal abuse; those couples whose behaviour could not be modified sufficiently by those around them, however, made their way into one of a number of courts. Abusive husbands, disobedient wives and disruptive couples alike found themselves presented by neighbours at manorial and borough courts. The manorial courts primarily dealt with cases of civil jurisdiction, but also some disciplinary matters of a criminal (but non-felonious) nature, such as small-scale assault (‘drawing blood,’ or initiating an ‘affray’) and petty larceny. The borough courts for the urban centres worked in much the same way and dealt with similar cases. The borough courts were not feudal in nature; they were a development of the High Middle Ages, granted by the king as a concession intended to resolve the unusual problems that arise in an urban environment. Consequently, while they were royal courts per se, the common law was not as binding in this forum. For the county of York, this study examines the voluminous records of the manor of Wakefield32 together with the surviving materials from other Yorkshire manors available at The National Archives at Kew, Surrey, such as Sheffield, Thorner, Pontefract, Bradford, and Tickhill Honour. For Essex, the plentiful records of Earls Colne,33 and the borough of Colchester34 have been 32 The records of the manor of Wakefield are a stunning collection including a vast number of both courts and tourns from the thirteenth century onwards. Since a large number of these rolls have been transcribed (sometimes translated) and published by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, only the published sources have been used for this study. 33 Alan Macfarlane’s translations and microforming of the Earls Colne records has been of great use in this study. See Alan Macfarlane, ed., Records of an English Village: Earls Colne, 1400–1750 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1980–81) http://www. colnevalley.com/Ecrecords.htm. 34 The records of Colchester borough are as abundant as are those for Wakefield manor. In the interests of brevity, this author chose to examine only published borough records. Isaac Herbert Jeayes has edited and translated three large volumes of rolls, spanning the majority of the fourteenth century (1310–1352, 1352–1367, and 1372–1379). See Isaac Herbert Jeayes, ed. and trans., Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester (3 vols., Colchester: W. Gurney, 1921).

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supplemented with the much less spectacular records of Nazeing to provide the base for a local investigation of domestic violence. Abusive persons or couples might also find themselves presented in an ecclesiastical court under the church’s ex officio jurisdiction. Cases of this nature were disciplinary matters, initiated by court summons and intended to reform the moral behaviour of the individuals arraigned. These records, then, not only draw attention to cases of marital breakdown, but also offer an understanding of what respectable people believed to be an excessive use of violence in marriage. This study explores these records for both York and Canterbury in conjunction with the archbishops’ registers, correspondence between various archbishops of York and Canterbury and lower church officials regarding individual cases and actions.35 Ex officio registers of this nature provide a fuller view of the archbishop in a disciplinary capacity because they generally include discussions of matrimonial complications and transgressions by members of the upper echelons of society.36 A victim of abuse also had the option of petitioning an ecclesiastical court for a divorce a mensa et thoro (from table and bed), or a formal separation. Although the church was adamant in its belief that marriages are indissoluble, it did permit couples to live separately in situations of cruelty (saevitia) or repeated adultery. A separation, however, did not annul the union: the church still deemed the couple married even if they no longer behaved as a married couple. A discussion of the kinds of cases for which the church permitted a separation, then, reveal much about general attitudes towards spousal abuse. This study investigates the records of the archbishops for the northern and southern ecclesiastical provinces and records from the dioceses of York, Canterbury and London,37 with a primary focus on the counties of York and Essex, and some insight into eastern

35 Many archbishops’ registers exist in printed form, and retain the Latin of their originals. While the archbishops’ registers only offer insight primarily into the diocesan work of these officials (thus, limiting an investigation to the dioceses of York and Canterbury respectively) an examination of the printed records of the diocese of London (of which Essex was a part) was also included in this study. 36 All couples who appeared in cases of marital strife were checked against spousal homicides in the database, unfortunately without results. Moreover, interesting cases (such as the six case studies discussed at length in chapter four) were traced whenever possible in the Calendar of Patent Rolls and Calendar of Close Rolls. 37 In order to reduce the volume of records, for the diocese of London this study takes into consideration only those records having to do with the county of Essex.

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Kent and London. Because of the paucity of records surviving for Essex, it seemed prudent to extend the investigation to neighbouring Kent, a county that shared much of Essex’s rebellious history and political concerns. Moreover, because Essex shared dioceses with the city of London, some cases of abuse from this region have also made their way into this study to supplement the gaps in Essex’s records. Every so often, when violence in a marital relationship went unnoticed or the unofficial or legal options for resolution failed to address it adequately, abuse escalated to the point of homicide. Because common law required coroners to investigate any violent or unexpected death, their rolls are a valuable repository of local opinion. In the course of an inquest, coroners questioned neighbours, witnesses, and the first finder, as well as examining carefully the body of the victim in order to detect any suspicious lesions or abrasions that might indicate death due to unnatural causes (such as bruising caused by strangulation). This combination of verbal inquiry and physical examination sometimes led coroners to identify the spouse as a culprit. This type of evidence is of great value for a study of spousal abuse: coroners’ inquests provide a window into the minds of kin and neighbours and often speak to their immediate suspicions and attitudes. The cross-examination of relatives and neighbours who made up the coroners’ inquest jury usually proved to be the most informative part of the process. Here, it is important to understand that the medieval concept of a jury was completely unlike our modern counterpart. Theoretically, the former knew (or thought they knew) exactly what had happened, even if they had not actually witnessed the death themselves. What these few neighbours had to say significantly influenced the outcome of the case. The death of an Oxfordshire woman, Matilda Pouk, in 1342 demonstrates just how important was the opinion of neighbours. The inquest jurors note that she died a natural death, having been sick with “diverse diseases and old.” However, “because there was much talk that her husband beat her unduly . . . the body was rolled over and over before the eyes of the coroners’ and there was no injury in body or head or limbs” and thus, no one was guilty of her death.38 Coroners took into careful consideration the observations of neighbours and friends in determining the cause of death. After the interrogation, the coroner recorded his

38

H.E. Salter, ed., Records of Mediaeval Oxford: Coroners’ Inquests, the Walls of Oxford, Etc. (Oxford: The Oxford Chronicle Company, Ltd., 1912), 24.

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perceptions of the death and the jury’s beliefs. These notes were then passed on to his scribe who made up the final record, and are referred to collectively as the coroners’ rolls.39 If local officials were capable of apprehending the suspect, he or she was then imprisoned until justices of assize arrived to deliver the gaols of their prisoners by holding trials for all those accused of felonies. The records of these trials, gaol delivery rolls, offer a much less local perspective than do coroners’ rolls. However, they also provide what many coroners’ rolls do not: a judgement. Accordingly, many cases can be traced from their first appearance before the coroner’s inquest jury to the hanging or acquittal of the defendant. For the purposes of statistical analysis, the inclusion of this type of record has proven to be fruitful. For a variety of reasons, many of the cases of spousal homicide in the coroners’ rolls were not also included in the gaol delivery rolls, among others, because the accused fled the scene of the crime and failed to reappear in the community to stand trial. Occasionally such incidents make their way into the gaol delivery rolls, but not consistently, and thus a full perspective of spousal homicide from the period requires examination of both. However, in light of the statistical failings of previous studies, this investigation attempts to avoid the pitfalls inherent in these records with a cautious and judicious use of statistical analysis.40 This study employs coroners’ rolls and records of gaol delivery records41 for both York42 and Essex.43 For the period after the demise of the eyre,

39 Coroners’ rolls belong to the class of documents referred to as Justices Itinerant 2 ( JUST 2) and housed in The National Archives in Kew, Surrey. 40 For a discussion of some of the difficulties involved in using gaol delivery rolls for statistical analysis, see J.B. Post, “Crime in later medieval England: some historiographical limitations,” Continuity and Change 2 (1987): 211–24; and E. Powell, “Social Research and the Use of Medieval Criminal Records,” Michigan Law Review 79 (1980–81): 967–78. 41 I examined not only those gaol deliveries that belong to the class of records categorised as gaol delivery ( JUST 3), but also those that appear in the records of the eyre courts from the early part of the period ( JUST 1) and those in the King’s Bench rolls (KB 27). 42 Coroners’ rolls exist for York for the period 1333 to 1393, in what seems to be a fairly unbroken series. Similarly, records of gaol deliveries for York are numerous and concentrated in the fourteenth century, although some rolls do exist from both the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Sessions of the peace from the fourteenth century have also been included in this study. 43 Essex coroners’ rolls are somewhat lacking when compared to York; they cover only the period 1369 to 1389. Records of gaol deliveries and eyres for Essex are more numerous and cover most of the fourteenth century.

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because the royal government experimented with various forms of peace-keeping, it seemed prudent to include also all extant sessions of the peace for the two counties. Where the records are weak, cases from coroners’ rolls outside of these regions have also been included for discussion; however, these extraneous records do not form part of the statistical analysis.44

The Challenges of Medieval Sources None of these records is unproblematic. In the case of the ecclesiastical records, the very humanity of the court’s decisions sometimes impedes historical inquiry. To illustrate, an example: on November 11 of the year 1474 John Colam of Stonegate, York, a goldsmith, came before the archbishop of York in his court with an interesting request. Accused of adultery with a married woman, Colam begged the court to defer his compurgation in respect of the offence. His reason for this request was quite simple: he feared such a public process might alert his wife or the woman’s husband to their alleged infidelity and he wished to avoid any unnecessary disgrace. Upon consideration of the petition, the archbishop and Colam reached a compromise of sorts. The court decreed that Colam should purge himself with his hand alone and the offence would be concealed.45 For the archbishop, the concession was presumably insignificant. Regardless of the process, the outcome was the same: the alleged offender submitted to the process of compurgation. For Colam, however, the bargain was much more meaningful. It enabled him to keep his wife blissfully ignorant of the possibility of any failings on her husband’s part. Bearing in mind that adultery was one of the few acceptable premises for an ecclesiastically sanctioned separation, the archbishop’s 44 All violent crimes appearing in the records of the royal courts for both Yorkshire and the county of Essex were entered into a database. The data was then “dumped” into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and sorted in a variety of ways (type of crime, name of victim, location of crime, year of court appearance, etc.) in order to uncover all those cases that appear more than once. This method also gave me an opportunity to discover any cases of husbands and wives who were accused of more than one crime. 45 D/C AB 1, f. 146. This case is also cited and translated in J.S. Purvis, ed., A Mediaeval Act Book with some account of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction at York (York, 1943), 28. Colam’s request was not all that unusual. Purvis’s discussion of this register includes at least two similar cases (28).

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actions in this case seem contradictory at best. Why would an ecclesiastical official knowingly permit an offender to conceal his sins from his wife when his offence directly influenced her? Should he not have felt obligated (morally, if not legally) to inform the wife of her husband’s conduct? Allowing the husband to cover up an investigation into his sins seems almost to excuse them. At the very least, the secrecy of the investigation would have diminished the effectiveness. Public confession and contrition were fundamental aspects of medieval theology: together the church intended them to humiliate the miscreant and thereby deter any future recurrences of the offence. Without publicity, the presentment was merely a nuisance. Colam’s affair was certainly not the only instance in the later medieval period when the English church chose to overlook the regular process in order to avoid scandal. During his incumbency as archbishop of York over the course of the last two decades of the fifteenth century, Thomas of Rotherham opted for privacy in a marital issue on at least three occasions, when his decision would seem merely to have paved the way for future litigation. In October 1486, Rotherham permitted William Hawkesworth and Joan Alman of Ribstone in Goldesburgh parish to marry without having published the usual banns because “they fear that as Hawkesworth is a gentleman and Alman of humble origin, the publication of banns would cause unreasonable objections to be raised by his family.”46 Similarly, in August 1491, Rotherham allowed Raynebrowne Bolling and Alice Philip of the parish of Methley to elude the gossipmongers by marrying without banns. They had lived together as husband and wife for such a long time that it would have been a shock to their neighbours to discover that they were not already married.47 Finally, in April 1495 Rotherham also granted licence to the curate of Sutton on Derwent to marry John Eglesfeld and Joan Thomson without the requisite banns because Joan was visibly pregnant and publication of the banns would only cause them scandal.48 The omission of a central part of the ritual for the solemnisation of marriage ties all of these cases together. Publication of the banns was required by the church in order to discover any impediments 46 Eric E. Barker, ed., The Register of Thomas Rotherham Archbishop of York, 1480–1500 (Canterbury and York Series, v. 69, 1976), nos. 1731, 216. 47 Barker, nos. 1849, 234. 48 Barker, nos. 660, 81.

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to the marriage. Failure to adhere to the formal process meant that church officials risked contravening canonical regulations for marriage concerning consanguinity, affinity or sponsorship. Nevertheless, the church was willing to disregard the implications of neglecting to discover impediments when the situation might be publicly degrading. While this approach may have laid the groundwork for future annulments, it was the more sympathetic course of action.49 Herein lays the difficulty of using records of the medieval church to uncover a definition of extreme cruelty. While royal justices were bound by the formalities of common law procedure and custom, there were no firm and fast rules governing the decisions made by archbishops or bishops in their courts. Canon law functioned as a guide in the day-to-day business of the court, but the English church courts judged cases chiefly on their individual circumstances. At times, a heartfelt plea or an honest face persuaded an ecclesiastical official to act contrary to what he understood to be the church’s authoritative position on an issue. England was not exceptional in this approach to canon law. As Richard Helmholz has argued, “[t]he medieval canon law was not meant to be taken as an ‘absolutely binding statute law’ in the modern sense. It made provision for the force of local custom; it left room for variant interpretations; it was willing to tolerate much for the sake of peace; and it required the willingness of local officials and litigants, with local interests and particular quarrels to settle, before it could be put into effect.”50 The adaptability of the court and compassion of its judges, particularly in matters of marital difficulty, led Helmholz to observe, “[i]f we think of the ecclesiastical judge as a rather heavy-handed marriage counsellor, we come nearer the truth than if we see him as a man who limited himself to the determination of points of law.”51 That is not to suggest that court practice undermined canon law. As James Brundage has written, there was “remarkably little judicial freewheeling and a great deal more respectful attention to legal doctrine than one might have

49 Dispensations of this nature were the subject of discussion by the canonists. James Brundage notes that Pierre de La Palude enumerated six situations in which dispensations from the requirement of the banns usually were granted. Two of these cases cited above fall into these categories. See James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 442. 50 R.H. Helmholz, Select Cases on Defamation to 1600 (London: Selden, Society, 1985), xxv. 51 Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 101.

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expected.”52 Nonetheless, the result of this approach to the law is an array of sometimes seemingly arbitrary rulings, such as Colam’s secret atonement or the omission of banns. This individualistic approach presents its problems for a study of what medieval courts interpreted as acceptable levels of violence. Yet, this very human quality in both the writings of canon lawyers and the courts’ judgements in some ways render their records more valuable to a social historian. The decisions of ecclesiastical officials in their courts represent not only the mores of the church, but also the values of the society in which they lived. The cases of Colam and the three couples substantiates J.S. Purvis’s claim that, in England at least, even if the church courts intruded frequently and oppressively in the marriages of the medieval laity, “the general impression is of lenience rather than of severity.”53 Ecclesiastical records of matrimonial litigation, although astonishingly full and revealing, also present a number of obstacles for a study of abuse. In suing a plea in court, the plaintiff had specific goals, whether these were a judicial separation, annulment, or forced reconciliation. The objective inevitably shaped the litigation. The plaintiff offered the court the kind of evidence necessary to obtain the desired sentence. In her study of women’s testimonies in witchcraft trials, Diane Purkiss has made a similar observation. She notes that women may have “tried to adopt strategically the languages and discourses of the elite in order to make their depositions persuasive.”54 Given the plaintiff ’s distinct agenda, we cannot take at face value the evidence presented in matrimonial litigation. Yet, as Tim Stretton has argued, the biases of the records are not necessarily a hindrance. The pleading strategies litigants and lawyers employed; inconsistencies between rival accounts; the exaggeration and other methods of story weaving they used to fashion cases; the facts they chose to stress or to gloss over; the charges they were most anxious to allege or refute; the stereotypes they drew upon when describing individuals and their behaviour; how they dealt with questions of credit and reputation; even the formulaic expressions that appear in pleading after pleading; all of

52

Brundage, 546. Purvis, A Mediaeval Act Book, 5. 54 Diane Purkiss, “Women’s stories of witchcraft in early modern England: the house, the body, the child,” Gender & History 7 (1995): 409. 53

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these can provide material for the historian, and offer an understanding of which arguments and statements contemporaries considered to be plausible, convincing, coherent or compelling.55

Even representatives of the medieval church recognised the possibility that persons might knowingly manipulate the courts for their own purposes. Thomas Chobham addressed the issue directly in his manual for confessors. He wrote that a couple might work together to hoodwink the courts by contriving a tale of impotence, or some other such impediment, and thereby escape a jointly unsatisfactory marriage. Because of the potential for deception, Chobham argued that it was essential for the courts to meet with the couple’s neighbours and inquire into the truthfulness of any claim.56 A case of spousal abuse, then, may tell us more about opinions and beliefs concerning violence in marriage, than actual instances of violence. The records of the secular courts present many of the same problems, but for different reasons. First, it seems clear that the moral character of the common law does not accurately reflect communal values. While death was the only penalty available for felony, most trial juries seemed unwilling to impose such a harsh punishment even in cases of homicide. This reluctance would seem to imply that jurors perceived death to be too harsh a penalty and worked to mitigate the severity of the law. Thomas Green has explored the implications of this predicament that he has described as ‘merciful nullification.’ He argues that jurors imposed their own communal sense of culpability by manipulating the verbal formulas of the indictments. Not only were juries willing to fabricate scenarios of self-defence to secure the acquittal of a defendant, but also they regularly included details of pure invention to cast the defendant in a better light and accordingly to excuse his/her actions.57 Second, by the late medieval period the English common law had become a rigid and inflexible system of law that did not reflect the needs of the people who used it. For example, while many litigants

55 Tim Stretton, “Social historians and the records of litigation,” Tid og Tanke 2 (1997): 29. 56 Thomas Chobham, Thomae de Chobham. Summa Confessorum, trans. F. Broomfield (Louvain: Analecta Medieavalie Namurcensia, v. 25, 1968), 185. 57 See chapter two of Thomas A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

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believed that the wrongs they experienced were worthy of royal justice, the formality of the common law required them to argue that the offence had been committed with force and arms (vi et armis) and against the king’s peace (contra pacem), even if it had not.58 Legal fictions of this nature, particularly in cases arising from marital violence, might be very misleading and thus require a healthy dose of scepticism. Once again, in this respect Stretton reminds us that the “relationship between disputes as they appear in court, and the quarrels which produced them” might be tenuous at best.59 A death by misadventure might mask the homicide of a wife’s lover; the task of the historian is to discover if the indictments or marginalia offer any clues that might reveal the genuine story behind it and thus offer a better understanding of communal values. What is perhaps most important to remember is that the justices assigned to deal with cases in the courts were well aware of the blatant lies and manipulation of the law put forward by litigants. Yet, it was not their responsibility to discern truth from lies. “The task they set themselves was not to reconstruct precisely what happened in each situation, but to decide which of the conflicting representations of the truth before them was the most convincing.”60 In terms of a study of marital violence, these monitions are both significant and relevant. Cases of spousal homicide in the royal courts, then, offer more than a mere indication of rates of marital violence; because the stories were shaped with the intention of persuading the king’s justices, they are a useful guide to contemporary perceptions of abuse at all levels of society. A study of the ecclesiastical records allows an examination of constructions of marital violence in one context and provides an understanding of the prevalence of abuse at diminished levels; secular legal records, on the other hand, provide a base for assessing legal constructions of spousal abuse in another context and for determining approximate levels of extreme familial violence. Together, both kinds of records offer a much more complete picture of spousal abuse in the medieval context. A survey of the literature from the period augments this perspective. This study employs sermons, exempla, poems, 58 S.F.C. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law (London: Butterworths, 1981), 283–313. 59 Stretton, 17. 60 Stretton, 22.

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songs, plays, laws, treatises and literature, in the hope of providing a better understanding of medieval perceptions of abuse. Because marital strife was such a common theme in medieval literature of all forms, this study cannot possibly aspire to a comprehensive survey of the literature. Instead, a selection of works focusing specifically on instances of physical violence and known to have been popular in late medieval England have been investigated to enhance and complement the legal evidence in this study.

York and Essex This study concentrates primarily on the counties of York and Essex, with some material from other counties to supplement the shortcomings of these records. These two counties were chosen for a variety of reasons. York and Essex represent the two geographic extremes with respect to England’s legal centre. Because of its proximity to London and Westminster, any changes in legal perspective or practice were disseminated quickly to the royal courts of Essex. Recent studies of the courts of the northern counties, however, suggest that, while York may have been quite distant from the legal centre, northerners had a very strong sense of justice and were willing to use the royal courts to deal with the wide variety of problems associated with living near the Scottish border. For example, Cynthia Neville has noted that fifteenth-century northern juries frequently employed the laws of treason to their advantage in order to penalise crossborder criminal activity.61 Such an innovative use of the law courts is an indication that Yorkshire juries may have adopted an equally ingenious approach to cases of spousal abuse. With such different social and political agendas, any similarities shared between these two distant counties with respect to situations of domestic violence, then, may represent a peculiarly English perspective. Perhaps more significantly, the extant records for both counties are especially good. Because of its size and the reliable preservation of its legal documentation, records of all types (royal, ecclesiastical, and manorial) for the county of York in the later medieval period are plentiful and,

61 C.J. Neville, “The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages,” Law and History Review 9 (1991): 1–30.

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in the case of the royal and manorial records in particular, appear to be fairly complete. Essex, on the other hand, with a much smaller jurisdiction and population, offers a more meagre lot of records, particularly where the records of the church courts are concerned. In this respect, in order to provide a broader perspective of southern views of spousal abuse, records from the diocese of Canterbury have also been included. Given the similarity of histories and political activism in both Essex and Kent, the Canterbury diocesan records, which include eastern Kent and parts of Sussex, seem like a logical choice. With respect to the royal records, when compared to other central counties in England the survival of Essex’s records seems to be particularly good. As a result, these two counties with sheer numbers on their side present themselves as ideal candidates for a statistically based study. Finally, Essex is an obvious choice for the study of a woman-centred subject in this period of transition simply because of its later history. As Alan Macfarlane has noted, Essex was a hotbed of witchcraft prosecutions in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.62 Any abnormal attitudes towards women that might have encouraged a wave of misogyny of this magnitude may have originated in the period immediately preceding the Reformation. Thus, a study of the late medieval courts of Essex offers a unique opportunity to view a society that was becoming increasingly troubled by the activities of women. It seems reasonable to suppose that Essex’s method of handling cases of domestic violence may reflect this attitude. While not all of these hypotheses are borne out by the evidence, the records of scold prosecutions discussed in Chapter Six reveals that the two regions may have varied in the handling of aggressive women, and that this approach may be reflected in rates of spousal violence.

Subjects of Study and Preliminary Findings As the title of the first chapter announces, its goal is to set the scene, by making the reader more familiar with medieval discourses of violence and passivity relating to wives, husbands and marriage. Accordingly, the chapter begins with the difficult issue of the rules

62 Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: a regional and comparative study (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

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of coverture. The obstacles posed by the rules of coverture to married women are central to an understanding of women as victims of abuse; however, coverture also put husbands in a difficult situation that helps to illuminate the role they played in domestic violence. Married men were legally and socially responsible for their wives’ public and private behaviour. Thus, they became moral instructors to their wives. At a time when force in marriage had ambiguous limits, how did husbands know where to draw the line between discipline and abuse? The goal of this chapter is to explore the discourses of marriage, governance and marital violence in this period, in an attempt to understand how medieval men and women made sense of this difficult situation. Chapter Two discusses the regular process of dealing with marital violence and the frequency with which it appeared in the various courts of medieval England. The legal records attest that litigants evinced some measure of comfort with England’s expansive and heterogeneous legal system, appearing in a wide variety of fora to resolve their disputes. This chapter endeavours to explore differences in the nature and frequency of cases of abuse that made their way into the medieval courts and explain why certain cases were addressed by local instead of royal or ecclesiastical judges (and vice versa). Here, it is important to note that those cases identifiable as instances of physical violence in marriage represent only a small fraction of either violence- or marriage-related cases. While this investigation examined 11,893 instances of violent actions (ranging from assault to rape to homicide), and well over ten thousand cases relating to marriage (bigamy, spousal non-cohabitation, restitution of conjugal rights, coerced marriage, etc.)63 as well as several hundred cases of moral transgressions, there are just over 300 identifiable instances of specifically physical inter-spousal violence appearing in the various courts of medieval York and Essex (with some cases from Kent). While this

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Because I did not plan to do any statistical analysis of the various kinds of cases of marital disharmony appearing in the church courts of medieval England, I did not count every case of marital disharmony encountered in this study. As an example, however, in his study J.S. Purvis uses one of the same ex officio act books used in this study (York D & C AB/1). He notes that this contains a total of 3640 charges, of which 3236 were cases of fornication, adultery or similar moral offences, all of which have an impact on marital harmony (see Purvis, A Mediaeval Act Book, 4). This was just one of the many act books, court books, and cause papers I had the opportunity to explore in the course of this investigation.

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admittedly modest sum represents a very small percentage of the total number of cases before the courts in the fourteenth to early sixteenth century, the very appearance of these few hundred cases in England’s various courts demonstrate the existence of an established legal method of dealing with marital violence. Moreover, as Chapter Three discusses, the records permit the opportunity to examine the causes of marital violence, although there is admittedly some discrepancy between actual and perceived sources of marital tension. The church courts, in particular, recognised spousal abuse as a symptom of greater marital difficulties and worked to eliminate the causes of this violence. The question raised repeatedly by all this material is, what did medieval men and women understand as “acceptable violence” in marriage? Chapter Four attempts to respond to this query from a micro-historical perspective by examining six applications for a judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty. While these cases do not offer definitive answers, they sketch types of behaviour that medieval Englishmen and women may have considered unacceptable in marriage. Chapter Five examines the role of the community in the regulation of marital violence, focusing specifically on the attitudes evoked by their actions. Family, friends, neighbours and even jurors, as representatives of their communities, played an integral role as marriage counsellors, but also as instructors, teaching couples about contemporary expectations of gender roles. The final chapter demonstrates that tensions within marriage were not static throughout the late medieval period. After the first appearance of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, English society became less tolerant of social misbehaviours, exemplified best by growing concerns over the figure of the scold in late medieval England. Drawing the links between increasing prejudice against women who voiced their opinions, patriarchal supervision and domestic violence, the evidence proposes a new source of marital tension and regional differences in approaches to the regulation of spousal abuse. A number of themes emerge from this study. As is also the case in the modern period, the courts of medieval England were inadequately prepared to deal with spousal abuse. Because medieval canonists and lawmakers alike failed to address the problem of marital violence in a definitive way by explaining precisely what they considered unlawful or unreasonable in terms of marital violence, there were no obvious limits to the castigation of wives. Such an ambigu-

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ous definition of abuse meant that the courts did not hold most husbands legally responsible for their violent ways. Yet, as Hanawalt has proposed, court officials may have believed that, in general, legal resolution was not required because spousal abuse was a matter for village regulation. Families, neighbours and friends felt obliged to participate actively in the regulation of violent marriages; and it was only after a man’s behaviour was perceived to have exceeded the capacities of unofficial regulation that he was presented (by these same individuals) before a court of law. The participation of respectable local people did not end there. As witnesses, and inquest or presenting jurors, members of the couple’s village helped to shape the case for the court in order to secure the kind of sentence they believed to be justified. As trial jurors in the royal courts, they awarded appropriate sentences. As spectators to the punishment of convicted abusers, they helped to reinforce and disseminate the values of their communities. Such a strong system of checks and balances may have curbed or even eliminated much of the violence before it reached the point of homicide. Moreover, the manifestly local resolution of spousal abuse reinforces the importance of the community in medieval society, reminding critics that although both “ ‘community’ and ‘popular opinion’ ” are “rather slippery concepts,” they are “nonetheless critical to our understanding of medieval and early modern local societies.”64 Court records and literature together offer valuable insight into general attitudes towards the causes of marital violence. The shrewish wife portrayed best in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath or the Wakefield Flood play was not merely a literary motif; popular society blamed wives’ scolding tongues for provoking the wrath of their husbands. The finding that conflicts most with our modern sensibilities, however, is that the courts may even have held rebellious wives accountable for the abuse inflicted upon them. In addition, adultery, also a frequent cause of marital violence, was treated much differently in the Middle Ages than in the early modern period. Laura Gowing observes that while the early modern courts permitted husbands to separate from their wives by bringing accusations of adultery against them, wives might only hope for a separation if they could prove their husbands

64 Shannon McSheffrey, “Jurors, Respectable Masculinity, and Christian Morality: A Comment on Marjorie McIntosh’s Controlling Misbehavior,” Journal of British Studies 37 (1998): 270.

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were a threat to their lives. These findings stand in stark contrast to the medieval period. In theory, the medieval canonists understood adultery to be acceptable grounds for separation; in practice, the English church rarely (if ever) deemed adultery acceptable in and of itself to justify breaking the sacrament of marriage. Moreover, the evidence of the York cause papers would seem to suggest that male sexual reputation was also integral to the marital and social order, although perhaps not to the same extent as women’s. Gowing’s work, then, illustrates that this particular method of handling cases of judicial separations by the ecclesiastical courts was unique to medieval England. Perhaps most important, this book contributes to the small but growing field of masculinity studies. Spousal abuse in the Middle Ages was as much about men as it was about women. Medieval England forced men to shoulder a double burden. Not only was a man expected to govern himself appropriately, he was expected also to govern his household. The inability to do both according to the standards of the community was interpreted as a hallmark of male inadequacy. Marital masculine self-identity also was tied implicitly to a husband’s ability to govern the conduct of his wife: any rebellious or disobedient behaviour from a wife was perceived as evidence of failed masculinity. Yet, a man who disciplined his wife too enthusiastically was subject to the same ridicule. Without any firm guidelines to teach the limits of castigation, a man’s own actions and those of the people closest to him constantly endangered his communal standing. As a result, any investigation of the language medieval men and women used to describe marital violence must be sensitive to male honour. As Elizabeth Foyster has maintained for the early modern period, men may have purposely avoided beating their wives simply because they feared how such an act might reflect on their reputations.65 Similarly, men who did beat their wives were in a constant battle to reconstruct the narrative of their actions and thereby cast themselves in the best possible light. At the very least, the evidence of the various courts and literature of the period do not confirm Stone’s worst fears. Medieval society did not encourage or merely tolerate marital violence. There was an established multi-layered process set up to deal with spousal abuse

65 Elizabeth Foyster, “Male Honour, Social Control and Wife Beating in Late Stuart England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th series, 6 (1996): 215–24.

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in later medieval England. The approach was far from foolproof, and it expounded a much different understanding of what constituted violence than we might today. Medieval England sanctioned, and even anticipated, some violence in marriage. A good husband did not beat his wife, but he knew when to use violence and how much force to employ. Moreover, the records suggest that English communities did not expect wives merely to submit to their husbands’ violence. Wife-beating smeared male reputation; allegations of abuse, then, offered wives a chance to reclaim their own honour, and obtain a viable solution to marital misery.

CHAPTER ONE

SETTING THE SCENE: DISCOURSES OF PASSIVITY AND VIOLENCE

The rules of coverture have dominated discussions of women’s history in the past few decades. Historians have explored extensively the vulnerability of women under a law that fictitiously considers husband and wife as one person represented by the husband. Upon marriage, a woman lost many of her former rights to property: goods and chattels immediately passed permanently into the hands of her husband, while both real property (land) and chattels real (leases) passed into his control for the duration of their marriage. Wives were not able to accept inheritances or gifts, even from their husbands, nor could they make wills defendable at common law.1 The rules were even more complicated when it came to lawsuits. In civil law, no married woman could sue or be sued apart from her husband. In criminal law, England permitted wives slightly more leeway: a married woman could sue for the death of her husband, or bodily injury (usually defined as rape).2 In terms of marital disharmony, the disadvantages women suffered because of the rules of coverture are immediately apparent. A victim of abuse might not desert or abandon her husband easily, because she lacked free access to support. Although the church courts helped to

1 Emma Hawkes, “ ‘[S]he will . . . protect and defend her rights boldly by law and reason . . .’: Women’s Knowledge of Common Law and Equity Courts in LateMedieval England,” in Medieval Women and the Law, ed. Noël James Menuge (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 146–7. R.H. Helmholz has argued that married women might make wills of their own, but that it was rare. See his “Married Women’s Wills in Later Medieval England,” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 165–82. 2 In practice, the king’s courts did not apply the rules in such a strict manner. Royal justices sometimes allowed married women to bring a broad range of criminal appeals to court, the assumption being that it is better to catch a criminal on a woman’s advice than to not catch a criminal at all. See Patricia R. Orr, “Non Potest Appellum Facere: Criminal Charges Women could not—but did—Bring in Thirteenth-Century English Royal Courts of Justice,” The Final Argument: The Imprint of Violence on Society in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Donald J. Kagay and L.J. Andrew Villalon (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 141–162.

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create and enforce maintenance agreements for both separated wives and the wives of delinquent husbands, the courts were incapable of enforcing their judgments. An impoverished woman abandoned by her husband, then, was in a serious bind. Even the wages of a hardworking singlewoman in the Middle Ages were often not enough to support one person.3 Not only was a deserted wife incapable of financial independence, then, but she might not accept a gift of support from a friend or family member without the fear that her husband might claim it for his own later. Where allegations focused on physical, rather than economic, abuse, women were also disadvantaged. Theoretically, the common law permitted a woman to sue her spouse on the grounds of assault. A writ even existed specifically for this purpose. The writ required a husband “to treat and govern her [his wife] well and honestly, and to do no injury or ill to her body other than that permitted lawfully and reasonably to a husband for the purpose of control and punishment of his wife.”4 Yet, wives seem to have rarely, if ever, exercised their rights in this matter. While the common law acknowledged spousal abuse as a problem and so provided wives with a loophole, the rules of coverture may have been so ingrained in medieval society that plaintiffs, and the courts, were simply uncomfortable with the idea of wives suing their husbands. Much less time has been spent on the burden imposed by the rules of coverture on men in medieval English society; a study of power relations in marriage, however, must address this query. Being the legal and social representative of both spouses had its drawbacks. The law held husbands accountable for their wives’ actions, regardless of whether they were accomplices or even witnesses to the act. The records of the English courts exhibit a determination to place the blame for a married woman’s actions on her husband. In this respect, the rules of coverture were not limited to the courts of common law. The Colchester borough rolls boast a number of examples. In a case from 1311, the court summoned a couple for assault on a woman in the street. With the unfolding of the tale, it is revealed that the husband had very little to do with the crime:

3 Mavis E. Mate, Women in Medieval English Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 33–34. See also Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 23. 4 Frederick Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed. (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 2:436.

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chapter one Joan, wife of William Sprot, complains of Richard le Blunt and Benedicta his wife on plea of trespass, owing to the said Richard failing to chastise his wife, when she the said Joan was on the King’s way opposite her house near Stanwell, the said Benedicta came up and attacked her, to the damage of half a mark.5

This is not the only example of a husband blamed for “failing to chastise his wife.” In a case from the following year, we find a similar situation: Joan Pakes by the said Peter, her attorney, complains that as she was in the king’s highway near “Berestal” in Colchester market, the said Clemence came up, for want of chastisement of the said Guy [her husband], and assaulted the said Joan, striking her with her fist and a stick and tearing her cloak and scarf to the damage of 40sh. The said Guy came and confessed to the said assault and begs for mercy. It was considered that Joan might recover the said 40sh.6

Analogous cases appear in 1333 and 1334.7 While these four cases are the only instances in which the husband’s fault was spelled out this clearly, the Colchester borough records document at least two other assaults by women on their own in which the husband was held jointly responsible.8 This phenomenon was not confined to Essex. The Yorkshire manorial records contain a smattering of similar situations, indicating that, here, too, people were concerned that husbands maintain a degree of control over their wives’ actions. In 1339, when Joan, wife of Adam son of Jordan of Horbiry, called Agnes Hughet a false thief and a jade, she and her husband both ended up before the Wakefield court denying the charges.9 The court at Bradford in 1347 asked both William Tiel and his wife Joan to respond to Agnes Chapman’s allegations that Joan had beaten her.10 5 Isaac Herbert Jeayes, ed. and trans., Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester, 3 vols (Colchester: W. Gurney, 1921–41), 1.56. 6 Jeayes, 1.86. 7 Jeayes, 1.114 and 1.135. 8 Jeayes, 3.9, 16. 9 K.M. Troup, ed. and trans., The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield from October 1338 to September 1340 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 2nd ser., v. 12, 1999), 47. 10 TNA DL 30/129/1957, m. 16. A husband’s responsibility for his wife’s behaviour even stretched into the realm of religious belief. Shannon McSheffrey notes that the church held husbands accountable for their wives’ heresy. In her investigation into Lollardy in late medieval England, she notes a number of cases where church courts fined husbands for concealing the opinions of their wives. The court ordered one husband in particular, whose wife was up on charges of heresy, to

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These cases demonstrate that both the church and the laity interpreted a wife’s independent behaviour—in thought, or action—as an outward sign of poor governance. Any husband incapable of controlling his wife was deemed a poor husband, subject to not only public ridicule, but also hefty fines, public processions or time in prison, all because of his wife’s unlawful or immoral actions. A strong sense of married masculine self-identity rested on a man’s ability to govern his wife and household appropriately. Yet, this goal held many pitfalls for men. First, how did medieval society define ‘reasonable’ force in terms of governance? Not only is this elusive to students of medieval history, but it seems that many medieval men, when faced with a range of beliefs on the subject evident in diverse sources from sermon literature to legal treatises to theatre, also experienced some uncertainty in determining this for themselves. More important still, while the vision of the good wife in the medieval period praised her obedience and passivity, the literature of the period buttresses the idea that medieval wives were anything but. The many depictions of Uxor Noe from the popular late medieval passion plays are a satirical reminder of the incongruence of the theory and practice of marriage. These images also offer frustrated husbands some guidance in how to deal with their wives: a firm (but not too firm) hand was the rule.

The Limits of Castigation: The English Church “[I]f she is foolish, moderately and decently correct her, and if necessary castigate her.”11 This advice to husbands from Thomas Chobham’s manual for confessors (1215) made it clear that physical correction is a last resort; husbands should implement it only after ‘moderate’ and ‘decent’ attempts had already failed. He emphasised this point by immediately following his advice with the statement that a husband should care for his wife above all else “because nothing should be more dear to him than his wife.”12 A good husband, “manage his wife properly and honestly.” See Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 94–5. 11 Thomas Chobham, Thomae de Chobham. Summa Confessorum, trans. F. Broomfield (Louvain: Analecta Medieavalie Namurcensia, v. 25, 1968), 375. 12 Chobham, 375.

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then, knew when to use force and how much force to use. In many ways, Chobham’s vision of marital relations reflects the tenor of the church’s general stance on the issue. While Chobham envisioned instances in which physical force was required, he was far from being an advocate of wife beating. In fact, Chobham adopted what might be interpreted as a proto-feminist stance on marriage. He noted that the entire institution of marriage was created around women, and that it is called “matrimony rather than patrimony because the woman suffers greater distress in bearing, generating and nurturing the children.”13 For that reason, the wife plays a central role in the entire process and demands respect. Chobham also claimed for women an important voice in some very public issues. He wrote that In imposing penance, it should always be enjoined upon women to be preachers to their husbands, because no priest is able to soften the heart of a man the way his wife can. For this reason, the sin of a man is often imputed to his wife if, through her negligence, he is not corrected. Even in the bedroom, in the midst of their embraces, a wife should speak alluringly to her husband, and if he is hard and unmerciful, and an oppressor of the poor, she should invite him to be merciful; if he is a plunderer, she should denounce plundering; if he is avaricious, she should arouse generosity in him, and she should secretly give alms from their common property, supplying the alms that he omits. For it is permissible for a woman to expend much of her husband’s property, without his knowing, in ways beneficial to him and for pious causes.14

Chobham’s portrayal of the wife as an influential figure, characterised by economic independence and a greater tendency towards piety than men, is important principally because of the way he chose to disseminate it. Confessors’ manuals, like Thomas of Chobham’s popular work, are one of the few media through which medieval historians can begin to appreciate religion as the clergy preached it to the public.15 Theological debates centred on the Aristotelian doctrine 13

Chobham, 145. Chobham, 375. Translation taken from Sharon Farmer, “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61.3 (1986): 517. 15 Chobham’s Summa Confessorum “reached a wide audience in the medieval world.” Of the more than one hundred surviving manuscripts, at least two were printed in the 1480s, substantiating the enduring nature of the work. Moreover, many of these remaining manuscripts were used in priories and colleges “where they would have been accessible to a large readership”. See Michael M. Sheehan, “Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages: Development and Mode of Application of a Theory of Marriage,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, n.s. 1 (1978): 25. This article also appears in his Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 87–117. 14

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of woman as a deficient man, while intellectually stimulating, contribute very little to a clear understanding of popular misogyny. Confessors’ manuals, on the other hand, allow an exploration into medieval pastoral care and the precise nature of clerical representations of women as they were conveyed to the people, which often contrasted with the more dogmatic texts. Furthermore, they demonstrate widespread ecclesiastical interest in the practical problems of marriage, rather than merely focusing on its spiritual aspects. Parish priests made an intelligible distinction between ‘women’ and ‘wives’ in their sermons; the latter received much fairer treatment than the former.16 In his advice to parish priests, Chobham did not abandon contemporary notions of feminine vices. He simply reinterpreted them as they relate to wives. As Sharon Farmer has noted, “[i]n their use of speech and sexual enticements to manipulate men, the pious wives of the eleventh-, twelfth-, and early-thirteenth-century sources resemble contemporary depictions of Eve, who compelled Adam ‘to obey her voice rather than the Word of God.’ ”17 Nevertheless, Chobham readily translated womanly weapons into positive attributes, providing a married woman wielded them in accordance with Christian beliefs. Chobham’s perspective on marital discipline sheds light on the limits of castigation. He expected husbands to employ physical force to instruct wives on appropriate conduct; and yet, given the greater proclivity of wives towards pious behaviour, a husband must have needed sound justification for any force of great magnitude he chose to apply.18 Chobham’s position may have developed out of Gratian’s Decretum. A gloss of Gratian’s twelfth-century work states, “a man may chastise his wife and beat her for her own correction; for she is of his household, and therefore the lord may chastise his own. . . . so likewise the husband is bound to chastise his wife in moderation.”19 Although

16 See D.L. D’Avray Medieval Marriage Sermons: Mass Communication in a Culture Without Print (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 283; Rüdiger Schnell, “The Discourse on Marriage in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 73 (1998): 771–86. 17 Farmer, “Persuasive Voices,” 539. 18 It is important to note that Chobham’s vision of the wife as being more pious than the husband is not an isolated aberration. In her analysis of John of Bromyard’s compendium of 1300 exempla, Ruth Mazo Karras notes that charity “appears as a characteristically feminine virtue” and that “Bromyard often depicts women as more charitable than their husbands, sometimes criticizing the latter’s greed.” See Ruth Mazo Karras, “Gendered Sin and Misogyny in John of Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium,” Traditio 47 (1992): 244. 19 As cited and translated in G.G. Coulton, ed., Life in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 3.119.

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the gloss fails to offer a clear definition of ‘moderation,’ the Decretum does imply what the term might encompass. For example, the canons of the first council of Toledo (A.D. 400), included in Gratian’s Decretum, discuss acceptable discipline of clerical wives. The council wrote: If the wives of any clerics have transgressed, their husbands may use non-deadly force in order to deprive them of any license to misbehave further. The husband may exercise the power to confine them, to place them under constraints within the house, compelling them to saving, not deadly, fasts, with the result that poor clerks might reciprocally give aid to each other if they lack household servants. They should not, however, take food with these wives who have sinned, unless their penitential acts should happen to return them to the fear of God.20

Next to Chobham’s Summa, then, the Decretum provides an even more lucid statement on the acceptability of marital violence. Although it also advocated physical violence when necessary, in this passage the Decretum detailed a variety of other kinds of force a husband might employ in order to mend his wife’s unruly ways, underscoring strongly that violence is a last resort. Gratian’s glossator and Chobham shared a very middle-of-the-road attitude on marital violence: they believed that limited physical force was acceptable, on condition that it be restricted to moral education. Not all canonists agreed with such a temperate position. The anonymous author of the Summa Parisiensis (1160) “was prepared to authorize clerical husbands to beat their peccant wives very harshly indeed (acerrime flagellari ), provided only that they stopped short of killing them.”21 In general, the moderation advocated by both Chobham and the Decretum would seem to illustrate a broader perspective embraced by the church. In his Ordinary Gloss, Johannes Teutonicus noted that, “[a] husband could correct his wife solely for the reasons laid down by the law. If he exceeded his authority he became liable to punishment himself: the courts could fine him up to one-third of the property he had contributed to his marriage (donatio propter nuptias)

20 Emil Friedberg, ed., Decretum Gratiana (Leipzig: University of Leipzig, 1879), C. 33 q. 2 c. 10. The gloss presents this passage as a response to the question ‘how are clerks to operate their households if their wives are doing penance?’ The answer, then, is that if they do not have servants, they should seek the help of other poor clerks. 21 As discussed in James A. Brundage, “Domestic Violence in Classical Canon Law,” in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 187.

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or, if he had failed to make such a contribution, he might forfeit up to a quarter of his net worth.”22 The records of York and Essex do not provide any examples of the courts carrying out such a powerful threat; nevertheless, that a prominent canonist believed rules existed for the disciplining of wives and that these rules must be observed is significant in and of itself. The notion that physical force is acceptable only when all else fails is repeated in the work of the thirteenth-century Genoese archbishop Jacopa da Varazze, usually identified as Januensis. He advised that husbands turn first to Christianity in the moral correction of their wives: “but if she cannot learn to blush with fear of God, let her grow red with the switch.”23 Januensis gave emphasis to the role of the husband as head of the household. He explained that a wife’s insubordination earned the same kind of punishment as a servant, “since she does not know how to feel shame like a free woman.”24 His vision of marriage, like Chobham’s, was not all one-sided. Januensis ascribed to women an instrumental role in marriage over their husbands’ morality, particularly in the case of fornicating men. He urged wives to take an active position on this matter by throwing their husbands out of the home or by turning to the bishop for help. The reluctance of many women to do so arises, in part, “because they are frozen by fear, since they fear to be beaten by their husbands— but they ought more to fear a God who perceives what they do than a husband who beats them.”25 Finally, Januensis brought the argument full circle by reminding women that, irrespective of their husbands’ opinions in this matter, wives should not act as servants to their husbands in matters of morality. Januensis made clear what Chobham only hinted at. Clerical writers perceived domestic violence as an abuse of the hierarchical relationship

22

Brundage, 187. As cited and translated in Andrew Galloway, “Marriage Sermons, Polemical Sermons, and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue: A Generic Excursus,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992): 18. Galloway notes that at least twenty-two collections of Januensis’s sermons are extant from later medieval England, as well as manifold adaptations and derivations of his work by English preachers, demonstrating that his sermons were very influential in late medieval English society. In fact, Galloway proposes that Januensis’s sermons on women may have provided the base for the Wife of Bath’s discussion of marriage in The Canterbury Tales, and that the Wife’s last husband, Jankyn, is intended to be a “parodically vernacularized version of Januensis” (19). 24 Galloway, 19. 25 Galloway, 12. 23

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within marriage: men beat their wives in order to gain ultimate control, and so that society will not hold them accountable for their actions. Both Chobham and Januensis make us manifestly aware of just how complicated was the structure of a marital relationship in the Middle Ages. While the church and its representatives envisioned a hierarchy of gender-specific roles, they may not have expected disparity between husband and wife as great as was often the case. The work of one of Januensis’s contemporaries, a Polish Dominican friar named Peregrinus, who compiled a remarkably popular collection of Latin sermons, also addresses the complicated nature of the marital hierarchy and its potential for abuse. The sermons in his collection reveal an even more complex, but intuitive, perspective on the matter of marital relations. Peregrinus argued that a husband should “love his wife without speaking any evil words to her or striking her.”26 Like Januensis, he believed that the source of violence within marriage was founded unquestionably in the power relationship. He wrote, [y]et I fear that there are many husbands who are so angry after a visit to an inn that they enjoy beating their wives. They do not dare to strike those who insulted them because they know that, if they do, they will be beaten in return. But after they return home, in their rage, they take all the wrong they have suffered in the inn out on their wives: they grab them by the hair and shove them around the room. Because of this, your love must be such that you do not treat her poorly either in word or deed.27

Peregrinus’s analysis is significant in a number of ways. First, he attempted to understand the psychology of abuse. Peregrinus saw that marital violence is associated wholly to a strong sense of male insecurity. He is not the only medieval sermon writer to have reached this conclusion. Berthold of Regensburg similarly shifted the blame for violence to husbands, by arguing that “[o]utside the house some husbands cut a pathetic figure; inside the house, they acted like lions.”28 Berthold perceived what modern studies of spousal abuse have stated, that men beat their wives because it makes them feel 26 As cited and translated by Schnell, 772. Galloway notes that there are at least six surviving English manuscripts that contain Peregrinus’s sermon cycle, leading us to the conclusion that his work was probably well known in England as well as on the continent. Galloway, 8. 27 Schnell, 772. 28 Schnell, 784.

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like ‘real men.’ Both Berthold and Peregrinus explained the male psyche in a remarkably profound way. In locating the source of wife abuse in the projection of male inadequacies, they have brought to light a contemporary crisis in gender identity. Second, Peregrinus and Berthold together suggest that husbands may have found themselves torn between two discrete, and sometimes competing, discourses of masculinity. That men chose to reassert their masculinity in the home through violence argues that it was a vital component of general late medieval expectations of masculinity, and that these conceptions of gender identity were both internalised and widespread. Recent studies confirm that medieval English society thought violence was integral to maleness. P.H. Cullum has argued that “two of the activities which most obviously characterized the ideal of masculinity. . . . [were] fighting and reproducing.”29 Similarly, Ruth Mazo Karras, in her study of university students in the Middle Ages, noted that students found themselves in a very complex situation. Students, who belonged to (albeit lower orders of ) the clergy, were uncomfortable with the idea of renouncing their masculinity by leading chaste, peaceful lives for the duration of their studies. All students were forbidden to carry weapons, but because this was such a key feature of aristocratic masculinity, many young clerics often fell short of expectations, and found themselves arrested for carrying daggers, shields, and swords. Karras argued that misbehaviour of this nature represents a “need to demonstrate masculinity through participation in brawls,” just like any other (lay)man of their age.30 The university students in this situation exemplify the difficulties associated with being male; “important in the dynamics of gendering is the competition between different notions of acceptable masculine behaviour.”31 Violence in the home during the medieval era may have been another example of the unfortunate outcome of clashing discourses.

29 P.H. Cullum, “Clergy, Masculinity and Transgression in Late Medieval England,” in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D.M. Hadley (New York: Longman, 1999), 182. 30 Ruth Mazo Karras, “Sharing Wine, Women, and Song: Masculine Identity Formation in the Medieval European Universities,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland, 1997), 190. 31 D.M. Hadley, “Introduction: Medieval Masculinities,” in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, 4. See also Shannon McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture: Governance, Patriarchy and Reputation,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), 245.

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Men constantly faced conflicting expectations of what it meant to be a man, but also what it meant to be a husband. As P.H. Cullum has noted, at times, “[s]ome forms of masculinity carry more weight than others.”32 Domestic violence may represent an instance when one discourse of masculinity triumphed over another. Wife abuse occurred when a man’s masculinity temporarily overpowered his marital self-identity; or, in broader terms, when the aggressive male triumphed over the husband as educator and protector. Like Chobham and Gratian, Peregrinus represented the more widespread notion that physical force is a weapon of final recourse. He cautioned husbands to use force judiciously and only for the purposes of chastisement. This preoccupation with the appropriate use of physical compulsion provides the historian with an opportunity to understand better actual cases of abuse from the period. Why did men sometimes defend their actions as castigation, not abuse? Because the church argued that moral discipline was the only appropriate grounds for which physical force might be employed. As we will see in Chapter Four, husbands commonly appropriated wife chastisement as justification for their violent actions. In its exhortations against the immoderate use of force in wife chastisement, then, the medieval church not only recognised this misuse of ecclesiastical teachings, it also isolated and challenged a dominant justification for what it perceived as inexcusable behaviour. Peregrinus argued that a wife should not be expected merely to submit to her husband’s cruelty. He proffered women the story of two squirrels as a form of instruction: “The male squirrel will not let the female eat the nuts they have collected together. He stands for harsh and unkind husbands. The female may create a hole from below the store of nuts. When the male starts eating from above, then she starts eating from below. The moral is that wives may find ways round an unreasonable husband’s authority.”33 In noting that “many husbands . . . are so angry after a visit to an inn that they enjoy beating their wives,” Peregrinus also hints at the possibility that marital violence may be linked intimately with alcohol abuse, a factor that has certainly proven to be true in modern society. This kind of insight helps to fill in the gaps in the legal

32 33

Cullum, 193. D’Avray, 9.

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records. While cases of marital violence at law fail to blame alcohol for a husband’s actions, Peregrinus’s shrewd assumption, most likely buttressed by his experience in the confessional, opens a window onto the external factors influencing marital violence. Not only may alcohol have been to blame, but the ultra-masculine atmosphere of the medieval inn also may have contributed to a competitive spirit among husbands as patriarchs. Certainly, such conditions might produce the kind of anti-feminine climate often associated with the Middle Ages. One point to which Chobham, Gratian and the various sermon writers seem to agree is that a man’s use of violence in marriage is tied to his reputation as a good husband. Male honour was dependant on a legitimate use of physical force in the household. This code of male conduct was not merely theoretical; the language of abuse employed in the church courts of medieval England reflects this code. Because the medieval church treated spousal abuse as a delicate matter, the records are sometimes quite cryptic when referring to abuse. For example, in the case of Thomas de Craven of York the records simply allude to his abuse by requiring Thomas to treat his wife “decently and honourably.”34 However, the case is immediately identifiable as an instance of abuse because the records are so formulaic in nature. Violent husbands were regularly ordered to treat their wives decenter et honeste. When Richard Machonne was presented before the court because he “exercises cruelty” in his treatment of his wife Alice, the record notes “he beat and castigated her excessively and indecently”; he was also commanded to treat his wife “decently and honourably.”35 As Richard’s case demonstrates, the opposite was also true. ‘Indecent’ behaviour seems to have been a euphemism employed by the courts for abuse. A consistory court act book similarly reports John of Kellingley to have conducted himself indecently with his wife because “he treated her cruelly and beat her in an inappropriate manner.”36 While the records are vague about what decent and honourable behaviour towards a wife might constitute, they do confirm that beatings and excessive chastisement were not acceptable behaviour and were thus a stain on a man’s honour.

34 35 36

York M 2(1) c, fo. 30. York M 2(1) c, fo. 23. York M 2(1) c, fo. 21.

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The medieval church held high expectations for husbands and they were willing to enforce these expectations. It understood physical force as an important tool of moral instruction; at the same time, the church made it clear that husbands who employed force too readily should expect to explain themselves. Sermon writers also offer some justification for why men beat their wives: suffering from a sense of male inadequacy, some husbands may have attempted to demonstrate their manhood through aggression in the home. While violence may have been an acceptable and even encouraged part of public masculinity, in private, immoderate violence was not excusable. Married masculine honour relied on a delicate balance of instruction and force; and the church courts were more than willing to hold men accountable for their inability to adhere to the virtues of marital masculinity.

The Limits of Castigation: Secular Law Secular law in medieval England shared many of the same ideas about violence in marriage; its focus, however, was recognisably distinct from that of the church. While the church concerned itself chiefly with the sin and dishonour of wife-beaters, secular law focused on the responsibility of husbands to discipline their wives. This gap between ecclesiastical and legal treatment of the subject is not surprising. Because the rules of coverture held men accountable for their wives’ wrongful activities, courts of law needed to emphasise a husband’s duty to discipline his wife. Constant reminders of a man’s marital duty were fundamental to keeping the peace. For example, J.B. Given has argued, “the village community would on occasion punish women who had violated one of its regulations by ordering the errant woman’s husband to beat her.”37 Although Given’s evidence for this broad statement is narrowly based on a single entry in the Chalgrave (Bedfs.) manorial rolls, the ruling is significant. It suggests that the courts may have expected husbands to discipline their wives using physical force. The cases of husbands reported for “failing to 37 J.B. Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 195. Given’s evidence comes from an analysis of Marian K. Dale, ed., Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor, 1278–1313 (Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, v. 26, 1948).

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chastise” their wives from the Colchester borough cases support this belief.38 In the village setting, relying on the household hierarchy for the discipline of social misbehaviours was the most effective means of enforcing village custom in the absence of a more official mechanism. The rules of coverture, in this respect, were a powerful tool of social control. If husbands were responsible for the misbehaviours of their wives, then they might be more inclined to control that behaviour before it resulted in a suit at law. The expectation that husbands maintain a firm hand when dealing with their wives is ubiquitous in the legal treatises of the late medieval period. Legal treatises are a vast repository of knowledge concerning contemporary juridical practices, chiefly because the subject matter of these works is thought to have drawn heavily on actual cases adjudicated by medieval English courts. Thus, the legal treatises provide a good grasp of contemporary practices for a system of law that was largely unwritten. Although a discussion of spousal abuse is absent in these treatises, the use of castigation is implied in discussions of a married woman’s responsibility in crimes committed in the company of her husband. Both the late thirteenth-century Mirror of Justices and the early thirteenth-century treatise On the Laws and Customs of England, traditionally attributed to Bracton, approach this subject in a profound way. The Mirror of Justices is succinct but explicit: if a married woman stands accused of consenting to her husband’s felonious activities, “she may answer that she is under her husband’s rod and that she may not contradict [him].”39 The Mirror goes on to declare that if her actions were committed “without her husband’s knowledge, then she must answer.” While this perspective was useful as a legal strategy for women wishing to evade the consequences of their actions, it surely paints an unbalanced picture of medieval marriage. The description of a married woman as “under her husband’s rod” argues that the courts anticipated the use of physical force by husbands in the good management of a home. Bracton adopts a much gentler approach than that espoused by the Mirror of Justices; at the same time, it is redolent of Chobham’s expectations of female moral superiority. The treatise approaches the subject with the simple but vague statement that a man’s “wife will not 38

Above on p. 32. Andrew Horne, The Mirror of Justices, ed. and trans. William Joseph Whittaker (Selden Society, v. 7, 1895), 140. 39

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be held liable [for her husband’s theft] because it is not she who has it within her potestas but her husband.” The term potestas, or power, in this context is ambiguous at best: it neither contradicts nor reaffirms that a wife is “under her husband’s rod.” Yet, it establishes distinctly a hierarchy within the conjugal union in which the husband occupies the privileged position. The treatise continues: “[a] wife ought not to accuse her husband nor disclose his theft or felony, but neither ought she to assent to it or act as his confederate; she ought to keep him as best she can from felony and wickedness.”40 How is this different from Chobham’s ideal of the pious wife who distributes her husband’s wealth behind his back and uses ‘pillow talk’ to improve his moral character? The distinctively clerical perspective of Bracton reminds us of the ecclesiastical credentials of its probable authors. Given that the authors were near contemporaries of Chobham and shared similar ecclesiastical training, it is not surprising that the two works should have shared the same expectations of gender roles within marriage. Yet, neither perspective accords with the more standard Christian theology on the inferiority of feminine moral integrity, and the outlook of both works on this issue was formed uniquely by their interactions with the laity through the royal and ecclesiastical courts and the parish church. It seems clear that in the thirteenth century, Christian writing in both law and morals reflects a desire to offer realistic solutions to ordinary laymen and women. This approach probably reflects the increasing influence of friars in the thirteenth century. Friars deliberately altered their sermons in order to make them less offensive to women, because as Jacqueline Murray has argued, the demands of weekly preaching did not mean “the laity will listen to advice that is irrelevant, insulting, or at odds with their own experience and values.”41 The result is a law and a moral theology that seems much more realistic than what had come before. Not surprisingly, then, Bracton offers some indications that although men occupied the position of superiority in marriage, their rights

40 Henri de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. G.E. Woodbine, trans. Samuel E. Thorne (Cambridge: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 1968), 2: 428. 41 Jacqueline Murray, “Thinking about Gender: The Diversity of Medieval Perspectives,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 9.

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were limited. This vision is far different from that of the Mirror of Justices. In the latter, a married woman’s primary allegiance is to her husband. This approach fits in well with medieval theology. A morally superior husband would not lead his wife into sin intentionally, but away from it. Bracton espoused a more practical perspective. It undermined the husband’s ultimate power by arguing, “though she ought to obey her husband she need not be obedient to him in heinous deeds.”42 Bracton’s willingness to advocate compliance only when ethically and logically sound smacks of realism. While the Mirror of Justices presents the ideal of the good wife who accedes to her husband’s commands without question, most women probably would have had some difficulty with such unwavering loyalty. Bracton’s perspective, then, provides a foil for that found in the Mirror of Justices. More important, it points to the probability that legal constructions of gender roles within marriage were equally as ambiguous as ecclesiastical perceptions, and at best contradictory. The records of the law courts of medieval England document a similar preoccupation with wife chastisement; juries also dealt with castigation with a degree of uncertainty. For example, a Lincolnshire coroners’ roll for the year 1374–5 held over the body of Alice, wife of Alexander Dey of Potter Hanworth, confirms that the limits of castigation might well be unclear. The record states that on the Sunday closest to the feast of St James Apostle, in his chamber at Potter Hanworth, Alexander whipped his wife on the back to the extent that she feared for her life. Escaping the hand and ‘power’ ( potestam) of her husband, Alice fled the chamber, only to slip on some grease and break her neck. The coroners’ roll is very careful to remark, however, that her death occurred not because of the flagellation, but by accident.43 The coroner’s inquest jury was at pains to note that, although Alexander’s wife may have interpreted his actions as excessive, they did not endanger her life. Yet, the marginalia of this case illustrates the trial jury thought otherwise. Rather than a marking of ‘infort ’ to indicate that this was an accident, the margin reports simply Alexander’s name, as if he were any other felon. A Yorkshire inquest from the year 1348 offers another case to support the thesis that coroners’ juries were unsure about whether

42 43

Bracton, 2.428. TNA JUST 2/72, m. 3.

