Normal Women, page 3
Women were prepared to die for their faith: in 1285, eight women and 55 men were burned for heresy against the Roman Catholic Church in Yorkshire.38 Not all enclosed women were so committed: some postulants were given to the church as an act of thanksgiving by their families, or to avoid the costs of raising a daughter; these girls were probably unwilling recruits. Nuns escaped from their orders, and some of the reported rapes and kidnaps of nuns were women staging their escape from the convent with the help of a friend or lover. Agnes Sheen, a nun of Godstow Nunnery, was apparently kidnapped in 1290 – but an inquiry revealed she had been escaping the nunnery, not taken against her will.39 Another discontented nun, Agnes de Flixthorpe, ran from her religious house at Stamford and hid out in Nottingham. She was dressed as a man when she was recaptured in 1309. The nunnery put her in chains and punished her for five years, until she convinced them of her penitence in 1314 . . . when she ran away again. This time she was not recaptured.40 Another nun, Joan of Leeds, faked her own death to get away from her Benedictine nunnery at St Clement’s, York, to the town of Beverley. The Archbishop of York, William Melton, wrote to the dean of Beverley in 1318, telling him to ‘warn Joan that she should return to her house’. He complained that Joan had persuaded her friends to help her make a dummy to pass off as her dead body and be buried in her place, in consecrated ground. According to the archbishop, she ‘perverted her path of life arrogantly to the way of carnal lust and away from poverty and obedience. Having broken her vows, and discarded the religious habit, she now wanders at large to the notorious peril to her soul and to the scandal of all her order.’41 But the archbishop did not order the dean to arrest Joan and send her back to her convent, only to reprove her. Perhaps both men thought it was easier to scold than to capture a woman who was determined to be free.
Towns
There were only 18 towns in England in 1066, each a sprawl of unplanned houses with big gardens, drying greens for laundry, grazing greens for the town’s animals, orchards, market gardens and parkland for hunting, as well as workshops for craft industries. Here, just as in the surrounding farmland, raising livestock and growing food was essential. The country people brought their produce for sale in the daily or weekly markets, driving the animals on the hoof down long-distance drovers’ roads to urban markets and slaughterhouses. Urban women entrepreneurs went out to the country, taking raw materials to women pieceworkers in their cottages: textiles for spinning, weaving or finishing; cloth for tailoring; leather for saddlers and cobblers; metals for blacksmiths and goldsmiths.
Most people were born in the rural areas, and many would return to them, particularly girls who would go into town for a few years in domestic service before going back to their villages for marriage, to take up a partnership in the family business, inherit family land and rights, or a tenancy. Town and country life merged – every countrywoman went to market, and townswomen would head out into the countryside for seasonal work during harvesting and haymaking.42 Despite the hard work of tenant farmers like Juliana Strapnel, there were hungry years: in the great famine of 1315–18, about 10 per cent of the population starved.43
The towns offered people economic opportunities and freedom from the strict rules of the lord of the manor. A Sussex town like Lewes could be a magnet for country girls: women outnumbered men there in 1378.44 Towns presented work opportunities for women as well as for men: Stratford-upon-Avon listed 60 different recognised occupations, Bristol more than a hundred.45 By 1300, there were at least 30 towns and cities in England, each with a good-sized church, a regular market and stone-built buildings. Most settlements had originally formed around a castle, and spilled beyond the old defensive walls, around the castle gates, which might still be closed at sunset every day.
As the towns grew bigger and more prosperous throughout the century, they became increasingly independent of the local Norman lord in his castle. They sought royal charters to be self-governing: electing a mayor, aldermen and bailiffs to enforce rules on public behaviour, safety and hygiene, and to represent civic interests to important visitors or in disputes with the church or neighbours. Once independence was won, the little towns guarded it fiercely, obeying their own charter and defying requests from lord, church or king.46 They raised local taxes to pay for the few urban services like street sweepers, watchers and gate keepers, and these civic jobs were open to women.
