Women, Posthumous Benefaction, and Family Strategy in Pre-Conquest England

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 399-422

  Crick, Julia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85013958054     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: 15456986     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/386201     Document Type: Article

References (183)

1. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), p. 67. My emphasis.
2. With notable exceptions such as Ælfthryth, wife of King Edgar and mother of /Æthelred II, on whom see M. A. Meyer, “Women and the Tenth Century English Monastic Reform,” Revue bénédictine 87 (1977): 51–55.
3. For two perceived female enemies of the church, although not territorial predators, see J. L. Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Medieval Women, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 31–77.
4. See also S. D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988), pp. 10–11, 26–31
5. B. H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909–1049 (London, 1989), pp. 109–143
6. C. B. Bouchard, Sword, Miter and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1180 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987)
7. also T. Reuter, “Property Transactions and Social Relations between Rulers, Bishops and Nobles in Early Eleventh-Century Saxony: The Evidence of the Vita Meinwerci,” in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 170, 1–16, 245–71
8. G. Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992), pp. 57–58.
9. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, p. 142.
10. For examples from 1897 to 1994, see J. Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth in Pre-Conquest England,” in Gender and Material Culture from Prehistory to the Present, ed. M. Donald and L. Hurcombe, 3 vols. (London, in press).
11. They represent the results of an extensive (but not exhaustive) search through P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), supplemented by examples from narrative texts (as cited). I am extremely grateful to S. E. Kelly for access to her revised version of Sawyer's list prior to publication.
12. Pauline Stafford, “Women and the Norman Conquest,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. (Cambridge, U.K., 1994), 4:221–28
13. J. T. Rosenthal, “Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: Men's Sources, Women's History,” in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. J. Rosenthal (London, 1990), pp. 259–284.
14. Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth”;
15. cf. Stafford, “Women and the Norman Conquest,” p. 226.
16. “Wills” is a convenient shorthand in common use to describe a very miscellaneous group of documents; see Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1968), 2:317—321.
17. Compare P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), p. 175.
18. See M. M. Sheehan, The Will in Medieval England from the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Toronto, 1963), pp. 49–54, 60, regarding the written records
19. Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.” I am grateful to John Hudson for reminding me of the spiritual aspect of legal documents: cf. Huw Pryce, Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales (Oxford, 1993), p. 37.
20. M. McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), pp. 138–153
21. White, Custom, pp. 153–158
22. cf. Sheehan, The Will, p. 16
23. see also H. D. Hazeltine, in D. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930), pp. xviii-xx.
24. Compare Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, pp. 122–125.
25. While Æthelflaed made reversionary grants to her sister and brother-in-law in accordance with the terms of her father's will (e.g., Cockfield), she also delayed the passage of two of her father's reversionary grants destined for religious houses by granting to her sister a lifetime interest (Lavenham, Peldon, Mersea). Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1483, 1486, 1494
26. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 14, 15, 2
27. see the paragraph following. On the property of Godgifu, see P. A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford, 1994), p. 69
28. discussed by Crick, “Men, Women and Widows: Some Implications of the Terminology of Widowhood in Pre-Conquest England,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Cavallo and L. Warner (London, 1999), pp. 24–36.
29. Stafford, Unification and Conquest, p. 175.
30. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 15, pp. 38–39, and on the grant by Æthelflaed, see no. 14. My brackets.
31. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1519
32. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 32.
33. On Ketel, a thegn of Archbishop Stigand, see N. P. Brooks, “Arms, Status and Warfare in Late-Saxon England,” in Ethelred the Unready, ed. D. Hill (London, 1978), pp. 81, 87–92.
34. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 32.
35. See now K. Lowe, “A New Edition of the Will of Wulfgyth,” Notes and Queries, n.s., 36 (1989): 295–298.
36. Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”
37. Compare Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”
38. Both hinted at, but not tested in print, by Pauline Stafford, Unification and Conquest, pp. 174–176.
39. On widows as testatrixes see Stafford, Unification and Conquest, p. 176.
40. Compare Stafford, Unification and Conquest, pp. 174–75, on female land-holding in general.
41. Compare the fate of the bequest by Ulf and Madselin in Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, pp. 208–9.
42. Compare F. E. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1914), no. 7
43. also P. Wormald, ‘ ’A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits,” Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988): 247–81, e.g., nos. 18, 65
44. cf. Crick, “Posthumous Obligation and Family Solidarity,” in Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, ed. B. Frazer and A. Tyrrell (Leicester, in press)
45. Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), p. 303.
46. Those transactions clearly signaled as bequests are marked “a.” In the case of three of the writs (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1090, 1117, 1119), it is not made explicit that the grants were to be delivered after the donors' death, but the omission may not be significant, given the jejune wording of writs.
47. One writ specifically recording a bequest, that naming Æthelric and Gode (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1118), is of dubious authenticity
48. see F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 297–99, 301–3. Becwmdon occurs rarely
49. see Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, nos. 76, 84, 93, p. 495.
50. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1511
51. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 11.
