ABSTRACT
Records of secular and church court proceedings provide significant insights into the nature of social and political relationships, including the dynamics of the interpersonal conflicts and the communities created through participation in legal processes. The major role of the courts was to enforce consensus and maintain order through a system of communal discipline by publicly indicting and punishing those who violated the law. Ordinary people were involved in varying ways in litigation processes and in the administering of law. The place of women in the legal system has, however, only recently begun to receive attention.1 With the notable exception of Elizabeth I, whose famous 1601 “Golden Speech” we feature here (also see chapter 5), women for the most part did not contribute to political policy and were excluded from public civil offices and barred from legal functions. Nevertheless, the involvement of single women in litigation and legal activities differed considerably from that of married women. While the former enjoyed property rights, the right to inherit legacies, and to conduct business affairs, married women under common law were required to leave legal affairs to their husbands. The English system of coverture, which identified husband and wife as one person for most civil matters and some criminal purposes, was responsible for many of the legal restrictions on women’s agency.2 Certainly women’s participation as litigants or merely even as onlookers was restricted within the court system. Yet at the same time we can attempt to reconstruct the lives of early modern women by studying testimonies of and about women who made court appearances.3
