Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:54:26.994Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women and the Norman Conquest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Pauline Stafford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

IN 1779 William Alexander published what is probably the first history of women in English. The work is in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment tradition of Montesquieu or the Scot Millar in its wide comparative reference; it ranges over ancient and modern societies, civilised and savage. Alexander was interested, like Millar, in the historical changes which had produced change for women; and convinced, like so many eighteenth-century thinkers, that change was a western phenomenon. In his story, the first great change after Rome came with the arrival of the Germans, who gave ‘law and custom to all Europe’ and who brought with them a new view of women. ‘Their women were in many respects of equal and sometimes even greater consideration and consequence than their men’. His sentiments echo those of the French writer Thomas, whom he had certainly read. In 1772 Thomas had begun his essay on the character, manners and spirit of women in different centuries by dividing the world into savages, who oppress as tyrants, orientals, who are driven to oppress due to an excess of love, and the denizens of temperate climates, where less passion allows greater freedom. It was thus from the cold ‘shores of the Baltic and forests of the North’ that the primitive Germans brought to Europe their spirit of gallantry and great respect for women. Both Thomas and Alexander echoed and adapted Tacitus’ classic picture of Germanic women. Tacitus had long since written of the high regard in which the German women were held: of the mothers and wives who urged their sons and husbands to valour, of their inspirational chastity, of the austere frugality of Germanic marriage, of wives whose controlled passions loved the married state itself rather than their husbands.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 4 , December 1994 , pp. 221 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 I am grateful to Professor Jane Gardner, Dr Ann Hughes and Dr William Stafford for guidance on aspects of the historiography of this topic.

2 Millar, J., The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (Edinburgh, 1779)Google Scholar.

3 Alexander, W., The History of Women from the Earliest Antiquity to the Present Time: giving some account of almost every interesting particular concerning that sex, among all nations, ancient and modern (1779), 10Google Scholar. For discussion of this rather confused work and of the Enlightenment traditions which influenced it see e.g. Rendall, J., The Origins of Modern Feminism, Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780–1860 (1984)Google Scholar and Tomaselli, S., ‘The Enlightenment debate on women’, History Workshop Journal, XX (1985), 101–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Thomas, A-L., Essai sur le Caractère, les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Femmes dans les differens Slèdes (Paris, 1772)Google Scholar, reprinted with introduction and notes by Colette Michael (Paris and Geneva, 1987).

5 Taciti, Cornelii, De Origine et Situ Germanorym, ed.Anderson, J G. C. (Oxford, 1938), chaps 7, 18 and 19Google Scholar.

6 Kemble, J. M., The Saxons in England, a History of the English Commonwealth till the Period of the Norman Conquest (1849), 233Google Scholar.

7 Thrupp, J., The Anglo-Saxon Home: a History of the Domestic Institutions and Customs of England from the Fifth to the Eleventh century (1862), 74Google Scholar.

8 Thrupp, op cit, 69 and 71Google Scholar.

9 Buckstaff, F. G., ‘Married women's property in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman law and the origin of common-law dower’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, IV (1893), 233–64 at 264Google Scholar.

10 Stenton, D. M., The English Woman in History (1956), 348Google Scholar.

11 Chibnall, M., ‘Women in Orderic Vitalis’, Haskins Society Journal, II (1990), 120Google Scholar and fn. Change within the period before 1066 is argued by Klinck, A., ‘Anglo-Saxon women and the law’, Journal of Medieval History, VIII (1982), 107–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meyer, M. A., ‘Land charters and the legal position of Anglo-Saxon women’, in The Women of England, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, ed Kanner, B. (1980), 57–82Google Scholar is a nuanced and thoughtful review. Literary views of Anglo-Saxon women are reviewed by Hollis, S., Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church (Woodbridge, 1992)Google Scholar, Introduction.

12 Moore, J. S., ‘Domesday Slavery’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XI (Woodbridge, 1989), 220 and fnGoogle Scholar.

13 See Lowenthal, D., The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985), esp 21–28, 372Google Scholar. For specific discussion of Golden Ages in women's history rebutting the idea of an early modern Golden Age see Hufton, Olwen, ‘Women in History: Early Modern Europe’, Past and Present, CI (1983), 125–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Vickery, Amanda, ‘Golden Age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history’, Historical Journal, XXXVI (1993), 383–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a rejection of such a Golden Age in the late medieval English countryside see Bennett, J., Women in the Medievial English Countryside (Oxford, 1987), 4–6Google Scholar and passim.

