The Ties That Bound

by Barbara A Hanawalt

9. Ibid., pp. 9, 76. Frederick J. Furnivall, Manners and Meals in Olden Times, EETS, o.s. 32 (London, 1868), p. 46.

  10. F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law before Edward I, new ed., II, (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 404-407.

  11. English Wills, p. 80.

  12. Ibid., pp. 17-18, 22.

  13. Ibid., p. 70.

  14. For women purchasing bits of land, see Court Rolls of Chalgrave Manor, ed. Marian K. Dale, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 28 (1950), p. 22. The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, trans. Sue Sheridan Walker, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 2nd ser. 2 (forthcoming), pp. 152, 153, 162, 170. The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, I, trans. W. P. Baildon, The Yorkshire Archaological Society Record Series 29 (1901), pp. 81, 96, 106, 115, 122, 124, 174.

  15. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunnisett, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), pp. 48-49.

  16. Judith Bennett, "Medieval Peasant Marriage: An Examination of Marriage Fines in the Liber Gersumarum," in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed. J. P. Raftis (Toronto, 1981), pp. 208-211.

  17. Rossell Hope Robbins, Secular Lyrics of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1952), p. 44. Ester Boserup, Women's Role in Economic Development (London, 1970), pp. 24-30, maintains that in all plow cultures, plowing is a male role and women seldom do it. There is in the folklore of plow cultures a male sexual connotation to the act of plowing.

  18. Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, pp. 503-504.

  19. Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Childrearing Among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (1971), pp. 1-22.

  20. Boserup, Women's Role, pp. 27-29. Carlo Poni, "Family and `Podere' in Emilia Romagua," The Journal of Italian History 1 (1978), pp. 201-234, has shown that nineteenth-century Italian peasant women spent more time in the house from November to March, working largely on linen; from April to October their fieldwork surpassed their housework. Their day was often longer than the man's.

  21. Reliquiae Antiquae, II, "Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband," pp. 197-198.

  22. Just. 2/78 m. 2.

  23. Just. 2/18 m. 19, 2/69 m. 7d.

  24. Two percent of women's accidents came from dealing with animals. See, for instance, just. 2/67 m. 40d., 2/70 m. 10, 2/86 m. 2. In the latter case a woman had put a ladder against the post of a barn to get straw down for her cows when the ladder broke.

  25. Twenty-three percent of the women died in accidents related to supplementary activities such as gathering, fishing, and begging. See, for instance, just. 2/18 m. 11, 2/ 104 m. 3.

  26. Hanawalt, "Childrearing," pp. 14-18.

  27. Edward Britton, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England (Toronto, 1977), p. 88.

  28. See, for instance, just. 2/67 m. 23, 2/91 m. 4, 2/81 m. 8.

  29. William Beveridge, "Wages in the Winchester Manors," Economic History Review, 7 (1934), pp. 33-34.

  30. Ibid., p. 34. R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), pp. 101-102.

  31. F. W. Tickner, Women in English Economic History (London, 1923), p. 23.

  32. Walker, Wakefield, p. 22. Hilton, English Peasantry, pp. 103-105. R. H. Britnell, "Production for the Market on a Small Fourteenth-Century Estate," Economic History Review 2nd ser. 19 (1966), p. 383. Elaine Clark, "Debt Litigation in a late Medieval English Vill," in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed. J. A. Raftis (Toronto, 1981), p. 252, found that 7 percent of the creditors were women. In just. 2/17 m. 4d. a woman taking reeds to market, and in just. 2/200 m. 7 a woman taking cheese to market. Chalgrave, p. 33.

  33. Just. 2/18 m. 44.

  34. Hilton, English Peasantry, p. 105. Wakefield, I, p. 194: "Sara, widow of Henry son of Robert de Hertesheved, came and waged her law with women, and the said John de Dychton sought judgement because she waged her law with women." She lost. A. E. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, ed. H. M. Cam, M. Coate, and L. S. Sutherland (Oxford, 1938), pp. 242-243.

  35. Hufton, "Women in Revolution," pp. 92-95.

  36. W. O. Ault, "By-Laws of Gleaning and the Problems of Harvest," Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 14 (1961), pp. 212-214. Just. 2/17 m. 3d.

  37. Walker, Wakefield, pp. 28, 164, 169, 175. Wakefield, I, 91, 117, 149.

  38. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 120-122.

  39. Just. 2/106 m. 1. See also just. 2/114 ms. 3, 7, 8, 17.

  40. Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, "Women's Work and the Family in NineteenthCentury Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History 17 (1975), pp. 44-45.

