Beattie Cordelia, Stevens Matthew (eds.). Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe. Boydell Press,2013. — 264 р.. 2013

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.

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CONTENTS

FIGURES AND TABLES

CONTRIBUTORS

INTRODUCTION: UNCOVERING MARRIED WOMEN

INHERITANCE, PROPERTY AND MARRIAGE IN MEDIEVAL NORWAY

SPOUSAL DISPUTES, THE MARITAL PROPERTY SYSTEM AND THE LAW IN LATER MEDIEVAL SWEDEN

WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE: MARRIAGE AND THE LAW IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND

MARRIED WOMEN, CRIME ANDTHE COURTS IN LATE MEDIEVAL WALES

PEASANT WOMEN, AGENCY AND STATUS IN MID THIRTEENTH- TO LATE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND: SOME RECONSIDERATIONS

LONDON’S MARRIED WOMEN, DEBT LITIGATION AND COVERTURE IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS