The number of premarital pregnancies and illegitimate births among medieval English peasants is also impossible to know. In Broughton, if the courts accurately reported all children born out of wedlock, twenty-six cases appeared in fifty-two years. Studies of the sixteenth century, based on parish registers, indicate that premarital pregnancies were relatively infrequent (13 to 26 percent of all marriages) and that bastardy was uncommon. The researchers have concluded that teenagers were less promiscuous in the sixteenth century than they were in later centuries. Later studies have also shown that for most of these women a premarital pregnancy was a prelude to marriage and that conception may, indeed, have been necessary for the marriage to take place. Children were so important to the economy that a couple wanted to be sure of fertility before entering into a marriage. But some women had two or more illegitimate children, suggesting that a small subset of village women routinely engaged in illicit sex.26 The stigma of an illegitimate birth for either the mother or the child need not have been very strong in peasant society.
A coroners' inquest preserves the community sentiments toward one unwed mother. Johanna, daughter of Alice of Fordham, was "secretly pregnant" and gave birth in the middle of the night to a female infant. The infant died without baptism, but there is no hint from the jurors that it was killed. What they did object to was Johanna's subsequent action. She "shamefully took the infant and put it at the door of Thomas King in his croft." He was apparently the father, but the village found her way of indicating that fact reprehensible. 27
Ballads, however, illustrate some of the problems of premarital sex and pregnancy for young women. In "Gill Brenton" the young bride was worried on her wedding night because she was not a virgin; she had had previous sexual relations with a man in the forest. She tried to substitute her maid for herself but was discovered. The groom's mother, however, found out that her son was the one who raped the bride in the forest and that she was already with child by him. The couple were happily united and expecting their first child. In "Willie's Lyke-wake" Willie had been unable to get his sweetheart to marry him, so his understanding mother suggested that he pretend to be dead. The sweetheart came to the wake and he grabbed her and put her between himself and the wall (a sexual position that appears in other ballads as well). She begs that he desist, but he maintains that he will not send her home until she is with child. He left her few options to an eventual marriage. But some of the young women in ballads gave themselves to their lover only to be told afterward that he had a wife and five to seven children at home. The number of his offspring is always large, thus demonstrating his sexual prowess and the hopelessness of her position.28
Young peasants going through their adolescence had one foot in childhood and one in adulthood. They were still tied, to their families, for the first finder was still usually a parent. By their late teens they engaged in flirtations and, the evidence suggests, in sexual contacts. For peasant youth who would come into property marriage was a more serious matter and the free love of adolescent years had to be put aside for more serious considerations of a suitable match. Whether rich or poor, male or female, the most important rite de passage for peasant youth was marriage.
Discovering who the young men apd women married is as difficult as finding out their age of marriage. Did they marry within their villages? Did they make their own choices or accept the dictates of their parents or a lord? The manorial court rolls usually only indicated that a merchet (fine to the lord for a woman's marriage) was paid toward the marriage of a peasant woman, and only rarely does the prospective husband's name appear. The Liber Gersumarum of Ramsey Abbey gives some indication of marriage arrangements. Of the 194 cases in which the husband is known and his residence given, 41 percent were outsiders. Ecclesiastical court cases, which list both names in a disputed marriage, do not provide conclusive evidence on the percentage of endogamous compared to exogamous marriages but indicate that perhaps as many as two-thirds could be from the same village.29
The popular poetry of the day discouraged freedom of choice in marriage. "Mutatis Mutandis," a fifteenth-century poem, deplored that
Such moralistic preaching against freedom in marriage selection is a sure sign that a noticeable number of young people were choosing their own mates. But the prevalance of youth selecting their own spouses must have been limited, even though the Church argued that both parties had freely to consent to a marriage.
In developing the consensual theory of marriage, it would appear that the Church was offering a theory of matrimony that left to the individual the final choice of a marriage partner and excluded the control of family, feudal lord, or king. The consensual theory stated that a marriage could only be considered canonically valid if both parties freely consented to it. It was a short step from consensual theory to accepting private or clandestine marriages as valid. The dangers of abuse were apparent, and sermons and synods spoke against secret marriages contracted against the wishes of responsible parties. The solution was to require that the parish priest read the banns at an interval before the marriage (three weeks in England) so that anyone who had objections to the marriage could raise them. The usual objections were consanguinity, prior contract, or marriage of one of the parties. If no one raised objections after the banns were read, the priest married the couple at the church door. The advantage of the banns and ceremony at the church door was that the marriage could be publicized and thereby curb some of the abuses of clandestine marriage, such as bigamy.
Clandestine marriages, however, were canonically valid, for all that was needed was for both parties to agree to the marriage. Thus one comes across such pathetic cases in the consistory court as that of John Borewelle and Margaret Stistede. John claimed that he promised to marry Margaret if his family (parentes-but on another questioning he used the word amicorum) agreed and they then had sexual intercourse. Margaret affirmed that he had promised marriage and that they had had sexual intercourse, but denied that he had put any condition on the marriage agreement.32 With such informal arrangements constituting legal marriage, young people could easily contract marriages without parental consent, and sometimes contracted them to their regret, as bigamy cases indicate.
