ABSTRACT
In the middle of the thirteenth century, women could be named attorneys, but these rolls have only a single instance of a woman who was by her husband, in a plea of land. The maritagium in land, which returned to a woman when her husband died, would turn into the marriage portion in money which, like all personal property, became the sole possession of the husband. The women chronicled are ostensibly respectable free landholders or wives and widows of free landholders, even aristocrats appearing as plaintiffs and defendants in civil suits at the assizes, before the justices at the Bench, and before the king himself. These were the great noblemen and women of the realm, the group one would expect to find demanding or defending rights to land or custody in the courts. They were often suing or being sued by members of their own extended families; non-familial adversaries were frequently the heads of religious houses or other substantial landowners.
