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Women, Posthumous Benefaction, and Family Strategy in Pre-Conquest England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Julia Crick
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Extract

In the early Middle Ages it was men who, with their resort to armed might, were the plunderers of church property, though some among them did contribute to its increase. Women, and especially widows, were more positively involved with the church, as givers rather than as receivers.

When Jack Goody put more than a thousand years into the few hundred pages of his Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, he could be allowed a little judgmental rhetoric. The documentation from early medieval Europe, unevenly distributed across very diverse situations, may indeed yield fewer examples of female than male predation, and perhaps more examples of female than male benefaction. But, since Goody wrote, historians have been increasingly alerted to complex relationships among individuals, property, and the church, which may extend far beyond the scope of individual documents, across several generations. Goody's female “givers” take on a new complexion in an environment in which donations can be more apparent than real, where a land transfer may prove no more than a social gesture. In such circumstances, identifying the originators of grants, let alone separating male and female action, becomes a delicate process. In the following article, female involvement is considered in the context of pre-Conquest wills, a body of documents that could be interpreted as classic evidence that female “givers” literally as well as morally stood in credit with the church.

The prominence of women in pre-Conquest wills has long been noted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , October 1999 , pp. 399 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1999

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References

1 Goody, Jack, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), p. 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My emphasis.

2 With notable exceptions such as Ælfthryth, wife of King Edgar and mother of Æthelred II, on whom see Meyer, M. A., “Women and the Tenth Century English Monastic Reform,” Revue bénédictine 87 (1977): 51–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For two perceived female enemies of the church, although not territorial predators, see Nelson, J. L., “Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Medieval Women, ed. Baker, D. (Oxford, 1978), pp. 31–77Google Scholar.

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6 They represent the results of an extensive (but not exhaustive) search through Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968)Google Scholar, supplemented by examples from narrative texts (as cited). I am extremely grateful to S. E. Kelly for access to her revised version of Sawyer's list prior to publication.

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9 “Wills” is a convenient shorthand in common use to describe a very miscellaneous group of documents; see Pollock, Frederick and Maitland, Frederic William, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1968), 2:317–21Google Scholar.

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12 McLaughlin, M., Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), pp. 138–53Google Scholar; White, , Custom, pp. 153–58Google Scholar; cf. Sheehan, , The Will, p. 16Google Scholar; see also Hazeltine, H. D., in Whitelock, D., ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, 1930), pp. xviii–xxGoogle Scholar.

13 Compare Rosenwein, , To Be the Neighbor, pp. 122–25Google Scholar.

14 Records of bequests employ few technical tenurial terms. The arrangements laid down in many documents amount to usufruct, but no descriptive term is used.

15 While Æthelflæd made reversionary grants to her sister and brother-in-law in accordance with the terms of her father's will (e.g., Cockfield), she also delayed the passage of two of her father's reversionary grants destined for religious houses by granting to her sister a lifetime interest (Lavenham, Peldon, Mersea). Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1483, 1486, 1494; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 14, 15, 2; see the paragraph following. On the property of Godgifu, see Clarke, P. A., The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford, 1994), p. 69Google Scholar; and discussed by Crick, , “Men, Women and Widows: Some Implications of the Terminology of Widowhood in Pre-Conquest England,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Cavallo, S. and Warner, L. (London, 1999), pp. 24–36Google Scholar.

16 Stafford, , Unification and Conquest, p. 175Google Scholar.

17 Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 15, pp. 38–39Google Scholar, and on the grant by Æthelflæd, see no. 14. My brackets.

18 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1519; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 32. On Ketel, a thegn of Archbishop Stigand, see Brooks, N. P., “Arms, Status and Warfare in Late-Saxon England,” in Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, D. (London, 1978), pp. 81, 87–92Google Scholar.

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20 Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”

21 Whether it was she who first promised the estate to Christ Church remains a moot point. Wulfgyth's husband, Ælfwine, probably predeceased her, so we cannot rule out the possibility that she herself held the land as a reversionary grant.

22 Compare Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”

23 Both hinted at, but not tested in print, by Stafford, Pauline, Unification and Conquest, pp. 174–76Google Scholar.

24 On widows as testatrixes see Stafford, , Unification and Conquest, p. 176Google Scholar.

25 Compare Stafford, , Unification and Conquest, pp. 174–75Google Scholar, on female land-holding in general.

26 Compare the fate of the bequest by Ulf and Madselin in Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, pp. 208–9Google Scholar.

27 Compare Harmer F. E., , Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1914), no. 7Google Scholar; also Wormald, P., “A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits,” Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988): 247–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, e.g., nos. 18, 65; cf. Crick, , “Post-humous Obligation and Family Solidarity,” in Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, ed. Frazer, B. and Tyrrell, A. (Leicester, in press)Google Scholar; and Brooks, Nicholas, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), p. 303Google Scholar.

28 Those transactions clearly signaled as bequests are marked “a.” In the case of three of the writs (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1090, 1117, 1119), it is not made explicit that the grants were to be delivered after the donors' death, but the omission may not be significant, given the jejune wording of writs. One writ specifically recording a bequest, that naming Æthelric and Gode (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1118), is of dubious authenticity; see Harmer, F. E., Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 297–99, 301–3Google Scholar. Becwædon occurs rarely; see Harmer, , Anglo-Saxon Writs, nos. 76, 84, 93, p. 495Google Scholar.

29 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1511; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 11.

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36 For example, the reversionary grants made by Leofric and his gebedda (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1232) and Eadnoth and his wife (Kemble, J. M., Codex diplomaticus aevi Saxonici, 6 vols. [London, 1839–1848], vol. 4, no. 919)Google Scholar or the wills of Thurkill and Æthelgyth (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 36) and Æthelnoth and Gænburg (Robertson, A. J., ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters [Cambridge, 1939], no. 3)Google Scholar.

37 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1200, 1500; Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 3, pp. 4–7Google Scholar. Æthelmod had no surviving relatives closer than his greatnephew, the Eadweald in whose name the grant was made. Æthelnoth and Gænburg's grant was conditional on their childlessness; if they were to have a child, he or she would inherit the estate.

38 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1511; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 11. The document mentions a lifetime grant to one Brihtwaru, but does not stipulate the nature of her connection with the donors. A dispute settlement involving Brihtwaru and Brihtric, apparently our testator, describes them as kin and so appears to rule out lineal descent; see Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 59, pp. 122–25, 178–79Google Scholar.

39 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1231; see Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.”

40 Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 9; Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 2.

41 Compare the action of Thurkill, husband of Thorgunnr (Macray, W. D., ed., Chronicon abbatiae rameseiensis [London, 1886], pp. 175–76Google Scholar), although, as Christopher Holdsworth has pointed out to me, Thurkill's action might have been exceptional; cf. also White, , Custom, p. 38Google Scholar.

42 Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 5, pp. 16–19Google Scholar; see also Ærnketel and Wulfrun (Kemble, Codex diplomaticus, no. 971), Osulf and Leofrun (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1608).

43 Note the mentions of burial arrangements (including collection of the body) in Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 9; and Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 2.

44 For a later instance of benefaction on childlessness, see Holdsworth, C. J., “The Cistercians in Devon,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. Harper-Bill, C., Holdsworth, C., and Nelson, J. (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 179–91Google Scholar, esp. p. 186.

45 Sheehan, The Will, p. 78, n. 55; Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 3; Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 7; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 5, 11, 39.

46 Discussed by Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”

47 Compare the comments of Stafford, , “Women and the Norman Conquest,” pp. 229–37Google Scholar.

48 On Anglo-Saxon widows, see Bremmer, R. H., “Widows in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood, ed. Bremmer, J. and van den Bosch, L. (London, 1995), pp. 58–88Google Scholar; and Rivers, T. J., “Widows' Rights in Anglo-Saxon Law,” American Journal of Legal History 19 (1975): 208–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.”

49 Yorke, B., “Æthelwold and the Politics of the Tenth Century,” in Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Yorke, B. (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 69, 73–75, 83Google Scholar.

50 Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, p. 141Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., p. 119; see now Kelly, S. E., ed., The Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey (Oxford, 1996), p. 56Google Scholar.

