ABSTRACT
Women were subject to the same laws and punishments as men in regard to criminal law. Since most women’s places in society were determined by fathers or husbands, their rights in many areas of civil law were weaker than men’s. One area of law which was developing and increasing women’s legal power at the end of sixteenth century, especially in regard to property, was Equity, administered by Court of Chancery. The Law’s Resolutions discusses many such aspects of the law that affected women, and thus men, negatively and positively. Its principal concerns are with situations connected to the law of marriage, “the most important part of the English law of persons”. By Civil ordinance also Marriage is sometime restrained and forbidden, as betwixt him which adopteth and her which is adopted. Seeing, therefore, right of marriage is to be discussed by the spiritual Judge, they which are married ought in no case to sever themselves and remarry without spiritual Judge.
