Writing fornication: Medieval leyrwite and its historians

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 13, Issue , 2003, Pages 131-162

  Bennett, Judith M ^a  

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EID: 33748328815     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0080440103000069     Document Type: Review

References (157)

1. Domesday Book, I, 204b. Jean Scammell has claimed that leyrwite 'is recorded, well-established, in the mid-eleventh century in a context which shows it profitable to lords and of intense concern to villeins', but she offered no references to support this statement
2. I have found none before 1086. See Jean Scammell, 'Wife-Rents and Merchets', Economic History Review, 2nd series, 29 (1976), 487-90, at 488
3. I am grateful to Ian McDougall for this observation about the possible implications of leyrwite's association with bloodwite. In 1974, Jean Scammell claimed that leyrwite had 'no implication whatsoever of violence', but she offered no explanation of this judgement: see her 'Freedom and Marriage in Medieval England', Economic History Review, 2nd series, 27 (1974), 523-37, at 526
4. For a further instance of such compounding, see Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (1982) [hereafter Holy Trinity, Caen], 91 and xlvii-xlviii
5. I have relied on the edition and translation found in Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and the Ancrene Wisse, ed. Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Oxford, 1990) [hereafter Hali Maidenhad], 42-3
6. Five examples will suffice to show the trend. (1) At Halesowen, there were few leyrwites in the 1270s, an increasing number from 1280a, a decline with the Great Famine and a rise again c. 1330. See Margaret Spufford, 'Puritanism and Social Control?', in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge, 1985), 41-57, at 55
7. For the manors of Spalding Priory, see Table I in E.D. Jones, 'The Medieval Leyrwite: A Historical Note on Female Fornication', English Historical Review, 88 (1992), 945-53. (5)
8. For Cottenham (Cambs.) see Table 4.3 in Jack Ravensdale, 'Population Changes and the Transfer of Customary Land on a Cambridgeshire Manor in the Fourteenth Century', in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. Richard M. Smith (Cambridge, 1984), 197-225
9. See especially Ruth Mazo Karras, 'The Latin Vocabulary of Illicit Sex in English Ecclesiastical Records', Journal of Medieval Latin, 2 (1992), 1-17
10. The Early English Carols, ed. Richard Leighton Greene (2nd edn, Oxford, 1997) [hereafter Carols], item 452. I am grateful to Judith Ferster for her assistance in interpreting this carol (which survives in a single, fifteenth-century text)
11. Carols, items 453 and 456.1
12. Jean Scammell, 'The Rural Chapter in England from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century', English Historical Review, 338 (1971), 1-21
13. F.S. Pearson, 'Records of a Ruridecanal Court of 1300', in Collectanea, ed. Sidney Graves Hamilton (Worcestershire Historical Society, 1912), 69-80
14. See also Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in Late-Medieval England: The Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, 1336-1349, and the Deanery of Wisbech, 1458-1484, ed. L.R. Poos (Oxford, 2001) [hereafter Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction]
15. Nigel Tringham, 'The Parochial Visitation of Tarvin (Cheshire) in 1317', Northern History, 38 (Sept. 2001), 197-200
16. Sandra Lee Parker and L. R. Poos, 'A Consistory Court from the Diocese of Rochester, 1363-4', English Historical Review, 106 (1991), 652-65, at 654
17. What E.D. Jones has noted for the manors of Spalding Priory is generally true elsewhere; so little was made from the levying of leyrwite that 'the Priory did not levy the fine from primarily financial motives' (Jones, 'Medieval Leyrwite', 947). In some instances, however, landowners seem to have exploited leyrwite for financial profit. See, for example, Eleanor Searle, 'Seigneurial Control of Women's Marriage: The Antecedents and Function of Merchet in England', Past and Present, 82 (1979), 3-43, at 28-9
18. The data provided in the table are inaccurate, but Searle's point about seigneurial profit nevertheless stands. Please note, however, that most of the earl of Warenne's profit came not from leyrwite fines but from fines levied for concealing leyrwite; a woman paid for her lapse (usually 6d. or 12d.) and her community paid for having failed to report it (usually 40d.). Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, IV: 1315-1317, ed. John Lister, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 78 (1930) [hereafter Wakefield, IV], 53-4
