34. Frances Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), pp. 83, 87. These provisions were directed specifically against laborers.
35. Court Rolls of the Manor of Carshalton from the Reign of Edward III to that of Henry VII, trans. D. L. Powell, Surrey Record Society 2 (1916), pp. 59-61. Thomas Wright, A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages (London, 1862), pp. 226-255. Edward Britton, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England (Toronto, 1977), pp. 42-43.
36. Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Keepers of the Lights, Late Medieval English Parish Gilds," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984), pp. 21-37. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York, 1977), p. 102. Edward Shorter, Making of the Modern Family (New York, 1975), pp. 56-60.
37. Just. 2/66 m. 6d., 2/102 m. 10d., 2/200 m. 7.
38. Rumble, Breton Lays, pp. 176-177.
Chapter 14. Widowhood
1. Richard L. Greene, The Early English Carols, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1977), no. 347.
2. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 2nd ed. 2 (forthcoming), p. 26. Chertsey Abbey Court Rolls, Abstract, trans. Elsie Toms, Surrey Recprd Society 21 (1937), pp. xvii, 21.
3. Bedfordshire Wills, 1408-1519, trans. Patricia Bell, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 45 (1966), nos. 164, 157. English Wills, 1498-1526, ed. A. F. Cirket, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 37 (1956), pp. 10-11, 20, 27, 32, 49, 50, 51.
4. Zvi Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in the Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen, 1270-1400 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 40.
5. English Wills, pp. 20, 23, 41, 44, 48, 73.
6. Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor, ed. Marian K. Dale, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 28 (1950), pp. 17, 54, 66; see p. 16 for another example. On taking land together, see pp. 63-64 and Walker, Wakefield, pp. 5, 40-41, 214, 288.
7. Walker, Wakefield, p. 308. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, I, trans. W. P. Baildon, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 36 (1906), p. 182. Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 162-163. David Roden, "Fragmentation of Farms and Fields, in the Chiltern Hills, Thirteenth Century and Later" Mediaeval Studies 31 (1969), p. 229. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, IV, trans. John Lister, The Yorkshire Archaeological Record Society Series 78 (1950), p. 10.
8. R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), p. 100. Wakefield, IV, pp. 19, 131. The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, V, trans. J. P. Walker, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 109 (1945), p. 7. Walker, Wakefield, p. 25.
9. Eleanor Searle, "Seigneurial Control of Women's Marriages: The Antecedents and Function of Merchet in England," Past and Present 82 (1979), p. 40. Spufford, Contrasting Communities, pp. 116-117, 163. J. Z. Titow, "Some Differences between Manors and the Effects on the Condition of the Peasant in the Thirteenth Century," Agricultural History Review 10 (1962), pp. 7-13.
10. J. R. Ravensdale, "Deaths and Entries: The Reliability of the Figures of Mortality in the Black Death in Miss F. M. Page's Estates of Crowland Abbey, and Some Implications for Land Holding," in Land, Kinship, and Life-Cycle, ed. Richard Smith (forthcoming) and Judith Bennett, "Medieval Peasant Marriage: An Examination of Marriage Licence Fines in the Liber Gersumarum," in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed. J. A. Raftis (Toronto, 1981), p. 205, found that on Ramsey Abbey, from 1398 to 1458, only 47 of the 426 merchet payments recorded were from widows. Razi, Halesowen, pp. 63, 138, found 63 percent of widows remarrying shortly after the husband's death in the preplague period. Following the Black Death only 10 percent remarried.
11. Robert S. Gottfried, Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth-Century England: The Medical Response and the Demographic Consequences (New Brunswick, NJ., 1978), p. 180, found that 10 percent of the testators mentioned a second spouse. But wills could well have considerable underreporting. P. E. H. Hair, "Bridal Preganancy in Earlier Rural England, Further Examined," Population Studies 24 (1970), p. 64. R. S. Schofield and E. A. Wrigley, "Remarriage Intervals and the Effect of Marriage Order on Fertility," in Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past, J. Dupiquier, E. Helin, P. Laslett, M. Livi-Bacci, S. Sogner, eds. (London, 1981), pp. 212, 214. In the eighteenth century 48 percent of the men remarried within one year and 37 percent of the women remarried. For men the interval was 12.6 months and for women, 19.4 months. Michael M. Sheehan, "The Influence of Canon Law on the Property Rights of Married Women in England," Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963), p. 121.
