Cordelia Beattie & Matthew Frank Stevens 
Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe 

Fresh approaches to how premodern women were viewed in legal terms, demonstrating how this varied from country to country and across the centuries.


There has been a tendency in scholarship on premodern women and the law to see married women as hidden from view, obscured by their husbands in legal records. This volume provides a corrective view, arguing that the extent to which the legal principle of
coverture applied has been over-emphasized. In particular, it points up differences between the English common law position, which gave husbands guardianship over their wives and their wives’ property, and the position elsewhere in northwest Europe, where wives’ property became part of a community of property. Detailed studies of legal material from medieval and early modern England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Ghent, Sweden, Norway and Germany enable a better sense of how, when, and where the legal principle of
coverture was applied and what effect this had on the lives of married women. Key threads running through the book are married women’srights regarding the possession of moveable and immovable property, marital property at the dissolution of marriage, married women’s capacity to act as agents of their husbands and households in transacting business, and married women’s interactions with the courts.


Cordelia Beattie is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh; Matthew Frank Stevens is Lecturer in Medieval History at Swansea University


Contributors: Lars Ivar Hansen, Shennan Hutton, Lizabeth Johnson, Gillian Kenny, Mia Korpiola, Miriam Muller, S.C. Ogilvie, Alexandra Shepard, Cathryn Spence.

Table of Content

Introduction: Uncovering Married Women – Cordelia Beattie and Matthew Frank Stevens

When Two Worlds Collide: Marriage and the Law in Medieval Ireland – Gillian Kenny

Inheritance, Property and Marriage in Medieval Norway – Lars Ivar Hansen

Spousal Disputes, the Marital Property System, and the Law in Later Medieval Sweden – Mia Korpiola

Married Women, Crime and the Courts in Late Medieval Wales – Lizabeth Johnson

Peasant Women, Agency and Status in Late Thirteenth- and Early Fourteenth-century England: Some Reconsiderations – Miriam Muller

London’s Married Women, Debt Litigation and Coverture in the Court of Common Pleas – Matthew Frank Stevens

Married Women, Contracts and Coverture in Late Medieval England – Cordelia Beattie

Property, Family and Partnership: Married Women and Legal Capability in Late Medieval Ghent – Shennan Hutton

‘For His Interest’?: Women, Debt and Coverture in Early Modern Scotland – Cathryn Spence

The Worth of Married Women Witnesses in the English Church Courts, 1550-1730 – Alexandra Shepard

Married Women, Work and the Law: Evidence from Early Modern Germany – Sheilagh Ogilvie