Life in the urban areas proved so unhealthy, especially for women and children, that towns had to be repopulated from the countryside, especially during plague years or epidemics. Elite people suffered from the dirt and disease almost as much as the poor did: a lady in a castle would use a privy that voided into a moat that was rarely cleaned; townswomen’s houses had a pit dug for waste, which was occasionally dug out; and poor people would use a dung heap or defecate in the muddy streets, which were already fouled by animals. People drew their water from the rivers or from the local pump or well, all contaminated by the waste dumped by households into watercourses and the pollution from industries like leather works, textiles and metal works. With no understanding of how infections spread, there was little interest in cleanliness and hygiene, except as a luxury.
Small manufacturing industries flourished alongside residential areas. Leather works, with their poisonous dyes and disgusting smells from freshly skinned hides, would be sited on streams and rivers, and women worked in these hard environments, as they did everywhere else: Petronilla Ballew was a tanner in Shrewsbury in the early 1300s.47 Foundries and metalworks were sited in their own, high fire-risk areas, and women worked with metal: forging heavy pieces like ploughshares, skilled pieces such as armour and delicate work like jewellery.
The guilds became the leading organisations in towns and cities, setting apprentices to masters, admitting male and female members, maintaining standards, excluding ‘foreigners’ (even artisans from nearby towns) and supporting members who had fallen on hard times. They organised celebrations, feast days and holy days, and sometimes put on events for the public. The Guild of Tailors of Lincoln showed its care for men and women members – promising to pay for masses for any deceased brother or sister, at home or away, a sort of after-life insurance.48 No one could set up a workshop and open for business unless he or she was a member of the relevant guild. Women could be guild members, but generally not officers, and there were very few trades without women workers as ‘masters’ or partners. Usually, a man would only join a guild after he had completed his apprenticeship and married, so that he could set up a workshop with a working wife as a full partner.
Some guilds only admitted women who were related to guildsmen, such as the London Girdlers’, which ruled in 1344 that members could only employ women who were family members.49 Female guild members could claim townsmen status and the freedom of the town: the obligation to pay local taxes and the right to vote for the officers. Other women could claim the freedom of a town if they were independently wealthy or inherited their husband’s townsman status on his death. Some towns were well aware that they needed a female workforce and attracted women with an offer of the status of a ‘freeman’ or ‘townsman’ with legal rights – whatever her status. Women were valued for their money-making abilities, and in many towns even a poor woman who had run away from her home or her feudal lord would be granted ‘freeman’ status if she could show that she had supported herself in the town for a year and a day. Such women – working for themselves and keeping their own wages – usually chose to marry later than those living in the country, and some never married at all, creating a group so numerous and so distinct that historians call them ‘singlewomen’.50
London
Prior to 1066, the capital of England was Winchester. It provided the administrative centre for a royal court that moved seasonally, from castle to palace around the country. In 1200, the royal documents were moved to a permanent home in the palace of Westminster, then a small town outside the walled City of London. Westminster and London grew side by side: the City as the centre of trade and Westminster as the home of the royal court and government. In 1100, the population of all the parishes of London was little more than 15,000. By 1300, it had grown to about 80,000.
There was steady demand for women domestic servants in all the towns, especially in London, where many servants were needed to manage and maintain the great town houses and their market gardens, with their own cows, hens or pigs. Servants also worked in the businesses that were sited at home – manufacturing, retail, catering and crafts – with little distinction being made between work for the family and production for sale.
Women dominated many London trades; the textile trade was almost entirely run by women, and in the early 1400s the London Brewers’ Company had 39 women members.51 Women formed the majority in retail marketing, especially in second-hand goods, small loans and the pawn business of trading goods for credit or cash: Mariotta Convers was a successful pawnbroker in London in the 1300s.52
Londoner Emma Hatfield inherited and ran her own chandlery business, making and selling candles. Goda a Gablere was a London moneylender to merchants and shippers in the 1200s.53 She confessed to the crime of being a Christian engaged in the sin of usury, repented and lived out the rest of her life as a nun.54 With no trades closed to women, their industry powered London’s prosperity.55 Women who partnered with their husbands in a trade and then at his death married a fellow guild member consolidated two successful businesses, unifying capital and keeping experienced management in the business. Some widows united and developed multiple businesses over their lives, using their inheritance from husbands to reinvest. Many master widows married their apprentices, giving the business continuity and solving the problem of succession.