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or not to hold men responsible for the results of their chastisement. The roll states: an argument arose between Richard Sutor of Ormesby and Cecilia his wife, so that the said Richard struck the said Cecilia with his hand. And then the said Cecilia fled, and in fleeing, she fell into the fire over which a brass pot full of water stood (and) which overflowed on her stomach and around the said Cecilia and scalded her, so that she died confessed the Sunday next closest after the Ascension of the Lord then next following. And immediately after the fact, Richard fled.44

It is possible to see this death as a misadventure, rather than culpable homicide. In fact, in a society in which physical abuse of a wife was acceptable and even encouraged, an accident is probably exactly how a jury would have interpreted such a case. This perspective is reinforced by the omission of the standard phrase which would indicate that Richard “feloniously slew” ( felonice interfecit) his wife. Yet, Richard Sutor was not so convinced that a jury of his peers would believe his innocence. After the death of his wife, he immediately fled. The chief reason why he would have done so was in fear of execution, the prescribed penalty if a jury found him guilty of a felony. Hence, Richard perceived his own situation to be a case of homicide, and not an accident. In her study of the king’s pardon, Naomi Hurnard has demonstrated that culpability for homicide sometimes was misunderstood during the Middle Ages, and that even bystanders now and then fled out of fear of judicial penalty.45 If this were the only record of Cecilia’s death, we would have to question Richard’s flight on these grounds. However, like many cases in the coroners’ rolls, Cecilia’s death appears more than once. A second entry in a later roll, while much less descriptive, is enlightening in its lack of detail. None of the events leading up to Cecilia’s death is included in the record. Instead, it states merely that “Richard Sutor of Ormesby feloniously slew his wife Cecilia.”46 Richard was not the only one who interpreted Cecilia’s death as a homicide; so, too, did his indicting jury.

44

TNA JUST 2/214, m. 11. This is not entirely surprising considering the number of changes effected to the law of homicide throughout the medieval period. For a fuller treatment of persons who fled the scene of the crime see Naomi Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide Before A.D. 1307 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), viii. 46 TNA JUST 2/213, m. 7 45

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Both of these cases of accidental death resulting from a husband’s use of physical force would seem to suggest juries (and defendants) were unclear about the extent to which they should hold husbands legally accountable for their actions. Nevertheless, these are only two cases among many; what is perhaps even more important is that the coroners’ rolls for Yorkshire and Essex do not acknowledge any cases of a wife’s death by castigation. In this respect, it is crucial to recognise that the language of discipline was not foreign to royal records of indictment. For example, the 1368 case of John Benet in the Yorkshire coroners’ rolls describes how John castigated his brother William with a rod until he died.47 An early sixteenth-century serjeant named Keble who wrote a treatise on the law, actually addressed the issue of death by chastisement and declared that it was, indeed, a felony. He wrote, “if a master corrects his servant, a master his slave, a schoolmaster his student, and from the force of the same correction he dies, even if the master did not intend to kill him, still it is a felony.”48 This statement does not refer specifically to wife chastisement, but it seems reasonable to suppose that medieval society would have placed it, too, in this category. If Keble’s knowledge reflects a wider, and more long-standing, awareness of the problematic nature of death by chastisement, abusive husbands in medieval England may have realised the chances of justifying their actions in this way were slim. Nevertheless, the total absence of cases of spousal homicide by chastisement invites the unpleasant possibility that it may have been so common as to be unworthy of note. In any case, the discourse of marital relations blurred the line between castigation and abuse in both theory and practice. An unusual case from a Cambridgeshire coroner’s roll brings to light the possibility that the legal representatives of communities adopted a harsher position on castigation than the ecclesiastical or legal treatises. In fact, inquest juries may have considered a wife’s rebellious response to chastisement an ideal excuse for homicide. The roll recounts the story of John French and his wife Maud. On a Wednesday before the feast of Pope Gregory in the year 1362, the record states that discord arose between John and his wife when he attempted to castigate her for her “evil words.” Her husband’s actions 47

TNA JUST 2/222, m. 10d. See J.M. Kaye, “The Early History of Murder and Manslaughter,” Law Quarterly Review 82 (1967): 570. 48

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so enraged Maud that she took the staff from him and hit him with it. In self-defence, John took up his knife. He fled their home, but Maud followed him. Unable to escape her, he brandished his knife so that, in descending the stairs, Maud ran into the knife, wounding herself in the belly. She languished until the following Thursday, when she died, confessed. Since John had not intended to kill his wife, jurors did not consider her death a felony.49 Maud’s death is an almost classic example of self-defence from this period, meeting the court’s stringent requirement that the perpetrator do everything in his power to avoid killing his harasser.50 From John’s flight to Maud running into his knife, the jury’s account embraces the tenor of the common law rules of homicide by selfdefence. The formulaic nature of the account makes it hard to imagine that Maud’s death occurred precisely in this manner; the jury’s declaration of John’s innocence, however, suggests that a wife’s refusal to be governed might have justified homicide in some circumstances. Both the legal treatises and law in practice shared many of the same features of the discourse of castigation. Medieval laymen saw that it was not only a husband’s right, but also his duty, to reform his wife’s behaviour through force (sometimes) of a physical nature; yet, neither the theory or practice of the law clarifies the acceptable degree of force nor the husband’s accountability. A distinction may have existed between the two: while Bracton expected some restraint and that wives might sometimes disregard their husband’s dictates, the law courts seem to have been less generous. Local representatives of the moral community may have had much more strenuous expectations of wives in terms of governance. Bearing in mind that men expected to intervene in cases of marital violence in their neighbourhoods, the general assumption may have been that it was not

49

TNA JUST 2/18, m. 57. A Year Book from 1454 cites the rules for threatening to kill in self-defence, noting: “. . . . if a man assaults you in order to beat you it is not lawful for you to say you will kill him and to menace his life and limb: but if the case is such that he has you at such advantage that it may be understood that he is going to kill you as if you seek to flee and he is swifter than you and pursues you so that you are unable to escape; or if you are on the ground under him; or if he chases you to a wall or hedge or dike, so that you cannot escape, then it is lawful for you to say that if he will not desist, you want to slay him to save your own life, and thus you may menace him for such special cause.” Year Books, 1422–1461 (Henry VI) (London, 1556–74), 33 Hen. 6, Easter, pl. 10. 50

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a wife’s right to determine when her husband’s actions exceeded acceptable bounds; instead, this was a decision best left to the men of the vill.

Discourses of Female Passivity The expectation of female passivity when faced with marital violence should not come as any surprise. The image of the passive wife was far more common than Chobham’s interpretation of the good wife who corrects her husband’s moral failings. In terms of spousal abuse, some of the ecclesiastical literature from the period even spelled this out. For example, the anonymous writer of a fourteenth-century preacher’s manual51 entitled Fasciculus Morum, noted that although wife-beating was scandalous, a wife should not only expect to be beaten, but keep silent about it to protect her husband: [h]umility as thus defined must be practiced, first because it patiently endures its troubles; just as a wife who is mistreated by her husband suffers it patiently so that she may not cause her husband to become worthy of public shame, and if perhaps, to his shame, some external lesion from his beating can be seen on her, she carefully dissimulates saying she took such an injury elsewhere.52

St Augustine perpetuated probably the most common image of the good wife who silently endured her husband’s abuse. In his biography, he held up his own mother as an example to women. He wrote, [f ]or she bore his acts of unfaithfulness quietly, and never had any jealous scene with her husband about them. . . . he had a very hot temper. But she knew that a woman must not resist a husband in anger, by deed or even by word. Only when she saw him calm again and quiet, she would take the opportunity to give him an explanation of her actions, 51 An important distinction exists between preachers’ and confessors’ manuals. The church intended confessors’ manuals to guide priests in their work in the confessional. They suggested the kinds of questions a priest should ask in order to uncover sins, as well as the advice a priest should dole out to his parishioners in the confessional setting. A preacher’s manual, however, was quite different because its focus was entirely on sermon material. The method of dissemination, then, transformed the effect of the literature. Parishioners probably shared many of the ideologies expressed in a confessors’ manual; on the other hand, a preacher’s spiritual community most likely shared the perspectives found in a preacher’s manual. 52 Siegfried Wenzel, ed. and trans., Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Manual (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 64–5.

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chapter one if it happened that he had been roused to anger unreasonably. The result was that whereas many matrons with much milder husbands carried the marks of blows to disfigure their faces, and would all get together to complain of the way their husbands behaved, my mother talking lightly but meaning it seriously, advised them against their tongues: saying that from the day they heard the matrimonial contract read to them they should regard it as an instrument by which they became slaves . . .53

Because Augustine presents Monica as the ideal Christian wife, his portrayal of her as the submissive wife who avoided strife is significant. Augustine “makes his mother a spokesperson for the subservient obedience necessary from chaste Christian women.”54 Monica is an ideal wife and woman because she stands out from the rest: “If she had acted in ways that provoked beatings, as Augustine believed her peers did, she would have been no better than them.”55 Even the more popular prescriptive literature of the period had much to say about a woman’s need to keep silent. In “What the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter”56 mothers ostensibly instructed their daughters on appropriate feminine behaviour, noting: “Make thou no jangling” (14); “sweet of speech shall thou be” (28) and “be thou no chider, nor of words bold” (83). Moreover, the poem contains a description of the adult life to which an urban daughter should aspire: a home that is also a business, in which one’s husband is also one’s employer.57 The perceived need for this kind of prescriptive literature ironically demonstrates that it might be ignored; but it also confirms that the late medieval period in England was one in which images

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Augustine, Confessionum S. Augustini, l. 9, c. 9, Patrologia Latina 32, cols. 772–773. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Nancy Nienhuis, “Battered Women and the Construction of Sanctity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17 (2002): 42. 55 Kienzle and Nienhuis, 41. 56 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 853. The poem is available in a printed edition in Edith Rickert, ed. and trans., The Babees’ Book: Medieval Manners for the Young Done into English from Dr. Furnivall’s Texts (Early English Text Society, o.s. v. 2, 2006). “What the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter” was a very popular poem that circulated from the mid-fourteenth century to the late fifteenth in England in Latin, French and English. A very useful survey of the circulation of this literature is provided by Felicity Riddy, “Mother Knows Best: Reading Social Change in a Courtesy Text,” Speculum 71 (1996): 66–86. 57 Felicity Riddy has argued persuasively that this literature, written by clerics (not wives), very much reflects a crisis in late medieval urban femininity: young singlewomen were moving to urban environments for work, and were leading independent lives that did not conform to contemporary social expectations of femininity. The author(s) of this poem, then, wished to remind women of their place. 54

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of passive femininity were proffered with the hope of teaching women appropriate behaviour. The exempla of the period also include morality tales intended to teach wives the importance of being silent. An exemplum from The Book of the Knight of Tour Landry recounts that a woman ought not to strive with her husband, nor give no displeasance nor answer her husband before strangers like a rampe (virago), and with great villainous words, disraising him and setting him at nought; of the which he was often ashamed, and bade her hold her peace for shame, but the more fair he spake, the worse she did. And he that was angry of her governance, smote her with his fist down to the earth; and then with his foot he struck her in the visage and brake her nose, and all her life after she had her nose crooked, the which shent and disfigured her visage after, that she might not for shame show her visage, it was so foul blemished. And this she had for her evil and great language, that she was wont to say to her husband. And therefore the wife ought to suffer and let the husband have the words, and to be master, for that is her worship; for it is shame to hear strife between them, and in especial before folk. But I say not but when they be alone, but she may tell him with goodly words, and counsel him to amend if he do amiss.58

Exempla, or sermon stories, were a powerful means of instruction. As Ruth Mazo Karras has argued, “[i]f anything reveals how common men and women received the church’s teaching, it is the exemplum, the form in which that teaching was expressed most vividly to the laity.”59 While we cannot assume that women embraced whole-heartedly the church’s teachings, the ubiquity of this kind of literature is significant. D.L. D’Avray describes the exempla as the first system of mass communication. He writes, “[t]he question ‘Who was influenced by sermons?’ is like the question ‘Who is influenced by the newspapers?’ ”60 We do not know whether newspapers influence people’s opinions, but we do know that people read them. Similarly, medieval wives knew they were supposed to be silent, and that a failure to do so might earn a beating from their husbands; whether they chose to observe these teachings is another story entirely. The Knight of La Tour Landry’s story of the scolding wife was not the only exemplum to argue that women should be passive. In his discussion of the ideal bride, Guibert de Tournai wrote, “she should not go out to shows, 58 59 60

Cited and translated in Coulton, 3.114–5. Karras, “Gendered Sin and Misogyny,” 233. D’Avray, 14.

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she should bow her neck, lower her eyebrows, close her eyes, abstain from laughing, restrain her tongue, hold her anger in check, walk in a seemly manner, and keep her good name secure—let there be nothing in her to offend others, so that a good house may be known from its lintel.”61 Being constantly confronted with such a narrow stereotype of ideal femininity, women had a difficult path to negotiate. Certainly, Chaucer’s Patient Griselda exemplifies the most taxing stereotype for medieval wives. As Margaret Hallissy notes, “[e]very wife must emulate the patience of Grisilde, whose story makes its appearance whenever wifely obedience is discussed.”62 Chaucer’s tale gives an account of the marriage of Walter and Griselda. After many years of refusing to marry, Walter, king of Saluzzo, was pressured into marrying by his people, eager for a successor to the throne. His only condition was that he would not marry unless his wife was wholly obedient. Thus, when he married Griselda, he made her promise that she would always obey his will, even if it caused her pain. Throughout their marriage, Walter put his wife’s obedience to the test. Immediately after the birth of both their daughter and son, he had the children removed to be raised elsewhere. Griselda suffered this enormity without complaint. When the daughter had reached the age of twelve, Walter informed Griselda that the pope had given him permission to marry a woman of higher rank. Griselda agreed to return to her father’s home, but only after she had helped him with his wedding. His new bride (actually his daughter) was brought to Saluzzo and Griselda unwearyingly aided in the preparations for their wedding day. Finally appreciating fully the submissiveness of his wife, Walter confessed to Griselda that the beautiful young woman was, in fact, her daughter. He stopped testing his wife’s tolerance and the two lived happily ever after. Clearly, Walter and Griselda’s marriage was not the ideal. As Margaret Hallissy has noted, the irony is “that having a perfect wife makes Walter a worse man, not a better.”63 The clerk justifies the tale as an allegory for the soul’s triumph over adversity and the need for utter submission to God’s will. None the less, the tale leaves its readers with a disturbing message. “The happy ending to their 61

D’Avray, 308–9. Margaret Hallissy, Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer’s Women and Medieval Codes of Conduct (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993), 64. 63 Hallissy, 70. 62

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marriage, and their final years lived in harmony have the effect of legitimizing Walter’s testing, confirming the medieval misogynist tradition that a wife was weak, willful, and in need of her husband’s superior male judgment. The ample good humor displayed between the two, soon after Griselda has recovered from her last swoon, and Griselda’s obedient and obliging responses from this point onward, also confirm the authority of Walter, not only as husband, but as her teacher and guide, despite the difficulty of the ‘lesson’ he attempts to teach her.”64 Even if Chaucer intended this to be a “tale of faith” in God, the image he casts of the good wife is an ideal few women could hope (or would wish) to emulate.65 The rhetoric of female passivity was not restricted to the literature of the period; it also permeated the records of the courts. The language of female passivity is evident in disciplinary cases of domestic violence presented before officials of the court. A 1371 notation from the court book of the Dean and Chapter of York records that Christian, wife of Robert of Moorby, feared living with her husband because she believed that his abuse might lead to her death.66 Joan, daughter of William Matheuson, around the same time, also preferred not to live with her husband Robert of Pontefract, even though they had been married for a long enough time to produce five children. She argued that she was in such fear for her life that “she did not dare live with him.”67 Formulaic language of this nature was very careful to meet the court’s requirements of abuse that was near fatal. At the same time, however, by asserting that the wife does not ‘dare’ live with her husband, or that she ‘fears’ him, the plaintiff was very careful to remain within the acceptable gender boundaries of marriage: she was the victim. Both ‘dare’ and ‘fear’ indicate her submission and inferiority, and especially her passivity, reminding the court that she had not violated social constructions of gender identity.

64 Kathryn L. McKinley, “The Clerk’s Tale: Hagiography and the Problems of Lay Sanctity,” The Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 104. 65 Linda Georgianna, “The Clerk’s Tale and the Grammar of Assent,” Speculum 70 (1995): 793–821. 66 York M 2(1) b, fo. 2. 67 York M 2(1) c, fo. 15.

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chapter one Discourses of Female Aggression The other day befell a strife Between an old man and his wife; She took him by the beard so hard With hey, ho! She took him by the beard so fast Till both his eyes were bursting with water, With hey, ho!68

While the ideal wife was obedient and silent, some of the lay literature and folklore of the period, as evidenced in the poem above, suggests a more unpleasant reality in which most wives may have fallen far short of these expectations. In fact, the prescriptive literature of the period may only have been necessary because of the glaring disparity that existed between the goodwife of poems, exempla and sermons, and the goodwife next door. The vast repository of lay literature and English folklore indicates that some women found silent acquiescence to their husbands’ governance an unrealisable goal. This subconscious fear led men to expect the worst. The veneration of the saints echoes the suspicion that everywhere English wives yearned to do away with their husbands. According to legend, unhappy wives prayed to Saint Wilgefort in the hopes that some terrible accident conveniently might befall their husbands. Thomas More observed that there were even rituals rumoured to guarantee just such an “accident.” He maintained that English women celebrated Wilgefort because of her remarkable capabilities, “she should provide a horse for an evil husband to ride to the devil upon, for that is the thing she is so sought for, as they say. Insomuch that women have therefore changed her name and instead of Saint Wilgeforte call her Saint Uncumber, because they reckon that for a peck of oats she will not fail to uncumber them of their husbands.”69 Wilgefort enjoyed a 68 “An Old Man and his Wife,” from Celia and Kenneth Sisam, eds., The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 481–2. 69 As cited by Sara Maitland and Wendy Mulford, Virtuous Magic: Women Saints and their Meanings (London: Mowbray, 1998), 126. Keith Thomas also refers to this practice. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Belief in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Scribner, 1971), 29. Finally, M.R. James remarks upon a similar custom peculiar to the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk and focused on a relic called the Good Sword of Winfarthing. According to local folklore, “it helped to the shortening of a married man’s life, if that the wife who was weary of her husband would set a candle before that sword every Sunday for the space of a whole year, no Sunday excepted, for then all was vain whatsoever

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special prominence in England throughout the later medieval and early modern periods, as evidenced by artwork dedicated to her cult. A statue in her honour remains in Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey, and images of the saint appear in Worstead, Norwich and Boxford (all in the county of Norfolk) until the time of Edward VI.70 Even if popular worship of St Wilgefort was only legendary, the existence of her cult must have perpetuated fears by husbands of the repercussions of poor governance and reminded them of the burdens of patriarchs. While overly lax husbands were subject to public ridicule of their manhood, autocratic husbands might well have expected to see their wives leaving the doors of Westminster Abbey, the remnants of a peck of oats clinging to their hands. The cult of St Wilgefort represents medieval society’s worst fears of failed governance. Because it was an extreme example, most men were probably incapable of experiencing a strong sense of empathy with these concerns. The more common representation of the ungovernable wife was characterised by a more subtle rebellion against social expectations; at the same time, this image likely echoes realistic concerns about feminine conduct. Bawdy song and verse often depicted wives in a position of control. Husbands forced to deal with the abuse of domineering wives were the unenviable subjects of many laments. This distorted view of marriage is a representation of the mundus inversus, a world turned upside-down in which the wife runs the household with a firm, tyrannical grip while the husband caters to his wife’s every need. Writers and balladeers intended this antithetical view of the world, common to both medieval and Renaissance literature, art and popular festivals,71 was done before.” Its popularity in Norfolk would seem to argue that this county may have experienced some particular anxiety about petty traitors. See M.R. James, Suffolk and Norfolk: a perambulation of the two counties with notices of their history and their ancient buildings (Bury St. Edmunds: Alastair Press, 1987), 132. 70 Maitland and Mulford, 129. S. Baring-Gould also notes that the worship of Wilgefort appears briefly in the Salisbury Enchiridion, published in 1533, in which she is provided with hymn and collect. See S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints (London: Benziger Brothers, 1874), July. 488. 71 See Natalie Z. Davis, “Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Political Disorder in Early Modern France,” in The Reversible World, ed. B. Babcock (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978); Martin Ingram, “Ridings, Rough Music and the ‘Reform of Popular Culture’: Early Modern England,” Past and Present 105 (1984): 79–113; E.P. Thompson, “ ‘Rough Music’: Le Charivari anglais,” Annales: EconomiesSociété-Civilisations 27 (1972): 285–312; and Kusue Kurokawa, “Noah’s Wife as a Virago: A Folkloric Figure in English Mystery Plays,” The Profane Arts of the Middle Ages 5 (1996): 218–25.

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to be comical in its absurd representation of the marital relationship; however, the inversion of gender roles was a literary tool with a view of both entertaining and instructing. While the mundus inversus may have been a farcical image of marriage, contemporary expectations defined appropriate gender roles in a very public setting in a way that was meaningful to the audience. The inversion of roles provoked laughter because of the unnaturalness of an aggressive woman or a submissive man, while at the same time it supported contemporary notions that the reverse is natural: women are inherently passive, men inherently active. The message was very clear. Literary representations of domineering wives served a dual purpose: not only did they produce laughter with the inanity of the depiction, they also mocked women who ventured to adopt such roles.72 Yet, the subject would not have been at all amusing unless the representation was in some way familiar to the audience. Literature did not create the norm, it merely confirmed to people what should be the norm. Popular literature functioned as a form of gender control within society, ensuring that audiences would greet any deviance from the norm with laughter. “Humorous ballads taught men and women to take their gender roles within marriage seriously.”73 In the mundus inversus, violence was often a tool by which the wife maintains control. The mundus inversus is a world where the natural order has been upended, transforming the husband into a woman. With years of marital experience behind her, an old wife learns to bend her husband to her will. “A Henpecked Husband’s Complaint, I” typifies this genre of humour. The song begins with the husband cautioning other men not to marry an elderly woman precisely for this reason. Young men, I warn you everyone: Old wives take you none; for I myself have one at home— I dare not speak when she says “peace!”

72 Elizabeth Foyster, “A Laughing Matter? Marital Discord and Gender Control in Seventeenth-Century England,” Rural History 4 (1993): 6–7. 73 Foyster, 18. Of course, this phenomenon was in no way confined to theatrical representations of gender relations. The enforcement of social morality through mockery reached its height in the later comedies of Ben Johnson and Molière, where the miser, the cheat and the sycophant, rather than the hen-pecked husband and his garrulous wife, received the most scathing treatments.

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When I come from the plough at noon, In a broken dish my meat is done; I dare not ask our dame [for] a spoon— I dare not speak when she says “peace!” If I ask our dame bread, she takes a staff and breaks my head, and does me run under the bed— I dare not speak when she says “peace!” If ask our dame flesh, she breaks my head with a dish: “boy, thou art not worth half a pea.” I dare not speak when she says “peace!”74

Although the song retains the gendered nature of the couple’s labour, the inversion of the power relationship within the marriage makes its message even more pointed. Men who recognised elements of themselves in this depiction had reason for concern. The justification for the use of force in this poem is simple: the husband cannot seem to keep quiet. Perhaps he would have done well to learn from the Goodwife’s words to her daughter: “Make thou no jangling.” This popular song presents a sensationalised view of marriage intended to portray abuse comically in order to reach a wider audience. None the less, the exaggerated perspective does not detract from the moral of the story; in fact, it may have served an additional function. If the wife who beats her husband every time he opens his mouth is a comic figure, is this merely because she is a woman, or does the degree of violence play a role in this joke? The irrational and excessive nature of the violence in this depiction may have been a tool calculated to berate husbands who resort too frequently to physical force in marriage. Might a man who participated in this discourse on marriage in good conscience beat his wife for no apparent reason? Songs of this genre may have caused him to rethink his actions. The mundus inversus was not a theme restricted to literature; it was also a frequent subject of medieval English art. Ayers Bagley has described it as the “mainstay of the human comedy played out among the [church] stalls” in misericords.75 Misericords are carvings found

74 Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 39. 75 Ayers Bagley, “Misericords & Choir Stall Carvings: Education, Imagery and

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on wooden ledges that jut out from the bottom of the hinged seat of a choir stall in collegiate churches. Their purpose was to act as a support for canons and monks, especially elderly or infirm ones, by giving them the appearance of standing. However, the carvings were not merely decorative. Rather, they were “a successful and meaningful part of church architecture, inspired artistically by the desires of the clergy to see reflected therein comment on their own social interests and religious status.”76 Some even had a didactic function as miniature morality tales: the patrons intended a solitary image to bring to mind a specific Christian teaching. Accordingly, the proliferation of images of the mundus inversus in this particular art form is very instructive. These carvings were constant visual reminders of the absurdity of female dominance and aggression. With celibate male canons as their intended audience, these images probably discouraged them from marriage by highlighting it at its worst: marriage to a shrew.77 At least twenty-three English misericords depicting domestic brawls have survived from the period between the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century.78 These carvings show women beating their husbands with all the tools of their trade: men are struck with ladles, pots, brooms and distaff; wives pull beards and birch men’s bottoms. The latter is a particularly curious inclusion because of its hierarchical implications: medieval art regularly depicted disobedient children having their bottoms birched by schoolmasters or parents. The drawing of an analogy between husbands and children must have made the

Satire in Medieval Choirs,” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2000), http://education.umn.edu/EdPA/iconics/misericord/misericords_text.htm. Many examples of misericords are listed in G.L. Remnant, A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), passim. The most prominent examples in Remnant’s catalogue having to do with domestic violence, however, are those of Stratford-upon-Avon and Westminster Abbey (see figures 1–4 at the end of this chapter), and also Ely Cathedral. 76 Wendy Armstead, “Interpreting Images of Women with Books in Misericords,” in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (London and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 70. 77 At least two works discuss the possibility that these misericords are a visual representation of the threat of women to preachers. See Wendy Armstead, “A Catalogue of the Misericords of St David’s Cathedral,” (MA diss., University of Wales, 1986), 21–35. See also E.C. Block, “Half-Angel Half-Beast: Images of Women on Misericords,” Reinardus 5 (1992): 17–34. 78 Kusue Kurokawa offers a list as well as plentiful illustrations of these misericords. See Kurokawa, 222–27.

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lesson much clearer: in the world turned upside-down, wives assumed the role of patriarch. Moreover, there is a particular significance to the baring a man’s bottom in these misericords: “breeches used to be a traditional costume, symbol of man’s bodily sway over women, so that a woman beating a naked man without breeches, as at Westminster, shows that she is now physically ruling him.”79 Undoubtedly, these images of husband-beatings must have had an effect on social perceptions of the acceptability of domestic violence. The role reversal inevitably lends a comedic quality to the art. Yet, if marital strife is not upsetting, but amusing, how does this change our perspective of actual instances of marital violence? This is a difficult question to answer. At the very least, this barrage of images likely entertained audiences while simultaneously making medieval spouses highly aware of social constructions of gender roles.80 Once again, for men these images had a special meaning: a wife’s unruly behaviour put him in an uncomfortably feminine position.

Discourse of Marital Violence: Abuse as a Remedy for Disobedience The literary representations of marital violence dwell on the burdens of masculinity. They are patently clear: violence in marriage is usually provoked by the actions of a scolding, rebellious wife—a woman who 79

Kurokawa, 229–30. Barbara Hanawalt, arguing from an English perspective, has asserted that this inverted vision of spousal abuse was “the usual illustration” in medieval artwork. Danièle Alexandre Bidon and Monique Closson, in their examination of the continental evidence, have claimed the opposite. In their examination of manuscript illustrations from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, Alexandre Bidon and Closson concluded that conjugal violence much more frequently was directed against women, in particular adulterous wives. This disparity in representations of marital violence reveals a distinction in continental and English treatments of the phenomenon, despite the similarity of counsel in pastoral care. The continental images eschew the comedic façade entirely; consequently, the message implied in the image is much more direct. Within the parameters of the present study, it is not feasible to attempt to understand why there was a perceived need for direct instruction about gender roles on the continent while this was apparently not the case in England; nevertheless, this finding insinuates that England dealt with marital abuse in a unique way. See Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 207, and Danièle Alexandre Bidon and Monique Closson, “L’amour à l’épreuve du temps: femme battues, maris battus, amants battus à travers les manuscrits enluminés (XIIIè–XVè s.),” in Amour, mariage et transgressions au Moyen Age. Actes du colloque des 24 –27 mars 1983, ed. Danielle Buschinger and André Crépin (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1984), 493–514. 80

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refuses to heed her husband’s commands, and speaks to him without reverence or respect. Yet, even literature places the blame for a wife’s behaviour very much on the husband’s shoulders. Because it is his responsibility to instruct his wife on acceptable and moral conduct, her inability to act accordingly marks his failure. The literature also addresses the issue of just how firm a firm hand should be. Intemperate violence from a husband leads to irrational rebellion; but a man who uses force wisely is much happier in his marriage. Probably the best-known medieval example of the shrewish wife was the character of Uxor Noe, the wife of Noah in the Flood plays of the English mystery cycles. These collections of biblical plays, ranging from Genesis to the life of Christ and the Last Judgement, offer a glimpse into the minds of the medieval laity. Despite their religious content and unmistakable educational thrust, lay guilds both created and performed the mystery plays. Because these men occupied a significant position in the courts as jurors, the plays are instructive about their perceptions of conduct appropriate to gender and rank. Moreover, these cycles had a very conscious objective. They intended “to make sacred events real to lay congregations.”81 As a result, guilds adopted contemporary dress and sets, and even addressed contemporary social or political concerns in an effort to facilitate audience identification with the characters and situations presented in them. Thus, the plays represent a wide range of social perceptions: not only those of the elite urbanites who were instrumental in the writing and performance of these plays, but also of the members of the lower ranks who participated actively as performers in the crowd scenes and passively as audience members. The mystery cycles, then, are one of the best means of unravelling shared perceptions of key social issues. The depiction of Noah and his wife in these cycles is critical to this investigation, in part because it is the most extensive depiction of domestic strife in English medieval literature. It is also one of the most fictionalised scenes appearing in the cycle plays and thus may represent an attempt to make a mythical story memorable to medieval audiences. While the Bible mentions Noah’s wife only in passing, the Uxor Noe of the English mystery cycles was usually a lively and comic

81 A.C. Spearing, “Mediaeval Religious Drama,” in The Medieval World, ed. D. Darches and A. Thorelley (London, 1973), 526.

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shrew who baits her husband and constantly disobeys his orders.82 The Wakefield play presents the most creative and most violent vision of the relationship between Noah and his wife, and thus our discussion will focus on this version of the play. In many ways, the Wakefield couple represents the medieval antecedent of the Punch and Judy plays. From the instant the two appear on stage together there is never a dull moment. The exchange of blows and incessant squabbling between the two reduces the pageant into a travesty of a failing marriage. The depiction of the couple is so absurd that one begins to wonder why God did not decide simply to start from scratch. From the beginning, the audience is aware of Noah’s inability to govern his wife properly. Hearing God’s plan to flood the earth, Noah expresses his fears at his wife’s reaction, guaranteeing that even before Uxor appears on the stage the audience knows exactly what to expect. My wife well I fear what she will say, And I am terrified that we get some affray Between us both, For she is easily irritated, For little often angry; If any thing wrong be, Soon is she angered. (183–89)

Noah’s fears set the scene, and the audience is not disappointed by what transpires. A friendly greeting to his wife meets with immediate disapproval. While Noah has been off conversing with the divine he has been neglecting his duties, and Uxor is not hesitant to remind him of this. Before Noah has a chance to tell his wife about the flood and his building project, she immediately launches into a tirade directed first at Noah, then at the audience. She harangues Noah for his melodrama and constant over-reaction, and warns him that his depression “be it false or true” (201) is beginning to bore her. Having made her point and sufficiently distracted Noah from his original purpose, she turns away from her husband and wishes heartily to be “loosed” from the bonds of marriage. (209) With an air of wisdom and experience, she invites the women in the audience to learn from

82 The only English mystery cycle in which Uxor is not depicted as such is the N-Town cycle, often referred to as Ludus Coventriae, believed to have been associated with the town of Coventry in Warwickshire. This particular cycle adopts a much more continental typology by portraying Uxor as a type of Mary. See Richard J. Daniels, “Uxor Noah: A Raven or a Dove?” The Chaucer Review 14 (1979): 23–32.

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her mistakes. Taking them into her confidence, she tells them what marriage is really all about: deception and revenge. If he is detained, I must tarry, howsoever it stands, Seeming full sorry, wringing both my hands For dread; But that otherwhile, What with game and with guile, I shall smite and smile, And pay him back instead. (210–16)

Her aside is the beginning of the end. Frustrated and incensed, Noah casts the first blow: “Upon the bone shall it byte!” (220), and there follows a rapid exchange of blows and caustic remarks. The battle resumes when Uxor first lays eyes on the ark. The ship is so misshapen that she cannot discern the bow from the stern. She is so bewildered by the ship, that she cannot suffer the thought of boarding it. Deeply unsettled, she refuses to come aboard and pronounces her intention to spin. In utter amazement, Noah and his sons watch as she sets herself upon a hill and pulls out her distaff and wool. It is only once the water has reached the top of the hill and she is no longer able to spin on dry land that she considers boarding the ship. In a conspiratorial tone, Noah turns to the men in the audience and warns what will happen if they do not beat their wives while they are young enough to be taught: You men that have wives, while they are young, If you love your lives, chastise their tongue. Me thinks my heart is torn apart, both liver and lung, To see such strife, wedded men among. But I, As have I bliss, Shall chastise this. (400–06)

He then turns back to his wife and resumes battle without the slightest consideration for the encroaching water. In the end, utter exhaustion, not the flood, drives them aboard the ship. “[B]eat so blue” (413) they agree to a truce and both enter the ark. From this point onward, the Flood play is much like any other. Noah and his wife cooperate in guiding the ship to land and they begin their new lives much more peaceably. This depiction of Noah and his relationship with his wife in the Wakefield plays holds a powerful message. The level of violence in this play is both offensive and repellent while at the same time very

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entertaining. The play at once amuses and disturbs the audience with the excessive nature of the violence. Noah’s wife is very much a type of Eve, the first disobedient wife, a fitting part since she assumes the role of the new “Eve” in the world after the Flood. The links between Uxor and Eve were sometimes explicit. Representations of Eve in art and literature throughout the medieval period regularly associated her with the act of spinning, a feminine task symbolic of Eve’s punishment after the Fall; thus, the distaff was a constant physical reminder of women’s role in Original Sin.83 Like Eve, Wakefield’s Uxor is represented as a spinner, and it was in this role that she best exhibited her disobedience. Her absolute refusal to board the ark because of her preoccupation with spinning is the ultimate defiance of Noah’s authority. The allusions to Eve are at times even more clear-cut. Before the first exchange of blows between the two, Noah shouts to his wife, “I shall make thee still as a stone, beginner of blunder!” (406), drawing here the connection between Uxor and Eve for those in the audience who might otherwise have missed the more subtle references. Moreover, Noah’s wife is the quintessential scold. Uxor’s fears of being “pent up” (band, 328; pynd, 332) on the ship stem from its similarity to contemporary punishments for scolding. A misericord from medieval Beverley reveals that husbands drove scolds through the streets in a ship-shaped wheelbarrow to the local pond or river for ducking.84 Surely, this imagery was not lost on medieval audiences. The Wakefield play was a powerful introduction to the notion that violence in marriage is an exercise in futility. It is not until they learn to move past their chastisement and rebellion that the couple is capable of working together. In the unfolding of this plot “[b]oth husband and wife are chastised, and order is restored through a physical experience that makes them consider looking at their relationship in a different light.”85 Audiences participating in this battle for power cannot help but be aware that there is no decisive victory. After they establish peace and board the ark, neither is

83 Laura F. Hodges, “Noe’s Wife: Type of Eve and Wakefield Spinner,” in Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright, and Joan Bechtold (New York: P. Lang, 1990), 31. See also, Jeffrey Alan Hirshberg, “Noah’s Wife on the Medieval English Stage: Iconographic and Dramatic Values of Her Distaff and Choice of Raven,” Studies in Iconography 2 (1976): 25–40. 84 Kurokawa, 232. 85 Josie P. Campbell, “The Idea of Order in the Wakefield Noah,” The Chaucer Review 10 (1985): 83.

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master in the relationship: man and woman are forced to work together. This progression represents a clear break between the old and new worlds. By entering the ark, the couple shed their past antagonism and become equal partners in marriage. While the Flood Play was most likely intended as a lesson in faith, accentuating Noah’s godliness in contrast with Uxor’s frivolity, the play’s function as religious instruction easily may have fallen by the wayside, adopting the tone of a slapstick comedy not unlike its more modern equivalent, Punch and Judy. Because Punch and Judy are puppets, the abuse they inflict on each other is funny. No one is at a disadvantage. They are equally matched. The Wakefield audience may have perceived Uxor and Noah in a similar fashion. While it is conceivable that a woman played the role of Uxor Noe, it is not likely. There are few known cases of female actors in the Middle Ages. Moreover, given that the shipwrights, mariners and fishmongers were primarily responsible for this pageant in the cycle, it seems highly unlikely that this would have been the case. This single yet crucial detail might have had significant ramifications on the audience reaction to the abuse in this play. A man and woman beating each other is depressing because we already know the outcome; two men knocking each other senseless, especially when one is in drag, is just funny. This is not to suggest that as a burlesque the moral of the tale was ineffectual. As the popular songs of the era bear witness, humour was a useful tool in the expression of shared values. Yet, the visual imagery of two men beating each other may have diminished slightly the effectiveness of this motif for the reinforcement of gender roles in marriage. In her analysis of fabliaux, Angela Weisl has argued the dangers of slapstick depictions of this nature: “the humor takes place before a backdrop of violence against women, which it normalizes by turning it into the punch line of a joke.”86 In effect, rather than teaching audiences about the dangers of poor governance, the Wakefield Noah and his wife may merely have desensitised medieval audiences to the horrors of domestic violence, and established the naturalness of abuse as a feature of marriage.

86 Angela Jane Weisl, “ ‘Quitting’ Eve: Violence against Women in the Canterbury Tales,” in Violence against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. Anna Roberts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 120.

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Conclusion While the Wakefield Noah represents one of the feeblest examples of the able patriarch, he nevertheless offers medieval men some of the best advice: “You men that have wives, while they are young,/If you love your lives, chastise their tongue.”87 If a man failed to govern his wife appropriately from the very beginning of their marriage, he was doomed to end up exchanging words (and blows) with a wife as shrewish as Uxor Noe. If he was lucky, he would be the only victim of her abuse; if her behaviour extended beyond the walls of their home, he might also find himself on the wrong end of a suit of trespass, or presented in the church courts. Even that was not the full extent of the damage an independent and unruly wife might incur. A man’s burden was two-fold. Not only was he responsible legally for his wife’s immoral and illicit behaviour, but socially his manhood depended on it. The paradigm was standard, and needed little interpretation: a wife who behaved badly did so out of poor governance; a husband who governed poorly was ill suited to be a husband, and in fact, not only was he a poor husband, he was not really a man at all. What constituted instances of ill rule seemed to be identifiable. When it comes to notions of ‘good governance,’ however, the sources are much more ambiguous. The underlying theme in these various and sometimes competing discourses is that a good husband knows when to use violence and how much violence to use. Medieval society left it to husbands to negotiate the limits of force. At the very least, the sources explain why men beat their wives. According to the ecclesiastical sources, wife beating resulted from a failure to internalise appropriately the public and private faces of masculinity. The legal sources, on the other hand, make it evident that wife beating is the consequence of unclear limits: while the theory of castigation encouraged some degree of force only when necessary, in practice medieval England tolerated a much higher level of force. Forced to negotiate these various discourses of violence and passivity, it is no wonder that some men were capable of describing their actions as discipline. The blurred boundary between castigation and abuse provided fertile ground to sow the seeds of marital discord.

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See p. 62 of this chapter.

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Fig. 1: A misericord from Stratford-upon-Avon illustrating the mundus inversus. A wife pulls her husband’s beard and prepares to hit him with a pot.

Fig. 2: A misericord from Stratford-upon-Avon depicting marital strife.

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Fig. 3: A misericord from Westminster Abbey’s Henry VII Chapel. A wife beats her cowering husband with a distaff.

Fig. 4: A misericord from Westminster Abbey’s Henry VII Chapel. A woman birches her husband’s bottom. This imagery is reminiscent of a schoolmaster’s punishment of a disobedient boy.*

* These images are reproduced here with permission from Bagley’s “Misericords & Choir Stall Carvings.”

CHAPTER TWO

TYPES AND FREQUENCY OF ABUSE IN THE MEDIEVAL LAW COURTS

One of the standard lessons of medieval history is that during the High Middle Ages marriage was indissoluble. Once the vows had been uttered, there was no turning back. For modern-day historians, this kind of permanence of the conjugal union may seem almost grim and forbidding, particularly given the involvement of parents and other family members in spousal selection. Nevertheless, more recent research has demonstrated that medieval marriages were not as enduring as was once thought. The proliferation of canon laws regulating impediments to marriage (such as consanguinity, affinity, and sponsorship) caused F.W. Maitland to declare, “spouses who had quarrelled began to investigate their pedigrees and were unlucky if they could discover no impedimentum dirimens.”1 Since Maitland’s time, egged on by investigation into the practice rather than theory of canon law, historians have rejected his cynical contention that distressed spouses exploited the provisions for annulment by seeking out impediments of relationship to escape the perpetuity of marriage. Instead, they have put forward the hypothesis that unhappy couples turned first to the laws of bigamy. During the Middle Ages, bigamy (or precontract, as it was then described) occurred much more frequently than today, owing to the fluctuating definition of medieval marriage. Medieval marriages might be ambiguous—the only legal requirement was an exchange of vows with no fixed vocabulary expressing mutual consent in the present tense.2 While clergy at all levels regularly 1 As cited in R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 75. Maitland is referring specifically to the laws of incest. By the early thirteenth century incest was defined as entering into marriage with a person related within four degrees (i.e. third cousin) by blood (consanguinity), by marriage or by sexual union (affinity), or by sponsorship or spiritual relationship (e.g. a godparent). These were not the only impediments to marriage. Impotence, force and fear and minority were also thought to be reasonable grounds for an annulment. 2 Although there was no set vocabulary required by the church to create a valid marriage, the vocabulary employed by Englishmen and women in marriage vows was remarkably fixed.

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preached against clandestine unions and insisted on ecclesiastical solemnisation of marriages at the church door, ironically, canonical sanction of clandestine marriages thwarted their efforts. The unpretentious nature of medieval marriages often led to uncertainty about whether or not a couple had in fact contracted marriage. The simplicity of the exchange created a situation ripe for manipulation, one that has become the focus of much debate. James Brundage has argued that the practice of “clandestine marriage made it possible for people to contract and dissolve their own marriages. If a couple made promises to each other privately in the future tense, and then settled down together, there was no effective way to prevent them from separating and marrying again should the experiment not work out.”3 Richard Helmholz describes this process as ‘self-divorce.’ Unhappy couples bypassed the laws altogether, parting by mutual consent to carry on their separate lives.4 An informal separation coupled with relocation to a different village would have created an opportunity to start a new life. Perhaps more cynically, some historians have expressed that, “[m]edieval marriages were more dissoluble than the rules would suggest . . . because everyone, or at least many people, could come up with a precontract.”5 From this perspective, one would be inclined to think that all medieval marriages should have been happy ones; and yet, records from almost every kind of court in England from this period offer evidence to reveal that many medieval marriages were far from it. Despite the obvious loopholes, uncovered by studious historians and exploited by some medieval men and women, many others truly believed that a marriage lasts “till death us depart.” This viewpoint entails a much different approach to marriage than the Western world espouses today. Without an ecclesiastically sanctioned and publicly approved form of divorce, medieval couples needed much more

3 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 501. 4 Helmholz, 59. Helmholz does argue that self-divorce in the Middle Ages was not merely a form of wife repudiation, as some historians have suggested. More often than not, the separation of the couple was rationalised as being “vaguely canonical,” meaning that the couple perceived their marriage to be invalid for one reason or another. In this way, the laity was acting within the bounds of canonical doctrine, but without ecclesiastical sanction. 5 Charles Donahue, Jr., “A Legal Historian Looks at the Case Method,” Northern Kentucky Law Review 19 (1991): 27.

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rigorous supervision and assistance in dealing with marital disharmony. For the most part, family, neighbours and friends addressed typical instances of marital disharmony and domestic violence of a less extreme form. Marriage in this era was not the private institution it is today. Families and vills expected to play an important role, not only in the creation of a marriage, but also in its regulation. Owing to the informal nature of this kind of supervision, there are few documents to illustrate the role of the family in this capacity, but there is ample evidence to argue that it played an essential role in coping with domestic violence. The role of the family and the larger community as marital supervisors is explored in Chapter Five. The goal of the current chapter is to look at the more easily documented (and thus more quantifiable) kinds of abuse—cases of marital disharmony in which the levels of violence exceeded the capacity of family, friends and neighbours. Unable to cope with some situations of abuse, family, friends and neighbours used their powers to present violent couples before a court of law where they were required to resolve their difficulties in a public and, somewhat, humiliating fashion. Although only a modest number of documented cases of physical abuse have survived from medieval York and Essex (and also parts of Kent belonging to Canterbury diocese), these 309 cases identified as instances of physical violence in marriage and found in all three fora (ecclesiastical, manorial and royal courts) offer much insight into the regular method of dealing with abuse. Given the spiritual dimensions of such a predicament, the ecclesiastical courts were the obvious venue for cases of excessive force; however, the manorial courts also played an important role in the regulation of marriage and may have seemed the more appropriate forum for those cases where reconciliation was not the concern. The royal courts claimed jurisdiction in extreme cases of marital violence, those leading to the death of a spouse. In examining how each of these courts dealt with marital violence it becomes apparent that the decisions these courts had to make were not always so clear-cut. Even in cases of spousal homicide, the verdicts recorded simply by an ‘S’ (suspensus—‘hanged’) or ‘Q’ (quietus—‘acquitted’) in the margins mask complex ethical and gendered battles fought daily among the various levels of the local community. An analysis of all of these kinds of records, then, offers us much insight into the regular process of dealing with spousal abuse in the medieval context, but also opens a window into the minds of the medieval peasantry to glimpse their perspective on marital disharmony.

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At the very least, these records permit a greater understanding of what medieval families understood as unacceptable levels of violence in marriage.

Regulating Spousal Abuse: the Church Courts Since the early thirteenth century when the church first recognised marriage as a sacrament, the ecclesiastical courts had come to assume jurisdiction in cases of marital disharmony requiring curial intervention. Abuse could make its way into the courts of the church by two different means. First, an unhappy wife might plead a suit in court for a judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty. Suits of this nature were rare, however, and their plaintiffs were of an extraordinary nature. A suit in an ecclesiastical court was a costly venture; as a result, the kind of women who were capable of pleading a suit in court had to have independent access to finances and most likely believed they had a monetary stake in the dissolution of the marriage.6 In the second and more routine scenario, bishops and deans addressed disciplinary matters ex officio (by virtue of their office).7 The official in his court summoned couples experiencing marital disharmony (along with a multitude of other sinners) to respond to the allegations and pay their penance. In some of these cases, the informant may have been a spouse who was unable to afford the high costs of litigation. Other possible complainants might be a family member concerned for the well-being of the couple, or a neighbour weary of continual disruption. The records intimate that court officials expected families and friends to play a role in regulating marital violence, and at times held them financially accountable for the actions of violent men in their communities. The ecclesiastical records are not awash with cases of spousal violence. While ex officio act books and court books for York and

6

Judicial separations are explored at length in Chapter Four. For a discussion of ex officio procedure in general, see Norma Adams and Charles Donahue, Jr., eds., Select Cases from the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Province of Canterbury c. 1200–1301 (London: Selden Society, 1981), 57–59. A convenient guide to the surviving act books of the ecclesiastical courts may be found in Charles Donahue, Jr., ed., The Records of the Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts: Reports of the Working Group on Church Court Records 2: England, Comparative Studies in Continental and Anglo-American Legal History 7 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1994). 7

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Canterbury for the period 1357 to 1508 offer insight into myriad cases of marital disharmony, there are around thirty-five cases of identifiable instances of physical violence in marriage, with the vast majority issuing from the York evidence.8 When compared to adultery, fornication and even prostitution, this is a very small number. Most probably, this figure does not reflect the actual number of cases of marital violence that came before the court in the medieval period. More likely, it speaks to the poor survival of ecclesiastical court records, particularly in Canterbury, the difficulty of deciphering those records that have survived, as well as the reluctance of scribes to detail the marital difficulties of the clients of the court. While many court scribes were willing to point out that a couple was in court to discuss the possibility of an annulment or a separation, they often failed to provide any further insight into the events that had brought the couple before the court. Of those ex officio records that do offer evidence of physical violence in marriage, the vast majority are exceedingly terse. The late fourteenth-century case of John Knyght of Burnham (Yorks.), presented before the court for spousal mistreatment, exemplifies this brevity. The record reveals only that he “maltreats his wife greatly.”9 Although his abuse is boldly stated, the record omits entirely the details of his actions, preventing a fuller understanding of what ‘great’ spousal mistreatment might have entailed. Similarly, an ex officio act book of 1395–1410 mentions the case of William Chapman of Canterbury diocese who appeared before the court because he beat his wife.10 The documentation reveals no other details. Some records offer a somewhat fuller account: an ex officio act book of 1468 to 1474 from Canterbury records a joint presentment of Thomas Preston and his wife Denise for openly arguing in the fields close to their home.11 In this instance, the notation at least makes it clear that the courts held both husband and wife responsible for their disruptive behaviour; and

8

Of course, both ex officio and consistory court books in general are in poor condition; they are torn, stained, and very poorly hand-written with much abbreviation. Given the general state of these books, statistical analysis is not advisable. Accordingly, any figures presented in this book issuing from these records represent only cases that are clearly legible and thus unmistakable instances of abuse, or cases that relate to the subject. 9 York D & C AB/1, fo. 9. 10 Canterbury X.8.1, fo. 31v. 11 Canterbury Y.1.11, fo. 188r.

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yet, records of this nature lack the kinds of detail necessary in order to draw firm conclusions about attitudes towards domestic violence. Nevertheless, those cases that have survived are instructive about the nature of the court’s treatment of spousal violence cases. For example, while records of marital disharmony appearing in the consistory court do not regularly record the judge’s ruling in the matter, extant sentences reveal consistory courts adopting a fairly consistent strategy. Officials were determined to address the reasons for the abuse (adultery, non-cohabitation, scolding, and so on) and penalise them accordingly. Then, once there were no longer clear obstacles standing in the way of the couple’s happiness, the court’s judgement added a monition, warning the husband individually, or both husband and wife jointly, to treat each other appropriately on pain of an even greater penalty. This tactic is what Helmholz refers to as “an amicable settlement”: rather than simply grant a judicial separation, the church courts preferred first (and often second and third) to attempt reconciliation.12 What is most remarkable is that some couples, like John and Margaret Colwell, who appeared before the court at Canterbury in the year 1454, defied the courts by blatantly refusing to continue their marriage. When the judge attempted to patch up their marriage, they argued that they would prefer death in prison than living together because their relationship had become so violent that each lived in daily fear of the other. Convinced by their sincerity and unanimity, the court chose to grant them a separation.13 John and Margaret’s response makes it clear that not all couples were willing to submit to the court’s intrusion. However, when no objections were forthcoming, the decision of the court to resolve rather than dissolve may have been motivation enough for the couple to revaluate their relationship and renew their efforts to live peaceably together. The kind of penalties assigned in cases of spousal abuse as both penance for past sins and monitions against future transgressions were typical of the church’s approach to moral offences in general: floggings and processions in multiples of three, with or without the added humiliation of the white gown and bare feet. Occasionally the court imposed penalties that were more severe, signalling that church officials considered some types of domestic violence to be problems

12 13

Helmholz, 101. Canterbury Y.1.5, fo. 37v.

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of a more serious nature. For example, the register of the court of the Dean and Chapter of York recounts the mid-fourteenth century cases of John Dammsell who not only cohabited with his mistress Maud of Leck, he also maltreated his wife and did so for three years. The official of the Dean ordered Dammsell to admit his wife back into his home and treat her well under the pain of the usual processions around the church. In addition, the court warned that if they found he had ignored their authority, he was subject to confiscation of two measures of wool.14 The threat of amercement by the court was likely a result of the multiple nature of his crime: he was guilty of longstanding adultery, spousal eviction and recurrent spousal mistreatment over the course of a three-year period. Even with the embarrassment of the court appearance and public confession, John Dammsell was inclined to be a repeat offender. A man of this nature might be more apt to listen to reason if he believed his future welfare was in danger.15 Dammsell’s adultery might have been an additional incentive. The records reveal that the medieval church was critical of men who mistreated or ignored their wives out of lust for another. John of Strensall of York’s punishment is an indication that the courts might impose steep penalties. He came before the court on charges of fornication and spousal maltreatment around the same time as Dammsell. When he appeared, the official of the Dean warned him to treat his wife more kindly on pain of 20 shillings.16 Similarly, the consistory court of York in the early 1370s counselled Richard Epworth not to revert to his former violent ways on pain of both twelve floggings around the church and a fine of one hundred shillings, a high price even for the wealthiest ranks of medieval English society.17 The nature of John of Strensall’s abuse is not disclosed, but in the case of Richard Epworth, the records clearly state that the treatment of his wife was 14

York M 2(1) f, fo. 10. Medieval England always took a much harsher approach to repeat offenders, evidenced by the fact that jurors were far more likely to convict when confronted by such an individual. See Philippa C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 132; B.W. McLane, “Juror Attitudes towards Local Disorder: The Evidence of the 1328 Lincolnshire Trailbaston Proceedings,” in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200–1800, ed. J.S. Cockburn and Thomas A. Green (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 36–64. 16 York M 2(1) f, fo. 9. 17 York M 2(1) c, fo. 27. 15

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severe: not only was he cruel, his discipline was excessive and indecent. The exceptional nature of his misbehaviour was likely the cause of the stiff financial threat. The court’s monition to his wife also reflects the severity of the charges: on pain of twenty-four floggings around the church, they commanded her to obey her husband. By modern standards, one might have expected the court to grant the couple a separation on the grounds of cruelty (the requirements for which, according to their own records, Richard Epworth’s conduct met—Richard is said to have “fiercely or inappropriately beat[en] [her], and excessively or indecently castigated [her]”). The ecclesiastical officials chose instead reconciliation by coercion. It is important to note here that the records give no indication that his wife Margaret had actually requested a separation; yet, there is reason to assume that at least some canonists would agree that a separation was required in this situation to save a woman from her own passivity. In his Lectura, Hostiensis comments on the case of a man who suspected that his wife was having an affair, a suspicion that led him to declare publicly his intention to kill his wife. Given the gravity of the situation, he argued, “the wife could hardly be expected to rely on her husband’s undertaking not to harm her. Hence under these circumstances she not only had no obligation to return to her husband, but should even be removed from his control if she were unlucky enough to fall into it.”18 The English courts seemingly did not adopt this approach to marriage. Nevertheless, their method may have been equally effective. The records note no repeat appearances for Richard on the same charges. Thus, coercion may have been a more successful tool against domestic violence than one might imagine. The case of Richard Epworth and his wife Margaret is not the only incident of domestic violence among the ex officio business of the courts in which the resolution seems negligent. When John Eget and his wife appeared before the court at York in 1382 for spousal non-cohabitation, Alice used the language employed in applications for judicial separations when she informed the judge that “she did not dare live with her husband out of fear for her life.” Despite indications of cruelty, the courts compelled the two to resume co-residence. In addition, the official of the Dean cautioned John to treat his wife 18 As cited and translated in James A. Brundage, “Domestic Violence in Classical Canon Law,” in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 190.

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with marital affection or suffer the penalty of twelve floggings around the cathedral church at York.19 If the abuse inflicted upon Alice Eget was so extreme that she feared he might someday kill her, how advisable was their reconciliation? Moreover, why was his monition so petty? Clearly, there was more to this case than meets the eye. An inquiry into the circumstances of abuse might have revealed that Alice exaggerated the degree of violence in an effort to manipulate the court. Alternatively, John may have presented proof of his wife’s antagonism, making her the scapegoat for his actions. None the less, the cases of both Richard Epworth and John Eget serve to confirm the observations that Donahue draws from the success rates of marriage litigation: the church courts of medieval England shared a strong “presumption in favour of marriage.”20 The mid-fourteenth century case of Roger Fouk of Allerston (Yorks.) typifies this approach. The official of the Dean summoned Roger before the court on a number of different transgressions. First, he was engaged in an adulterous affair with a woman named Margaret Schephird to whom he was related within the fourth degree. Second, the records stress that Roger maltreated his wife. He continually “beat her and even wounded her arm.” Given the nature of the abuse, one might expect a harsh ruling, but Roger’s punishment was only slightly more severe than that of other unruly husbands presented before the court. The official of the Dean required him to treat his wife more kindly, on pain of six days in procession around the cathedral church at York, and also at Pickering and Malton.21 While the records are usually silent on the nature of the abuse, the account of Geoffrey of Rainsforth’s (Yorks.) mistreatment of his wife Emma highlights the egregious features of his behaviour. The notion in the court book for the years 1372–5 describes Geoffrey as “exercising cruelty towards his wife on a daily basis.”22 The inclusion of the frequency with which he beat his wife shows that, in the eyes of the court, this behaviour was intolerable. The record also states that Geoffrey did not hesitate to use weapons as well as his hands 19

York M 2(1) f, fo. 23. Charles Donahue, Jr., “Female Plaintiffs in Marriage Cases in the Court of York in the Later Middle Ages: What can we learn from the Numbers?,” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 191. 21 York M 2(1) f, fo. 10. 22 York M 2(1) c, fo. 31. 20

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and feet, asserting once again that he chastised his wife excessively and indecently. These details provide a better understanding of ecclesiastical perceptions of domestic violence. Geoffrey’s case makes plain that even in domestic warfare weapons were not acceptable. The subject of weapons in household management was a delicate issue. For example, a Chancery petition concerning the beating of a Yorkshire servant, Thomas Lincolne, argues that his master, John Hewett, a shearman, beat him “with tongs of iron and such other unreasonable weapons.” Lincolne’s bill employs the phrase “unreasonable beating” more than once, and notes that he wishes Hewett to take him back into his service only if he could “use himself reasonably toward him.” 23 Lincolne’s claim reinforces Geoffrey’s presentment, suggesting that chastisement of an inferior remained within the realm of discipline only if weapons were not involved. While Hewett’s punishment is not recorded, the York consistory court ordered Geoffrey of Rainsforth to treat his wife better on pain of one hundred shillings and public processions around the church on six consecutive Sundays. Public penance and monition were probably the most popular methods of dealing with cases of domestic violence, but they were not the only methods. In cases of abuse, as in other moral offences, ecclesiastical judges might insist on a guarantee of the husband’s future behaviour. Usually referred to as a cautio, it might take several forms: a pledge of money or goods, a personal promise on oath to improve one’s behaviour, or guarantee by sureties, meaning men of good reputation who were willing to pledge future good conduct. English church courts frequently employed all three forms of cautio in cases of domestic violence. For example, when the York consistory court summoned Thomas Catryk for exhibiting cruelty to his wife (his enraged father-in-law appears to have been the court’s leading witness), it required Thomas to produce sureties for his future good conduct.24 If he reverted to his old behaviour, the court would subject his pledges to a financial penalty. This was a strategic move. The church was deliberately involving the wider community in order to enforce its rulings. The cautio made Thomas responsible not only to the church, but also to friends and family members who trusted his

23 TNA C1/324/12 (c. 1504 × 1509). The use of weapons in domestic violence will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. 24 York Cons AB/3, f. 6.

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word enough to lay their own reputations, not to mention their purses, on the line. This was probably an effective strategy in dealing with abuse. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to public intervention in cases of domestic violence was the personal nature of the offence. It is not always obvious that marital strife should have been a matter for public or legal resolution. Nevertheless, a cautio went to great lengths to make spousal abuse everyone else’s business. The registers of the archbishops for both ecclesiastical provinces also demonstrate that spousal mistreatment was a part of married life at all levels of society. Although the published registers offer only fifteen additional cases, they do demonstrate that even husbands of the gentry and nobility sometimes needed the occasional reprimand by the church in order to treat their wives appropriately.25 Cases of abuse in these records bring to light a similar approach to their resolution adopted by the courts, irrespective of the higher ranks of those involved. For example, a commission to the Dean of Westbere in 1296 to inquire into the case of a man who continued to treat his wife cruelly demonstrates that, even in the marriages of those at the upper ranks of society, the church was determined to uphold the sacrament. The man, referred to simply as “A. de N.,” was known “to beat his wife Alice greatly” and “to wound her on several occasions.” He treated his wife “badly” and “dangerously,” alluding that his abuse might well prove fatal if unchecked.26 Here, the court recognised that the degree of violence exhibited in the conduct of A. de N. towards his wife Alice exceeded the acceptable bounds of wife chastisement, and indeed met the legal requirements for a divorce a mensa et thoro. None the less, in keeping with the tendency witnessed in the act books of the church, Archbishop Winchelsey chose not to set the couple on the road to separation, but instead to demand simply that the man discontinue his ill conduct and treat his wife with marital affection. While this ruling confirms the court’s desire to uphold the bond of marriage wherever possible, the judgement in this case demonstrates that even among the propertied classes, this

25 Published registers were used for the following years: York 1215–1255, 1266–1279, 1279–1285, 1286–1296, 1300–1304, 1306–1315, 1317–1340, 1397, 1398–1405, and 1480–1500; Canterbury 1279–1292, 1294–1313, 1366–1368, 1414–1443, 1454–1486, and 1468–1500; London 1362–1375. 26 Rose Graham, ed., Registrum Roberti Winchelsey, Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, A.D. 1294 –1313, 2 vols (Canterbury and York Society, v. 51–2, 1952–56), 1.83–4.