14 In doing so he, like Alexander, also utilised another concept, that of the ‘noble savage’ or ‘barbarian-as-superior’.

15 Buckstaff, , op cit, 264Google Scholar.

16 Stuard, S. M., ‘A new dimension? North American Scholars contribute their perspective’, in Women in Medieval History and Historiography, ed. Stuard, S. M. (Philadelphia, 1987), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Browne, G. F., The Importance of Women in Anglo-Saxon Times: the Cultus of St Peter and St Paul and other Addresses, Studies in Church History (1919), 24Google Scholar.

18 See Gardner, Alice, A Short History of Newnham College Cambridge (Cambridge, 1921), 11–12Google Scholar. He was secretary to the syndicate for local lectures in Cambridge which was so important in fostering the foundation of Newnham. He supported the proposals in the 1880s to provide some more stable form for the instruction and examination already being provided for women and was involved in the drawing up of the ‘Graces’ which formed the basis of Newnham.

19 Texas Quarterly, XVIII (1975), 46–55Google Scholar. For parallel arguments that the early nunneries in Europe secured women the personal freedom of supportive all-female institutions, provided an environment which allowed them to free their bodies, souls and brains from male domination see Wemple, S., Women in Frankish Society, Marriage and the Cloister 500–900 (Philadelphia, 1981), 163, 190Google Scholar.

20 Figures calculated by Meyer, M. A., ‘Women's Estates in later Anglo-Saxon England: the politics of possession’, Haskins Society Journal, Studies in Medieval History, ed. Patterson, R. B., III (1991), 111–29, at 113–17Google Scholar.

21 Queens as witnesses: Campbell, A. ed., Encomium Emmae Reginae, Camden Soc, Third Series, LXXII (1949), appendix 2Google Scholar; Barlow, F., Edward the Confessor (1970), 77, 93, 163Google Scholar and Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note in addition the witness list of S 582 [S = Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters, an annotated list and bibliography, (1968)Google Scholar] where Ælfgyth magistra of Wilton witnessed a charter of 955 A.D. in favour of the nuns of Wilton.

22 Musset, L., ed., Les Actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la Reine Mathilde pour les Abbayes Caennaises, Memoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, XXXVII (Caen, 1967), nos 2–16, 18–22, 25, 27Google Scholar. No 17 is a list of parishioners of Bourg l'Abbé, including six women out of some 67/68 people. The above list includes many signa and activities of Queen Mathilda, but also covers many transactions involving other women. I am grateful to Dr David Bates for pointing out the utility of the Caen charters for the study of women.

23 The Libellus Æthelwold is the only English collection which approaches this for evidence of female activity. Like the Norman charters it covers private grants and disputes rather than royal. Forthcoming edition by Keynes, S., see for the present Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden Soc, Third Series, XCII (1962)Google Scholar.

24 The most recent discussion of Mathilda's claim and Henry's plans is Chibnall, M., The Empress Mathilda (Oxford, 1991), 50–53Google Scholar. Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester, felt able in 1142–3 to make a case for a daughter's inheritance based on divine, natural and human law which is unparalleled pre-1066. Chibnall, op cit, 84–7Google Scholar discusses this letter and its arguments. It is printed in The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, eds Morey, A. and Brooke, C. N. L. (Cambridge, 1967), 60–6Google Scholar. For Henry of Huntingdon on women's claims to rule see below n. 105.

25 This is how the implications of the Statutum Decretum may be interpreted. This lost royal decision, referred to as a Statutum Decretum in Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, iii, eds. Cronne, H. A. and Davis, R. H. C. (Oxford, 1967), 39 no 106Google Scholar, was concerned with the division of land among daughters. Cf. Milsom, S. F. C., ‘Inheritance by women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in On the Laws and Customs of England, Essays in Honor of S.E. Thome, eds Arnold, M. S., Green, T. A., Scully, S. A. and White, S. D. (Chapel Hill, 1981), 77–8Google Scholar. Milsom remarked that ‘it took some step beyond Henry I's coronation charter in establishing female inheritance itself’. Holt, J. C., ‘The heiress and the alien’, Supra, ser 5, XXXV (1985), 11–14Google Scholar argues convincingly for a date for this decision between 1130 and 1135. Chibnall, M., Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1986), 174Google Scholar sees it as the preservation of traditional custom rather than deliberate change. What it did provide was the first recorded written acceptance of daughters’ inheritance. It is worth speculating whether such a change was politically important to Henry I in securing the throne for his daughter.