Girls were apprenticed to trades as well as boys, working in skilled and well-paid jobs and gaining a place in the guild on their graduation. In 1276, Marion de Lymeseye was apprenticed to Roger Oriel in his business as a paternoster-maker – a creator of rosaries for Roman Catholic prayers.56
Many London parishes had their own local guild, an association of prosperous parishioners to provide charity and social control in their area, open to any successful male or female master in the parish, regardless of their trade. The guild of Holy Trinity at St Botolph’s near Aldersgate listed 274 women members and 530 men in the late 1300s.57 Women were equal members in the parish guild of St James, Garlickhithe, in London, and paid the substantial sum of 20d each for the compulsory annual feast – about four or five day’s pay for a skilled worker – suggesting women members were working full-time at skilled artisan level and getting paid the full rate.58 Some parish guilds provided dowries for poorer young women members, for marriage or entry to a nunnery. Pilgrims formed into guilds, as did devotees of some saints and worshippers at certain churches, and some people joined a guild to provide for funeral expenses.59
Women’s Status
All Englishwomen lived in a society that accepted without question the judgement of the ancient Greeks and the wisdom of the church fathers: that women were ‘naturally’ inferior to men, physically, mentally and spiritually.60 The incoming Normans enshrined this into law. Every woman lived under her father’s name. On marriage, she became a ‘femme couvert’ – everything she already owned or earned in future became the property of her husband. The children she birthed were his alone. She had no official legal existence and was assumed to act under her husband’s direction. He had to answer for her crimes. If she were kidnapped or raped, it was a crime against her husband or father, who were compensated for damage to their property.
As always, women were quick to take advantage of their oppression. If a woman had no presence in law, she could run up debts for her husband or father to settle, and he would be sued – not her. He might be held responsible for her criminal behaviour too, such as taking part in public unrest. This became an increasingly difficult question for the courts when women rebelled – for seven centuries after the Norman invasion, judges were afraid that women believed they were free to riot, and were terrified that they were right.
Women accepted the dogma of inferiority but lived as if they were healthy, strong, intelligent, spiritual and sexual. They were told, and some may have believed, that they were inferior to men; but many lived as equals, getting on with their real lives, ignoring the lawmakers, creating their own businesses, making their own fortunes and keeping them, leaving money and lands to their chosen heirs – often kinswomen. They played as well as worked alongside men, dancing, dicing, competing at chess and other games, as witnessed by Ipomydon, a twelfth-century poet:
When they had dyned, as I you saye,
Lordes and ladyes yede to playe;
Some to tables, and some to chesse,
With other gamys more or lesse.61
In 1276 in the London Eyre, a game of chess turned violent: ‘David de Bristoll and Juliana wife of Richard le Cordwaner were playing chess together in Richard’s house, with several others present; a quarrel arising between them, David struck Juliana in the thigh with a sword, so that she died forthwith.’62
In the game of chess, the queen was a piece of authority, essential to the survival of the king – whose death marked defeat and the end of the game. But she was not yet able to move in all directions. She could only move one diagonal square at a time, until around 1300, when she was allowed to move two squares in her first move and became one of the key pieces for victory.63
Some women married late, or never married at all, and were single women, owing fealty to no man, economic managers of their own individual lives.64 To cope with women like these, the feudal law had to invent a category known as ‘femme sole’ – a woman alone. Such a woman could enter into a tenancy in her own name, run a business, borrow, lend and even earn freeman status, equal to men. Many widows also declared themselves femmes sole and even married women could claim the status if their husbands allowed. Some towns insisted on giving women traders femme sole status to prevent them hiding behind their husbands’ names, dodging taxes and shirking their civic responsibilities.
