A company of women and men: Men's recollections of childbirth in medieval England

Journal of Family History

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 92-100

  Lee, Becky R ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; FEMALE; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY; HUMAN; LABOR; MALE; NEWBORN; PREGNANCY; PUBLICATION; UNITED KINGDOM;

ENGLAND; FEMALE; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY, MEDIEVAL; HUMANS; INFANT, NEWBORN; LABOR, OBSTETRIC; MALE; MANUSCRIPTS; PREGNANCY;

EID: 0036549339     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/036319900202700202     Document Type: Review

References (124)

1. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, 20 vols. (London: HMSO, 1904-1995), 19:999.
2. B. Rowland, ed., Medieval Woman's Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), 58.
3. G. McMurray Gibson, "Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval Childbirth," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29, no. 1 (1999): 10.
4. See Gibson, "Scene and Obscene";
5. see also "Blessing from Sun and Moon: Churching as Women's Theater," in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. B. A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 139-54;
6. and her forthcoming book, Texts, Talismans, and Cultural Performances of Medieval Pregnancy and Childbirth.
7. See R. Blumenfeld-Kosinsky, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990)
8. and J. Made Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).
9. See J. Murray, "Thinking about Gender: The Diversity of Medieval Perspectives," in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. J. Carpenter and S.-B. MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 1-3.
10. See Gibson, "Scene and Obscene," 10;
11. M. Green, "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe," in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Bennett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 64;
12. and U. Rublack, "Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in the Early Modern Germany," Past & Present 150 (1996): 84-111.
13. See Green, "Women's Medical Practice";
14. P. Biller, "Childbirth in the Middle Ages," History Today 36 (1986): 42-49
15. and "Birth-Control in the West in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries," Past & Present 94 (1982): 3-26;
16. F. Harris Stoertz, "Suffering and Survival in Medieval English Childbirth," in Medieval Family Roles: A Book of Essays, ed. C. Jorgensen Itnyre (New York: Garland, 1996), 101-20.
17. I am indebted to Katherine French for introducing me to these records.
18. Knights came of age at age twenty-one; women of that order came of age at age fourteen if married, age sixteen if single.
19. Thomas Cromwell ordered parish registers to be kept in 1538. W. Coster, "Popular Religion and the Parish Register 1538-1603," in The Parish in English Life 1400-1600, ed. K. L. French, G. Gibbs, and B. Kümin (Manchester, 1997), 97, notes that a number of surviving registers antedate Cromwell's injunction, suggesting that the keeping of registers had already become customary in some localities.
20. On the other hand, S. S. Walker, "Proof of Age of Feudal Heirs in Medieval England," Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973): 323, points out that due to faulty keeping of parish registers, living memory continued to be relied on into the nineteenth century.
21. I am indebted to Walker, "Proof of Age," 306-23
22. and J. Bedell, "Memory and Proof of Age in England 1272-1327," Past & Present 162 (1999): 6-12, for the background information on proof-of-age inquests in this section.
23. J. Hurstfield, The Queen's Wards: Wardship and Marriage under Elizabeth I (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1958), esp. 157-72, also discusses proofs-of-age.
24. Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur, ed. G.D.G. Hall (London: Nelson, 1965), 7.9: 82-83.
25. Cited in Walker, "Proof of Age," 308, note 7.
26. The Chancery records are calendared in Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, 20 vols. (London: HMSO, 1904-1995), which covers the period from 1 Henry III (1216) to 5 Henry V (1418) inclusively (hereafter cited as IPM).
27. Proofs-of-age from the reign of Henry VII (1486-1509) are published in IPM, Second Series, 3 vols. (1898-1955). The proofs-of-age recorded during the years 6 Henry 5 to 2 Richard 3 (1418-1483) have yet to be published. These are held at the Public Record Office, London (hereafter cited as PRO).
28. For example, IPM 6/188: "John le Carpentir, aged 41, says the like [agrees that the heir is of age], as appears certain to him by the statements of Christine her mother and of near neighbours, on the day of the feast of her purification."
29. See also IPM 3/429.
30. When considering the evidence provided by proofs of age, it must be noted that there are some suspiciously similar testimonies to be found among these records. It is likely that as the procedure for taking proofs of age became routine, a tradition of stock recollections gradually developed. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this discussion, while some of the memories recounted by the jurors may have been invented, proofs of age do reveal the kinds of activities normally associated with the birth of a feudal heir, thus affording some insight into men's participation in the customs surrounding childbirth in England in the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. See Bedell, "Memory and Proof of Age," 6-12;
