Normal Women, page 7
London bakers Alice de Brightenoch and Lucy de Pykeringe ran an ingenious fraud on customers who brought in their own dough to bake in the women’s oven in the early 1300s. The table for the bread dough to rise on was prepared with holes and the two women’s husbands hid under it, tearing pieces of dough from the waiting loaves. The bakers were accused of working ‘falsely, wickedly, and maliciously; to the great loss of all [their] neighbours and other persons living near’.
While the husbands who had helped them were set in the pillory, with dough hung around their necks, the women pleaded femme couvert status, saying ‘said deed was not their deed’. They were spared the pillory as wives under the control of their husbands.172
Businesswomen who were femmes sole were easier to prosecute for infractions of trading law as they could not put their husbands forward for punishment. In the Wakefield court rolls of 1348–50, most women appeared for offences relating to brewing and selling ale. Alice, daughter of Adam, dug her own pit for iron in Yorkshire and was charged for mining without permission.173 Mabel the Merchant was charged with stealing ash trees by the Chalgrave court of 1294.174 Country women were often accused of illegal gleaning – taking more than the agreed share of leftovers after the harvest of cereal crops – or of stealing fruit and vegetables from gardens.
Women could be violent in a violent world: in Wakefield around 1348, Matilda, wife of Robert of Combirworth, attacked Magota, daughter of John, and drew blood – she was fined 3d. Agnes, wife of William Walker, drew blood in her attack on William de Pudsay and was fined 12d. Amabel the Cowkeeper fractured a man’s skull while defending her herd.175 Amicia, the daughter of Hugh of Wygenale, was the official watchwoman – guarding the fruit crop – when she tackled Cecilia, wife of Richard le Gardyner, who was stealing.176
The older women of the village and towns were sometimes officially appointed to make inquiries into sexual misconduct, pregnancies or witchcraft, but they kept a constant surveillance over everyone and maintained the social standards of communities. They would denounce women as ‘scolds’ – argumentative women – and a woman would be punished.
Women community leaders could summon neighbours to make ‘rough music’, clattering pans outside their targets’ windows, or organise a ‘skimmington ride’, when local people would perform a pantomime of insult. Cuckolds would be visited by a man wearing horns; a disorderly household would be shamed by a horse led past their house, with riders seated backwards, or insulting symbolic gifts left on the doorstep.
Occasionally, the women of the community would side with an abused woman and publicly shame a violent, drunken or adulterous husband; but it was mostly women who bore the brunt of scrutiny and censure from other women. Women who offended against community standards or traditions might be taken to the church or manor court and punished, sometimes by time on the cucking stool.
The early cucking stools were little more than ordinary seats. The local lord or the priest or community leaders would order that an offending woman be strapped down and left on the stool for some hours or even the whole day. Some seats could be raised and held up using a lever – like being stuck at the top of a see-saw. Sometimes the woman would be left so long that she soiled herself; sometimes the stool was a chamber pot. Since the term ‘cucking stool’ comes from the Latin caccare – ‘to defecate’ – it may have been intended that the woman soil herself in public as part of her humiliation. The Domesday Book records a cucking stool in Chester to punish the sellers of short measures or bad ale.177 From 1216 onwards, every parish was ordered to provide a cucking stool: legal institutionalised violence for women who had done nothing more than offend their neighbours or argue with their husbands. Later stools were developed into ‘ducking stools’ to drop a woman into water. The town ordinance for Glamorgan in 1330 ruled that: ‘If any woman be found guilty by six men of scolding or railing any townsman or his wife, or any of their neighbours, then she is to be brought at the first fault to the Cucking Stool there to sit one hour, at the second fault two hours. And at the third fault to let slip . . .’178
People who missed church services would be brought before the church court, while people who failed to work the common-held lands, perform their feudal duties or pay their fees would be brought before the manor court of the lord. Women said to be unchaste would be formally charged in either court. Unmarried women caught having sex would pay a ‘leyrwrite’ – a fine – but sexually active bachelors faced no such punishment: the double sexual standard was justified because a woman might give birth to a bastard and the cost of the child might fall on the manor. Agnes Chilyonge had to pay her feudal lord 2d for being found guilty of ‘adultery’ at Manningham in 1350.179
Every parish had to have a ‘cucking seat’ from 1216. The seats would later become ‘ducking stools’
[And Cover] ‘Cucking Seat’, illustration from an engraving reproduced in John Ashton, Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century, Chatto & Windus, 1882, p. 274 (Chronicle/Alamy)
Violence Against Women
Domestic violence was probably so common as to be rarely reported and no commentators complained of it for centuries. A husband could legally use so-called ‘reasonable force’ on his wife and children, usually understood to be a beating with a whip or stick no wider than his thumb. In practice, women only reported violent husbands to the authorities if they feared for their lives, and then a husband might only be ‘bound over’ to keep the peace. Only if domestic violence disturbed the community would he be prosecuted or reproved by community action – a violent prank against the abuser or an official public shaming. Usually, the senior women of the community would warn a violent husband against going too far – sometimes they violently attacked him. Since most of daily life took place in public, and women entered each other’s homes for communal working sessions, cooking and support in illness and childbirth, village women had an inside view of local marriages. This was not always helpful: most of the court actions against women were accusations of ‘slander’ – complaints that others had been commenting on their private lives.