12. Bedfordshire Wills, no. 183, and English Wills, pp. 13-14.
13. Bedfordshire Wills, no. 62, and p. 55.
14. Chalgrave, p. 29. Wakefield, I, p. 232.
15. Chalgrave, p. 56. Walker, Wakefield, pp. 102, 104, 150, 253, 270, 285. Wakefield, I, pp. 140, 219, 223, 232, 243.
16. Just. 2/67 in. 15.
17. Hilton, English Peasantry, p. 108. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunni- sett, The Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), p. 42. Just. 2/104 m. 10d.
Chapter 15. Old Age and Death
1. One version is in Robert [Mannyng] of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, quoted in George Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), pp. 154-156. Homans took this as an indication that the son dwelling with the father was the norm.
2. Jack Goody, "Aging in Non Industrial Societies," in Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences (New York, 1976), Robert H. Binstock and Ethel Shanas, eds., pp. 117-129. More detailed discussion may be found in Jack Goody, Death, Property, and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the Lodagaa of West Africa (Stanford, 1961), pp. 273-283. John C. Caldwell, Theory of Fertility Decline (New York, 1982), has proposed a theory that wealth (or benefits) always flow from the young to the old and as a consequence, in a family-based economy, the old benefit from having large families to take care of them. But, as he himself recognizes (pp. 217-222), the development of the West differed from that of current Third World economies. Furthermore, his model, being a demographic one, focuses on adults in their prime rather than the aged.
3. Robert [Mannyng] of Brunne's Hander Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS, o.s. 19 (London, 1901), pp.43, 202-206.
4. B. H. Putnam, The Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers during the First Decade after the Black Death (New York, 1908), pp. 249-250. Gransden, "Childhood and Youth," pp. 12-14. She discusses the tensions between youth and old age that appear in chronicles. Creighton Gilbert, "When Did a Man in the Renaissance Grow Old?" Studies in the Renaissance 14 (1967), pp. 7-32, found that men described themselves as old at fifty or before.
5. E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 250-252, found that at age 30 for 1550-1599 expectation of life was 29.2 for males and 30.2 for females. The expectation of life at birth for the same period was 42.5. Their back projection for earlier in the century was 36.8. Don Brothwell, "Palaeodemography and Earlier British Populations," World Archaeology 4 (1972), p.84. Robert Gottfried, Epidemic Disease in Fenth-Century England: The Medical Response and the Demographic Consequences (New Brunswick, NJ., 1978), p. 160, found that 22 percent of the testators could be estimated to be over 50, but this is too high for the overall population since only those with wealth to bestow left wills.
6. Peter Laslett, Family Lift and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1977), pp.181-189.
7. David Herlihy and Christiana Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et lours families: Une Etude du catasto Florentine de 1427 (Paris, 1978), pp. 374-378.
8. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 159-161.
9. Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth a
nd Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974), p. 112.
10. Elaine Clark, "Some Aspects of Social Security in Medieval England," journal of Family History 7 (1982), pp. 307-320.
11. Chertsey Abbey Court Rolls, Abstract, ed. Elsie Toms, Surrey Record Society 21 (1937), p. xxix. See also Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor, ed. Marian K. Dale, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 28 (1950), p. 18.
12. Clark, "Some Aspects of Social Security," p. 310.
13. Eleanor Searle, "Seigneurial Control of Women's Marriages: The Antecedents and Function of Merchet in England," Past and Present 82 (1979), p. 32. In another case the father held on to one-half the land for life, with that portion reverting to the son-inlaw and daughter at his death.
14. Chertsey Abbey, p. xxix.
15. Clark, "Some Aspects of Social Security," p. 311.
16. Ibid., p. 312.
17. R. K. Field, "Worcestershire Peasant Buildings, Household Goods and Farming Equipment in the Later Middle Ages," Medieval Archaeology 9 (1965), pp. 126, 121. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakef eld, I, trans. W. P. Baildon, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 29 (1901), pp. 86, 203.