31. L. R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex 1350-1525 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 190;
32. Hurstfield, The Queen's Wards, 159-63;
33. R. C. Fowler and M. T. Martin, "Legal Proofs of Age," English Historical Review 22 (1907): 101-2, 526-27.
34. See Gibson, "Scene and Obscene," 9;
35. Stoertz, "Suffering and Survival," 110-11.
36. See also J. Gélis, History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe, trans. R. Morris (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1991), 101-2;
37. A. Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1.
38. IPM 7/485. Other men also recall hearing the cries of women laboring in childbirth from outside the birthing chamber.
39. See IPM 5/228
40. IPM 6/754
41. IPM 7/245
42. and IPM 9/125.
43. The exception to this rule was royal birth (e.g., according to Gélis, History of Childbirth, 102); the king of France was always present at the confinement of the queen.
44. IPM 18/314.
45. IPM 17/1317.
46. See also IPM 18/1178.
47. IPM 19/999.
48. IPM 20/272.
49. See also IPM 19/999;
50. IPM 2:1/1250.
51. IPM 16/1054.
52. See also IPM 10/196;
53. IPM 16/75.
54. IPM 7/544. Similarly, Elias Martel of Lincoln was at a wedding when his son was born;
55. see IPM 8/64.
56. See Blumenfeld-Kosinsky, Not of Woman Born, 91;
57. Green, "Women's Medical Practice";
58. Biller, "Childbirth in the Middle Ages," 47-49;
59. Gélis, History of Childbirth, 101-2.
60. This testimony is found in a York consistory court record of a hearing called to determine if the principals in a marriage were old enough to contract marriage. It is, in effect, a proof of age. See P.J.P. Goldberg, ed., Women in England c. 1275-1525 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995), 3, 64-65. I am indebted to Shannon McSheffrey for this reference.
61. IPM 18/953.
62. Biller, "Childbirth in the Middle Ages," 47-48, suggests priests were allowed into the birthing chamber not only to administer the sacraments and spiritual comfort but also for their medical knowledge.
63. See also Stoertz, "Suffering and Survival," 110. I have found no mention in the proofs of age of a medical man being present at a birth.
64. Walker, "Proof of Age," 306.
65. IPM 10/399.
66. IPM 11/129.
67. See also IPM 11/379.
68. IPM 13/67.
69. See also IPM 12/178.
70. Cf. B. A. Hanawalt, "At the Margin of Women's Space in Medieval Europe," in Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society, ed. R. R. Edwards and V. Ziegler (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1995), 1-18.
71. R. 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," in Women in Medieval English Society, ed. P.J.P. Goldberg (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton, 1997;
72. reprint, Woman Is a Worthy Wight, 1992), 149-50.
73. See also J. C. Ward, "The English Noblewoman and Her Family in the Later Middle Ages," in "The Fragility of Her Sex?" Medieval Women in Their European Context, ed. C. R. Meek and M. K. Simms (Portland, OR: Four Courts, 1996), 133-34.
74. See Archer, " 'How Ladies' ";
75. M. E. Mate, Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350-1535 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 154-78;
76. J. C. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1992);
77. A. S. Haskel, "The Paston Women on Marriage in Fifteenth-Century England," in Five Papers on Marriage in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Leyerle (Los Angeles, 1972), 459-71;
78. B. A. Hanawalt, "Lady Honor Lisle's Networks of Influence," in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Erler and M. Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 203.
79. For example, see IPM 3/483;
80. IPM 5/152.
81. For example, see IPM 14/300.
82. See Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages, 70-79;
83. Hanawalt, "Lady Honor Lisle's Networks," 192-9;
84. K. Merles, The English Noble Household 1250-1600 (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 75-139;
85. C. Carpenter, "Gentry and Community in Medieval England," Journal of British Studies 33, no. 4 (1994): 340-80.
86. For example, see IPM 6/123
87. IPM 12/262
88. IPM 20/130
89. and IPM 20/142.
90. IPM 6/123.
91. IPM 12/381.
92. IPM 10/399.
93. IPM 18/979.
94. IPM 6/434
95. IPM 8/670
96. IPM 10/399
97. and IPM 18/999.
98. IPM 18/310.
99. See also IPM 17/1319;
100. IPM 17/1320.
101. IPM 7/169.
102. IPM 18/309.
103. IPM 19/1003.
104. IPM 10/336.
105. See also IPM 18/673.
106. Gibson, "Scene and Obscene," 14.
107. Stoertz, "Suffering and Survival," 102.
108. See also Ward, "The English Noblewoman and Her Family," 135.
109. See Goldberg, Women in England, 3;
110. S. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, trans. C. Galai (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1990), 62-63. Valerie Fildes has studied wet nursing in England after 1500 in detail, but there has been little study of wet nursing in medieval England.
111. See V. Fildes, "The English Wet Nurse and Her Role in Infant Care, 1538-1800," Medical History 32 (1988): 142-73
112. and Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 32-48, 79-100, 159-89.
113. C. Klapisch-Zuber, "Blood Parents and Milk Parents: Wet Nursing in Florence, 1300-1530," in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 132-64.
114. See IPM 18/998
115. IPM 18/1140
116. and IPM 19/666.
117. The chief of a tithing or frank-pledge.
118. IPM 14/300.
119. See also Goldberg, Women in England, 73, 78.
120. IPM 6/192;
121. Goldberg, Women in England, 73, 78.
122. IPM 2:2/204;
123. IPM 2:2/208.
124. IPM 19/343.