52. On wif, see M. Clunies Ross, “Concubinage in Anglo-Saxon England,” Past and Present, no. 108 (1985), pp. 3–24, 22.
53. On cum uiru suo, see M. Gibbs, Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London (London, 1939), p. 280, no. 344
54. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1243a.
55. For Osulf and Leofrun, see C. R. Hart, The Early Charters of Eastern England (Leicester, 1966), pp. 89–90
56. on Æthelric and Leofwyn, see C. Hart, The Early Charters of Essex (Leicester, 1971), pp. 16–17.
57. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1529
58. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 36, but see also p. 190.
59. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1200
60. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 7, pp. 10–11.
61. On single women's wills, see Stafford, Unification and Conquest, p. 174.
62. For example, the reversionary grants made by Leofric and his gebedda (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1232)
63. and Eadnoth and his wife (J. M. Kemble, Codex diplomatics aevi Saxonici, 6 vols. [London, 1839–1848], vol. 4, no. 919) or the wills of Thurkill and Æthelgyth (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 36)
64. or the wills of Thurkill and Æthelgyth (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 36)
65. and Æthelnoth and Gænburg (A. J. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters [Cambridge, 1939], no. 3).
66. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1200, 1500
67. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 3, pp. 4–7. Æthelmod had no surviving relatives closer than his great-nephew, the Eadweald in whose name the grant was made. Æthelnoth and Gaenburg's grant was conditional on their childlessness; if they were to have a child, he or she would inherit the estate.
68. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1511
69. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 11. The document mentions a lifetime grant to one Brihtwaru, but does not stipulate the nature of her connection with the donors. A dispute settlement involving Brihtwaru and Brihtric, apparently our testator, describes them as kin and so appears to rule out lineal descent
70. see Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 59, pp. 122–25, 178–79.
71. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1231
72. see Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.”
73. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 9
74. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 2.
75. Compare the action of Thurkill, husband of Thorgunnr (W. D. Macray, ed., Chronicon abbatiae rameseiensis [London, 1886], pp. 175–76), although, as Christopher Holdsworth has pointed out to me, Thurkill's action might have been exceptional
76. cf. also White, Custom, p. 38.
77. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 5, pp. 16–19
78. see also Ærnketel and Wul-frun (Kemble, Codex diplomaticus, no. 971)
79. Osulf and Leofrun (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1608).
80. Note the mentions of burial arrangements (including collection of the body) in Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 9
81. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 2.
82. For a later instance of benefaction on childlessness, see C. J. Holdsworth, “The Cistercians in Devon,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. Holdsworth, and J. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 179–91, esp. p. 186.
83. Sheehan, The Will, p. 78, n. 55
84. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 3
85. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 7
86. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 5, 11, 39.
87. Discussed by Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”
88. Compare the comments of Stafford, “Women and the Norman Conquest,” pp. 229–237.
89. On Anglo-Saxon widows, see R. H. Bremmer, “Widows in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood, ed. J. Bremmer and L. van den Bosch (London, 1995), pp. 58–88
90. T. J. Rivers, “Widows' Rights in Anglo-Saxon Law,” American Journal of Legal History 19 (1975): 208–215
91. also Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.”
92. B. Yorke, “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” in Bishop Æthel-wold: His Career and Influence, ed. B. Yorke (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 69, 73–75, 83.
93. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, p. 141.
94. Anglo-Saxon Wills., p. 119
95. see now S. E. Kelly, ed., The Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey (Oxford, 1996), p. 56.
96. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1810. The grant was made in the episcopate of Æthelstan of Elmham who succeeded in or after 995, three years after the death of her husband, Æthelwine
97. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 329.
98. For her style, see Macray, Chronicon abbatiae Rameseiensis, p. 58.
99. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1513
100. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 17, pp. 30–33.
101. “In an oral statement while he was still living”: Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1808
102. Kemble, Codex diplomatics, no. 968.
103. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1064
104. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, no. 2, pp. 121–122.
105. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1521
106. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 29, pp. 76–79.
107. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 3, pp. 10–15
108. cf. Kelly, ed., Charters of Shaftesbury, p. 56.
109. E. O. Blake, ed., Liber Eliensis (London, 1962), Book I, chap. 59, pp. 130–31 (Liber Eliensis book and chapter hereafter cited as 1.59).
110. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1236
111. Kemble, Codex diplomatics, no. 926. One twelfth-century uicecomitissa of Devon, Aelicia, was so styled as the daughter of a sheriff
112. see Holdsworth, “Cistercians,” p. 183
113. see also Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, 1:483.
114. Hart, Charters of England, pp. 44–45, 80.
115. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1525–1525a
116. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 37 and 38.
117. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, pp. 49–51.
118. Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”
119. Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, 2:400–405.
120. Brooks, “Arms, Status and Warfare,” p. 81, also pp. 87–93
121. R. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988), pp. 137–38, 263, n. 17. The Regularis concordia forbad payment of heriot by abbots and abbesses
122. see C. J. Holdsworth, “Benedictine Monks and Nuns of the Tenth Century,” in Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed. L. Keen (Dorchester, in press).