19. Similarly, for the three Cambridgeshire manors of Crowland Abbey taken together, F.M. Page noted that leyrwite 'was incurred, upon an average, only twice a year'. F.M. Page, The Estates of Crowland Abbey (Cambridge, 1934), 133
20. Zvi Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen, 1270-1400 (Cambridge, 1980), 65
21. This pattern can be found in all the printed extracts from the Wakefield rolls, but see, for example, Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, 11: 1297-1309, ed. William Paley Baildon, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 36 (1906), where the numerous courts for 1306-9 yield only two such fines (found on 57 and 93)
22. Jones, 'Medieval Leyrwite', 950. Although none of these manors boasts today a perfect run of records, the figures for Sutton are drawn from a fifteenth-century compilation that might accurately represent the annual incidence of leyrwite. For discussion of this source, see E.D. Jones, 'Going Round in Circles: Some New Evidence for Population in the Later Middle Ages', Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989), 329-45
23. Mark Bailey, 'Blowing up Bubbles: Some New Demographic Evidence for the Fifteenth Century', Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989), 347-58
24. and E.D. Jones, 'A Few Bubbles More: The Myntling Register Revisited', Journal of Medieval History, 17 (1991), 263-9
25. H.E. Hallam, Rural England, 1066-1348 (Brighton, 1981), 262-3
26. Thomas Blount, Fragmenta Antiquitatis: Ancient Tenures of Land and Jocular Customs of Some Mannors Made Publick for the Diversion of Some, and the Instruction of Others (1679), 145 and 159
27. The conflation of merchet and leyrwite, marriage and fornication, was not new in the sixteenth century. For an early fourteenth-century example, see case 25 in Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third, Year XV, ed. Luke Owen Pike (1891), 332-5
28. Alain Boureau, The Lord's First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage (Chicago, 1998)
29. Helena Graham, 'A Social and Economic Study of the Late Medieval Peasantry: Alrewas, Staffordshire, in the fourteenth century (Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1994), 95-9
30. Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (2 vols., Cambridge, 1911), II, 543
31. Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seigneurial Courts, ed. Frederic William Maitland, Selden Society, 2 (1888), 98
32. The Court Baron, ed. Frederic William Maitland and William Paley Baildon, Selden Society, 4 (1890), 102 and 104
33. For a recent elaboration of this interpretation, see Tim North, 'Legerwite in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries', Past and Present, 111 (1986), 3-16
34. Paul Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892), 154
35. For a more recent reiteration of this interpretation, see Chris Middleton, 'Peasants, Patriarchy and the Feudal Mode of Production in England: 2 Feudal Lords and the Subordination of Women', Sociological Review, 29:1 (1981), 137-54, at 144-6
36. Rodney Hilton, 'Peasant Movements in England before 1381', originally published in 1974, but reprinted in his Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History (1985), 122-39, at 125
37. Middleton, 'Feudal Lords: 2', 145-6
38. Spufford, 'Puritanism'
39. See also Britton, Community, 51-4
40. and Sherri Olson, A Chronicle of All that Happens: Voices from the Village Court in Medieval England (1996), 215
41. L.R. Poos and R.M. Smith, ' "Legal Windows into Historical Populations"? Recent Research on Demography and the Manor Court in Medieval England'
42. Zvi Razi, 'The Use of Manorial Court Rolls in Demographic Analysis: A Reconsideration'
43. L.R. Poos and R. M. Smith, 'Shades Still on the Window: A Reply to Zvi Razi'
44. Zvi Razi, 'The Demographic Transparency of Manorial Court Rolls', all originally published in 1984-6 but reprinted in Medieval Society and the Manor Court, ed. Zvi Razi and Richard Smith (Oxford, 1996), 298-368
45. For Cornwall, see appendix. For men presented for leyrwite elsewhere in England, see: (1) Court Roll of the Manor of Downham 1310-1327, ed. M. Clare Coleman, Cambridgeshire Records Society, 11 (1996), 20 (item 15)
