Widows and their Lands: Women, Lands and Texts in Fifteenth-Century Norfolk

Widows and their Lands: Women, Lands and Texts in Fifteenth-Century Norfolk Philippa C. Maddern After the recent flourish of research on w o m e n in late-medieval England, everyone knows the immense theoretical difference between the legal standing of wives and widows, especially in relation to landholding. At the instant of ' See, eg., S.S. Walker, ed., Wife and Widow in Medieval England (Michigan: Ann Arb 1993); Caroline M. Barron and Anne Sutton, eds, Medieval London Widows 1300-1500 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1994); P.J.P. Goldberg, ed., Woman is a Worthy Wight; Women in English Society c. 1200-1500 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992); especially Rowena E. Archer, '"How ladies...who live on their manors ought to manage their households and estates": Women as Landholders and Administrators in the Later Middle Ages', pp. 149181 ; Rowena E.Archer 'Rich Old Ladies: The Problem ofthe Late Medieval Dowager', in Tony Pollard, ed. Property and Politics: Essays in LaterMedievalEnglish History (Stroud Alan Sutton, 1986); Medieval Women in Southern England (Reading Medieval Studies, vol. XV, Reading: University of Reading, 1989), esp. articles by Archer, Barron and Crawford; Janet Senderowitz Loengard, '"Ofthe Gift ofher Husband"; English Dower and its Consequences in the Year 1200', in Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple, eds, Women oftheMedieval World; essays in Honor ofJohn H. Mundy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985) pp. 215-255; Helen Jewell, Women in MedievalEngland (Manchester. ManchesterUniversity Press 1996), esp. ch. 4. For two particularly detailed and scholarly surveys ofwomen's and widows' legal position in relation to property-holding and inheritance, see A m y Louise Erickson, Women andProperty in EarlyModern England (London andNew York: Routledge, 1993), ch. 2, and Eileen Spring, law, Land and Family; Aristocratic Inheritance in Engla 1300-1800 (Chapel Hill, N C : University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1993), ch. 2. 124 Philippa C. Maddern her husband's death a w o m a n was literally transfigured from a legal nonentity to an independent individual in law; and simultaneously from a person with almost no legal control over landed property to (often) the holder of significant amounts of landed wealth. A wife was subsumed in the legal persona of her husband, unable to make a will or sue in a common-law court even over her own inherited property without his permission. Even over the alienation of her own dower and inheritance she could exercise only a power of veto, in turn enforceable only after her husband's death by writs inrightof dower, or cui in vita. Conversely, no sooner was her husband dead than she gained an independent legal persona,rightsto the personal direction of her own inherited land (if any), lifetime tenure of any land which had been jointly settled on her and her husband, and entitlement to a dower consisting, by the later middle ages, of at least one-third of any real property of which her husband had ever been 3 seised during their marriage. W e k n o w too that dower could be the least of a gentry widow's entitlements. Thefifteenth-centuryuse ofjointure (an arrangement whereby real estate to a specified value was settled jointly on a married couple for the life of survivor) could result in a widow's provision substantially exceeding the minimum dower level; and no law prevented a widow holding both dower and 4 jointure. Heiresses particularly could attract substantial jointures. The marnage settlement between Anne Harling, only daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Harlyng, and Sir William Chamberlain required him to provide a jointure of property worth a clear hundred pounds annually before the marriage was concluded. This sum was equivalent to a year's income for all but the richest esquires, and some of the poorer knights, in Warwickshire in 1436. Chamberlain died in 1462, leaving Anne comfortably possessed of this income. Furthermore, a generous male testator could leave land outright to his widow, or grant her lifetime administration of his own property. In 1459, William Iwayn ofWallington willed to his wife Katherine the manor of Thorpland for life, but also granted \ Loengard, '"Of the Gift of her Husband'", pp. 223-225. Good summaries are given in Archer, 'Rich Old Ladies', pp. 16-19, and...