  41. R. L. Greene, The Early English Carols, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1977), no. 401. See also nos. 400, 402, 403.

  42. Robbins, Secular Lyrics, pp. 35-36. Greene, English Carols, no. 399.

  43. Testamenta Eboracensia: A Selection of Wills From the Registry at York, III, Surtees Society 45 (1865), p. 203.

  44. Furnivall, Manners and Meals, p. 39.

  45. Walker, Wakefield, p. 264.

  46. Fredricka Pickford Santos, "The Economics of Marital Status," in Sex Discrimination and the Division of Labor, ed. Cynthia Lloyd (New York, 1975), pp. 249-250. She further explored a model of Gary Becker, "A Theory of Marriage, Part I," Journal of Political Economy 81 (1973), pp. 813-846, and "A Theory of Marriage: Part II," 82 (1974), pp. sl 1-s26. Both writers explore the shared economic benefits that accrue to both partners in a traditional marriage. For a more theoretical discussion of women's economic contributions in preindustrial Europe, see Barbara A. Hanawalt, Introduction, in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, Ind., forthcoming in 1986).

  Chapter 10. Children and Servants at Home and in the Fields

  1. The Italian Relation of England, ed. C. A. Sneyd, Camden Society 37 (1847), p. 24. Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981) has the most complete discussion of early modern servants.

  2. Just. 2/113 m. 37. Other children looked into caldrons or tried to taste the contents: Just. 2/113 ms. 32, 33, 46.

  3. Just. 2/109 m. 8, 2/106 m. Id., 2/77 m. 3d, in which a child was watching construction work when a ladder fell on him.

  4. Just. 2/200 m. 2.

  5. Just. 2/67 m. 19d., 2/91 m. 6, 2/18 m. 21d., 2/104 m. 3d., 2/92 m. 8,2/104m. 3d.

  6. Just. 2/92 m. 8, 2/104 m. 3. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, IV, trans. John Lister, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 78 (1930), p. 193.

  7. Just. 2/17 m. 2d., 2/18 M. 19d., 2/104, m. 39d., 2/195 m. 17, 2/199 m. 4, 2/109 ms. 1, 7. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunnisett, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), p. 11.

  8. James E. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages: The History of English Labour (London, 1884), p. 170. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, pp. 29-30, gives the case of William Fraunceys, who set out to get his cattle with his ten-year-old son.

  9. Just. 2/88 m. 3; 2/82 ms. 4d., 9; 2/67 m. 40; 2/77 m. 9; 2/104 m. 27; 2/44.

  10. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 82. Just. 2/195.

  11. Just. 2/203 m. 13.

  12. Just. 2/104 m. 42.

  13. Just. 2/104 ms. 5, 27, 42.

  14. Just. 2/104 m. 11. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 103.

  15. Just. 2/104 m. 2., 2/91 m. 5.

  16. A. E. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, ed. H. M. Cam, M. Coate, L. S. Sutherland (Oxford, 1938), p. 246.

  17. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 54.

  18. Ibid., pp. 13, 15, 52. Just. 2/85 m. 2. G. E. Fussell, "Countrywomen in Old England," Agricultural History Review 50 (1976), p. 176. "Three Records of the Alien Priory of Grove and the Manor of Leighton Buzzard," ed. Robert Richmond, in Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 8 (1924), pp. 31-38, has information on the work that the various servants, men, women, and "lads" did on the manor.

  19. Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism,
(New York, 1979), pp.148-149.

  20. Bertha Haven Putnam, Enforcement of the Statute of Laborers during the First Decade after the Black Death, 1349-1359 (New York, 1909), pp. 79-80. Kussmaul defines laborers as those hired for part of the year and living separate from the employer, whereas servants are hired for the year and live with the employer: Servants in Husbandry, p. 7. Since medieval servants may not have lived with the employer, I have modified the definitions.

  21. Wakefield, IV, p. 99.

  22. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry, pp. 3, 11-12.

  23. A. Raistrick, "A Fourteenth-Century Regional Survey," Sociological Review 21 (1929), pp. 242-246. R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), p. 32. Edgar Powell, Rising in East Anglia in 1381 (Cambridge, 1896), pp. 67-85.

  24. Hilton, English Peasantry, pp. 31-33.

  25. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, pp. 22, 92. Often in these burglaries only one out of four or five burglaries will be of a house in which there is a servant present at night. In Just. 2/67 m. 33 a servant is killed by leaving a candle burning. Just. 2/93 m. 3.

  26. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 111.

  27. The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, trans. Sue Sheridan Walker, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 2nd set. 2 (forthcoming), p. 318.