52 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1810. The grant was made in the episcopate of Æthelstan of Elmham who succeeded in or after 995, three years after the death of her husband, Æthelwine; Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 329Google Scholar. For her style, see Macray, , Chronicon abbatiae Rameseiensis, p. 58Google Scholar.

53 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1513; Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 17, pp. 30–33Google Scholar.

54 “In an oral statement while he was still living”: Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1808; Kemble, Codex diplomatics, no. 968.

55 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1064; Harmer, , Anglo-Saxon Writs, no. 2, pp. 121–22Google Scholar.

56 Wilburh is styled uidua.

57 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1521; Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 29, pp. 76–79Google Scholar.

58 Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 3, pp. 10–5Google Scholar; cf. Kelly, , ed., Charters of Shaftesbury, p. 56Google Scholar.

59 Æthelgifu, Wulfgyth.

60 Blake, E. O., ed., Liber Eliensis (London, 1962), Book I, chap. 59, pp. 130–31Google Scholar (Liber Eliensis book and chapter hereafter cited as I.59).

61 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1236; Kemble, Codex diplomatics, no. 926. One twelfth-century uicecomitissa of Devon, Aelicia, was so styled as the daughter of a sheriff; see Holdsworth, , “Cistercians,” p. 183Google Scholar; see also Pollock, and Maitland, , The History of English Law, 1:483Google Scholar.

62 Hart, , Charters of England, pp. 44–45, 80Google Scholar.

63 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1525–1525a; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 37 and 38.

64 Rosenwein, , To Be the Neighbor, pp. 49–51Google Scholar.

65 As Sarah Foot has pointed out to me.

66 Crick, “Women, Wills and Moveable Wealth.”

67 Pollock, and Maitland, , The History of English Law, 2:400–405Google Scholar.

68 Siflæd, in whose name two wills are preserved, constitutes the sole exception.

69 Brooks, , “Arms, Status and Warfare,” p. 81, also pp. 87–93Google Scholar; Abels, R., Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988), pp. 137–38, 263Google Scholar, n. 17. The Regularis concordia forbad payment of heriot by abbots and abbesses; see Holdsworth, C. J., “Benedictine Monks and Nuns of the Tenth Century,” in Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed. Keen, L. (Dorchester, in press)Google Scholar.

70 Note that in her son's will, the tax goes to his lord, Archbishop Stigand.

71 Brooks, , “Arms,” pp. 88–89Google Scholar.

72 A list: Ælfflæd—armlets and drinking cups; B list: Æthelgifu—dogs, horses, and money; Leofgifu money. Abels recognized Æthelgifu's grant as heriot in Lordship, p. 265, n. 45.

73 Above, pp. 407–9.

74 Compare two pre-Conquest marriage agreements: Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 76–77, pp. 148–51Google Scholar; see also Pollock, and Maitland, , The History of English Law, 2:365–66Google Scholar.

75 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1539; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 3.

76 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 939; Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 16.2.

77 Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 31, 13. Christopher Holdsworth has suggested to me that Thurstan might have sought to protect his wife's property, from the acquisitiveness of his own relatives; on Thurstan's widow, see Clarke, , The English Nobility, p. 42Google Scholar.

78 Ælfric Modercope (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 28), Æthelric Bigga (note only part of his property appears to be recorded: Kelly, S. E., ed., Charters of St. Augustine's Abbey Canterbury and Minster-in-Thanet [Oxford, 1995], no. 38, p. 133Google Scholar), Ealdorman Æthelwold (Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 20), Brihtric Grim (Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 7), Leofwine (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1522), Godric (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1518), Ulf (Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1532; Keynes, S., “The Will of Wulf,” Old English Newsletter 26, no. 3 [1993]: 16–21Google Scholar).

79 Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, nos. 32 and 15; Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1486.

80 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1235 and 1511. When Ælfswith bequeathed two plow lands to Rochester for her soul and that of her ancestors, she perhaps used her own inheritance; her husband granted land in a different estate to the same house for the same purpose. The fact that both grants consisted of the same quantity of land—two plow lands—may make the possibility of inheritance less likely.