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approach was appropriate. For this case to come to the personal attention of the archbishop, either Alice or representatives on her behalf must have petitioned privately. Access to the archbishop, in and of itself, establishes Alice’s high social standing. The level of abuse described by Alice suggests a sanctioned separation might have been in order. Nevertheless, she had not requested one. The social mortification and economic difficulties that accompanied a separation among couples of property were probably not very appealing to Alice. That she turned to the court for assistance in her marital difficulties shows that some Englishmen and women believed the court to be an effective instrument in curbing the behaviour of abusive husbands. The monitions threatened in cases of moral transgressions in the archbishops’ registers reflect the greater accessibility of disposable cash among the accused. The archbishop’s registers measured penalties in pounds, not shillings. When the official of the archbishop of York summoned John husband of Julianne, daughter of Sir Walter de Stirtheley, before the court for failing to treat his wife with marital affection, the court ordered him to adhere to his wife and treat her more kindly on pain of £20, no small sum in late thirteenth-century England, even for a member of this rank.27 There was a general tendency in sexual offences to view men as the instigators and to penalise them more harshly accordingly. For example, in the 1298–9 case of Sampson de Strelley, accused both of failing to treat his wife with marital affection and committing adultery with Elisabeth of Clipstone, the record describes Sampson as being the party wholly at fault. Sampson held Elisabeth for many years as his mistress, and consequently not only “exposed her soul to danger,” but made her the subject of “manifest scandal in the church.” The official of the archbishop of York ordered Sampson and Elisabeth to refrain from any further contact of this nature on penalty of a £20 fine at the expense of Sampson de Strelley, and Sampson was required to treat his wife properly. Elisabeth of Clipstone did not escape entirely without punishment. For her part in this sinful activity, she was required to perform public penance of floggings on three days around the parish church of Oxcombe. The divergence in penalties may signal

27 William Brown, ed., The Register of John Le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York, 1286–1296, 2 vols (Surtees Society, v. 123 and 128, 1913–17), 1. nos. 257, 280–81.

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a number of different approaches. The church courts perhaps considered a monetary fine a more appropriate deterrent than public penance for a man of this status. Sampson’s weightier punishment may also underline the dual nature of his sin; as an adulterer and an abuser, Sampson had earned his punishment.28 Similarly, in 1310 when Henry of Rockley and Douce, wife of Thomas de la Chaumbre, appeared before the court at York on charges of adultery, the archbishop ordered them immediately to abjure further sin. If they continued their sinful activities, Henry would be subject to a penalty of £20. Douce’s monition was not of a financial nature; rather, if she engaged in further adultery, she would do so on pain of twelve floggings, six around the parish church of Derfeld, three around the market of Barnsley, and three around that of Rotherham.29 While the record does not describe Henry as a wife-beater, the disparity in fines is hard to disregard. As in the case of Elisabeth of Clipstone, Douce’s monition was embarrassing and unpleasant in nature, but it was much less severe than the heavy fine imposed on her lover. Le Romeyn and Greenfield most likely spared these women the severity of a financial exaction because they were married: their unwitting, and most likely innocent, husbands would have been responsible for paying the fines. Husbands bore the financial burdens of marriage. Although both husbands might have preferred to conceal the crime and thus avoid embarrassment by paying their wives’ fines, as penance, amercement failed to impact those in need of punishment and contrition: the wives themselves. The church recognised that specific problems in the marriage might often provoke abuse: while adultery was foremost among these factors, monitions to women like Margaret Epworth, requiring her to obey her husband on pain of twenty-four floggings, lead us to the conclusion that church courts identified disobedient wives as a cause of marital disputes. The medieval church acknowledged a number of other causes of abuse. What is important is that the church not only recognised that abuse was merely a symptom of greater problems in the marriage, but it set out to resolve these problems before reconciling the couple. The approach adopted by the courts of the medieval church might 28

Brown, The Register of John Le Romeyn, 1. nos. 247, 272–3. William Brown and A. Hamilton Thompson, ed., The Register of William of Greenfield, Lord Archbishop of York, 1306–1315, 5 vols (Surtees Society, v. 145, 149, and 151–3, 1931–40), 1. nos. 904, 94. 29

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be callous in this respect: individuals or couples were subject to threats of, or actual instances of, public penance and costly fines. Moreover, the courts made an effort to involve the greater community: neighbours, friends and family witnessed the spectacle of floggings and processions, and financial guarantees of the abuser’s future behaviour drew them into the supervision of marriage. Perhaps, what is most striking is that the church employed these same methods regardless of rank or place in society; the only difference between the treatment of the upper and lower ranks seems to have been the amount of money involved. A sliding scale of penalties existed, uniquely associated with the wealth and situation of the individuals involved. Irrespective of wealth or the level of violence, however, it seems clear that the church was determined to keep couples together. In marital litigation, the church courts assumed the role of “a rather heavyhanded marriage counsellor”: it was their intention to keep the marriage together whenever possible.30 The church espoused this approach even where the levels of abuse might have seemed to justify a separation.

Regulating Spousal Abuse: the Manorial Courts In cases in which the abuse was repeated and immoderate, but considered by local notables to lack the seriousness required for a separation, manorial or borough courts sometimes adopted a disciplinary role, although the records indicate that locals only stepped in to handle exceptional cases. The manorial courts were more inclined to deal with cases arising from marital strife, rather than spousal abuse itself. In addressing moral transgressions in this way the jurisdiction of the local courts encroached on that of the ecclesiastical courts. The manorial and borough courts complemented the church courts, by addressing those spiritual issues that most affected the well being of the community. In their fervour to uphold the marriage bond, the local courts also tried to assume the role of ‘marriage counsellor.’ As in the case of ex officio records, the manorial and borough records offer only a smattering of cases of spousal abuse; no more than twenty identifiable cases have survived from the manor and borough

30

Helmholz, 101.

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courts under investigation in this study, and many of these do not offer a clear explanation as to what transpired between the couple, causing one or the other of the pair to appear in court.31 Nevertheless, what few details are included demonstrate that the medieval laity were not only determined to include themselves in the regulation of marital violence, and also that they made qualitative judgements about the nature of the violence involved. The raising of the hue brought a number of violent couples before the courts. A case from a Wakefield (Yorks.) tourn of 1339 notes, “the wife of Robert de Sandale justly raised the hue on Robert her husband who is amerced 3d. Robert de Sandale justly raised the hue on his wife who is amerced 3d.”32 Similar entries can be found in the records of the local courts from Essex during the same period. In the vill of Nazeing in 1409, the wife of Robert Halmond raised the hue on her husband, who was in mercy; in Earls Colne in 1435 William Morce raised the hue unjustly on his wife Katherine and was amerced two pence.33 At the very least, judgements of this nature tell us that manorial courts considered a husband or wife capable of justly raising the hue on his or her spouse. Given that the rules of coverture, which forbade husbands and wives from pleading suits against one another, extended frequently into the manorial courts, the appearance of these cases suggests that domestic violence was considered a worthy exception to the rule. That these cases appear in the records speaks to the frequency with which marital violence was

31 The manor and borough courts examined in the course of this investigation were: Bradford (1338–9 to 1392–3); Colchester (1310–1352, 1352–1367, and 1372– 1379); Earls Colne (1400–1521); Nazeing (1400–01, 1408–1410, 1414–15, 1421–22 and 1464–5), Pontefract (1427–29); Sheffield (1384–5 to 1515); Thorner (fourteenthcentury records); Tickhill Honour (1509–15); and Wakefield (1274–1297, 1286, 1297–1309, 1313–1316, 1315–1317, 1322–1331, 1331–1333, 1338–1340, 1348–1350, 1350–1352). 32 K.M. Troup, ed., The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield from October 1338 to September 1340 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 2nd ser., v. 12, 1999), 78. 33 TNA SC 2/173 33 m. 8; manorial records for the county of Essex are housed at the Essex Record Office (hereafter abbreviated as ERO). See ERO D/DPr68. This study examines the court records for the manor of Earls Colne in Essex in translation, using Alan Macfarlane’s microfiche collection entitled Records of an English Village Earls Colne, 1400–1750 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1980–81), http://www. colnevalley.com/Ecrecords.htm. Macfarlane uses a complex notational system involving a series of lengthy references numbers for each record. For simplicity’s sake all references to ERO records in this book refer instead to the original manuscript, rather than Macfarlane’s microfiche.

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resolved within the community. In fact, the Wakefield court intervened regularly in disruptive marriages, and cases of domestic violence appear in the Wakefield manorial rolls at least every three years.34 Obviously, one case cannot account for the entire manor’s marital difficulties over the course of a three-year period; more likely this figure represents the frequency with which the friends and neighbours felt it was necessary to supplement the work of the church courts by dealing with the behaviour of those couples who seemed beyond the control of the church or the community at large. The decision to describe these offences as the ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ raising of the hue give us some indication of the nature of the role played by the manorial court as judge. This was a qualitative assessment; the courts were defining what level of violence warranted the raising of the hue. It is unfortunate that the records did not include the deliberations that led to these verdicts. Very few cases within the manorial courts addressed recognisable instances of physical assault between spouses. In fact, there were only three examples: one case from Colchester (Essex) in 1374 of John Gardener’s wife drawing blood from her husband, and two cases from Wakefield tourns. In 1308, Julianne Wade drew blood from her husband William le Couhird; in 1340, John Edelot’s wife drew blood from her husband.35 Given that the fourteenth-century court records from Colchester note 606 other cases of assault, the low rate of spousal assault in Colchester probably stems from a reluctance to deal with cases of physical violence in marriage rather than from low levels of physical violence in general. Manorial records from Earls Colne (Essex) support this idea. In the period 1400–1521, 277 cases of assault appeared before the manor and priory courts; none of these was between spouses. Those cases that did appear before local courts, then, most likely represent couples whose behaviour had exceeded the capacities of unofficial local controls. Nevertheless, these few cases are revealing. Both Wakefield assaults include notice of the fine exacted on the defendant: the court required Julianne Wade 34 Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Women before the Law: Females as Felons and Prey in Fourteenth-Century England,” in Women and the Law, ed. D.K. Weisberg (2 vols, Cambridge: Schenkman, 1982), 1.180. 35 Isaac Herbert Jeayes, ed. and trans., Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester (3 vols, Colchester, 1921), iii.54; W.P. Baildon, ed. and trans., Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, 1274–1297, v. 1 and 2 (2 vols, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series v. 29 and 36, 1901–06), 2.185, 1.221.

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and the wife of John Edelot to pay twelve pence each to the court for their violent behaviour. This was a typical sum. In this respect, the court treated domestic assaults no differently than any other offence. It is noteworthy that in each of these cases the court punished the wife, not the husband, for unruly conduct. In this sense, presentment may have performed a dual function. By openly humiliating the wife for her aggressive behaviour, the court encouraged her to reform; at the same time, presentment served to embarrass the husband also by highlighting his inability to manage a home. Local elites were also concerned with reconciling separated couples who had a history of abuse. A case from 1331 provides a glimpse of the court’s supervisory role: Sureties for Thomas s[on]of John Kenward, that he will be reconciled with Agnes his wife, and will treat her well—William Wade, Nicholas de Ananden, Adam Wade and John Couper. And if he fails and should be convicted, the sureties bind themselves to the lord in 40 s.36

Forty shillings was a significant sum of money. Such a steep penalty indicates that the courts considered wife abuse to be a serious matter. While the nature of the abuse was not addressed in this account, the demand that Thomas treat his wife well was a fairly formulaic statement employed by church courts to allude to a husband’s former violent ways. At the same time, this case indicates a significant difference between the church’s and manorial courts’ approaches to spousal violence: while the church was determined to eliminate the cause of marital violence, this court dealt only with the effect. In addressing cases of domestic violence, the manorial courts overlapped the jurisdiction of the church; there is also some evidence that manorial courts were willing to encroach on the jurisdiction of the king’s courts in marital affairs. For example, in 1326 when Margery, wife of Richard Child of Wakefield, ran away with her lover Robert del Clif, her husband took his revenge by suing Robert for ravishment of wife and the goods that disappeared with her. For his loss, Richard demanded compensation of twenty shillings, suggesting that spousal desertion was not a matter to be taken lightly.37 Common

36 John Lister, ed., Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, 1315–1317, v. 4 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, v. 78, 1930), 181. 37 J.P. Walker, ed. and trans., Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, 1322–1331, v. 5 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, v. 109, 1945), 93.

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law generally considered trespassory ravishment of wives part of its jurisdiction. Sue Sheridan Walker describes these actions as ‘consensual abduction’: she argues that “[t]he wives in question were probably not only willing but had their portable possessions packed awaiting the arrival of their abductors.”38 She maintains further that this was an explicit “extension of control by women over their lives and marriages,” and that by allowing themselves to be abducted, unhappy wives were consciously acting out a wish to bring an end to their marriages.39 Most plaintiffs who appeared in the royal courts with pleas of ravishment probably had given up on their marriages and wished only compensation. That the royal courts recognised and accommodated this legal fiction is not entirely unexpected: studies of the common law and its courts have shown that plaintiffs employed legal fictions both to get cases into court, and to gain a sympathetic audience.40 Invention of this nature in the manorial courts, where legal precedent did not provide the same kind of constraints on the process, is much less common. In the case of Richard Child, he was adopting the same strategy as those who sued their cases in the royal courts: a suit in court against the wife’s lover, demand for compensation for goods taken at the time of abduction, no demand for restoration of the abducted wife. Why Richard chose to take his case to the manor rather than a royal court remains a mystery. The value of the goods may have been insufficient to make the case worthy of the common law courts; it is also possible that Richard thought he would receive a more judicious ruling from his peers, who had a more intimate knowledge of the situation and those involved. The decision of the manor court to entertain this case is an indication that the latter may well have been the case. Moreover, its appearance in the records of the manorial courts signifies that even these courts recognised that some marriages are beyond repair. The story of Richard Child and his wife Margery does not end there. A case from the following year shows that Richard and Margery had not yet resolved their difficulties: “Richard Childe found pledges, that is Richard del Bothes and Robert son of Gilbert, that he receive his 38 Sue Sheridan Walker, “Punishing convicted ravishers: statutory strictures and actual practice in thirteenth and fourteenth-century England,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 239. 39 Walker, “Punishing convicted ravishers,” 238. 40 See S.F.C. Milsom, Studies in the History of the Common Law (London: Ronceverte, 1983), 28.

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wife in his house and treat her agreeably and provide for her faithfully and courteously to the best of his ability etc.”41 Although the records of the local courts provide only glimpses of domestic violence, there are a sufficient number to suggest that the families and neighbours thought manorial and borough courts were appropriate forums for the resolution of marital disputes. This is not difficult to comprehend. The representatives of the court were usually family, neighbours and friends of the couples they presented. These records highlight the unofficial role played regularly by these same individuals in the regulation of spousal abuse; when the level of violence exceeded informal controls, the local court stepped in as an extension of this familiar supervision. Public presentment before the court, the imposition of a fine, and the request to find sureties for one’s behaviour may have been a sufficiently humiliating process to deter any future recurrences of the kind of behaviour that landed the couple in court in the first place.

Spousal Homicide: the King’s Courts In cases of heightened violence, leading to the death of a spouse, the royal courts, under the aegis first of the county coroner then the justices of eyre or assize, assumed the responsibility for investigating and punishing the crime. Spousal homicide is a reasonable indicator of levels of extreme marital violence. Although homicide is a severe form of spousal abuse, it is the most unequivocal and is generally subject to detection. Bruises and emotional scarring are easily hidden; a corpse is not. The records suggest that spousal homicide was a rare occurrence; and yet, when it did occur, the crime had gendered features. For men, spouse-murder was a solitary crime; but not for women. This finding may reflect contemporary perceptions of the crime. The common law treated wife killing as if it were any other felonious homicide; husband killing, on the other hand, belonged to a completely different category of crime: petty treason. Juries may have considered a transgression of that nature by a woman to require the conspiracy of a number of actors. Regardless of the distinction 41 Sue Sheridan Walker, ed. and trans., The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield from October 1331 to September 1333 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 2nd ser., v. 3, 1983), 72.

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between the two, most spouse-killers did not stand trial for their actions, and those who did were usually acquitted. A low rate of convictions does not imply that medieval juries were unconcerned with instances of domestic homicide; rather, it reflects both the difficulties of law enforcement in a time before institutions developed to address the issue, and a system of justice that medieval men and women often deemed too harsh to meet the crime. While jurors generally perceived spousal homicide as being an especially repugnant felony, the sex of the offender deeply influenced the handling of the case in the common law courts. The decision of Parliament to distinguish the killing of a husband and a wife as two different categories of crimes marks an expectation that the courts wished to deal with murderous wives more severely. After the drafting of the 1352 statute of treason, which sought to clarify the various acts that constituted the offence, royal courts interpreted the homicide of a superior by an inferior (such as a wife killing her husband, a servant his or her master, a cleric his prelate) as a form of treason.42 The statute did not employ any specialised terminology to distinguish between the two main forms of treason (crimes directed against the person of the king, and the homicide of a superior); however, the written evidence confirms that this differentiation was already in place by the early fifteenth century.43 In fact, Bellamy has traced the emergence of petty treason to an even earlier period, noting “at the end of the thirteenth century there was more than one type of treason, one kind being an offence committed against a man’s immediate lord rather than the king.”44 A wife’s attack on her husband fell into this category. English society expected a woman of the upper ranks to consider her husband ‘mon baron.’ The language itself signifies that a wife’s relationship with her husband resembled that of lord and vassal. Hence, spousal homicide was effectively treason. In the king’s courts, the trial of both kinds of spousal homicide was identical: petty treason required no special forum or judicial formality. In fact, often the only indication in the records of the courts that a homicide had been categorised as treason rather than felony was the penalty assigned to the offender. Men convicted of petty 42

25 Edward III st. 5, c. 2. See J.G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (London and Toronto: Routledge, 1970), 229. 44 Bellamy, 226. 43

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treason were drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle and then hanged.45 The intention, of course, was both punitive and didactic: not only was the convict shamed publicly, the display acted as a graphic warning to spectators of the harsh treatment doled out to those who violated the social hierarchy. When compared with the disembowelment and decapitation typically assigned to men convicted of high treason, the unique punishment assigned to social transgressors made a point, albeit in a less harsh way. For women, however, the distinction between petty and high treason did not affect their penalty. The willingness of common law justices to equate petty and high treason where women were concerned speaks to the dual nature of the transgression. Women who slew their husbands were guilty not only of violating the social hierarchy, but also of undermining the gender hierarchy. In this climate, their crime was as egregious and socially disruptive as an attack on the life of the king. This perception was emphasised doubly in the penalties assigned for spousal homicide: while a man was hanged like any other felon, a woman was burned at the stake, a much more painful and prolonged form of execution than simple hanging. The differential treatment is underscored by the willingness of jurors at times to prosecute cases of attempted petty treason as if they had been successful.46 Traditional jurisprudence drew a careful distinction between the will and the act; however, as Kiralfy has noted, until well into the early seventeenth century, “cases of attempted murder [were] only penalised as such if they [might] be fitted within the traditional boundaries of petty treason.”47 The records of coroners’ rolls and gaol deliveries taken together furnish information on 9294 victims of violent crimes for the county of York, and 1713 for the county of Essex.48 Of the former, 7300 were victims of suspected homicide, with 189 described as victims of spousal homicides. Cases of spouse-murder amount to less than three percent of all surviving reported homicides in Yorkshire at this time, and an even smaller percentage (two percent) of all alleged violent crimes. In comparison, domestic homicides by family members 45

Bellamy, 20. Albert Kiralfy, “Taking the Will for the Deed: The Mediaeval Criminal Attempt,” Journal of Legal History, 13 (1992): 95. 47 Kiralfy, 98–99. 48 Here I have defined ‘violence’ as anything physical, thus: homicide, suicide, self-defence, assault, rape, abduction, and unlawful imprisonment. 46

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apart from spouses for the county taken together represent only two percent of the alleged homicides during the period in question, or fewer than two percent of all violent crimes.49 These figures lead us towards two distinct conclusions. First, neither spousal homicide nor domestic homicide in general accounted for many of the total number of slayings in the county of York during the later Middle Ages. Individuals were far more likely to die at the hands of a neighbour or someone else within their vill than of those of their own family. Second, although domestic homicide was a rare event, when members of a family slew a relative, the victim was most often a spouse. The figures are substantially lower for the county of Essex than they are for Yorkshire. However, the Essex totals reflect the county’s size and in general terms the patterns are the same in both counties. Of the 1560 victims of suspected homicide in Essex, juries reported only forty-four cases of spouse slaying, or three percent of the total number of homicides, a slightly higher percentage than that of Yorkshire. In terms of family killings in general, the Essex figures, like those of York, show that spousal homicide was by far the most frequent manifestation of intra-familial deaths. Less than two percent of the total number of homicides for the entire county occurred at the hands of a family member other than a spouse. This data represent indictments only and thus does not reflect actual rates of homicide in the late medieval period. Many people accused of homicide were found innocent of the crime, and acquitted. Accordingly, the percentages mentioned above may well present a distorted vision of late medieval crime. Nevertheless, these figures are informative given the vital role played by members of the community in the indictment process. The fact that the communities of Yorkshire and Essex pointed a finger at a spouse in each of these situations suggests that these 233 cases represent histories of poor

49 The definition of ‘domestic’ has been construed in the broadest sense possible to include the modern definition of ‘family’ (that is, parents and their children and any in-law relationships that fall within these parameters), as well as all masterservant relationships. Owing to the frequency of the practice and the relationship of the master towards his servants, historians have come to view servants or apprentices as a somewhat extended part of the family. See Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 90–104; Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England 1300–1840 (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1986), 83–7; and, J.M. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 54–64.

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relations that, in turn, led neighbours to believe that a domestic spat had spiralled out of control. Of the 233 cases in which a spouse was accused of conjugal homicide, 152 (or 65 percent) were alleged uxoricides, or wife-killings. The husband, in these cases was almost always suspected as the principal offender (the person who actually carried out the crime). In total, juries accused 133 out of the 152 wife killers (or 88 percent) of acting without any assistance, confirming that wife killing was a solitary act. Bearing in mind J.B. Given’s observation that “the most striking feature of medieval homicide [is] its markedly collective character,” the predominance of wife-slayers working alone is suggestive, highlighting the power relationship within marriage.50 In the few cases in which a wife-killer did engage the assistance of an accomplice, he usually chose to work with a man, or a group of men, unrelated to either the victim or the accused.51 Only two accomplices were family members of the accused. In stark contrast stand the details of cases in which the husband, rather than the wife, was the victim. Some eighty-one of the 233 spousal homicides that occurred in Yorkshire and Essex consisted of husbandkillings (35 percent). Here, the wife was listed only thirty-four times (or 42 percent) as having committed the crime on her own. Out of the forty-seven husband slayings carried out with the assistance of others, the rolls described the wife twenty-four times as being only an accomplice to the crime, aiding, abetting and procuring the crime while a male principal carried it out. It is possible that medieval jurors found it difficult to imagine a wife capable of committing such a monstrous crime without the guidance of others.52 At times, laying the blame against a wife may not have been easy. For example, in two separate records of a Yorkshire case, although the wife is described as a principle in her husband’s slaying, only one record actually gives her a name. She is described merely as “the wife of

50

J.B. Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 41. 51 Only thirty-four accomplices aided in uxoricides. Of these thirty-four, ten were identifiably female, twenty-three male. The gender of one accomplice, however, remains a mystery. The accomplice is identified as Cassander child of William of Cawood of Bilton. With such an unusual name, it is too difficult to postulate this accomplice’s gender with any precision. See TNA JUST 2/242, m. 5. 52 Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 129.

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Roger Rudbrade” while the two other principals are identified clearly, implying that she was not, in fact, the leader of this criminal trio.53 In cases where accomplices are included, husband-killers evidently demonstrated the same disposition towards male accomplices. Of eighty identifiable accomplices, sixty-nine were male, eleven female, exposing the false reality of inflated male fears of wives soliciting murderous assistance from their female friends. Unlike wife-slayers, however, husband-killers were more likely (but only marginally so) to turn to a member of their household for support in their deed. The rolls identify ten of the eighty accomplices as members of the accused’s household. The decision of spouses to turn to members of their households to resolve their marital difficulties may have been a natural one.

Acquittal Rates and Medieval Justice The court’s failure to prosecute adequately cases of spousal homicide is evident in high acquittal rates. In the sixty cases of uxoricide from both counties that actually went to trial, juries overwhelmingly found in favour of the defendant: there were forty-six acquittals,54 ten hangings, two convictions (without any indication of the penalty assigned), one judgement of sine die and one case of peine forte et dure. Thus, the conviction rate of accused wife-killers was only 22 percent (13 out 60). An accused petty traitor faced much greater odds, with a 35 percent chance of conviction (17 out of 49). Of the forty-nine cases of husband-killing tried before royal justices in the courts of medieval Yorkshire and Essex, thirty-two women were acquitted, fourteen burned, two hanged, and another convicted (without any indication of the penalty assigned). These figures are typical of execution rates for general homicide in the medieval period. For example,

This case appears first as a presentment in TNA JUST 2/217, m. 8. It appears again in an almost identical format, but without the wife’s name in TNA JUST 2/218, m. 5. 54 At least two of these acquittals were most likely granted on the grounds of insanity: the case of Richard Sharp of Maltby (TNA JUST 3/74, m. 3/14), and the case of William Proudfoot of Barnby. Although the records do not indicate that a plea of insanity was put forward in William’s case, the fact that he not only killed his wife Joan, but also his eighteen-week-old son suggests that his acquittal was granted on that basis. See TNA JUST 2/227, m. 10. 53

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J.B. Given observes a 29.9 percent execution rate for indicted felons who appeared before the court to stand trial in the thirteenth century.55 This is not significantly different from either a twenty percent execution rate for wife-killers, or thirty-five percent for husbandkillers. None the less, all of these figures are much lower than one might expect. When execution was the only acceptable penalty, trial juries were likely to acquit. However, execution may not have been the goal of an indictment. While medieval jurors were reluctant to impose the death penalty, they knew that indictment itself was a humiliating process that severely damaged the reputation of the defendant. Moreover, time spent in gaol awaiting delivery was a costly and horrific procedure. The accused might easily spend up to a year or two awaiting his trial, during which time the court expected him to pay for all his expenses, and to endure unhealthy and dangerous living conditions. Trial jurors probably perceived indictment itself adequate as a punishment.56 Trial juries were not the only obstacle to royal justice. The failure of grand juries to present felonies may have aggravated the situation by permitting known offenders to re-offend. For example, when Robert Frere of Crofton (Yorks.) came before the king’s justices in 1346, the court charged him with multiple crimes. First, that on the Monday before All Saints in the year 1339, he feloniously slew his wife Cecilia at Crofton. More than a year later authorities accused him of feloniously burgling the grange of James of Crofton, and then fleeing with goods valued at five shillings.57 A period of seven years between Frere’s second crime and his trial seems excessive. It is probable that, like most medieval felons, Frere fled the scene of the crime. Court officials may have captured him later, or Frere turned himself in once he was convinced that his chances of acquittal had improved.58

55

Given, 97. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities 1300 –1348 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 267. 57 TNA JUST 3/78, m. 46d. 58 Some cases of spousal homicide took a very long time indeed to come to trial. For example, when Thomas de Wod finally appeared before royal justices in 1341 to answer charges of having slain his wife Margaret, twenty-five years had passed since her death (TNA JUST 3/77, m. 4/11d). Similarly, William Cryske managed to elude justice for sixteen years after the death of his wife Alice (TNA JUST 3/176, m. 14). Both men were acquitted; in all likelihood, the verdict in each case reflects the difficulty of trying a case after members of the community had long since forgotten what happened. 56

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The year-long hiatus between crimes, however, is inexplicable. The exact date identified in the document makes it clear that Cecilia’s death did not go unnoticed. If the jury was confident enough in their evidence to indict Robert for her death, how, in good conscience, might they, or other members of his community, have permitted him to roam free for a whole year, allowing him to commit a second crime? The case of John Walker of Great Driffield (Yorks.) provides a further example of how failure to prosecute a felon might have dangerous ramifications. When Walker appeared before the king’s court at York in 1366, they accused him of slaying not one, but two wives. His first wife, Cecilia, daughter of Robert Donays, met her death on the Sunday before St Martin in the year 1362. His second wife, Cecilia, formerly wife of William de Cayton, died on the Saturday after the feast of Saints Peter and Paul two years later.59 Most spouse-killers evaded prosecution in the courts of later medieval England. Similar to most medieval felons, the majority of accused spouse-murderers (56 percent) fled the scene of the crime and were never heard from again. In these instances, the sheriff immediately began the process of exaction. After a suspected felon failed to appear at five sessions of the county court, the sheriff proceeded to outlawry. An outlaw forfeited the protections and privileges of the law, and if captured, might be beheaded on sight (at least until the fourteenth century when legislation forbidding this practice was enacted). Moreover, people who harboured a known felon or even permitted one to enter their home were indictable at law, and ran the risk of hanging. Outlawry was a great disadvantage. As a minimum, it required the felon to resettle in a new village or town, a difficult process in a world where one’s wealth lay in inherited property. None the less, outlawry was not as harsh as the laws might suggest. Naomi Hurnard argues, “many outlaws remained in England and did not lose contact with their families and neighbours. Some settled successfully and undetected under new names in new localities. Those who went abroad could find new friends there or at any rate settle down and earn a sufficient livelihood.”60 Hurnard’s vision highlights once again the gap between legal requirements and popular perceptions of

59 60

TNA JUST 3/155, m. 7d. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide, pp. 33–4.

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culpability. The discrepancy of gender in flight figures of accused persons supports the hypothesis that neighbours and friends simply allowed some wife-killers to escape because they believed the wife had gotten what she deserved. While sixty-eight percent of wife-killers fled the scene of the crime and failed to reappear, only thirty-five percent of petty traitors attempted flight.61 Not all spouse-murderers disappeared completely. If a felon was able to reach the safety of a church, he or she might claim sanctuary there for up to forty days before deciding what course of action to pursue. Some felons used this time to initiate the pardoning process. Friends and family members were often engaged to petition the king for a pardon in the felon’s absence; although few spouse-murderers appear to have taken advantage of the process. Alternatively, a person might stay in sanctuary long enough only to make a confession to the county coroner before abjuring the realm. In this situation, the coroner instructed the abjurer to travel to the nearest port, never veering from the king’s highway, and to take the first ship available out of England. Any person who met an abjurer off the king’s highway was permitted to hang or arrest him, like any other convicted felon. As was the case with flights from justice, any felon who chose to abjure the realm probably returned later and resettled in a new location. Some abjurers failed to leave the country at all, taking advantage of the first unsupervised moment to lose themselves conveniently in the anonymity of a large urban setting. Altogether, abjuration was not a popular option for people convicted of spousal homicide; although like pardoning, it was an option. More importantly, for victims of abuse in general, abjuration might have even “provide[d] a crude form of unilateral divorce proceeding” since the spouse of an abjurer was legally free to remarry.62 Gervase Rosser cites a fourteenth-

61 Of course, it is essential to take into consideration the simple fact that it was easier for men in this period to flee and make a life elsewhere than it would have been for women. As Ruth Mazo Karras has demonstrated, working as a singlewoman in the late medieval period was not very common because there existed numerous preconceptions about the sexuality of singlewomen. Men, who did not encounter these same biases, must have found it much simpler to resume life as a bachelor. See Ruth Mazo Karras, “Sex and the Singlewoman,” in Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800, ed. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 127–45. 62 Gervase Rosser, “Sanctuary and social negotiation in medieval England,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 68.

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century case in which a woman “was so desperate to get away from her husband that she went to the church, accused herself of an invented felony, and swore to go into exile. When, as she left, her husband attempted to restrain her, a supporter of the woman held him back, allowing her to make good her escape.”63 This approach to the law of sanctuary and abjuration probably does not reflect the motives of these spouse-murderers; however, the willingness of the court to apply the laws governing outlawry and abjuration to spouse murderers demonstrates that domestic homicide was not an exceptional crime.

What is Missing from the Royal Records Two features are noticeably absent from the accounts of violent encounters between spouses in the coroners’ and gaol delivery rolls. First, there are no indictments or appeals for assault by a spouse, even though a form of writ existed specifically for this purpose. The writ required a husband “to treat and govern her [his wife] well and honestly, and to do no injury or ill to her body other than that permitted lawfully and reasonably to a husband for the purpose of control and punishment of his wife.”64 Despite the explicit recognition, then, that a husband’s behaviour might sometimes exceed the limitations of chastisement and require legal intervention, none of the wives in this study chose to exercise this provision. This finding is not entirely unexpected. In all of the records for both counties, there are only two cases of assault between family members, and in both these cases, the appealer was a man presenting against his brother.65 Given the fact that both counties together boast 1367 assaults over the course of the later medieval period, two cases of intrafamilial assault represent a very small percentage. The records of royal indictment suggest that juries did not regard violence between family members (especially spouses) as a matter for the king’s courts. Second, the records of felony indictment for both Yorkshire and Essex do not point to a high concentration of domestic homicides. Representing fewer than three percent of all homicides for the two 63

Rosser, 68. Frederick Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed. (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 2:436. 65 See TNA JUST 1/253, m. 2d, and TNA JUST 1/1125, m. 7. 64

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counties over the course of the later medieval period, in relative terms spouse-murder was not a frequent occurrence. Despite the sometimes alarming subject matter of these court records, the low figure offers a positive assessment of the late medieval situation. Spousal homicide as an extreme manifestation of domestic violence was not widespread in late medieval England. Indeed, the fact that some cases made their way into the records of the royal courts confirms that there were limits to abuse, and that these limits were enforced. Equally significant is the fact that out of the 10,594 cases of violent crime recorded in the surviving record materials of the two counties, 125 couples worked side by side to commit (or aid in) crimes. Thus, jurors suspected married couples of carrying out little more than one percent of violent crimes. While neither figure portrays an ideal couple, the latter is significant: medieval spouses were almost half as likely to team up to assault or slay someone else as they were to be accused of killing each other.

Conclusion Later medieval England did not treat spousal abuse as a matter of little significance. Both the church and the manor provided options for community involvement in the regulation of domestic violence. When cases of marital violence appeared in either court, both employed a similar approach: while the two courts were determined to keep the marriage intact, harsh penalties and fines were imposed to make an example of the abuser and to impress upon him, or her, the importance of a peaceable marriage. Moreover, the church courts specifically addressed the causes of marital violence. By punishing adultery, delinquency and disobedience, the court may have paved the way for better marital relations between the couples in the future. The involvement of the community in the regulation of marital violence extended even to the extreme form of abuse: spousal homicide. Accusations and judgment occurred at the hands of one’s peers. Jurors did not often impose the penalty of death, probably because indictment itself was the most suitable punishment. For those brought to trial, an indictment meant public humiliation and a year or two in prison awaiting delivery. For others, an indictment meant abjuration of the realm, or simply flight from their home. At a time when most people came into property through inheritance, forced exile acted as

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a punishment in itself. Despite the reluctance of trial jurors to assign capital punishment, then, perpetrators of spousal homicide nevertheless received relatively harsh punishment. In this respect, both the laws and conviction rates imply that English society reserved the most severe treatment for petty traitors. Women who killed their husbands transgressed the social and gender hierarchy; juries and royal justices may have felt it necessary to make public examples of petty traitors in order to impress upon other women that they would not tolerate such behaviour. Nevertheless, husbands and wives did not frequently resort to homicide as a solution to marital misery. In itself, this finding suggests an optimistic re-evaluation of the medieval community’s desire to solve problems themselves. With the abundance of options available to couples and communities for the official and unofficial resolution of violent marriages, couples may have found the causes of marital violence eliminated before they had an opportunity to escalate to the point of homicide.

CHAPTER THREE

CAUSES OF MARITAL TENSION

All that I may work and toil, My wife will both drink and eat: and if I say of it she will me beat— careful is my heart therefore!1

The bawdy world of medieval ballads would have us believe that termagant wives were the cause of marital strife. Unhappy to abide by the constraints of social expectations, wives rebelled against male rule and beat their husbands into submission. This caricature of violence exposes a contemporary belief that disobedient wives were a major source of domestic violence. In reality, it is much more difficult to pin down why some marriages descended into violence. It is not hard to imagine that the courtship process of late medieval England produced a variety of anxieties: that is, people pressed into marriages too quickly soon found they did not actually like each other enough to live together for the rest of their lives. Yet, because the rituals of courtship were so engrained in late medieval society, defences of this nature were not generally raised in cases of domestic violence appearing before the courts. Nevertheless, the records themselves do reveal some sources of tension. An examination of ecclesiastical and royal court records together show that late medieval society acknowledged a wide variety of troubles leading to marital disharmony. The sordid reality reveals that then, as now, adultery was a common cause of marital violence. Adultery and spousal abuse often went hand-in-hand, and both the medieval church and common law juries adopted a callous and unforgiving position on the matter. In particular, this chapter will explore the records of the king’s courts together with exempla from the period, which indicate that adultery by wives may have provided sound justification for homicide, not only of the wives’ lovers, but perhaps even of those wives who threatened good governance most by bear1 “A Henpecked Husband’s Complaint, II,” from Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 39.

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ing another man’s child. Economic deprivation and insanity were also causes of spousal abuse. In both, spouses may have vented their aggression by turning to homicide. In cases of economic deprivation, at the very least, the church courts held a husband responsible for supporting his wife, even if he had deserted her. A higher principle may have motivated the church’s determination to enforce a wife’s support. Not only was economic deprivation thought to be a form of abuse: it might also endanger a woman’s soul. The church intervened to prevent impoverished women from turning to prostitution to support themselves. Finally, not only popular perception, but also the medieval church considered the disobedience of wives a widespread problem. The courts may even have been prepared to hold wives accountable for provoking abuse. Intervention by the church was not always as positive; in fact, the church may have been a cause of continuing marital violence. The records reveal that noncohabitation was the most frequent solution to spousal incompatibility. The response of the church in these situations was to uphold marriage at all costs by reconciling discontented couples. This approach may have put the church in the unhappy position of perpetuating, rather than resolving, marital violence.

Adultery Whether as a cause for separation or merely a symptom of matrimonial disharmony, adultery played a large role in the dissolution of medieval marriages. As James Brundage has noted, “[p]reachers thundered warnings about the awful consequences of adultery, and reinforced their admonitions with such cautionary tales as the one about a moralistic lion who hunted down adulterers and tore them to shreds. None of this seems to have diminished very seriously the rate at which married folk yielded to extramarital temptations.”2 Cases of adultery appearing in the ex officio act books of both York and Canterbury are numerous. Together with simple fornication, adultery was one of the most common moral offences to find its way into the church courts of later medieval England. The ex officio records expose a

2 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 462.

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‘moral underworld’ of sexual transgression, defamation, clerical misconduct and general depravity.3 Sexual offences occupied by far the vast majority of the court’s time. For example, in a statistical analysis of one act book covering the period 1387 to 1484, J.S. Purvis counted a total of 3640 charges, of which 3236 (89 percent) were cases of fornication, adultery or similar moral offences.4 In the sheer range and quantity of cases presented, the courts revealed their willingness to intrude heavy-handedly in the daily lives of Englishmen and women. Thus, it is reasonable to suppose that the high rate of incidents of adultery affected marital discord. What is perhaps most surprising is that the medieval church recognised the intimate connection between adultery and spousal abuse, going so far as to blame some cases of marital strife on adultery. For example, in 1404, just four years after the court of the Dean and Chapter summoned Thomas Tebbe of Driffield to respond to allegations of spousal mistreatment, he found himself before the court once again, presented for a variety of moral crimes. When he first made the decision to engage in sexual intercourse with Joan, servant of Peter Tebbe, Thomas probably believed his extramarital activities would remain a secret between the two. In a small village where gossip ran rampant, such a choice titbit must have been enticing for local gossipmongers. The ensuing scandal caused by his flagrant adultery had disastrous effects on his marriage and was reported to be the source of discord between Thomas and his wife. As a result, the record notes, “Thomas maltreats his wife”; he was compelled to answer to the court for both his adultery and the abuse.5 The case of Thomas Tebbe is just one instance in which the courts placed the blame for marital breakdown on the adulterous activities of a particular spouse. In the case of a late fourteenth-century Yorkshire miller named William of Sledmere and his wife Hawis Martyne, the “diverse squabbles and discord between the two” were reported as a direct result of the husband’s adultery. The court’s final judge3 L.R. Poos, “The Heavy-Handed Marriage Counselor: Regulating Marriage in Some Later-Medieval English Local Ecclesiastical Court Jurisdictions,” American Journal of Legal History 29 (1995): 291. 4 J.S. Purvis, ed., A Mediaeval Act Book with some account of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction at York (York, 1943), 4. The object of investigation in this study is a court book of the peculiar jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter of York usually referred to as D & C AB/1. 5 York D & C AB/1, fo. 33.

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ment took into account William’s betrayal of the trust implicit in the marital relationship. While Hawis and William were required to make peace, the court released Hawis from her obligation to render the conjugal debt.6 This was a standard judicial response to allegations of adultery. As the applications for separation of Margery de Devoine (1349) and Agnes Huntington (1345–6), both of York, discussed below, demonstrate, the past adulteries of litigants directly influenced the legal course of the dissolution of the marriage.7 The church prohibited a convicted adulterer from pleading a suit for divorce a mensa et thoro on the grounds of adultery. The English church considered adultery a suitably grievous sin that it wholly transformed the nature of the marital relationship. As a result, both halves of the conjugal union no longer retained equivalent rights within marriage. Equal access to the conjugal debt by both marital partners broke down barriers in the gender hierarchy;8 unequal access, then, challenged the source of a genuine bond of affection between the two. Andrew Finch similarly argues that marital affection, as it was employed in courtroom terminology, was merely a “euphemism for sexual intercourse,” showing that the courts believed sexual intercourse and affection within marriage were deeply intertwined.9 To eliminate equality in this aspect would have created emotional and psychological barriers between the two that may have condemned the marriage to a lifetime of distrust and unhappiness. Here, it must be underscored that equal access to the conjugal debt did not elevate a woman’s authoritative role in the marriage; as Dyan Elliott’s study of chaste marriages in the later Middle Ages demonstrates, the husband’s authority remained intact, regardless of their sexual relationship. A wife who had made vows of chastity might even be expected to break them if her husband demanded it of her; the husband played the role of “God’s vicar: God preferred female obedience to her husband over the fulfillment of sworn acts of devotion.”10

6

York M 2(1) c, fo. 29. See discussion of the “clean-hands rule” in Chapter Four. 8 See James A. Brundage, “Sexual equality in medieval canon law,” in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel Rosenthal (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 66–79. 9 Andrew Finch, “Repulsa uxore sua: Marital difficulties and separation in the later middle ages,” Continuity and Change 8 (1993): 21. 10 Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 165. 7

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Victims of abuse also sometimes reported a correlation between adultery and their husbands’ violent conduct. A case from the diocese of London in 1488 makes this explicit. After being beaten by her husband, Agnes Badcok presented herself at the home of her husband’s mistress, declaring publicly “[a] vengeance on the whore, Joan Essex, this [bruise?] have I for thy sake, thou art my husband’s whore and this have I for thy sake.” Joan’s situation may also have been complicated by the existence of an illegitimate child. According to another witness, John Smert, Agnes compounded the injury by adding a further accusation: “Will ye see, yonder sits a whore, this same is my husband’s child.”11 Joan’s suit of defamation against Agnes for her accusations suggests that she also considered this a serious matter. Medieval commentators on marriage feared that adultery might lead some spouses to homicide. As a result, the church included the impediment of crime among its numerous and variegated obstacles to marriage. The conditions of this impediment stipulated that a man might not legitimise an illicit union through marriage if he was implicated in the death of his wife, and he had sworn to marry his mistress during his wife’s lifetime. This rule also held true in the reverse. Canonists were well aware that the laity might consider the permanence of marriage inconvenient, and they wished to discourage spousal elimination as a ready solution for a man or woman torn between a spouse and a lover.12 Although only rarely, the royal records verify that adultery did sometimes lead medieval spouses into crime. There are only two extant cases from the king’s records, both from Essex, in which jurors accused a person of conspiring with a lover to do away with a spouse. The first is a straightforward account. It states that, in the year 1285 “Robert de la Walle [of Essex] slew Avice his wife in the vill of Ardlea. . . . [and] that the said Robert went [to stay] with his concubine, namely Mabel daughter of Thomas the Carpenter. And that the said Mabel and the said Robert have fled.”13 Unfortunately, in 11

GL MS 9065, fo. 44v, Joan Essex c. Agnes Badcok. Richard Helmholz includes a more lengthy discussion of this impediment in his Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 94–8. The impediment of crime was seldom brought forward as a reason for annulment in the medieval English courts. Helmholz is able to identify only three cases in which annulment on these grounds was proposed, yet there is no evidence that the courts granted an annulment in any of the three. 13 TNA JUST 1/242, m. 98. 12

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the absence of a verdict and with such a spare record, this case fails to reveal the jurors’ opinions of lovers working together to do away with a spouse. In the case of Ebote, wife of John Ireland, however, the documentation is much more informative. An inquest jury from the county of Essex in the year 1358 accused her of knowingly aiding and procuring the death of her husband in the village of Barking earlier that year. According to the jury, William Copyn of Barking met Ireland in the street and viciously assaulted him with a staff. Once he had John pinned defenceless on the ground, William pulled out his knife and feloniously stabbed his victim to death. The indictment makes explicit the nature of the association between Ebote and William. William was said to have known Ebote carnally, indicating that the two were indeed lovers. As contemporary attitudes towards adultery might suggest, the jury punished the couple harshly for its crimes: William was hanged, and Ebote was burned at the stake.14 More common was the situation in which a husband became aware of his wife’s infidelity and took his revenge. As a case from the Yorkshire gaol delivery rolls of 1358 implies, juries sometimes acquitted jealous husbands accused of killing their wives’ lovers. The record notes that William de Silver of Sutton had a sexual relationship with the wife of Robert Grainson of Setcotes. It goes on to state that the same William entered the home of Robert one night with malice aforethought. He saw Robert’s son, a child also named Robert, sitting by the fire, and proceeded to beat him with a wooden staff. Seeing that his son’s life was in danger, Robert brandished a knife and stabbed William to death. In court, he pleaded not guilty on the grounds of self-defence and was acquitted of the charges.15 It is hard to imagine that this story accurately represents the events of the homicide. The entry begins with the statement that William slept (concubivit) with Robert’s wife. This remark is thoroughly unconnected to the rest of the account, but was somehow relevant enough to the homicide to justify its inclusion in the record. Furthermore, the indictment provides no context for the beating of Robert’s son. While it is possible that William merely walked into the room and began beating the child, as the record states, it seems likely that some sort of an argument preceded these actions. It is also possible the beating did 14 TNA JUST 3/18, m. 7/1; a fuller account of the record appears in TNA JUST 3/18, m. 8/1. 15 TNA JUST 3/141a m. 38d.

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not occur at all: the abuse of the child was merely fictionalised context by which to exonerate the homicide, transforming Robert into an overly protective father. In the same way, the affair was included in the account to clarify Robert’s response and, in turn, to justify his actions. Quite simply, Robert was defending his family. Medieval juries were notorious for fabricating judgements of selfdefence out of narratives of culpable homicide where they believed a death was excusable even if it did not meet the parameters of contemporary legal requirements.16 Nowhere is the jury’s manipulation of the self-defence plea more evident than in cases of the slaying of an adulterer, although, there were set rules to the game. “An aggrieved husband was not permitted to take the adulterer’s life, but, as in the case of a trespasser upon his land, he would have been able to drive him away.”17 Homicide was justifiable only when all else failed and the master of the house suddenly found his own life endangered. The degree to which the jury framed its verdict in order to create this illusion was, at times, significant. The case of Robert of Laghscale (Yorks.) presents the clearest example of jury manipulation to sanction the killing of a wife’s lover. The coroner’s roll records a straightforward case of homicide. Robert returned unexpectedly from working in the fields one afternoon to find his wife in bed with John Doughty. The discovery so enraged him that he struck John in the head with an axe, immediately killing him.18 As the indictment suggests, this was an unambiguous case of culpable homicide. Its members may have believed that Robert’s rage was justifiable, but he was nevertheless responsible for his actions. The petty jury assigned to Robert’s case, however, saw things in a different light. The gaol delivery account includes a much-reshaped version of the events, intended to emphasise John’s trespass in Robert’s home and to paint Robert as the victim. John Doughty came at night to the house of Robert in the village of Laghscale as Robert and his wife lay asleep in bed in the peace of the King, and he entered Robert’s house; seeing this, Robert’s wife secretly arose from her husband and went to John and John went to bed with Robert’s wife; in the meantime Robert awakened and hearing noise in his house and seeing that his wife had left his bed rose and sought

16 See Thomas A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 28–64. 17 Green, 42. 18 TNA JUST 2/211, m. 1d/1.

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her in his house and found her with John; immediately John attacked Robert with a knife . . . and wounded him and stood between him and the door of Robert’s house continually stabbing and wounding him and Robert seeing that his life was in danger and that he could in no way flee further, in order to save his life he took up a hatchet and gave John one blow in the head.19

The jury’s reworking of the setting to place Robert in bed asleep in the dark of night was a substantial modification of the narrative, intended to accentuate the heinous nature of John’s trespass. John had not only intruded into Robert’s home without consent, he was, in effect, usurping Robert’s role as master of the house by sleeping with his wife. If Robert had been forced to kill a man of this low moral fibre in order to save his own skin, the jury’s account makes it clear that it was no great loss to the village of Laghscale. Robert was pardoned for his crime. The jury’s decision to alter even the hour of the crime in this instance, doubtless an attempt to heighten the deceitful and villainous nature of the crime, expresses just how gross a sin jurors considered female adultery to be. In this respect, it is important to remember that women were barred from participating in medieval juries. Instead, juries were composed of men from the middling to upper ranks of English society. It is not difficult to imagine that men of this rank and position, eager to uphold the moral standing of their village community, would have condoned the slaying of an adulterer as a necessary evil.20 The petty jury’s reluctance to apply common law penalties in cases of revenge killings on lovers is reflected in the tendency of trial juries at gaol delivery to transform cases of deliberate homicide into selfdefence. This tactic was not exclusive to homicides involving adultery; medieval trial juries frequently employed this strategy in cases where popular perceptions of culpable homicide were at odds with the requirements of royal law.21 Because the common law requirements for self-defence were rigid and exacting, stipulating that homicide

19

TNA JUST 3/78, m. 2d/1. This case is also discussed by Green, 42–3. Certainly in other places in medieval Europe, the slaying of a wife’s lover (and sometimes even the wife) was standard practice. See Eva Cantarella, “Homicides of Honor: The Development of Italian Adultery Law over Two Millennia,” in The Family in Italy: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. David I. Kertzer and Richard P. Saller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 229–244. 21 Green, 41. 20

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must be a last resort when retreat was no longer possible and death was near at hand, the tales told in the records often appear almost ludicrous.22 Jurors may have believed that God, or at least the English church, also sanctioned the slaying of a wife’s lover. The exemplum of “A Roper’s False Wife” helps to clarify the church’s perspective on adulterous wives. When a “deceitful bawd” approached the roper’s wife and convinced her to sleep with a libidinous prior in return for gifts and jewellery, the wife agreed to the plan and invited the prior to come lie with her. After several close encounters, the husband began to suspect his wife’s fidelity and ordered her not to return to the priory. He then went into town, arranged to hire a surgeon capable of healing two broken legs and returned to his home where he “took a pestle and broke both his wife’s legs and said to her, ‘At the very least, for a while, you will not go far and disobey my orders’.” Her injuries did not put an end to the wife’s wantonness. He awoke that night to see his wife and the prior next to him in bed in flagrante; without a word, the husband grabbed his knife and “pierced them both through, fixing them to the bed.” The exemplum closes with the hearty congratulations of his neighbours and town officials, “the which, they all said with one voice, was a proper way to punish them.”23 “A Roper’s False Wife” is a very graphic morality tale emphasising the dangerous consequences of betraying the marriage bond. The most striking aspect of this tale is not the murder of the wife and her lover in such a horrific manner, but rather the village’s whole-

22

Green makes a very valid point in this respect. He notes, “given the nature of medieval life, the rules of both self-defense and felonious homicide were unrealistically strict. If firmly applied, they would have meant the condemnation of persons of pride who, when under attack, did not turn tail and flee until cornered beyond all hope of further escape.” (Green, 46). In a society where war and chivalry were glorified as noble causes, the common law was out of step with national ethics. This finding helps modern historians to understand why jury tampering was tolerated. Royal justices probably shared many of the same values as their jurors, and did not wish to penalise persons who committed homicide in contravention of the law, especially when they might have chosen the same course of action if the positions had been reversed. 23 Joan Young Gregg, ed., Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 127–30. This originally appeared in Thomas Wright, ed., The Book of the Knight of Tour Landry (Early English Text Society, Old Ser. v. 33, 1906), 79–82. Landry’s text was very well known in England and thus it can be assumed that this particular exemplum would have been among the stock sermon stories recounted to the English laity in the later Middle Ages.

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hearted support of the crime. If the intention of this exemplum were only to explain that sinners receive their just deserts, then would it not have made more sense for God to strike the wife down in a way that did not seemingly justify homicide? A sudden illness or even an unexpected bath in boiling water, Marie de France’s chosen punishment for adulterers in “Equitan,” might have communicated the same message without condoning murder. The fact that the husband’s debacle was resolved with such brutality and that the fictional community met this punishment with resounding approval indicates that this was not the only message intended to reach parishioners. “A Roper’s False Wife” was but one of a number of exempla that helped to confirm traditional beliefs by reflecting communal values in the teachings of the church. Sermon stories such as these argue that the church’s perspective on spousal abuse was dualistic: the official position did not necessarily accord with beliefs held within the parish. Taken together, the records of both the ecclesiastical and royal courts confirm that adultery was linked frequently to spousal violence and homicide. Moreover, respectable people interpreted adultery along gendered lines: while adultery was always thought to be an offensive and sinful act, a wife’s adultery may have furnished a husband with free license for retribution.

Economic Deprivation Economic deprivation was another source of friction that led repeatedly to abuse. As Mavis Mate has argued, within marriage, a wife had few individual property rights. A husband, as head of the household, controlled all the material resources of the family, including any goods that a wife may have brought to the marriage and any money that she earned through her labour or from the sale of goods that she produced. If a husband wasted in drink or gambling what a wife had earned, she had no recourse in law.24

The inequity of this situation and the dangers to which it could lead was not lost on contemporary preachers. In his popular collection of Latin sermons from the thirteenth century, the Dominican Friar

24 Mavis E. Mate, Women in Medieval English Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 34.

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Peregrinus draws clear links between physical and financial cruelty. He wrote: “I fear . . . that there are many . . . who give their wives absolutely no freedom, instead excluding them from everything so that they cannot give their children even the basic necessities, and often they do not even have enough to be able to pay for a bath.”25 Peregrinus’s denunciation of tight-fisted husbands who paved the way for marital misery by depriving their wives of basic domestic needs is both perceptive and appropriate. Although husbands had a moral obligation to support their wives, the church recognised that marriage made a woman reliant on her husband’s sense of decency and honour. Even though money and property were not formally within the purview of their jurisdiction, the representatives of the church took it upon themselves to remedy this situation. What Peregrinus condemned in his sermons, the ecclesiastical courts actively pursued in medieval society. Women abandoned by their husbands and lacking any financial resources turned to the church for assistance.26 Married men who disregarded the needs of their wives and families exceeded the authority granted to them by the sacrament of marriage.27 In the event of financially irresponsible husbands, canon law provided wives with the option of suing their husbands for restitution of their dowries.28 The records of the English courts, however, include no evidence to suggest that this theoretical right was ever put into practice. Nonetheless, the English church reflects Peregrinus’s determination to force delinquent husbands into living up to social expectations concerning the support of their wives, whether they shared a residence or not. In a letter to an archdeacon’s official dated June of the year 1286, archbishop of York John Le Romeyn ordered William of Beltoft to treat his wife with marital affection as owed to her by the state of matrimony. The letter states that William caused a scandal because of his poor conduct. He not only “mal25 As cited in Rüdiger Schnell, “The Discourse on Marriage in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 73 (1998): 773. 26 Sara M. Butler, “Maintenance Agreements and Male Responsibility in Later Medieval England,” in Gender, Jurisdiction and Geography: The Boundaries of the Law in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. A.J. Musson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 67–83. 27 James Brundage notes that “[c]anonists and civilians alike held that husbands incurred a continuing obligation to maintain their wives, not only during marriage, but also after its termination.” Consequently, the courts were willing to order the payment of alimony, however, as Brundage observes, the payments were often trivial in nature. See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 479–80. 28 Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 542.

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treated his wife,” a euphemism for physical violence, but also deprived her of nourishment. Le Romeyn ordered the official to force William into reform through ecclesiastical censure.29 Similarly, in a mandate from August of the same year, the archbishop demanded that Sir Michael of Upsall, who also maltreated his wife and withheld necessities from her, treat his wife with marital affection.30 It seems probable that both mandates appeared in response to complaints from either the women involved, or family and friends outraged at the treatment of these respectable women. The high social standing of their husbands emphasised the contemptible nature of the offence. To deprive one’s wife of the necessities of life would not have been commendable behaviour under any circumstances; for a man of this rank, who could well afford to offer his wife luxuries, this behaviour was not only reprehensible, but also scandalous. The medieval church addressed economic deprivation even outside the upper ranks of medieval society. An act book for the Canterbury Dean and Chapter notes that when Thomas Waralynton was presented in 1373, the court required him to swear an oath to treat his wife Maud Trippes with marital affection in mensa et thoro, and to provide her with necessities in food and other materials, according to his ability.31 Thomas seems to have effected his own informal separation, abandoning his wife to her own resources. The court intervened on her behalf before circumstances forced her to resort to begging. The willingness of the Dean and Chapter to step in suggests that the English church acknowledged a husband’s duty to provide for his wife and, at times, compelled delinquent husbands to carry out this obligation. The English church may even have perceived economic deprivation of a wife as a particularly sinful form of domestic violence. In a mandate to the dean of Shoreham in 1297, the archbishop of Canterbury takes Walter de la Mare to task for having deserted his wife and the mother of his many children four years earlier and refusing to provide her with maintenance. The archbishop notes that Walter not only deprived her of the conjugal debt, but he also inhumanely refused to render to her the necessities of life out of her dowry and 29 William Brown, ed., The Register of John Le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York, 1286– 1296 (2 parts, Surtees Society, v. 123, 1913), 1. nos. 718, 250. 30 Brown, Register of John Le Romeyn, 1. nos. 545, 191. 31 Canterbury Y.1.1, fo. 28v.

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other common goods of theirs “in contempt of his salvation and the scandal of many, since great danger to souls is transferred because of these things.”32 This is not the only account in which failure to provide for one’s wife was painted in this unholy light. The register of Thomas of Corbridge, archbishop of York from 1300–1304, contains a mandate to the official of the provost of Beverley on behalf of Alice, wife of Ellis son of James of Lockington. The mandate states that Alice, “for whom we are compassionate,” maintains she was prepared to be obedient to her husband in all matters, according to the law of marriage, but “without reasonable cause,” Ellis banished her from their home. Also, he does not treat her with marital affection; and what is more “inhumane,” he has deprived her of the necessities of life and other things, “contrary to the teachings of the church and putting her soul in jeopardy.” Accordingly, the archbishop commanded his representative to summon both parties before the court where they should be compelled to conduct themselves as befits husband and wife, noting that this applies especially to the man who, as it is understood, is rebellious against God and the church.33 The letters concerning Walter de la Mare and Ellis of Lockington speak volumes to contemporary perceptions of wife maintenance. A husband who did not live up to his marital duties, chiefly when he was capable of doing so, was considered a serious offender. Moreover, the use of the term “inhumane” to describe this treatment indicates that the courts may have adopted an expanded definition of abuse, and likewise considered financial deprivation to be a form of abuse. Without economic support, a woman’s soul was thought to be in danger,

32

Rose Graham, ed., Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, 1294–1313 (Canterbury and York Series, v. 51, 1952), 194–5. 33 William Brown, ed., The Register of Thomas of Corbridge, Lord Archbishop of York, 1300 –1304 (2 parts, Surtees Society, v. 141, 1928), 2.44–45. Records from the diocese of London suggest that the use of the term inhumaniter may have been a stock phrase used in cases of domestic violence, or at the very least, plaintiffs employed this phrase on a number of occasions to describe situations of violence in marriage. For example, one witness in the divorce a mensa et thoro case between William Hyndeley and his wife Joan described a particularly savage beating that left Joan in the hands of a Franciscan monk for healing as having been committed inhumaniter (LMA MS DL/C/205, fo. 289r, Joan Hyndeley c. William Hyndeley, 1475). When William Badner beat his wife with swords so badly that her life was thought to be in peril, he was also described as having treated her inhumaniter (GL MS 9064/6, fo. 86r, 1494).

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indicating that the courts understood a woman in dire financial straits might be tempted to trade sexual favours for food and shelter. A case from the register of the archbishop of York emphasizes the church’s determination to make husbands responsible for maintaining their wives. In 1300, Henry Leue of Walkeringham was warned to treat his wife with marital affection and to provide her with necessities. Beyond these basic requirements, he was ordered to pay his wife five shillings annually for her support, even though this was not a case of separation and the court intended that he reside with her.34 Why ask a man to pay alimony to his wife if he were not separated? A probable answer is that Henry Leue was a repeat offender and the court no longer had the confidence that he would support his wife as requested. A fixed payment, documented and enforceable in court, was an easy alternative to constant supervision and frequent citations. An annual payment of alimony assured the representatives of the church that they would see him in court no more than once a year. A drastic solution of this nature reveals the court’s willingness to put wives in charge of their own maintenance when forced to deal with irresponsible husbands. Economic deprivation may have led some wives to desperate actions. The archbishop of York’s register notes how, in the year 1290, Dame Christian Meynell, wife of Sir Nicholas de Meynell, was rumoured to have made an attempt on her husband’s life. Her redemption lay in the fact that her husband survived. Nicolas de Meynell was the complainant in the matter. According to the account, the charges against her were manifold. “It is said that she engineered the plot to kill her husband, to poison him, having prepared a measure of venom, and she committed adultery with the clerics W. de Grenefeud and Walter de Hamerton.”35 Over the course of the investigation, the archbishop’s court cleared Dame Christian of all charges. The court’s decision to sentence in favour of Dame Christian and to proclaim her innocence publicly might be best explained by her choice of lovers. The William de Grenefeud to whom the commission refers was not only a respected and accomplished clergyman, but also the future archbishop of York.36 With such a powerful man on her side, 34

Brown, Register of Thomas of Corbridge, 1. 201. Brown, Register of John Le Romeyn, 1. nos. 481, 170. 36 The editor of the volume, William Brown, is responsible for making this connection. See Brown, Register of John Le Romeyn, 1.170n. 35

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it probably did not matter whether the allegations were fact or fiction.37 A letter written to the king by the archbishop two years after the fact shows that Sir Nicholas had good reason to suspect that his wife wished to see him dead. To the lord king. We have recently received a letter of your highness containing [the following]: that because the wife of Sir Nicholas de Meynell, it is said, has withdrawn from him against his will, putting distance between herself and him and leading a sinful and also dishonest life, refusing to adhere to him, at the great and serious cost of the said Nicholas, we wish to offer a suitable remedy. Accordingly, it is brought to the attention of your lordship, after examination of the said Nicholas and his wife by the usual procedures in the ecclesiastical court, we find that Nicholas in violent fashion threw his wife out of her home in contravention of the law governing married people and thereafter neglected to support her against the church’s ruling, which ruling was intended to secure her an honest manner of living and [adequate] sustenance. More particularly [it was found that] the fault [here] lies with the husband, who inflicted bodily harm on this blameless woman. Given this cruelty and the fragility of the woman, it is not advised to return to the control of the man without requiring of him suitable warranty that he will treat her in future with marital affection, as appropriate; yet it was frequently and publicly sworn that, in contravention of ecclesiastical law, the husband refused to undertake such a pledge. Therefore do not be surprised, your lordship, if as a result of this injury and with the agreement of the community in which she now resides, the church has pity on this oppressed woman.38

The solution to which the archbishop refers was almost certainly a separation from table and bed with a court approved maintenance agreement. Such a solution, necessitating a division of property among one of the king’s tenants-in-chief, however, would have required the archbishop to contact the king for approval. Sir Nicholas’s position demanded royal authorisation in order to make any exchange of property lawful. Otherwise, he was legally warranted to disregard the

37 Sir Nicholas’s complaint may represent a sincere accusation from a man happy to have survived. However, there are reasons to suspect “fiction in the archives.” His decision to compound the accusations against his wife may represent an attempt to lay the groundwork for a divorce a mensa et thoro. If the investigation into the charges had substantiated his claims, Sir Nicholas would have had all the necessary proof to obtain a separation. 38 Brown, Register of John Le Romeyn, nos. 96, 76–77.

