The marriages, however, do not fall into the categories suggested for the modern marriage pattern. They were not the "companionate" ones Stone describes as characteristically modern nor the scenes of "domesticity" Shorter identifies. Husband and wife did not seek marriage for entertainment and consolation. They were not looking for some ideal of domestic bliss, even though their romantic stories also ended with "and they lived happily ever after."38 But, equally, medieval peasant couples could not afford to go their separate ways in the marriage.
Partnership is the most appropriate term to describe marriage in medieval English peasant society. The partnership was both an economic and an emotional one. Marriage began with a contract outlining the economic benefits of the partners; the traditional roles for work guaranteed the effective functioning of the household unit; and the necessity of planning for the children's eventual marriage and, finally, the retirement of the couple made mutual planning desirable. Not all partnerships worked well, of course. In some the husband dominated to the wife's disadvantage, and in some, one or the other party failed to meet expectations; but the exceptions were not so numerous as to modify the ideal that couples should contribute their share to their partnership. It is not necessary to paint a foul picture of traditional peasant marriage in order to suggest that marriage is somewhat different in the modern period. Certainly, our high divorce rate gives us no grounds to consider the modern mode of marriage superior. Rather, we should look on the institution of marriage as a remarkably flexible one that adapts to meet the needs of the economic and social conditions prevailing at different times.
Medieval society ascribed few viable roles to single people. After childhood and adolescence most people would marry; the category of spinster, defined as an unmarried woman, was not a medieval one, and bachelor likewise carried a different meaning from its modern one. In the village context the two most notable categories of single heads of house would be widows and the local priest. One might wonder why widowers are not included in this category, but demographic studies and property-holding surveys make it quite clear that, then as now, women were more likely to outlive their husbands and less likely to remarry than men. An old peasant proverb noted that the household could survive without the husbandman but not without the good wife, and most men rushed into remarriage. For widows, however, the death of the husband brought a variety of new options and new independence, both economically and emotionally, that women could not achieve in any other phase of their life cycle. Widows were thrust into a new position, legally and personally, which gave them a greater role in planning their own future and that of their children. A widow could enter into land contracts on her own, could decide on marriage alliances for children, could make her own decisions about remarriage and whom she would marry. The new-found freedom, however, was not welcomed by all widows; some flourished and others suffered. But what is of interest to us is how peasant widows coped with this unique phase in their life cycle. We will leave aside elderly widows until the subsequent chapter and investigate here the lives of those women, still young or in their prime, who must manage as only half of the former partnership.
Medieval literary sources would lead us to believe that widows were poor and vulnerable. We are all familiar with Chaucer's portrait of the poor widow in the Canterbury Tales. But other writers also expressed disapproval over the poverty of widows and those who tried to deprive them of their rights. One lyric advised that a knight should "mayntene trouth and rightwysnes/And Hole Cherche and wedowes ryght."I As we have already seen, widows were very common in medieval England, and so the writers had reason to be concerned about them. But were they poor and vulnerable?
As we saw in the chapter on inheritance, widows could demand a third of their husband's property as dower or the husband could make more generous provisions for her through manorial court arrangements or through wills. Men could make several broad types of provisions for their widows: (1) give the widow all or part interest in the family landholding for life, (2) endow her either in a will or by dower with some land, housing, and goods, or (3) make provision with sons or others to see that the widow was honorably kept.
Nowhere is the mutual respect and sense of partnership in marriage better demonstrated than in men's provisions for their wives in manorial court or in wills. Through these directives they left the perpetuation of mutual responsibilities to their helpmate, and the majority did so with obvious trust. As we have seen, the wife was the most frequent executor of her husband's will, and moralists had no warnings against putting the wife in such a capacity, as they did against trusting offspring of the marriage. The variety and generosity of legal provisions for the continued maintenance of widows indicates that not only husbands, but society as a whole, regarded a wife's contribution to the home economy as highly significant and well worth rewarding after the death of her spouse.
In manorial court rolls one frequently reads that a husband and wife reverted their tenement to the lord and made fine with him so that they could hold it again in joint tenancy. When the husband died, the wife could continue on the tenement for the rest of her life. She would be expected to continue providing the labor services, working the land, and paying rent. On some manors, as we have seen, she might have to relinquish the land when her sons reached the age of majority. In these cases some further provision would be made for her well-being.2
Wills present the full range of options that a man with property could make for his widow. Of the 326 wills of adult males surveyed, 235 had surviving wives. Sixty-three percent of these women received the home tenement for life, 3 percent had the tenement only until the-oldest son reached majority, 3 percent were allowed the house but not the lands and 3 percent were allowed a room in the main house. Other provisions for the widows included a dower of one-third of the property (2 percent), return of the dowry (5 percent), land other than the home tenement (15 percent), and a separate house (5 percent). In addition, widows were left money, animals, household goods, and the residue of the property after the debts were paid (52 percent). In general, the provisions for widows were generous, with husbands preferring to give their wives the greater benefits possible under customary law as opposed to the third allowed in common law.