26 Chandler, V., ‘Intimations of authority: notes on three Anglo-Norman countesses’, Indiana Social Studies Quarterly (1978), 5–17Google Scholar; Vitalis, Orderic, The Ecclesiastical History, ed Chibnall, M., especially Vol 3, Book 5 (Oxford, 1972), 134–8Google Scholar for her death and epitaph.

27 Thus, for example, Fourier, ‘As a general proposition: social advances and changes of period are brought about by virtue of the progress of women towards liberty and social retrogression occurs as a result of a diminution in the liberty of women … The extension of privileges to women is the fundamental cause of all social progress’. Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées Générales, (Paris, 1846)Google Scholar in The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier, eds Beecher, J. and Bienvenu, R. (1972), 195–6Google Scholar.

28 Kemble, op cit, ii, 97Google Scholar. For Kemble's commitment to German scholarship and his correspondence with Jakob Grimm see Wiley, R. A., ‘Anglo-Saxon Kemble: the life and works of John Mitchell Kemble, 1805–1857, philologist, historian, archaeologist’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, B. A. R. British Series, LXXII, (Oxford, 1979), 165–273Google Scholar.

29 I shall be concerned particularly with the questions of ‘status’ and ‘women’. It should also be pointed out that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is an equally debatable term in this tradition. Abbess Hilda from the seventh century is too readily cited alongside the landholding women of the tenth and eleventh centuries in a common category ‘Anglo-Saxon women’ which does little justice to the differing circumstances necessary to an understanding of either.

30 Hanawalt, B. A., ‘Golden Ages for die history of medieval English women’, in Women in Medieval History and Historiography, ed. Stuard, S. M. (Philadelphia, 1987), 1–24Google Scholar. For a similar history of writing about Greek women see M. Katz' forthcoming article on Greek women in History and Theory.

31 If Doris Stenton's views differ from those of Kemble it is in large part because of the growth of knowledge of legal and social history in the intervening years. The evidence on which so many of these statements, particularly since Kemble, have been based requires careful consideration not blanket rejection.

32 For the question of whether there can or should be a history of women see Riley, D., Am I that name, Feminism and the category of ‘women’ in history (1988)Google Scholar, Bloch, H., Medieval Misogyny and the invention of western Romantic Love (Chicago, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Introduction.

33 Stenton op. cit and Eileen Power's opening remarks in ‘The position of women’, in The Legacy of the Middle Ages, eds Crump, G. C. and Jacob, E. F. (Oxford, 1926), 401Google Scholar, reprinted in her Medieval Women, ed M. M. Postan (Cambridge, 1975).

34 Stenton e.g. judges by landholding and legal rights. Marjorie Chibnall ‘Women in Orderic’, 120 and fn, has recently criticised this approach for a failure to take account of status within or through the family.

35 For the problems of measuring female status Moore, H., Feminism and Anthropology (Cambridge, 1988), chap 2Google Scholar; Rogers, S. C., ‘Woman's place: a critical review of anthropological theory’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XX (1978), 122–62Google Scholar; discussion in Meyers, C., Discovering Eve, Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford, 1988), 33–37Google Scholar and Sanday, P. Reeves, Female Power and Male Dominance, on the Origins of Sexual Inequality (Cambridge, 1981), 114, 120–1, 163 etcGoogle Scholar.

36 Chibnall, op cit. For Kemble the family was the private world in which women belonged. The more recent views of e.g. McNamara, J. and Wemple, S., ‘The power of women through the family in medieval Europe’, in Clio's Consciousness Raised, eds, Hartmann, M. and Banner, L. W. (New York, 1974)Google Scholar and much reprinted, or P. Stafford, ‘Sons and mothers, family politics in the early middle ages’ in Medieval Women, ed D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), 79–100 take issue openly or implicitly with the idea of a clear public/private distinction in the early middle ages. For specific discussion of this issue see Nelson, J., ‘Review Article, The problematic in the private’, Social History, XV (1990), 355–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Holt, J. C., ‘Feudal society and the family, I to IV’, Supra, ser 5, 32–35 (1982–1985)Google Scholar; his ‘Politics and property in early medieval England’, Past and Present, no LVII (1972), 3–52Google Scholar, and Magna Carta (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar.