  28. R. T. Davies, Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology (Evanston, Ill., 1964), p. 154. Greene, English Carols, no. 346.

  29. Just. 2/18 m. 4.

  30. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 23. In just. 2/105 m. 5 a man, twenty-seven years old, pursued his servant into a neighbor's house but ran into an object and knocked himself out.

  31. Ibid., pp. 28, 34, 75.

  32. Bedfordshire Wills, 1480-1519, ed. Patricia Bell, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 45 (1966), pp. 55-56. English Wills, 1498-1526, ed. A. F. Cirket, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 37 (1957), pp. 17-18, 22, 70.

  33. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, I, trans. W. P. Baildon, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 29 (1901), pp. 164, 169.

  Chapter 11. Childhood

  1. Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of the Family, trans. Robert Baldick (London, 1962), p. 368. Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York, 1963), pp. 247-274, for a summary.

  2. Mary Martin McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates: Children and Parents from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries," in The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York, 1974), pp. 113-114. Records of Medieval Oxford, Coroners' Inquests, The Walls of Oxford, etc., ed. H. E. Salter (Oxford, 1912), p. 27.

  3. C. Wimberly, Folklore in English and Scottish Ballads (Chicago, 1928), pp. 371-376. James Francis Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, I, (Boston, 1883), nos. 5B, 5C.

  4. Juha Pentikainen, The Nordic Dead-Child Tradition, Folklore Fellows Communications, no. 201 (Helsinki, 1968), pp. 71-75. Nicole Belmont, "Levana: or How to Raise up Children," in Family and Society: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Societes, Civilisation, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore, 1976), pp. 1-3. Thomas C. Rumble, The Breton Lays in Middle English (Detroit, 1965), pp. 49-50, 86-88.

  5. Child, Ballads, I. IA.

  6. John Myrc, Instructions for a Parish Priest, ed. Edward Peacock, EETS, o.s. 209 (London, 1940), pp. 3-4, instructs the midwife to have clean water present at the birth, and if the child comes out by its head and shoulders and it appears it will not live, she is to baptize it. If the mother dies, the midwife is to take a knife and cut her open and extract the child. If her heart fails her, she can call upon a man for help. In folklore there was also considerable concern about the fate of children who "die without a name." Wimberly, Folklore, p. 409.

  7. Charles H. E. White, "The Church and Parish of Chesham Bois, Bucks.," Architectural and Archaeological Society for the County of Buckingham 6 (1887), p. 195.

  8. Louis Haas, "Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in the North of England, 1250-1450," M.A. Thesis (Ohio State University, 1982), pp. 69-80, describes the baptismal ceremony in detail. He has drawn on the manuals for priests and the proofs of age from the Inquisitions Post Mortem.

  9. Ibid., pp. 76, 85.

  10. Michael Bennett, "Spiritual Kinship and the Baptismal Name in Traditional European Society," in Principalities, Powers and Estates: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Government and Society, ed. L. O. Frappell (Adelaide, 1979), p. 8, provides the information on the proof of age from the Inquisitions Post Mortem, including the godparent who fought for his naming privileges. English Wills, 1498-1526, ed. A. F. Cirket, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 37 (1956), p. 24. See also Bedfordshire Wills, 141519, trans. Patricia Bell, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 45 (1966), p. 60. The proof of English citizenship was used in York in the late fifteenth century when some tradesmen were accused of being Scots and refused the right to practice their trade. They proved their English origins by bringing evidence of their godparents from their baptismal records. Some of these are published in A Volume of English Miscellanies, Surtees Society 85 (1890), pp.35-52.

  11. Zvi Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in the Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen, 1270-1400 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 15.

  12. Bennett, "Spiritual Kinship," p. 8.

  13. Lawrence Stone, Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500--1800 (New York, 1977), p. 70, has concluded that parents gave two siblings the same name in the expectation that only one would survive.

  14. J. C. Russell, "Demographic Limitations of the Spalding Serf Lists," Economic History Review 2, 15 (1962), pp. 138-144. F. S. Colman, A History of the Parish of Barwick- in-Elmet, in the County of York, Thoresby Society 12 (1908), p. 300.

  15. A. C. Chibnall, Sherington: Fiefs and Fields of a Buckinghamshire Village (Cambridge, 1965), p. 95. Chertsey Abbey Court Rolls, Abstract, trans. Elsie Toms, Surrey Record Society 21 (1937), p. xxxix.

  16. Thomas Wright, A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England in the Middle Ages (London, 1862), pp. 48-51. McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates," pp.113-114.