46. BL, Add. MS 40625 (Court Book for Park), fos. 12v and 96
47. (3) Ada Elizabeth Levett, Studies in Manorial History (Oxford, 1938), 235
48. For customs that state that men should pay leyrwite, see Lancashire Inquests, Extents, and Feudal Aids, Part III: 1313-1355, ed. William Farrer, Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 70 (1915) [hereafter Lanchashire Inquests], 122 and 132
49. See also Jörg Wettlaufer, Das Herrenrecht der ersten Nacht: Hochzeit, Herrschaft und Heiratszins im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 1999), 177-84
50. G.G. Coulton adduced several continental analogues of leyrwite, but none could be verified through his references; see The Medieval Village (1935; republished New York, 1989), 477-8
51. For recent, but brief, comments see Llinos Beverley Smith, 'Towards a History of Women in Late Medieval Wales', in Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales, ed. Michael Roberts and Simone Clarke (Cardiff, 2000), 14-49, at 17 and 31
52. Huw Pryce, Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales (Oxford, 1993), 95, 110, 218-20
53. R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales 1282-1400 (Oxford, 1980), 136-8
54. Dafydd Jenkins and Morfydd E. Owen, The Welsh Law of Women (Cardiff, 1980), esp. 73-5
55. See also: The Black Book of St. David's, ed. J.W. Willis-Bund (1902)
56. Eventually English queens claimed the income from 'amobrages'; see Hilda Johnstone, 'The Queen's Household', in Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, ed. T.F. Tout (6 vols., Manchester, 1920-33), V, 231-89, esp. 264-7
57. and Notes on "Betagh" Tenure in Medieval Ireland', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 43, section C (1935-7), 41-77
58. J. Otway- Ruthven, 'The Organization of Anglo-Irish Agriculture in the Middle Ages', Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 81 (1951), 1-13
59. and G.J. Hand, 'The Status of the Native Irish in the Lordship of Ireland, 1272-1331', Irish Jurist, new series, 1 (1966), 93-115
60. T.P. Ellis (in his Extent of Bromfield, 34) linked the traditional Irish fine of coibche to leyrwite, merchet and amobr, but, if so, it was more related to marriage than to fornication: s.v. coibche in Ancient Laws of Ireland (6 vols., Dublin, 1865-1901), VI (glossary)
61. Boureau, Lord's First Night, 17-24
62. See also Raphael Holinshed, The Historie of Scotlande (1577), 257
63. and John Anderson, 'Enquiry into the Origin of Mercheta Mulierum', Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 3 (1831), 56-73
64. See the appendix for information about my search for leyrwite in southern counties. I have not found evidence of leyrwite along the Welsh marches, but my search there was limited to (1) 'A Transcript of "The Red Book", a detailed account of the Hereford Bishopric Estates in the Thirteenth Century', ed. A.T. Bannister, Camden Miscellany, 15 (1929), 1-36, and (2) my own work with selected pre-1348 courts of the Hereford manors of Norton Canon, Preston-on-Wye and Woolhope (Hereford Cathedral Library, R892, R908, R824, R833, R747 and R756). The counties where leyrwite flourished roughly correspond to the Danelaw, but there is, to my knowledge, no Scandinavian antecedent for Anglo-Saxon leyrwite
65. The one exception I have found is Worlingworth where the first extant fine was 'leyerwyta' but all subsequent fines were some version of 'cheldwyte'. See SRO-I, S1/2/1.1. Although the terms were mutually exclusive, they did not necessarily refer to different circumstances. Some leyrwites were levied for fornication alone, but others were, like childwite, directed at illegitimate childbirth. See, for example, entry for Chalgrove, Rotuli Hundredorum (2 vols., 1812-18), II, 768-70
66. On some of the manors of the Ely estates, freewomen were as liable as bondwomen for the levy: see, for example, Doddington (Cambs.), fo. 63v. E.A. Kosminsky noted that both free and unfree paid leyrwite in Northumbria: E.A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1956), 135
67. Sometimes freewomen who held unfree land were assessed; see, for example, The Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows 1303-1350, ed. Ray Lock, Suffolk Record Society, 41 (1998) [hereafter Walsham], 332
68. and cases from Worlingworth given in Select Cases in Manorial Courts, 1250-1550: Property and Family Law, ed. L.R. Poos and Lloyd Bonfield, Selden Society, 114 (1998), item 170