38 Holt, J. C., Magna Carta (Cambridge, 1965), 46Google Scholar saw the proffers by which widows gained some freedom of choice in marriage as ‘one of the first great stages in the emancipation of women’, though as Loengard, J. S. remarked, much depends on the size of the proffer, ‘“Of the gift of her husband”: English dower and its consequences in the year 1200’, Women of the Medieval World, eds Kirshner, J. and Wemple, S. (Oxford, 1985), 235 fhGoogle Scholar; Stenton, Dorisop cit, 51Google Scholar hailed Magna Carta clause 8 as a ‘tentative beginning of the emancipation of English women from the legal subservience which had followed the Norman Conquest’.

39 Stafford, P., ‘The Laws of Cnut and the history of Anglo-Saxon royal promises’, Anglo-Saxon England, ed Clemoes, P. et al. , X (1981), 173–90Google Scholar and Unification and Conquest, a Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (1989), especially chaps 2, 8, 9 and 10.

40 II Cnut 73 and 74 printed in Liebermann, F., Die Gesertze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1903–1916), vol IGoogle Scholar, and with translation in Robertson, A.J., ed., The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge, 1925)Google Scholar.

41 I have argued a case for seeing Cnut's laws as, if not a coronation charter, at least the expression of a political agreement between king and nobles in ‘The Laws of Cnut…’.

42 Whitelock, D., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930), nos 2, 14, 15Google Scholar.

43 The witness lists indicate a gap between Ælfgar and Byrhtnoth, but the idea of a politically arranged marriage is not thereby invalidated. The king may have had plans for Ælfgar's daughters, including his own marriage to one of them, whilst their father was ealdorman, and his plans may have included the future succession of the ealdormanry. Ælfgar's disappearance from the witness lists does not necessarily argue for his death and if there was an ealdorman whose office separates that of Ælfgar and Byrhtnoth, the appointment of a new man and his marriage to a woman whose landholding has been confirmed for his benefit may mark renewed royal intervention in Essex. We may be misled in seeing a tenth- or eleventh-century will as a simple arrangement of post obit bequests rather than the confirmation of a series of gifts and arrangements, some already made inter vinos, dowry possibly among them.

44 Two cases in the Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, ed Macray, W. D., Rolls Series, (1886) 49Google Scholar, where Archbishop Oda received lands for petitioning Eadred that Edwyn might marry the daughter of Ulf, and 135, where a follower of Cnut receives royal permission to marry an English widow. For another probable case see Williams, A., ‘The king's nephew: the family and career of Ralph, earl of Hereford’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. Bill, C. Harper, Holdsworth, C. and Nelson, J. (Woodbridge, 1989), 327–43Google Scholar. Williams sees Ralph's English fortunes founded on an advantageous arranged marraige. Her identification of his wife Gytha links her with a family which certainly had male members and thus potential male heirs in 1066. A choice of die woman as heir followed by her marriage to a royal relative seems possible here. Nelson, J., ‘Commentary on the papers of J. Verdon, S. F. Wemple and M. Parisse’, in Frauen in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter, Lebensbedingungen—Lebensnormen—Lebensformen, ed. Affeldt, W. (Sigmaringen, 1990), 332Google Scholar suggests Alfred may already have been interfering in the fate of noble women, directing them, for example, to nunneries.

45 Cf one of the earliest wills, that of ealdorman Alfred in the late ninth century, ed. Harmer, F., Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1914), no 10Google Scholar for a similar attempt to pass land to a female heir in the direct line, but allowing for the repurchase of the land by paternal relatives in die event of her failure to produce an heir. This case is muddied by die existence of a son whom some have argued as illegitimate.

46 Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut…’, Reynolds, S., ‘Towns in Domesday’, Domesday Studies, ed. Holt, J. C. (Woodbridge, 1987) 295–309Google Scholar; and Stafford, , Unification and Conquest (1989)Google Scholar, chapter on ‘Ruling the Kingdom’, and 213, 159–61.