123. Brooks, “Arms,” pp. 88–89.
124. Abels recognized Æthelgifu's grant as heriot in Lordship, p. 265, n. 45.
125. Compare two pre-Conquest marriage agreements: Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 76–77, pp. 148–151
126. see also Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, 2:365–66.
127. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1539
128. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 3.
129. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 939
130. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 16.2.
131. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 31, 13. Christopher Holdsworth has suggested to me that Thurstan might have sought to protect his wife's property, from the acquisitiveness of his own relatives
132. on Thurstan's widow, see Clarke, The English Nobility, p. 42.
133. Ælfric Modercope (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 28)
134. Æthelric Bigga (note only part of his property appears to be recorded: S. E. Kelly, ed., Charters of St. Augustine's Abbey Canterbury and Minster-in-Thanet [Oxford, 1995], no. 38, p. 133)
135. Ealdorman Æthelwold (Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 20)
136. Brihtric Grim (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 7)
137. Leofwine (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1522)
138. Godric (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1518)
139. Ulf (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1532
140. S. Keynes, “The Will of Wulf,” Old English Newsletter 26, no. 3 [1993]: 16–21).
141. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 32 and 15
142. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1486.
143. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1235 and 1511. When Ælfswith bequeathed two plow lands to Rochester for her soul and that of her ancestors, she perhaps used her own inheritance; her husband granted land in a different estate to the same house for the same purpose. The fact that both grants consisted of the same quantity of land—two plow lands—may make the possibility of inheritance less likely.
144. See Crick, “Posthumous Obligation.”
145. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 10, pp. 24–25, 125–26.
146. On the leases associated with Saint Oswald see P. H. Sawyer, “Charters of the Reform Movement: The Worcester Archive,” in Tenth-Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and the Regularis Concordia, ed. David Parsons (London, 1975), pp. 84–93
147. also V. King, “St. Oswald's Tenants,” in St. Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (London, 1996), pp. 100–116.
148. For example, male lessees only are named in Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1309, 1313, 1353, 1341, 1374.
149. I know of only three examples of a three-life lease that name a woman as the first lessee: Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1283 and 1309, in both of which the lessee is a kinswoman of the lessor, and 1385. In no. 1283, discussed later in this paragraph, the original lease was negotiated by Bishop Waerferth who then transferred it to his kinswoman; on no. 1309
150. see King, “St. Oswald's Tenants,” p. 110.
151. For example, Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 109, 1275, 1326, 1345, 1348
152. J. Stevenson, ed., Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, 2 vols. (London, 1858), 1:477.
153. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 32.
154. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1283
155. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 16, pp. 28–31.
156. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1425
157. J. Crick, ed., The Charters of St. Albans (Oxford, in press), no. 15.
158. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1309, 1385: discussed above, n. 84.
159. Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.” She is described as wif'm the endorsement but this word may mean simply woman rather than wife; cf. n. 30 above.
160. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, pp. 109–143.
161. For an exception see the will of Ælfsige, bishop of Winchester (a.d. 951–58): Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 41.
162. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1533
163. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 52–53.
164. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1808.
165. Anglo-Saxon Charters., no. 1064.
166. Dorothy Whitelock, with contributions by N. R. Ker and Lord Rennell, The Will of Æthelgifu (Oxford, 1968), p. 25.
167. On the source of land used for benefaction see J. Campbell, “The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England,” Journal of the Haskins Society, ed. R. Patterson, 1 (1989): 23–37, esp. 25–26. John Hudson has raised with me the interesting question of to what extent the lands promised by donors were themselves subject to competing claims.
168. “Formless” is Maitland's adjective; see Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, 2:319.
169. C. La Rocca, “Pouvoirs des femmes, pouvoir de la loi dans l'ltalie lombarde,” in Les femmes et pouvoirs des femmes (Lille conference, 1996)
170. see also Janet L. Nelson, “Commentary on the Papers of J. Verdon, S. F. Wemple and M. Parisse,” in Frauen in Spatantike und Fruhmittelalter: Lebensbedingungen—Lebensnormen—Lebensformen, ed. Werner Affeldt (Sigmaringen, 1990), pp. 330–32. I owe these references to Julia Smith.
171. See D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar: Six Essays on Political, Cultural and Ecclesiastical Revival (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 177–178.
172. On the evidence of the Domesday Book, see P. Halpin, “Women Religious in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Journal of the Haskins Society, ed. R. Patterson, 6 (1994): 103–4
173. R. Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994), p. 33.
174. Compare Stafford, Unification and Conquest, pp. 174–175.
175. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1533
176. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 26.
177. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 10, pp. 13–15, 47–49.
178. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 15.
179. Compare White, Custom, pp. 163–170.
180. Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.”
181. Compare S. R. I. Foot, “Gender and Evidence in the Historiography of Anglo-Saxon Nunneries” (paper presented at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, 16 July 1997)
182. also Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.” p. 32.
183. Foot's ideas will be fully explored in her forthcoming volume Veiled Women: The Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England, 2 vols. (Aldershot, in press).