Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2022
In 1364 a cause of divorce a vinculo was brought in a York court by a certain Edmund Dronesfeld against his reputed wife Margaret de Donbarr, on the grounds of her previous marriage in Scotland. The story unfolded by the witnesses, whose depositions are the only remaining record of the cause, is a strange one, which reflects the unsettled conditions of life on the border and in northern England during the long-drawn-out Scottish wars, and the further confusion introduced by the Black Death. The questions put by Edmund’s side were intended to prove that Margaret’s name was originally Agnes, that she had married in Scodand, eighteen years before, a man named William de Brighan, who was still alive, and that Edmund himself had not known this when he had ‘married’ her at Bedale six years later.
1 Helmholz, Richard H., Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge 1974)Google Scholar, has discussed the forms of pleading in matrimonial causes in some detail and has quoted some of the material used here.
2 I owe to Professor D. E. R. Watt of St Andrews the suggestion that this place may be identified with Leitholm, now a chapelry in the parish of Eccles.
3 In a previous reference to this paper SCH II p 218, I suggested incorrectly that this criticism applied to Agnes/Margaret.
4 Professor Watt has pointed out to me that the countess Agnes of Dunbar was known later in the middle ages as ‘Black Agnes’.
5 I owe this suggestion to Professor Watt. See also An Historical Atlas of Scotland, ed Peter McNeill and Randal Nicholson, Conference of Scottish Medievalists (St Andrews 1975) maps 63-45.
6 For a transcript of this cause see appendix two.
7 Ladurie, E. Le Roy, Montaillou, Village Occitan de 1294 a 1324 (Paris 1975).Google Scholar
8 YBI, CPF 33.
9 Lincolnshire Archives Office, episcopal register 9, fol 65, William de Swynflet resigned Mablethorp St Mary 17 September 1349.