47 Coronation Charter of Henry I, caps 3 and 4, Stubbs Select Charters, 9th edition (Oxford, 1913), 118Google Scholar.

48 Will of Æthelgifu, ed Whitelock, D., Club, Roxburgh (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar.

49 Magnum Rotulum Scaccarii vel magnum rotulum pipae de anno tricesimo primo regni Henrici Primi, ed Hunter, J. (1833), 110Google Scholar.

50 The similarity between such payments and proffers for dower after 1066 would bear exploration. Few women testators proffered the heriot which was the normal payment made by men, but most proffered some combination of land and cash to the king, and occasionally to the queen. The relevance of the queen to noble women's landholding in the tenth century and the significance of heriot in gender definition are issues to which I hope to return elsewhere.

51 Wills no 16.2. It is not clear whether Æthene's widow was seeking all his land, or merely her dower. The outcome involved her gift of her morning-gift to Christ Church Canterbury, and it may be that it was chiefly this and her dower with which she was concerned.

52 Below n 75 for more discussion of the legal framework.

53 Milsom, S. F. C., ‘Inheritance by women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, On the Laws and Customs of England, ed Arnold, M. S. et al. (Chapel Hill, 1981), 60–89Google Scholar and The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar.

54 Stafford, P., ‘Women in Domesday’, Medieval Women in Southern England, Reading Medieval Studies, XV (Reading, 1989), 75–94Google Scholar.

55 The fullest account of Gytha remains the various references in vols I to IV of Freeman, E. A., The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and Results (Oxford, 1870—1879)Google Scholar.

56 Stafford, P., ‘Sons and Mothers…’ and Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, the King's Wife in the Early Middle Ages (1983)Google Scholar. There are important similarities in the opportunities which the roles of wife, widow, mother allow women throughout the medieval period as the growing literature on noble and royal women demonstrates, e.g. Ward, J., English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (1992)Google Scholar; Jones, M. K. and Underwood, M. G., The King's Mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

57 Martindale, J., ‘Succession and politics in the Romance-speaking world, c. 1000—1140’, in England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453, essays in honour of Pierre Chaplais, eds. Jones, M. and Vale, M. (1989), 19–41Google Scholar.

58 Nelson, J., ‘Commentary on the papers of J. Verdon, S. F. Wemple and M. Parisse’, in Frauen in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter, Lebensbedingungen—Lebensnormen—Lebensformen, ed Affeldt, W. (Sigmaringen, 1990), 331Google Scholar, arguing that the property claims of women already made them manipulable in ninth-century Frankia.

59 The claim and its negotiation may have contributed both to the breach and reconciliation with Geoffrey, see Chibnall, M., The Empress Mathilda, 55–62Google Scholar. Some Angevin chroniclers stress that she brought the promise of power to Geoffrey. Their joint action on the continent is discussed in ibid 62–72. Henry II and her other sons were brought up in her household, often in her own land of Normandy. Relations between mother and sons are discussed in ibid esp 143–63.

60 Including the advantages of a higher degree of male commitment to marriage to an heiress and a greater intensity in the husband and wife relationship, Gillingham, J., ‘Love, marriage and politics in the twelfth century’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, XXV (1989), 292–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 They had different implications for another group of women, concubines.

62 Fell, C., Women in Anglo-Saxon England (1984), 56–7Google Scholar. Buckstaff, op cit, 242–5Google Scholar.

63 Classic general discussion of the shift in a European framework in Hughes, D. Owen, ‘From brideprice to dowry in mediterranean Europe’, Journal of Family History, III (1978), 262–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whitelock, , Wills, 179Google Scholar, claims dowry as foreign to Anglo-Saxon marriage customs.

64 Harmer, 18.

65 Wills, 15.

66 II Cnut, 73a.

67 Against this it must be pointed out that the Leges Herici Primi, ed and trans Downer, L.J. (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar, cap 70.22 distinguish dos, maritagium and morning gift. There may be some antiquarian compilation here. Be wifmannes beweddung, printed and translated Whitelock, D., English Historical Documents, I, (second ed. 1979), no 50Google Scholar, stresses gifts to the bride for her acceptance and does not mention dowry. But the document is clearly in the context of the growing stress on Christian marriage, witness the reference to the presence of a priest, and the mention of the gift which symbolised the wife's consent would be critical. It may not be wise to place too much emphasis on its omissions.