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archiepiscopal decree. He could even sue a case in the royal courts against his wife’s guardian on the grounds of unlawful ejection, and if her adulterous past were verifiable, a common law court would permit his executor to reject her claims to dower after his death. In order to guarantee Dame Christian’s future economic and spiritual well being, the archbishop needed to co-ordinate his efforts with the king. In the event that Nicholas once more refused to obey the decrees of the court, the church might summon officers of the king. This is the last missive written on behalf of Dame Christian de Meynell to survive amid the records of the archbishop’s register; thus, it is unknown whether Le Romeyn’s pleas were well received. None the less, her case brings together much of the prevailing beliefs found in both the ecclesiastical act books and the archiepiscopal registers concerning the duty of the husband to support his wife. More important still, the letter permits a glimpse into the mind of a high-ranking ecclesiastical official in order to understand his personal opinion of what constituted excessive abuse. Le Romeyn’s perspective, expressed so eloquently and passionately on behalf of Dame Christian, is vital to a more complete understanding of the attitude and approach adopted by the representatives of the medieval English church, and thus deserves a more profound examination. The details of the physical abuse were not what interested the archbishop most. The forced eviction from the home, Dame Christian’s terror at returning to her husband’s lordship, and the spiritual ramifications of Sir Nicholas’s refusal to provide financial support seem to have been the three fundamental elements of Le Romeyn’s understanding of abuse. From the archbishop’s perspective, Sir Nicholas was entirely to blame. He maintained that Dame Christian withdrew from her home “unwillingly,” even though her home environment was not a happy one, her husband was admittedly cruel and she later demonstrated reluctance to return. Consciously or not, Le Romeyn painted Dame Christian as an ideal victim. He referred to her alternately as both “blameless” and a “fragile woman.” She was the passive woman who dared not return home. She was also constantly acted upon: she was expelled from her home; bodily harm was inflicted upon her. Most seriously, if her reputation was marred with sin, then once again her husband must shoulder the responsibility. Without the support of a husband, all too easily a woman might turn to a life of dishonesty. In this cleric’s mind, a much sinned against wife was the victim of abuse.

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Economic deprivation was both a source of tension leading to marital disharmony and a form of abuse. A man’s responsibility for his wife’s soul, safeguarding her from resorting to prostitution as a means of support, was a heavy burden; a man who failed to live up to these expectations was not only a disappointment as a husband, but a wife-abuser. His actions may not have left tangible evidence on the body of the victim; but a man might scar a woman’s soul permanently by deserting her.

Insanity In the medieval courts, insanity very rarely cropped up as an explanation for spousal violence; a fact in itself that attests, in the Middle Ages, one did not have to be mad to beat one’s wife. When a defendant did plead insanity, however, the intent was to excuse his or her actions. Where felony was concerned, medieval common law was explicit in cases of insanity. The mid-thirteenth century treatise attributed to Bracton argued that a crime is not committed unless the will to harm is present. Thus, those suffering from lunacy were innocent of intent and not responsible for their actions, even in cases of homicide or treason.39 In this respect, then, insanity should have been the perfect explanation for a defence of spousal homicide; and yet, manipulation of insanity pleas was not that easy. Pleas of this nature were hard to maintain without solid proof. Jurors demanded concrete evidence. The safest defence was to assert that after committing the crime the accused had also attempted to take his or her own life.40 In cases of spousal homicide, when a defendant denied accountability on the grounds of insanity, trial juries appeared sceptical. This attitude was particularly evident in cases of temporary insanity. Faced with an exceedingly sober and lucid wife-killer, trial jurors may have believed that a defence of insanity was not sustainable. The 1313 case of Richard Sharp of Maltby (Yorks.) reflects the problematic nature of temporary insanity pleas. According to the presenting jury,

39 Henry de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. George Woodbine, trans. S.E. Thorne (4 vols, Cambridge: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 1968), 2.424. 40 Naomi D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide Before A.D. 1307 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 165–6.

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for four years before the death of the said Agnes, Richard has been of unsound mind on occasion, sometimes for a quarter of a year, sometimes for longer. On that day, he was in such a state and lacking and deprived of his senses, he came one morning to Maltby and entered a house where his wife Agnes was staying. He carried with him an axe and in a rage struck her on the head and wounded her so that she died immediately. They say that for two months before the said deed, during the deed and for a month after it he remained non compos mentis. They say that he was in that state when he killed Agnes, and that she did not die as a result of felony or malice aforethought. Richard is therefore remitted to gaol, to await the king’s grace, and nevertheless he has not fled.41

The record implies that, before her death, Agnes was no longer living with her husband. Bearing this in mind, an imaginative jury might have interpreted Richard’s actions as the last episode in an ongoing marital spat. Thus, it was in Richard’s best interest for the presenting jury to record clearly that his actions were not premeditated, and that Agnes deserted her husband because of his unstable mental state. This point is significant on its own. While this statement cannot speak to the church’s position on marital cohabitation, at the very least it implies that the English laity did not always expect a woman to continue living with her husband under such conditions. The presenting jury in Richard’s case was at pains to demonstrate that his actions were those of a man afflicted with mental insanity, despite his otherwise sane appearance at his trial. Their efforts were rewarded: an entry in the Calendar of Patent Rolls notes that Richard received a pardon for his crime,42 although the record of his indictment shows that this was no easy feat. In fact, jurors seem to have frequently empathized with mad spouse-killers, remitting them to gaol to await the king’s mercy. For example, a Leicestershire coroner’s roll recounts the story of John Jugg of Garthorpe the younger from the year 1382. Through diabolical temptation, John was led to stab his wife Hawis with a knife in the chest, so that she died five days later. During the time that the act occurred and for two days before and after, John was furious and out of his mind. The roll notes that

41

TNA JUST 3/74, m. 3/14. CPR 1307–13, 431. The entry notes that a pardon was granted to Richard Sharpe of Maltby for the death of Agnes his wife as it appears by the record of John of Insula and the other justices of gaol delivery for York that he was mad when he killed her. The date is given as 16 February 1312. 42

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John was remanded to the king’s gaol at Leicester, presumably to await pardon from the king.43 Men were not the only ones capable of defending their actions with an insanity plea. A late thirteenth-century Yorkshire coroner’s roll notes the case of Maud, wife of Hugh of Wray, who slew her husband while he was sleeping. However, the record gives no indication of the court’s handling in this matter because the defendant died before the case could come to trial.44 A Lincolnshire coroner’s roll that records the death of Thomas son of William Sherman at the hands of his wife, Isabel, suffering from frenzy, also fails to note the outcome of the case.45 Without sentences, it is difficult to know if the king’s mercy applied differently according to the gender of the accused. There are meagre signs that men may have been required to defend their actions more stringently. Suicide verdicts, which are more likely to include allegations of insanity, demonstrate a predominance of non compos mentis verdicts among female victims.46 Given contemporary perspectives on the weakness of the female mind and feminine susceptibility to the temptation of the devil, the courts may have seen fit to excuse insanity in women more easily than in men. With such a paucity of cases, however, it is impractical to make this assertion with any confidence.47 Together, the cases suggest that if insanity was not a cause of spousal homicide, defendants and jurors may have used it to excuse their behaviour. A plea of this nature would not have made it into the records if the respectable local people did not vigorously consent that it was applicable.

Disobedient Wives As Ruth Mazo Karras has noted, “[t]he disobedience of women in general, and of wives specifically, was one of the most popular lines

43

TNA JUST 2/57, m. 12. TNA JUST 1/1078, m. 81. 45 TNA JUST 2/69, m. 7d 46 Sara M. Butler, “Women, Suicide, and the Jury in Later Medieval England.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32.1 (2006): 141–66. 47 The attitude of jurors towards homicidal insanity is the subject of a current investigation by this author. 44

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of antifeminist argument in the Middle Ages; as embodied in Eve, this vice was responsible for the fall of mankind.”48 This popular theme was not restricted to fictional literature like the Flood play; rather, its popularity was such that one of the more influential French exemplists, Étienne de Bourbon, devoted an entire section of his work to the shrewishness and disobedience of wives.49 This fear permeated much of medieval society. The records reveal that men frequently justified their violent actions with the scolding tongues of their wives. For example, a case from the Rochester consistory court in December of 1347 recounts the tale of a Kentish couple, Henry Cook of Hethe at Trottiscliffe and his wife. When brought before the court on charges of spousal non-cohabitation, Henry argued that the fault was entirely his wife’s because she was a scold. His spouse countered the argument with a more traditional defence, asserting allegations of sexual infidelity and physical cruelty. Neither spouse was able to present a convincing argument for separation; the court ordered them to be reconciled.50 While Henry failed to persuade the court of the validity of his case, his resort to scolding as a justification for divorce is significant. At the very least, this one man thought scolding was such an egregious behaviour that an ecclesiastical official from the period might sympathise with a scold’s husband. Henry’s justification is symptomatic of a more widespread belief. This view is supported by a number of cases of divorce a mensa et thoro from late medieval England. The standard defence turned the wife into a scapegoat, by arguing that she provoked him with disrespectful language. Such was the defence of William Hyndeley of London in 1475 who alleged that his wife used “opprobrious, contentious, scolding and vexatious words,” moving him to strike her.51 Richard Styward of London in 1488 also defended his violent

48 Ruth Mazo Karras, “Gendered Sin and Misogyny in John of Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium,” Traditio 47 (1992): 252. 49 Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, légendes, et apologues tirés du recueil inédit d’Étienne de Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris: Librairie Renouard, H. Loones, 1877), 201–10. He was not alone. See also Jenny Swanson, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 114–18, 124–26; and for examples in sermons see G.R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in the Medieval World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 163. 50 Charles Johnson, ed., Registrum Hamonis Hethe, Diocesis Roffensis, A.D. 1319–1352, v. 2 (Canterbury and York Society, v. 48, 1948). 51 GL MS DL/C/205, 293r, Joan Hyndeley c. William Hyndeley.

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actions by shifting the blame to his wife’s unrestrained tongue. He contended that her use of “very many opprobrious and despicable words” was the cause of her beating.52 Similar rationalisations were put forward by Simon Munkton (1345–6), Henry Venables (1410) and Thomas Nesfeld (1396), all defendants in cases of applications for separations at York.53 The case of Nesfeld c. Nesfeld, in particular, demonstrates that disobedience was thought to excuse violence. In order to refute Margery Nesfeld’s claims of cruelty, her husband’s former servant shrewdly painted a picture of constant aggravation by a potentially lecherous woman. In the face of Margery’s insubordination and irreverence her husband Thomas emerged as the voice of reason. While the servant agreed that Thomas was driven to beat his wife, his account maintains moderate chastisement even when confronted with open rebellion and death threats. His testimony was likely modelled on a contemporary mind-set shared by the representatives of the court, that women frequently incited their husbands to physical abuse through their disobedience. In this testimony, the gendered weapons of marital discord are distinguished: male physical force, female verbal aggression. Whether or not the church’s officials judged scolding as sufficient grounds for physical violence is still unclear because the sentences have not survived for any of these cases; however, some of its defendants evidently believed that a wife’s scolding justified the use of violence. Only one case indicates the English church entertained seriously defences of this nature. Before a fifteenth century ecclesiastical court in London, Andrew Peerson was forced to admit that he had indeed exchanged vows with Agnes Wilson a year earlier. Since then he had refused to have his marriage solemnised, because Agnes had shown herself to be such a great scold and had even been indicted by the local courts for her behaviour. Rather than deny the validity of the marriage, the judge chose instead to grant Andrew and Agnes a judicial separation, ordering the two not to remarry.54 The records also point to the possibility that the courts held a disobedient wife accountable for her husband’s violent actions. A York act book notes a case from 1400 concerning Thomas Tebbe of 52

GL MSS 9065, fo. 62r, Ann Styward c. Richard Styward. These cases are examined in depth in Chapter Four. 54 Cited in Richard M. Wunderli, London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1981), 121–2. 53

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Driffield. The Dean and Chapter summoned Thomas before the court on the grounds of spousal mistreatment. His behaviour earned him twelve floggings around the church, and he was ordered to treat his wife “decently” in the future. The account highlighted also his wife’s rebellious behaviour, tacitly implying that her vituperative tongue may have provoked the abuse. For her part, she suffered no immediate penalty but was required “decently” to obey her husband under pain of twelve floggings.55 It is impossible to ignore the harsh implications of the court’s double sentence in the case of Thomas Tebbe and his wife: Thomas had beaten her repeatedly and expelled her from the family home, not only because he had trouble with anger management, but also because, through her own rebellion, she had provoked her husband’s wrath. The court’s decision to hold Tebbe’s wife responsible, even in part, for the violence inflicted upon her seems to suggest that her disobedience excuses the abuse. The court’s decision in the case of Tebbe’s wife was not that remarkable. For example, when Thomas Rigton of York and his wife Ebote appeared before the court in 1406 to respond to allegations that Thomas had long abused his wife, the court required Ebote to swear formally that, in the future, “she would humbly obey her said husband.”56 Even in situations of admittedly severe abuse, the church might still hold the wife liable. According to a late fourteenth-century consistory court book, Richard Epworth of York exercised great cruelty in his conduct towards his wife, Margaret. He is described as having “fiercely or inappropriately beat[en] [her], and excessively or indecently castigated [her].”57 Under pain of one hundred shillings and twelve floggings around the church, the court ordered Richard to refrain from any further cruelty towards his wife. The court also recognised Margaret’s culpability in her own abuse: it commanded that henceforth she obey her husband under pain of twenty-four floggings. The decision of the courts Christian to blame marital conflict on both halves of the couple confirms Thomas Nesfeld’s perception of the essential differences between husbands and wives: medieval society believed that men and women differed fundamentally in the way they participated in marital strife. Men expressed their unhappiness 55 56 57

York M 2(1) f, fo. 35. York D & C AB/1, fo. 39. York M 2(1) c, fo. 27.

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through physical violence; women, on the other hand, resorted to vocal disobedience. Both were blameworthy.

Spousal Non-Cohabitation: The Church as a Cause of Tension Marital disharmony generally does not resolve itself. While the laity and the church involved themselves in the marriages of others in the hopes of eliminating the causes of marital tension, this solution was not wholly successful. Some cases of marital disharmony erupted into spousal homicide; the more usual route was an informal divorce. Unhappy couples in later medieval England seldom turned to the church courts in order to terminate their marriages. Rather, they simply ‘divorced’ themselves. These informal and often long-term separations were the source of much frustration for officials of the church. Spousal non-cohabitation not only debased the sacrament of marriage; it was the breeding ground for a wide variety of other marital transgressions, from adultery to bigamy. The courts of the medieval church dedicated themselves to reconciling separated couples at almost any cost. Undoubtedly, this approach caused more marital tension than it resolved. The reunion of a couple who had long since abandoned any pretence of marriage was not an event to be celebrated, and created the ideal atmosphere for abuse. The records of an ex officio act book from the diocese of Canterbury over the course of the years 1468 to 1474 (presented below in Table 3.1) demonstrate that many couples chose to separate without the blessing of the church. At the same time, these records show that the courts were not willing to tolerate unsanctioned separation: Table 3.1: Charges of Spousal Non-Cohabitation, Canterbury 1468–74 1468 1469 1470 1471 1472 1473 1474

2 12 9 4 6 6 3

Total

4258

58 Compiled from Canterbury Y.1.11. The specific book was chosen for this study simply because of its late date. With such high figures for the period of 1468–74, this

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Each case represents an accusation of spousal non-cohabitation levelled at an individual offender, that is, the husband or wife alone rather than a joint presentment. Among these forty-two cases, there are only three instances in which husband and wife appeared separately in court for the same charge. Considering this overlap, over the course of this seven-year period the court penalised thirty-nine couples for a failure to co-reside. In all probability, thirty-nine cases of spousal non-cohabitation over a period of seven years does not represent the total figures for actual cases of informal separation in the entire diocese of Canterbury. None the less, it is a very high figure on its own, indicating that the courts were anxious to uncover evidence of self-divorce and to compel offenders into reconciliation, however unwelcome this might be. These figures contrast well with a similar study of the Norman abbatial peculiar of the officiality of Cérisy la Forêt in the diocese of Bayeux, buttressing the notion that English ecclesiastics were especially vigilant in the prosecution of spousal non-residence. Over the course of the years 1314 to 1413 in the officiality of Cérisy, the court prosecuted fourteen cases of informal separation.59 Given the great disparity in the length of time involved in this study when compared to that of the Canterbury ex officio act book, the archbishop of Canterbury appears to have been vastly more concerned with marital dissolution than were the Bayeux officials. The Hereford visitation returns of 1397, in which the court heard twenty-seven cases of informal separation in that year alone, confirm an English preoccupation with the irregular dissolution of marriage.60 Even the penalties imposed by the two jurisdictions for cases of this genre varied greatly. The officiality of Cérisy exhibited a striking reluctance to punish the offenders or to enforce conformity with the rulings of the court, whereas the visitation returns of Hereford include the penitential floggings and public humiliation typical of English courts Christian of the medieval period.61

book would seem to suggest that the English church was more than willing to take an active position on the regularisation of marriage even in the very late Middle Ages. 59 Finch, 17. 60 Finch, 21. 61 Finch, 24. This feature is echoed in cases of domestic violence. Parisian courts were notoriously reluctant to award judicial separations. See Jean-Philippe Lévy, “L’officialité de Paris et les questions familiales à la fin du XIV e siècle,” Études d’histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras (2 vols, Paris: Sirey, 1965) 2: 1265–94. See also Charles Donahue, Jr., “The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage and Social Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Family History 8 (1983): 149–50.

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Of the thirty-nine cases of spousal non-residence appearing in the Canterbury ex officio act book of 1468 to 1474, only two of the accused chose to deny the allegations. Both Richard Potter of Harbledown (Kent) and Agnes Borell of the parish of St Dunstan argued that they were innocent of marital non-cohabitation because their spouses had died and were buried at Guildford and Dunstable respectively.62 The remaining accusations went unchallenged by the offenders. The difficulties encountered by the representatives of the court with these particular cases reinforce that their concerns were well founded. Almost half the couples (a total of seventeen) brought before the court exhibited the anticipated complications: since the separation, one of the delinquent spouses had taken a lover or had remarried. Although the records omit any discussion of the length of separation between husband and wife, the high numbers of spouses living elsewhere and remarried affords proof that the separations were not recent and were intended by those involved to be a permanent solution to their marital woes. Both the evidence of the cause papers and recent studies by other historians in this field support this conclusion. Cases of judicial separation from the York cause papers affirm that informal separations might be lengthy. Margery and Thomas Nesfeld had separated at least four years prior to their appearance in court, Margery de Devoine and Richard Scot eight years, Cecilia Wyvell and Henry Venables seven years, and Agnes and Peter Benson six years.63 These four couples probably intended their separations to be permanent and only sued in court once something happened to bring their relations to a head, perhaps an ex officio presentment for spousal non-cohabitation, or a sudden desire for maintenance. In this respect, ecclesiastical support of the permanency of marriage conflicted with lay conceptions. As Finch has argued, “the church’s desire to control and regulate marriage would not represent the imposition of order upon disorder, but rather the gradual erosion and replacement of an existing system of

62

Canterbury Y.1.11, fo. 70d and 87. In his investigation of Cerisy and Hereford, Finch similarly encountered lengthy separations, sometimes of an extreme nature. For example, Thomas la Pie and his wife had been living in separate residences for five years before they appeared in court at Cerisy in 1325, while Jean la Pie and his wife Jeanne had not slept with each other in seventeen years, and both had taken lovers. Finch, 18, 17. 63

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law and custom by another.”64 Much like clandestine marriage,65 selfdivorce may have represented a remnant of the traditional system of marriage in which conjugal unions were formed and unformed both privately and with some ease. Self-divorce presented a similar threat to the control of the church over marriage, and by extension, over the laity and the state in which they lived. For that reason, church officials sometimes may have prosecuted clandestine unions and selfdivorce under the rubric of sexual morality and female vulnerability. The breach between sacred and secular understandings of marriage raises the question: how effective were the courts in the actual reconciliation of separated couples? Within the Canterbury ex officio act book for the years 1468–74, the court summoned no one more than once for spousal non-cohabitation. This finding contrasts with the records of the Cerisy court, in which Jean le Scelé, for example, appeared on three separate occasions for failing to live and share a bed with his wife.66 Because of the court of Canterbury’s greater dedication to punishment and reform, it is possible that penitents simply respected the judgements of the court, shedding any recent attachments and reforming their earlier conjugal unions. It is also possible that at least some of these couples merely evaded any official decision by manipulating the process. In a legal system in which members of the community supply information voluntarily and in which justice is local in nature, couples had numerous options to escape legal proscription. If a couple could not buy silence, the most logical course of action was for the offenders to move their residence. Newcomers might easily hide the evidence of a past union, just as a man and woman might pose as husband and wife without eliciting the suspicions of their new neighbours. Amidst the relatively high 64

Andrew John Finch, “Crime and Marriage in Three Late Medieval Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions: Cerisy, Rochester and Hereford” (Ph.D. diss., University of York, 1988), 65. 65 The English church railed against clandestine marriage until well into the early modern period. While clandestine marriage was, in fact, legitimate (if sinful), the church attempted to restrict opportunities for fraud and deception by making sure that marriages were made public through a formal process that included ecclesiastical blessing. Nevertheless, many couples disregarded these provisions and married clandestinely. For a discussion of the legal ramifications of clandestine marriage, see Martin Ingram, “Spousals Litigation in the English Ecclesiastical Courts c. 1350– c. 1640,” in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, ed. R.B. Outhwaite (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 35–57. 66 Finch, “Repulsa uxore sua,” 18.

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levels of migration peculiar to post-plague England, this strategy would have been an easy alternative for couples reluctant to renew an unhappy union.67 Some couples did willingly submit to the wishes of the church courts. When John Chamber of Langthorpe (Yorks.) and his wife Ellen appeared before the court for spousal non-cohabitation and adultery, they were not only ordered to resume their marriage but were forced to undertake public penance for their actions by participating in a procession around the cathedral church at York wearing the traditional garb of white sheets.68 The case of John and Ellen was not exceptional. Spousal non-cohabitation was a sin and a disgrace to marriage; thus, a mere court order could not remedy the situation. Penance was required to absolve the sin. Would any couple have willingly undertaken such a public pronouncement of its moral inadequacies if both persons were not equally willing to comply with the court’s decision? It seems unlikely that this would have been the case. Couples in this situation would not have shown up in court. Just how stable a marriage could this have been if a court was required to intervene and compel them to reconcile? Charles Donahue, Jr. has argued persuasively that women in medieval England initiated marriage litigation for different reasons than did men. More often than not, men began litigation in order to escape one union and legalise another. Women, on the other hand, appeared in court to restore a previous union or legitimise one that was in the process of dissolution.69 The ex officio cases, at first glance, do not appear to conform to Donahue’s model. The evidence of the ex officio act book of 1468–74 indicate that the court considered wives delinquent nearly as often as were husbands in cases of spousal non-cohabitation. Of the forty-two individual cases of dereliction, twenty-five offenders were male, seventeen were female. While the numbers favour male offenders, the difference is not substantial, not enough to argue that the church courts equated spousal non-residence with male desertion. None the less, the language of the articles submitted in these cases betrays this 67 See L.R. Poos, A rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 160–5. 68 York D & C AB/1, fo. 100. 69 Charles Donahue, Jr. “Female Plaintiffs in Marriage Cases in the Court of York in the Later Middle Ages: What can we learn from the Numbers?” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 197.

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impression. The allegations of non-cohabitation in the records are exceedingly formulaic. Although usually abbreviated, the wording of the offence is standard: ‘John Tailor of Faversham does not cohabit with his wife.’ Seven of the forty-two allegations, however, adopt an entirely different wording: ‘John Tailor of Faversham expelled his wife.’ Usually appended to this brief statement is the further damning assertion: ‘and he keeps another [wife].’ In these particular allegations, then, the charge is not merely spousal non-cohabitation, but eviction from the family home. The perpetrator in each of these seven cases was invariably the husband. The preponderance of male offenders in cases of forced non-cohabitation shifts the balance in support of the belief that the courts held men primarily responsible for the dissolution of conjugal unions. The evidence of another ex officio act book for the diocese of Canterbury, covering the years 1449–57, upholds this verdict. Although the figures are lower, in the seven cases of marital non-cohabitation presented before the court the delinquent spouses were all male.70 Doubtless, the courts did not fail to notice that men were more inclined to dissolve a union than preserve it; this inclination may have actually provided the impetus to pursue cases of non-cohabitation. As the earlier cases of economic deprivation imply, without the support of a husband, a wife was vulnerable to a variety of evils, including prostitution. Pursuing cases of spousal non-cohabitation, then, may have been a less directly obvious part of the church’s mission to protect wives. A case from the diocese of London indicates that some men opposed the church’s efforts to intervene in cases of spousal repudiation. In 1476 when Katherine Burwell approached her husband William and asked him to receive her back into their home and treat her as his wife, his response was firm. He never wished to live with her as his wife, nor treat her as his wife, and if any judge should try to restore their marriage or compel Katherine to adhere to him as his wife, then he would seize a knife and slit her throat and kill her without mercy.71 Whether William’s behaviour lived up to his boasting is not known; however, his comments make it clear the medieval laity might treat the church’s intervention with some hostility. 70 Canterbury X.1.1, passim. Andrew Finch makes a similar observation in his study. He notes that in instances of desertion or spousal repudiation the husband usually took the initiative. Finch, “Repulsa uxore sua,” 25. 71 LMA MS DL/C/205, fo. 313r, Katherine Burwell, alias Bachelere c. William Bachelere.

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The church courts sometimes played an even more invasive role in medieval marriages. It was within the purview of the court not only to order a resumption of the marital union, but also to demand payment of the conjugal debt. Such an order could derive from two possible scenarios. First, spouses might plead a suit in court in order to enforce the payment of the debt. Not surprisingly, however, this particular suit seldom appears among the records of medieval marriage litigation.72 Second, the representatives of the court might also take it upon themselves to intercede in unhappy marriages and demand that couples adhere to each other and pay the conjugal debt. In the York and Canterbury records, this degree of interference in the personal lives of the laity, if not common, was more frequent than one might suspect. Over the course of the period 1372 to 1492, there were at least thirty-four cases of the diocesan court demanding restitution of conjugal rights.73 The court’s willingness to interfere in marriage in such an intimate way demonstrates the kind of power the church wished to wield over the lives of parishioners. At the same time, the determination of the courts in these matters reveals a powerful source of marital tension. While marriage was rarely private in its inception or regulation, marital affection was a private matter not easily subject to manipulation. This is evidenced best by the court’s inability to oversee compliance of their rulings. The courts’ “effort to re-establish the physical reality of the marriages, through enforcing the mutual obligation to pay the debt, largely failed in the face of the obvious hostility of those involved.”74 A couple might unite to hoodwink the courts or even openly rebel; and yet, the ramifications of their sin in debasing marriage and defying the church may have left one or both spouses with a guilty conscious. Psychological

72 A case of restitution of conjugal rights might cost upwards of 33 s. 4 d. (Helmholz, 161). Given that restitution of conjugal rights probably only became an issue in cases of spousal desertion, it seems likely that an abandoned wife on her own may not have been wealthy enough to afford the high costs of litigation. 73 Canterbury Y.1.1 (1372–5), fo. 18; Y.1.2 (1398–9), fo. 110; Y.1.3 (1416–23), fos 38, 40, 112, 113, 229 and 240; Y.1.4 (1419–25), fos 79, 88, 93, 95, 97, 114, 159, and 162; Y.1.6 (1463–8), fos 120, 186, 260; Y.1.7 (1459–63), fos 47, 54, 171; Y.1.8 (1468–74), fos 78, 261, 299, 299, 35; Y.1.12 (1474–9), fol. 51, 90, 279; and Y.1.15 (1488–92), fos 66, 134, and 234. It is perhaps significant that the act books for the years 1500–1502, and 1503–1505 contain no mention of cases of this sort. It is entirely possible that an invasion of personal privacy of this type no longer suited communal mores. 74 Finch, “Repulsa uxore sua,” 24.

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baggage of this nature must have been a poor base from which to reconstruct a shattered marriage. From a modern perspective, perhaps the most unexpected reconciliation of spousal non-cohabiters is that of John le Cupper (Notts.) and his wife Agatha. The two appeared before the court at York in the year 1298–9 in response to Agatha’s request for a divorce a mensa et thoro. Her reasons for the separation were multiple. She maintained that John had committed much adultery, even though she had never given him cause to pursue other women. Moreover, his conduct towards her had been less than exemplary. She recounted how one night, against her will, John abducted Agatha to his home and “willingly and consciously he lay with her and knew her carnally.” His violent treatment of her and his flagrant extramarital sex life constituted, in Agatha’s mind, grounds for a judicial separation. Nevertheless, the register insinuates that the archbishop thought otherwise. For the ‘violent abduction,’ John was presented before the court of the ordinary and required to pay a fine of £20 or be flogged on ten days around the market at Nottingham. Through the intervention of the court and other friends, the couple was reunited, but the registers warns that if John should treat his wife badly in the future the court would require him to pay a fine of £10 or be flogged on five days in the above-mentioned manner. He must treat his wife honourably and with marital affection and “he must not commit any serious fault against her.” The record continues briefly to mention that John and Agatha’s son, John Kyt, had finally settled his dispute with his father.75 The case of John and Agatha offers a tale of abuse that today might be categorised as marital rape, although canon lawyers of the Middle Ages generally would not have seen it as such. Canonists argued that a husband could not rape his wife, choosing to believe that if a woman had consented to marriage then she had already given her consent to intercourse.76 Canon law clearly stated that it was a spouse’s responsibility to engage in sexual intercourse on demand, even if the act might seem sinful, because it was better to

75

Brown, Register of John Le Romeyn, 1. nos. 254, 279–80. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 70; James A. Brundage, “Implied Consent to Intercourse,” in Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1993), 245–56. 76

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commit the sin of fornication on a holy day or even in a holy place than it was to betray the conjugal union.77 With this in mind, although John used undue force by compelling his wife into the act, Agatha was equally guilty for spurning her marital duty. Given John’s history of repeated adultery, however, it seems these rules did not apply in Agatha’s situation because the adultery of one spouse should have exempted the other from the payment of the conjugal debt. Hence, the official of the archbishop may have understood John’s actions as not only an excessive display of violence, but indeed rape. A comparison of the assigned penalties between this case and the more typical kind of rape attest to the harsh treatment of John le Cupper by the courts. A mere thirteen days before Agatha appeared in court in the hopes of having her separation approved by the archbishop, Archbishop Newark was confronted with the case of James of Pocklington, rector of the church at Holme, convicted of abducting and raping one of his parishioners in April of the previous year. While rape normally fell within the purview of the royal courts, as a cleric James was able to claim benefit of clergy and have his crime removed to the church court. In lieu of the execution that a conviction of rape garnered in the king’s court, the archbishop’s court sentenced James to pay twenty shillings to the young woman whom he had offended in five-shilling increments over the course of the next four years. In addition, he was required to enter into a bond of ten marks to guarantee his future good conduct, with the threat of a further thirty marks in the event he returned to his criminal way of life.78 While the archbishop did not lightly excuse James of Pocklington, his immediate fine was less than that of John le Cupper, even if his monition was similar. The chief distinction between the two cases is the nature of the relationship between victim and accused; in each, the attack was a breach of trust of varying degrees. That the archbishop chose to punish John le Cupper’s offence much more severely than James of Pocklington’s supports the idea that he believed John’s transgression to be the more egregious of the two. Because modern

77 For a fuller discussion of this subject, see Brundage, “Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law,” 66–79. 78 Brown, Register of John Le Romeyn, 1. nos. 249, 276–77 (this volume also contains the register for Henry of Newark).

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courtrooms seldom recognise marital rape as such, the inclusion of this case among the records of the medieval archbishop’s business is quite astonishing. Yet, the church courts of the medieval era were much more attuned to the sexual lives of their litigants than it is possible to imagine today. John le Cupper’s appearance in court and his amercement for violent abduction is an indication that the medieval courts Christian may have been better equipped to deal with this kind of offence, and more willing to accept that transgressions of this nature might occur between married people. Given the church’s willingness to acknowledge the severity of violence between the two, it may seem surprising that they chose to reunite John and Agnes anyway. The account demonstrates that the archbishop was led to believe reconciliation was in the couple’s best interests. The register notes that both the court and the couple’s friends were in favour of reconciliation. If those who knew John and Agatha intimately were inclined to believe they might overcome their differences, then the court’s representatives were in no position to disagree. Also, the tale of John and Agatha’s appearance in court concludes with the settlement of a dispute between Agatha’s son and husband. While the record does not make explicit the source of contention between the two, this disagreement may have been the original cause of strife between John and Agatha. Having resolved the dispute, the archbishop might have had every reason to believe that John and Agatha would resume their marriage in a happier state. While the case of John le Cupper and his wife Agatha was an atypical example of abuse, the court’s decision to reconcile in this situation makes an important point about the role played by the English church in marriage. If any of the couples who enjoyed separate residences experienced even a degree of the violence John inflicted on Agnes, from a modern perspective, it is hard to imagine that reconciliation was in their best interests. In terms of John and Agnes in particular, forced coitus is a poor psychological base for rebuilding a marital relationship. While the goal of the church often was to mitigate the circumstances exacerbating situations of abuse, by bringing about unwanted reconciliations, the actions of the church itself may have caused marital violence as often as it resolved it.

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An examination of the causes of marital tension offers mixed messages about the role played by the church in the regulation of medieval marriages. On the one hand, the English church admirably attempted to identify causes of domestic violence, such as adultery and spousal desertion, and tried to eliminate abuse by addressing the heart of the problem. The medieval church, at times, even championed the plight of women. By forcing men to stand up to their obligation in supporting their wives, the church undoubtedly prevented many women from experiencing a descent into destitution. From a Catholic perspective, it may even have saved their souls. The willingness of the church to acknowledge an instance of sexual violence in marriage is even more astounding and signifies that the church recognised the dangers a woman faced in the late medieval culture of marriage. The church did not generally consider marital violence a problem in and of itself; rather, it was symptom of marital breakdown, provoked by a variety of other factors. In this respect, medieval England may have been much more progressive than Western society today. Understanding that violence had many recognisable causes and addressing these causes communally through both official and unofficial means, medieval England had many checks and balances in place to head abuse off at the pass. On the other hand, the church’s willingness to hold disobedient wives accountable for their husbands’ violent actions contradicts contemporary notions of self-governance. A husband was not only required to govern his household properly, the church expected him to exert a measure of self-control over his own actions. Perhaps, disobedient wives presented an exception to this rule. The determination of the church to reconcile non-cohabiting spouses, and thereby create the ideal conditions for marital disharmony, as well makes it clear that the resolution of marital discord placed second in priority to the upholding of the sacrament. Accordingly, the church may have exacerbated situations of abuse; it is hard to imagine that a couple reconciled against their wishes resumed their marriages peaceably and happily.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ACCEPTABILITY OF MARITAL VIOLENCE: SIX CASE STUDIES

At the very least, the church provided medieval wives with some recourse from abusive spouses. A victim of domestic violence might apply to the courts for a divorce a mensa et thoro, literally a separation from bed and board, awarded on the grounds of cruelty or adultery.1 Perhaps not surprisingly, medieval canon lawyers remained divided on how the divorce a mensa et thoro should be applied in practice. Most medieval canonists recognised fornication as the only acceptable premise for a separation from table and bed, and it was not until the sixteenth century that canonists generally agreed upon the necessity of separation in abusive marriages. Some medieval canonists did argue in favour of considering physical abuse an acceptable premise for spousal non-cohabitation. For example, Raymond of Peniafort made it clear that in cases where a husband was suing for a restoration of conjugal rights, a wife had the right to refuse cohabitation if the violence was acute enough to warrant it. He declared, “a man seeking restoration should not be restored [if ] his cruelty is so great that adequate security cannot be provided to the fearful woman.”2 Pope Innocent III declared, “if a husband were so cruel to his wife that no security would permit her to live with him without fear, the wife would be justified in living separately from her spouse. The pope added, however, that if the husband could furnish adequate security to allay his wife’s apprehensions of illtreatment, she was bound to return to his bed and board.”3 The approaches of these two canonists may have influenced and encouraged the practice of awarding separations on the grounds of cruelty,

1 It was also possible to obtain a judicial separation on the grounds of heresy, but in England this was sufficiently rare that it is almost not worthy of mention. 2 Raymundus de Peniafort, Summa de poenitentia et de matrimonio cum glossis Johannis de Friburgo 4.22 (Rome 1603; repr. Farnborough: Gregg Press, 1967), 568. 3 James A. Brundage, “Domestic Violence in Classical Canon Law,” in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 189.

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although it is important to note that the courts, not the canonists, introduced the practice of granting separations and thus court practices often differed substantially from canonical guidelines. As Brundage observes, “[t]he courts granted divorces with the right of remarriage when the law said they could not do so, they granted separations on grounds that the canons did not recognize, and conversely some of the grounds for separation that are most elaborately discussed in the commentaries appear very infrequently in practice.”4 Brundage even cites an exceptional example of the courts awarding a separation on the grounds of habitual drunkenness, for which no precedent exists in the canonical writings.5 By the mid-thirteenth century, the church courts of medieval Europe generally were willing to grant a separation for cruelty, providing the tales of abuse presented by the litigants were sufficient to be categorised as near fatal and the husband’s behaviour was incorrigible.6 A separation from table and bed was decidedly not the same as an annulment. The couple was still deemed married; the application was compulsory merely to sanction separate living accommodations. The existence of such a complex suit forces us to ask an obvious question: if assertions of precontract were such an easy ‘out,’ and self-divorce was so common, why do those few applications for separation exist at all? Would it not have been more logical to sue for precontract with a lover rather than stay married for an eternity to an abusive spouse? One possible explanation for this quandary is that plaintiffs were seeking a guaranteed escape. Self-divorce required mutual agreement; sometimes consensus was simply not feasible, especially when alimony was concerned. If one-half of the couple was not participating enthusiastically in the deception, a trumped up charge of precontract might be apparent to the court; but who can quibble with domestic bloodshed recounted by troubled friends and family? Armed with a solid case and copious evidence, a victim of abuse might have preferred to stick to the less deceptive path. Cases sued as divorce a mensa et thoro, then, represent situations of abuse egregious enough to comply with public (if not always ecclesiastical) definitions of cruelty. 4 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 548. 5 Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 511. 6 For a good discussion of canonical debate on the subject, see A. Esmein, Le mariage en droit canonique, 2nd ed. (2 vols., Paris: R. Génestal and J. Dauvillier, 1929–35), 2.106–13.

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How did the church and society identify ‘cruelty’ in this context? Repeatedly, historians have argued that wife abuse was acceptable in the Middle Ages, as long as it was ‘within limits.’ The church’s official line in this matter, as discussed above, is difficult to discern. Canonical legislation does not give cruelty a clear definition; yet, clerical writers of the period relay evidence as to how the church might have understood it. Thomas Chobham observed that the church explained ‘coercion’ as the level of force employed to extract consent to marriage from an unwilling bride or groom. Basing his understanding on the writing of Alexander III, Chobham stated that the “degree of violence and fear must be such that it could turn a stable man, such as fear of death or physical mutilation.”7 While he did not suggest the courts should apply this definition universally to all marital litigation, vocabulary of this kind appears in most of the English cases of domestic violence, and as such implies that it was ubiquitous. The evidence of the church courts, then, helps to reconstruct medieval perceptions of acceptable domestic violence. The records of the ecclesiastical province of York during the later medieval period provide the ideal venue to explore these boundaries. English scribes were meticulous in both recording and preserving the details of these cases, and as such shed some light on contemporary concepts of violence and marital disharmony. While cause papers exist for both ecclesiastical provinces (York and Canterbury), the York papers are by far the more complete and revealing where cases of divorce a mensa et thoro are concerned. Perhaps because of the much earlier dates of the Canterbury material,8 the documentation of the Canterbury cause papers is meagre in comparison. While the York cause papers often include lengthy files boasting witness depositions and libels from the plaintiffs, the Canterbury material is exceptionally brief (often a single membrane of parchment that may contain no more than a paragraph summary of the case). Moreover, the Canterbury cause papers do not include any detailed cases of divorce a mensa et thoro on the grounds of violence. Consequently, the York material offers a much more fertile ground

7 Thomas Chobham, Thomae de Chobham. Summa Confessorum, trans. F. Bromfield (Louvain: Analecta Medieavalie Namurcensia, v. 25, 1968), 142. 8 The Sede Vacante Scrap Book and the Ecclesiastical Suit Rolls are Canterbury’s equivalent of York’s cause papers. Both collections are concentrated in the thirteenth century, with some material from the early fourteenth.

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for the study of cases of domestic violence in this period. For the entire province of York in the later medieval period (that is, from the fourteenth to the very early sixteenth centuries), there are only six files which may be identified as applications for separation on these grounds.9 It is important to note that this represents only a tiny fraction of the number of cases arising from matrimonial disputes that appeared before the archbishop’s court; for the same period, there are at least 202 other marriage-related causes, many of which are very complete files indeed.10 The surviving documentation for judicial separations varies. Some offer only a few membranes of witness depositions; one case contains a stunning sixty-two documents. In three of the six cases, the judgement has not survived. In the remaining three, two were decided in favour of the plaintiff. In all six cases, the victim of abuse was female. These six cases are invaluable sources of collective narratives of marital violence. Each case boasts a compilation of witness depositions that offer first-hand accounts of violent encounters between husband and wife, and their own unique interpretations of this violence. As such, it is possible to gain an understanding of how contemporary perceptions of the power relations within marriage were internalised and perpetuated. Moreover, these narratives help us to explain village responses to marital violence. Not only do they clarify why men and women chose to intervene in spousal violence, but also

9

Because the extant documentation is so varied and incomplete, it is difficult to identify the action in each cause with absolute certainty. Missing libels, in particular, force the historian to rely on other sources for indications of what action the plaintiff might have sued. For example, in the case of Margery de Devoine and Richard Scot (YBI CP. E 257), all that survives are four membranes of six witness depositions focusing on Richard’s adultery and maltreatment of his wife. Accordingly, one might perceive this cause in a couple of different ways. I am inclined to see this case as an application for divorce a mensa et thoro for two reasons. First, the accounts focus almost exclusively on Richard’s poor conduct as a husband, and fail to respond to any particular allegations imputed against Margery. The general tenor, as a result, is very much that of a woman desperate to get away from an abusive husband. Second, the case is endorsed as Devoine c. Scot, suggesting that Margery was indeed the plaintiff in this action (although this does not exclude the possibility of a counter-suit). Charles Donahue, Jr., who is much more familiar with the records of the medieval English church, has been kind enough to point out to me the possibility that these depositions might well represent Margery’s defence to an action for restoration of conjugal rights. My decision to treat CP. E 257 as a case of divorce a mensa et thoro is a judgement call, but one that I feel reflects the sentiments expressed in the depositions for this cause. 10 This figure may include repeat appearances by the same litigants.

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conversely, they help us to understand why others may have chosen not to involve themselves. Collectively, these six cases confirm that litigants and the courts understood marital violence in a gendered fashion. Gendered responses are evident in a number of ways. First, men and women in the courtroom described marital disharmony in entirely different ways. While women were concerned most with physical violence, men were much more troubled by adultery. Although both transgressions were violations of the popular ethics of marriage, the latter was much less ambiguous, and may accordingly have been a more obvious target for communal disdain. That men chose not to focus on male violence, however, is an indication that, in part, they may have condoned it. Second, the court strategies adopted by litigants and their deponents very much reflect a desire to stay within the acceptable gender paradigm. Stories recounted by plaintiffs and their concerned witnesses abound with images of female passivity: good, obedient wives who, only through their husband’s failure to live up to social expectations, endured unbearable living conditions. Defendants manipulated the same paradigm. Husbands accused of wife beating denied the abuse and chose instead to paint themselves the ideal patriarchs: when faced with rebellion and scorn from their wives, these anxious bridegrooms had no choice but to reform their wives’ behaviour with a firm hand. Such a wide gap between the narratives of plaintiff and defendant make it clear that an entirely truthful account of the abuse is likely unattainable from these records. Litigants recounted tales of abuse that would meet the court’s strict requirements. In this respect, Laura Gowing reminds us of another significant detail in unravelling the meaning of these depositions. She notes that it was the proctors’ responsibility to make comprehensive legal narratives out of people’s words, selecting relevant evidence, ordering it, and ensuring it made sense to the court. Probably it was the proctors who had the most hand in deciding what details were the basis of a case: the exact words of abuse in defamation suits, the gradations of violence in complaints of cruelty, or the signs of affection and familiarity that could prove promises of marriage.11

11 Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 45.

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None of these witnesses entered an interrogation without some contact with the proctor (an attorney in the ecclesiastical court). Each tale was “coached”; the proctor knew exactly what details to include in order to be successful in court.12 The stories of abuse drawn from the cause papers tell us much about the church’s, as well as contemporary, expectations of the unacceptable limits of violence. To this end, litigants implemented creative dispute strategies, and some may even have borrowed freely from the vast repository of instructional literature and lore associated with the church, knowing that the officials of the church might not reject its own teachings. Finally, these six cases draw attention to the role played by male honour in marriage. Defendants regularly denied allegations of wife beating, not because they wished to keep their marriages together, but because courts and litigants alike thought wife beating was scandalous, and unmanly behaviour.

Devoine c. Scot (1349) The case of Devoine c. Scot13 brings us much closer to an understanding of the limits of violence, and the kind of allegations a plaintiff believed she needed to impute if she wished to succeed in an application for a judicial separation. More important still, this case substantiates that litigants, their proctors, and the courts may not have perceived physical violence, on its own, as sufficient grounds for a separation. Margery de Devoine and her husband Richard Scot had a stormy relationship. As Peter de Walworth of Benwell, witness for the plaintiff, tells it, the honeymoon had been over for Margery and Richard for quite some time, figuratively speaking. Eight years before the suit, on a date that neither he nor the other witnesses could recall, in the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Richard beat Margery with a staff about the head and shoulders, wounding her severely and knocking

12 For a good discussion of the instance process in the ecclesiastical courts, see Norma Adams and Charles Donahue, Jr., eds., Select Cases from the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Province of Canterbury c. 1200–1301 (London: Selden Society, 1981), 37–56. 13 YBI CP. E 257, Margery de Devoine c. Richard Scot (1349).

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one of her eyes from the socket.14 Margery was in such a pitiable state that neighbours fetched a doctor to their home at once in order to treat her wounds only to have Richard inform the doctor in no uncertain terms to leave, threatening to break both his arms and legs. Margery’s injuries were left to heal unattended. Another witness for the plaintiff, John de Halghton, commented that Margery later fled to a hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on her own, dressed only in her underclothes. Employing the language of abuse typical of these documents, the witnesses note that “because of the cruelty and harshness of her husband, and out of fear for her life, she refused to return to her husband.” None of the witnesses chose to reveal how this issue was resolved, or even if it was, and at least one witness seemed to believe the two were no longer married,15 subtly implying that an illicit separation already may have occurred as far back as eight years ago. Five other witnesses repeated variations of this tale of abuse, each depicting the altercation as the only instance of excessive violence between the two. Yet, none of them describes this behaviour as unprecedented. They all agreed that Richard generally mistreated his wife, that his behaviour was well known in the community, and that Margery did not dare cohabit with her husband out of fear for her life. Each of these elements was essential to the case and was included in virtually all applications for separation. However, Margery’s witnesses offer concrete evidence to suggest that a grain of truth lies behind these allegations. As Peter de Walworth de Benwell states, this was not the first time Richard underwent discipline for his behaviour. When called before the official of the archdeacon of Northumberland to respond to allegations of ill conduct,16 Richard had gone so far as to declare publicly that “it was his right to beat 14 This interpretation of the events is deeply indebted to the work of Frederik Pederson. While I was unable to read the damaged portion of Peter de Walworth of Benwell’s testimony, Pedersen had less difficulty. Pedersen’s translation of this event made me aware of the inclusion in this tale of the ocular displacement—a factor that I will return to later in this chapter. For Pedersen’s translation, see his Marriage Disputes in Medieval England (London: Hambledon, 2000), 136. 15 When recounting the tale of abuse, Margery is referred to as his “then wife” (tunc uxorem), suggesting that while she had been married to him at the time of the incident, she was no longer. This formulation is actually a fairly common inclusion in the court records for both provinces and would seem to confirm Helmholz’s belief that self-divorce was a popular resolution to marital disharmony. 16 Unfortunately, the deposition does not elaborate on the specific nature of the sin that landed Richard in court before the archdeacon of Northumberland.

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his wife.” Peter’s decision to incorporate this detail into his testimony hints that both the witness and the archdeacon of Northumberland did not agree.17 From a modern perspective, surely such a brutal beating should have been ample evidence to prove a dangerous marriage. Nevertheless, Margery’s approach to litigation implies that she was not confident of qualifying for a separation on these grounds alone. Prudently, she increased her chances of success by including allegations of adultery. Her witnesses offered testimony to confirm that Richard not only had adulterous relations with as many as seven women, but these unions had produced many illegitimate children, all of whom he supported and recognised as his own. The reasons why women like Margery felt it necessary to incorporate claims of adultery in their requests for separation is one that has been the source of some debate.18 Alison McRae-Spencer writes that a woman’s “case is greatly helped if the husband can be seen by the court to be blameworthy in another area of his life which is even less defensible than violence towards his wife.”19 The unwavering assertion that male adultery is less ‘defensible’ than male violence notwithstanding, her point is appropriate. If a woman was at all uncertain whether the incidents of violence recounted by her witnesses would fulfil the requirements for judicial separation, then it made sense also to paint her husband as an immoral character. In addition, because adultery was another permissible justification for separation, it was the most obvious choice to pad a case of cruelty. The answer to this question may be in the process itself. James Brundage notes that the courts Christian exercised what is known as the ‘clean-hands rule’: one adulterous spouse might not charge the other with adultery, regardless of how public the affair.20 In this situation, Margery might

17

YBI CP. E 257/2. Early modernists, however, have performed most of the research in this field. See Keith Thomas, “The Double Standard,” Journal of History of Ideas 20 (1959): 195–216; Tim Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1998), 194–201; and Gowing, 184, 188. 19 Alison McRae-Spencer, “Putting Women in Their Place: Social and Legal Attitudes towards Violence in Marriage in Late-Medieval England,” The Ricardian 10 (1995): 190. 20 James A. Brundage, “Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law,” in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 67. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 244. 18

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have been attempting to secure her reputation by being the first to bandy about accusations of infidelity.21 These allegations are noteworthy because they contradict the work of historians who have argued in favour of a firm double standard in the medieval period, one that rigidly structured the sexual behaviour of women, while showing indifference to the conduct of men.22 In order for Margery’s witnesses to speak reprovingly of Richard’s actions, their accusations must echo a wider sentiment shared by members of the medieval community that male infidelity is also reprehensible. As Shannon McSheffrey has argued, to posit a double standard in sexual behaviour in the late medieval period is to construct too simple a paradigm.23 “Late medieval patriarchy brought with it the concept of governance: not just the rule of men over women, but also the responsibility of men to use that rule wisely. In addition, each man was expected to rule himself and contain his own lustful will. The limits of respectable behavior were placed differently for men and for women, but by no means was a man’s sexual life irrelevant to his good name.”24 Margery may have added the adulterous relationship to brace what she saw as a weak claim of abuse. In the absence of a libel, we must also recognise the possibility that the plaintiff intended the allegation of abuse to fortify an argument for a separation on the grounds of adultery. Given that the witness depositions respond first to the allegations of adultery (which usually correspond to the order of complaints listed in the plaintiff ’s articles and positions), this may have been the case with Devoine c. Scot. The length of time each witness spent within the depositions on the adultery as opposed to the violence supports this hypothesis. Each was much more articulate

21 Medieval husbands were not inclined to sue their wives for separation on the grounds of adultery. In this study, no cases of this type were discovered. Charles Donahue, Jr. has suggested to me the possibility that YBI CP. F 110 may be a case of divorce a mensa et thoro on the grounds of adultery; however, the poor condition of the record makes it difficult to determine its cause with any certainty. 22 For example, see Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 31, 42–3, 52–3, 76 and 134. 23 See Shannon McSheffrey,“Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture: Governance, Patriarchy and Reputation,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), 243–78. 24 McSheffrey, 258.

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about Scot’s illicit affairs: naming a variety of mistresses, detailing the number of children he supported from these unions, and even going so far as to explain how he or she had first learned about his extramarital activities. The violent altercation was not an afterthought, but it was not as central to the depositions as were the affairs. Probably this was a litigious strategy purposely employed by Margery and her witnesses on the advice of her proctor. A close examination of one particular detail from the witness depositions may illuminate why, in Margery’s case, it made sense to favour the charge of adultery. Almost all the witnesses carefully pointed out that some time ago, Richard’s affairs had become so notorious that he was brought up on charges before the archdeacon of Northumberland. In the archdeacon’s court, Richard confessed his sins and received public condemnation for his actions. Bearing this in mind, when Margery’s witnesses tendered this information, they probably intended it to support the verbal contention that Scot’s adulterous behaviour was well known. Yet, the inclusion of this evidence may be more significant. In cases of judicial separation where adultery was the cause, witnesses were not obligatory if the parties had confessed to their sins.25 Once more before the court, Scot may have been unwilling to confess to his adultery and hoped that all records of his ex officio case before the archdeacon of Northumberland had been lost or forgotten. In testifying to his confession, Margery’s witnesses may have been trying to achieve the same goal, and thus guarantee a sanctioned separation. Regardless of whether Margery’s primary intention was to sue for adultery or cruelty, her case is instructive in the combination of separate accusations. Her need to claim both would tend to indicate that Margery, or her proctor, did not judge this level of abuse (or adultery, for that matter), adequate on its own to fulfil the ecclesiastical requirements for separation.

25 R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 104.

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Wyvell c. Venables (1410) Because the case of Wyvell c. Venables26 was successful, it is capable of answering some key questions about the kind of strategies litigants needed to adopt in order to succeed in the courts of the English church. This case demonstrates that Margery de Devoine’s strategy of inflating the charges against her husband by asserting both adultery and cruelty was not only astute, but also necessary. Like Margery, Cecilia Wyvell allegedly suffered physical abuse at the hands of her husband; when it comes to adultery, however, Cecilia’s plight was much worse than Margery’s. While Cecilia and Henry’s marriage sometimes seems even farcical, the exceptional nature of these allegations may have been exactly what was required in order to obtain a judicial separation. More important still, because Henry’s response to the allegations has survived, we can better understand this case from the defendant’s perspective, and the kinds of decisions with which he needed to wrestle when faced with allegations of wife beating. Cecilia Wyvell presented a formidable case for marital cruelty. Witnesses for the plaintiff offered two particularly unforgettable instances of abuse. The first took place seven years before the suit. Henry beat Cecilia to the ground with his fist, and then punched her eye with such force that he knocked it from the socket so that it hung on her cheek by a thread. According to her witnesses, she would have lost the organ completely had her mother not been present to replace it gently in the socket. Some time after this occasion, her witnesses say that Henry pounded Cecilia to the ground and beat her with a shortened staff. He then took her by the neck, strangling and suffocating her, so that the neighbours had to rescue Cecilia. The incident left Cecilia bandaged around her arm and neck for a period of fifteen days or more. While these were the two most violent episodes used to illustrate his barbarous behaviour, the consensus, as we saw also in Margery’s case, seemed to be that Henry’s usual conduct towards Cecilia was not much better. Agnes wife of Adam Shafton of York noted that, “[f ]or ten years. . . . Henry has been and (still) is a violent, overbearing, adulterous and terrible man . . . (and) that Henry was and is accustomed at all times when he has

26

YBI CP. F 56, Cecilia Wyvell c. Henry Venables (1410).

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access to Cecilia, his wife, to mistreating Cecilia and greatly beating her and wounding her enormously without cause.”27 If Agnes is to be believed, Henry was not successful at hiding his raucous behaviour from the community in which he lived. Cecilia, wife of William Redeness of York, provided a very thorough narrative of the abuse suffered at Henry’s hands. According to Redeness, Henry’s habit of greatly beating his wife with a shortened staff had driven Cecilia to the point of suicide. The record alleges that, as if she had lost her mind, Cecilia threatened to jump from a window in her highest chamber or drown herself in the river Ouse, and would have done so had her mother not intervened. Having been prepared by Cecilia’s proctor, her witnesses knew what was expected of them and accordingly produced depositions of a highly damning nature. Not only did they describe the brutality and excessive nature of the force, they placed the entire blame for these incidents on Henry. William Constowe of York swore that Henry’s near blinding of Cecilia was “without cause,” while other witnesses referred to Henry’s character in turn as “severe,” “terrible,” “demented,” and “lunatic.” The same witnesses described Cecilia as “an honourable, humble, and kind woman.” The inference, clearly, is that Cecilia had not provoked his anger through disobedience or shrewishness; any violence directed towards her was not chastisement, but a manifestation of Henry’s mental instability. In light of the witness depositions, Henry’s response to the allegations seems overstated at best. He is self-described as “a decent, mild, sombre, pious, kind, quiet, peaceful and humble man.”28 Like Margery de Devoine, Cecilia also felt it wise to include allegations of adultery. Her witnesses declared that, over the past four years, Henry had been involved in a serious relationship with a woman named Mabota Don, and that Henry had fathered three illegitimate children by her. He is described by one witness as treating Mabota “as if she were his wife,” insinuating that his behaviour was not only in blatant disregard of common and Christian ethics, it also bordered on bigamy.29 Further, their adultery was well-known

27 28

YBI CP. F 56/7. YBI CP. F 56/1. This description derives from Henry’s response to Cecilia’s

libel. 29 YBI CP. F 56/7. From the deposition of Alexander Johnson of Newcastleupon-Tyne.

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throughout the dioceses of York, Lichfield, and Coventry and in the vill of Westchester where he sometimes cohabited with Mabota. That Cecilia’s suit for judicial separation was successful may come as no surprise. Perhaps what is most reprehensible about this case is how much she allegedly endured before applying for separation: not only general maltreatment, but also one near blinding, one homicide attempt, pseudo-bigamy, and being driven to the brink of suicide. It was only after all of this that she applied for a judicial separation. Is it possible that the requirements for separation were so inflexible that such a shameful and scandalous situation was necessary for a successful plea? Or, might these accusations represent something even more deceitful? It is possible that these charges were just that: allegations invented to obtain a judicial separation knowing that the church could not possibly ignore violence and adultery of such an exceptional nature. Bearing this in mind, what exactly was Henry’s defence? In an otherwise relatively complete file, there are no surviving depositions from counter-witnesses called on Henry’s behalf. It is possible that Henry did not appoint any; and yet, with such a powerful case for the plaintiff, it would have been reckless for Henry not to do so. Henry’s response to Cecilia’s libel is the only extant evidence to document his position. In this, not only does he deny passionately “the beatings, terrors, and ferocities” imputed in the plaintiff ’s libel and positions, instead he chooses to characterise his marriage to Cecilia as both “honourable and praiseworthy.” If there were any problems in the marriage, he said that Cecilia was entirely to blame. While he treated her “modestly and amicably,” she was “disobedient, hardhearted, horrible, terrible, abominable, unsettled, overly-vocal, and noisy, and nearly a virago.”30 Forced to live with such an unpleasant woman, it is perhaps even more striking that Henry had made only two attempts on her life. Henry’s strategy in pleading this case has a number of obvious deficiencies. First, it is contradictory to say at once that his marriage is praiseworthy, and his wife is a virago and difficult to live with. The marriage could not be healthy if his wife truly lived up to this depiction. Second, despite his self-fashioned portrait as Henry the Venerable, he chooses not to address the issue of adultery at all,

30

YBI CP. F 56/1.

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failing even to issue a feckless denial. Court officials may have understood this as a tacit admission to the contrary. Third, the utter failure of Henry’s response to refer to counter-witnesses who might support his version of events exposes the possibility that Henry may have intended to stand his case on his word alone. His defence, then, consisted of an irreconcilable and farfetched account, reeking of egotism and derision of the law. Up against five credible witnesses for the plaintiff, this defence is not only laughable, but piteous. Why would Henry have opted for such a flawed defence? The most plausible explanation is that Henry wanted to lose. Witnesses for the plaintiff described a marriage in the process of serious breakdown: even if their marriage was not as violent or as adulterous as Cecilia’s witnesses describe it, the reality may not have been far off. After thirteen long years, maybe Henry, as much as Cecilia, wanted to call it quits. Cecilia’s case was successful then, not only because of her own ingenious pleading and visible distress, but because Henry chose not to defend his case. Perhaps one of the most important questions is, was Cecilia involved in Henry’s decision to lose? Such a rash defence may represent collusion between husband and wife. If any part of Cecilia’s narrative presents an accurate picture of their marriage, then both Cecilia and Henry were unhappy and probably wished to end their unfortunate marriage. A case of cruelty brought before the church and poorly defended would have been a fair solution for both. It is not hard to imagine, then, that Cecilia and Henry might have schemed to deceive the courts. Cecilia’s tale of ocular displacement and psychological torment coupled with Henry’s arrogance and incoherence provided the ideal court case to transform an unhappy marriage into a very happy separation.