69. R.M. Smith, 'Marriage Processes in the English Past: Some Continuities', in The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure, ed. L. Bonfield et al. (Oxford, 1986), 43-99, at 92
70. Some three decades ago, Jean-Louis Flandrin suggested that medieval peasants might have employed a variety of non-procreative sexual practices and that single persons, eager to avoid pregnancy, might have been particularly creative in this regard: Jean-Louis Flandrin, 'Contraception, Marriage, and Sexual Relations in the Christian West', originally published in 1969, but reprinted in Biology of Man in History, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore, MD, 1975), 23-47
71. His suggestions have since been buttressed by: (1) J.M. Riddle who has established the efficacy of many drugs then used as contraceptives or abortifacients, see Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 1992)
72. and (2) Peter Biller who has exhaustively traced clerical anxiety about the laity engaging in sterile forms of sexual intercourse (an anxiety that was especially strong, interestingly enough, around 1300), see The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought (Oxford, 2000), 135-212
73. Razi, Life, Marriage, Table 12
74. Richard M. Smith, 'Appendix on the Bastardy Prone Sub-Society', in Bastardy and its Comparative History, ed. Peter Laslett et al. (1980), 240-6, at 245
75. Elaine Clark, 'Mothers at Risk of Poverty in the Medieval English Countryside', in Poor Women and Children in the European Past, ed. John Henderson and Richard Wall (1994), 139-59, at 151
76. For the details that lie behind this general summary, see especially Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200-1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 109-50
77. (2) Some paid leyrwite at the same time as their sisters married: see the marriage of Agnes Reeve and the leyrwite of her sister in Crowle, LAO, CM 1/19
78. (4) Some inherited or received land from parents: see Cecilia Pudding in Walsham, 37, 107, 117, 122
79. Others argued with siblings about inheritance: see Agnes Bond of Chatteris in Court Rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey and of the Honor of Clare, ed. Warren Ortman Ault (New Haven, 1928) [hereafter Ramsey], 274-6
80. (5) Some worked as servants: see Alice servant of Big John and Margery servant of the hall in Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, ed. W.H. Longstaffe and J. Booth, Surtees Society, 82 (1889) [hereafter Halmota Dunelmensis], 13 (and many others in later pages)
81. On this, see especially H.S.A. Fox, 'Exploitation of the Landless by Lords and Tenants in Early Medieval England', in Medieval Society, ed. Razi and Smith, 518-68
82. Smith, 'Marriage Processes', 57
83. Informal cohabitation was so common that English synods introduced in the thirteenth century a practice whereby couples convicted of habitual fornication were told that any future sexual intercourse between them would create a legal marriage. See R.H. Helmholz, 'Abjuration sub pena nubendi in the Church Courts of Medieval England', published in 1972, but reprinted in his Canon Law and the Law of England (1987), 145-56
84. For the process of marriage-making in medieval England, see especially: Smith, 'Marriage Processes', and Christine Peters, 'Gender, Sacrament and Ritual: The Making and Meaning of Marriage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England', Past and Present, 169 (2000), 63-96
85. For lay knowledge of canon law, see especially Frederik Pedersen, Marriage Disputes in Medieval England (2000), 59-84
86. Note, however, that lower ecclesiastical courts had no jurisdiction over marriage disputes, and in the higher courts that judged such cases, serfs did not participate as either witnesses or litigants. See R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1974), 160
87. Church courts had similar difficulties. Of the fifty-four couples charged with fornication in the Rochester consistory court between 1347 and 1348, ten stated that they had contracted to marry. Andrew John Finch, 'Sexual Morality and Canon Law: The Evidence of the Rochester Consistory Court', Journal of Medieval History, 20 (1994), 261-75, at 267
88. In Worlingworth in 1319, jurors issued a judgement that carefully distinguished between liability for purchase of marriage licences and liability for leyrwite (see Poos, Select Cases, 120-1). In Crowle in 1314, it was ordered that payment of leyrwite did not preclude subsequent payment of merchet (LAO, CM 1/3)