Those provisions that gave the widow a room in the main house or some guaranteed source of support in food or money were common when the main holdings were already distributed to the heirs or the heirs were adults and ready to take charge of the land. These benefits were in addition to the dowry that she had brought with her at marriage and that she would have returned to her unless she had given it to her children. The wills indicate a wide range of possible accommodations. The widow might have the main house for a number of years and then move to a dower cottage; she might be guaranteed room in the family house and a place at the hearth; or she might be given lands and house separate from the family holdings. The coroners' inquests in which widows appear as accident victims show that all of these options were used.3
Sometimes the dying husband would instruct in his will that the son should provide for the surviving widow, and the amount was often explicitly stated. Such wills usually indicate that the husband and wife were already retired and he was making arrangements for her final years. The actual provisions of these settlements are a more fitting topic for the following chapter, on old age.
While the material comforts must have varied consideraby, the wills and manorial court cases make it clear that widows always had some provision made for them. We must look beyond the legal settlements, however, in order to see how well widows coped with their new life and, perhaps, considerable new responsibilities for cultivating the land and rearing their children alone.
Quite frequently widows were left with young children who had to be raised and provided for in adulthood. In Halesowen the ages of five husbands can be established at the time of their death. Their ages ranged from twenty-three to forty-four and most had young children. The wives paid fines to become guardians of these chi
ldren and keep the family holding for them.4 In the wills husbands left wives explicit guardianship over the children and often made property settlements for them, should they grow up. A husband might give his wife extensive control over the children, including the right to disinherit them. Thomas Clay of Potton directed that his tenement and lands in Potton pass to his son Richard after his wife's death "on condition that in the future his behavior improves to the satisfaction of his mother and the executor [Richard's uncle, John the Chaplain]." Only one husband felt that his wife was unfit to care for his children because of her insanity: "she shall kepe my childerne or els she shall not enter ... and if so be she have not her witts," the executors are to do what they think best.5
One can trace the careers of some of these young mothers in the manorial court rolls. For instance, Agnes of the Land did fealty for the family tenements in 1286 and carried on the cultivation of the lands until 1306, when her son Richard was twenty-one and took over the lands. She received as dower a third part of the land and Richard paid 20s. for entry and the right to marry. By 1313 Richard had married and increased the family landholding. Often the mother took the land in both her name and that of her heir, so that the succession would be automatic. In the case of the heir being a daughter, the mother usually surrendered the land when the daughter married.6
A widow left with land and a young family to care for must have found the responsibilities taxing. Widows remaining. single had to arrange for the cultivation of the land, but these contracts could go awry. For instance, Eve, formerly wife of William de Colley, sued John Payne because he failed to plow and sow for her. In some communities the widow cultivated the land only until her sons reached the age of majority. Isabell, widow of Patrick, for instance, surrendered her rights to her land to her son John. She arranged that he would give her 15s. 4d. by Whitsuntide and pay her 6s. 8d. a year maintenance. A study of inheritance and land-use patterns in the Chiltern Hills shows that the widow usually released her life interest to the inheriting sons and then held her dower lands jointly with them. Another common solution widows chose was to rent out the land for a specified period until the children came of age. Thus Alice, widow of John of the Mere, rented land to a man for a period of twenty years. When that time was up, the land was to revert to the heirs of her husband.7
Widowhood, however, did not have to be a period of just managing to cope in the face of great odds. Many widows appear to have flourished in their new-found freedom. They no longer faced the encumbrance of pregnancies, and the legal controls of the husband over the family finance had ended. Thus the manorial surveys show widows holding full tenements as well as simply cottages. In manorial courts one sees widows actively buying land and pursuing trades. Johanna, widow of William of the Bothes, arranged for her minor son to take over the eighteen acres and the buildings of his father, but to remain with his lands and person in her custody. She then purchased two acres of new land for herself and her heirs. Clare de Blakewode and Matthew, her son, acquired four acres of additional land. Matilda, widow of Elyas, did well enough in her economic management to sue another couple for 7s. 4d. worth of flour she had sold them. Widowhood released women into a legal category that left them free to pursue economic enterprises denied to single women or wives.8
Not all widows, however, chose to remain on their own, and some sought to solve the problem of managing the land and children through remarriage. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, widows remarried rather rapidly because they were often well-endowed marriage partners and their responsibilities required a man to work the fields. A similar pattern was observed for the sixteenth century. The marriage market for widows, however, appears to have fluctuated depending on the availability of land. In the tight land markets of the early fourteenth and sixteenth centuries widows were in demand. The marriage patterns on the late thirteenth-century Winchester estates has been described as a marriage fugue. On manors on which there was no vacant land, young men sought old widows for marriage partners. They lived on her land until she died, and they then perhaps remarried younger women, thus establishing a fugue pattern of a young man marrying an older widow, remarrying a younger woman who, when she is widowed, will marry a younger man.9
