An examination of three cases of judicial separation from the late medieval court of York.

Since the publication of Philippe Aries’ Centuries of Childhood in the early 1960’s,
historians of the family have been intrigued by the prospect of a history of change in
familial sentiment. 1 Aries’ study of attitudes about children from the Middle Ages to
the eighteenth century, based primarily on art and material evidence,…[Read more]

When Isabelle, widow of Richard Vergeons, commissioned the
writing of a bill of complaint to Chancery at the end of the fifteenth
century, she was clearly at the end of her tether. Six months before the
writing of the petition, the wife of Thomas Hyll, a wire monger of London,
approached the petitioner’s husband, begging for ‘‘secour and saufg…[Read more]

This paper asks us to rethink the boundaries between consent and coercion in medieval England.
From gentle persuasion to threats and abuse, coercion was a part of the courtship process. Although
late medieval society expected parents to play an active, even heavy-handed, role in matchmaking,
the English church recognized the possibility that…[Read more]

According to medieval common law, assault against a pregnant woman
causing miscarriage after the fi rst trimester was homicide. Some scholars
have argued, however, that in practice English jurors refused to acknowledge
assaults of this nature as homicide. The underlying argument is
that because abortion by assault is a crime against women,…[Read more]

Sunday, January 23, 1390 was a day that Ralph Peioun of Wotton (Lincs.)
and his wife most likely never forgot. On this day, their one-year-old son,
Richard, presumably curious and headstrong like most young toddlers his
age, made an unfortunate choice of playthings when he picked up a pair of
shears and wounded himself in the throat, a fatal…[Read more]

When confronted with cases of self-killing, medieval jurors had to contend with a
vast array of often conflicting concerns, from religious and folkloric condemnations
of the act of suicide, to fears for the welfare of the family of the dead, and to coping
with royal confiscations of a felon’s goods. All of these factors had a profound i…[Read more]

In the year 1397 in the parish of Tuttington (Norfolk), a woman whose
name is lost to history, frantic to rid herself of the evil spirit that
possessed her, turned to suicide. She attempted first to hang herself,
but her husband discovered her while life remained in her body, cut down
the rope, and comforted her. A few weeks later she tried…[Read more]

Scholars of the medieval family would generally agree that the lot of the medieval
wife was not an easy one. Medieval husbands held the upper hand in
the power relationship, both legally and socially. Although Lawrence Stone’s
view of niarried life in the Middle Ages as “brutal and often hostile, with little
communication, [and] much…[Read more]

The use of the term “community” in historical studies continues to present
problems for many medievalists. Myriad studies have emphasized the inadequacy
of the term when describing medieval society. Microstudies of manors and villages,
especially in the English context, by historians Barbara A. Hanawalt, J.
Ambrose Raftis, and Sherri Olson (am…[Read more]

Art historian Barbara Kellum’s 1973 article on child murder in medieval
England paints a picture of a world replete with ruthless and murderous
single mothers who escaped the legal consequences of their actions due to
an indifferent court system that chose to turn a blind eye to the deaths of
young children. Despite the overstated tone of h…[Read more]

The history of homicidal insanity in the courts of law of medieval England.

Given the hurdles one faced in trying to stay healthy in later medieval England, it
should come as no surprise that the medieval English placed a premium on competent
medicine. As Carole Rawcliffe has argued, “medieval life was beset by constant
threats to health arising from poor diet (at both ends of the social spectrum), low
levels of h…[Read more]