ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 looks into what marriage making entailed amongst the middling and upper social groups in the cities of Antwerp, Leuven and Ghent and how partner choice conflicts arose and were perceived. By examining legal, social and cultural ideas surrounding marriage making and partner choice, this chapter will show that women’s extensive inheritance laws in the Low Countries pushed middling and upper social families to use their powerful position in the city to try and limit their children’s options to marry freely, leading to the intense criminalisation of abductions with marital intent in the late medieval Low Countries.