Family and friends, however, did play a major role in arranging marriages, especially if land and other wealth accompanied the union. The parents and siblings in the families had a concern in the marriage, and the lord also wished to keep some accounting of village marriages. In cases where the marriage was part of the family's economic and social strategy, careful planning by the whole unit was needed, for a good marriage could bring considerable economic benefits. The prospective bride and groom also had an economic stake in a marriage contract, because it would determine not only who their life partner would be, but also how well they could expect to live. To marry for love without land or chattels could assure nothing but a life of penury.
Because the family had such strong vested interests in marriage, strategy became all important. A good example is Alwin of High Easter, a half-virgater, and his placement of his five sons. He managed to marry two of them to heiresses inheriting half-virgates. Another son married a widow with a dower of half a virgate, and the fourth son took over the paternal holding. While Alwin paid the merchet for the marriages, he had to purchase land for only the fifth son. One does not imagine that these sons protested their father's efforts to fird them wives who brought them land. Fathers of daughters were also willing to make comfortable marriage arrangements for them at considerable expense to the family. Richard Young in Berkshire held thirty-eight acres in the common fields in addition to other pieces of land. He had four children who had to be provided for out of family capital. One son, of course, inherited. A second son was sent to school and returned in the exalted position of steward. A daughter, Felicia, was given a large dowry of nine marks and married off the manor. In the next generation the pattern repeated, with one son becoming priest, a daughter making a very favorable marriage, and the land passing on to anothe
r son. Fathers of heiresses had even greater reason to select their sons-in-law with care, because they would take over the family land and perhaps care for them in their old age. Even poorer families with only a few acres made the best marriage arrangements they could for their children. If the parents were dead, it was incumbent upon the inheriting son to arrange marriages for his siblings.33
Marriage contracts involved detailed planning. Sometimes they would be planned far in advance, with earnest money put down toward keeping the terms. The delicate negotiations could come to naught because the young man had sown his wild oats with a kinswoman and the marriage could not take place because of consanguinity. John Love, for instance, wanted to take up a vacant holding, but could not afford the entry fee of E3. Agnes Bentley offered to pay the fine if he married her daughter Alice. He had to turn down this attractive offer because he had already had sexual intercourse with one of her kinswomen. Another woman, Agnes Smith, was so desirable a marriage match that John Tolle gave her 24s. to reserve herself for marriage to him. He claimed that she agreed to return the money if there was an impediment to the marriage. But when it transpired that he had sexual relations with one of her kinswomen, she refused to return the money and the marriage was not permitted. In a breach of promise case, however, the partners to the contract expected the earnest money to be returned, and Alice Sourhale successfully challenged Henry Poket for detaining 4s. 8d., which he had promised her if she withdrew from the marital suit.34
With the family making as generous provisions as they could toward the marriage of their children and providing them with a standard of living they had become accustomed to at home, one would expect that most of the young people consented to the arrangements and probably took part in them. If one looks at ecclesiastical court cases, very few cite force and fear as a grounds for divorce. In the eighty-four divorce cases in a study of the Ely diocese courts from March 1374 to 1384 only three people claimed that they were forced into their marriages. Force and fear were also rare grounds for divorce in Canterbury and York. One daughter complained that her father said that he would break her neck if she did not agree to marry the young man of his choice. Another was threatened with being taken by her ears and thrown into a pool if she did not consent to an arranged marriage. Sometimes there was every indication of impending violence. One woman complained that her family brought staves to the marriage contract ceremony, but her family maintained they had only used them for getting over ditches on the way to the ceremony. On the whole, the courts were not lenient in such matters and tended to uphold the validity of the marriage.35
Not all young people, however, had marriages arranged for them. Some were from poor families who had nothing to negotiate and hence would either not marry or marry whom they pleased. Others were younger sons and daughters and not part of the family's economic strategy and, therefore, had a greater independence. It is even possible that in times of land shortage, family interference in marriage was less common because they had nothing with which to bargain. Thus the Irish peasants before the potato famine did not make elaborate arrangements for marriages because they had little property, and children married whom they wished. After the migrations and deaths from famine, elaborate negotiations for marriage became common.36
The merchet payments from Ramsey Abbey's Liber Gersumarum show the peasant marriage market at work. While the document does not record all marriages between 1398 and 1458, and is therefore not complete, the 426 merchet cases recorded present the broad outline of interested parties in marriages and the amounts they paid for merchet. The bride's father paid in 33 percent of the cases, and the bride paid the merchet in the same percentage of cases. The bridegroom paid in 26 percent of the cases, and another person, such as the bride's mother, paid in 8 percent of the cases. Four categories of licenses appeared in the records. The most typical (37 percent) was for a naif (villein) of the village to marry another naif of the same village. Licenses to marry people outside the village comprised 26 percent, and marriage to a freeman constituted 16 percent. In all these cases the groom was specified. But in 21 percent of the cases only a general license to marry was purchased.