  17. Just. 2/77 m. 4.

  18. Just. 2/111 m. 17; 2/1 12 m. 38; 2/1 13 ms. 27, 31; 2/255 m. 5. Beatrice, daughter ofJohn Gous, fell in a ditch in her father's close when both her parents were in the fields: Just. 2/67 m. 9. Edith, wife ofJohn le Taylor, put her infant daughter in a cradle by the fire at prime and went to hear Mass. A chicken in the house started a fire in the cradle by dropping embers on the child's hair: Just. 2/200 m. 6.

  19. Beatrice White, "Poet and Peasant," in The Reign of Richard II, ed. F. R. H. DuBoulay and C. M. Barron (London, 1971), p. 70.

  20. Just. 2/70 ms. lOd, 11; 2/67 m. 33.

  21. Just. 2/18 ms. 42d, 45; 2/104 m. 18d; 2/200, m. 2; 2/199. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunnisett, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), pp. 25, 45.

  22. Ibid., p. 93. Just. 2/18 m. 12d., 2/66 m. 2d., 2/67 m. 8d., 2/104 m. 13d.

  23. Just. 2/105 m. ld., 2/204 m. Id., 2/104 m. 7. Richard Helmholtz, "Infanticide in the Province of Canterbury during the Fifteenth Century," History of Childhood Qyarterly 2 (1974-75), pp. 282-390, for a discussion of the admonitions on childrearing that appear in penitential literature.

  24. Wright, Domestic Manners, p. 51.

  25. Just. 2/105 m. 6.

  26. Frances M. M. Comper, Spiritual Songs from English MSS. of Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1936), p. 27.

  27. McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates", pp. 115-116.

  28. Just. 2/18 m. 57d., 2/85 m. 5, Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 9.

  29. Robert D. Stevick, ed., One Hundred Middle English Lyrics (Indianapolis, Ind., 1964), pp. 66-67.

  30. Ibid., pp. 62-63.

  31. Beth Lomax Hawes, "Folksong and Function: Some Thoughts on the American Lullaby," Journal of American Folklore 87 (1974), pp. 140-147, points out that mothers may sing any type of song to their infants, not just lullabies. The typical American lullaby not only speaks of a n
ice environment for the child, but one that is isolated from the parents and from the child's usual environment.

  32. David Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York, 1970), pp. 135-136, has applied Erik Erikson's model of child development to a historical content. In my initial work on the subject, "Childrearing among the Lower Classes," I too used this approach. The more broadly based biological approach seems more appropriate to me now.

  33. Just. 2/18 m. 48d.; 2/74 m. 9; 2/201 m. 1; 2/106 m. ld.; 2/109 m. 8; 2/77 m. 3d.; 2/113 ms. 32, 33, 37, 46; 2/194 ms. 2, 8d. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 35.

  34. Just. 2/104 ms. 2, 12; 2/104 m. 2.

  35. Albert P. Iskrant and Paul V. Joliet, Accident and Homicide (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 19, 22, 138.

  36. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, pp. 6, 11-12.

  37. Carl Haffter, "The Changeling: History and Psychodynamics of Attitudes to Handicapped Children in European Folklore," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 4 (1968), pp. 55-61. Wimberly, Folklore, pp. 285, 325.

  38. Hunt, Parents and Children, pp. 159-179. Robert [Mannyng] of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS, o.s. 119 (London, 1901), p. 244.

  39. Mary Seger, A Medieval Anthology, Being Lyrics and Other Short Poems Chiefly Religious (London, 1915), p. 131.

  40. F. J. Furnivall, Manners and Meals in Olden Time, EETS, o.s. 32 (London, 1868), pp. 33, 46. Robert [Mannyng] of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, pp. 45-46.

  41. Just. 2/67 m. 40d. Calendar Coroners' Rolls of the City of London, ed. Reginald Sharpe (London, 1913), p. 83.

  42. Just. 2/107 m. 5.

  43. Just. 2/107 m. 7, 2/77 m. 3.

  44. Aries, Centuries of Childhood, p. 365. Stone, Family, Marriage and Sex, p. 6. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, pp. 11, 27-28, 51-52, 93, 100-102, 103. Just. 2/106; 2/109 ms. 1, 7; 2/255 m. 6.

  45. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300--1348 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), p. 161.

  46. Just. 2/66 m. 6d, 2/102 m. 10d., 2/200 m. 7.

  47. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 29.

  48. Records of Medieval Oxford, Coroners' Inquests, the Walls of Oxford, Etc., ed. H. E. Salter (Oxford, 1912), p. 7.