68 Wills, 16.2.

69 See e.g. the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire customs in Domesday which appear to exempt dower from forfeiture, DB I 280V.

70 Wills, 24 and DB II, I95r the case of Bishop Ælmser; DB II, 43IV, land Edmund the priest received with his wife; DB II, 264r refers to land which Reinold the priest held ‘with the daughter of Payne’ which may be dowry. DB I, 252V is a Shropshire case of dowry given pre-1066, in land which the father held ‘as a canon’. The bishop of Durham in the late tenth century gave his daughter together with lands of St Cuthbert to Uhtred, see the tract De Obsessione Dunelmi in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed Arnold, T., Rolls Series, LXXV vol 1 (1882), 215–20Google Scholar, translated Hart, C. R., The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands (Leicester, 1975), 146–50Google Scholar. The geographical spread will not allow Fell's and Whitelock's interpretation of a Scandinavian custom. A common theme is church land. Since it seems odd to argue that ecclesiastical husbands and fathers were unique in giving and receiving dowry, this should probably be interpreted as a desire to record dowry when church land or claims were involved in some way.

71 See e.g. Azelina widow of Ralf Taillebois, sheriff of Bedfordshire who was holding lands de maritagio and de dote in 1086, DB I, 218r.

72 See e.g. DB I, 48rv and 356V Guy holding Warnborough, Claxby and Sloothby from Hugh son of Baldric with his daughter; DB I, 48V Fatherling held Woodcutt from William Bellett with his daughter. If Reinhold the priest above is to be interpreted as holding dowry the practice was not new in 1066; he was holding from his wife's brother.

73 The Leges Henrici Primi, caps 70.12 and 70.23 show how incomplete the transfer of a woman from her natal family was. The undatable tract Be wifmannes beweddung, clause 7, stresses that it is when a woman moves from her natal family [and lord?] and their protection that she is most vulnerable. Like the Leges it underlines the lack of total separation at this date by insisting that a woman's family shall continue to help her pay compensation after marriage.

74 Again the nature of the 1066 debate may here have artificially separated factors which in fact interacted. The religious/reform context of the growth of English royal power in the ninth and tenth century was a factor drawing both king and churchmen further into interference in family life and inheritance e.g. their joint punishment of marital offences involving loss of land, further comment in Stafford, , Unification and Conquest (1989), p 168Google Scholar.

75 Such a periodisation would also make more sense for the legal framework. This is not the place to discuss the framework, or the disagreements about it, in detail. Note for example the difference between White, S. D., Custom, Kinship and Gifts to the Saints, The Laudatio Parentum in Western France 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill, 1988), esp 70–3Google Scholar, arguing that the mid twelfth century saw a shift from one legal framework of norms, legitimating strategies, flexibility and custom continually remade to another of strong government, routine, regularity, the application of rules by trained professionals, and that of Davies, W., Fouracre, P. et al. , The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), 237–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar emphasising that state intervention was not the key development of the twelfth century, but was already well-established. Where both are in agreement, however, is in the substantial continuity of the situation at least from the tenth to the mid twelfth century.

76 Though there are problems, see above n 32.

77 On such false contrasts and their relationship to ‘feudalism’ see Clanchy, M., England and its Rulers, 1066–1272 (1983), 84Google Scholar.

78 That there is much to be said is suggested by the fact e.g. of Robert of Gloucester's wife, Mabel, fulfilling his treaty with the Earl of Hereford in 1142, Earldom of Gloucester Charters, ed. Patterson, R. B. (Oxford, 1973), 95–7Google Scholar; the charge which she took over his affairs when he was captured, Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi Historia Novella, ed Potter, K. R. (1955), 68Google Scholar; and from the land which accumulated in the hands of women in a family which produced a succession of female heirs and widows like that of the Arches in twelfth-century Yorkshire and from their apparent power over it at certain stages of life. The fortunes of this family may be followed in Farrer, W., Early Yorkshire Charters, I–III (1914–1916), nos 534–6, 538, 541, 545–6, 548, 553, 555, 1331–8Google Scholar.

79 Robertson, A.J., Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge, 1956), no 78Google Scholar. Whitelock, , English Historical Documents I, 602Google Scholar remarks that ‘it shows how freely a woman could dispose of land in Anglo-Saxon times’, and Stenton, D., op cit 26–7Google Scholar comments on the freedoms of Anglo-Saxon women it suggests.

80 DB vol I, 182R and 187R.

81 For a comparable case in the East Midlands see above n. 44.

82 Such editing was far from unknown; see a series of ninth-century Worcester cases. English Historical Documents, I, no. 81 lays great stress on the right of a mother to dispose of her lands to the church, and specifically envisages trouble with the Berkeley people; the land in question ended up in the possession of the church of Worcester and in the Worcester Cartulary. This record follows a record of a dispute between those same Berkeley people over the land. Did the woman have such clear rights to dispose of her land? Or is that Worcester's claim, made precisely in the context of the dispute with Berkeley? Cf English Historical Documents, I, nos. 68 and 75 in which a grandmother appears to bequeath a monastery at Withington to her granddaughter who in turn grants it to the bishop of Worcester. The girl's mother is presented as disputing the original bequest, but her action is presented as an illegitimate intervention. Both documents are recorded in the Worcester cartulary. It was in the bishop's interests to present a simple line of inheritance and transmission in which the rights of grandmother and granddaughter to pass on the land were uncomplicated and other claims indefensible. We might at least suspect that legitimate family claims were much wider and rights of disposal more problematic than either document would suggest.

83 Stafford, P., ‘Women in Domesday’, Medieval Women in Southern England, Reading Medieval studies, XV, ed Bate, K. et al. (Reading, 1989), 75–94Google Scholar.

84 Hyam, P., ‘”No register of title”, the Domesday inquest and land adjudication’, Anglo-Norman Studies, IX (1987), 127–41Google Scholar draws attention to the fact that predecessors were probably named by Norman tenants in 1086. Holt, J.C., ‘1086’, in Domesday Studies, ed. Holt, J. C. (Woodbridge, 1987), 41–64Google Scholar sees Domesday as a super charter in which Normans sought to secure their holding: the extinction of earlier claims by naming the predecessor entitled to transfer them is central to such a view.

85 Searle, E., ‘Women and the legitimisation of succession at the Norman Conquest’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, III, ed Brown, R. Allen (1981) 159–70 and 226–9Google Scholar.

86 The frequency of dispute about women's land suggests a gender-specificity about such flexibility, exploited by the Normans. At the same time we should note the reorganisation of claims around male heirs after 1066 suggested by Williams, A., ‘A vicecomital family in pre-Conquest Warwickshire’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XI (Woodbridge, 1989) 279–95Google Scholar.

87 For an earlier example of by-passing see Will of Wulfric Spott, Wills no 17 in which he disinherited his daughter in favour of his brother and nephew. The political context is again crucial, but so is recognition that flexibility is by no means simply good for women's claims on land.

88 Loengard op cit on dower, and cf Smith, R. M., ‘Women's property rights under customary law; some developments in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Supra, ser 5, XXXVI (1986), 165–94Google Scholar for the complex and by no means simply unfavourable influence of the precision of Common law on women's landholding among peasants.

89 As in the case of Gytha E. A. Freeman must stand as an honourable exception to this generalisation.

90 See the men who surrounded her at Wilton in 1072 when she witnessed the record of the sale of Combe, Dickinson, F. H., ‘The sale of Combe’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural history Society Proceedings, XXII (1876), 106–13Google Scholar.

91 Mathilda's career, like that of Gytha, would repay detailed examination for the interaction of the sort of forces I have been discussing. In the charters of great nobles of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries we find frequent reference to prayers and gifts for the soul of the whole royal family—defined as the king, his sons and their mother the queen see e.g. Farrer, W., Early Yorkshire Charters, I–III (1914–1916), nos 559, 1002Google Scholar; IV (1935), no 1; VI (1939), no 1 etc. Such constant nods in the direction of the throne bespeak the same sort of anxiety in the face of royal power expressed by tenth-century nobles in their wills. The definition of the royal family is an index of the insecurity of an upstart dynasty anxious to emphasise its hereditary claim on a conquered throne. The inclusion of the queen as high-born and legitimate mother highlights that specific insecurity even as it expresses the more general emphasis on direct line. Queen Mathilda was not just wife and mother; but the wife of William I and the mother of his heirs. She was also the daughter of the count of Flanders, a fact which Norman charters recognise and stress see e.g. Caen charters, no 12. like her granddaughter and namesake Mathilda, her particular status is that of heiress, wife and mother in a specific political family situation. As an English queen she was heiress of yet another tradition. In the Caen charters she appears as a woman who bought and sold land, exercised patronage, favour and was actively sought out. She later backed her son in his rebellions against his father. Again it is hard to read her simply as an emanation of her roles, as ‘woman’ in any of her eleventh-century guises.

92 Stafford, , ‘Women in Domesday’, 78–9Google Scholar, for more details.

93 See Godgifu and Ælfgifu widows of earls Leofric and Ælfgar and a range of lesser women like Wulfeva widow of Finn, DB I 98rv; Saewulfs widow, 51V; Godgifu, 168v; the widow of Wulfweard the White, 87r; Leofgeat, Ælihild, Ealdhild, Wenesi's widow 74f; Edric's widow, 7 or and many others. Many of the above are not simply widows, but widows of royal officials another group with a high survival rate across 1066.

94 Above n 92 for the Domesday interest in sheriff's wives, see e.g. the 48 lands of the wife of Hugh son of Grip in Dorset where she is listed as a separate tenant-in-chief.

95 DB I, fo i6yr for example, where he married the widow of an Old English sheriff Ælfwine, to Richard.

96 DB I, 238V and 48V.

97 See e.g. Wulfeva whose lands in Suffolk came to be held by Robert Malet the sheriff and his mother and Wulfwen of Creslow whose lands in Dorset, Somerset, Middlesex, Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire came into the hands of Edward of Salisbury. DB I, fos 80v, 150V, 6gv etc.

98 Searle, Eleanor, op cit, 163Google Scholar.

99 Scott, J. Wallach, ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’, American Historical Review., XCI (1986), 1053–1075CrossRefGoogle Scholar has pointed out how often gender relations and identities are defined with reference to contemporary social and political debate. This applies as much to the twelfth as to the nineteenth century.

100 The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed. Darlington, R. R., Camden Soc, Third Series, XL (1928), 23Google Scholar.

101 Chibnall, , Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, IIIGoogle Scholar, Book 5, 137, fn notes an epic, legendary quality in the story.

102 The belligerence of Norman women has been discussed by Searle, Eleanor, ‘Emma the Conqueror’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R Allen Brown, eds Bill, C. Harper et al. (Woodbridge, 1989), 281–8Google Scholar. In view of the arguments about declining status and the role of a military society in this decline, the belligerence of Norman women is ironic. One of the first Norman women mentioned after 1066 is Emma, daughter of William Fitz Osbern and wife of Ralph of Gael; we hear of her because she is in control of a castle during the rebellion of her husband in 1075. The castle as a confusion of stronghold and home is an ideal foyer for women's military activities. Orderic often speaks approvingly of the Norman fighting women. Isabel of Montfort is likened to Camilla and the Amazon queen when she rides out amongst the men, Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed Chibnall, , IV, Book 8, 212–4Google Scholar. But did he realise how ambiguous Amazons are as a symbol of female military activity? They lose and are restored to correct female status. There is an extensive literature on them as inversion figures in antiquity see e.g. Hardwick, L., ‘Ancient Amazons—heroes, outsiders or women’, Greece and Rome, XXXVII (1990), 14–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. At best Orderic is divided on this issue.

103 Vitalis, Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, II, Book 3, 218–20Google Scholar.

104 The story may be told in this place to contrast their motives and behaviour with the looting mercenaries whose pay off is recorded immediately afterwards.

105 The two authors whom I have cited are both monastic. A rather different view might be derived from the works of more secular clerical writers, such as Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth or Geoffrey Gaimar. Henry, for example, does not comment on women and 1066, but his discussion of Æthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians in the early tenth century and widow of the last Mercian king Æthelred, is of great interest. He is fulsome in praise of a regnant woman, who is almost a king, and mistakenly makes her her husband's daughter, a significant error in view of the contemporary debate about Empress Mathilda's rights to rule. The readiness to argue for female rule after 1066 is clear. Such readiness is not, of course, a guide to Henry's views on gender in general. These questions would repay further study. I am grateful to John Gillingham for drawing my attention to this.