ABSTRACT
The number of gentlemen and farmers involved in marriage settlement suits dropped over the course of the seventeenth century, but their place was more than filled by the dramatic increase in wealthier tradesmen. The records are extremely difficult to work with. Initial bills of complaint and the defendants' answers are filed separately from depositions, and both are separate from decrees, so it is inordinately time-consuming to locate successive documents dealing with the same case. Before looking specifically at marriage settlement cases, it will be helpful to assess how often women appeared at all in Chancery, whether they did so when married or unmarried, and with whom they joined in suits. The increase in female plaintiffs in Chancery between the mid-sixteenth and the early eighteenth centuries from 17 per cent to 26 per cent, and the tripling of the proportion of widows among women, is not necessarily an indication of increasing access to the court for women.
