ABSTRACT
Statements from the twelfth century onwards assert limitations on the circumstances in which a woman could bring an appeal. The absence of consensus on whether the death of a foetus was something which should found an appeal, and if so, whether such an appeal should be brought by the woman, by the father/husband, by both or by neither, is not surprising, given that ideas about the nature and value of the foetus were in flux amongst common lawyers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at the same time that there were changes in the range of possible legal actions for personal injury. Women did bring appeals of wounding and mayhem, from at least the mid-thirteenth century, without regular, obvious, objection. These fall within the scope of those statements of their legitimate appeals, which include a general reference to bodily injury, rather than specifying rape. The ‘conventional’ categories for women’s appeal were themselves neither straightforward nor free from restriction.