18. Clark, "Some Aspects of the Social Security," pp. 313-314.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., pp. 314-315. In general in East Anglia a third to a half of the landholdings went outside the family on the head of household's death, so that this pattern was consistent with the norm.
21. Thomas Held, "Rural Retirement Arrangements in Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-Century Austria: A Cross-Community Analysis," Journal of Family History 7 (1982), pp.228-252. Laslett, Family Life, pp. 208-213.
22. Clark, "Some Aspects of Social Security," p. 316.
23. Ibid.
24. Cicely Howell, "Peasant Inheritance Customs in the Midlands, 1280-1700," in Family and Inheritance, ed. J. Goody, J. Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson (Cambridge, 1976), pp.137-139.
25. Wakefield, I, 235-236. J. A. Raftis, Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Medieval English Village (Toronto, 1964), pp. 42-46.
26. Clark, "Some Aspects of Social Security," p. 315.
27. Bedfordshire Wills, 14819-1519, trans. Patricia Bell, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 48 (1966), no. 157. English Wills, 1498-1516, ed. A. F. Cirket, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 37 (1956), pp. 46, 49, 63.
28. English Wills, p. 46.
29. Bedfordshire Wills, no. 55.
30. English Wills, 14.
31. Laslett, Family Life, pp. 208-213.
32. English Wills, pp. 17-18, 22, 24. K. L. Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries in Britain (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 212-233. On page 232 she has an interesting breakdown of the age of parish priests in various counties: Of a total of 672 priests 12 percent were under 39; 30 percent, 40-49; 30 percent, 30-59; 21 percent, 60-69; and 7 percent over 70. Chantry priests definitely belonged to a graying profession. Peter Heath, The English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (London, 1969), pp. 183-186, has a discussion of various retirement arrangements for parish priests including keepers.
33. H. F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Medieval England (London, 1919), has an appendix with all of the extant returns of 1389 summarized. This has been used for information on provisions of parish gilds.
34. Just. 2/82 m. 3.
35. Just. 2/104 m. 7d.
36. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunnisett, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), p. 4.
37. Just. 2/200 m. 2. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 73.
38. Just. 2/17 tn. Id., 2/104 m. 32, 2/104 m. 10 an old woman (over sixty) was staying at the home of someone else and was crushed under a great cheese that fell on her; in 2/92 m. 4 a man (over sixty) was riding on a horse with two panniers on the side by the river when the horse tripped and he fell in.
39. Just. 2/18 m. 42.
40. The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford B. Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS o.s.212 (London, 1940), pp. 179-181.
41. Lowery Charles Wimberly, Death and Burial Lore in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, University of Nebraska Studies in Language, Literature, and Criticism 8 (Linton, 1927), pp. 215, 219, 224, 294, 307, 308.
42. Mary G. Segar, ed., A Mediaeval Anthology Being Lyrics and Other Short Poems Chiefly Religious (London, 1915), p. 132.
43. Thomas Wright and James 0. Halliwell, eds., Reliquiae Antiquae, II, (London, 1841), pp. 210-212.
44. Ibid., I, p. 58.
45. Bedfordshire Wills, p. 50.
46. Ibid. For the Tichemarch network, see pp. 59-60, 68-69, 75. English Wills, p. 66.
47. Ibid., p. 28.
48. Ibid., p. 29.
49. J. A. Raftis, "Changes in an English Village after the Black Death," Mediaeval Studies 29 (1967), p. 167. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, pp. 73, 49.
50. A. E. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, ed. H. M. Cam, M. Coate, and L. S. Sutherland (Oxford, 1938), pp. 221-222. Calendar of Coroners' Rolls of the City of London, ed. Reginald R. Sharpe (London, 1913), p. 5.
51. Richard Leighton Greene, The Early English Carols, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1977), no. 374.
52. Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, p. 249.