89. See the similar case of Mabel Springold in Walsham, esp. 176 and 178
90. It might be telling, in this regard, that two case studies have suggested that leyrwites were especially common in times when marriage was difficult to achieve. Razi, Life, Marriage, 64-71, 138-9
91. and Miriam Müller, 'Rural Politics and Peasant Ideology in the 14th Century: The St Albans' Manor of Winslow, A Case Study' (M.Phil. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1997), 80-1. I am grateful to Miriam Müller for sharing this information with me
92. Robert of Brunne's 'Handlyng Synne' A.D. 1303, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, original series, 119 (1901), 265 (lines 8394-8)
93. Charles Donahue, Jr, 'Female Plaintiffs in Marriage Cases in the Court of York in the Later Middle Ages: What Can We Learn from the Numbers?', in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor, 1993), 183-213
94. One unusual solution to premarital sexual relations was described in a case heard in East Grinstead (Sussex) before the King's Bench in 1276. When the friends of one Matilda caught her in fornication, they gave her lover Simon three choices: he could promise to marry her, lose his life or kiss her backside ('vel ipsam affidare, vel vitam suam amittere, vel ipsam Matillidem retro osculare'). Simon chose to plight his troth to Matilda, but in the end, he never actually married her. See Select Cases in the Court of Kings Bench under Edward I, ed. G.O. Sayles, Selden Society, 3 vols., 55 (1936), 57 (1938), 58 (1939), I, 27-9
95. The difficulties of proving fornication led Razi to conclude that virtually all leyrwites were occasioned by physical proof thereof - that is, pregnancy or childbirth. Richard Smith and Larry Poos have effectively questioned this assumption in their debate with Razi, 'Legal Windows'. In some cases, common fame might have sufficed; on this, see especially, L.R. Poos, 'Sex, Lies, and the Church Courts of Pre-Reformation England', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 25 (1995), 585-607
96. But in other cases, neighbours were genuinely uncertain about what had transpired; see cases from Church courts described in Helmholz, 'Abjuration', 148-50
97. The Broughton court rolls provide a good example of how prior conviction in Church courts worked as a substitute for the physical evidence of pregnancy or childbirth. Most women in Broughton were presented for either pregnancy or illegitimate birth, and in these instances of obvious culpability, prior conviction in Church courts was seldom mentioned. Yet when the women or men were presented for fornication or adultery - that is, cases harder to prove - prior conviction in a Church court was a customary part of the presentment. For examples of both sorts of presentments from one Broughton court session, see PRO, SC2 179/20
98. The same pattern can be observed in the courts of Houghton (Hunts.); see, for example, PRO, SC2 179/13
99. The jurors found William innocent of the charge, presented Emma for false claim and forgave her fine with the standard excuse of poverty. They did not present Emma for leyrwite. For another case that linked forcible intercourse, courtship and marriage, see Pedersen, Marriage Disputes, 63-5
100. See especially, J.B. Post, 'Ravishment of Women and the Statutes of Westminster', Legal Records and the Historian, ed. J.H. Baker (1978), 150-64
101. Sue Sheridan Walker, 'Punishing Convicted Ravishers: Statutory Strictures and Actual Practice in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century England', Journal of Medieval History, 13 (1987), 237-501
102. Christopher Cannon, 'Raptus in the Chaumpaigne Release and a Newly Discovered Document concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer', Speculum, 68 (1993), 74-94
103. and the response by Henry Ansgar Kelly, 'Meanings and Uses of Raptus in Chaucer's Time', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 20 (1998), 101-65
104. For recent literary studies, see Corinne Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2001)
105. Frederick Morgan Padelford, 'Liedersammlunger des XVI Jahrhunderts, besonders aus der zeit Heinrichs VIII, IV. 7. The Songs in Manuscript Rawlinson C. 813', Anglia, 31 (1908), 309-97, at 380-1