Noble Norman women took their husband’s status as their own – often deputising for him. Some queens assumed full regency powers in the absence of the king: William I’s wife Matilda took on a heavy share of the work, ruling in his absence as a duchess in the Norman lands and as queen regent in England, where she was the first female consort to be named ‘Queen of England’. She established herself as an active ruler in both of her territories, travelling between the two countries to enforce her rule and, as shown in the Domesday Book, sitting as a judge on legal cases and granting charters.65
Her son’s wife, Queen Edith Matilda (1080–1118), served as regent during Henry I’s frequent absences from England, initiating a programme of church-building and signing laws and treaties with her own name. Their daughter, Empress Matilda, would invade England at the head of her own army against the usurper to the English throne, her cousin Stephen.66 Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204), famous for her independence, sexual freedom and unconventional behaviour, acted as regent during the absence of Henry II, and as an old lady served as regent for her son Richard I, negotiating for his release after he was captured while returning from the Third Crusade in 1190.67 Isabella, queen consort of Edward II, planned and executed an invasion of England in 1326, deposed her husband the king and ruled as regent for her son Edward III.68
Most great Norman estates, gifted to Norman lords by the king in return for a vow of loyalty, were managed by their wives and, after their deaths, their widows. Slowly, women moved into positions of power. These women employed hundreds of workers, farming thousands of acres, managing many houses – some of them castles or palaces. These upper-class women behaved as lords, deputising for their absent husband or young son, on the land and in the manor court, sometimes drawing an income, some making a fortune and leaving wealth and goods to their chosen heirs. Women’s authority was so normal that it was rarely a topic for comment.69 While the noble husbands represented the family at the royal court and in the wider political world, competing with other great men, summoned by the king to serve in his army or even called by the church to crusade, the women ran the great homes and lands, ordered the servants, managed the workers, commanded the peasants, sat as judges in the manorial courts, and recruited and even led fighting forces. On the lord’s death, his widow would manage the estate for a young son – like the thirteenth-century Margaret de Lacy, later de Quincy, Countess of Lincoln, who inherited the title of Countess of Lincoln from her mother and never handed over power and fortune to her son, who died before her.70
As poet and author Christine de Pisan (1363–c.1430) wrote: ‘Because barons and still more commonly knights and Squires and gentlemen travel and go off to the wars, their wives should be wise and sound amid wars and manage their affairs well.’71 Lady Isabel Berkeley was clearly worried to leave her home with her husband in charge. She told him to do absolutely nothing: ‘Keep well all about you till I come home, and treat not without me, and then all things shall be well.’72
Bridget of Sweden, who founded the order of nuns known as the Bridgettines in 1344, would only appoint women to run the abbeys that housed both monks and nuns in co-ed houses, believing leadership to be a natural quality for women because the Virgin was ‘head and queen of the apostles’.73
Walter de Bibbesworth’s treatise on gardening in 1230 urged women to be good gardeners – he meant food producers.74 When Bishop Robert Grosseteste wrote his French manual in 1241 on managing a great household, estate and farming, he addressed it to the English heiress Margaret de Lacy, who may have been the bishop’s patron and may have commissioned the book.75
Upper-class women served as legal authorities and were sometimes appointed to formal office – their status outweighed their ‘female defect’. In 1257, the lady of the manor Angareta de Beauchamp sat as judge in her own manor court and sentenced criminals to be hanged on her own gallows. Nichola de la Haye, who held Lincoln Castle through two sieges, was appointed sheriff of Lincoln in 1216. Ela, who inherited the title of Countess of Salisbury from her father, requested and was awarded the post of sheriff of Wiltshire in 1231.76 One lady even reprimanded the king himself. Isabella, Countess of Arundel, with a dignity ‘more than that of a woman’, complained to Henry II that he was extorting money and breaking his word in 1252. According to chronicler Matthew Paris, she told the king, ‘You govern neither us nor yourself well.’77