Nesfeld c. Nesfeld (1396) Of all the cases in this grouping, the records show that only one case was unsuccessful. Accordingly, Nesfeld c. Nesfeld31 provides a glimpse into what forms of violence may have remained within the definition of ‘moderate chastisement.’ Similarly, Thomas Nesfeld’s

31

YBI CP. E 221, Margery wife of Thomas Nesfeld c. Thomas Nesfeld (1396).

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response to the allegations is a far cry from Henry’s haughty and dogmatic denial. Through his witnesses, Thomas shifted the blame for any physical violence to Margery herself. His account of Margery as a woman of mutinous and debauched character reflect the kind of expectations of marital violence depicted in the ballads of Chapter One; these accusations, then, probably represent the response the courts, and respectable families, expected from a defendant in cases of cruelty. The case of Nesfeld c. Nesfeld recounted two very distinct renditions of the marriage of Margery and Thomas. Margery’s witnesses, both female, painted a picture of irrational and unprovoked murderous violence. According to Joan White of York, . . . this witness was present together with Margery Speight, her fellow witness, and John Semer, servant of Thomas Nesfeld of York in the same Thomas’ house in the parish of Bishophill, York, on the Saturday before the feast of St Bartholomew four years ago next within the darkness of night where and when she saw the said Thomas throw Margery, his wife to the ground with a club and beat her severely with the same and afterwards he drew his baslard [dagger] and gravely wounded her in the arm and broke the bone of that arm, commonly called ‘le Spelbon’ and he would then have killed her that night if he had not been prevented by this witness, the said Margery, her fellow witness, and John Semer, then servant of the same Thomas. Afterwards, for a week or two, as this witness believes, when the same Margery, wife of the same Thomas, was somewhat healed and restored, she went away from Thomas, her husband, because she dared not stay longer with him for fear of death . . .32

Both Joan White and Margery Speight, the other witness for the plaintiff whose story mirrors that of her co-deponent, constructed their testimonies carefully, omitting entirely the context of the abuse in order to accentuate the husband’s irrationality. If they had been the only witnesses for this case, Margery Nesfeld might have been more fortunate in her suit. However, Thomas provided two counterwitnesses. Richard Hanley of York appeared merely as a character witness for the case. He declared that he had known Thomas for twenty years, and during that time, he had never seen or heard that Thomas assaulted Margery.33 Hanley’s inclusion in this suit may seem

32 33

YBI CP. E 221. YBI CP. E 221/1.

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incongruous, given that he appeared as one of only two counterwitnesses and he knew nothing about the alleged altercation. Still, Richard Hanley was a sixty-year-old male. In a society that equated masculinity and age with authority and wisdom, his testimony must have carried a great deal of weight, despite his unsatisfactory knowledge of the events. Otherwise, Thomas would not have bothered to include him. This left one actual counter-witness, John Semer, Thomas’s servant at the time of the event. John recounted the same violent exchange but from an entirely different viewpoint than that of the witnesses for the plaintiff. He declared that, four years ago the said Margery left her home in the parish of Bishophill and went to a house, the which this witness does not remember, in the city of York without and contrary to the said Thomas, her husband’s mandate and precept, and stayed there from noon of that day until the darkness of night. When she returned to the house shared by the said Thomas and the said Margery his wife, Thomas asked why she had left her home against his will and precept. She replied that she wished to go where she would against the will of the same Thomas her husband, and then Thomas, seeing Margery’s rebellion, struck her with his fist in order to chastise her.34

By adding a context to the abuse, John’s version produces a much different story. Margery is no longer the deplorable victim of senseless abuse, but a disobedient and potentially adulterous wife requiring moral correction by her husband. His account also reduced significantly the degree of violence. John’s version of the events included no weapons, no broken bones, no recovery period. He went on to say that he was present one day, the which he does not remember, around the feast of the nativity of St John the Baptist four years ago in the aforesaid house when he heard the said Margery swear and say to Thomas her husband that she could kill him in bed at night if she wanted, which same Thomas, roused by anger, wanted to strike her with his fist. She immediately fled outside the door into the highway crying, wailing, weeping, and publicly exclaiming that Thomas, her husband, wanted to kill her.35

34 35

YBI CP. E 221/1. YBI CP. E 221/1.

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In John’s version, if there is any victim in this marriage, it is Thomas, whose unruly wife has a history of making false accusations against him, subtly insinuating that this accusation may, also, be false, and has even threatened his life. John concluded his testimony with the final damning statement that he never witnessed any violent behaviour towards Margery that was not provoked.36 The court ruled against Margery, and she was required to stay married to Thomas. Commenting on the reason why Margery’s suit was unsuccessful, P.J.P. Goldberg has argued that biology is responsible. He remarks “[s]ince Margery brought two female deponents to testify to the same events, whereas her husband had only one such (male) deponent and another (male) character witness, it is hard not to conclude that the court was prejudiced against the testimony of women.”37 This verdict corresponds with canonical requirements. Canonists advocated a set series of rules and standards regarding the acceptability of testimony to which judges were expected to adhere. Tancred’s Ordo notes, “[i]f the witnesses on one side conflict with those on the other, then the judge ought to follow those who are most trustworthy— the freeborn rather than the freedman, the older rather than the younger, the man of more honorable estate rather than the inferior, the noble rather than the ignoble, the man rather than the woman.”38 Despite Tancred’s assertions, women did appear frequently as witnesses in cases of marital litigation, a fact that would suggest their testimony was not without value, and maybe even especially appropriate.39 In his demographic study of fourteenth-century cause papers involving matrimony, Frederik Pedersen notes that of the 565 gender-identifiable witnesses, 389 were men, 175 were women.40 While these levels do not prove equal representation, the figures reveal a high level of

36

YBI CP. E 221/1. P.J.P. Goldberg, “Debate: Fiction in the archives: the York cause papers as a source for later medieval social history,” Continuity and Change 12 (1997): 445. 38 As cited and translated by Charles Donahue, Jr. “Proof by Witnesses in the Church Courts of Medieval England: An Imperfect Reception of the Learned Law,” in On the Laws and Customs of England. Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne, ed. Morris S. Arnold, et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 131. 39 Donahue, 130. 40 Frederik Pedersen, “Demography in the archives: social and geographical factors in fourteenth-century York cause paper marriage litigation,” Continuity and Change 10 (1995): 420. 37

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female participation as witnesses, at a ratio of 1:2.22 female to male witnesses. This figure is considerably greater than female participation in the church courts in other kinds of litigation, and dramatically higher than female participation in the legal process of the king’s courts. These figures are fairly consistent with the ratio of male to female participation as witnesses in cases of divorce a mensa et thoro at 1:2.45. While these figures demonstrate a marked predisposition for male witnesses, female witnesses played no small part. Consequently, the fact that the only case of separation known to be unsuccessful had only female witnesses for the plaintiff, then, is simply not substantial enough without further gender break-down of all matrimonial cases, both successful and otherwise, in order to discern any particular gender bias. Alternative explanations for the court’s sentence are also possible. John’s position as servant in the Nesfeld household at the time of the violent exchange may have privileged his testimony. The court may have perceived John Semer as being uniquely qualified to comment on Thomas and Margery’s relationship because he was a member of the Nesfeld familia and, as Joan White’s testimony quoted above demonstrates, his position meant that he was privy to these altercations. What Thomas lacked in quantity of witnesses, then, he compensated with quality. A final possibility is that Margery’s case failed to meet the canonical requirements for proof. Because Margery was the plaintiff, she shouldered the burden of proof. The law required her to produce two credible witnesses to convince the judge of her argument. The court bore no such expectations for Thomas. He did not need to establish his case affirmatively by two witnesses. All he needed to do was cast doubt on the testimony of Margery’s witnesses. Thomas also responded personally to the allegations of abuse against him, and his version of events played upon John Semer’s moralised account. In his positions, he argued that Margery’s rebellion earned his actions, and that his “castigation,” not “beating,” had been “lawful” and “honest” rather than “excessive” or “cruel.” He intended his behaviour only to reduce Margery’s errors, as a good husband should. He went on to say “he was never harsh or cruel to any woman, and that he never engaged in any illicit beatings of his wife.”41

41

YBI CP. E 221/2.

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Thomas’s reinterpretation of the relationship, fortified by John Semer’s testimony, drastically changes the perspective on the cause of violence within this marriage; nevertheless, his representation of the union is essentially no different than that of Margery’s two close friends. Whether Margery was innocent victim or murderous shrew, his response still presents the marriage both as a dangerous, unhappy union. Regardless, the court chose to enforce the marriage. Two instances of the court held against Margery and supported the marriage. Thomas was required to give surety that he would not mistreat Margery in the future, a detail that argues strongly that the court accepted Margery’s story (at least, in part). When she tried to appeal the case to the Holy See, however, the court official refused to refer it. Margery could have continued to pursue the case in Rome without the court’s protection, but there is no evidence to suggest that she did so. The modern observer, accustomed to a world where divorce is commonplace, cannot help but ask, if the court had reason to suspect that Margery and Thomas’s marriage was dangerous why uphold it? In marital litigation the church courts assumed the role of “a rather heavy-handed marriage counsellor”: it was their intention to keep the marriage together whenever possible.42 Still, in the case of Margery and Thomas, the court seems to be inviting future animosity or even fatality, if we are to believe any of the testimonies presented. That, however, may be the clue. Margery and Thomas had been married for more than ten years. How could a marriage of that length produce only three witnesses qualified to speak to the rocky nature of the relationship? In the intense existence of medieval society, it is difficult to imagine that Margery and Thomas managed successfully to hide their domestic squabbles from their neighbours. Furthermore, each witness was able to testify to only one incident of actual, rather than threatened, violence. Margery de Devoine presented seven witnesses on her behalf, Cecilia Wyvell five. Both these plaintiffs submitted additional evidence of marital breakdown outside of the one memorable occurrence of domestic violence in order to illustrate a pattern of abuse rather than an isolated instance. The Nesfelds’ three eyewitnesses with such opposing views and only one violent incident between them likely was not ample evidence to

42

Helmholz, 101.

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convince the court that this was anything more than a trumped up case of marital disharmony. The failure of this suit, then, tells us less about the church’s definition of acceptable limits of spousal abuse than about the strict legal requirements for manipulating the sacraments. Nevertheless, John Semer’s account does hint at traditional justifications of marital violence. To characterise assault as mere chastisement for disobedience and marital rebellion suggests that John Semer’s assumptions were built on a heritage of ideas about gender roles in marriage. Whether the church agreed or not, John Semer felt that Margery’s free will and independent mind transgressed gender norms and justified violent retribution.

Munkton c. Huntington (1345–6) The case of Munkton c. Huntington43 not only uncovers degrees of acceptable violence, it also addresses an earlier query: why plaintiffs did not plead cases of abuse merely as precontracts in order to dissolve the union. The evidence of this case would seem to argue that the choice might have been more difficult than we can imagine. This case provides abundant evidence of the legal options litigants had available to them. Over the course of the period 1345–46, Simon Munkton pled two suits for the restoration of conjugal rights, and even turned to the royal courts with a plea of ravishment; Agnes Huntington began as a defendant in a case for the restitution of rights, then became a plaintiff in an application for a judicial separation, but ended up asking the court for an annulment. The actions of both litigants remind us that medieval England was a highly litigious society; individuals were prepared to turn to whatever court they believed might sympathise best with their plight, as well as use whatever pleading strategy might best meet their needs.44

43 YBI CP. E 248, Simon Munkton c. Agnes Huntington (1345–6). For a fascinating, in-depth discussion of this case, see Frederik Pedersen, “‘Romeo and Juliet of Stonegate’: a medieval marriage in crisis,” (York: Borthwick Paper no. 87, 1995); repr. as chapter two in Marriage Disputes in Medieval England. 44 The resourcefulness of litigants has been explored best by Daniel Klerman, “Jurisdictional Competition and the Evolution of the Common Law: An Hypothesis,” in Boundaries of the Law: Geography, Gender and Jurisdiction in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Musson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 149–68.

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Agnes Huntington and Simon Munkton married for love rather than money, but money was their downfall. In the autumn of 1345, Agnes found herself under attack from her husband and evicted from the conjugal home after a passionate dispute between the two in which Agnes staunchly refused to consent to a sale of lands she had received from her father.45 Fearing that Agnes might take legal action against him, Simon decided that the best line of attack was, in fact, to beat her to it by filing a suit with the court of the Dean of the Christianity of York claiming spousal abandonment without just cause. In response to his action for a restoration of conjugal rights, Agnes argued that, because of Simon’s cruelty and out of fear for her own safety, she was incapable of residing with her husband, and in fact desired a separation from him in order to put as much distance between them as she was able. By October of 1345, the Dean’s court was uncertain about how to proceed with the case, whether to treat it as a correctional matter and order Agnes to return home to her husband; or, instead, to treat it as a civil action, and request Agnes to sue a case of divorce a mensa et thoro. To resolve the problem, the archbishop of York himself intervened in the case and brought it before his audience court for a more extensive inquiry into the state of their marriage. By the end of February 1346, the archbishop had made up his mind on the matter and decided that Agnes had made enough of a case to proceed as a civil action. The charges of cruelty were renewed and the case proceeded as an application for separation by Agnes on the grounds of cruelty. At the archbishop’s court, both sides presented very different versions of the assault. According to Agnes, Simon beat her “so much that blood poured out both by her nostrils and ears.”46 She was in such a deplorable condition that Simon thought she had died during the beating. He fled the scene of the crime and was about to take refuge in the local church, presumably with the goal of claiming sanctuary, when it occurred to him to have someone look in on

45 Simon’s anger may have arisen from the fact that he had anticipated her forthcoming consent and already arranged the transfer of the lands to the steward of Lord Ralph Neville. Her refusal, then, may have placed him in a difficult situation. See the depositions of William Joveby, Nicholas Fraunceys and John Snaweshill in YBI CP. E 248/34, who all confirmed the transfer of land to Lord Nevill. Moreover, many of Agnes’s witnesses confirmed that Agnes was unwilling to endorse Simon’s use of her wealth. See CP. E 248/12 and 13. 46 YBI CP. E 248/33.

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his wife. Simon asked his neighbour, Nicholas Fraunceys, to stop in at his home and make sure Agnes was still alive. Nicholas and another man carted the wounded Agnes, battered and bleeding, to the home of another neighbour, John Snaweshill, where she might be safe from her husband’s rage. Simon returned home to the happy news that he was not a felon, and then visited Agnes long enough to tell her to seek permanent accommodation elsewhere. In her positions, Agnes stated that this attempt on her life had occurred “without reasonable cause” and that, as she saw it, his beating had been both “immoderate” and “excessive.”47 Employing the verbal formula of a separation suit, she decried that “because of the likely threat of death . . . and because of the pain of her body and the excessive cruelty committed against her by the said Simon,” she did not dare remain in a marriage with this man.48 Simon’s defence was filled with images of Eve. He explained that an argument had arisen between them because “Agnes kept company with certain men in suspect places against the will and prohibition of the said Simon, the said Agnes’ husband. And she conducted herself in a suspect manner in several ways against the said Simon and irreverently spoke disgraceful words against the said Simon.”49 From his perspective, Simon had no choice but to castigate Agnes for her unruly behaviour. Still, he argued that his reprimand was “without danger of death or mutilation of any limb, [but] lightly as is permitted by law.”50 He then produced witnesses to dispel the depiction of him as a money-hungry abuser. Picking up where Simon left off, his witnesses disparaged Agnes as an adulteress. She had not only associated with “suspect men” and conducted herself in a “suspect manner,” but she had already been presented at court and done public penance for an earlier affair with a squire named William Morthyng, providing solid proof of her lewd and immoral ways. On this particular evening, when Simon confronted her about her conduct, she answered him both “disgracefully” and “irreverently,” so that Simon “gave her a slap on the ear with his fist, a gentle one though . . . and in order to castigate and not violently.”51

47 48 49 50 51

YBI YBI YBI YBI YBI

CP. CP. CP. CP. CP.

E E E E E

248/26. 248/40. 248/31. 248/31. 248/30.

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In light of Devoine c. Scot and the church’s “clean-hands rule,” Simon’s strategy becomes clearer. Not only was he justifying his violent behaviour as moral discipline, and thus depicting himself as the upright, responsible husband, he was also attempting to negate her claim to a divorce a mensa et thoro. If an adulterous wife cannot demand separation because of her husband’s adultery, and if the church equated adultery and cruelty as grounds for separation, why should the court permit an adulterous wife to divorce a cruel husband? If his witnesses had been present at Agnes’s public penance for her incontinence, their testimony would have been as powerful as Agnes’s own confession. Whether Simon and his witnesses were being truthful in their account of Agnes’s extramarital dalliances or this was merely a ploy to manipulate the legal system, their construction of these events is revealing. To interpret a beating of the intensity described by Simon and his witnesses as castigations for disobedience and sexual misconduct is an indication that the church would have found the occasional slap or punch by a husband appropriate in the name of moral correction. After all, the charges of immorality cast against Agnes imply that she was in good need of correction. Simon’s desperation to diminish Agnes’s account, however, demonstrates that her version of the events comes dangerously close to the ecclesiastical definition of excessive violence. With such conflicting views and severe allegations, the court needed time to untangle the events. In order to save Agnes from any undue force, the archbishop granted her permission to live apart from her husband while the court reached a decision, and thus she resumed residence with her uncle, William Huntington, in Petergate.52 Simon soon tracked her down and exploited the delay as an opportunity for an out-of-court settlement by trying to beat Agnes into submission. According to neighbour Thomas Esoby, witness for the plaintiff, he saw Simon

52 The ex officio records of the late medieval court of Canterbury suggest that the courts frequently ordered the sequestration of endangered wives during matrimonial litigation. For example, the Canterbury act books for the years 1463 to 1505 include nine examples, see Y.1.6, fo. 21; Y.1.15, fos 160 and 201; Y.1.16, fo. 253; Y.1.17, fo. 13; Y.1.19 in which the folios are unnumbered but the cases are those of Ralph Huddingfeld of Smorden and his wife Amice Humfrey, and Lodan of Betrysden and his wife Elisabeth Barker; and finally, Y.2.2, fos 37 and 110.

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throw Agnes . . . to the ground and in a very smelly place . . . . and lie upon her stomach. But whether Simon hit the said Agnes then he does not know for certain . . . . And while they, Simon and Agnes, were lying there, John de Midelton, a tailor living in the same neighbourhood, came and took the same Simon by his hood and pulled him to himself away from the stomach of the said Agnes . . . Indeed, this Simon then drew out his knife but did not stab anyone with it, so far as this witness knows.53

Another witness for the plaintiff, Julianne de Aldeburgh, described just how brutal the beating actually was. She remarked how “she saw the said Simon . . . beat Agnes with his fists and feet so that afterwards she lay for a period of fifteen days in her bed and was not able to leave during that period of time because of the beating.”54 Simon’s effort got him no closer to reconciliation, nor had he convinced Agnes to grant him permission to sell her father’s lands. None the less, Simon was astute enough to recognise the implications of his failed settlement on Agnes’s request for separation. In order to counteract the damage, Simon sent in his own witnesses to defend his account of the confrontation. Both John de Midelton of York and his wife Agnes appeared for the defendant. Their interpretation of the episode was much tamer than either Thomas’s or Joan’s had been. They explained that Simon intended merely to meet with Agnes and persuade her to come home. The encounter did not go as planned; Simon became physically abusive, but not to the extent outlined by the witnesses for the plaintiff. John was obliged to pull Simon off Agnes, but he did not see any knife, and Agnes avoided any serious harm. In fact, John argued that Simon and Agnes reunited some time after the encounter. He saw them sit together, eating and drinking, and “kiss each other peaceably, voluntarily and without fear”; he also commented how Simon “treated [her] kindly.”55 Only Simon’s witnesses mention this rapprochement after the event. It is not difficult to imagine why they included this detail. Any reconciliation subsequent to the act of cruelty or adultery barred a separation.56 In fact, any settlement after a grant of separation by the church courts also lifted the grant. A wife cannot forgive her husband’s sins and then use those same sins against him 53 54 55 56

YBI CP. E 248/26c. YBI CP. E 248/26c. YBI CP. E 248/55. Helmholz, 100.

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when convenient. With this information, Simon may have achieved another minor victory in the courtroom. At about this time, Simon decided to pursue his cause simultaneously in both the ecclesiastical and royal courts. Simon requested a commission of oyer and terminer to look into the ravishment of his wife by Agnes’s uncle William, Richard de Grymesby and others.57 The enrolment in the Calendar of Patent Rolls notes specifically that Simon was concerned chiefly with the loss of goods taken with Agnes and detained from him still. It was not uncommon for husbands whose wives had deserted them to plead a suit of abduction in the king’s court. Abductions of this nature were most likely consensual; as is the case with Agnes Huntington, the wives were not only willing to leave, but probably orchestrated the entire event.58 The goal of such a suit was economic: husbands asked only for reparation for the loss of goods taken during the ‘abduction.’ In many respects, a favourable response from the royal courts to his request might have resolved his problems and made any further suit in the ecclesiastical courts unnecessary. Although the Calendar does not offer any hint to the court’s decision in this suit, Simon’s continued appearances in the ecclesiastical court points to the possibility that royal justice may have been awaiting the outcome of the ecclesiastical suit before proceeding in the king’s courts. Simon was still not ready to give up the possibility of an out-ofcourt settlement. Aided by a male acquaintance, Robert Tayergrave, Simon physically abducted Agnes from a Corpus Christi procession held within the precinct of York Minster. While Agnes was not hurt in the process, the seizure was against her will and accompanied by physical restraint. Gervase of Rawcliffe testified that Simon and Robert carried Agnes away from the parade with Simon holding Agnes by the head, Robert by her feet. Agnes finally encouraged them to let her walk and they discussed the issue rationally, although Simon had no success in persuading his wife to return. In the end, Agnes emerged from this incident uninjured, but the incident further tarnished Simon’s credibility.

57

CPR, vii.102. Sue Sheridan Walker, “Punishing Convicted Ravishers: Statutory Strictures and Actual Practise in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century England,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 239. 58

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Despite the renewed violence, Agnes chose this point in the litigation to change her tactic. In May 1346 Agnes repeated earlier allegations that her marriage to Simon was, in fact, invalid because of a precontract with John de Bristol, a former lover. She then proceeded with her case as an action for divorce a vinculo, an annulment, on the grounds of precontract.59 Soon after, Simon renewed his petition for restitution of conjugal rights, although the court does not appear to have addressed it with much seriousness. Agnes’s decision to change tactics, despite what appears to be a reasonably solid case involving multiple instances of abuse, implies that she lacked assurance in her chances. Nevertheless, the story of her precontract was plausible and had the added benefit of official documentation. In February 1339 Agnes and John, the son of a successful Yorkshire businessman, decided to marry despite vocal protests from Agnes’s parents who, for reasons unknown, had not taken a liking to the young man. Their disapproval was so vehement that the couple had difficulty in finding people willing to witness their exchange of vows. One servant of the household, Margaret Foxholes, was so determined to avoid a conflict of loyalties between Agnes and her parents that she ran from the exchange to prevent being called into court as a witness.60 Because of the notoriety of their relationship, it was not long before Agnes and John had to defend their marriage publicly, when they found themselves summoned before the tribunal of the Dean of the Christianity of York. At this meeting, John and Agnes once again attempted to persuade Agnes’s parents to agree to the marriage, but their approval was not forthcoming.

59 Agnes first brought up the issue of precontract with John de Bristol in response to Simon’s original action for a restitution of conjugal rights. However, her claim was the last in a list of allegations discussing Simon’s violent behaviour, which would seem to suggest that a separation from Simon was her primary concern. Considering mention of precontract did not appear again until May of the following year, the pattern of the case and the evidence brought forward by Agnes’s witnesses suggest that she intended to sue for a judicial separation and that she simply changed her mind in May of 1346. Frederik Pedersen does not agree with this conclusion. His assessment of this situation is that Agnes may have been suing for precontract all along. If this were the case, however, Agnes would not have required any witnesses to the violence of her marriage with Simon. This detail would have been extraneous and inappropriate. To have expended this much time and money on witnesses to the abuse suggests that Agnes chose to deviate from her original course and instead sue for precontract once she was no longer certain that she had a solid case of abuse. See Pedersen, Romeo and Juliet, 11. 60 YBI CP. E 248/23.

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In the end, the youthful Agnes of 1339 succumbed to the wishes of her parents and reported to the tribunal that the contract had been conditional on her parents’ consent, and thus the marriage was not valid. By 1346, however, a much wiser and mature Agnes was more prepared to defend this marriage. Simon’s response to Agnes’s claim of precontract was somewhat less consistent. He combined two distinct tactics. First, he presented witnesses who claimed that Agnes and John’s contract had indeed been conditional upon the consent of her parents and that, before Simon and Agnes decided to marry, the Dean of the Christianity of York had declared them free to marry whomever they wanted.61 Less convincingly, Simon also argued that his exchange of vows with Agnes had taken place prior to her vows with John de Bristol.62 One deponent even went so far as to describe an exchange of present consent between the two reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. John Marschall notes that the exchange took place in the garden at the home of Agnes’s father, with Agnes standing in the window of her room while Simon remained in the garden below: and because the said window was so far from the said garden that the said Simon and Agnes could not touch each other with their hands, the said Agnes extended her hand and kissed it. Which hand she extended as far as she could towards the said Simon standing in the said garden as the witness says and the said Simon immediately kissed his own hand and reached as far as he could upwards by reaching above towards the said window so that the extension of his arm could replace a kiss by the said Simon just like the extension of the said Agnes’s arm was made to Simon below as a sign of a kiss given to the said Simon . . .63

Whether Marschall’s account of the romantic nature of the couple’s exchange was ample to move the archbishop, or merely caused him to give up entirely will have to remain a mystery, since this lengthy file concludes with the depositions that accompany the petition for annulment. The court may have sided with Simon in light of the numerous discrepancies highlighted by Simon in Agnes’s case of precontract. Not only did Simon refute the allegations of precontract, bringing to light the court records in which Agnes admitted that she

61 62 63

YBI CP. E 248/43; CP. E 248/44. YBI CP. E 248/18. YBI CP. E 248/18.

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was not actually married to John of Bristol, but he adopted a shrewd strategy of discrediting her witnesses on technical grounds. If an annulment was what Agnes wanted, one has to wonder why this was not her first choice for prosecution? One possible explanation is that Agnes was hesitant to resume her prior union with John, or that John was the reluctant party, a very plausible conclusion in light of his total absence from the proceedings. Yet, in the end, she felt marriage to an old boyfriend was a more trustworthy option than a judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty. Agnes’s legal strategy indicates that she herself was not confident that two brutal beatings and abduction were sufficient to meet the ecclesiastical definition of cruelty. This is difficult to imagine. While her initial complaint might seem inadequate in light of Simon’s allegations of sexual misconduct and their ensuing reconciliation, his ceaseless hostility and disregard for his wife’s safety should have corroded his defence. It is also possible that the question of who was at fault in each suit determined Agnes’s decision to change her position. In a case of judicial separation, her attempts to place the blame squarely on her husband’s shoulders may not have been as successful as she had hoped; in a case of precontract, however, the sin was entirely her own. The issue of who is more blameworthy, in a judicial setting, is all about control. In the request for judicial separation, Simon’s re-interpretations and cross-allegations might counter too easily Agnes’s upper hand. With a case of precontract, Agnes had full control. Her own confession was her best weapon. In shifting the blame from Simon to herself, then, Agnes was taking charge of the direction in which the case proceeded.

Benson c. Benson (1448) Of all the cases of divorce a mensa et thoro that came before the York consistory court, the case of Benson c. Benson64 was probably the least violent and the most incomplete. Only the plaintiff’s positions and the corresponding witness depositions have survived and neither are in particularly good condition. Despite the poor documentation, the details of the case are very instructive, and offer some of the

64

YBI CP. F 235, Agnes Benson c. Peter Benson (1448).

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clearest evidence to suggest that the courts, as well as the people, of medieval England may have defended an expanded definition of cruelty. According to the plaintiff, Agnes and Peter Benson had been married six years before their suit in the parish of St Margaret in Walmgate. None the less, within a very short period, their relationship had broken down to the point where Agnes claimed that Peter had tried to kill her, and would have done so had her witnesses not intervened. Because of his cruelty and out of fear for her life, she dared not live with him, implying once again that she had separated from her husband since the brutal episode. The first witness for the plaintiff, Agnes, wife of Robert Helagh of York, agreed heartily with the plaintiff ’s contention. According to the witness, four or five years earlier, Peter initiated a violent encounter that caused Agnes to withdraw from her home. While at the home of the Helaghs with the couple and their daughter, Peter denounced his wife as having been sexually incontinent. When Agnes denied Peter’s accusation, he called her “a liar” and “a false whore.”65 He then drew his knife intending to strike her with it, and would have done so if the witness’s husband and daughter had not stepped in. With their assistance, Agnes was able to escape from the home unscathed. Robert Helagh, husband to the first witness, also appeared in court to support Agnes Benson’s application for separation. His story is generally consistent with that recounted by his wife. The main difference between the two is Robert’s account of Peter’s verbal tirade. Not only did Peter indulge in a spate of name-calling, but also Robert relates how Peter continued to employ further “indecent words” before attempting to stab his wife.66 Robert also agreed that Agnes had withdrawn justly from her husband and did not dare live with him out of fear for her life. With so little evidence, no counter-witnesses and no response from the defendant, it is difficult to speculate how this case might have concluded. Yet, it contributes in an important way to our understanding of popular, if not ecclesiastical, interpretations of abuse. To say that Peter had accused his wife of adultery places the violent episode within context and even taints the defendant’s character as

65 66

YBI CP. F 235/2. YBI CP. F 235/2.

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one who engages so casually in slander. The violent episode should have been sufficient to explain the circumstances surrounding the abuse and illuminate the uncaring and litigious nature of the defendant. Why, then, include the actual slanderous statements and continue further to say that he used indecent words? Perhaps this was merely for the purpose of accuracy, to convey the full extent and manifestation of his rage. Equally likely is the possibility that these statements were included because the witnesses themselves saw them as evidence of abuse. In her examination of the more plentiful sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cases of divorce a mensa et thoro, Laura Gowing observes that when plaintiffs and witnesses recounted tales of marital disharmony their definition of what entailed abuse was quite broad, encompassing economic, mental and verbal cruelty in addition to physical violence.67 This expanded definition of saevitia helped to convey the extent of the violence, even if it did not conform to the church’s understanding of the term. Without the insensitive slurs of her reputation and Peter’s “severe expression,” officials might have interpreted this case as an isolated incident of rage, easily explained away by cheap drink. However, aspersions of Agnes’s sexual honesty slung about in the home of their neighbours paint the defendant as hot-headed, careless of his wife’s reputation and bordering on neurotic. Such verbal abuse, when combined with an attempted stabbing, characterises this as a deeply troubled marriage. The case of Benson c. Benson is not the only case in which the definition of abuse transcends the physical. To return briefly to the case of Wyvell c. Venables, Cecilia Redeness of York, witness for the plaintiff, was graphic and pointed in her description of the beatings and physical abuse suffered by Cecilia Wyvell. She meticulously recounted two of the most violent episodes mentioned elsewhere; in the midst of these accounts, she replayed the scene of a desperate Cecilia, driven to suicide attempts by Henry’s incessant abuse. Cecilia’s mental instability was not essential to the legal narrative. Nevertheless, the witness chose to incorporate it into her story. Her inclusion of this incident and her failure to distinguish it in any way from the acts of violence substantiates that the witness perceived the mental abuse not as colouring, but as a manifestation of cruelty, and may even have equated it with the physical torment inflicted upon Cecilia by Henry. Bearing in mind that a court proctor coached all depositions, 67

Gowing, 210.

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it may not have been merely the witness who was inclined to interpret evidence of mental abuse as intemperate cruelty, but also the courts.

Ireby c. Lonesdale (1509) The final case confirms that abuse was more than just physical in medieval perceptions. In Ireby c. Lonesdale economics played a central role in the dispute.68 Ireby’s plea forces us to ask a number of key questions about married women’s property rights in the event of a separation: might a separated wife confidently expect to restrict her husband’s access to property that she had brought to the marriage? Upon separation, how did spouses divide marital property? While this case does not provide all the answers to these questions, it brings us much closer to an understanding of what contemporary attitudes might have been. Maybe even more important still, this case illuminates the viewpoint of medieval men on the issue of governance: depositions by Joan’s witnesses hint that Robert Lonesdale’s inability to govern his own behaviour might have made him less of a man. Witnesses for the plaintiff in the case of Ireby c. Lonesdale recount the tale of a marriage gone sadly astray. Five of the seven witnesses recount the most impressive incident of abuse as having taken place some time ago, when Robert Lonesdale, with “a flushed expression on his face,” struck his wife Joan on the cheek and the eye with such force that her eye hung defective on her cheek and she was wounded gravely.69 This was not the only beating endured by Joan at the hands of her husband. Joan Fleschawer of York, servant to the couple during their marriage, remembered a time when Robert beat his wife so that “he broke her head” while they sat together at the table. Over a year later, on a date the witness could not recall, Robert was so determined to kill his wife that the witness and a fellow servant, Alice, relative of Robert, stepped in to prevent him. 68

YBI CP. G 35, Joan Ireby c. Robert Lonesdale (1509). Five of the seven witnesses for the plaintiff mention this beating, however, only John Potter of York remarks on how her eye hung defective on her cheek. This detail has been included owing to its relevance in light of the other abuse cases related in this chapter, and is discussed further on in greater detail. All of the depositions of the witnesses for the plaintiff appear on the same membrane, YBI CP. G 35/1. 69

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They were not able to curtail Robert’s beating before Joan suffered a broken arm and shinbone. On this occasion, Robert was required to find sureties to ensure that he would not repeat his performance. Joan, wife of John Potter of York, remembered an instance when Robert flaunted a dagger and attempted to kill his wife with it; William Scorburgh Potter of York recalled an episode in which Robert threw his wife on a bed and then attacked her with a knife. Her husband’s unpredictable and alarming conduct forced Joan to withdraw from his home. As all the witnesses agreed, “Joan did not dare live with her husband out of fear for her life or mutilation of her body” and for this Robert was entirely at fault: Joan had been nothing but “obedient,” while Robert behaved harshly. What is perhaps most remarkable about the witness depositions in this case is how they contextualise the violence. Abstract narrative was the strategy adopted by most witnesses for the plaintiff: exclusive focus on the abuse to the point of neglecting the context entirely. The case of Nesfeld c. Nesfeld demonstrates why this was such a potent and effective tactic. On the one hand, Margery’s two female friends described senseless violence from a barbarous man; Thomas’s servant, on the other hand, transformed the narrative altogether by adding a framework to the discussion. His account of the events leading up to the altercation and other disputes between the two emphasise mutual abuse provoked by a rebellious shrew. Many of the other cases of domestic violence recounted only from the perspective of the plaintiff probably hide similar details. In Ireby c. Lonesdale, however, the approach espoused by Joan’s witnesses is wholly different. In fact, her witnesses embrace context. According to witnesses for the plaintiff, money is the explanation for the difficulties with Joan and Robert’s marriage. When Robert leaned across their table to strike his wife on the head and seriously wound her, it was because Joan had lent money to a friend, Petronella Russell of Goodramgate, without consulting her husband. This is an important detail. Its inclusion by a witness for the plaintiff suggests that the witness, and probably the plaintiff ’s proctor, felt the plaintiff was within her rights to lend a sum of money to a friend. In medieval England, married women had few property rights. By law, a married woman was not permitted to sell, transfer or exchange property without her husband’s consent; nor did the common law permit a wife to make a will without her husband’s approval. The case of Ireby c. Lonesdale brings the issue of married women’s property to the forefront and proposes

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a distinction between theory and practice. Legally, Joan may not have been entitled to lend money without her husband’s agreement, but this witness seems to have believed that it was within her rights. Had a witness for the defendant brought forward this detail, the interpretation would have been vastly different. For a case of divorce on the grounds of cruelty, Joan Ireby’s witnesses pass far more time on the issue of money than one might anticipate. According to witnesses for the plaintiff, before her marriage to Robert, Joan’s lands and tenements were worth twelve marks a year, her goods forty pounds. Robert had since taken full possession of his wife’s property, and, failing to obtain his wife’s permission, he had sold all her goods, with the exception of some items of clothing, and refused her access to the profits. When Joan left Robert, she also left behind financial stability. Since then, she had become so destitute that she had to borrow money in order to bring her case before the archbishop. What is probably most striking about Joan’s descent into poverty is the way Joan’s witnesses narrate it. Her deponents saw Robert’s actions as not only illicit, but also contemptible. Accusingly, they relate how Robert was ‘seized’ of Joan’s own property, and how he still has possession of it, the implication being that, despite their separation, he continues to hold this property. To dwell at such length on the issue of property and to whom it should belong is an indication that the deponents interpreted Robert’s actions as both cruelty and an infraction of marital property practices. One of the possible conclusions we might draw from this evidence is that, in the minds of these witnesses, cruelty was not only physical, but also economic. None the less, property, in this case, was not merely about abuse. By focusing on the value of lands and goods brought into the marriage, the value of which was repeated by each witness in turn, Joan’s witnesses provide the figure for what they seem to believe is owed to her upon leaving the marriage. Without maintenance, Joan was incapable of independent survival. Her lands and tenements were an essential source of funding for her lifestyle. If she and Robert were living separately and married only in the eyes of the law, what rights should he have to her property? Mismanagement of money and the tendency to fly into a rage were not Robert’s only faults. Five of the plaintiff ’s witnesses reveal that Robert had difficulties with governance. Although the details are scanty and the documentation poor, it seems that while Joan was still living with her husband, a mix-up occurred one day over

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lunch. Joan used a new pewter dish for Robert’s meal rather than the one to which he was accustomed, causing Robert to beat her severely; soon after this, Joan withdrew completely from his home. Witnesses probably intended the context of this beating to sway the judge’s opinion. Did Joan transgress her wifely bounds, requiring Robert to discipline her? Or, was Robert treading into an area of domesticity that was beyond the constraints of patriarchal authority? Of Joan’s seven witnesses, five were male. Only the male witnesses chose to recount this particular story of abuse. Their gender makes this story all the more meaningful. What these men were objecting to was Robert’s abuse of his position as a figure of authority within the household. Surely, none of these men would have contested that a man is the head of his household and as such is required to use his power to keep his home in order, but he must use this power wisely. In beating his wife and driving her away over something as trivial as a pewter dish, Robert demonstrated that he is incapable of exerting the authority conferred on him by virtue of their marriage. Joan Ireby was successful in her plea for separation; without any surviving evidence of the defendant’s position, however, it is difficult to know exactly why. The sentence in her favour raises numerous questions. Would Robert’s violence have been sufficient on its own to gain her a favourable verdict? How influential was his abuse of authority? Did ecclesiastical officials accord with popular perceptions of a married woman’s property rights? Given the surviving evidence, these questions must remain unanswered. Ireby’s case, more than any other, demonstrates the broad range of issues that an application for judicial separation had to take into consideration.

Why These Six Women? Six cases of abuse over a period of two centuries most likely does not constitute the total number of actual cases of non-homicidal, yet excessive, marital strife in the northern ecclesiastical province of England. All the same, they are the only extant records of violence to come before the archbishop in which the woman perceived the situation to be critical enough to warrant legal separation.70 Why 70 These were not the only cases of applications for divorce on the grounds of separation in the late medieval period. Act books record the daily business of the

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were these six women willing to tackle the ambiguous definition of cruelty in order to obtain marital freedom when many others were not? First, we must grapple with the broader query of why any plaintiff sued a case before the York consistory court. Plaintiffs in the archbishop’s consistory were not there by mere chance. An examination of the 88 cases of matrimonial litigation before the court at York in the fourteenth century reveals that 61 of these cases (or, 71%) were sued by plaintiffs whose residence was less than ten miles from the court.71 The majority, then, were initiated by persons within the city of York or immediately outside its perimeters. Thus, not only were urbanites more litigious, but inevitably the less convenient a legal resolution, the less frequently it was sought. The urban/rural distinction is not just about convenience. Goldberg notes “townswomen were less prepared to put up with unsatisfactory and violent marriages than may have been true of their rural sisters.”72 In fact, the high degree of female agency demonstrated by urban women is a direct result of urban/rural distinctions in the courtship process. While the rural north of the later Middle Ages practised what has come to be viewed as the model of medieval marriage, replete with manipulative and domineering parents, as well as overarching concerns of property, the urban centre of York exhibited a far different pattern. Many of the young women living in the city of York were of rural origins, but had come to the city to work as domestic servants. Their departure from the familial household entailed less supervision not only of marriage, but also of sexuality. Young people were “permitted a comparatively high degree of initiative,” allowing them the opportunity “to become emotionally entangled with more than one partner,” and even to choose their own marriage partners.73 Urban marriages may have been actual love matches. If York women were so eager to challenge tradition and courts in a brief, perfunctory way, and thus provide very few details. None the less, cases of matrimonial litigation in which the dispute centres on physical abuse exist among these records, although there is no corresponding documentation of the various stages of the process in the York cause papers. 71 Pedersen, “Demography,” 411. In this respect, it is important to remember that there were five active archdeacons in the diocese and that they heard marriage cases as well. Consequently, we should not expect to find all northern marital disputes in the archbishop’s court. 72 Goldberg, 439. 73 Goldberg, 433.

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initiate marriages independently, we should not be surprised that they also demonstrated initiative in terminating them. Pleading a matrimonial suit in court was no easy process. Not only did it call for exceptional courage and strength of character just to bring a case to court, but a plaintiff also required independent access to funds in order to hire a proctor who is capable of presenting the case in the best possible light. The entire legal process was remarkably expensive. Each step of the judicial process had a price tag attached: introduction and dismissal of a suit, three pence each; letters of citation, four pence; writing of a libel, two shillings, four pence; examination of a principal party, one shilling. All of this adds up to a grand total of seven shillings, eight pence. This does not even account for the costs of the proctor (six pence per appearance), nor those fees exacted for interrogating the witnesses.74 In any case where the court handed down a sentence, the party who lost the suit was also responsible for paying in full all the costs owed by the successful party.75 For an urban woman, then, matrimonial litigation might be an expensive prospect, particularly in the event of failure. For a rural woman, the costs would have been much, much steeper. Not only was she required to cover all these same costs, she had to foot the bill for her witnesses’ travel and lodging, as well as her own. For witnesses, the high costs of litigation may have been a significant factor; helping one’s neighbour only goes so far without sufficient remuneration. The impracticality of embarking on such a costly course of action must have deterred many rural women from turning to the archbishop for a resolution to their marital woes. For urban women with concrete cases and access to ample funds, the consistory court would have been the quickest route to a permanent and legal solution.

74 These cost summaries have been taken from Brian L. Woodcock’s Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the Diocese of Canterbury (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 61. A case from the Chancery records of the late fifteenth century suggests that the cost for divorce litigation might have been particularly onerous. When Dame Jane Cursen divorced her husband, Edmund Aylmer, circumstances compelled her to borrow 40 marks in order to pay for the costs of litigation. Few women would have had access to such a substantial sum of money. See TNA C 1/107/29, Dame Jane Cursen c. Edmund Aylmer, husband of complainant (c. 1486 × 1493). 75 Woodcock, 61.

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Matrimonial litigation in general seems to reflect this trend. The courtrooms of the late medieval church were no place for the medieval poor.76 Nor, however, were they a forum for aristocratic matrimonial strife. Members of the upper crust ordinarily bypassed the courts and took their causes directly to the bishop or archbishop. Instead, the archbishop’s court tended to the domestic affairs of the middling sort in society. The six cases of divorce a mensa et thoro on the grounds of cruelty fall neatly into this paradigm. Not only were all six plaintiffs urban women (five from York, one from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), most also belonged to that middle economic layer. It is not always easy to determine the economic standing of litigants in ecclesiastical causes, since the records irregularly note their occupations. The York cause papers tell us that Simon Munkton is a goldsmith (aurifaber) and Henry Venables a young gentleman (domicellum), situating both at the upper end of the middling variety. The case of Margery de Devoine and Richard Scot also points to wealth. The court asked all their witnesses specifically if they were tenants of the plaintiff, implying that she, too, was fairly well off. With such heavy financial undertones, the case of Ireby c. Lonesdale strongly argues for an upper middling stratum as well. In the remaining cases, it is not as easy to assess the situation with any certainty. However, we know that Margery and Thomas Nesfeld were sufficiently affluent to employ at least one male domestic servant. One of Agnes Benson’s witnesses stated that he was a fraser, a very middle of the road occupation for the period. It seems safe to assume that Peter and Agnes Benson associated with people who shared a similar economic standing. All six female plaintiffs, then, belonged to an order of women with some degree of economic clout. These six women were fighting against the social grain. Marriage litigation was, largely, an activity initiated by women for enforcing their marriages.77 Despite their husbands’ dalliances and desperate attempts to escape commitment without regard for children, impending pregnancies, or possible female destitution, the vast majority of the women appearing before the archbishop were determined to hold

76

Helmholz, 160. Charles Donahue, Jr. “Female Plaintiffs in Marriage Cases in the Court of York in the Later Middle Ages: What can we learn from the Numbers?” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 195–7. 77

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on to their men. Yet, these six women emerge as anomalies, equally persistent, but with a view to retreating from marriage. While their stories may not represent typical cases of abuse, they afford proof that female independence was alive and well in the north of medieval England.

Shared Aspects of Domestic Violence Individually, these cases reveal much about abuse and common perceptions; collectively, they have more to offer. Together, these cases suggest that the laity understood violence in a gendered fashion. This is not unusual. In her study of similar cases of abuse in the early modern context, Laura Gowing notes that “not all members of the community felt the same about the necessity to complain and intervene. It was women, more often than men, who protested to violent husbands, sometimes physically interposing themselves between husband and wife, and coming to court, later, to testify to their female neighbour’s precise injuries, and it was women to whom battered wives turned first.”78 The medieval evidence also reveals a gendered approach to domestic violence. Nesfeld c. Nesfeld is the only instance in which the gender of the witnesses reflects that of the litigants, creating a bold division between the sexes. Such a distribution allows some insight into how deponents of opposite sexes interpreted differently the same instance of violence. Margery’s two female friends not only appeared as witnesses on her behalf, but also were instrumental in putting an end to a violent beating that they feared would result in her death. Both women emphasised the necessity of intervention required by the exceptional nature of the violence, as if the need for interference were sufficient proof in itself that the marriage was dangerous. Conversely, John Semer, who also participated in Margery’s rescue, interpreted the altercation in a wholly different light. He did not perceive neighbourhood involvement as tangible proof of a dangerous marriage. The various accounts of Simon Munkton’s first attempt at an outof-court settlement with his wife demonstrate the same distinction in perceptions of local intervention. The male deponents downplayed

78

Gowing, 217.

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the level of violence, although there were differences in the way witnesses for the plaintiff and for the defendant framed their stories. Agnes’s witnesses all credited John de Midelton with having saved her from certain danger, and yet the man who intervened and rescued Agnes appeared instead as a witness for the defendant. His version of the events is so tame that one wonders why he bothered to intercede in their affairs at all. Even so, it is not very different from the testimonies of the male witnesses for the plaintiff. Thomas Esoby offers the most detailed description of the encounter. He saw Simon throw Agnes to the ground and restrain her with his body, “[b]ut whether Simon hit the said Agnes then he does not know for certain.” He also witnessed Simon pull out a knife, although he was quick to point out that Simon “did not stab anyone with it, so far as this witness knows.”79 Neither account resembles the brutality alleged by female witness for the plaintiff, Julianne de Aldeburgh. She claimed that Agnes was confined to her bed for over two weeks after the assault. Even if the male witnesses had not been present for the duration of the episode, Agnes’s condition after the fact, and her absence from village life for a period of fifteen days, should have been noteworthy. What Julianne de Aldeburgh recognised as an inappropriate and excessive use of force within marriage, John de Midelton saw merely as a disruption of quiet village life. The case of Wyvell c. Venables provides yet another example of gendered distinctions in focus and priority. Of the five witnesses for the plaintiff, three were male. The depositions of two of the male witnesses are distinct in their preoccupation with the defendant’s adultery, almost to the exclusion of anything else. One witness, Alexander Johnson of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, does not even refer to Henry’s behaviour towards his wife, although he acknowledges that Henry is married, that his wife’s exemplary disposition is known throughout the city of York, and that Henry is “a violent and terrible man.” This is all he has to say about their relationship. The rest of his deposition is restricted to Henry’s extramarital activities with Mabota Don, presenting a much fuller perspective on the relationship than any of the other witnesses for the plaintiff. Johnson not only summarises the long-standing nature of the affair and the number of children born to Mabota as a result, he also includes

79

YBI CP. E 248/26c.

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details omitted by the other deponents, such as where Henry and Mabota cohabited in Westchester, and Henry’s public declaration that “no bishop would separate them from leading this life.”80 The next witness, John Kirkby of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, discusses the abuse in few words, mentioning that Henry “is accustomed to beating his wife,” that he is “a violent, demented, terrible and lunatic man,” and that Cecilia “did not dare say anything about the abuse out of fear for her life.” Otherwise, his testimony also focuses on the adultery of Henry and his concubine, describing how he has seen Henry alone with Mabota lying in a bed in her chamber, and reporting the number of children they produced between them. Why were both these deponents so engrossed in Henry’s sex life? Is it possible that they regarded Henry’s illicit sexual encounters as a more egregious transgression than physical abuse? Of the five witnesses for the plaintiff these two deponents were the only residents of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. All the other witnesses resided within the city of York. The geographical distinction alone may have made them more privy to Henry’s affair with Mabota than his scurrilous behaviour towards his wife. Nevertheless, it seems peculiar, given that both men were aware of the dispositions of husband and wife and had some knowledge of their marriage, that John Kirkby merely glossed over the abuse, while Alexander Johnson omits it entirely. If the nature of the abuse were as virulent as indicated by the remaining three witnesses, this silence speaks volumes. To prioritise Henry’s moral crimes as adultery first, near-fatal abuse second, indicates that these two men shared a perspective on the significance of violence within marriage far different from their female counterparts. As witnesses to her husband’s cruelty, Cecilia presented two females and one male on her behalf. All three recount similar stories of abuse. The chief difference among the three depositions lies in the number of violent episodes described by each witness. Agnes, wife of Adam Shafton of York, offered two violent encounters. Cecilia, wife of William Redeness of York, addressed the same two instances, but highlighted this tale with a description of Cecilia’s failed suicide attempts. William Constowe of York mentioned only the most memorable incident of violence when Henry nearly blinded Cecilia. Is it mere coincidence that the male witness presented the least violent

80

YBI CP. F 56/7.

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account of their marriage? It may be that what Agnes and Cecilia Redeness interpreted as sure signs of abuse, William did not. The cases of Devoine c. Scot, Benson c. Benson and Ireby c. Lonesdale, on the other hand, do not show a particular predilection for female intervention nor gendered interpretations in addressing the issue of physical violence. Even in the case of economic deprivation by Robert Lonesdale, the male deponents felt as adamantly as did their female counterparts that Robert’s treatment of his wife was unjust. The only gendered distinction in this case concerns the issue of authority. The pewter bowl incident demonstrates the male deponents’ aversion to an abuse of governance by Robert, and indicates that some men believed that irrational rule was as abhorrent a contravention of the marital bonds as physical abuse. Gowing’s hypothesis that “women were likelier to perceive men’s violence as unacceptable” would seem to hold true for the medieval period, although the paucity of case studies and depositions warrants a greater study of the phenomenon.81 A gendered perspective of marital roles laid the base for telling stories of abuse in matrimonial litigation in the medieval church courts. Both witnesses for the plaintiff and for the defendant cautiously recounted their version of events in a way that highlighted each party’s ability to stay within the scope of acceptable gender behaviour. Garthine Walker’s 1998 study of rape and sexual violence in early modern England sheds some light on this occurrence and the importance for women, in particular, to plead normative behaviour.82 It is Walker’s contention that victims of rape intentionally shaped their sorry tales to highlight their passivity. This construction is justified by medieval and early modern perceptions of female sexuality. Because the active female in discourses of illicit sexuality is either wanton or a prostitute, women are incapable of describing themselves in an active role in situations of rape without characterising themselves as zealous participants. Simultaneously, because discourses of consensual sex focus on the active male/passive female, victims of rape cannot describe a sexual encounter that would suggest male criminality. Before the courts, then, women often omitted

81

Gowing, 231. See Garthine Walker, “Rereading Rape and Sexual Violence in Early Modern England,” Gender and History 10 (1998): 1–25. 82

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any details of the sexual act, concentrating instead on the physical violence. With this approach, they constructed a story focused on male action, not female behaviour, and avoided implicating themselves altogether.83 Many similarities exist between rape and spousal abuse: a gendered hierarchy defines both relationships; both involve masculine power over female bodies. As such, they experience many of the same discursive difficulties. While rape was surely better defined criminally than spousal abuse in late medieval England, marital violence was equally difficult to discuss. An active woman resisting the advances of a rapist was not a victim at all; in fact, she was everything one would expect from a willing, albeit lewd, participant. Likewise, a wife who returned her husband’s blows was not a victim of abuse; she was a disobedient woman. The courts were very much aware that a woman who defended herself too vehemently might easily cross the line between self-defence and petty treason. The most effective strategy adopted by plaintiffs and their witnesses in cases of spousal abuse was to put forward accounts of violence with an exclusive focus on male action, withholding entirely the female reaction. For example, when Margery de Devoine’s husband, Richard Scot, beat her with a staff to the head, wounding her severely and knocking one of her eyes from the socket, Margery alleges that she did not raise a hand in her defence. The same passive restraint is evident when Henry Venables beat his wife Cecilia to the ground with a staff and then strangled her. With both their lives in danger, it is difficult to imagine that either woman simply accepted her fate without casting a single blow in her defence. That either woman survived these attempts on their lives is nothing short of miraculous. None the less, both plaintiffs and their deponents lead us to believe that they willingly submitted themselves to their husbands’ authority, however excessive. These records only mention one

83

Women may also have felt that, as in cases of rape, it was impossible to present a credible story of abuse that would not implicate the wife. An exemplum from John of Bromyard’s compendium recounts the story of a rape victim whose story is tested by the judge by commanding the accused to take the complainant’s money from her. When the complainant fiercely guards her money, the judge replied “that if she had defended her chastity as hard as she did her money she would have kept it.” See Ruth Mazo Karras, “Gendered sin and Misogyny in John of Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium,” Traditio 47 (1992): 247. Thus, women may have encountered some difficulty in presenting themselves as victims at all.

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instance of a woman actively resisting her husband. During a particularly unpleasant argument between Margery and Thomas Nesfeld, Margery ran into the street and raised the hue on Thomas. It is significant, however, that a witness for the defendant brought forward this single shred of proof demonstrating active female resistance with the intention of casting Margery in a negative light. Even this description of human agency is specifically gendered. Self-defence for a man surely did not involve tears and wailing. The skilled manipulation of the details by medieval deponents to remove all evidence of female resistance paints the perfect picture for a suit of judicial separation: the only transgression of acceptable gender boundaries was a masculine show of tyranny. In the minds of the witnesses for the plaintiff, this was not the case of undue chastisement, but fullblown spousal abuse. The records emphasise female passivity in a number of other ways. Perhaps the most obvious was for plaintiffs and their witnesses to describe carefully how the woman narrowly escaped death through the intervention of others. If Margery Nesfeld’s friends had not stepped in, Thomas surely would have stabbed her to death. If Cecilia Wyvell’s neighbours had not pulled Henry from Cecilia’s body, she too would have died. With such active friends and neighbours, a beaten wife did not have to act in her own defence. Even the language of the testimonies supports this interpretation of the events. Tales of abuse were invariably accounts of the active male. Men strike, beat or mistreat their wives; women, on the other hand, are struck, beaten or mistreated. The Latin construction of these tales highlights the female position as object: the victim is described in the accusative, while the nominative is reserved for the perpetrator of the abuse. Defendants are the actors; plaintiffs are acted upon. The formulaic statement included at the end of each libel and deposition captures best the sense of female inactivity the plaintiff and her witnesses hoped to convey: the wife “does not dare cohabit” with her husband out of fear for her life. If she dared return home, she would be a far braver person than her femininity permits. The testimonies did not reflect the reality even superficially, and both the litigants and the courts were well aware of this. If any of these women was as passive, submissive and frightened as her witnesses stated, would they have been capable of suing their husbands in court? How does a woman make the transition from cowering victim to plaintiff ? The fact that Cecilia Wyvell, at least, is known

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to have been successful in her plea confirms that the gap between discourse and reality may have been insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Justice, even at this time, had little to do with who was in the wrong; rather, it was meted out to those who told the most convincing story. Male defendants regularly employed a similar strategy when pleading their cases. Henry Venables was the only witness to deny the allegations, and thus reject male agency. His lack of success in court suggests that he might have been better advised to embrace the gender paradigm. In all the other cases examined here the husband, or witnesses on his behalf, readily transform abuse into roughly acceptable, if somewhat overzealous, wifely chastisement. Simon Munkton’s response best exemplifies this approach. In minimising the intensity of the violence, and painting his wife as a lewd woman in desperate need of moral correction, Simon’s actions were no longer those of an irrational, abusive husband; rather, he was the concerned and able Christian patriarch, teaching his wife the errors of her ways with a firm hand. Simon was not alone in asserting the right to correct his wife’s failings; Thomas Nesfeld, Richard Scot, Peter Benson and Robert Lonesdale all argued at some point that it was their legal right to chastise their wives physically. These men were drawing on the same paradigm of male/female relations as were their wives. Wives manipulated this model to present themselves as victims of excessive male action; husbands argued the opposite. They had not surpassed the limits of their authority; instead, their wives had taken active, illicit control of their lives. If active femininity was necessarily sinful, the defendants, then, were compelled to exert their authority and force their wives back into positions of submission. If the discipline was excessive, its objective was none the less admirable. The conscious shaping of stories in order to fit within socially acceptable parameters is nowhere more evident than in the description of the weapons used to inflict injuries. In each tale, while husbands claimed to use fists and feet, witnesses for the plaintiff regularly commented on specific weapons: Thomas Nesfeld used a dagger, a club and a knife, Simon Munkton a knife, Richard Scot a staff, Henry Venables a shortened staff, Peter Benson a knife, and Robert Lonesdale a dagger, a knife and a tapstaff. When the defendant or his representatives had an opportunity to respond to the allegations, the weapons suddenly disappeared. John Semer, in support of his former employer, Thomas Nesfeld, argues that Thomas struck his

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wife with his fist, twice, but failed to mention any evidence of a brandished dagger. John de Midelton emphatically denied the existence of a knife wielded by Simon Munkton in the street fight with his wife, despite the testimonies of a number of witnesses for the plaintiff. These same litigants attempted more desperately than any other to recast their abuse as moral correction. Apparently, both men married rebellious, perfidious women. Simon Munkton’s wife not only disobeys express commands, but she is also disrespectful and irreverent; Thomas Nesfeld’s wife denounces him publicly and may even be of murderous intent. Both men argued that their ‘castigations’ were within their legal rights and in response to their wives’ immoral activities. Given the wilful moulding of the legal narrative, the defendants’ renderings of the events are meaningful. In the minds of both defendants and plaintiffs, fists and feet fell short of the legal requirements for a judicial separation; weapons did not. The tendency of Yorkshire husbands to construct defences that played down the degree of violence bolsters the idea that northerners were intolerant of physical aggression that might leave lasting marks on the body of the recipient. Therefore, in the case of Cecilia Wyvell, the defendant’s witnesses avoid mention of the beating that left Wyvell bandaged around the arm and neck. In the case of Margery Nesfeld, the defendant never addresses her broken “spelbone.” None of the defendants mentions anything having to do with eyeballs popping out of their sockets. Evidence from the diocese of Canterbury raises the question of whether the expectation of limited physical injury was restricted to the north. In a case of domestic violence from 1470 in the London area, Yon Machon openly admitted to flying into a rage and beating his wife Elizabeth so that her skin turned black and blood flowed from her head. He also beat her left arm until he believed that he had broken it, and it had to be set with a sling for over a month afterwards.84 Although he acknowledged this as a beating and admitted that it was undeserving, he was also very careful to describe it as castigation; yet, Machon fails to note why such vehement discipline was required. Likewise, in a case from Maldon, Essex, when William Hyndeley was facing allegations of abusing his wife Joan, his own version of events was gruesome. He describes how he struck Joan with a staff so hard that

84

LMA MS DL/C/205, fo. 58r, Elizabeth Machon c. Yon Machon (1470).