106. John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (1961), 339-40
107. David C. Fowler, 'XV.Ballads', in A Manual of Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, ed. Albert E. Hartung (10 vols., New Haven, 1967-98), VI, 1773
108. Levett, Studies, 235
109. For an example see: Halmota Dunelmensis, 27
110. and examples given in Karras, 'Vocabulary', n. 6. The possibility of illegitimate sexual relations between persons living in the same household was so acute that apprenticeship contracts sometimes set heavy penalties for such behaviour. For an example from the early fourteenth century, see the contract of Robert Sharp and Richard ate Grene, as reported in Year Books of Edward II, 22: 11 Edward II (1317-1318), ed. John P. Collas and William S. Holdsworth, Selden Society, 61 (1942), 126-30, at 127
111. The more extensive evidence of master-servant sexual relations in the early modern era leaves no doubt about the sexual vulnerability of female servants. For the best discussions, see Laura Gowing, 'Ordering the Body: Illegitimacy and Female Authority in Seventeenth-Century England', in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge, 2001), 43-62
112. Tim Meldrum, 'London Domestic Servants from Depositional Evidence, 1660-1750: Servant-Employer Sexuality in the Patriarchal Household', in Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640-1840, ed. Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe (Basingstoke, 1997), 47-69
113. and Paul Griffiths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England, 1560-1640 (Oxford, 1996), 267-89
114. See also the subtle analysis of this problem in a US context by Darlene Clark Hine, 'Rape and the Inner Lives of Southern BlackWomen: Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance', in Southern Women: Histories and Identities, ed. Virginia Bernhard, Betty Brandon, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Theda Perdue (Columbia, MO, 1990), 177-89
115. Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales, Part 3, ed. Rowland Alwayn Wilson, Worcestershire Historical Society, 41 (1933), 155
116. When the phrase is used infrequently, however, 'violata est' might signify rape. The two cases cited by Levett, for example, are unique uses of the phrase in the Codicote courts of their time. I found no other leyrwites or similar fines levied for ten years thereafter; the only earlier instance (fo. IV) states that a woman 'pro leyrwit' dat 2s' (24 Henry III). One other clue: it might be telling that in the court of Elton (Hunts.) in 1279, entries about a case of attempted rape are preceded and followed by fines for out-of-wedlock births. See Elton Manorial Records, 1279-1351, ed. S.C. Ratcliff (Cambridge, 1946), 3-4
117. Richard M. Smith, 'Demographic Developments in Rural England, 1300-48: A Survey', in Before the Black Death: Studies in the 'Crisis' of the Early Fourteenth Century, ed. Bruce M.S. Campbell (Manchester, 1991), 25-77
118. See also Elaine Clark, 'Mothers', and 'Social Welfare and Mutual Aid in the Medieval Countryside', Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 381-406
119. Marjorie K. McIntosh, 'Local Responses to the Poor in Late Medieval and Tudor England', Continuity and Change, 3 (1988), 209-45
120. and Judith Bennett, 'Conviviality and Charity in Medieval and Early Modern England', Past and Present, 134 (1992), 19-41
121. There is no reason to assume that better-off tenants viewed their lesser neighbours altruistically; some, possibly most, used their social power to personal advantage. See Christopher Dyer, 'The English Medieval Village Community and its Decline', Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 407-29
122. Still, these people lived in such small communities that most were forced to heed Walter of Henley's advice to 'have the love of your neighbors, for whoever has a good neighbor has a good morrow' (as cited in Clark, 'Social Welfare', 401)
123. Ingoldmells, 107; Crowle rolls, LAO, CM I/3
124. Some women contested jurors' presentments, claiming they were unfair or ill-informed. For an example, see Manorial Records of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, circa 1200-1359, ed. P.D.A. Harvey, Oxfordshire Record Society, 50 (1976) [hereafter Cuxham], 611
125. For examples of pre-plague customary fines set at high levels, see: 'An Extent of Langar and Barnstone, c. 1340', ed. L.U.D. Owen, Thoreton Society, II (1943-5), 158 (5s.4d.)
