Imprisoning Medieval Women: The Non-Judicial Confinement and Abduction of Women in England, c. 1170-1509 by Gwen Seabourne (review)

The subject of medieval incarceration has enjoyed something of a revival of interest in recent years. A number of new monographs have been published (Julie Claustre's Dans les geôles du roi. L'emprisonnement pour dette à Paris à la fin du Moyen Age (2007); Guy Geltner's The Medieval Prison: A Social History (2008); this reviewer's Imprisonment in the Medieval Religious Imagination (2011); Adam Kosto's study of Hostages in the Middle Ages (2012)) and a growing network, mostly of French scholars, has generated a significant number of conferences and publications devoted to 'Enfermements', the relationship between monasteries and prisons between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Gwen Seabourne's book may be situated within this newer literature that emphasises the cultural and social history of imprisonment. The author particularly identifies her study as sitting within the parameters of both legal history and women's history. In this way, Imprisoning Medieval Women certainly adds much to our understanding of both women and the law - loosely defined - in medieval England. Seabourne's primary area of interest is non-judicial confinement, that is, the many situations where women were enclosed or confined (or participated in enclosure and confinement) outside the formal judicial processes of trial and sentence.

Given its social history framework, then, it is odd that none of the newer literature on forms of imprisonment is cited in the book or its bibliography. This is a shame, as some of the fascinating and insightful material presented throughout the book might have been framed in the context of what we now know to be the highly multivalent nature of medieval confinement. Likewise, the value of exploring notions of confinement and imprisonment outside of the conventional parameters of legal history has been tested over the last half-decade and some of the theoretical aspects of this may have furnished Seabourne with further methodological clarity in her endeavours to understand the prevalence of confinement throughout the high Middle Ages.

That said, however, this is an excellent study of the situations of confinement that medieval women all too frequently experienced. It is based on an impressive range of sources and it is well written and carefully argued. The book is broadly divided into three parts, dealing respectively with cases of royal confinement, the issues of wrongful imprisonment and abduction, and women's agency as captors themselves. Some of the material certainly makes for distressing reading, as we are told of women used as hostages, raped and murdered during times of war, abducted from their homes, and separated from their families. On the other hand, Seabourne is reluctant to buy into the paradigm of women as victims and the final section of her book is an attempt to show that some women were able to negotiate the imprisonment of themselves or others through petition, intercession, and intervention. The time period covered in the book is lengthy - from c. 1170 until 1509. This allows the author to consider both individual cases and broader shifts in the thinking behind non-judicial confinement throughout the Middle Ages, using gender as the primary category of historical analysis. The concluding argument is that confinement for women could be effected in a range of different places and contexts and that 'such uncertainty must have been an important factor in the lives of medieval women' (p. 192).

Further discussion of the categories used in the book would have given the book additional intellectual depth. Although readers might infer from the title of the book, Imprisoning Medieval Women, that processes of imprisonment will be the focus, it is the book's subtitle that more accurately reflects the content. What is meant by 'imprisoning' could have been teased out, especially in the Introduction, although the categories of abduction, raptus, and even the looser 'non-judicial confinement' are explained carefully. I would also like to...