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blood flowed from her forehead, and she “languished” in bed after the beating.85 Hyndeley, at least, explains his violent actions. He argues that his wife provoked his actions by speaking “opprobrious, contentious, scolding and vexatious words.”86 The evidence from the diocese of London may even suggest that southerners equated discipline with beatings as one witness for the plaintiff did in a case from the year 1471. When asked to comment on the marriage of Joan Baron and Robert Howton, Joan Hyde said that “she found fault with the said Robert Howton because of the correction or inordinate beating” to which he submitted his wife.87 After some elaboration, it became clear that this ‘correction’ consisted of an attempt on her life in which he brandished a dagger and gravely injured his wife.88 The degree of violence presented by defendants in all three of these cases is excessive when compared to their northern counterparts. While this disparity may speak to the nature of violence exhibited in these nine specific cases, it is also possible that southern Englishmen tolerated more brutality in marriage than their northern countrymen. Collectively, these six cases from the York court provide an important perspective of the regulation of domestic violence in the late medieval period. Most significant, they point to the existence of an informal system of spousal expulsion and separation among the laity, despite canonical regulations forbidding it. In all of the cases of divorce a mensa et thoro, separation had occurred long before the case appeared in court: Margery and Thomas Nesfeld had been separated for four years; Margery Devoine and Richard Scot, eight years; Cecilia Wyvell and Henry Venables, seven years; and Agnes and Peter Benson, six years. These lengthy periods of separation, or selfdivorces, suggest a number of points. First, something must have happened to threaten their current situation; otherwise, none of these couples would have appeared in court. A de facto separation had already occurred; a formal recognition of this would not have altered their relationship in any tangible way. For these women to face the high costs of court and reopen old wounds there must have been

85

GL MS DL/C/205, fo. 293r, Joan Hyndeley c. William Hyndeley. Gl MS DL/C/205, fo. 293r. 87 LMA MS DL/C/205, fo. 93r, Joan Baron alias Howton alias Palmer c. Robert Howton alias Palmer (1471). 88 LMA MS DL/C/205, fo. 93r. 86

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the threat of a forced reconciliation. Most of these women may have found themselves presented before the lower courts of the church for spousal non-cohabitation, and chose not to abide by the court’s decision. Another possibility is that these women suddenly found themselves in need of maintenance, although after such lengthy separations it is more difficult to uncover the reasons for a sudden change in economics. Second, the only cases not to experience a lengthy period of separation prior to litigation were those in which the women were wealthy in their own right. This is a common feature of late medieval matrimonial litigation. It was women, not men, who usually fought to enforce a marriage; however, “when the financial stakes [were] high,” medieval men suddenly took an avid interest in keeping a marriage together.89 What is most striking is the fact that, despite the amount of time that had passed since the abuse, the witnesses still precisely and vividly recalled the instances of violence. This unusual ability to recollect events long past raises a number of critical questions. Did these memories trouble their sub-consciences because the violence was so exceptional and disturbing? Conversely, is it possible that these were not really memories at all, but fabrications by the plaintiff and her friends in order to meet the requirements of the court?

“Fiction in the Archives” The similarity of the most violent episodes of abuse sustained in three of the divorces within this sampling would seem to suggest that plaintiffs might have embellished their tales of abuse. Margery de Devoine, Cecilia Wyvell and Joan Ireby all suffered an extraordinary affliction because of beatings to the head: in each case, the defendant struck the plaintiff ’s head so hard that an eye burst from the socket and hung on her check. Three of Cecilia’s witnesses repeat this tale; the record reports that her mother, who was present during the quarrel, gently replaced it in the socket. Only one of Margery’s and one of Joan’s witnesses mentioned this detail in their narratives, and neither gave any indications of a resolution. Although these women experienced similar beatings to the head and therefore may

89

Donahue, “Female Plaintiffs,” 197.

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have sustained identical injuries, it seems unusual that all three suffered such a remarkable impairment. It is possible that all three women are drawing on the same pool of images about spousal abuse or violence against women, influenced heavily by saints’ lives and English folklore. The vita of the virgin martyr Saint Lucy may in fact be the source for the abuse appearing in these tales. According to her vita, Saint Lucy of Syracuse was a fourth-century Christian determined to remain celibate. After disbursing her dowry to the poor, her intended bridegroom, consul Paschasius, became enraged and denounced her as a Christian. To punish her for her false conversion, he ordered that she be forced into prostitution. When the guards came to arrest her, they were unable to budge Lucy from her place, even after they had tethered her to a team of oxen. Seeing these efforts were fruitless, Paschasius ordered that she be tortured and then killed. They tried to burn her to death; but the flaming bundles of wood would not consume her. Finally, they executed her by stabbing her in the throat with a dagger. Two different legends of the life of Saint Lucy incorporate stories having to do with eyes. In one, Lucy responds to a suitor’s flattery by plucking her eyes out of their sockets and presenting them to him on a platter. In the other, Paschasius’s minions tore her eyes from her head while they tortured her cruelly. In both, her eyes were restored miraculously to their sockets. Not surprisingly, Lucy became the patron saint of the blind and those suffering from eye ailments, and is represented iconographically by a statue of her holding a dish with two eyeballs balanced delicately upon it. This element of her vita was especially prominent in late medieval representations.90 Her story was suited especially to tales of abuse in a courtroom setting. Not only are the attacks on St Lucy analogous with spousal abuse, but these grisly and vivid tales of violence against the virgin martyrs had a particular resonance in late medieval Europe.91 Any woman wishing to paint herself the ideal Christian woman would delight in drawing similarities with such a pivotal figure.

90 David Hugh Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 404. 91 For a fuller discussion of the popularity and meaning of the vitae of the virgin martyrs, see Shari Horner, “The Violence of Exegesis: Reading the Bodies of Ælfric’s Female Saints,” in Violence against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. Anna Roberts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 22–43.

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Why would any of these witnesses invent parts of their tales of abuse when, if their narratives are to be believed, it seems that these women were actually in dangerous marriages and might provide their own stories of abuse? The inevitable conclusion is that none of these individuals was confident that what she had suffered would meet the court’s definition of cruelty. Instead, they drew on their knowledge of what constitutes excessive violence against women in the eyes of the church, and included it in their testimonies. Irrespective of whether violence of this degree actually occurred, the stories recounted by the plaintiffs and their witnesses are meaningful. Both carefully constructed cases that they believed would meet the church’s mandate: both lay families and the church considered beatings that endangered the life of the victim, near-blindings, and even mental, verbal and economic abuse excessive.

Spousal Abuse and Male Honour If the plaintiffs presented even a shred of truth about the levels of violence within marriage, it is difficult to understand why their husbands defended their cases so vehemently. Why were these men so determined to save their miserable marriages? There are a number of explanations for these bold responses. First, it is important to acknowledge that these defences are necessarily a product of the ecclesiastical system of law to which the litigants submitted their marriages. Even if Henry Venables wanted a separation as much as his wife Cecilia, he could not simply appear in court and ask for one. The nature of the litigation demanded that he present a defence to his wife’s allegations; the courts might interpret any failure to do so as collusion, an attempt by husband and wife to deceive the court into falsely granting a separation. Bearing this in mind, it made the most sense for any husband to present his case with an air of confidence and entitlement; but, as in the case of Henry Venables, put forward a defence based on little evidence and replete with contradictions and exaggerations, ensuring his wife’s victory. In this grouping of cases, however, it seems clear that Venables was the only defendant to fall into this category. All five of the other husbands eagerly refuted the accusations against them and presented generally solid defences. Financial considerations may explain their obstinate refusal to let go of their marriages: in the event of a

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separation, the church expected the husband to continue to maintain his wife, even though she no longer resided with him. Providing enough money for food, clothing and separate shelter for a wife could be quite costly, and some men did just about anything to shirk this responsibility. In the cases of Lonesdale and Munkton, a separation might have endangered the husband’s access to joint assets. Especially in those cases of men who married up in society, a separation had negative repercussions on a man’s livelihood. Financial considerations may also explain a husband’s counter-accusations of adulterous behaviour. Some canonists argued in favour of penalising adulterous wives with the loss of their dowries.92 This moralizing attitude, if not the prescription itself, was carried over into secular statute law. According to the second Statute of Westminster (1285), an adulteress was ineligible to claim dower rights after the death of her husband unless he had forgiven her, and the two were reconciled at the time of his death.93 Accusations of adultery, then, represent a last attempt to safeguard a man’s property rights, whether they, too, wished to separate or not. Defendants may also have felt compelled to defend their honour. These cases fall in the midst of a growing culture of slander, incomparable to anything that came before it, surfacing in the later Middle Ages and flourishing in the sixteenth century. In the royal courts, the growth of the action on the case for words is a hallmark of the vastly increased concern. The proper and more popular forum for resolution of defamation suits, however, was that of the church courts. Throughout the late medieval period, cases of defamation became more and more numerous, so much so that by the dawning of the early modern era the church courts of England were preoccupied with slander litigation to the exclusion of all else.94 In the church courts, slander struck right to the heart of gender identity and the culturally defined standards of morality associated with it. For women, this inevitably meant smears of their sexual character, while for men honesty, reliability and respectability were much more at stake. Men appeared in court to defy allegations of theft, assault, even homicide in a fervent attempt to clear their good names. Plaintiffs in cases of 92

Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 541. Westminster II, c. 34. 94 See R.H. Helmholz, “Introduction,” Select Cases on Defamation to 1600 (London: Selden Society, 1985). 93

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defamation often came forward of their own initiative, with compurgators in tow, to purge themselves of any derogatory accusations, rather than awaiting a presentment in the church courts. L.R. Poos describes this form of legal prevention as “self-defence compurgation.”95 Late medieval society promoted a culture in which honest reputation enabled one to speak in the courts, to trade, to have a political voice and to gain respect within one’s community. We cannot undervalue the importance of reputation as a motivation for zealous engagement in ecclesiastical litigation. Defamation suits were “not just about reputation in the abstract, but some very tangible penalties.”96 Condemnation in an ecclesiastical court entailed financial penalties; confirmed accusations of theft, assault and homicide might end up before the royal courts facing the threat of fines or execution. Men and women alike, then, had palpable reasons to protect their honour. A study of ex officio defamations from Wisbech, Durham and London in the fifteenth century uncovers the case of a man defending himself against allegations of ill-treating his wife.97 At less than one percent of the total number of cases of defamation in those courts, this case does not suggest a frequent occurrence of suits of this type. However, its existence confirms that a link existed between masculine honour and marital conduct. Late medieval society held certain expectations for men in marriage and did not perceive cruelty as honourable behaviour. Lindsay Bryan similarly argues that late medieval society considered wife beating scandalous; her study highlights that church courts dealing with cases of abuse not only punished the sinful act, but also the sin of scandalising other parishioners.98 The cases of divorce a mensa et thoro from the York cause papers fit well within this paradigm. Allegations against the defendants cast aspersions on their honour and masculinity. Concession to the demands of the plaintiff amounted, in effect, to an open confession of failed manhood, and admission that they could govern neither their wives nor their tempers. The attempts by the defendants to normalise the

95 L.R. Poos, “Sex, Lies, and the Church Courts of Pre-Reformation England,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25 (1995): 588n. 96 Poos, 607. 97 Poos, 598. 98 Lindsay Bryan, “Scandle is Heaued Sinne,” Florilegium 14 (1995–6): 71–86.

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violence by describing it within acceptable limits, then, take on a new light. These men were not trying to hold together their marriages for the sake of the marriage; they were trying to salvage what remained of their marred reputations. Informal separation, while damaging to a man’s name, might be rationalised as a temporary difficulty; judicial separation, however, was an explicit affirmation of a man’s inadequacies and had to be avoided at all costs. A man’s honour was tied intimately to his ability to control his wife’s behaviour. Men like Thomas Nesfeld and Richard Scot, although they, too, may have wished to end their marriages, were compelled to defend their actions out of honour. If a good husband, and thus a good man, was one who treated his wife “honourably and decently,” then a confession of abuse acted as a declaration of failed marital masculinity. Recasting their actions as acceptable in the eyes of the church not only excuses their violence but also, in essence, paints the picture of ideal married masculinity. With such unruly and inappropriate behaviour from their wives, these men were doing what men do best: discipline. If we believe Thomas Nesfeld and Richard Scot, then, they were not abusive husbands, but model patriarchs.

Conclusion The York cause papers demonstrate that ecclesiastical sentencing was entirely pragmatic: unless the evidence was eminently persuasive, the judge maintained the status quo. While only three verdicts have survived out of the six cases of abuse, distinction between success and failure seems to rely exclusively on number of witnesses and their credibility. Is this a ‘heavy-handed’ approach? The success of Wyvell c. Venables and Ireby c. Lonesdale, at least, would appear to argue otherwise. The courts may have offered incentive for separation cases to obtain a formal resolution by presenting these couples in court, but the settlements of both these cases would seem to suggest that, where the evidence was plentiful, the court granted a separation. What these cases illustrate, however, is a possible gap between lay and curial interpretations of spousal abuse, but also a diversity of discursive construction even within those two positions. Laura Gowing reminds us “we cannot assume an unproblematic community whose moral interests and ideas were more or less in accord with those of lawgivers in the spiritual and secular sphere and more or less the same

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across the differences of age, class, family, and gender.”99 While significant variations in interpretation existed, these cases allow us to develop a broader awareness of formal and public constructions of domestic violence and the interaction and exchange between the two. The savage clubbings, near blindings, and attempted homicides on wives presented by these deponents may not represent accurately actual instances of violence between these couples. Yet, the willingness of neighbours and friends to support these women in their applications for separation, and particularly to jeopardise their souls through creative fabrication of some details, is significant. Even if, at times, plaintiffs and their deponents exaggerated the extent of violence, medieval families upheld an ideal of the acceptable boundaries of wifely chastisement and physical violence was limited in this model. Moreover, because plaintiffs and their deponents shaped these instances of violence to meet the court’s stringent requirements, these cases demonstrate what kinds of violence were not acceptable: a man might discipline his wife when required, but wife beating was not generally tolerated.

99

Gowing, 11.

CHAPTER FIVE

REGULATING MARITAL VIOLENCE: THE FAMILY AND THE COMMUNITY

By the very nature of the process, legal records permit a glimpse into abnormal, rather than typical, behaviour. Weapon-wielding, homicidal spouses, as well as threats of excommunication and execution were not part of the normal process of dealing with spousal abuse. Certainly, before the mid-fourteenth century, marital violence did not frequently propel couples into the courtroom for a judicial solution; even after this period, couples seldom sought legal resolution for their marital difficulties. In the home environment, family and friends were the most likely candidates to intervene in situations that they perceived to be out of control.1 Given the extensive participation of families and friends in the medieval marriage process, their continued involvement after the wedding was predictable, if not compulsory. Michael Sheehan has boldly described marriage as one of the medieval family’s “procedures for recruiting new members,” noting that intervention by third parties began even before the first possible moments of courtship.2 More recently, Shannon McSheffrey has argued that while “[l]egally, only the present consent of the principals was necessary to create a binding contract of marriage . . . . socially, the right and wise thing to do was to marry with the advice and sometimes the consent of relatives, employers and friends.”3 If families and friends

1 A number of authors have suggested this possibility. Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 208–210; P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c. 1300–1520 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 267. 2 Michael M. Sheehan, “Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages: Development and Mode of Application of a Theory of Marriage,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, n.s. 1 (1978): 5. This article also appears in his Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies, ed. James K. Farge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 87–117. 3 Shannon McSheffrey, “‘I Will Never Have None Ayenst My Faders Will’: Consent and the Making of Marriage in the Late Medieval Diocese of London,” in Women, Marriage, and Family in Medieval Christendom: Essays in Memory of Michael M. Sheehan, C.S.B., ed. Constance M. Rousseau, Joel T. Rosenthal (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute

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were eager to participate in matchmaking, they had an even more pressing vested interest in the future prosperity of the couple; overseeing the smooth running of a marriage was a way of protecting their investment. The nature of English village life, in fact, guaranteed the involvement of the wider community in family problems. Living in densely populated villages, friends and neighbours had comprehensive knowledge of one another’s private lives. The York cause papers provide numerous examples of neighbours and friends brought as witnesses before the church courts to document instances of sexual intercourse.4 If members of a couple’s community were privy to such intimate details, how could they not have been equally aware of every heated argument? The walls of medieval homes were too thin and too close in proximity to their neighbours’ to have muffled the angry voices of marital discontent. The medieval approach to keeping the peace encouraged and even required active intervention in the lives of their fellow villagers. Participation in tithing groups prepared men from the age of twelve to police their communities and report on the misdoings and illicit behaviours of their neighbours; what man from this background would hesitate to intrude in another man’s home if he believed a woman’s life was in danger? Even if the records do not always highlight the involvement of family and friends, both intervened regularly in matters of spousal abuse. Their actions speak to communal beliefs and expectations of appropriate marital behaviour current in later medieval England. When family and friends chose to intervene in abusive marriages, adopting the role of arbitrator or marriage counsellor, they did so because they felt that violence in the home exceeded acceptable levels. Instances of communal intervention documented in the courts highlight unsuccessful attempts to resolve marital spats; it is not hard to imagine that for each case that appeared in the courts, another ten or more cases were sorted out in the community by families and friends, making legal intervention unnecessary. Nevertheless, the legal records demonstrate that families, neighbours and friends actively involved themselves in both acts of marital Publications, 1998), 156. See also James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 498. 4 Frederik Pedersen, “Did the Medieval Laity Know the Canon Law Rules on Marriage? Some Evidence from Fourteenth-Century York Cause Papers,” Mediaeval Studies 56 (1994): 116, 118, 131.

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violence, as well as its regulation. Not only were they frequently accomplices in cases of spousal homicide, it was also their primary responsibility to act as judges in the coroner’s inquest. Coroner’s inquest juries were composed of representatives from the visne, the scene of the crime: in cases of marital violence, all too often the home of the victim. As jurors, neighbours and friends, who may have arbitrated marital disputes in the home of the deceased on more than one occasion, they offered their opinions on what had happened, and whether the accused should hang. Their actions as jurors, especially, are integral to unravelling popular understandings of spousal violence in its extreme form.

Marriage, Violence and the Family Later medieval marriage was anything but a private affair. Even before the first moments of courtship, families worked to manipulate the social environment of their children to guide them towards an ‘appropriate’ partner. Youths were introduced to future spouses through organised communal events (such as guild activities, feast day celebrations, village dances and carolling), but group encounters of this nature also worked to restrict their social interactions to those who shared similar (or ideally, slightly better) economic and social standing within the community. Parents and older siblings as well played an active role in chaperoning the relationships of youths, in part, because the marriage of one member affected the entire family. Because wealth and land were critical factors in the choice of spousal partners, marriage required strategy: parents and siblings strove to form the most effective union to benefit at once the couple and the family. While love and marital affection were surely not foreign concepts to this society, they were not the overriding concerns in the courtship process.5 As Barbara Hanawalt has argued, “[t]o marry for love without land or chattels could assure nothing 5 Although Michael Sheehan has argued that spousal selection in medieval England, especially among the lower classes, was indeed a matter of individual choice, more recent historians have suggested that familial intervention was still common. See for example, Shannon McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture: Governance, Patriarchy and Reputation,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), 243–78.

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but a life of penury.”6 Naturally, love and economics were not mutually exclusive; the best marriages embraced both. None the less, these dual, and sometimes conflicting, priorities laid the groundwork for a climate conducive to marital disharmony. The well-known example of the wilful Margery Paston’s ill-fated choice in spouses demonstrates the importance of combining the two. When she rebelled against her family’s wishes and married the family’s head bailiff, Richard Calle, Margery threw the Paston family into turmoil. Despite a succession of beatings and a lengthy separation, both Margery and Richard insisted that they had knowingly exchanged words in the present tense, forcing the bishop to acknowledge their union.7 Eventually, the Pastons permitted Margery to live with Richard as his wife. Because she had failed to marry with the family’s economic interests in mind, her family gained its revenge by alienating her entirely: the family’s correspondence never mentions her again, even though Richard continued his work with the Pastons. Margery and Richard’s marriage is a paradigm of the dangers of marrying only for love. Although the Paston letters offer no evidence of the subsequent quality of their marriage, it is hard to imagine that Margery’s new status as family pariah had no influence on her marital relationship (emotionally, economically or otherwise), particularly in light of Richard’s continued working relationship with her family. Not only were family members instrumental in arranging marriages, they also played an important role as arbiters in marital disputes. For example, when Alice, wife of George Softley of Latton in Essex, was beaten so badly that “she was thereby in peril of her life,” then driven out of her house without a “kerchief on her head nor clothes able to cover her body,” she immediately turned to her son Richard for help. Richard, who lived “within a mile of her house,” gladly took her into his home, but was not about to let the incident between his mother and stepfather pass by without comment. Soon after the incident, he appeared at his stepfather’s door, accompanied by a host of his neighbours, and eager to convince his angry stepfather “to keep and cherish his said wife like a woman.” Richard’s subsequent bill in Chancery makes it clear that his attempts to indoctrinate his stepfather with the high morals of chivalry were 6

Hanawalt, 198. Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the 15th Century (2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971–6), 1.342. 7

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an utter failure: not only did George almost slay Richard and his mother; both suffered repeated threats and harassment from George and his acquaintances.8 Alice was not the only medieval wife to turn to a family member for help. In 1327, when John del Scoles beat his wife Ellen and drove her from their home, her father retaliated by bringing a breach of contract suit against his son-in-law to the manorial court at Wakefield: Thomas Assholf sues John del Scoles, saying that they agreed for half mark of silver John should . . . find the said Ellen food and raiment . . ., but he afterwards drove the said Ellen from his house and beat her, so that she could not remain with him. John brings a cross suit against Thomas . . . so that the said Ellen [shall be] removed from the house, with her goods and chattel. An inquisition to be taken in both matters.9

While the precise nature of the breach of contract suit is not clear, it seems apparent that Thomas and John had previously agreed that John would act charitably towards his wife and, in return, receive a set sum of money. It was not precisely his abuse, then, but the failure to keep his word that landed him in court. The record suggests that Thomas bribed his son-in-law to stop beating his wife and then was angry when the latter continued to do so. Both Thomas Assholf and Alice’s son Richard had similar goals: they hoped that an open discussion of the abuser’s behaviour might help him to reform his actions and strive for a greater degree of self-control. In the words of Alice’s son Richard, he wanted George to abandon his “shameful and unmanly ways” and learn to “keep and cherish his said wife like a woman.”10 Gentle reminders about the precepts of male honour by concerned family members may have been a common tactic employed in cases of marital violence. An early sixteenth-century petition in Chancery exposes the sense of entitlement the families of victims of abuse felt when it came to intervention on this scale. When John Baker of London’s sister quarrelled with her husband over “a matter of small substance,” he beat her 8 TNA C 1/162/46, Alice wife of George Softley of Latton previously wife of Thomas Westwode of Latton, and Richard son of the said Thomas and Alice c. George Softely of Latton (c. 1504 × 1509). 9 J.P. Walker, ed., Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, v. 109, 1945), 130. 10 TNA C 1/162/46.

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“so grievously that it was thought she would die.” Hearing of this great injustice against his sister, John Baker immediately stepped in. Taking Thomas, her husband, aside, he “entreated him with good words to be a good and kind lover unto his sister and no more to demean himself after such manner and he would be unto the said Thomas as good a friend as he had been in times past.” The veiled threat was not lost on Thomas: John soon found himself imprisoned on suspicion of felony when Thomas’s brother William brought forward the accusation.11 Brothers, in particular, hoped to shelter their sisters from violence. A feeling of protectiveness spurred William, son of William Sivier of Gilling (Yorks.), into action after witnessing an altercation between his sister Cassandra and Richard the carter of Gilling. Despite his good intentions, he injured his sister with his own knife during the affray, while he escaped unscathed. Rather than saving his sister’s life, as the coroner’s jury contended was his purpose, William’s intervention resulted in the accidental slaying of his sister and his own flight from an impending charge of homicide.12 Although the outcome was very different from the original intent, William’s willingness to mediate a fatal argument on his sister’s behalf illustrates his devotion to his sister and his wish to shield her from harm. William’s impulse was virtuous and may have been typical of a number of brothers whose best intentions simply acerbated an already unpleasant situation. The courtship process perhaps best documents the role brothers played in marriage. The York cause papers offer two examples of what McSheffrey has described as “medieval equivalents of shotgun weddings.”13 In both, brothers of the bride intervened when it became clear that the young couples’ final objective might have been something other than marriage. The first, a case from the year 1334, is recounted from the brother’s perspective. One August night while John, son of Ralph of Painsthorpe, was awaiting Elisabeth de Waldegrave in her father’s bakehouse for an appointed tryst, John encountered instead Elisabeth’s brother Richard and his servant. Armed with a sword, Richard easily persuaded John of the necessity

11 12 13

TNA C 1/287/47, John Baker, clerk (c. 1504 × 1509). TNA JUST 2/214, m. 4. McSheffrey, “ ‘I Will Never Have None Ayenst My Faders Will’,” 172.

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of a swift marriage with his sister. He then sent his servant into the house to get Elisabeth. Moments later, she came out with her sister Alice, and John and Elisabeth contracted marriage straight away inside the bakehouse. Not long afterwards, John rebelled. Risking the ire of his in-laws, he pled his case before the archbishop and demanded an annulment, claiming coercion and physical violence.14 What is most revealing about this case is the sense of entitlement that informs Richard’s testimony. In his statement, Elisabeth’s brother implies that the wedding occurred without ever consulting Elisabeth for her opinion on the matter. According to Richard, he learned from an unnamed woman that John had frequent access to his sister and that he planned to come to the house that night with carnal intentions. Thus, of his own initiative, he met John at the appointed time and place, drew his sword and strongly encouraged an exchange of vows between the two. Nothing in his testimony indicates that the plan was agreeable to his sister. He did not seem to consider her opinion relevant in this matter. The fact that his sister showed no resistance to the idea, and that she later took the case to court to have the marriage enforced, confirms that she may have been in agreement with her brother anyway. When asked if this level of interference constituted a coerced marriage, Richard replied that he doubted whether a court might construe his actions as sufficient force to turn a constant man and thus liable to the church’s grounds for annulment. Richard also argued that the marriage might not have taken place if he had failed to intervene, a remark which raises a point of good significance. John and Elisabeth were involved in an illicit, but regular affair that, if made public, would have been regularised by the church without the need for Richard’s intervention. The circumstances compel us to return to a question first offered by Richard Helmholz in 1972: “[s]hould a man forced to marry a girl for what society considers to be good and sufficient reason be able to divorce her by pleading force and fear?”15 Elisabeth’s brother thought not. He sincerely believed that his actions were justified as those of a concerned brother

14 YBI CP. E 26, John son of Ralph of Painsthorpe (Pennysthorpe) v. Elisabeth de Waldegrave (1334). 15 R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 220.

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and that he had transgressed neither popular nor ecclesiastical regulations. As he saw it, he was ‘making an honest woman’ of his sister. Because the court returned a sentence in favour of John of Painsthorpe, it seems likely that it believed Richard’s interference to have been excessive. None the less, this case demonstrates the extent to which one brother was willing to intervene in his sister’s marriage. A similar case brought before the church over the course of the years 1431/2 recounts how John Ward, servant of John Burdesall (Yorks.), found himself in his master’s barn faced by his lover, Alice Skelton, and an angry contingent comprising her brother Thomas Holme, his wife, and two armed men.16 Alice’s brother, with his hand upon his dagger, demanded that John marry his sister on pain of death. John refused: he was already married and did not intend to enter falsely into a second marriage, even when threatened with a dagger and several axes. The case ended up in court as multiparty litigation with Alice attempting to prove the legitimacy of her claim to marriage. In response to John’s allegations of force, Alice’s deponents instead maintained that his account was false and deceptive, intended to manipulate the system. The men who accompanied Alice’s brother were not brandishing weapons to coerce John into marriage; they were merely carpenters sporting the tools of their trade. Further, John’s assertion that he was in the barn not to meet Alice for a romp in the hay but instead to reap it was parried cunningly by Alice’s deponents, all seven of whom testified that the field in question lay fallow at the time of the encounter. Alice’s strategy in court was obvious: if he was not to be proclaimed her husband, she might at the very least hope to portray herself a victim and so avoid any counter accusations of fornication. Unlike the case of Painsthorpe c. Waldegrave, Alice’s brother seems to have been responding to his sister’s call for help, rather than working on his own initiative. His aggression, then, was motivated less by a desire to legitimise an illicit union than by his sister’s ambition to be married. Their effort to disguise any evidence of force is an indication that neither Alice nor her brother supposed that their actions were defensible in any light. While force may have been acceptable in some forms, this degree of coercion exceeded natural bounds. None the less, these two cases are very instructive. Together,

16

YBI CP. F 200, Alice Skelton c. John Warde (1431–2).

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they suggest that women may have turned naturally to their brothers for help in relationships gone awry, particularly when a little muscle was required. If brothers were this willing to intervene in their sisters’ relationships at the courting stage, they were probably even more amenable to the notion of stepping in to defend a sister from an abusive husband. The coroners’ rolls include a number of examples of situations in which brothers willingly stepped in to protect their sisters from domestic violence. A Northamptonshire coroner’s roll from the year 1315 recounts how John Pistor de Pilesgate met his death at the hands of his wife’s brother. According to the roll, an argument arose between John and his wife Emma while at their home. Intending only to castigate her for her misbehaviour, John beat his wife who then raised the hue against him. Emma’s brother, hearing his sister’s cries, came to the home of John Pistor and struck him in the head with an axe, killing him. The roll reports that his sister assented to the death.17 The behaviour exhibited by Emma’s brother was, admittedly, an extreme reaction to the abuse against his sister. One can only imagine that this was not the first instance of physical violence between Emma and her husband; or, at the very least, Emma’s brother perceived the level of violence to be of a life-threatening nature. What else might have motivated him to show up axe in hand? Regardless, the method in which the coroner’s roll recounts the violence is an indication that the neighbourhood was on the husband’s side: John had every right to castigate his wife. If her brother disagreed, perhaps he should have expressed his opposition without the axe. Brothers may also have played an important role in the prosecution of spousal homicides. A Yorkshire assize roll records the case of Thomas Pye of Yorkshire and the death of his wife in 1218. According to the jury of twelve and the representatives of the four neighbouring vills, [w]hen Thomas’s wife’s brother came from his plough he found in the fields of Nunburnholme a certain cloth, and when he went there and lifted the cloth he found, beneath the cloth, his sister’s body, strangled. When he realised that, he immediately raised the hue and cry, and the village of Nunburnholme saw Thomas fleeing in the fields and they pursued and took him near Nunburnholme churchyard. Thomas

17

TNA JUST 2/107, m. 7.

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was brought before the Justices and, asked when he was at his home, said that he was there on the Wednesday next before the Purification (30 Jan) and that he left his wife there, and then he went to the house of Reiner of Garton on the Wolds and stayed there the whole night. In the morning when he came he could not find his wife, and when he knew that she was dead he made no suit touching her death. Because he made no suit and, when suit was made by the village of Nunburnholme touching her death, the same Thomas was taken fleeing towards the church, and because the jurors and the 4 neighbouring villages bear witness that he is guilty of his wife’s death, it is adjudged that he has failed [in his defence] and he is hanged. A certain Elena who was in this Thomas’s house has fled and is suspected. Therefore let her be taken.18

The case of Thomas Pye and the woman known only as Elena demonstrates that the evidence used to indict (and convict) a person might be slim. While this jury may have been confident that the evidence stacked against Pye was sufficient for a conviction, another jury in the same situation, but without previous knowledge of Thomas’s character and the relationship with his wife, might have delivered an entirely different verdict. Given that planned homicide was a crime of stealth, usually lacking witnesses to share the story, even neighbours and family members, who were supposed to know what happened, might not be entirely certain of the circumstances surrounding a homicide. In the case of Thomas Pye, his low moral fibre must have been of a sufficient degree to convince jurors of his guilt. The death of Thomas’s wife also alerts us to the likelihood that the wife’s family, represented here by her brother, may have filled the role of the accuser in the prosecution of cases of domestic violence, particularly after the decline of private appeals in the fourteenth century.19 While presentments were supposed to be the product of a shared discourse concerning crimes committed in the area since the last visitation of the justices of assize, a slain wife’s family may have operated behind the scenes, spearheading the attack against a husband by ensuring that his name went forward as a suspect for the crime. Given the nature of the surviving record, this kind of pretrial activity remains hidden from the modern observer; however, 18 TNA JUST 1/1053, m. 9d. Cited and translated in Doris Mary Stenton, ed. and trans., Rolls of the Justices in Eyre. Being the Rolls of Pleas and Assizes for Yorkshire in 3 Henry III (1218–19) (Selden Society, v. 56, 1937), 306–307. 19 On the decline of the appeal, see J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 3rd ed. (London: Butterworths, 1990), 574.

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such activity would have been a natural extension of the role of protector played by the wife’s brother.20 Opposition to family violence was not the preserve of the wife’s natal family in this period. At times, even the husband’s family felt inclined to champion the rights of victims of abuse. For example, a coroners’ inquest from the county of Lincoln tells the story of Alice Sely. When an argument broke out between her brother, Walter Rake de Uslingham, and his wife Margery at their home, out of fear Margery fled to her sister-in-law’s house for protection. Walter soon tracked her down, and when Margery refused to obey him, he slapped her, and then drew his knife. Sensing danger, Alice threw herself between the two just as Walter leapt forward to slay his wife. Alice was struck accidentally and against Walter’s will; she died immediately.21 Cases of spousal homicide in the royal courts of medieval Yorkshire and Essex highlight the dual function of the family as both protector and accessory. Although spouse-murderers usually worked alone, when they did call upon others for help, family members sometimes filled this role (roughly ten percent of accomplices were family members). In 1284 when John, son of Walter of Wennington (Essex), slew his wife Christian, he did so with the help of his brother and another man. Men of both Yorkshire and Essex often turned to their brothers for help in cases of homicide;22 and thus, it was a natural reaction 20 Sisters may also have been called upon at times to protect women from their abusive husbands, as in the case of Eleanor Brownynge from the diocese of London who, with her husband in hot pursuit, fled to the home of her sister (LMA MS DL/C/205, fos. 203r–204v, Eleanor Brownynge c. Alexander Brownynge, 1473). However, the records present few cases of sisters rescuing sisters. 21 TNA JUST 2/67, m. 6. A Chancery bill from the late medieval period also suggests victims of abuse may have turned to their in-laws for help. See TNA C/1/82/87, Isabelle late the wife of Richard Vergeons c. Thomas Hyll, wiremonger of London, brother-in-law of complainant (c. 1487 × 1503). 22 In the records of felony indictment for the county of York, of which there were 9,294 victims of violent crimes, a male felon chose to work with his brother to carry out a violent crime 420 times. The figure for Essex is substantially smaller, but still in proportion to its size. Of the 1,713 victims of violent crimes in Essex over the course of the late Middle Ages, 47 had violence inflicted upon them by brothers. While both of these figures reflect only a small number of the crimes committed in both counties in the late Middle Ages, the numbers are high enough to suggest that brothers often supported each other in their actions, no matter how violent. Moreover, these figures are considerably higher than are those for any other family relationship. The only relationship to come close is that of father and son. In the county of York, father and son worked together in violent crime on 206 occasions, while in Essex this pairing resulted in only 18 violent crimes. These figures only represent cases presented before the king’s justices. If the figures were

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for John to enlist his brother’s assistance. The jury’s distaste of family collusion is evident in the ruling on this matter: while John’s brother managed to escape on his way to the Colchester gaol, a trial jury sentenced John and Ralph de Lee to hang.23 A Yorkshire jury exhibited similar abhorrence of family murders when dealing with the 1293 homicide of Alice, wife of Henry son of Maud of Bashall, by her husband and his daughter Isabel. Not only was the act reported to have been committed by night (a phrase often included to indicate that it was a crime deserving of death),24 the jury saw fit to execute Henry. His daughter probably would have met the same fate had she not fled immediately after the fact. She was exacted four times, then waived.25 Although rare, wives sometimes turned to their families for assistance in spouse-murder. When Maud, wife of John son of Michael of Essex (1271–2), determined to slay her husband, she turned to her brother Roger and her sister Agnes to assist her in this act. Together they slew him at night while he lay sleeping, buried him in the backyard and fled the county.26 Wives may have turned more frequently to their extended familia for support in petty treason. For example, in the year 1392 when Margaret, wife of Robert Rasebek of York, decided to do away with her husband, two of his servants helped her to carry out the plan.27 Elisabeth, wife of Andrew Wantone, was also assisted by two of her husband’s servants.28 When Alice, wife of Simon of Flawith (Yorks.), slew her husband in 1235, her maidservant was her accomplice.29 Servants who had grown up in the tense environment engendered by marital disharmony probably came to sympathise with the wife as another victim of autocratic household governance. expanded to include all assaults committed jointly by family members and prosecuted within the locality (e.g. at the sheriff ’s tourn), the numbers would most likely be substantially higher. 23 TNA JUST 1/242, m. 75. 24 See p. 281 for a fuller discussion. 25 TNA JUST 1/1098, m. 5. A woman could not be outlawed because she was not considered to be under the law in the first place. A woman might be “waived,” however, a process which entailed all the same legal restrictions as outlawry. See Henry de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. George E. Woodbine, trans. Samuel E. Thorne (4 vols., Cambridge: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 1968), 2. 428. 26 TNA JUST 1/238, m. 47. 27 TNA JUST 1/1145, m. 3. 28 TNA JUST 2/155, m. 21d. 29 TNA JUST 1/230, m. 4.

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None of these examples is exceptional. Medieval families sometimes assisted each other in their murderous deeds. In fact, the figures for the York and Essex gaol delivery rolls over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reveal that the accused sought the help of a family member in a considerable number of homicides. The lowest participation rate comes from the Essex gaol delivery rolls. Of the twenty-nine percent of cases of homicide committed by multiple accused or an accused with an accomplice, eighteen percent included family members. The Yorkshire gaol delivery rolls reveal a significantly higher figure. Of the twenty-three percent of homicides involving more than one accused or an accomplice, twentyseven percent were committed in collusion with a family member.30 None of the figures presented here includes spousal or service relationships. If we incorporate the latter figures into the equation, the numbers are even higher. The Essex gaol delivery records demonstrate that twenty-six percent of the cases involving accomplices or second principals included family members, while the figure for the Yorkshire gaol delivery rolls is thirty-four percent. When individuals turned to others for help in perpetrating a murderous crime, a family member seemed like a logical choice. The pun ‘the family that slays together, stays together’ may be at once trite and objectionable, but there is an undeniable truth imbedded in this aphorism. Since death was the only penalty available in the medieval courts for felony, entering into a murderous pact meant 30 When reading these figures there are a number of important points to keep in mind. First, the numbers represent cases of homicides rather than victims of homicides (hence, each case of homicide may have had multiple victims and accused). If a homicide was recorded separately it was considered to be an individual case, or instance of crime, regardless of the number of victims. However, in the process of finding duplicate recordings of homicides within the rolls, if a case had the same victim but the accused was different (as is often the case in the recording of separate trials in gaol delivery rolls), it was still counted as only one case. Second, these figures include all cases where there were multiple accused (that is, where no one was identified as being more responsible for the crime than were the others), and cases where there were accomplices (that is, those persons indicated as being secondary in responsibility). There is a somewhat artificial distinction that these records make between these two categories; consequently, for the purposes of understanding the role of the family in supporting murderous intentions, it seemed crucial to eliminate this distinction and equate second principals and accomplices. This category also includes those cases in which the accused was unknown, and yet the jury was convinced that more than one person had committed the homicide. Finally, being an accomplice involved a large range of possible crimes from “aiding and abetting,” all the way down to “receiving knowingly.”

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that medieval families were putting their own lives in danger in order to help one another. These findings fly in the face of conclusions drawn by some historians about the pre-modern family. J.A. Sharpe has argued that the English “family was not an institution which made unique emotional demands upon its members.”31 Would families have willingly laid their lives on the line for each other, if they did not feel a strong sense of loyalty, if not love, for one another? In terms of marital violence, these findings draw a number of conclusions. Chiefly, they emphasise the centrality of self-help as an alternative to court settlements. Medieval Englishmen and women often preferred to bypass the courts altogether and solve their problems themselves. Medieval courts were not only costly and time-consuming, but also notoriously ineffective. A suit of homicide or rape was more likely to be acquitted than not, and litigants were well aware of this fact. Why take a chance in court when there were other options available? Additionally, with the inadequacies of the royal justice system and its inflexibility in dealing with cases outside the normal parameters of customary law, many conflicts simply fell through the gaps, making self-help a popular alternative. By the end of the fourteenth century, self-help was even more crucial in medieval England as a method of dispute resolution because of the “perceptible slackening of royal control.”32 This shift mirrors the creation of new courts outside the regular fora for dispute settlement, such as the courts of Chancery and Admiralty, and the rise of private mediation. Cases with no prescribed remedy were, for the first time, recognised as tangible issues and provided with a solution. Yet, the masses perceived the normal mechanism for dispute resolution as being less and less effective. In order to grasp fully the range of alternatives available to a victim in the medieval era, then, it is necessary to consider self-help as one possible strategy and realise that it worked side by side with the common law. This perspective is pertinent to a more profound understanding of family intervention in marital violence. Families were accustomed to resolving their own disputes in the absence of official alternatives. Intercession in the marriages and relationships of younger members may have been merely an extension 31 J.A. Sharpe, “Domestic Homicide in Early Modern England,” The Historical Journal 24.1 (1981): 34. 32 Edward Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 124.

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of a widespread concept of ‘self-help.’ Finally, turning to one’s family for help was a natural part of medieval life. In this climate, a victim of domestic violence would not have hesitated to call on her (or his) family for help, even if the proposed solution was a drastic one.

Beyond the Family: Communal Intervention in Marriage Not all troubled wives had family members to turn to in situations of abuse. The urban setting engendered an atmosphere in which persons living apart from their families were likely to rely instead on neighbours and friends for help in their domestic woes. Neighbours frequently acted in loco parentis, exerting the same kind of pressures on a couple as parents or family members would have in a rural setting. The case of Whytell c. Beaumonde, drawn from the York cause papers, confirms that neighbourly advice and intervention were necessary and regular parts of the process of regulating medieval marriages.33 According to Richard Dey of St Wilfrid parish (Yorks.), one night Margaret Whyttell came to the home of Richard Bryg, knelt before him and tearfully confessed that John Beaumonde had treated her poorly. The two had exchanged words of betrothal and then afterwards consummated their union, thus creating a valid marriage in the eyes of the church (since the act confirmed the intention). John, however, was unwilling to acknowledge publicly his marriage and, conveniently, no one had been present to witness the exchange. She went on to explain that John had made no effort to support his new wife financially or emotionally since the joining, and that they continued to maintain separate residences. Margaret was so distraught over her potential spiritual endangerment that she turned to her neighbour, Richard, for help. Between the two of them, they immediately hatched a plan to encourage John into making their marriage public. One evening soon thereafter, John arranged to meet Margaret at her home so that, as a dutiful wife, she could wash his hair. Afterwards, they retired to bed. Richard, his wife, and another friend waited

33 YBI CP. F 75. It is important to note that in the case of Whytell c. Beaumonde, we are presented only with Whytell’s side of the story. The depositions of Beaumonde’s witnesses do not exist, nor is there a sentence.

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until the couple had withdrawn and extinguished the candles. Then, with weapons in hand, Richard led the small contingent into Margaret’s bedchamber where they met a shocked and surprised John, and demanded what he was doing there. Given no other choice, John replied that he had good license to be there because he had recently betrothed Margaret. As proof, Richard called for a renewed exchange of vows. Convinced by Whytell’s armed neighbour and his companions, John and Margaret proceeded to exchange vows before them, acknowledging publicly their commitment to each other. Richard then extracted from John a promise that he would not mistreat Margaret in the future, and John immediately pledged his word. Two weeks later, Margaret was in court, trying to prove the validity of her marriage. Richard Bryg was not an outstanding neighbour. Neighbours, particularly elderly men, expected to play a role in the marriages of those in their locality. In her study of late medieval London, Shannon McSheffrey has argued that the “concern of senior men with moral probity went beyond the patriarchal household and the master-servant relationship into the community as a whole,” and that “as the patriarchs of the community, [they] felt a responsibility to police relationships.”34 This sense of paternalism may have led some men into danger. For example, a coroner’s roll from the county of Leicester recounts the story of a barker named Giles of Owston, neighbour of John Draper and his wife, in the year 1369. Hearing great dissension and anger from their home, Giles took it upon himself to call on the couple, in the hopes of mitigating John’s anger and pacifying their argument. His good intentions were a poor shield. John stabbed Giles to death with his knife.35 Not only was Giles expected to participate informally in the supervision of his neighbours’ marriages, he may even have felt a strong sense of responsibility to do so. Indeed, the church perpetuated the expectation of neighbourhood involvement in marriage. In July 1440, the case of Thomas Marr of Huggate came before the Dean and Chapter at York. In Thomas’s case, adulterous activities lay at the heart of his floundering marriage. The record reports first that he

34 McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture,” 250–1. 35 TNA JUST 2/53, m. 3.

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“maltreated” his wife Agnes and “expelled her from his home.” The expulsion, however, occurred subsequent to his adultery with a woman named simply as Emmotte whom he had previously sworn to abjure. Since his wife’s departure, Emmotte had moved into his home and behaved as his mistress. The Dean and Chapter laid the blame for the fiasco entirely at the feet of Thomas. He was not only ordered immediately to cease his relationship with Emmotte, it was decreed also that he should process around the parish church of Huggate on three Sundays with bare shins and feet, clothed only in his shirt, and carrying a candle weighing one pound in his hand in the manner of the penitents. Moreover, in the same format he was required to process around the cathedral church at York, offering a candle weighing one pound of wax on both sides of the far places of the highest altar on the day his penance was completed. Finally, the church required him to abjure any further sin on pain of twice the usual penalty. Concerning Agnes, the court commanded Thomas to treat her “honourably.” The two were then asked to submit themselves to local arbitration by two squires because of “the disagreements and extralegal deeds between Thomas and Agnes his wife,” in the hopes of repairing some of the damage inflicted by Thomas and resolving some of their differences.36 The example of Thomas Marr and his wife Agnes is revealing. Rather than a simple monition for good behaviour, here the court was attempting to present a viable solution to the problem. Thomas and Agnes had reached a point in their marriage where they could no longer resolve their differences without outside intervention. If they were a married couple today, marriage counselling would be an obvious solution to their problems. The court’s request that they undergo arbitration suggests that counselling of this genre is not a modern invention. Of course, the mention of “extralegal deeds” reveals that there may have been more to the story. It is unfortunate that the records provide too little detail to discern the nature of arbitration. While this is the only case uncovered in this investigation where arbitration as a solution to marital discord was required by the court, judges might have advised couples regularly to participate informally in arbitration. In the case of Thomas and Agnes, the solution is reassuring. The court recognised the earmarks of an

36

York D & C AB/1, fo. 97.

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impending divorce a mensa et thoro and understood that serious measures were required in order to avoid this path.

Spousal Homicide and the Parish Priest In her study of trespassory ravishment, Sue Sheridan Walker has observed the frequency with which husbands accused clergymen of abducting their wives. She contends that these men “may have been acting in their capacity of spiritual advisor”—essentially counselling women to leave abusive marriages.37 If a victim of abuse had no family to turn to, who better than the local priest, dedicated to the care of souls, to rescue her from an unhappy relationship? Cases of marital violence present numerous examples of clerical involvement in spousal disputes, adding substance to Walker’s assumption that counselling victims of abuse was a significant aspect of the care of souls. For example, one somewhat cryptic entry in the Yorkshire assize rolls hints that the church’s position as mediator in cases of domestic disputes involved its local representatives. Odo the Chaplain was found killed on Barmby Moor and on the same day in which he was killed he ate in the house of Gregory of Pollington. Gregory has come and is not suspected of the death and therefore let him be under sureties to answer if anyone wishes to say anything against him, and let the sheriff have the names of the sureties. The village of Wilberfoss said that Stephen of Wilberfoss beat his wife and she said that he killed the priest, and therefore let Stephen be attached. He has come and is not suspected by the jurors. Therefore let him be under sureties to stand to right etc if anyone etc and let the sheriff have their names.38

Although the representatives of Wilberfoss did not make explicit the connection between Stephen’s abuse of his wife and his intentions towards the priest, one possible explanation is that Odo had taken it upon himself to meddle in family affairs and either to counsel Stephen to reform his behaviour, or his wife to abandon the marriage. Otherwise, Stephen’s ill treatment of his wife would not have been

37

Sue Sheridan Walker, “Punishing Convicted Ravishers: Statutory Strictures and Actual Practise in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century England,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 245–6. 38 TNA JUST 1/1053, m. 9d. Cited and translated in Stenton, 312.

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sufficiently pertinent to the entry to warrant inclusion. Wife beating was not satisfactory evidence in and of itself to substantiate a murderous character. The decision of the scribe not to spell out the implications of Stephen’s abusive behaviour is also enlightening. If intervention by priests in the disputes of couples within their parish was a familiar feature of late medieval society, the association between the abuse and Odo’s death required no explanation. Surviving indictments of petty treason by poison characterise some clerics as willing intruders in unhappy marriages in an even more insidious manner. When John of Wink died inexplicably in 1334 in the village of North Frodingham (Yorks.), a presentment jury indicted both his wife Julianne and Hugh of Alne, the local vicar. The jury accused the couple of knowingly giving John poison to drink, thus bringing about his death in a deceitful manner.39 The cleric’s perceived interest in this relationship immediately raises some important questions. Was Hugh in fact Julianne’s lover? Although the records do not indicate any amorous relationship, priests in the medieval period were notorious for failing to adhere to the vow of celibacy.40 It is equally plausible that Hugh was a concerned priest, whose intrusive actions in the marriage of Julianne and John prior to John’s death led jurors to think the worst. In the minds of a medieval jury, it may have been logical for a wife and cleric to conspire together using poison. Given the church’s firm stance on bloodshed and violence, it may have been reasonable to assume that a cleric would prefer a non-violent method of homicide, such as poison, if he were going to engage in the act at all. Hugh of Alne was not the only man of the cloth accused of aiding a petty traitor. Eight of the eighty accomplices to husband-killings in York and Essex were described as being members of the clergy (two vicars, two canons, one provost, three clerics). These findings argue in favour of a local role played by priests in dysfunctional marriages. Anxious neighbours undoubtedly reacted in inappropriate ways to a priest’s intervention. Repeated close contact with an abused wife may have been misinterpreted, especially in situations in which a husband died inexplicably soon thereafter. This conjecture may 39

TNA JUST 3/78, m. 11. See James Brundage, “Sin, Crime and the Pleasures of the Flesh: the medieval Church judges sexual offences,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London and New York, Routledge, 2001), 294–307. 40

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explain the frequent association between petty treason, poison and clerics: poison is the one method medieval jurors were incapable of proving or disproving. The best evidence against a cleric, then, may have been his active involvement in a man’s marriage before his death. In his study of medieval expectations of clerical masculinity, R.N. Swanson addresses popular associations between clerics and wives, and the hostile response of laymen. He writes, [t]he collusion between clerics and women to civilize and Christianize medieval lay men could easily be interpreted as a conspiracy against male control over the family and domestic life: the clergy could be attacked as having too close attachments to women, encouraging their spirituality and acts of charity without reference to their husbands, thereby undermining male power.41

Medieval laymen largely distrusted clerics. Swanson argues that this sentiment derived from the uncertain gender of the clergy; while ‘visibly male,’ medieval society expected the clergy to renounce their masculinity upon taking their vows. Thus, many features of medieval masculinity, such as sexual intercourse with women and violent altercations, were not supposed to be part of the clerical lifestyle. The relationship between laymen and clerics, then, was complicated by the lay refusal to believe that a man might successfully deny his masculinity.42 Consequently, men expected the worst from clerics, whether as his wife’s lover, or her confidante. Indictments of this sort may represent collective animosity towards meddling priests. How better to communicate dissatisfaction with the church’s prying policies than to indict its representatives in the royal courts? Here, it is worthy of note that a cleric indicted in the royal courts did not face the same penalty as lay felons. Priests might claim benefit of clergy and have their case brought before the bishop’s court where the penalties were much less stringent. Accordingly, presentment in no way endangered the life of the cleric, and in most cases, would have presented little more than an inconvenience. Abetting a vengeful wife 41 R.N. Swanson, “Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation,” in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D.M. Hadley (New York: Longman, 1999), 170. Sharon Farmer makes a similar observation about the close relationship between clergy and wives. See Sharon Farmer, “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61 (1986): 517–43. 42 Farmer, 167. In his study of defamation suits, Derek Neal addresses this subject in a similar way. See Derek Neal, “Suits Make the Man: Masculinity in Two English Law Courts, c. 1500,” Canadian Journal of History 37 (2002): 1–22.

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was not the only instance when English people used the royal courts to punish clerical transgressions. Late medieval communities frequently levelled fictionalized accusations of rape at priests; these allegations represent an attempt by the laity to penalise lecherous clerics in violation of their vows of celibacy.43 Swanson makes a similar observation, noting that clerical sexuality was always “available for use as an anticlerical weapon by the threatened males.”44 With such resentment against priests and discomfort with their place in medieval life, it is not surprising that some clergymen fell victim to accusations of petty treason. Overt hostility towards clergymen and the role they played in marital disputes landed at least one clergyman in prison. The Chancery bill of John Carvare, clerk chancellor to the archbishop of York, in the very early sixteenth century tells the story of Joan, wife of Guy Dawny, who appeared before the archbishop of York to request a judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty. Although the court ordered the sequestration of Joan, her husband quickly tracked her down and attempted an out-of-court settlement by dragging her home. John Carvare, as clerk to the archbishop, was the official of the court appointed to escort Joan back to her temporary residence in York after this debacle. Angry and looking for revenge, Guy sued a case of trespass against Carvare. Faced with imprisonment, and without a superior to whom he could appeal (the archbishop rather inconveniently died during this process), Carvare was forced to turn to the court of Chancery for help.45 Unable to prevent his wife from continuing her suit against him, Guy laid blame on the man he saw as being (at least partly) responsible for his trouble. Carvare’s misfortune is evidence of lay hostility towards meddling clerics: marital disputes were a matter for “real men.”

43 Edward Powell, “Jury Trial at Gaol Delivery in the Late Middle Ages: The Midland Circuit, 1400–1429,” in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200–1800, ed. J.S. Cockburn and Thomas A. Green (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 102–3; Robin L. Storey, “Malicious indictments of clergy in the fifteenth century,” in Medieval Ecclesiastical Studies in Honour of Dorothy M. Owen, ed. M.J. Franklin and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), 221–40. 44 Swanson, 171. 45 TNA C1/295/4, John Carvare, clerk chancellor to Thomas late archbishop of York (c. 1504 × 1509). Certiorari.

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Indictments and the Community Spousal homicides in the coroners’ rolls, in particular, offer another kind of evidence that is relevant to understanding communal attitudes about marital violence. The county coroner investigated each death, whether accidental, natural, or deliberate. His investigation relied primarily on the verdict of the inquest jury—a group of twelve men from the community and four representatives of the neighbouring vills, whose responsibility it was to report what had happened, and decide who, if anyone, was to blame. Unfortunately, their reports, as transcribed by the coroner’s scribe, are generally terse, unrevealing and exceptionally formulaic. A typical entry runs as follows: The jury present on oath that on the Sunday next before the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the second year of the reign of King Richard II [1378], at Ryther, Roger Uttyng of the same feloniously slew William Medde of Ryther by piercing his head with an arrow so that he immediately died. And the said Roger immediately fled. His chattels are none. Viewed by Thomas of Lockton, coroner.46

An entry like this may seem so formulaic as to be of little use to the social historian. Yet, such an evaluation of the evidence contained in coroners’ rolls would be foolhardy. The formulaic nature of the rolls is not an obstacle, but a reliable tool. Because the majority of cases follow a set structure, those that do not conform immediately take on significant meaning, revealing a great deal about village attitudes as represented by the jury. For example, like most entries in the coroners’ rolls, an inquest held in 1344 on a suicide victim is a concise record of events, with one important exception. The roll entry states: “Alice, wife of Stephen Souter of Great Broughton, went to the river running through Great Broughton and, of her own free will, she drowned herself because of quarrelsome words between herself and her husband.”47 Inquests into cases of self-killing rarely offer evidence into a suicide’s motivation. The obvious exceptions are those where the jury identified a suicide as non compos mentis: but, even here, the records do not address circumstances that may have exacerbated the victim’s mental state. Why, then, should this coroner’s

46 47

TNA JUST 2/233, m. 5. TNA JUST 2/212, m. 19.

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roll have mentioned a marital dispute? The record does not name him as an accomplice to her death, and there is no sign that he encouraged or aided her in any way. Why would jurors have mentioned this quarrel unless, because they knew Stephen well and were capable of drawing some personal conclusions about this matter, they somehow felt that he was partly to blame for her self-imposed death? Even minor deviations from the norm are revealing. Most cases of homicide report simply that the accused “feloniously slew” ( felonice interfecit) the victim, and omit the particulars of the homicide. However, in the death of Margaret, wife of Stephen Calihorn, from the year 1285, the way the victim died was significant. The indictment states, at home in Childene (Essex), Margaret was “trampled” and beaten so severely by her husband that she languished for three days before dying.48 Because Stephen fled the scene of the crime and was later outlawed, a more complete record of the crime was crucial. If he was to return to stand trial at a later point, this information was adequate to try his case. The image of a woman trampled to death by her husband is sufficiently gruesome evidence to incline any jury towards a conviction. Similarly, in the homicide of Margaret, wife of Henry of Blackmore (Essex), by her husband in the year 1272, the indictment omits altogether the phrase “feloniously slew.” Instead, the eyre roll notes that Henry beat Margaret with a staff so badly that she died three days later.49 Once again, this is a very subtle deviation from the formula, but this version was surely more meaningful and effective than others in conveying the scandalous nature of the offence. The inclusion of superfluous detail in particularly appalling cases of domestic homicide is evidence of the strong sense of outrage experienced by the victim’s locality and its desire to secure a conviction. For example, in the 1355 case of Richard Grayne of Fangfoss (Yorks.), taken for the death of his wife Ellen, the indictment appears to have addressed the means by which she died in order to sway the trial jury’s convictions. According to the written indictment, Richard “feloniously placed his wife Ellen in a fiery oven where she was burned, and from this incident she afterwards died.”50 The jury probably

48 49 50

TNA JUST 1/242, m. 90d. TNA JUST 1/238, m. 53d. TNA JUST 3/141a, m. 16.

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included Richard’s specific actions in the indictment to account for the lapse in time between the quarrel and his wife’s death (that is, in order to prove that her death was, indeed, the direct result of his actions). The detailed and graphic nature of the homicide and the deliberate use of the term felonice, despite its unusual context, suggest that the community’s representatives were determined to see Richard hang. The death of Agnes, wife of John Dryvere of Coggeshall (Essex), in 1371 was also one in which the lengthy duration of the homicide required explanation. The coroner’s inquest jury offered a very explicit account of Agnes’s unfortunate death. [ The jury] say on their oath that John Dryvere son of Emma de Badewe, husband of the said Agnes, on Palm Sunday in the abovementioned year led the said Agnes his wife to a certain field called Westfield in the aforesaid Coggeshale to the said well for the sheep in that field and there he beat her in the head and neck and so maltreated her that he almost killed her; and John Dryvere, believing her (Agnes) to be dead, he placed her entire body in the well except her neck and head so that Agnes lay there in the water in that way until the next Friday which was Good Friday, the said John Growel found her lying in the said way and on that day he notified the neighbours in the area who came and took her from the well and brought her to the home of Margery Russh in the said vill and there she lay living, and she languished until the next Thursday in the week of Easter on which day she died from her wound. And so the said John Dryvere feloniously slew the said Agnes.51

The coroner’s jury was at pains here to formulate an account that would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that John’s actions were the direct cause of Margery’s death, and thus the court should treat her death as culpable homicide. John fled and did not return to stand trial for his crime; therefore, the outcome of this case remains a mystery. None the less, the jury’s revulsion at John’s treatment of his wife is apparent in the very full detail given in the indictment. If the coroner’s jury had not been so eager to ensure John’s conviction, it would not have constructed such an airtight case. The jury dictating this indictment represented the community of the victim: these men may have been neighbours or friends of the victim or her family. With such a despicable case of domestic violence, the

51

TNA JUST 2/35, m. 5/2.

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jury’s determination to prevent John Dryvere from ever returning home is not surprising. To this end, a coroner’s inquest jury might shape an account of spousal homicide in a number of ways to communicate its views on the fate of the accused. A detailed record of the crime accentuating its gruesome and sordid nature must have gone a long way towards securing a conviction.

Juries, Verdicts and Encoded Communication A study of deviance from the norm is not the only method of exposing communal perceptions of marital violence. The formulaic language of the records also provides powerful perception into the beliefs of the jurors. In a recent work, John Bellamy remarks that, apart from observing an occasional overlap in personnel, historians have generally disregarded the relationship between indicting and trial juries.52 As a result, any communication between the two has been under-valued. Bellamy’s work fits in well with current theories concerning the composition of medieval juries. Despite more traditional perceptions, trial jurors were rarely drawn from the ranks of those who lived closest to the scene of the crime, thus they could not, in fact, have been self-informing.53 If trial juries were not self-informing, then they must have looked elsewhere for evidence. Bellamy turns to formulas used in felony indictments to explain this conundrum. He contends that presentment jurors inserted a specialised vocabulary of key words and phrases into their indictments in order to communicate their fears and perceptions to trial jurors. When jurors of presentment wished to convey their suspicions in particularly egregious cases of felony and also highlight the shocking nature of the crime, they deliberately included these signals, or phrases of “afforcement,”54 to incline trial jurors towards a guilty verdict. By noting specifically that a crime took place “by night”

52 J.G. Bellamy, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England: Felony before the Courts from Edward I to the Sixteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 53 B. W. McLane, “Juror Attitudes towards Local Disorder: The Evidence of the 1328 Lincolnshire Trailbaston Proceedings,” in Green and Cockburn, 36–64. J.B. Post and Edward Powell have made similar observations. See J.B. Post, “Jury Lists and Juries in the Late Fourteenth Century,” in Green and Cockburn, 65–77; Powell, 78–116. 54 Bellamy, 29.

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(noctanter), “on the king’s highway” (in regia via), or that the accused was “common” or “notorious,” presentment jurors imbedded clues in the indictment to warn trial jurors that this was a crime committed by stealth and worthy of the full penalty of the law. When applied to spousal homicide, it is necessary to expand the vocabulary of juridical dialogue even more. As Frances Dolan observed in her examination of legal representations of conjugal homicides in the early modern period that [t]exts about petty treason dwell on the violation of domesticity and marital intimacy entailed by this crime, which generally occurred in the central locations of marital life—the dining table and the bed. The formulation of legal separation as a divorce a mensa et thoro, “from table and bed,” reinforces the significance of these furnishings as sites of intimacy and estrangement.55

Nowhere is this more apparent than in royal records of felony indictment for later medieval Yorkshire and Essex. On the Monday after the feast of St Bartholomew the Apostle in the year 1363, William, servant of John Smith of Rillington (Yorks.), Emma, daughter of Thomas of Rillington, and Joan, wife of Roger Rudbrade, together carried out a villainous plot to murder Joan’s husband. Their indictments focused on the sordid nature of the crime, which took place in the dark of night while Roger was lying asleep “in his bed” (in lecto suo).56 When Margaret, wife of John Trilly the younger of Waltham (Essex), decided to do away with her husband in the year 1378, she also chose the middle of the night, while her husband was in bed sleeping, to carry out her plan.57 Inclusion of the precise location of a crime not only underscored the deceitful and conspiratorial nature of the offence, it also stressed the violation of the solemn bonds of marriage. A couple’s bed was idealised as a place of trust and intimacy; the murder of one’s husband in bed was a decisive breach of this bond. The phrase in lecto suo materialises in various accounts of petty treason, cropping up in at least six of the eighty-one cases for both 55 Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550 –1700 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 29. T.A. Green makes a similar observation. See Thomas A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200 –1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 58. 56 TNA JUST 2/217, m. 17. 57 TNA JUST 3/168, m. 4.