126. Abbey of Bec, 113 (2s.8d.)
127. For seized landholdings, see Poos, Select Cases, cases 92, 170
128. Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (1941; repr. Cambridge, MA, 1970), 438 n. 14
129. Page, Crowland, 109
130. For expulsions, see Clark, 'Mothers', 151
131. On the manor of Swainston (Isle of Wight), a bondwoman guilty of illegitimate birth became ipso facto a forced servant of the manor, although most women seem to have avoided this by payment of a fine; see Registrum Johannis de Pontissara, 1282-1304, Surrey Record Society, 6 (1924), 674
132. In 1391, a leyrwite on the three Cambridgeshire manors of Crowland Abbey was stated to cost 5s. and a purse ('bursa') worth 1/2d. (Cambridge University Library, QC4/Ad23). As Michael Camille has noted in The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (1998), 64, the purse is 'one of the most charged signs in medieval art', but its meaning in Oakington remains obscure. North has implausibly speculated that these expensive leyrwites suggest that, after 1348, leyrwite was only levied when the cost of meeting an ecclesiastical fine necessitated the sale of land. The explanation for leyrwite's post-1348 history of rising charges but declining incidence remains an open question
133. James E. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages (1894), 326
134. Ecclesiastical supervision of sexual offences continued unabated after the Great Plague. For the resumption of local actions against those who misbehaved sexually, see the data in Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370-1600 (Cambridge, 1998), 69-74. I thank Marjorie McIntosh for sharing with me her list of late medieval and early modern by-laws on sexual behaviour
135. For an interesting discussion of ecclesiastical punishments, as well as an instance of heavier sentences imposed on men, see James Masschaele, 'The Public Space of the Marketplace in Medieval England', Speculum, 77 (2002), 383-421
136. Since evidence from ecclesiastical courts shows that fornication was spread across the social spectrum of rural society, it is unlikely that only poor women fornicated outside of marriage. Interestingly enough, literary sources suggest a similar ambivalence, breaking across socio-economic lines, towards unwed mothers. On the one hand, Neil Cartlidge has argued that popular songs, a genre that depicts unwed mothers of low socio-economic status, are funny, catchy and generally hostile in their depictions of clumsy, vain, silly women who alone bear 'responsibility for bringing social catastrophe on themselves': Neil Cartlidge, ' "Alas, I Go with Chylde": Representations of Extra-Marital Pregnancy in the Middle English Lyric', English Studies, 5 (1998), 395-414, quote at 406
137. On the other hand, Jennifer Fellows has argued that Middle English romances, a genre that depicts women of much higher social status, 'display a good deal of sympathy towards the unmarried mothers' of their tales. See 'Mothers in Middle English Romance', in Women and Literature in Britain, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge, 1993), 41-60, at 48
138. Smith, 'Appendix', has used network analysis to explore the extent to which such a sub-society can be found in late thirteenth-century Rickinghall. He concluded, albeit with considerable hesitation, that there was such a sub-society, although it might have been marked as much by poverty as by bastardy
139. For an example of four families in Salle that accounted for fourteen illegitimate children, see Clark, 'Mothers', 151
140. See the charitable practices of the communities of the Hospital of St John in Cambridge and Oxford, as described in Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), 157-8