Rape by a husband was no crime – the wedding oath was consent once and for all, and both husband and wife were considered to have consented for the life of the marriage to sex on demand.
Sex without consent outside marriage was first outlawed in the law codes of Alfred, 200 years before the Norman invasion, written in the late ninth century. A sliding scale of compensation charged seizing the breast at 5 shillings, throwing a woman down without penetration at 10s and penetration by force at 60s, and the fines were paid to the woman’s family or even to her personally.180
‘Rape’ under Norman law was understood both as the kidnap of the woman from her family and damage to their property. A ‘rapist’ would be prosecuted by a woman’s father or brother for stealing their property: ‘If anyone carry off a maiden by force, [he is to pay] the owner 50 shillings and afterwards buy from the owner his consent [to the marriage]. If it be rape of a maiden, seven half-cumals for it.’181
A cumal was a value – about 3 ounces of silver. The rape of the maiden cost about three times as much in a fine as the kidnap, because her virginity had been stolen and could not be restored.182 There was great anxiety about the kidnap and abduction of wealthy women – mostly widows – as a forced marriage handed her fortune to her abductor.183 A study from 1100 to 1500 revealed 1,198 allegations of kidnap.184 Some apparent victims may have been escaping unwanted marriages by arranging their own abduction with their lovers. Some unwilling nuns freed themselves from the nunnery with a male accomplice-lover.185
The stringent conditions for reporting rapes, and the scepticism of the all-male judge and jury, meant that few prosecutions were initiated by women themselves.186 To prosecute a rape, wrote Henry de Bracton in 1235, the woman had to have lost her virginity during the rape; she had to raise a public hue and cry against her rapist the moment it was over; she had to immediately report to men of good repute showing them bloodstains and torn garments; she must explain the circumstances to the local official (the reeve), to the king’s sergeant and to the sheriff; and she had to appeal for justice at the county court. What she said at each point must agree exactly with what she first said, since any variation would prove that she was lying. If she successfully managed all of these unlikely encounters immediately after a violent assault, and the courts found the rapist guilty, he would be blinded or castrated – unless she agreed to marry him.187 This would save his life or his sight, and her good name, since the man who had raped her had taken her ‘honour’ and could restore it with marriage.
Throughout the thirteenth century, the laws changed and changed again to define rape either as a crime of violence, punishable by death, or merely a trespass that could be punished with fines, exile or beatings. The decision was sometimes left to local communities, who could call for execution or mutilation if they felt strongly in a particular case.188 The law was reformed in 1285 to establish that rape against nuns or virgins was a crime punishable by death; but rape of a woman who was not a virgin was a trespass and her husband or father might be compensated for damage to his property. In 1300, rape was clarified as a crime against property, damaging a woman’s value, affecting her marriageability, her status and her family’s wealth. The new law required that the woman receive a payment into her dowry, so compensating any future husband for his loss. The sentence for rape was reduced from hanging, drawing and quartering to hanging (a similar punishment as for theft), but the raped woman was again given the option to marry her rapist and save his life and her good name.189
If an accusation of rape ever got to court, a woman’s word was not as good as a man’s word – he had legal status and she did not. There are few records of accused rapists making any defence. Mostly, an accused man simply denied the accusation.
Henry, son of Fullar of Shelfield in Walsall, denied raping Maud, daughter of Henry Spurnall, in 1221, ‘word for word’, according to the court record. He told the court that Maud’s father was an accused murderer and that he had caught Henry Spurnall with Maud, her sister and 15 sheep in the woods. Henry claimed that Maud accused him of rape ‘in grudge’. The jury of 12 men from four villages ruled that he was not guilty.190
One woman, abducted, raped and imprisoned for two years, could not get her rapist punished as she had failed to report her rape within the permitted period. John raped Rose, a virgin of Irchester, in Northamptonshire. When she tried to raise the hue and cry, he kidnapped her, took her to Oxfordshire and held her prisoner for two years. After she escaped, raised the hue and cry, and brought her rapist-kidnapper to court, his defence was a technical one – that she had not named ‘a definite day or a definite year or a definite place when he had raped her’.