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counties.58 Five of the six cases also note that the crime took place at night, while one of the six indictments further appends the damning statement that the wife had not only feloniously slain her husband, but had “murdered” (murdravit) him as well. In particularly deplorable cases of petty treason, indicting juries may have felt that the surest way to guarantee a conviction was to include as many terms or phrases of afforcement as possible. Vocabulary highlighting violations of the marriage bed in cases of petty treason was just as popular as focusing on the breach of trust between husband and wife who shared a table.59 Allegations of poison through food or drink arose in six of the eighty-one cases of husband-killing appearing in this study. An additional five cases of petty treason noted specifically that the crime took place in the home of the victim. Although this was not a transgression of table and bed per se, mention of the marital home as the location of the crime made a similar point. Together, phrases of afforcement that spoke specifically to the defilement of the marriage bond number seventeen out of eighty-one cases, or twenty-one percent. This is a sufficiently high percentage to conclude that medieval jurors were shocked and appalled at the nature of “these violations of domesticity, vividly figured through disrupted sleep and contaminated food.” In particular, the indictments spotlight “the dependent who should share the bed and table, and solace and nurture her husband’s body, [but instead] abuses intimacy to invade and destroy that body.”60

58 The inclusion of “in lecto suo,” or the equivalent phrase “dormienter” (while sleeping), in cases of indictment for petty treason was not exclusive to these counties, however. A cursory glance through the coroners’ rolls offers a variety of other cases. To offer a few examples, this phrase appears in the following cases of petty treason: TNA JUST 2/25, m. 8 (Derby); TNA JUST 2/26, m. 1 (Derby); TNA JUST 2/34, m. 12 (Gloucester); TNA JUST 2/83, m. 2d (Lincoln); TNA JUST 2/150, m. 2 (Salop); and TNA JUST 2/163, m. 1 (Stafford). 59 Although Bellamy chose to focus on the most universal phrases of afforcement (such as noctanter, in regia via, etc), Cynthia Neville’s study of the northern law courts suggests that regions of England may have created their own phrases of afforcement. Due to its proximity with the Scottish border, the north of England in the late Middle Ages was plagued with incessant cross-border crime. As a result, northern juries adapted their own circumstances to the English legal system by painting these ordinary felons as traitors, in order to ensure a high conviction rate. See C.J. Neville, “The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages,” Law and History Review 9 (1991): 1–30. 60 Dolan, 30.

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An even more compelling argument to support the hypothesis that “representations of the violated home” were perceived chiefly as an element of petty treason lies in the fact that the phrase in lecto suo occurs in only one indictment concerning wife-killing.61 In general, terms or phrases of afforcement in cases of uxoricide were of an entirely different nature. Indictments were far more likely to describe wife-killers as having “murdered” their victims (three indictments for petty treason included this phrase, while it surfaced in eight indictments for wife killings). With the exception of the one case of in lecto suo, noctanter, murdravit, and in regia via were the only phrases of afforcement used in uxoricides in either Yorkshire or Essex. This finding confirms that wife killing did not stand out from typical homicide in the way that husband killing inevitably did. It is noteworthy, however, that twenty-two out of 152 cases (or fifteen percent) of uxoricides from York and Essex employed these phrases, indicating that, even if wife killing was not perceived as a violation of marriage in the same way as was petty treason, it was still a repugnant and sometimes inexcusable crime. If the jury of presentment was eager to communicate its opinions about the fate of the accused, members of the coroners’ inquest jury were even more anxious to impart their perspectives. Coroner’s inquest juries had a greater interest in seeing the accused punished, in great part because inquest juries were composed of people whose lives were affected most by the conviction or acquittal of the defendant. An acquittal permitted a felon to continue living in his village. Moreover, Barbara Hanawalt has observed that jurors had a variety of important considerations. “If they convicted and condemned to death one of their fellow villagers, they risked starting a vendetta. The dead

61 Dolan, 31; TNA JUST 1/235, m. 19. The rolls describe one other victim as lying in bed; however, the case does not follow the typical pattern and as such does not really belong to the same category. In this Yorkshire case from the year 1268 or 1269, Agnes wife of Robert Pymme was not lying in bed asleep; rather, her husband was lying in bed with her and the two were reported as having been in the midst of an argument when Robert picked up a knife and slit his wife’s throat. This death was a violation of the marriage bed, as Dolan would suggest, but the crime does not bear witness to the kind of stealth and deception typical of phrases of afforcement, and thus is not a clear example of the use of in lecto suo in order to incline the petty jury against the accused. See TNA JUST 1/1051, m. 9d.

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man’s family might indict one of them for a felony . . . [e]ven if the jurors acquitted a known felon and returned him to the community, they had made the point that future bad behavior might result in hanging and everyone would be watching.”62 Local jurors were required to negotiate fine moral distinctions in a variety of unusual circumstances; but they also had to make the best decisions for the future of both themselves and the vill. With such a heavy burden on their shoulders, inquest juries must have been impatient to communicate their views. This assumption is borne out by the evidence of the coroners’ rolls. Despite the meagre number of husband-killings found in the coroners’ rolls for Yorkshire, it is striking that four of the eleven were described as having occurred by night, while only one out of forty-one uxoricide indictments included this phrase. Of the seven daylight husband-killings, one occurred on the king’s highway, while the records describe none of the uxoricides in this manner. Likewise, one case of petty treason was committed while the defendant’s husband was sleeping in bed, while none of the wife-killings included this phrase. Taken as a whole, over half the inquests involving husband-killings in the Yorkshire coroners’ rolls were recorded in a manner that would incline a trial jury towards a conviction; only two percent of uxoricides received the same treatment. Gaol delivery rolls also employed phrases of afforcement in cases of petty treason for the same county. Their appearance in these records, however, is quite low in proportion to the number of cases. Evidently, local jurors were most resolved to secure a conviction in transgressions of the gender hierarchy. Patriarchs sought to keep the values of their neighbourhoods on the straight and narrow. Phrases of afforcement in felony indictments did not guarantee a conviction. None the less, Bellamy’s statistical analysis reveals that the inclusion of these terms in an indictment significantly increased the likelihood of conviction. To offer an example, in early-fifteenthcentury cases in which the accused was described as ‘common,’ Bellamy notices a conviction against acquittal ratio of one to three (in similar cases without this designation the rate was merely one to eight).63 Cases of spousal homicide from the counties of York and 62 Barbara A. Hanawalt, “‘Good Governance’ in the Medieval and Early Modern Context,” Journal of British Studies 37 (1998): 254. 63 Bellamy, 30.

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Essex demonstrate a significantly higher ratio. In six out of the eleven cases of husband-killing employing phrases of afforcement that actually came to trial,64 three women were acquitted, two were burned and one was hanged.65 The final verdicts in the eight out of twentytwo cases of wife-killing in which terms or phrases of afforcement were employed, reveal that three men were acquitted, four were hanged, and one was convicted only (boasting a marginally higher ratio than that for petty treason).66 It seems clear that spousal homicide was a sufficiently outrageous crime in its own right that even those juries who were not from the locality needed little encouragement to produce a higher rate of conviction. Indictments for petty treason often noted attempts by the accused to conceal evidence of his or her actions by hiding the body of the deceased. This crucial detail, interpreted by juries as a sign of stealth and premeditation, was included in order to accentuate the deceitful nature of the crime and to convince the trial jury that the defendant had committed a crime worthy of capital punishment.67 In Yorkshire and Essex, this phrase was not restricted to petty treason, although it occasionally appeared in such cases. The inquest jury probably intended the account of the slaying of William Storour of Hirst (Yorks.) by his wife, who then buried him under the stable before fleeing, to convince the trial jury of her amoral character. The incorporation of the terms noctanter and murdravit into the indictment laid against William’s wife strongly support this perspective.68 64 The courts of medieval England were notorious for their inability to apprehend alleged felons. Bellamy describes the problem best when he writes, “in the more lawless decades of the later middle ages, a felon could consider himself distinctly unlucky if he were captured by the authorities.” J.G. Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London and Toronto: Routledge, 1970), 201. 65 The record offers no clues to suggest why jurors sentenced Beatrice wife of John Foweler of Ottringham to hang for her crime (rather than burn at the stake). It is entirely possible that this was some sort of a qualitative assessment by the justices, implying that she was guilty of the crime, but not “as guilty” as some others. However, it is important to take into consideration the equally likely possibility that this may simply have been a scribal error. See TNA JUST 3/199, m. 5. 66 The man who was convicted (but reportedly not hanged) was Sir Roger de Benton, Essex (TNA JUST 1/232, m. 9d). In all likelihood, his status as a gentleman saved his neck from the gallows, confirming the well-known late medieval adage, “Pore be hangid by the neck; a rich man bi the purs.” Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities 1300–1348 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 54. 67 See also Green, 58. 68 TNA JUST 2/242, m. 5d.

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Indictments of wife-killing might also contain this damning detail. For example, in a case from the year 1393, the coroner’s roll recounts the tale of John Thorpe of Sharlston (Yorks.) who not only beat his wife to death with a staff, but also threw her body into the river to hide the evidence of his crime.69 In this case, the jury may have had ulterior motives in mentioning concealment of the body: tossing a body into the water was a permanent way of hiding the corpse. In the absence of a body, the case against John was weak and defective at best. The indictment’s generously detailed account communicated the presentment jury’s opinions and may have helped to shape the trial jury’s findings concerning John Thorpe. The inability of phrases of afforcement to guarantee a conviction illustrates that trial jurors sometimes dissented with the opinions expressed by indicting jurors. Given the comparative social standings of indicting versus trial jurors, this finding is difficult to understand. Local notables were far more likely to have participated in the administration of the law as presenting rather than trial jurors.70 This pattern is well documented for Essex, in particular. Many of the jurors involved in the Essex sessions of the peace during the late fourteenth century were wealthy landholders or independent small farmers whose family names were associated with landmarks within their home communities.71 Quite simply, the elite believed juries of presentment exercised an onerous responsibility. Not only did they have to identify who in the village had exceeded the limits of local controls and required royal intervention, they also took the lead in determining the outcome of a case. With this kind of clout, it seems odd that trial jurors, whose single task was to deliver a final verdict, should have possessed the arrogance to overturn the preliminary judgements of their social superiors, particularly when they were working from a diminished knowledge of the events. Yet, their decision may not have been as straightforward as one might think. Many of those acquitted by the courts probably were innocent. Defendants might spend anywhere from a few months to several years in prison awaiting gaol delivery; during that time, information might be brought forward casting new light on the case. Trial jurors may also have

69

TNA JUST 2/250, m. 1d. McLane, 42. 71 Elisabeth Chapin Furber, ed., Essex Sessions of the Peace, 1351, 1377–79 (Essex Archaeological Society, v. 3, 1953), 33. 70

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opted for acquittal simply because they did not know whether the accused was guilty. If trial jurors did not, in fact, hail from the surrounding area, they may not have possessed the confidence of presenting jurors in a guilty verdict. Because death was the only penalty for felony, theirs was an important decision.72 When confronted with a sincere and remorseful display by the accused, the trial jury might well have preferred to acquit. The case of John Gelles of Cold Cotes demonstrates just how significant the disparity between the opinions of two juries might be. According to two separate entries in the Yorkshire coroners’ rolls, in the year 1364, an argument arose between John Gelles and John Lanerok of Ormesby. The disagreement reached such a feverish pitch that Gelles’s wife Agnes stepped between the two in order to quell the argument, but she quickly found herself on the wrong end of Gelles’s knife. She died soon after, peacefully lying in her husband’s arms.73 The coroner’s inquest jury made it very clear that Agnes’s death was an accident; Agnes received a blow meant for someone else, which according to the jurisprudence of the times, was a clear case of excusable homicide.74 Excusable homicide was not, in fact, a felony and the defendant received an automatic pardon from the king. Moreover, the fact that Gelles’s wife died in his arms emphasises her husband’s remorse. In the opinion of the coroner’s inquest jury, Gelles did not intend to kill his wife and so was not accountable for the act. This decision, however, is entirely at odds with that of a third account appearing in the gaol delivery rolls for Yorkshire some time later. While much less descriptive, the indictment is enlightening in its lack of detail. None of the events leading up to Agnes’s death is included in the record. Instead, the roll states merely that John Gelles of Cold Cotes feloniously slew his wife Agnes.75 Exactly why there should be such a disparity between the two accounts is impossible to determine; yet, given the similarity of Gelles’s case to others from the period, it is possible to speculate on the 72

McLane, 56–64. TNA JUST 2/217, m. 10 and TNA JUST 2/218, m. 10d. This appears in almost identical form. It is likely that one roll was merely a copy of the other. This would explain why the case appears more than once without any significant change. 74 Thomas Green notes that “slaying without malice was not felonious” (89). See his discussion of accidental homicide, Green, 88–93. 75 TNA JUST 3/145, m. 41. 73

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motives of both juries. The demise of Agnes wife of John Gelles was far from exceptional in the late medieval period. Death while attempting to pacify an argument was not as rare a way for English wives to meet their death as one might think. The Yorkshire coroners’ rolls alone include at least two similar cases.76 Yet, in both cases, the wife met her death at the hands of the husband’s enemy, rather than the husband himself. The intention of the coroner’s inquest jury probably was to accentuate the similarities between John Gelles’s dilemma and that of these two other grieving husbands in order to prove to the courts that this was indeed an excusable homicide, deserving of an acquittal. The real question, of course, is what exactly were Gelles and Lanerok fighting about that so intimately involved John’s wife? Perhaps Agnes was the source, rather than the mediator, of the argument. Perhaps she had defended Lanerok, a lover, rather than her husband. This line of thinking may help us to understand why the trial jury felt so strongly about this case that it entered a record of the death so much at odds with the sentiments of the coroner’s jury.

Attitudes towards Petty Treason The use of phrases of afforcement by juries in indictments of domestic homicide very much reflects Roderick Phillips’s contention that spousal homicide in medieval and early modern Europe was “one of the most drastic forms of informal divorce . . . more akin to voluntary widowhood than to divorce.”77 He notes that husbands and wives adopted a gendered approach to spousal homicide. “It would not be surprising to find that wives were more frequently guilty of spouse murder than husbands. Men had many more options other

76 Agnes wife of John Berier of Bedford of Bulmer was struck with a hatchet during an argument between her husband and Richard Stephenson of Hildershelf (TNA JUST 2/218, m. 31). Similarly, during an argument between her husband and John son of John of Shark, Margaret wife of John of Sandalworth was killed (TNA JUST 2/211, m. 10). There are many other cases similar in nature where the victim and accused were not related. 77 Roderick Phillips, Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 306.

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than murder when faced with oppression, provocation, or simple incompatibility; husbands could more easily leave, evict their wives from the house, or force some sort of compliance by sheer physical strength.”78 At first glance, this statement paints a harsh image of an infrequent and unusual phenomenon. Phillips seems to be insinuating that domestic homicide, especially for husband-killers, was a cold, calculated crime rather than the unintentional result of a marital dispute spiralling out of control. His argument is not without its strengths. In a society in which women were wholly reliant on their husbands for economic support and social representation, and their social interaction was restricted to the household environment, separation was sometimes not a realistic option in the event of an unhappy marriage. Similarly, English wives were very much aware that if a man was killed and his murderers never found, his wife would not suffer the kind of deprivations she might otherwise encounter in a separation. In these circumstances, spousal homicide may have seemed like the most viable option. Phillips’s contentions find support in phrases of afforcement. Jurors employed terms or phrases of afforcement in a significant number of cases (thirty-three out of 233 cases of spousal homicide in York and Essex, or 14 percent); this figure is an indication that medieval jurors shared Phillips’s morose perspective. Royal records of felony indictment for both counties emphasise the self-serving nature of some cases of petty treason, especially those in which accomplices were involved. Some indictments even suggest that husband-slayings were the work of hired assassins. When two men feloniously slew Thomas Kirkyn of Tickhill (Yorks.) in the year 1369, his wife Ellen was included in the formal charge. The records report that not only did she consent, aid and abet the crime, she “led” (conduxit) the men to do it.79 At least three other cases involving charges of petty treason employ similar vocabulary. In cases of uxoricide, on the other hand, this assumption is absent entirely from the records. How better to assert pre-meditation than to argue that the wife had actually hired men to carry out the crime? The case of Alice Brounrobynsdoghter reveals that jurors equated the procurement of felons with the felony itself. According to the Yorkshire coroners’ rolls for the

78 79

Phillips, 307. TNA JUST 2/217, m. 43.

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year 1340, John Tathum was the one to actually carry out the slaying of Robert Wasshebergh, Alice’s husband, at Alice’s procurement. The indictment stresses, however, that she aided and abetted him.80 A later account of the same crime in the Yorkshire gaol delivery rolls credits Alice with the murder itself, stating only that she feloniously slew him.81 The records reflect Phillips’s assertion that wives were more likely to plot against their husbands. Uxoricides were the only spousal homicides in which jurors included evidence of ‘hot blood’; in each of these situations, the slaying followed hard on the heels of a nasty domestic dispute. In the year 1257, Yorkshire jurors reported that an argument between Simon Shepherd of Rudston and his wife Alice ended when Simon plucked an axe from the corner of the room and struck his wife with it in the head.82 When Bella, wife of John Fuller of Tadcaster (Yorks.), met her death at the hands of her husband in the same year, it was also in the midst of a vicious marital dispute. On their way home from the tavern at Tadcaster, the two were crossing the bridge over the Wharfe River when John, angered with his wife, threw her into the river, where she drowned.83 In both cases, such a full account was necessary. The wounds inflicted by Simon on Alice did not cause the latter’s immediate death. She languished for two weeks after the incident, finally dying confessed. Because the period between the incident and her death was so protracted, it was critical for the jury to demonstrate that Simon’s actions had indeed been the direct cause of her death. In the case of Bella wife of John, the need for an elaborate account is apparent. Despite John’s flight, an investigation had not yet uncovered Bella’s body. Without a corpse, a detailed record of the jury’s suspicions was required because those suspicions were the only evidence that a crime had taken place.84 80

TNA JUST 2/210, m. 1. TNA JUST 3/78, m. 28d. Philippa Maddern reports a similar case in her study of fifteenth-century East Anglia. Margery Andrewes was indicted for complicity in the murder of her husband Walter, although her lover Thomas Tatenell actually carried out the crime. Nevertheless, the court sentenced Margery to burn as a traitor, as if she herself had committed the crime. See Philippa C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 104. 82 TNA JUST 1/1109, m. 30d. 83 TNA JUST 1/1109, m. 11. 84 In the case of John Fuller of Tadcaster, it is also possible that the jury intended such a lengthy account to provide him with grounds for a suitable defence upon 81

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Indictments of petty treason were more likely to include meticulous detail. The inquest jury fully appreciated the shock value of these particulars, and realised that a little embellishment might be used more effectively than stock phrases to ensure conviction and thus permanently repel the offender from their community. For example, a homicide indictment from the year 1346 narrates the story of John of Bingham (Yorks.). While he was kneeling and praying before the altar in the church of Aberford in Yorkshire one day, three men entered the church and struck him with a sword and two knives in the chest, head and back so that he immediately died. The records go on to declare that his wife Hawis not only abetted the felony, but also procured the men who carried it out.85 Had the inquest jury reported that this crime took place by night, on the king’s highway and by a common, notorious felon, they might not have received the same judicial response that a full-length entry of this crime, brimming with images of Becket’s murder at the Cathedral, would produce. The inclusion of shocking details of this vile conspiracy and sacrilegious bloodshed, whether they actually occurred or not, was the closest the inquest jury could come to tying the noose themselves. Because both the church courts and Chancery deemed the use of weapons in domestic violence to be an excessive use of force, inclusion of details in indictments regarding weapons employed in spousal homicide may be intended to clarify whether the death resulted from a cold and calculated design or a moment of sudden fury. For example, the indictment of Henry Bruning of Clapham (Yorks.) in 1293, who was reported to have slain his wife Maud in their home in the vill of Clapham with a piece of firewood, marks her death as having been precipitated by a heated argument rather than months of planning.86 The indictment of Henry of Wensley (Yorks.) in 1351, who shot his wife with a bow and arrow, has a different flavour his return to stand trial. As historian Nigel Walker has noted, royal justices often equated drunkenness with insanity, such that a court might not hold an intoxicated man more accountable for his actions than a lunatic. See Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England. Volume One: The Historical Perspective (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), 39. Naomi Hurnard makes a similar argument. See Naomi D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide Before A.D. 1307 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 168–9. Bearing this in mind, the mention of the detail that Fullo and his wife were returning from the tavern at the time of the incident was likely to prepare the court for the pardon he was hoping to receive. 85 TNA JUST 2/214, m. 5. 86 TNA JUST 1/1098, m. 1d.

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about it entirely. A man does not, in sudden anger, remove himself to a distance, draw an arrow, take aim, and kill his wife.87 Spousal homicides of both types offer up a plethora of household implements: breadknives, hatchets, staves, even the occasional hammer or fork. Husbands were far more likely to strangle or drown their wives, but the numbers demonstrate only one significant trend: only women were ever accused of poisoning.88 A common modern conception is the belief that murderesses compensated for their physical weakness by resorting to the use of poison.89 Poison levels the playing field, empowering the physically weak and allowing wives, in their capacity as preparers of food, the opportunity to execute scandalous designs. Frances Dolan has argued that husband poisoning is simply a representation of the “violated home”; contemporary fears of domestic mutiny came to life when women abused their position in the household by polluting their unsuspecting husbands’ food.90 However, despite modern conceptions, the medieval records of royal indictments do not reveal any such preoccupation. Only a very small number of women faced accusations of husband poisoning. A study of all records of felony indictments for both counties produces six cases of women put to trial on charges of having poisoned their husbands. All six are confined to fourteenth-century Yorkshire, implying that either poison was more readily accessible in the county of York, or quite simply, northerners were more suspicious. Perhaps most fascinating about these indictments is that in five of the six cases of husband-poisonings, the indicting jurors named an 87

TNA JUST 2/215, m. 21. One case of uxoricide included allegations of poisoning, however it is significant that the indictment tied poison once again to a woman’s involvement, this time a midwife. When Joan, wife of Simon the Constable, died, a Yorkshire jury of presentment indicted her husband of seeking the assistance of Beatrice, the local midwife, to poison her. Simon the Constable was an unusual criminal for the period. He stood accused not only of spousal homicide, but also of abducting the wife and goods of John Danethorp and robbing the priory of Swyne. He chose not to respond to the allegations altogether, instead submitting himself to peine forte et dure. See TNA JUST 1/1101, m. 41. 89 Lawrence Stone alludes to this belief in his article “Interpersonal Violence in English Society 1300–1980,” Past and Present 101 (1983): 27; see also Kathleen E. Garay, “Women and Crime in Later Mediaeval England: an Examination of the Evidence of the Courts of Gaol Delivery, 1388 to 1409,” Florilegium 1 (1979): 92. Richard W. Ireland notes an association between women and poison based on the midwife’s monopoly on abortifacients during the Middle Ages. See Richard W. Ireland, “Chaucer’s Toxicology” The Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 84. 90 Dolan, 31. 88

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accomplice. If poison was assumed to be the wife’s weapon of choice because it required no feats of physical strength, why would a wife have needed an accomplice (or two, as in the case of one husbandkiller aided by both her daughter and another man)? The case of Maud, wife of William of Monkton (Yorks.), sheds some light on indictments of this type. When Maud’s husband died suddenly in the year 1332, both she and his grandson, John, came under immediate suspicion. Although the records offer little indication of why they were suspected, the economics of inheritance may have played a role in jurors’ conclusions. Both Maud and John stood to gain the most from William’s death: Maud through her dower rights and John (presumably) by right of descent.91 William’s demise probably belongs to that category of deaths in which the cause was unknown but highly suspicious (a common occurrence in late medieval England considering the limited scope of contemporary medical knowledge). In these cases, the coroner’s inquest jury put forward the most reasonable explanation for the death. In William of Monkton’s case, poisoning by his wife and grandson may have seemed like a rational explanation. Death at the hand of a relative was also the jury’s assumption in the case of Robert of Alta Ripa. After a fortnight on his deathbed, when the Yorkshire man finally succumbed to death, his wife and her daughter and a man (whose relationship to the family was not stated) fell victim to allegations of poisoning.92 It is difficult to understand why the indicting jury determined that Richard had been poisoned. Perhaps Robert himself uttered this accusation before his death. Perhaps a neighbour witnessed preparation of the fatal meal. It is equally likely, however, that the inability of local medical experts to diagnose Robert’s condition and a history of bad relations informed the jury’s decision in this case. Regardless, the trial jury was unconvinced; they chose to acquit all three defendants. Indicting a woman for poisoning her husband was easy enough to do; convicting her of the crime was something else entirely. While many such claims sprung up in the absence of evidence, proving death by poison was well nigh impossible. Neither coroners nor medical experts were able to perform an autopsy to establish poison as the clear cause of death, even if they had had the technology to 91 92

TNA KB 27/92, m. 21d. TNA JUST 3/76, m. 33d.

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carry out blood analysis. The medieval church forbade physicians to engage in post-mortem human dissection because it considered the human body analogous with the temple of God; its desecration endangered the human soul.93 Not surprisingly, then, all six accused husbandkillers and their accomplices pleaded innocence and were acquitted of the charges. Cases of poisoning lead to an obvious conclusion. At six cases, later medieval women rarely fell victim to formal accusations of poisoning their husbands (the six cases represent little more than seven percent of husband-killings). Poison was simply not a weapon of choice; or at the very least, the coroner was incapable of detecting it. In fact, more often than not, when the records mention a weapon, they accused wives of wielding a hatchet or axe, both items of domestic use, but not ones restricted to women. Thus, while poison may seem like the ideal weapon for the murderess, it was not widely used in real life. The juries’ inclination to apply phrases of afforcement more frequently in cases of petty treason points to a number of conclusions. First, England in the later Middle Ages was more tolerant of marital violence when it was directed towards wives. This finding is not surprising. Historians have long argued that there existed “strong social and cultural inhibitions against the use of force by women as a means of settling disputes.”94 J.B. Given’s study of violent crime in thirteenth-century England exposes this widespread sentiment in the kinds of verdicts handed down to women accused of homicide. A woman stood a much greater chance of being sent to the gallows for homicide than did a man (33.3 compared to 18.3 percent).95 The frequent use of suggestive vocabulary in indictments for petty treason only strengthens this argument. Second, these findings indicate the nature of wife-killings in general did not shock or outrage jurors, 93 It was not until the mid-fourteenth century that the church began to relax its strict position on human dissection; and yet, until the late-fifteenth century only the Italian universities engaged in human dissection. See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 30–2; see also Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, “The Corpse in the Middle Ages: the Problem of the Division of the Body,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 334–36. 94 J.B. Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 137. 95 Given, 137.

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nor were they determined to ensure a husband’s conviction. The more frequent inclusion of these key phrases in inquests for petty treason implies the reverse. Jurors were more scandalised by cases of petty treason than wife-killing, and often sought to ensure that husband-killers would not escape punishment. These findings confirm what other historians have proposed about contemporary social perspectives. Jurors did not regard wife abuse as exceptional; husband abuse broke all the rules. These attitudes about spousal homicide echo contemporary beliefs about the role of the patriarch in the English community. If senior men were expected to embroil themselves in their neighbours’ violent marriages in order to safeguard the morality of the village, surely this same expectation was applied to these men in their role as jurors. While petty traitors and wife-killers underwent the same judicial process, an early fifteenth-century petition concerning a wife-killer from the rolls of parliament demonstrates that medieval families made a moral distinction between the two. The petitioners wrote: That where one John Carpenter, of Birdham, in the Shire of Sussex, husbandman . . . saying to Isabel his wife, that was of the age of sixteen year, and had been married to him but fifteen days, that they would go together on pilgrimage, and made to array her in her best array, and took her with him, from the said town of Birdham, to the town of Stoughton in the said shire, and there in a wood he smote the said Isabel his wife on the head, so that the brain came out, and with his knife gave her many other deadly wounds, and stripped her naked out of her clothes, and took his knife and slit her belly from the breast down, and took her bowels out of her body, and looked if she were with child; and thus the said John murdered horribly his wife: of the which horrible murder . . . the said John was indicted . . . according to your Law, till the said John Carpenter was outlawed of the said murder, and now graciously for the same cause arrest, and in your Prison called the King’s Bench. Please it to your righteousness to consider the horrible murder foresaid, and by authority of this your high Court of Parliament to ordain, that the said John Carpenter may be judged as a Traitor, in eschewing of such horrible murders in time coming.96

96 Rotuli Parliamentorum: ut et petiones, et placita in Parliamento temporo Edwari R. I [ad finem Henrici VII] (London: n.d., c. 1767–77), 4: 447.

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Which factor did locals find most repugnant: her age, the short duration of the marriage, or the husband’s disrespectful post-mortem dissection of her body? Regardless, the detail and the unusual decision to petition parliament make it clear that the community was outraged by her death. By demanding that the common law treat Carpenter as a traitor for his crime, petitioners emphasize that this was no ordinary wife-murder. The killing of a wife was horrific; petty treason, however, was scandalous. To hold a wife-killer accountable for treason illustrates that the definition of the crime may have been more elastic than previously imagined. Rather than a simple transgression of the established hierarchy, medieval families may have interpreted treason in a much more personal way. A gross violation of communal ethics in a manner that was so utterly offensive to village custom and way of life, may have been understood as treason against the community.

Conclusion Spousal abuse was one of those grey areas of medieval law. To hit one’s wife was acceptable as long as it was not excessive; yet, the term ‘excessive’ was subject to an unusual degree of interpretation. With such ambiguity, domestic violence more often required communal, not legal, intervention. Most important, these records confirm that families and communities in general had strong feelings about marriage and marital violence. Not only were families willing to intrude in a heavy-handed fashion in the inception of marriages, that supervisory role persisted after the exchange of vows. In the absence of a formal setting responsible for the resolution of disputes of this nature, parents and siblings, as well as members of the larger community, who witnessed a marriage out of control, were willing to act as arbitrators. In fact, victims of abuse may have felt a natural inclination to turn to their families for help, even when the resolution was as desperate as spousal homicide. Brothers, especially, considered themselves responsible for the well-being of their sisters. As patriarchs of the village, many brothers and neighbours of abuse victims believed they had a social responsibility to intervene and uphold the moral probity of the neighbourhood in which they lived. At the very least, these records demonstrate a widespread repugnance for marital violence and a chivalrous desire to protect women from

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abuse; the coroners’ rolls demonstrate, however, that jurors thought only certain women deserved protection. England was a patriarchal society: the male head of the household had the right to guide and discipline the members of his own household, and medieval wives did not have the right to question that authority independently. If a man was incapable of governing his household and himself, it was the responsibility of respectable men from the community to intervene. A woman who solved the problem herself through murder, then, not only failed as a wife, but as a woman and subject of the community in which she lived. Medieval English society was founded on a delicate balance of gendered expectations: spousal violence, in all its various manifestations, threatened that balance. Families, neighbours and friends interceded, not only out of a concern for the victim of abuse, but also because intervention was necessary to hold together the values of the community.

CHAPTER SIX

SCOLDS, PERSONAL LIABILITY, AND MARITAL VIOLENCE

The Book of the Knight of Tour Landry offers medieval men some advice on how to deal with wives who talk back in the exemplum of “The Obedience of Wives.” One day, when returning from a fair, three merchants made a wager together to test their wives’ obedience by commanding each of them to perform a senseless and ridiculous task. The winner would receive one penny from each of the others. When the first man asked his wife to leap into a basin that he set before her, she paused to ask why. In response, “her husband struck out with his fist and gave her two or three great blows.” At the second merchant’s home, his wife greeted the request in much the same way; the merchant “took a staff and beat her badly.” At the home of the last merchant, the men took a short reprieve in order to share a meal. When the third merchant asked his wife for salt, she misunderstood his demand and instead leapt onto the table, as she believed he had requested, because she was “afraid to disobey.” When asked why she had done this, she explained her confusion and added, “I have to do your bidding, as much as is in my power, even if it brings injuries to both you and me, and I would rather the both of us came to harm than that I should disobey your command.” The three merchants decided that it was no longer necessary for her to perform the basin test because she had proven her absolute obedience to her husband, “and she was not beaten as were the other two wives that would not do their husbands’ bidding.”1 The image of the good wife presented in this exemplum is in many ways unrealistic. Given the nature of the literature, this should not come as a surprise. Exempla were not precise reflections of reality so much as an enhanced reality, to demonstrate effectively and briefly

1

Joan Young Gregg, ed., Devils, Women and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 117–8. Gregg has appropriated this exemplum from Thomas Wright, ed., The Book of the Knight of Tour Landry (Early English Text Society, o.s. v. 33, 1906), 33.

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a point of Christian doctrine. In this respect, we should not assume that exempla are factual reflections of social mores, or that what justified abuse in sermon stories should translate into real life situations. Yet, exempla were not divorced from reality. These didactic stories were replete with “distinctive human beings functioning in clearly recognizable social contexts,” and as such helped to bring theology to life through contemporary social issues.2 Parish priests recounting these stories to entranced crowds maintained that these were authentic accounts of actual events, a factor that must have lent credibility to the stories and made them more personally meaningful. The medium itself was doubtless the most effective means of conveying standard ecclesiastical beliefs to the laity because of the familiar language and inherent entertainment value: the performative aspects of the exempla made the moral memorable. Thus, the representation of women in this medium is significant to an understanding of what the laity actually learned about marriage from the representatives of the church. That the medium should have presented such a hierarchical and invective vision of marriage, then, is all the more significant. The exemplum emphasised the importance of obedience in a senseless and irrational manner; any woman or man put in a similar position surely would have questioned the motives of such a pointless request. If Chobham and Januensis, discussed at some length in Chapter One, seem to depict marriage as a hierarchy of near equals who correct each others’ moral failings, this exemplum promptly corrects that false impression and restores to marriage a master-servant relationship. Further, the beatings received by the two disobedient wives were severe. Neither husband reprimanded with a slap or even harsh words, but rather with weapons and “great blows.” How could such a minor infraction of a husband’s authority result in this degree of violence? What kind of measure was this? Again, it is important to realise that the story of the three merchants was a caricature rather than an accurate representation of reality. However, even if we allow a degree of colouring, its underlying message is clear. A wife’s duty is to obey; if she does not, her husband will respond with physical force. This story is an explicit acknowledgement of the gender hierarchy and the embarrassment a wife’s willingness to voice her disobedience might present to her husband.

2

Gregg, 13.

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Late medieval society was preoccupied with disobedient wives. The goal of this chapter is to examine the extent to which this fixation permeated late medieval life. The literature of the period abounds with representations of disobedient wives: from the nagging wives of popular song to Noah’s wife of the passion plays. Images of the disobedient wife as shrew infuse all these works of shared culture, indicating at once the popularity of this figure as comic relief and as a warning sign to women in society against adopting similar behaviour. In each genre, there is an association between verbal misbehaviour and physical abuse. This link is demonstrated best in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, the archetypal shrew of the later Middle Ages. Her prologue presents physical violence as a remedy to a wife’s vocal disobedience; moreover, as this chapter will discuss, the wife may even have expected and enjoyed this response. The message implicit in all these tales echoes that of the exemplum of “The Obedience of Wives”: a good wife is quiet and compliant. The literature only condones domestic violence when a wife provokes it through her ill manners. Literary representations of disobedient wives, like Uxor Noe or the Wife of Bath, reflect a very real concern in late medieval society. A growing anxiety over social misbehaviours in fourteenth and fifteenth century England, specifically concerning scolding women, parallels the literary motif of the shrew. A scold was usually a woman who engaged in repeated instances of disruptive behaviour by being overly vocal and aggressive. She did not resemble entirely the disobedient wives of medieval literature: a scold might be married, but was not always or even usually. However, the scold, through her failure to conform to social expectations of gendered behaviour and her refusal to lead a quiet life, was the focus of a growing hostility directed towards women who voiced their opinions too loudly. Antipathy to the female voice was a well-established and vital component of the medieval literary tradition of misogyny in both ecclesiastical and secular circles; some of the most fundamental literary works of the period drew freely from this tradition. The most obvious example, of course, is the story of Eve and its medieval interpretation. Lynda Boose has argued that Eve’s transgressions were enormous in themselves, because “[t]hrough Eve’s open mouth . . . sin and disorder entered the world.”3 Eve first demonstrated her incapacity to use 3 Lynda Boose, “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman’s Unruly Member,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991): 24.

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God’s gift in a wise and intelligent fashion when she chose to respond to the serpent’s queries. Her verbal sins multiplied when she abused her power once again by persuading Adam to join in her disobedience. In both these verbal transgressions, Eve’s fault is located in her misuse of speech, a characteristic destined to be the hallmark of womanly conduct in medieval literary culture.4 Parish priests exploited women who indulged in idle chatter and used their tongues to harass and scold as an opportunity to remind their parishioners of St Paul’s admonition that “women should keep silent.” That the courts chose to present women for this unruly behaviour at the end of the Middle Ages does not afford proof that they had hitherto adhered conscientiously to Paul’s recommendation. Rather, this chapter will suggest that the conditions of the later period simply offered more opportunities for social control and less forbearance of unruly conduct. Changes in attitudes towards female vocal aggression did not take place in a social vacuum. The evidence of manorial and borough courts confirms Marjorie McIntosh’s recent conclusions that the fourteenth century was a key period in the regulation of social misbehaviours of all kinds (disturbers of the peace, eavesdroppers, gamblers, nightwalkers, gossips). The concerns of a highly moral elite as well as the creation of municipal byelaws against activities of this nature brought social misbehaviour into the village courtroom. In this respect, the responsibility for overseeing local harmony shifted from the unofficial hands of family and friends in the early part of the period to the legal community after the mid-fourteenth century. This change may have had a similar affect on marriage. It is notable that those cases of marital disharmony appearing in the manorial and borough courts, discussed in Chapter Two, all belong to the fourteenth century. Perpetrators of marital disharmony dealt with in an unofficial capacity prior to the fourteenth century suddenly found themselves presented and fined by manorial and borough courts as the century wore on and new ideas concerning personal liability emerged. This transition in local governance was part of a widespread trend in the regulation of social behaviour across England in which local authorities

4 Chiara Frugoni offers a comprehensive analysis of the reception and interpretation of the story of the Fall. See Chiara Frugoni “The Imagined Woman,” in A History of Women: Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, trans. Clarissa Botsford (Cambridge: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 1992), 358–62.

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took a more active role in the administration of the law. This development may be the key to understanding the transition from medieval to early modern expectations of the family. The intolerance of the late medieval period for social misbehaviour, but particularly for disobedient or overly vocal women, almost certainly had an effect on marriage. The use of the kind of literature, art and song discussed in Chapter One to shame women into embracing appropriate conduct meant that any man whose wife did not conform shared her disgrace. Men were responsible for the behaviour of their wives: a scolding wife, then, was a humiliation not many men would willingly have endured. Given that physical ‘chastisement’ was the remedy most often recommended for behaviour of this nature, how could such an important change in attitudes about the behaviour of women not have had an affect on marriage and domestic violence?

Taming a Shrew The Wife of Bath shares many similarities with Uxor Noe. In fact, the character of Uxor Noe may have even formed the basis for the Wife of Bath; Melvin Storm argues “the similarities are so numerous that a reader versed in Chaucer must surely feel he is encountering, for better or for worse, an old acquaintance.”5 Both Uxor and Alison share a comparable outspokenness and obstinacy in their relationships with their husbands that, even today, rarely fails to provoke laughter from their audiences. The story of the Wife of Bath, however, supplies a much different perspective of the dangers of allowing a wife too free a rein. While Uxor threatens Noah’s authority as patriarch in the marriage, she never actually gains the upper hand. Alison of Bath offers a glimpse of the other side of the coin. In her numerous marriages, Alison makes it clear that she is the one who wears the breeches. It is only her fifth husband who challenges 5 Melvin Storm, “Uxor and Alison. Noah’s Wife in the Flood Plays and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath,” Modern Language Quarterly 48 (1987): 306. Storm notes that the story of Noah and his wife as it is depicted in the mystery cycles must have been well known to Chaucer because he includes a reference to this in “The Miller’s Tale”: “‘Hast thou not heard,’ said Nicholas, ‘also / The sorrow of Noah with his fellowship, / Ere that he might get his wife to ship?” (3538–40).

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her in this respect. Her constant scolding and independent ways earn her repeated physical abuse. Chaucer’s interpretation of domestic violence is what is most relevant to our investigation. His writing insinuates that a husband must deal with a scolding wife with a firm hand; like sermon writers examined in Chapter One, however, The Canterbury Tales indicates that too firm a hand might produce poor results. The Wife of Bath’s response to her fifth husband’s violence is intriguing: she not only seems to expect cruelty from her husband (perhaps as any disobedient wife should have), but she seems to delight in it. As Alison sees it, “sovereignty” (818) is at the heart of the problem with marriage. Husband and wife cannot both be master, but “one of us two must bend, doubtless.” (440) In her first three marriages, Alison was very much in control. Through her youthful energy and sexual voracity, she kept her elderly husbands in line. If a husband rebelled against her mastery, she “chided him spitefully” (223), and reminded him of a man’s proper place in the marriage. The character of Alison, even more so than Uxor Noe, represents a figure of growing concern in late medieval society: the scold. Through her incessant nagging, gossiping, brawling and verbal abuse, the scold repeatedly harassed and troubled her neighbours. By the late fourteenth century, most municipalities in England had passed laws prohibiting such vexatious and disturbing behaviour. Boroughs submitted convicted scolds to either the cucking stool or the scold’s bridle, an iron mask intended to still the tongue.6 The connection between a disobedient woman and a horse needing to be tamed is very explicit in this imagery: like the wild horse, the scold lacks a master. Chaucer consciously makes allusions to Alison as a scold. It is through this very conduct that she gained “mastery” (818) in her first three marriages, because as Alison claimed, “as a horse I could bite and whine.” (386) Even in her fifth marriage, in which the struggle for power was most taxing, in the end her husband was brought to his senses and “gave me all the bridle in my hand.” (813) Chaucer draws a link between scolding as a social phenomenon and female

6 Although late medieval England employed the scold’s bridle, it became much more common in the early modern era. See Jody Enders, “Violence, Silence, and the Memory of Witches,” in Violence against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. Anna Roberts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 218–23.

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rebellion against the social construction of male dominance within marriage. Neither the surviving legal records nor the vast majority of popular literature from the period ever explicitly state this association. Chaucer’s analysis of this situation reminds us that some women, who indeed openly rebelled against the gender hierarchy, did not accept whole-heartedly the vision of a rigid marital hierarchy. With her spirited and intelligent voice, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath stands out from the rest. In the Wife of Bath, Chaucer created a woman of surprising intellectual aptitude: she is capable of teasing out the complexities of theological discourse on the subject of marriage, while at the same time demonstrates a profound knowledge of ancient mythology. Such a woman forces audiences to take a second look at the scold; she is not only untamed and overly vocal, but also dangerous. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath reminds us of the difficulties of interpreting the scolding wife in an entirely negative light. While the Wife was disobedient and loud, much of what she had to say made sense. Similarly, medieval audiences may not have been entirely comfortable with the parody of the scolding wife, simply because many of them knew that, while scolding wives were to be discouraged, often wives can be helpful to their husbands and, as Chobham has suggested, can even teach their husbands. The Wife of Bath is a worrisome symbol, then, simply because her character, like the scolding woman, may have seemed very real to medieval audiences. While her disobedient and boisterous performance exposed a certain moral deficiency, audiences feel compelled to hear her story. And what a story the wife has to tell about power relations in marriage. The Wife of Bath makes it clear to her audience that to her, “mastery” does not imply female independence. With her fourth husband, Alison was free from all constraints. Without a word in protest from him, she passed her time walking “from house to house, to hear sundry tales” (547) with her “gossip” and friends, and still she was not happy. Her husband’s philandering filled her “heart [with] great despite.” (481) Although nowhere does she confess to having loved him, her inability to control his actions angered and distressed her. Alison was looking for ultimate control: she wanted not only freedom for herself, but absolute authority over her husband’s actions. In essence, she was seeking the mundus inversus. When it became obvious to her that she would never obtain this degree of power in the relationship, she looked towards greener pastures and prepared to move on to husband number five.

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In her final marriage to Jankyn the “jolly clerk,” (628) her new husband’s personality transformed altogether. “He had a book that gladly, night and day, / For his sport he would read always.” (669–70) Obsessively, he read aloud from his “book of wicked wives,” (685) detailing the sins past women had committed against their husbands, in the hopes of putting his wife in her proper place. His constant torment eventually led to his submission. Seeing that his tirade might go on indefinitely, the Wife plucked the book from his hands, tore three leaves from it and cast the first blow. Jankyn’s response was overzealous: “with his fist he smote me on the head.” (795) He knocked the Wife to the ground unconscious. “Aghast,” (798) thinking he had killed her, Jankyn prepared to flee, just as Alison began to emerge from her swoon. This brush with death had a profound effect on Jankyn, immediately snapping him out of his morose funk and causing him to make the proclamation, “As help me God! I shall thee never smite.” (805) Hoping to reconcile with his wife after this ordeal, Jankyn bent down to kiss Alison, and in return she “hit him on the cheek.” (808) “But at last, with much care and woe,” (811) they devised a solution to their problems. Jankyn ceded to his wife the “governance of house and land, / And of his tongue, and of his hand also,” (814–5) and they lived happily ever after. The Wife of Bath’s prologue, then, is in an enigmatic and energetic introduction to the subject of marriage. Chaucer leaves the audience to unravel the various meanings of the prologue. The Wife of Bath demonstrates the dangers of giving a wife too free a rein. Not only was she uncontrolled and outspoken, her manifold attempts to exert “mastery” in marriage provide proof that power struggles within marriage drive out love. In this respect, it is essential to remember that the Wife of Bath is only the first of a group of tales focussed on the subject of marriage, and thus audiences should not interpret it as Chaucer’s final word on the subject. While the Wife of Bath’s prologue confirms that female dominance in marriage is both offensive and destructive, the Merchant’s Tale demonstrates that complete control by the husband is equally ruinous. The moral of this group, then, is surely to demonstrate that complete control by either spouse is an exercise in futility, and inevitably leads to an unhappy, and perhaps even fatal, end. How is the audience intended to interpret the abuse in the Wife of Bath’s prologue? The Wife herself has a mixed reaction to it. She describes her relationship with her fifth husband as a very unusual one.

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chapter six And yet was he to me the most shrew; That feel I on my ribs all by row, And ever shall unto my ending day. But in our bed he was so fresh and gay, And therewithal so well could he flatter me, When that he would want my bele chose, That though he had me beat on every bone, He could win again my love anon. I think I loved him best, for that he Was of his love dangerous to me. (505–14)

By her own admission, the Wife’s fifth husband beat her badly (“on every bone”) and frequently. In their final argument, the single blow she received was of such force that it not only knocked her unconscious, but of “the stroke my ear wax all deaf.” (636) And yet, she “loved him best” because “he was of his love dangerous to me.” The word “dangerous” in this context has been interpreted in a number of ways. T.L. Burton has argued that, here, readers should understand “dangerous” to mean “reluctant to make love.” The Wife of Bath loved this husband best because she liked to be dominated sexually.7 Elaine Tuttle Hansen takes this further, arguing instead that “dangerous” had much the same meaning as its modern variant. His brutality was the reason she loved him best.8 The abuse in this account, then, has a very specific and equally dangerous message. Not only are women attracted to violent men, but also they enjoy being beaten. This message renders the sermons of Chobham, Januensis and Peregrinus obsolete. There is no need to caution husbands against beating their wives, because a loving wife will both expect and welcome such treatment. Chaucer makes the audience very much aware of the reasons why men are driven to violence. The Wife of Bath is very much attached to her gossips, and it is this behaviour in particular that provokes 7 T.L. Burton, “The Wife of Bath’s Fourth and Fifth Husbands and her Ideal Sixth: The Growth of a Marital Philosophy,” The Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 42. 8 Elaine Tuttle Hansen, “‘Of his love daungerous to me’: Liberation, Subversion and Domestic Violence in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale,” in Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath, ed. Peter Beidler (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 278–80. Palomo adopts a similar argument. See Dolores Palomo, “The Fate of the Wife of Bath’s ‘Bad Husbands’,” The Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 315. Both Hansen and Palomo find some support for this contention in the Middle English Dictionary. It suggests that in this particular phrase “dangerous” should be interpreted to mean “niggardly” or “chary” (thus, her fifth husband was stingy or sparing with his love). See the Middle English Dictionary, 3, 847–8.

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ire from her husbands. Even Alison’s fourth husband, who was unemotional and distant, was driven easily to shame when he found Alison sharing details of his private life with her gossips. All five of her husbands had good reason to fear the Wife of Bath’s friendship and loyalty to her gossips. First, Alison herself believed that visiting her friends was evidence of her independence and sovereignty in marriage. Irrespective of her husbands’ protests she exerted and won this right again and again, establishing to herself (if not others) that she was the master of her marriages. Moreover, as Jankyn should well remember it, it was on one of these walks about town that she first showed her affection for him and expressed the opinion that if she were a widow, he should wed her. (568) Knowing the dangers this freedom afforded her, more than anyone, he should have feared extending her that same liberty. Second, the Wife prized her female friendships above all else. In fact, her relationship with one favourite gossip, a woman also named Alison, was much more enduring and personally meaningful than any of her marriages. Her primary allegiance to women doubtless empowered Alison, giving her the courage to stand up to her husbands and demand freedom of movement, but also undermined the potential for intimacy in marriage. When looking for her next husband, Alison did not feel compelled to find a soul mate, because she already had good friends with whom she might share the secrets of her life. In light of the growing concerns about scolding in late medieval society, Chaucer may have intended Alison’s female confederacy as a warning to men in society: the only way to prevent women from encouraging each other in their independence is to keep a good wife at home. We will never really know Chaucer’s purpose in writing the Wife of Bath’s prologue. It is not clear whether he was a proto-feminist using the Wife of Bath to voice concerns about male patriarchal authority, or he intended the Wife primarily to disparage domineering women. The underlying themes of this narrative, however, support the possibility that struggles with power relations were symptomatic of many late medieval marriages. Chaucer also relates scolding with marriage: the Wife of Bath was a scold because her husbands failed to govern her properly. While this does not explain the reality of all scolds in the late Middle Ages, it indicates that a failure to internalise and impose social rules of governance may have been thought to produce scolding wives. As far as Chobham, Bracton and other clerical writers might stray from essentialist notions of woman

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as a type of Eve, in the end, they were always compelled to come full circle, because as Alison expressed it best, everyone knew that “women desire to have sovereignty.” (1038) Yet, the Wife of Bath makes it clear that women need to strike a balance between Alison’s first four husbands and her last. Her early husbands offered too free a rein; Jankyn offered no freedom at all. Autocratic, abusive and ridiculous, Jankyn merely encouraged her rebellious ways. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath confirms the need for husbands to govern judiciously and even-handedly; otherwise, a lifetime of misery married to a scolding, disobedient wife is the best for which one might hope.

The Wife of Bath in Context: Scold Prosecutions in Late Medieval Essex and York The Wife of Bath is a caricature of the scold: it is hard to imagine that any medieval woman actually asserted that kind of power over men in society through verbal aggression. Mounting fears about women like Alison, however, imply that some medieval women replicated this behaviour. Misuse of the tongue landed many women before the courts. Gossiping, nagging, berating of husbands and generally disturbing the peace through excessive verbosity were all comparable offences that fell under the general category of scolding.9 As a minimum, a woman had to engage in multiple instances of quarrelsome behaviour before she found herself presented before the court. It was in the repetition of the offence, the perpetual disruption of her neighbour’s peace, that a woman’s conduct became intolerable. The prosecution of scolds was a serious undertaking. Although Essex and York adopted different approaches in this matter, both counties expressed anxiety over exposing acts of female verbal aggression and making an example of these women. The courts did not treat scolding as a matter to be taken lightly, as a case from the manorial records of Thorner in Yorkshire from 1365 confirms:

9 For a discussion of verbal misconduct in context of changing legislation in the fourteenth century, see Sandy Bardsley, “Sin, Speech, and Scolding in Late Medieval England,” in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. Thelma Fenser and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 145–64.

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Elena de . . ., Matilda Countays, Agnes wife of Adam son of John, Alice wife of John Best, Elena wife of Hugh de Schirwod, and Elizabeth Hastenges are common gossips (garulatores) and disturbers of the peace, so that the penalty of ijs. which was ordained by the Court is (incurred). . . . [and] that wheresoever and as often as any of those gossips, or other common gossips, be found guilty of gossiping by those officers, that forthwith they be placed on the thew, under penalty of forty pence, to be levied upon those officers to the lord’s use.10

Not only were women subject to steep financial penalties and threats of even greater future exactions in the event of continued misbehaviour; at times, the courts submitted them to public humiliation and physical torment using the “thew” or cucking stool. Martin Ingram has claimed that the manor or borough courts rarely used the cucking stool. He observes that most towns never invested in the building of a proper stool, and that even in those that did, the instrument was frequently in disrepair and unusable. Further, he maintains that records of final sentencing are misleading: women ordered to be cucked were often able to commute their penalty into a monetary fine and to avoid the stool altogether.11 This may be even more relevant for the medieval period when cucking stools were a much rarer find than in the early modern era.12 Nevertheless, there is evidence that medieval towns and villages were using the cucking stool as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century.13 A cucking stool, functional or not, was a powerful symbol of public values in which local elites identified female assertiveness as a direct threat to the welfare of the vill. Whether they used this instrument frequently or not at all, its very presence must have acted as a powerful deterrent to women who might have otherwise voiced their opinions when presented with an exasperating situation. With cucking stools on

10 W.T. Lancaster, ed., “Fourteenth Century Court Rolls of the Manor of Thorner,” Miscellanea (Thoresby Society, v. 15, 1909), 170. 11 Martin Ingram, “ ‘Scolding women cucked or washed’: a crisis in gender relations in early modern England?” in Women, crime and the courts in Early Modern England, ed. J. Kermode and G. Walker (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 48–80. 12 Unfortunately, much of the research into this phenomenon has been in the early modern context. The medieval evidence, however, strongly suggests that scolds became a problem in the late Middle Ages and that instruments, like the cucking stool, existed for their punishment. See Enders, 210–32. 13 John Webster Spargo, Juridical Folklore in England Illustrated by the Cucking-Stool (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1944), 15–6.

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prominent display, the typical Englishwoman of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries learned to keep her peace in the community through fear rather than respect or civility. Both Yorkshire and Essex during the later Middle Ages show signs of this budding intolerance of feminine aggression. Nevertheless, the two counties espoused different approaches to dealing with scolds. In Essex, over the course of the fourteenth century, municipal courts took it upon themselves to regulate the social misbehaviours of women by holding them (and sometimes their husbands) legally responsible for their actions. The village and borough courts of York were much less dedicated to this cause. Although Yorkshire manors sometimes presented scolds, the numbers simply do not compare to Essex. In the absence of municipal byelaws, the church in York filled this void. Yorkshire scolds regularly found themselves presented before the church courts, required to reform their behaviour. Despite their different methodologies, both counties expressed a marked resolve to punish instances of repeated verbal aggression by women. The late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manorial rolls of Earls Colne (Essex) confirm the severity of the offence. The court scribe described Margery Holdehall in 1429 as both a “common scandalmonger,” and an “abuser of her neighbours,” while Isabel, wife of John March, a year later was described as “a common scold and gossips and disturbs all her neighbours unjustly against the peace.”14 Both entries succinctly capture the various elements of social nonconformity. While the court fined Margery and Isabel four and three pence respectively, penalties were sometimes even steeper. In the year 1514, the wife of Breggs the butcher paid a fine of three shillings, four pence for being a common chider of her neighbours. Edith Thale, who was also brought up on charges of hedge breaking and threatened with a fine of forty pence if she repeated the offence, was warned in 1468 to leave the village altogether because of her gossiping.15 In both cases, the courts demanded penalties much greater than those habitually imposed on persons guilty of assault (an offence usually resolved with a fine of around three pence). Seemingly, in the minds of the village elite in Earls Colne, a bloodied and bruised body meant little when compared with transgressions of the social hierarchy. The high fines imposed for other infractions of social 14 15

ERO D/DPr68. ERO D/DPr66.

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norms underscore the critical nature of moral offences in late medieval Earls Colne. In 1433, Ralph Atte Pery was fined two shillings for being “a common night walker under the houses and walls of divers men harkening after their privy talk in the night.” In 1422, John Chaloner paid three shillings, four pence for keeping a whore in his house, and in 1503, the court exiled Katherine Pecocke from the village for being a “common bawd,” and warned her that if she did not comply with this command she would face a fine of forty pence.16 Given that, a sheep at that time sold for no less than ten pence and an ox at least seven shillings,17 the court excused none of these offenders lightly. This particular late medieval manor in Essex was participating whole-heartedly in the trend towards local persecution of moral transgressions. The borough of Colchester was even more condemnatory in its prosecution of scolds. Within a period of sixty-nine years, spanning the years 1311 to 1379, the borough presented and punished seventyeight cases of scolding.18 This total is higher than that of any other local jurisdiction within the limits of the present investigation. Understandably, Colchester’s quasi-urban nature might have contributed to this substantially higher figure. Yet, even by English standards, Colchester was never very large or its economy exclusively urban. Throughout the late medieval period, the inhabitants of Colchester relied heavily on pastoral agriculture in order to sustain themselves. In fact, sixty-nine percent of the total population participated in agriculture in one way or another.19 At a time when neighbouring London was overflowing with 40,000 inhabitants, estimates of Colchester’s early fourteenth-century population place it at a mere 3,000 people.20 Even at the height of population growth in the late fourteenth century, levels reached no higher than five or six thousand residents, although 16 The first two examples are both from ERO D/DPr68, the last appears in ERO D/DPr 70. 17 M.M Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain 1100 –1500 (Berkley: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 232. 18 Within these seventy-eight cases, one woman, Christian Ferthyng seems to account for three separate instances of scolding: first in 1352, again in 1366 and finally in 1375. The total number of offenders, then, lies somewhere between seventyfive (assuming that all three Christians are indeed the same person) and seventyeight. 19 R.H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 17. 20 Britnell, 16.

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this may be an overestimate for the fifteenth century.21 Despite Colchester’s local and national prominence, it was no booming metropolis. Given its small population, then, seventy-eight prosecutions over a period of sixty-nine years bear witness to an exceptional dedication to the prosecution of scolding women. There are no strictly medieval figures available for comparative purposes here; however, Karen Jones and Michael Zell’s study of the Kent borough of Fordwich provides a statistical analysis of a similar setting. While their study addresses a slightly later period and a smaller urban environment, Fordwich is a logical choice for a statistical comparison because it shared a number of corresponding characteristics with the Essex borough. Both were urban in nature and an agricultural economy continued to be of primary importance in each community. Their geographical proximity and joint political activity as well imply a very real possibility of a shared belief structure. When the peasantry of Essex actively opposed the poll tax in 1381 and rose up in armed revolt against the English aristocracy, their Kentish neighbours chose to support them. When peasants in south-eastern Kent began Cade’s rebellion in the mid-fifteenth century, the conflict drew immediate support in Essex. Both shared a unique political perspective strongly founded on notions of social injustice; given their similarity in outlook, the two regions might also have experienced comparable shifts in morality and the exercise of local justice. Jones and Zell chose a much longer frame of reference for their study. Over the course of one hundred and twenty years (from 1451 to 1570), the views of frankpledge for the borough of Fordwich produced thirty-seven scolds, of which the majority (twenty-one presentments) were concentrated in the decades around the beginning of the sixteenth century.22 This figure is substantially less than that of Colchester for the fourteenth century; however, we need to take a number of variables into consideration when evaluating this disparity. Because Jones and Zell’s study falls in the midst of a period of more intense persecution of scolds, particularly at the turn of the century, identified by McIntosh and other early modernists as an especially vehement moment in the history of social control, the total 21 L.R. Poos, A rural society after the Black Death, Essex 1350 –1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41. 22 Karen Jones and Michael Zell, “Bad conversation? Gender and social control in a Kentish borough, c. 1450–c. 1570,” Continuity and Change 13 (1998): 15.

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number of scold presentments should have been quite high. The intense nature of the period and the longer duration of the study, then, should serve to offset the population difference between the two regions. Yet, the Fordwich total pales in comparison with the findings of scold presentments in the Colchester borough. What is even more unusual about Colchester’s proclivity to prosecute female deviance is that it was fairly consistent throughout the fourteenth century. McIntosh argues that both manorial and church courts experienced the first pangs of anxiety about scolding around the year 1300; however, they discontinued the regulation of these offences after the year 1330 and they failed to reappear in any important way until the early 1370s.23 Nevertheless, as the figures in Table One suggest, Colchester’s prosecution of scolds fails to fall in line with national trends: Table 6.1: Colchester Scold Prosecutions: the Fourteenth Century Decade

Number of Presentments for Scolding

1310–19 1320–29 1330–39 1340–49 1350–59 1360–69 1370–79

12 0 14 2 14 6 30

Total Number

78

While the data for Colchester in the 1310s conform to McIntosh’s expectations, the figures for the entire century show that scolding was a fluctuating concern in Colchester, and that the 1330s was a period in which scolding was as contentious as it was in the 1310s. During the period between 1330 and 1370 when scolding prosecution should have been almost non-existent, according to McIntosh’s findings, Colchester reported thirty-six presentments, almost half the total number for the entire period under investigation. The findings of Colchester’s borough records reflect McIntosh’s observation that

23 Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370 –1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chapter one.