Looking at the marriage patterns over more than a century on the Crowland Abbey estates the historian Ravensdale correlated the marriages of widows with the population density and availability of land. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, when land was in considerable demand and a very active land market in small plots was prevalent, widows were sought-after matches. The widow's dower lands could support the new husband and perhaps a new family at least for the lifetime of the widow. If the widow wanted to retire and not remarry, there were plenty of nonkin as well as kin who were willing to cultivate the land in exchange for an agreement to support the widow until her death. During the period of land hunger the lords encouraged widows to remarry because they could then collect money from the marriage fines. After 1349, however, when land was in plentiful supply, many widows refused to take their husband's lands because they could find neither a new husband nor laborers to work the land. Young men with land were choosing to marry younger women. Thus widows were no longer desirable in the marriage market. Other court roll studies have since shown a similar pattern in widows' marriages.10
The percentage of remarriages is difficult to determine accurately. In the sixteenth century 25 to 30 percent of the widows remarried; for widowers it was higher. Widowers had a harder time managing the tenement alone than did widows, and if they had young children at home a wife would be most helpful. Remarriage was fairly rapid, with almost half of those remarrying doing so within the year. Canon law required no mourning period in such cases.11
Judging from wills, first husbands had a range of feelings about the remarriage of their widows. Some explicitly mentioned that the amount of lands and goods would be diminished if the wife remarried, or that she would get a greater amount "providing that she does not remarry." 12 Other husbands purposely endowed their widows with land or goods that they could take with them to a subsequent marriage. For instance, William Spenser gave his wife four acres and three rods of land that she held in clear title and could alienate. Another huband generously instructed his son to keep his wife, but that if she married or moved she was to have half of the movable goods.13
Wills and manorial court evidence indicated that widows were well provided for both by custom and by individual arrangements of their husbands. But there remains the question of their ability to collect these benefits. In the Bedfordshire wills surveyed, 197, or 65 percent, of the nonclerical males made their former wives executors, so that they had some control over the dispersal of the goods and lands. Widows often appeared in the court rolls, however, trying to regain payments and dower lands that were rightfully theirs. On Chalgrave manor a mother sued her son and had the court roll searched to prove that he had taken an acre of land that was rightfully hers.14 Usually it was the son or the husband's brother who was at fault in denying the widow dower rights.15
Widows appearing in manorial courts and wills had lands and goods to transfer or to sue for, but an unknown portion of the widows were left penniless when the chief breadwinner died. They relied on charity to see them through, hoping for occasional work and begging for their bread and housing. If they had young children, their reliance on the generosity of neighbors would be very great indeed. Such a one was Matilda Sherlok of Pinchbeck, a beggar, who had two sons, John and six-year-old William, and a daughter. They lived in a house in Spalding that John Herney lent to them. When they went to bed Matilda placed a candle on the wall and forgot to extinguish it, so that it fell, causing the house to burn and killing Matilda and her family.16
We are left with the problem of assessing the community's opinion of widows, but finding such information is always difficult. We know that poets felt that widows should be protected. But remarkably little of the folk poetry or the writings of moralists deals wi
th widows. The omission is particularly striking when one considers the volume of comments on marriage and the noticeable presence of widows in society. Even though Alison had been a widow five times, she is the Wife of Bath not the Widow of Bath. Widows are generally assigned one of two roles in society: respectable or disreputable. If we may judge from wills and literary remains, the assumption in medieval peasant society was that most widows would fall into the first category. There were, of course, some widows who did not. Such widows did take lovers and some became prostitutes. Isabel Edmond, a tenant in Cleeve Prior, took a lover, but he paid an entrance fine for her lands and the banns were read. But Lucy Pofot, widow of Thomas of Houghton, was at a tavern on the evening of November 30, 1270. After returning home at night, "a ribald stranger came and asked for entertainment and Lucy entertained him." She was found dead in the morning with five knife wounds in her heart. Sarra, a widow forty-six years old, one evening entertained three men at her house who killed and robbed her.'7
We need not end on a gloomy note, however. Since most widows did not rush into remarriage, a fair proportion of them must have taken up their new responsibilities as steward of the family fortunes with serious dedication and perhaps even relish. By not remarrying, they could preserve their own authority while benefiting their children by not introducing a new husband who would try to lay claim to the land or, worse, starting a new family to erode the rights of the children by the first husband. Widowhood, therefore, could bring both personal power and preserve family harmony. The years of widowhood, even for elderly widows, need not have been lonely, for, as we shall see in the next chapter, some of them died surrounded by loving children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, friends, and fellow villagers.
The Ties That Bound Page 28