81 See Crick, “Posthumous Obligation.”

82 Whitelock, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 10, pp. 24–25, 125–26Google Scholar.

83 On the leases associated with Saint Oswald see Sawyer, P. H., “Charters of the Reform Movement: The Worcester Archive,” in Tenth-Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and the Regularis Concordia, ed. Parsons, David (London, 1975), pp. 84–93Google Scholar; also King, V., “St. Oswald's Tenants,” in St. Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. Brooks, N. and Cubitt, C. (London, 1996), pp. 100–116Google Scholar.

84 For example, male lessees only are named in Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1309, 1313, 1353, 1341, 1374. I know of only three examples of a three-life lease that name a woman as the first lessee: Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1283 and 1309, in both of which the lessee is a kinswoman of the lessor, and 1385. In no. 1283, discussed later in this paragraph, the original lease was negotiated by Bishop Wærferth who then transferred it to his kinswoman; on no. 1309, see King, , “St. Oswald's Tenants,” p. 110Google Scholar.

85 For example, Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 109, 1275, 1326, 1345, 1348; Stevenson, J., ed., Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, 2 vols. (London, 1858), 1:477Google Scholar.

86 Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 32.

87 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1283; Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 16, pp. 28–31Google Scholar.

88 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1425; Crick, J., ed., The Charters of St. Albans (Oxford, in press), no. 15Google Scholar.

89 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos. 1309, 1385: discussed above, n. 84.

90 Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.” She is described as wif in the endorsement but this word may mean simply woman rather than wife; cf. n. 30 above.

91 Rosenwein, , To Be the Neighbor, pp. 109–43Google Scholar.

92 For an exception see the will of Ælfsige, bishop of Winchester (A.D. 951–58): Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 41.

93 See the terms of Ælfgar's will by which he granted several estates to religious houses reserving to his daughters' life interest. His daughters are promised other estates in addition but none with more than a lifetime interest. Discussed above, pp. 402–3.

94 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1533; Robertson, , ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 52–53Google Scholar.

95 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1808.

96 Ibid., no. 1064.

97 Dorothy Whitelock, with contributions by Ker, N. R. and Lord Rennell, , The Will of Æthelgifu (Oxford, 1968), p. 25Google Scholar. On the source of land used for benefaction see Campbell, J., “The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England,” Journal of the Haskins Society, ed. Patterson, R., 1 (1989): 23–37Google Scholar, esp. 25–26. John Hudson has raised with me the interesting question of to what extent the lands promised by donors were themselves subject to competing claims.

98 “Formless” is Maitland's adjective; see Pollock, and Maitland, , The History of English Law, 2:319Google Scholar.

99 That term could have encompassed abandoned as well as bereaved wives.

100 La Rocca, C. , “Pouvoirs des femmes, pouvoir de la loi dans l'Italie lombarde,” in Les femmes et pouvoirs des femmes (Lille conference, 1996)Google Scholar; see also Nelson, Janet L., “Commentary on the Papers of J. Verdon, S. F. Wemple and M. Parisse,” in Frauen in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Lebensbedingungen—Lebensnormen—Lebensformen, ed. Affeldt, Werner (Sigmaringen, 1990), pp. 330–32Google Scholar. I owe these references to Julia Smith.

101 See Dumville, D. N., Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar: Six Essays on Political, Cultural and Ecclesiastical Revival (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 177–78Google Scholar. On the evidence of the Domesday Book, see Halpin, P., “Women Religious in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Journal of the Haskins Society, ed. Patterson, R., 6 (1994): 103–4Google Scholar; and Gilchrist, R., Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994), p. 33Google Scholar.

102 Compare Stafford, , Unification and Conquest, pp. 174–75Google Scholar.

103 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1533; Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 26.

104 Harmer, , Select English Historical Documents, no. 10, pp. 13–15, 47–49Google Scholar.

105 Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 15.

106 Compare White, , Custom, pp. 163–70Google Scholar.

107 Crick, “Men, Women and Widows.”

108 Compare Foot, , “Gender and Evidence in the Historiography of Anglo-Saxon Nunneries” (paper presented at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, 16 July 1997)Google Scholar; also Crick, , “Men, Women and Widows.” p. 32Google Scholar. Foot's ideas will be fully explored in her forthcoming volume Veiled Women: The Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England, 2 vols. (Aldershot, in press)Google Scholar.