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the 1370s was a key decade in the inception of harsh regulation of social misbehaviour of this nature. Colchester rejoined the national pattern of changes in local justice, with thirty presentments over the course of the decade. Despite Colchester’s renewed vigour, the data for the period prior to this, however, remain constant, allowing for a slight interruption in the progression with the onslaught of famine and plague in the 1340s. The unusual population trends of Essex during this period may explain Colchester’s efforts in social control at such an early stage. Contrary to national patterns, “extensive geographical mobility had already become an integral experience of country life in Essex well before the Black Death.” In fact, by the 1320s “rural Essex communities experienced rates of resident population turnover roughly equal in magnitude to those of English communities three hundred years later.”24 Such intense migration in the rural environment had significant ramifications on the urban setting. Inhabitants soon acquired a heightened awareness of the economic benefits of population exchange; “migration was the means by which people found places in the local economy to fit into.”25 This early transformation in the composition of the population of Essex created a perceived need for social control not felt elsewhere in England.26 The difficulties of governing such a highly changeable population likely posed many problems to fourteenth century administrators and challenged traditional systems of communal policing. In this respect, Essex had little choice but to become more ‘progressive’ or sophisticated in its precocious forays into moral regulation. The borough court of Colchester fined individuals for a wide variety of acts that fall into the category of scolding: common scolds, litigious persons, babblers, chatterers, garrulous persons, brawlers, and disturbers of the peace. The range of names employed for the offence is an indication of the wide variety of transgressions involved in this kind of misbehaviour. Women who continuously sued their neighbours in court were placed in the same category as those who 24

Poos, 160. Poos, p. 159. 26 Elsewhere in England, peasants had regular contacts with inhabitants in other vills and were not as geographically immobile as has sometimes been suggested. However, Essex does seem to have been exceptional in this respect. For the mobility of the medieval peasantry, see Anne Reiber DeWindt, “Redefining the Peasant Community in Medieval England: The Regional Perspective,” Journal of British Studies 26 (1987): 163–207. 25

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gossiped or who initiated loud, disruptive arguments. Each of these offences was dealt with in a harsh and demoralising manner, although no scold was forced to undergo time in the cucking stool. Only one case from the records of this period even hints at the existence of a stool in Colchester. In 1334 Alice la Selkwimman and her daughter Mabel were convicted on their own confessions of being common litigious persons and ordered to be cucked for their offence. The punishment was never carried out. The court commuted the penalty to a fine of two shillings on the “supplication of friends.”27 The court’s lenience suggests that while their behaviour merited social mortification, friends and neighbours, and perhaps even the representatives of the court, considered the cucking stool excessive for this purpose. None the less, this case demonstrates that the borough of Colchester was in possession of a functional cucking stool at a very early stage, and yet, paradoxically, chose not to use it. This contradiction inevitably brings us back to the social utility of a cucking stool within a borough or manor. Colchester’s example argues that, during the fourteenth century at least, the borough courts may have intended the instrument chiefly as a physical deterrent to female aggression. It was a tangible warning of the potential disaster of violating the social hierarchy rather than a tool employed by the courts in the regular system of moral control. In Yorkshire, the manorial records express an interest in scolding, but of a much lesser degree. Wakefield boasts only four cases of women presented as “common scolds”; the fourteenth-century manor of Thorner notes only seven.28 The remaining manorial rolls, while admittedly in poor condition and few in number, also do not show signs of any great preoccupation with scold prosecution. Pontefract presents two persons for scolding;29 Bradford notes six;30 Tickhill Honor and Nazeing present one each.31 Nevertheless, while the Yorkshire manors lack the dedication of the Essex local courts, the nature of cases presented at Yorkshire courts reveals a burgeoning 27

Isaac Herbert Jeayes, ed., Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester (3 vols., Colchester: W. Gunrey, 1921–41), 1.123. 28 K.M. Troup, ed. and trans., The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield from October 1338 to September 1340 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, v. 12, 1999), 78, 222; W.P. Baildon, ed. and trans., Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, 1297–1309 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, v. 36, 1906), 191; Lancaster, 162, 164, 170, 171. 29 TNA DL 30/129/162, mm. 2 and 4. 30 TNA DL 30/129/1957, mm. 27d, 40, 55. 31 TNA DL 30/131/2006, m. 4; TNA SC 2/173/33, m. 1d.

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awareness of the utility of the law to compel individuals into behavioural reform. For example, the manor court at Thorner summoned Matilda Countays, Agnes, wife of John Best, and Ellen, wife of Hugh de Schirwod, to appear before the court for the first time in 1364, then again in 1365.32 Unfortunately, the records note only the fines for the second conviction; thus, it is impossible to discover whether penalties increased with each subsequent appearance. At two shillings, however, the second fine implies that repetition of the offence incurred greater fines. When the court amerced the wife of John Yung of Thorner for gossiping with the wife of Adam Souter, it assigned her a fine of six pence, but only three pence to the wife of Adam Souter.33 That two women accused of the same misbehaviour should have been penalised by fines of differing amounts invites one of two conclusions. Either one was held to be more responsible for the offence than was the other, or there was a scale of exactions in which each repetition of the ill conduct moved the offender up a notch. If the latter were indeed the case, one can only assume that Matilda, Agnes and Ellen were no strangers to the inner workings of the local court. The Pontefract court disciplined not only the act of gossiping, but also their method of gathering information. In the year 1427, Joan, wife of John Persson, appeared in court on charges of eavesdropping at her neighbour’s windows by night; in April of the next year, Elisabeth, wife of William Falby, appeared on the same charge.34 Bradford, on the other hand, punished both women and men for scolding. In the month of October 1351, the manor court fined Richard Jankyn, Hugh Dysip and Hugh son of Thomas all three pence for disturbing the peace with their clamorousness, while in October of 1357 the court fined Robert Dikson for a similar offence.35 The existence of so few cases from the northern courts is significant. At a time when all of England was reorienting and restructuring itself to deal with lapses in social conformity, York appears as an anomaly. And yet, northern scolds did not evade punishment altogether. The court book of the Dean and Chapter of York covering the period 1387 to 1494 manifests a remarkable concern for female verbal aggression; in fact, with respect to a relatively small group of 32 33 34 35

Lancaster, 162, and 170–1. Lancaster, 164. TNA DL 30/129/1962, mm. 2, 4. TNA DL 30/129/1957, mm. 27d, 40.

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parishes over which the Dean and Chapter had direct jurisdiction, this ecclesiastical court very much adopted the role of the manorial court. Over the course of this 108-year period, 31 cases in which the offender was accused of both scolding and defaming appeared before the court, while an additional 23 accused of scolding only and 20 accused of defaming only were also brought forward, there were 74 cases of verbal transgressions.36 As was the case in Colchester, the offenders were overwhelmingly female. Only six of the 74 offenders were male. One man, Richard Carterbarn of Dodworth (Yorks.), appeared twice for scolding and defaming together; however, on the first occasion he appeared with his wife who stood accused of the same crime, suggesting that the court might have seen her as the primary instigator. John Bygan, accused of both scolding and defaming, also appeared with his wife. The manor charged the other three male offenders with defaming only. That the court charged no man with scolding alone confirms that, even more than the secular courts, the church courts perceived this to be a particularly feminine offence. The records permit a number of conclusions concerning contemporary attitudes about domineering women. First, scolds were subject to prosecution in a wide variety of legal venues. While the manorial courts of Yorkshire do not offer many examples of this type, the number of scolds appearing in manorial records is sufficiently high to confirm that localities considered scolding as an offence to be within their purview. That these cases also appear in the records of the Dean and Chapter, then, indicates that the church in York was participating jointly in the objective to bind the tongues of unruly women. Second, the York figures for scold prosecution in the church courts demonstrate a marked difference between northern and southern approaches to controlling disobedient women. The act books for the diocese of Canterbury also document a growing preoccupation with garrulous women. While only 16 cases of defamation came before the Canterbury consistory court in the years 1372–5, the act book covering the years 1416–23 boasts 144 defendants in cases of defamation litigation.37 Finally, instance acta for the years 1474–9 exhibit

36 York D & C AB/1. I chose to examine this particular book simply because it spans such a long period, and one in which I expected scold prosecution should have been popular. 37 Canterbury Y.1.1 (1372–5); Y.1.3 (1416–23).

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the highest numbers of defamation cases at 329 persons accused of defamation over a six-year period.38 These figures support the argument that the Canterbury court, like its northern counterpart, was concerned with punishing verbal offences. However, a number of major differences distinguish the records of the north and the south. Most interesting, none of the Canterbury records indicates that the court singled women out as being specifically blameworthy. For example, in the years 1372–5, the defendants in defamation litigation were split down the middle according to gender, eight male, eight female. Of the 144 defendants accused of slander in the years 1416–23, eighty-nine were male, fifty-five female. Even the totals for the period 1474–9 point to a male predominance, with 183 male defendants, 146 female. Thus, while the court of Canterbury was rapidly becoming more intolerant of verbal offences, it did not perceive them to be a specifically female offence. In addition, the northern ecclesiastical court punished both scolding and defamation; its southern counterpart lacked scold prosecutions altogether. This glaring contrast confirms what the records of the borough court of Colchester intimate: in the south, scolding women so appalled local communities that they took it upon themselves to correct the problem. In the north, where scolding did not generate the same kind of anxiety, local courts considered the Dean and Chapter capable of bridling the tongues of women, and thus only the most rebellious of women found themselves faced with court proceedings. That regional variation in northern and southern attitudes towards “unbridled” or domineering women should exist is hardly surprising. As Helen Jewell has argued, “[t]he north-south divide in England is truly as old as the hills.”39 Throughout the medieval era northerners and southerners were preoccupied by entirely different concerns: the north with warring Scotland, the south with France. Relations between north and south were strained at best. The surviving records reinforce that the “the North was the poor relation throughout the middle ages,” and that “southerners desire northerners to be subordinate and are annoyed when they do not behave so.”40 Moreover, the common law in the north was applied in a 38

Canterbury Y.1.12 (1474–9). Helen M. Jewell, “North and South: The Antiquity of the Great Divide,” Northern History 28 (1991): 23. 40 Jewell, 18–9. 39

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unique fashion to cope with the difficulties of life in a region plagued by continuous war. For example, after the 1352 statute of treason northerners were able to penalize more effectively Englishmen who abetted Scots in crime through the statute’s broad definition of treason to include those who collude with the king’s enemies. Consequently, northerners were far more likely to impute treason than were southern Englishmen.41 When it comes to the role of women in general, recent studies have proposed that the situation of women varied tremendously between northern and southern England. P.J.P. Goldberg’s examination of late medieval York presents a positive assessment of the position of women in society. The post-plague era brought about great changes for northern women in the economy. Women were far more likely to acquire land through inheritance and right of dower; at the same time, women participated in the general rise in real wages and benefited from the rise in wages for unskilled labourers.42 Goldberg argues that women were “from an economic perspective newly enfranchised,” temporarily playing a greater position in society in general.43 This rosy perspective is simply not pertinent in the south. In her study of late medieval Sussex, Mavis Mate explains that after 1350, Sussex women continued to dominate a narrow range of low-paid, low-status positions. Moreover, certain profitable areas of traditional women’s work, like brewing, underwent a process of professionalisation at this time and thus passed out of the hands of women, making it even more difficult for women to achieve economic independence.44 Her assessment of women’s status in late medieval society is bleak enough to have earned some 41 C.J. Neville, “The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages,” Law and History Review 9 (1991): 1–30. 42 P.J.P. Goldberg, “Women in Fifteenth-century Town Life,” in Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J.A.F. Thomson (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1988), 121–2. See also, his “Women’s Work, Women’s Role in the Late Medieval North,” in Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed. M.A. Hicks (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1990), 34–50; “Female Labour, Service and Marriage in Northern Towns During the Later Middle Ages,” Northern History 22 (1986): 18–38; “Mortality and Economic Change in the Diocese of York, 1390–1514,” Northern History 24 (1988): 38–55; Women, Work and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire, c. 1300–1520 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). 43 Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life-Cycle, 7. 44 Mavis E. Mate, Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350–1535 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998). For a good summary of the differences between north and south for women in the post-plague era, see S.H. Rigby, “Gendering the Black Death: Women in Later Medieval England,” Gender and History 12 (2000): 745–54.

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criticism;45 however, it seems clear that, although the Black Death may have radically altered the position of women in the north, this calamity did not have the same impact on the south. Bearing all of this in mind, it is both reasonable and even predictable that the two regions should have dissented on the handling of scold prosecution. In general, northern women led lives that were “arguably more stressful and precarious than those of most medieval Englishwomen,” and thus a certain degree of female aggression may have been more readily acceptable in this environment.46 At the same time, the economic prosperity of women in the fourteenth century may have provided them with the ability to remain single, eliminating the possibility of marital strife. While both counties demonstrated a marked desire to rid themselves of the scolding tongues of women, it is thus not surprising that their dedication and methods of handling the situation differ considerably between the two counties.

Changing Values: The Importance of the Fourteenth Century The fourteenth century presented a variety of new challenges for married couples that may have led to increased levels of marital tension. This was a key period in the regulation of social misbehaviours of all kinds (not only marital violence, but also disruption of the peace, eavesdropping, gambling, nightwalking, gossiping, and scolding). Respectable local people were experiencing a sense of anxiety about public order that led to the creation of municipal byelaws against disruptive and non-conformist activities, bringing social misbehaviour into the village courtroom. Thus, the responsibility for overseeing local harmony shifted from the unofficial hands of family and friends in the early part of the period to the legal community after the mid-fourteenth century. Marjorie McIntosh notes that this “was by no means a simple ‘top down’ phenomenon. If a type

45 See J. Whittle, review of Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350–1535, by Mavis E. Mate, Economic History Review 52 (1999): 146. 46 C.J. Neville, “War, Women and Crime in the Northern English Border Lands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Final Argument: The Imprint of Violence on Society in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Donald J. Kagay, L.J. Villalon (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 165.

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of behaviour was causing trouble in their community, local jurors reported it, whether or not they had been authorized to do so. They were not dutifully carrying out the instructions issued by their superiors, for rarely had such orders been given. For some offences . . . the lesser courts began to tackle problems well before intermediatelevel institutions took notice of them.”47 Juries presented and punished transgressions of social values and conventions that were not categorised as legal infractions under the common law or according to local custom. Bawdry, nightwalking, gaming, living suspiciously, and other offences against the locality became a substantial part of the standard repertoire of finable transgressions. Even violations that should have appeared properly before the church courts, such as adultery and other sexual sins, somehow made their way into the local courts for regulation. Local officials were vigilant in their investigation of immorality, refusing to leave the governance of a family in the hands of ineffectual patriarchs. A study of fifteenth-century London notes there was “an apparent acceptance, on all sides, of public intrusion into domestic space . . . [such that, a certain] John Calton, by virtue of his office [as local constable], entered a neighbor’s house without his permission, late in the evening, because he had reasonable cause to suspect there were fornicators on the premises. Other constables and beadles also burst into people’s houses—even at four o’clock in the morning —to catch offenders in the act.”48 That the courts confidently proceeded to judgement in these matters, rather than referring them to the ecclesiastical tribunals, marks a transformation in perceptions of local jurisdiction and local enforcement that was well under way. This evolution has much to do with the composition of presentment juries. English society perceived presentment as the critical stage in the legal process.49 Presenting jurors identified people in the community who had exceeded the limitations of informal, local controls and required legal intervention. Trial jurors, theoretically, had

47

McIntosh, 39. McSheffrey, “Men and Masculinity in Late Medieval London Civic Culture: Governance, Patriarchy and Reputation,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), 254. 49 See B.W. McLane, “Juror Attitudes towards Local Disorder: The Evidence of the 1328 Lincolnshire Trailbaston Proceedings,” in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200–1800, ed. J.S. Cockburn and Thomas A. Green (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 41. 48

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nothing more to do than pass sentence. Presentment in the court for infractions of this nature was tantamount to conviction. The courts rarely gave defendants the opportunity to refute the charges; instead, they fined them for their behaviour and warned them against repeating it. Marjorie McIntosh interprets the domination of presentment juries well into the early seventeenth century as an overt attempt by the local elite to create new law within a restrictive manorial system based on custom and tradition. None of these developments occurred independent of more tangible transformations in legal procedure that point to increased anxiety over social disorder. The growing popularity of bye-laws is also symptomatic of an official appropriation by the locality of the kind of legislative power exerted in the royal courts or in boroughs,50 which in effect permitted municipalities to create their “own local statutes.”51 The decisive move away from custom-based law promoted the creation of new categories of transgressions, and encouraged local resolution of local problems. At the same time, important changes in forms of punishment were taking place. Manorial and borough courts began to abandon traditional amercements and instead adopted more rigorous and effective means of discipline, such as the stocks, pillory or the cucking stool. The intention of these forms of punishment was to shame or ridicule the defendant in the hope that the memory of public redress might deter regression and in fact reform the offender. The cucking stool in particular, with its origins as a dung cart and its continued association with excrement through the retention of the privy-stool design, must have been a humiliating punishment.52 A transition in terminology at this time supports the notion that morality was a growing concern in the fourteenth century. The term ‘good governance’ developed as a means of describing appropriate supervision of the morality of the household. The appearance of this phrase symbolised a powerful shift within late medieval society in which patriarchs, rather than individuals themselves, became directly 50 Owing to their character and proximity, borough courts acted collectively as a model for the manorial courts in the adoption of this legislative capacity. Here, it is worth noting that boroughs received this power through the granting of royal charters, while the development of by-laws to create new law in a rural environment was an innovation sanctioned by local authorities alone. 51 McIntosh, 39. 52 Boose, 179–212. See also Spargo, 16–18, 30–31.

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responsible for ensuring that the behaviour of their households conformed to popular standards. Local elites considered any failure to internalise this belief structure intolerable and liable to reprimand.53 In part, social control became as meaningful an issue as it did after the fourteenth century because of the Black Death. The arrival of the plague in England was responsible for large changes in social structure and constitution, which in turn affected attitudes towards local governance. The plague not only disrupted the continuity of established family residences with its soaring death rates; the high levels of post-plague immigration meant that local people were compelled to respond to an influx of outsiders who were doubtless unaware of regional customs or ethics. The creation of a mixed population impelled manorial courts to abandon traditional methods of enforcing good behaviour, such as compurgation and interpersonal bonds; they relied instead on monetary fines.54 Robert Palmer’s dramatic study of the effects of the Black Death on the English common law demonstrates the profound impact the Black Death had on English values and hierarchy.55 Palmer argues that legislators designed post-plague statute law, such as the Statute of Labourers, to compel the ranks of English society “to stand to their obligations.” The increased mobility of the post-plague era encouraged a society without honour, in which the peasantry abandoned their feudal obligations in favour of individual gain. The high rate of mortality created a labour market in which competition simply did not exist; when serfs did not wish to work for paltry wages, feudal lords were powerless to make them do so. The Statute

53 Barbara A. Hanawalt, “‘Good Governance’ in the Medieval and Early Modern Context,” Journal of British Studies 37 (1998): 246–57. 54 Hanawalt, 256–67. See also J. Ambrose Raftis, Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an English Mediaeval Village (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974); Edward Britton, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England (Toronto: Macmillan, 1977); Edwin Brezette DeWindt, Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth: Structures of Tenure and Patterns of Social Organization in an East Midlands Village 1252–1457 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972). For a dissenting view, see Zvi Razi, “Family, Land and the Village Community in Later Medieval England,” Past and Present 93 (1981): 3–36; Christopher Dyer, “The English Medieval Village Community and Its Decline,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994): 407–29. 55 Robert C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

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of Labourers was a royal attempt to enforce obligations and recreate the static and hierarchical social structure of the pre-plague era. A qualitative difference existed in the way justices enforced the law after this period. Not only were the English people required to fulfil their feudal obligations, the courts imposed a new understanding of personal liability to compel Englishmen “to perform to an acceptable standard.”56 The growth of civil liability, then, was a national response to social misbehaviour. While McIntosh sees widespread internal revision of morality restricted to the local courts, Palmer traces the same kind of changes at a national level. Palmer’s focus on the importance of the rise of trespass illustrates the link between this phenomenon and mounting anxiety about social misbehaviour. By the year 1370, the king’s courts chose to recognise the intrinsic value of trespass suits for the resolution of local civil disputes. They consciously abandoned constrictive traditional rules requiring wrongs to have been committed with force and arms, and against the king’s peace. In permitting a looser definition of the term, the royal courts simultaneously gave birth to case law. While trespasses were direct injuries against a person or his land and goods, cases were consequential harms. English courts might now hold liable a man who failed to reinforce the river walls, even though it was his responsibility to do so, for the damages caused to his neighbours by the flooding. This was a substantial deviation from traditional legal objective. Before this, the concept of liability was foreign to secular civil litigation. Even in criminal suits, the courts were uncomfortable with this concept, so that in a case of homicide, if John stabbed William when he had really intended to stab Robert, the courts were hesitant to hold him responsible for his actions.57 In the midst of this process, the central royal courts also became involved in the regulation of a broader number of socially deviant behaviours, joining local efforts to impose a joint code of ethics on non-conformists. Whether we describe this as a “crisis of order” or simply a growing trend towards an intolerance of social deviation, it is important to recognise that these expectations reflect a long 56

Palmer, 295. Naomi Hurnard refers to this kind of death as “killing by transferred intent.” See Naomi D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide Before A.D. 1307 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 98–101. 57

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process of development and maturation, beginning perhaps as far back as the thirteenth century. Scolding, gossiping, gambling, eavesdropping, disturbing the peace: all of these offences intruded on growing notions of personal privacy, Christian morality and public order. Scolding was doubly offensive: not only did these women transgress the social hierarchy by offending their moral superiors; they also transgressed the gender hierarchy, ignoring expectations that good Christian women are silent women. This development in English law and culture did not take place in a social vacuum. The confluence of plague and war in the fourteenth-century evoked a “sentiment of menace to respectable society” that “informed government attitudes” across Europe.58 One visible distinction, however, is that while all of Europe participated in the campaign against prostitution, gambling, blasphemy, sexual deviancy, and criminal association, England was one of the few to focus time and effort on the prosecution of aggressive women. The intolerance of the late medieval period for social misbehaviour, but particularly for disobedient or overly vocal women almost certainly had an effect on marriage. It is notable that those cases of marital disharmony appearing in the manorial and borough courts discussed in Chapter Two all belong to the fourteenth century. Violent spouses who had been unofficially reprimanded prior to the fourteenth century suddenly found themselves presented and fined by manorial and borough courts as the century wore on and new ideas concerning personal liability emerged. The use of literature, art and song to shame women into embracing appropriate conduct meant that any man whose wife did not obey the rules shared her disgrace. How could such an important change in attitudes about the behaviour of women not have had an affect on marriage and domestic violence?

58

52.

Trevor Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe 1200–1500 (New York: Longman, 2001),

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The records for both York and Essex suggest that married woman played a visible role in verbal offences of social misbehaviour. In York, just over one third of the women accused of either scolding or defaming (or both) in the records of the court of the Dean and Chapter were recognisably married.59 This figure is quite similar to the proportion of married scolds in Colchester. Of the seventy-eight individuals involved in scold prosecution in the Colchester court, at least twenty-six are identifiably married, representing exactly onethird of the total number of offenders. Chaucer’s suggestion, then, that poor governance may have been one explanation for the growing numbers of medieval scolds finds some justification in the figures for these two counties. It is hard to imagine that the ubiquity of scold prosecution did not have significant ramifications on social understandings of domestic violence. In a society where women who refused to be quiet and submissive were subject to punishment by the courts, it is only fitting that they should have shouldered some of the responsibility for their husbands’ abuse. One way of interpreting these findings is to argue that abuse was not simply a male transgression of gender boundaries, but also a female appropriation of male power. Because the unhappy wife chooses to take an active, assertive stance, she shifts the gender balance in the relationship. Her identifiably masculine conduct compels her husband to adopt ultra-masculine characteristics. Her aggression, then, excuses his violence. Both Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and Uxor Noe draw the conclusion that a wife’s scolding behaviour reflected poorly on her husband. An overly vocal wife offered a husband, encumbered with these social expectations, the opportunity to employ physical discipline regularly and with some enthusiasm. The records of the courts confirm that

59

By “recognisably married” I mean women who were identified specifically as being the wife of a named man, for example Joan wife of Henry Thorp. It seems highly likely that a number of other women were also married but were recorded in the court books under their own names without any reference to their husbands. There were only two identifiable cases of women who were (almost certainly) not married because they were distinguished in the records as being servants. The final figure for married women may actually be even higher than is suggested by a simple name analysis; however, without further investigation into local wills and other civic records it is difficult to offer a more precise total.

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a scolding wife was judged to be a heavy burden for any man. If scolding was a recognised cause of marital violence, and an acceptable excuse for a husband’s violent behaviour, then it seems likely that an increased aversion to and prosecution of verbally aggressive women was accompanied by a greater tolerance of domestic violence. Regional differences may also reflect this development. In the south, the local courts of Essex indicate persistence in prosecuting women for verbal aggression. At the same time, the surviving ecclesiastical records note very few cases of spousal abuse. Domestic violence is largely absent from the records of the diocese of Canterbury’s disciplinary courts. Examples of domestic violence from Essex included in the records for the diocese of London are still quite meagre where cases of spousal violence are concerned. The Canterbury act books present a smattering of cases. For the most part, in cases with a direct impact on marriage, the records restrict themselves almost exclusively to adultery or spousal non-cohabitation. Canterbury’s cause papers also suggest that women from Kent and Essex were unlikely to apply for a judicial separation. This is not the case for the ecclesiastical courts of the north. The church courts here were accustomed to dealing with cases of abuse in both an adjudicative and disciplinary capacity. In a York consistory court book for the year 1417 to 1420, at least three cases of marriage litigation appear in which the plea was recognisably a suit for judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty.60 Given that there are only six cases of this type in the York cause papers for the entirety of the later Middle Ages, three cases over a four-year period is a relatively high number. Divorce a mensa et thoro cases, while not specifically evocative of female aggression, do at least demonstrate women willing to assert their individual rights in search of personal happiness, a feature that may have conflicted with growing notions of female propriety. If Essex courts sometimes interpreted scolding as a woman’s attempt to berate her husband, few women might initiate litigation against their husbands. Both medieval families and the courts might perceive suits of this kind as evidence of their own quarrelsome and wholly unfeminine natures. What might begin as a suit against a woman’s husband for his inability to conduct himself in a manner befitting his role as the patriarch might end in a fine against the 60 York Cons AB/1: Selby c. Cawood, fos. 63, 126, 127; Wod c. Wod, fo. 82; and Foxholes c. Littester, fos. 99 and 109.

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plaintiff for her own lack of passivity. The willingness of Yorkshire wives to engage in suits for judicial separations indicates that they experienced less antagonism. Quite simply, the late medieval north was more sympathetic to female voices. Finally, if Essex wives expected to be presented for vocally disobeying their husbands, they might have been more inclined to obey them. This may explain the disparity in cases of spousal homicide. Women from Essex were far less likely to resort to murder as an escape from a violent marriage than were Yorkshire wives. While tentative, these differences between the records of the north and south where scolding and domestic violence are concerned, suggest that a revaluation of women’s place across late medieval England is in order. We need also to reconsider the treason statute of 1352 that redefined the crime to include petty treason. The reinterpretation of the offence responded to a variety of external pressures, of which the social control of misbehaviour may have been a guiding force. Scolding prosecutions invite the conclusion that local elites considered deviance from the communal norm a fundamental cause of social disorder. In this social and political climate, it is hard to imagine a more virulent disruption of social order than a wife’s murder of her husband. How better to punish the ultimate violation of social norms than a public burning of the offender?

Conclusion The figure of the scold was omnipresent in the late medieval period. In literature, works like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath suggest an explicit connection between poor governance and scolding: a husband’s failure to live up to social expectations might well lead to the creation of an unbridled scold. In this case, the message seems clear: husbands must govern their wives with a firm hand. Chaucer’s writing implies that wives expected a little violence from their husbands, and might even have enjoyed being dominated. The courts of medieval England reflected this growing concern in the fourteenth-century. In both the north and south of England, courts presented and punished scolds regularly for their anti-social behaviour. While regional differences do exist, with some indication that the north may have been more lenient towards scolding women, it is clear that the fourteenth century was a formative period in the history of gender relations. Anxiety

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over social misbehaviours in general created an aura of intolerance. Passivity was not simply expected and encouraged in women; localities construed signs of active choice or the deliberate expression of individual thought conflicting with contemporary perceptions as symbols of a failure to internalise the ideal. In turn, male activity and dominance was becoming an intrinsic quality of orderly life. It should come as no surprise that these very same courts held husbands responsible for the illicit actions of their wives.61 A wife ruled well by her husband, would not have found herself drawn to any wrongful activity. It seems clear that none of this was an immediate or even rigorous change in social regulation. On the contrary, it was an unhurried imposition of elite values with regional variation in both type and degree. It was not until the early modern era that this transformation culminated in a rigid and effective social control. It was, however, a widespread affair in the later Middle Ages, enforced primarily in local jurisdictions, but also at a more national level in the growth of the concept of personal liability in trespass litigation. It is difficult to imagine that these changes did not have an impact on rates of domestic violence. The records of the church court make it clear that men regularly argued marriage to a scold as a defence for their violent behaviour. If late medieval England was less willing to tolerate scolds, then they may have been willing to eliminate the problem by tolerating higher levels of domestic violence.

61

See earlier discussion Chapter Five.

CONCLUSION

When in the late fourteenth century the officials of the consistory court of York ordered Richard Machonne to return home and treat his wife “decently and honourably,” they were appealing to Richard’s sense of identity as a man in late medieval Yorkshire.1 Spousal abuse in the context of English communities in the late Middle Ages was as much about male honour as it was about wives as victims. An honourable man was one who demonstrated an ability to control his household, but without exceeding the boundaries of that power. In short, a good husband chastised his wife (or hoped that he would not need to); a poor husband beat her. The line between the two, however, was often blurred and subject to personal interpretation. Thus, when a 1349 record reports Richard Scot as having declared before the official of the archdeacon of Northumberland that it was “his right to beat his wife,” he may have sincerely believed this to be the case.2 Families and friends in medieval communities who witnessed this abuse were nevertheless unforgiving in their judgements. Machonne’s conduct was indecent and dishonourable. Similarly, in the very early sixteenth century when George Softley of the vill of Latton (Essex) beat his wife Alice so greatly that “she was thereby in peril of her life,” the record describes his behaviour as “shameful” and “unmanly.”3 Cecilia Wyvell’s deponents in 1410 were even more relentless. Henry’s abuse of Cecilia earned him the reputation of being both “lunatic” and “demented.”4 Wife beating was not only proof of a person’s deficiency as a man, but as a human being. It should come as no surprise then, that one fifteenth-century man from London was willing to risk the costs of litigation in order to defend his reputation against rumours of marital ill conduct.5 In a world in

1

York M 2(1) c, fo. 23. York CP. E 221 / 2. 3 TNA C1/162/46, Alice wife of George Softley of Latton previously wife of Thomas Westwode of Latton, and Richard son of the said Thomas and Alice c. George Softley of Latton (c. 1504–9). 4 York CP. F 56 / 7, Cecilia Wyvell c. Henry Venables (1410). 5 L.R. Poos, “Sex, Lies, and the Church Courts,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25 (1995): 598. 2

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which being a man was so closely tied to being a good husband, reputation was invaluable. The language of honour permeates the records of all the courts reviewed in this investigation. Yet, physical violence was not the only kind of wife abuse that might smear a man’s reputation. William of Beltoft’s failure to provide his wife with the necessities of life was a “scandal” in late thirteenth-century Yorkshire.6 Walter de la Mare’s decision in the early fourteenth century to desert his wife and leave her penniless for over four years not only caused “many scandals,” but his actions were described as “inhumane.”7 Both courts and communities employed an expanded definition of abuse, which may have even included marital rape. Archbishop John Le Romeyn’s outrage at Sir Nicholas de Meynell’s refusal to support his wife, a decision that endangered her soul, reflects the same kinds of concerns that caused a mid-fourteenth-century Yorkshire jury to remark how Stephen Souter drove his wife Alice to suicide with his harsh words.8 Late medieval Englishmen and women recognised the many faces of abuse: physical, spiritual, economic, psychological, perhaps even verbal, although the latter was the most problematic of the five. Medieval society rarely considered verbal abuse to be a male trait. The readiness of men like Henry Venables, Thomas Nesfeld and Simon Monkton to defend their violent actions with tales of wifely shrewishness demonstrates just how complex were gender relations within marriage in the late medieval period.9 Beating a wife was not acceptable; taming a shrew was. The discourse of marriage placed husbands in late medieval England in a precarious position. Wives, too, found themselves challenged by this imposing discourse. When faced with an overbearing, abusive husband, assertiveness or aggression was simply not an acceptable option. A woman who crossed over the gender barrier and exhibited these masculine characteristics soon found herself labelled a scold, or worse, a petty traitor. The discourse of abuse inevitably victimised women: self-defence led to social alienation, passivity might well lead to death. The redeeming feature was that the vulnerability of women 6

William Brown, ed., The Register of John Le Romeyn, Lord Archbishop of York, 1286–1296 (2 parts, Surtees Society, v. 123, 1913), 1. nos. 718, 250. 7 Rose Graham, ed., Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, 1294–1313 (Canterbury and York Series, v. 51, 1952), 194–5. 8 Brown, 1. nos. 96, 76–77; TNA JUST 2/212, m. 19. 9 All three cases are discussed at length in Chapter Four.

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in this respect was recognised and addressed within late medieval communities. England’s various courts of redress provide ample evidence to support an established process for dealing with marital violence. Victims of abuse had a variety of options available to them before even contemplating legal action. First and foremost, family members, friends and neighbours all expected to play an active role in the supervision of spousal violence, and did not hesitate to step in when required to remind an overly aggressive husband of his responsibilities towards his wife. This process was probably even more complex than the surviving records suggest. It is reasonable to suppose that confraternities or guilds might also have provided a logical support network for the wives of guild members.10 In this respect, public humiliation proved to be the most effective means of curbing violent tendencies. The dramatisation of abuse in local theatre, like the Flood plays, and the homiletic exempla taught village audiences through mockery and laughter that a world without established gender roles was a world of chaos. Those few husbands who failed to internalise this pivotal message and persisted in their violent behaviour eventually found themselves in court faced with representatives from those same communities judging their ill conduct. Once again, victims of abuse discovered many options available to them in terms of legal venues. While the church courts of late medieval England were responsible for addressing serious cases of marital violence, manorial or borough courts offered an alternative for dispute settlement. It is likely that some victims of abuse found themselves in a number of venues at one point or another during a rocky marriage. Medieval litigants understood the various strains of the English legal system as a whole. Secular, ecclesiastical, or local, medieval Englishmen and women simply turned to whichever court they believed might offer the best possible resolution to a problem. Both communities and the church alike in medieval England also recognised that an abusive marriage might not be salvageable. If the abuse was life threatening and a wife had exhausted all other means of settlement, representatives of the church were willing to grant a divorce from table and bed. Nevertheless, such a resolution far 10 On the importance of guilds as a support network, see Gervase Rosser, “Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994): 430–46.

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exceeded the financial resources of the vast majority of medieval Englishmen and women. Instead, communities throughout England tolerated widely self-divorce and even consensual abduction as unavoidable, without which spousal homicide rates would surely have been considerably greater. Herein lies the difficulty. While communities sanctioned informal separation, the English church stood firm behind the opposite position. A gap thus existed between ecclesiastical and lay beliefs where spousal abuse was concerned. Representatives of the church were reluctant to give up on any marriage, and chose rather to send in their own militia. Parish priests were the first line of defence, expected to intervene in marriages that evinced signs of abuse. The death of Odo the chaplain of Wilberfoss at the hands of an angry husband, however, is an indication that this kind of intrusion may not have been embraced by all members of late medieval communities.11 Hostility to ecclesiastical interference in marriage is evident in the failure of many couples to abide by the laws of the church. Despite repeated admonishments, marriages continued to be created and terminated without the assistance (or approval) of church officials. Moreover, couples who did turn to the church for ecclesiastical divorce only did so when informal separation failed, meaning either one party to the marriage refused to separate, or they suddenly found themselves in the bishop’s court on charges of spousal non-cohabitation. Lay communities and ecclesiastical representatives not only differed in perspective where separation was concerned: both understood abuse in different lights. The fact that plaintiffs and their deponents in cases of divorce a mensa et thoro felt the need to embellish their tales of domestic violence, sometimes borrowing freely from saints’ lives in order to meet the church’s stringent requirements for abuse, confirms the disparity between lay and sacred understandings of the kind of violence that necessitated separation. While the medieval English church and laity both tolerated substantially higher levels of abuse than today, the expectations of the church were out of step with contemporary values. What the laity considered abusive did not necessarily warrant an ecclesiastical separation. The inability of both the royal and ecclesiastical courts of the late medieval period to provide suitable remedies for victims of coerced marriage demonstrates

11

TNA JUST 1/1053, m. 9d.

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that the discontinuity between local and legal perceptions of abuse was notable. The laity of medieval England, however, may have been equally divided in their approach to domestic violence. While female deponents in cases of violence dwelt on the overwhelmingly physical nature of the abuse, economic deprivation, adultery and spiritual endangerment troubled male deponents and court justices. This bifurcated vision had important ramifications for the treatment of spousal abuse at law. Because men alone acted as the public representatives in court, victims of abuse were rarely able to find a sympathetic ear when physical violence was the only charge. Moreover, the laity was also divided in their reactions according to rank. The general medieval laity exercised their own sense of justice that differed from that upheld by medieval England’s lawmakers. Not only did they condone the killing of a wife’s lover, but they may have often permitted known wife-killers and some petty traitors to elude execution. Joy Wiltenberg has argued that the early modern era usually described marital discord in terms of female resistance to male authority.12 This perspective holds true for the medieval period as well. The fact that the church and laity alike regularly put forward female disobedience as an excuse for male violent behaviour supports this argument. Yet, in the late medieval period in England, the conditions were very complex. Abuse, in many ways, was not just about women. The outrage and loathing expressed by deponents, juries and court officials about men who overstepped their authority reveals that they held men of this nature responsible for much of the violence found in late medieval homes. However, men who failed to live up to contemporary expectations and adopted instead a passive role in their marriages were equally reprehensible. The underlying message in cases of female misbehaviour in a variety of the records from both Yorkshire and Essex is surely that these women were disorderly because they were ill ruled, with the blame for their conduct placed squarely on the shoulders of their ineffectual spouses. Wives may have provoked their husbands’ wrath through shrewishness and scolding, but if their husbands had exercised proper control from the very beginning, there would have been no problem at all. For this reason, manorial and borough courts in particular were 12 Joy Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 97.

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willing to hold husbands legally responsible for their wives’ scolding and even assaults. It is precisely this desire to uphold the hierarchy within marriage, however, that created difficulties in defining abuse. Violence in marriage was only sometimes abuse; more often than not, it was chastisement. Ideals about appropriate gender roles in marriage and spousal abuse did not necessarily undergo profound transformation over the course of the late medieval period; what did change is how they were enforced. The fourteenth century seems to have been a crucial period in the development of accountability for social misbehaviour. Increased mobility after the Black Death dealt a blow to traditional systems of behavioural supervision. Families and neighbours were no longer capable of exercising the kind of unofficial power they had in the past, and were compelled instead to adapt the legal system to meet the needs of a changing society. Although families and neighbours continued to play an important role as informal arbitrators in incidents of marital disharmony, communities transformed the English judicial system to supplement traditional methods. Byelaws against disruption of the peace and scolding are two examples of local resolutions intended to check levels of domestic violence; at the national level, changes to the laws of trespass and treason reflect this widespread anxiety. The overall effect on levels of marital violence is difficult to discern; and yet it seems clear that a public awareness of social misbehaviour gave birth to a sense of crisis that may have justified a heightened degree of spousal abuse. The north and south in England responded differently to the changes wrought by the arrival of the plague in Europe. In the south, the Black Death served merely to intensify an ongoing battle against social misbehaviour. By the mid-fourteenth century, rural mobility had been an integral feature of Essex life for such a long period that boroughs like Colchester had already begun to use the local courts to punish persons who refused to conform to contemporary standards of acceptable behaviour. Growing anxiety about social misconduct in the post-plague period is most apparent in the records of the church courts. In Canterbury, diocese defamation suits increased exponentially from a paltry 14 suits during the years 1372–5 to 324 in the six-year period between 1474 and 1479.13 In the south,

13

Canterbury Y.1.1 (1372–5); Y.1.12 (1474–9).

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the church courts worked together with the local judicial system to stamp out social non-conformity. The growing number of prosecutions, then, points less to increased misbehaviour than it does to a heightened awareness of the problem and a greater determination to eliminate it. Yorkshire, on the other hand, seems to have been much slower to react to changing perceptions of how collective values should be enforced, perhaps reflecting its distance from England’s legal centre. Although Marjorie McIntosh has pinpointed the 1370s as the crucial period when localities across England decided finally to take legal action against social misbehaviour, the local courts of Yorkshire in particular chose instead to address their concerns through traditional means. Prosecution of antisocial behaviour under the guise of spiritual transgressions multiplied in the northern ecclesiastical courts, while the manorial courts of Yorkshire addressed only the occasional and most egregious cases of social non-conformity. With only 74 suits of verbal offences over the period 1387 to 1494, the courts of York never exhibited the same kind of anxiety, as did their southern counterparts.14 It is possible that the disparity between the two regions had an effect on the prosecution of spousal abuse as well as general attitudes towards it. In the south, a wife’s assertiveness in an unhappy marriage may have resulted in a presentment before the local courts for scolding and a heavy fine. In York, that same wife might instead take her case before the archbishop’s court with every expectation that her friends and family would support her application for separation on the grounds of cruelty. The preoccupation with scolding wives and petty traitors in sixteenth-century England, however, affords proof that, in the end, the south’s tendency to oppress domestic violence through the rigid enforcement of socially approved gender roles became the more popular of the two approaches. The two regions, however, shared many similarities with respect to domestic violence. Most important was an eagerness to impose the death penalty on petty traitors. While the juries of Yorkshire and Essex sentenced 34 percent of petty traitors to burn or hang, only 20 percent of wife-killers received the same treatment. The higher execution rate for women accused of spousal homicide confirms

14

York D & C AB/1.

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that husbands might transgress the bonds of marriage more easily than might wives. Collectively, the court records of both the north and the south present a grim and gruesome image of late medieval society. This representation is an inevitable consequence of the choice of court records as evidence of daily life. By nature, court records reveal the dark side of the medieval era. In reality, while some medieval Englishmen abused their wives, spousal abuse was not a universally accepted practice. If indirectly, the law courts of medieval England demonstrate that English villages had an effective system of dealing with marital strife. Both unofficially and legally, medieval England punished domestic violence through public humiliation. In the village setting, families and neighbours mocked abusive couples through theatre, parish teachings and gossip circles; legally, presentment itself was an extremely embarrassing process that acted as a public declaration of one’s moral failings. Even the penalties imposed by the secular and ecclesiastical courts were of a public nature: processions, cucking and carting before a crowd of familiar faces would have been a humbling experience for even the proudest individual. This kind of communal pressure to reform must have been difficult to resist. Furthermore, medieval England’s extensive multi-layered system of familial, communal and legal intervention in cases of marital disharmony may have prevented many marriages from reaching the point where homicide seemed like the best solution to the problem. Medieval England’s methods of dealing with marital violence might appear to have been underhanded, circuitous, and random as well as somewhat oppressive; however, social expectations that families (and communities) should govern themselves at the very least make someone responsible for addressing instances of spousal abuse. If the courts and their agents had been solely responsible for investigating violence in marriage, as is usually the case today, one cannot help but wonder how much worse this situation might have been for medieval women.

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INDEX

abandonment, spousal 30–31, 108–09, 120, 126n, 151 accidental death 22, 45–47, 189, 194, 205, 215 accomplices (see also spousal homicide) 5, 14n, 16, 22, 31, 27, 70, 86, 88–92, 94, 96–7, 186, 192, 194, 196, 201–2, 205, 208, 209, 212, 213, 216–20, 223–4, 256, 261, 264 acquittal rates 91 adultery 8, 10, 14, 17, 25n, 27–8, 72–74, 79, 80, 96, 98–103, 105, 107, 111, 120, 124, 127–8, 130–1, 134n, 135, 139–43, 153–4, 159, 169–70, 180, 200, 249, 255, 262 afforcement, phrases of 208–14, 216–17, 222 alcohol abuse 40 alimony (see maintenance) Alison of Bath 27, 37n, 228, 230–36, 254, 256 amercements 250 annulment (see divorce a vinculo) arbitration 200 archbishop of Canterbury Archbishop Winchelsey 78, 109, 121 archbishop of York 11, 12n, 17, 18, 79, 80, 108–11, 151, 204, 259n Archbishop Greenfield 80, 111 Archbishop Le Romeyn 108–9, 11–12n, 113, 127–8n, 259 Archbishop Newark 128 Archbishop Thomas of Corbridge 110, 111n Archbishop Thomas of Rotherham 18 archdeacon of Canterbury 3 archdeacon of Northumberland 137–8, 140, 258 assault 11, 13, 25, 31–2, 48n, 83–4, 88n, 95–6, 103, 145, 150–1, 180–1, 195n, 238, 263 Augustine, Saint 49–50 Bagley, Ayers 57, 67 ballads and poems 10, 22, 54, 56, 98, 145

“A Henpecked Husband’s Complaint, I” 56 “A Henpecked Husband’s Complaint, II” 98n “An Old Man and his Wife” 54 banns 18–20 Bellamy, John G. 87–8, 208, 210, 212–13 Benson c. Benson (Agnes and Peter Benson) 122, 158, 159, 160, 167, 171, 174, 176 biases of the records 20 Black Death 8, 9n, 26, 124n, 240n, 247n, 424, 248, 251, 263 Book of the Knight of Tour Landry, The 51, 106n, 226 (see also exempla) Boose, Lynda 228, 250 borough courts 13, 81–2, 86, 229, 237–8, 243, 250, 253, 260, 262 Bradford, manor of 32, 82n brothers, role in regulating marriage ch. 5, passim Brundage, James 19, 20n, 36–7n, 69, 75n, 99, 101n, 108n, 127n, 128n, 131n, 132, 138, 147n, 180n, 185n, 202n Bryan, Lindsay 181 Cade’s Rebellion 240 Calendar of Patent Rolls 14n, 115 canon law 3, 11n, 19, 20, 36n, 68, 75n, 101n, 108, 121n, 127, 128n, 131, 138n, 185n canonical requirements for proof 148 case law, birth of 8, 252 cautio 77–78 Cérisy la Forêt, officiality of 121 Chalgrave, manor of 42 Chancery, bills 77, 166n, 187, 188, 194n, 197, 204, 219 chaste marriage 101 chastisement, as a defense 32, 40–1, 45–7, 63, 77–8, 95, 118, 142, 144, 150, 173–4, 183, 230, 253 role in education 26, 28, 148, 153, 175

282

index

Chaucer, Geoffrey 27, 37n, 52–3, 61n, 63n, 117, 220n, 230–5, 254, 256 the Merchant’s Tale 233 Patient Griselda 52 the Wife of Bath 27, 37n, 228, 230–6, 254, 256 church courts 7, 11–2, 19–20, 26, 71–81, 120–9 as cause of tension 120–9 ex officio jurisdiction 14, 99, 120–5, 140, 153n, 181 instance jurisdiction ch. 4 passim role in regulating marriage 76, 80–1, 83–4, 96 clandestine unions 69, 123 clean-hands rule 101n, 138, 153 clergy 11, 32, 39, 58, 68, 111, 128, 201–4 and masculinity 39, 203 Colchester, borough of 13, 31–2, 43, 82n, 83, 194, 239–43, 245 commission of oyer and terminer 7n, 155 concealment, of corpse 86, 214 confessors’ manuals 34–5, 49n conjugal debt 101, 109, 126, 128 restitution of conjugal rights 25, 126, 156 coroner 5n, 15–17, 86, 88, 94–5, 221, 222 coroner’s rolls 5n, 15–17, 45–7, 88, 95, 104, 115–16, 192, 199, 205, 212, 214–17, 225 inquest jury 15, 16, 45, 103, 186, 189, 194, 207–8, 210n, 211, 215–16, 221 Council of Toledo 36 court expenses 71, 166 coverture 25, 30–1, 42–3, 82 cruelty 14, 19, 26, 40–1, 71, 75–7, 108, 112, 117–19, 131–3, 135, 137–8, 140–1, 144–5, 151–4, 158–61, 163, 165, 167, 170, 179, 181, 204, 231, 255, 264 cucking stool 231, 237, 243, 250 Cullum, P.H. 39–40 D’Avray, D.L. 35n, 40n, 51–2 dean and chapter of York 53, 74, 100, 199, 200, 244 defamation 10, 12, 19n, 100, 102, 135, 180–1, 203n, 245–6, 263 Devoine c. Scot (Margery de Devoine and Richard Scot) 101, 122, 134n,

136, 139, 141, 142, 149, 153, 167, 171–2, 176–7 disobedience of wives 59–64, 99, 116–20, 227–9 divorce a vinculo 156 divorce a mensa et thoro 14, 78, 101, 110n, 112n, 117, 127, 131–3, 134n, 139n, 148, 151, 153, 160, 167, 176, 181, 201, 209, 255, 261 Dolan, Frances 10, 209, 210–11n, 220 Donahue, Charles Jr. 69, 71n, 76, 121n, 124, 134n, 136n, 147n, 167n, 177n double standard 138n, 139 Durham 181, 237n Dyer, Christopher 8, 9n, 251n Earls Colne 13, 82–3, 238–9 economic deprivation 99, 107, 109, 111, 114, 125, 171, 262 Elliott, Dyan 101 Étienne de Bourbon 117 Eve 35, 63, 64n, 116, 118n, 152, 228, 236 execution 46, 88, 91, 128, 181, 184, 262, 264 burning 256 hanging 16, 88, 91, 93, 212, 236n exempla 22, 35n, 51, 54, 98, 106–7, 173, 226, 228, 260 “A Roper’s False Wife” 106–7 The Book of the Knight of Tour Landry 51, 106n, 226 “The Obedience of Wives” 226, 228 eye injuries 137, 141, 144, 161, 172, 175, 177–78 Farmer, Sharon 31, 34–5, 203n, 214 Fasciculus Morum 49 felonies 5, 11, 16, 92 abduction 5, 85, 88n, 127, 129, 155, 158, 261 homicide 5, 6, 10, 11, 14n, 15, 16, 21–2, 25, 27, 42n, 46–8, 70, 86–99, 102–7, 114, 116, 120, 43, 180–1, 186, 189, 192–7, 201–2, 205–9, 211–13, 215–220, 222–4, 252, 256 larceny 13 rape 25, 30, 88n, 127–9, 171–2, 197, 199, 204, 259 female aggression 243, 248, 255

index Finch, Andrew 101, 121n, 122, 123n, 125n, 126 flight, from law 46, 48, 94, 96, 100, 128, 131, 126 Fordwich, borough of 240–41 fornication 8, 125n, 72, 74, 99, 100, 128, 131, 191 Foyster, Elizabeth 28, 56n gaol delivery records 6, 16, 196 Given, J.B. 6, 42, 90, 92, 222 Goldberg, P.J.P. 147, 165, 184n, 247 Goldesburgh, parish of 18 good governance 8n, 65, 98, 212n, 250 failing to chastise one’s wife 32 gossiping 231, 236–8, 244, 248 gossips, role of 229, 234–5, 237–8, 253 Gowing, Laura 10, 27–8, 135, 138n, 160, 168, 171, 182, 183n Gratian 3, 35–7, 40–1 Green, Thomas A. 21, 75n, 104–6n, 204n, 208–9n, 213n, 215n, 249n Guibert de Tournai 51–2 guilds 8, 60, 260 Hallissy, Margaret 52 Hanawalt, Barbara A. 1n, 4–7, 8–9n, 27, 59, 83n, 92n, 184n, 186, 187n, 211, 212–13n, 251n heavy-handed marriage counselor 19, 149 Helmholz, Richard 3, 6, 7, 8–9n, 11n, 12, 19, 30, 68n, 69, 73, 81n, 102n, 126n, 137n, 140n, 149n, 154n, 167n, 180n, 190 Hereford 121, 122–3n honour 105n, 147, 243 and masculinity 181 Hostiensis 75 hot blood 218 hue-raising 82–83 Hurnard, Naomi 46, 93, 114n, 219n, 252n husband-beatings 59 impediments to marriage 68 affinity 19, 68 bigamy 25, 68, 120, 142–3 consanguinity 19, 68 crime, of 86–7 sponsorship 19, 68 Ingram, Martin 55, 123, 237 insanity 91n, 99, 114–16, 219n non compos mentis 115–16, 205

283

intrafamilial assault 95 Ireby c. Lonesdale ( Joan Ireby and Robert Lonesdale) 161–4, 167, 171, 177, 182 Januensis 37–8, 227, 234 Jewell, Helen 246 Johannes Teutonicus 36 Jones, Karen and Michael Zell 240 judicial separation (see divorce a mensa et thoro) jurisdictions 11, 101n, 121, 123n, 257 juries 6n, 21, 23, 45, 47, 86–7, 89–92, 95, 97–8, 103–6, 114, 137, 168, 174, 178, 186, 208, 210–16, 222, 249–50, 252, 262, 264 jury communication 208–16 overlap in jury personnel 208 status of jurors 214–15 Kaeuper, Richard 5n, 7, 36, 75n, 131n Karras, Ruth Mazo 35n, 39, 51, 94n, 116, 117n, 139n, 172n Kent 15, 24–5, 70, 122, 240, 255 king’s courts, role of 11, 30n, 84, 86–7, 95, 98, 148, 158, 252 Kiralfy, Albert 88 language of abuse 41, 137 of discipline 47 of honor 259 legal fiction 22, 85, 104, 112n, 177–79, 204 legal process abjuration 94–5, 96 acquittal 70, 87, 89, 91–2, 103, 197, 211–6, 221 conviction 74n, 87, 88, 91, 97, 206, 208, 210, 211–4, 219 flight 46, 94, 96, 106n outlawry 93, 95 pardons 46, 94, 215 peine forte et dure 91 sanctuary 9, 94–5 sine die 91 waivery 195n legal treatises 23, 33, 43–4, 47–8, 114 Andrew Horne, Mirror of Justices 43n Bracton, On the Laws and Customs of England 43–5, 48, 114, 195n, 235 litigiousness of urbanites 165–7 London 2n, 6, 8n, 10, 12n, 14–5, 23,

284

index

39n, 102, 110n, 117, 118, 125, 184n, 186n, 188, 194n, 199, 239, 249, 255, 258 Lucy of Syracuse, Saint 178 Macfarlane, Alan 13n, 24, 82n, 89n maintenance 31, 108–12, 122, 132, 163, 177 Maitland, F.W. 31n, 68, 95n male honour 28, 41–2, 108, 136, 179–82, 188, 258 male witnesses, superiority of 147 manorial courts 13, 23–4, 70, 81–86, 229, 241, 245, 250–1, 253, 260, 262, 264 Marie de France 107 marital expectations 3–4, 10, 26, 43–4, 48, 49, 56, 98, 108, 114, 135, 181, 185, 199, 254, 256, 261–2 marital rape 127–9, 259 marital violence acceptability of 1, 4, 36, 59, ch. 4 passim communal regulation of 26–7, 70, 71, 86, 96, 176, ch. 5 passim economic deprivation 31, 99, 107–14, 125, 160, 163, 171, 179, 259, 262 provocation by wife 27, 99, 117, 119, 162, 176, 228, 262 psychological abuse 144, 160–1, 179, 259 psychology of abuse 38–9 spiritual abuse 113, 259, 262 verbal abuse 160, 179, 259 weapons 77, 146, 174–5, 219, 221–2 writ 31, 95 Mate, Mavis 9n, 31n, 107, 247, 248n McIntosh, Marjorie 7–8, 9n, 27n, 229, 240–1, 248, 249n, 250, 252, 264 McRae-Spencer, Alison 138 McSheffrey, Shannon 8, 27n, 32n, 33n, 39n, 139, 184, 186n, 189, 199, 249n Milsom, S.F.C. 8, 22n, 85n misericords 57–9, 66–7 Monica, Saint 50 mundus inversus 55–8, 66, 232 municipal byelaws 229, 238, 248, 250 Munkton c. Huntington (Simon Munkton, Agnes Huntington) 101, 118, 150–8, 167, 168, 174, 175, 180 Murray, Jacqueline 44

Nazeing 14, 82, 243 Nesfeld c. Nesfeld (Margery and Thomas Nesfeld) 118–9, 122, 144–50, 162, 167, 168, 173–6, 182, 259 Neville, Cynthia 23, 210n, 247n, 248n Newcastle-upon-Tyne 136–7, 167, 170 Noah 55n, 60–4, 65–230 north-south relations 23, 175–6, 220, 238, 244–8, 256, 263–4 Palmer, Robert 8n, 251–2 parent abuse 3 parish priest, role of 35, 201–4, 227, 229, 261 passivity, female 24, 49–53, 75, 135, 171, 173, 257, 259 Paston family 187 Paul, Saint 229 Pedersen, Frederik 137n, 147, 150n, 156n, 165n, 185n Peregrinus 38–41, 108, 234 personal liability 7 personal privacy 8, 126n petty treason (see treason) Phillips, Roderick 216–18 poisoning 12n, 111, 202–3, 210, 220–2 Pontefract 13, 53, 82n, 243, 244 Poos, L.R. 9n, 100n, 124n, 181, 240n, 242n, 258n Pope Alexander III 133 Pope Innocent III 131 potestas 44 Power, Eileen 1 preaching (see also sermons) 34, 37, 44, 69, 107 premeditation 213 proctors, role of 135–6, 140, 142, 160, 166 prostitution 72, 99, 114, 125 Punch and Judy plays 61–64 Purkiss, Diane 20 Purvis, J.S. 17n, 20, 25n, 100 rates of violence 6, 7n, 22, 24, 83, 89 Raymond of Peniafort 131 reasonable force 33 reconciliation, marital 20, 79, 73, 75–6, 80, 84, 99, 117, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 129–30 regional variation (see north-south relations) registers of archbishops 14, 78–81

index Romeo and Juliet 157 Rosser, Gervase 9, 94, 95n, 260n scolds, general 63, 259 as justification for divorce 27, 59, 73, 117–18, 176, 262–3 prosecution of 8, 24, 26, 63, ch. 6 passim, 263–4 Scots 23, 210n, 246–7 self-defence 21, 48, 88n, 103–5, 172–3, 181 self-divorce 69, 121, 123, 132, 137n, 259, 261 self-help 197–8 sequestration 153n, 204 sermons (see also preaching) 22, 33, 35, 37n, 38, 41–2, 44, 49n, 51, 54, 106n, 107–8, 117n, 226–7, 231, 234 servants, role of 37, 47, 77, 87, 89n, 148, 165, 195, 199, 254n Sharpe, J.A. 197 Sheehan, Michael 34n, 184, 186n Sheffield 13, 82n shotgun weddings 189–92 slaying of wife’s lover 22, 98, 102–6, 262 social misbehaviour 7–8, 26, 43, 228–30, 237–8, 242, 244, 248, 252–4, 256–7, 262–4 spinning 63 spousal homicide 5, 6, 16, 22, 46–8, 70, 86–99, 102–7, 114, 116, 120, 143, 183, 186, 192–7, 201–8, 212–24, 256, 261, 264, 265 rumour of 12–13 spousal non-cohabitation 25, 73, 75, 117, 120–9, 131, 177, 255, 261 spousal selection 68, 184, 186n Statutes Labourers, of 1348 251 Treason 1352 87, 247, 256 Wesminster, of II (1285) 180 stocks and pillory 250 Stone, Lawrence 1, 9, 28, 220n Storm, Melvin 230 Stratford-upon-Avon 66–7 Stretton, Tim 20, 21n, 22, 138n suicide 88n, 116, 142–3, 160, 170, 205, 259 Summa Parisiensis 36 Swanson, R.N. 203–4

285

Tancred 147 Thomas Chobham 21, 33–8, 40–44, 49, 133, 227, 232, 234–5 Thorner 13, 82n, 236, 237n, 243–4 Tickhill Honour 13, 82n, 217, 243 tithing groups 185 Tosh, John and Michael Roper 4 treason high treason 23, 88, 114, 247 in the north of England 23, 210 petty treason 86–8, 172, 195, 202–4, 209–13, 216–24, 256 punishments 87–8 statute, 1352 87, 247, 256, 263 trespass 32, 65, 104–5, 204, 252, 257, 263 trespass law, birth of 8, 252 trespassory ravishment of wives 85, 150, 155, 201 uxoricide 86–7, 90–91, 211–14, 217–18, 220n, 222–3 Uxor Noe 33, 60–4, 65, 228, 230–1, 254 verbal formulas

21, 152, 206, 208

Wakefield 5n, 13, 32, 82–4, 86n, 188, 243 Wakefield Flood Play 27, 61–4 Walker, Garthine 171, 237n Walker, Sue Sheridan 30n, 85, 155n, 201 Weisl, Angela 64 Westminster Abbey’s Henry VII Chapel 55, 67 What the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter 50, 57 wife chastisement 32, 40, 41, 45–7, 63, 78, 95, 118, 142, 144, 150, 173, 174, 183, 230, 253, 263 Wilgefort, Saint 54–5 Wiltenberg, Joy 262 Wisbech 181 witchcraft prosecutions 20, 24, 231n witnesses 10, 15, 27, 77, ch. 4 passim, 185 depositions 133–4, 142 gender distinctions in testimonies 169–72 gender of 145, 147–8

286

index

memories 177 strategies 136, 138–40, 142 173, 179 wives financial support (see also maintenance) 31, 79, 108n, 109–12, 122, 163, 177 held accountable for violence 50, 59, 99, 117, 119, 142, 145, 147, 162, 176, 262 piety 34 property rights 24–25, 30–31, 161–4

rights at law (see also coverture) 30–31, 42–3, 82 Wyvell c. Venables (Cecilia Wyvell and Henry Venables) 118, 122, 141–4, 149, 160, 169, 172–3, 174–7, 179, 182, 258, 259 York cause papers 25n, 28, 122, 133, 136, 147, 167, 181, 182, 185, 189, 198, 255

Later Medieval Europe Managing Editor Douglas Biggs ISSN: 1872-7875 Brill’s Later Medieval Europe series deals with all aspects of European history and culture from ca. 1100 to ca. 1600 (with the majority covering the Late Medieval time period of 1100-1500). All areas of Europe will be included; however, there will be a focus on the territories of modernday France, Germany and Great Britain, as well as on the Low Countries. Economic, social, political history and the history of culture and mentality will also be given special emphasis. 1. 2.

Armstrong, L., Elbl, I. & M. M. Elbl (eds.). Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe. Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro. 2007. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15633 3, ISBN-10: 90 04 15633 X Butler, S.M. The Language of Abuse. Marital Violence in Later Medieval England. 2007. ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15634 0, ISBN-10: 90 04 15634 8