The court agreed and John walked free. But on this rare occasion, the intervention of the king called John back to court and a second trial convicted him of rape and fined him £10. The fine was paid to the king, as the complainant – not Rose.191
If a woman conceived a child as a result of a rape, her claim of rape was automatically discounted, because it was believed (from Aristotle) that a woman would only conceive a child if she had experienced an orgasm: conception proved an orgasm, and an orgasm proved consent. That was what the judge told Joan of Kent, who claimed she had been raped and made pregnant. His judgment was recorded in the year books of Edward II.192
About a quarter of rape accusations were successfully prosecuted. In one study of thirteenth-century records, of 108 rape accusations 15 per cent yielded guilty verdicts, 12 per cent were settled out of court and in 33 per cent of the cases charges were dismissed.193 None of the guilty men were sentenced to death as the law provided, not even those who pleaded guilty. Agnes of Westwode said that Roger of Cheveral in Wiltshire was guilty of ‘rape and the violation of her body’, and he admitted to the coroner that he had ‘raped her with violence’. The jurors’ verdict confirmed that Roger was guilty of rape. The court fined him 4s and outlawed him.194
The difficulty of making an accusation, the almost impossible requirements of proof and the lenient punishments deterred women from making complaints.195 The shame of sexual intercourse with a stranger – even a rape – was a lasting stain on a wife’s reputation and a raped single woman would have to find a husband who would accept a dishonoured bride. Some reigns passed with no recorded allegations of rape at all, like those of Richard I (1189–99) and John (1199–1216).196
A study of all the surviving records of rape accusations between 1208 and 1321, from different parts of the country, shows that 21 per cent of men accused of rape were found guilty. Of these 31 men found guilty, 24 of them were punished. Two men were hanged, and about a third of the guilty men were imprisoned, a third were outlawed, and the rest compensated or even married the woman complainant. Some men probably ran away and became outlaws to avoid their trial.197
But 71 women – nearly half of those complaining of rape (49 per cent) – were arrested for false accusing or failing to attend court, or failing to complete the procedures. These were easy counter-accusations – given the complex requirements for a successful complaint and the fact that almost all rape victims were working poor women, social inferiors to their rapists who were almost all tradesmen, clerks or churchmen.198 The literate men could easily defend themselves to a male jury of their peers. The common women were in a court of their masters without representation.
The visiting judge, on a circuit from a distant town, was more concerned with imposing correct court procedure on an unruly area than on the rights of rape victims. His principal task was to raise money from the court by setting fines, and it was easier to fine a woman complaining of rape than to pursue and prosecute the man she had accused.199
Jurors were drawn from the villages of the accused and the accuser, and there may have been a desire for community peace. Since a woman was automatically an object of desire – whatever her intentions – she was traditionally held responsible for crimes that were committed against her. In the church’s view, the sin of raping a beautiful woman was a lesser sin than that of raping an ugly woman, because the temptation to assault a beautiful woman was so much greater.200
Convicted rapists could attract a royal pardon. Henry III’s Dictum of Kenilworth of 1266 gave a general amnesty to his supporters, whatever crimes they had committed – including rapes.201
Marriage
A wedding was a verbal promise that could be made anywhere – it did not even need to be on holy ground, with or without a priest, or any other witness. From the 1100s, the desire of the lords to control heiresses and their dowries prompted a new tradition that required promises to be made before witnesses, ideally a priest. The cleric would be responsible for making sure that the bridal couple were not closely related and that neither had a live previous spouse. From the twelfth century, canon law tried to prevent marriages forced on young people, or kidnapped brides, by making consent an essential element of a valid wedding.202 But a priest who owed his place and income to a powerful patron was unlikely to oppose him.203
A private promise to marry in the future – a betrothal – was considered as binding a commitment as a wedding oath. Theodora, born to a wealthy merchant family around 1096 in Huntingdon, was betrothed to a lord, despite her wish to become a nun. Her parents complained that her attempt to break her betrothal made them the ‘laughing stock of their neighbours’.204 The support of a hermit, who recommended Theodora’s vocation to the Archbishop of Canterbury, encouraged the young woman to escape from her family and she ran away from home dressed as a man, to join a woman hermit: Alfwen, at Flamstead. Theodora changed her name to Christina and supported herself by her art – she worked in silk, embroidering and weaving pictures often based on illuminated manuscripts. The St Albans Chronicle records her beautifully worked sandals and mitres, which she made as a gift for the pope.205 Two years later, her fiancé released her from the betrothal and the Archbishop of York annulled the oath. Christina took her vows at St Albans Abbey and lived in the hermitage at Markyate, where a priory was established around her. She served as prioress and was joined by other devout women. She befriended and advised the abbot of St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, who recorded his feelings for her in the St Albans Psalter, in which there is a letter ‘C’ for Christina at Psalm 105, the psalm that celebrates the power of God to protect his people.
A betrothal could be converted into a binding marriage by a wedding ceremony – ideally before a priest and witnesses – or merely by a sequence of rituals: the payment of a token, the gift of a ring and consummation of the marriage: penile penetration. After that, the couple were fully married and the wife might be considered as her husband’s responsibility, both for her behaviour and for her debts. A bride did not even speak in the wedding service. In the Bury St Edmunds Missal of the 1100s, only the husband has a voice. He was to say:
With this ring I thee wed,
this gold and silver I thee give,
with my body I thee worship,
and with this dowry I thee endow.
Then the bride, having received the gold and silver and the dowry, falls to the feet of her husband.206
She heard the almost idolatrous description of their union: ‘with my body I thee worship’. It’s a potent line, for marriages that we generally think of as ‘arranged’ and even ‘loveless’. She accepted the substantial gifts: the ring that proved the marriage, the ceremonial coins that represented the lifelong financial partnership, and her contribution – her dowry. She knelt, like a feudal tenant before a lord, like a lord before a king, to her superior.