141. For the exclusion of women who were suspected of prostitution, see The Account-Book of Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire, 1269-70, ed. S.F. Hockey, Camden Society, 4th series, 16 (1975), 174
142. Piers Plowman: The C-Text, ed. Derek Pearsall (rev. edn, Exeter, 1994), Passus X, line 217
143. See Clark, 'Social Welfare', 398. My discussion here relies particularly on Clark's insightful discussions of medieval provisions for the poor, especially in her 'Mothers', and 'Social Welfare'
144. English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge (Boston, 1904), 238-9, at stanza 5
145. I have discussed these songs at greater length in 'Ventriloquisms: When Maidens Speak in English Songs, c. 1300-1500', in Medieval Woman's Song: Cross-Cultural Approaches, ed. Anne L. Klinck and ann Marie Rasmussen (Philadelphia, 2002), 187-204
146. Hali Maidenhad, 22-4
147. For this and many other examples, see Janelle A. Werner, 'Romance and Finance: Courtship, Commerce, and Female Sexuality in Late Medieval England' (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2002)
148. The Miller's Tale, lines 3380-2
149. I have relied here on the path-breaking work of Ruth Karras; see especially, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York, 1996)
150. and 'Sex and the Singlewoman', in Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, ed. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (Philadelphia, 1999), 127-45, at 131
151. I have relied on the translation in Shannon McSheffrey, Love and Marriage in Late Medieval London (Kalamazoo, MI, 1995), 42-3
152. Karras cites a similar case in Common Women, 87
153. Both date from the second half of the fifteenth century, but they contain detail not available in early fourteenth-century records. In both cases, the women gave gifts to the men too, but only the men spoke of the gifts in terms of a bald exchange for sex. The link between male gifts and male sexual access to women has been explored in any other contexts. In traditional Ghanaian courtship it was expected that 'a man exchanged valued gifts in return for sexual services'; see Carmen Dinan, 'Sugar Daddies and Gold-Diggers: The White-Collar Single Women in Accra', in Female and Male in West Africa, ed. Christine Oppong (1983), 344-66, at 353
154. In early twentieth-century Chicago, working-class women partly survived by the benefits derived from dating; see Joanne Meyerowitz, 'Sexual Geography and Gender Economy: The Furnished Room Districts of Chicago, 1890-1930', Gender and History, 2 (1920), 274-96
155. and in Germany after the Second World War, women similarly found economic incentives to date soldiers in the occupying forces; see Perry Biddiscombe, 'Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945-1948', Journal of Social History, 34 (2001), 611-47
156. Lords and ladies, who derived so much of their profit from control of the bodies of unfree tenants, laid different obligations on married and unmarried, young and old, male and female. As Chris Middleton has shown, they attended particularly to the productive labour of men in fields and the reproductive labour - social as well as biological - of women in cottages and farmyards. Middleton, 'Feudal Lords: 2', and 'Peasants, Patriarchy and the Feudal Mode of Production: 1: Property and Patriarchal Relations within the Peasantry', Sociological Review, 29 (1981), 105-35. In short, insofar as leyrwite reflects seigneurial interests, it was also one of several ways in which the reproductive work of women was a source of particular manorial attention and profit
157. John Hatcher, Rural Economy and Society in the Duchy of Cornwall (Cambridge, 1970), 78-9, 194-5. According to Hatcher, this fine was also levied in similar ways 'on many other Cornish manors as well as some Devon manors' before 1348. Aside fromWerrington, I have found no evidence of leyrwite in Devon