When the father paid the merchet, he had probably arranged the marriage and used family funds for both the merchet and the daughter's dowry. In only 28 percent of these cases did a father pay the merchet for a general license for his daughter to marry whom and when she pleased. Bridegrooms, of course, paid for licenses to marry specific women, who were apparently heiresses or were bringing large dowries with them, for the bridegrooms tended to pay a higher merchet for their brides. But of the women purchasing their own merchets, 54 percent purchased general licenses. These general licenses that women procured for themselves cost less than the fines that their fathers paid, indicating that a large dowry was not involved. Furthermore, the fact that the young women were asked to produce pledges to guarantee that they would pay the merchet indicates that their credit standing was not very good. These young women did not rely on their families to select their marriage partner, or Fven asked for family money to pay the merchet, but used money from wages they had earned independently as servants.
The evidence suggests that while most young women had marriages arranged for them, one-third may have had free choice in selecting husbands. If one looks at the types of licenses these independent young women purchased (with a few exceptions, these women were not widows but making first marriages), they show considerable initiative. Only 22 percent paid to marry a naif of the same village, compared to 40 percent among those whose fathers paid; 18 percent of these women married outsiders, compared to 31 percent when the fathers paid; and 28 percent paid to marry a freeman, compared to 15 percent in marriages arranged by the father. The rest bought general licenses.37 Apparently the young women sought independence not only from family but from the village. They probably met the freemen in the course of their employment away from the family.
The marriage to freemen might have been a revolt against the other party who claimed control over marriages, the lord. The lord's control over marriages and the charging of merchet has been the subject of much recent debate. The origins of the fine need not detain us here; but it is important to know who or what was taxed. Some scholars have argued that it was a tax on people marrying, while others have argued that it was a tax on goods and land transferred at marriage. All agree that it did not constitute an effort on the lord's part to intervene in the marriage arrangements of his peasantry. What appears from these surveys of merchet on various manors is that it was a levy that was not routinely applied to all villein girls, for some were too poor to pay. The levy tended to be higher when the peasant was wealthier, and in these cases the explicit transfer of land was frequently mentioned. Thus the merchet was a combination of a marriage tax and land transfer fee. Since the tax varied, it is possible that it depended on the value of dowry, but such evidence is difficult to find explicitly in the records. On the whole, the amount of tax was not high, 3d. to 4s. being typical, but it was certainly an annoying encumbrance on the family economy at a time when they were also dividing family wealth. It was, further, a reminder of their servile state and the power of their lord. Like many other onerous fees of serfdom, merchet gradually disappeared in the fifteenth century.38
A crucial question, however, is whether or not the lord extended his power beyond a simple pecuniary charge on marriages and large dowries to dictating or approving a choice of marriage partner. The lords had reason to be interested in the marriages of their tenants' daughters and widows. If a daughter married outside the manor or married a freeman, the lord stood to lose a potential worker and producer of serf children. If an heiress or widow married, the lord might well be interested in the quality of the man who was to take charge of her land, for he would lose profits if the land was not productive. The Ramsey Abbey materials indicate that when land was involved in the dowry, the merchet was higher and usually the groom paid it.39 But evidence of a lord's direct intervention in a tenant
's marriage plans are rare. One finds the lord urging marriage on a tenant, usually a bachelor or widow, but not directing whom the person should marry. In one case a lord required a man to marry a particular widow, but the man found the situation so distasteful that he left the manor. Whatever the lord's intervention in peasant marriages, it seemed to have been largely confined to financial exactions rather than actual impositions of his choice of partner.40
Marriage for love has traditionally been assumed to be the dubious privilege of those without property. The lord would not bother to impose a merchet, parents would have no property to bestow and thus have no control, and the Church would not dissolve a marriage even if all the young couple did was to agree to marry while lying together in a haystack. When a young woman, through her initiative and wages, managed to accumulate a bit of chattels and land and paid her own merchet, she could choose her own marriage partner. But the freedom in choice of marriage partner may have been a larger phenomenon, going far beyond those without property. Evidence from the Ely bishop's court may indicate a widespread acceptance among the populace, as well as the clergy, of a more individualistic interpretation of the rules of free consent in marriage. Thus, while historians have traditionally given parents and lords decisive influence over marriages, the cases coming before the consistory court seldom mention these authority figures but concentrate instead on the individual's actions and decisions.4
Medieval culture was largely an illiterate one, and public ceremonial, symbols, and celebrations did not simply provide entertainment but also publicized important events such as marriage. Even in clandestine marriages, the couples reported some sort of ceremony and ritual, usually in the presence of witnesses. Thus when Alexander Wrighte and Isabel, daughter of Joan of Wisbech, were brought to the consistory court for marrying without benefit of clergy, they reported their marriage ceremony. Alexander asked Isabel if she would be his wife and she responded affirmatively. He pledged to marry her and then they joined hands. He endowed her with a kerchief and a little chest. Other couples mention that the groom placed a ring on the bride's finger. Witnesses attested to the marriage contract and the ceremony that united the couple.
The Ties That Bound Page 25