53. R. T. Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, A Critical Anthology (Evanston, Ill., 1964), pp. 73-74.
54. J. G. Hurst, "A Review of Archaeological Research to 1968," in Deserted Medieval Villages, ed. Maurice Beresford and J. G. Hurst (London, 1971), p. 135.
55. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 3.
56. Thomas Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory: An Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise Current During the Middle Ages (London, 1844), p. 31. Greene English Carols, pp. 216-232, for songs on preoccupation with death.
57. Bedfordshire Wills, p. 18.
Chapter 16. Surrogate Parents and Children
1. Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1972), p. 162.
2. Louis Haas, "Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in the North of England, 1250-1450," M. A. Thesis, Ohio State University (1982), pp. 20-25.
3. Robert [Mannyng] of Brunne's Handyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS, o.s. 119 (1901), pp. 303-305.
4. Haas, "Baptism and Spiritual Kinship," pp. 78-79, 83-84, 86. Jack Goody, The Development of Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 73-75, says that godparents were supposed to take in orphans.
5. Bedfordshire Wills, 1480-1519, trans. Patricia Bell, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 45 (1966), p. 60.
6. Michael Bennett, "Spiritual Kinship and Baptismal Names in Traditional European Society," in Principalities, Power, and Estates, ed. L. O. Frappe (Adelaide, 1979), pp. 4-8.
7. A Volume of English Miscellanies, Surtees Society 85 (1890), pp. 35-52.
8. Zvi Razi, Life, Marriage, and Death in the Medieval Parish: Economy, Sociey, and
Demography in Halesowen, 1270-1400 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 105.
9. English Wills, 1498-1526, ed. A. F. Cirket, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 37 (1956), p. 73. Testamenta Eboracensia: A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York, III, Surtees Society 45 (1865), p. 203.
10. English Wills, p. 20, 26. Bedfordshire Wills, pp. 89-90.
11. English Wills, pp. 27-28, 36, 29-30, 42.
12. English Wills, p. 82.
13. Just. 2/18 m. 57d., 2/204 m. Id. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunnisett, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), p. 105.
14. In folklore evil stepmothers (mothers rather than fathers are prevalent) play a variety of nasty tricks on their stepchildren. One turns her stepson and stepdaughter into a "Laily worm and a mackrel of the sea"; others turn them into animals or very ugly women. Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, I, (Boston, 1883), nos. 31. 36. Charles Wimberley, Folklore in English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Chicago, 1928), pp. 51, 57, 62, 96, 207-213. In a poignant Danish ballad the mother's ghost returns and finds her children all crying and the baby not nursed. She feeds them and combs t
heir hair and then threatens her former husband with another visitation if he does not look after their children. Ibid., pp. 266-267. Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (Totowa, NJ., 1977), p. 110. Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, V, trans. J. P. Walker, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 109 (1945), p. 5, for example of stepdaughter suing stepfather.
15. W. G. Hoskins, "Murder and Sudden Death in Medieval Wigston," Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society 21 (1940-41), pp. 179-183.
16. Bedfordshire Coroners' Rolls, p. 73.
17. Calendar of Nottinghamshire Coroners' Inquests, 1485-1558, ed. R. F. Hunnisett, Thoroton Society Record Series 25 (1969), p. 93.
18. English Wills, p. 15, 32, 34.
19. A. E. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, ed. H. M. Cam, M. Coate, L. S. Sutherland (Oxford, 1958), pp. 242-243. Chertsey Abbey Court Rolls, Abstract, trans. Elsie Toms, Surrey Record Society 21 (1937), pp. xv, xx, xxviii. The widow was the most common guardian, but if the child were an orphan the court made guardian arrangements. The child and guardian came to the court and the guardian paid an entrance fine. Free peasants owed wardship to the lord: Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor, 1278-1313, ed. Marian K. Dale, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 28 (1950), p. 63.
20. Court Roll of the Manor of Wakefield, IV, trans. John Lister, The Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 78 (1930), pp. 126, 127, 130.
21. Just. 2/18 ms. 45, 5; 2/104 m. 27.
22. Thomas C. Rumble, The Breton Lays in Middle English (Detroit, 1965), pp. 49-50, 86-88, 128.
The Ties That Bound Page 41