Stolen Women In Medieval England

The first comprehensive exploration of women's multifaceted experiences of forced and consensual ravishment in medieval England.

What was the status of women in the Middle Ages? How have women fared in the hands of historians? And, what is the current state of research about women in the Middle Ages? Susan Mosher Stuard addresses these questions in a collection of essays that delve in to the history and historiography of women in medieval England, France, Italy, and Germany. Contributors include Barbara Hanawalt, Diane Owen Hughes, Suzanne Wemple, Denise Kaiser, and Martha Howell. One of the most interesting observations made in Women in Medieval History and Historiography is the way in which the history of women in each country has followed a distinct course that is in rhythm with other concerns of national historical writing. Women in Medieval History and Historiography will interest historians, scholars of women's studies, and medievalists.

Royal women did much more to wield power besides marrying the king and producing the heir. Subverting the dichotomies of public/private and formal/informal that gender public authority as male and informal authority as female, this book examines royal women as agents of influence. With an expansive chronological and geographic scope—from ancient to early modern and covering Egypt, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Asia Minor—these essays trace patterns of influence often disguised by narrower studies of government studies and officials. Contributors highlight the theme of dynastic loyalty by focusing on the roles and actions of individual royal women, examining patterns within dynasties, and considering what factors generated loyalty and disloyalty to a dynasty or individual ruler. Contributors show that whether serving as the font of dynastic authority or playing informal roles of child-bearer, patron, or religious promoter, royal women have been central to the issue of dynastic loyalty throughout the ancient, medieval, and modern eras.

The non-judicial confinement of women is a common event in medieval European literature and hagiography. The literary image of the imprisoned woman, usually a noblewoman, has carried through into the quasi-medieval world of the fairy and folk tale, in which the 'maiden in the tower' is one of the archetypes. Yet the confinement of women outside of the judicial system was not simply a fiction in the medieval period. Men too were imprisoned without trial and sometimes on mere suspicion of an offence, yet evidence suggests that there were important differences in the circumstances under which men and women were incarcerated, and in their roles in relation to non-judicial captivity. This study of the confinement of women highlights the disparity in regulation concerning male and female imprisonment in the middle ages, and gives a useful perspective on the nature of medieval law, its scope and limitations, and its interaction with royal power and prerogative. Looking at England from 1170 to 1509, the book discusses: the situations in which women might be imprisoned without formal accusation of trial; how social status, national allegiance and stage of life affected the chances of imprisonment; the relevant legal rules and norms; the extent to which legal and constitutional developments in medieval England affected women's amenability to confinement; what can be known of the experiences of women so incarcerated; and how women were involved in situations of non-judicial imprisonment, aside from themselves being prisoners.

This is the first in-depth, comparative study of women's access to justice in medieval English towns. It compares the records of Nottingham, Chester and Winchester and a wide range of legal actions to highlight the variable nature of women's legal status in actions that arose from the complex, messy ties of everyday life.

Award-winning author Susan Higginbotham's The Stolen Crown is a compelling tale of one marriage that changed the fate of England forever On May Day, 1464, six-year-old Katherine Woodville, daughter of a duchess who has married a knight of modest means, awakes to find her gorgeous older sister, Elizabeth, in the midst of a secret marriage to King Edward IV. It changes everything — for Kate and for England. Then King Edward dies unexpectedly. Richard III, Duke of Gloucester, is named protector of Edward and Elizabeth's two young princes, but Richard's own ambitions for the crown interfere with his duties... Lancastrians against Yorkists: greed, power, murder, and war. As the story unfolds through the unique perspective of Kate Woodville, it soon becomes apparent that not everyone is wholly good or evil. "A sweeping tale of danger, treachery, and love, The Stolen Crown is impossible to put down!" —Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Cleopatra's Daughter

Drawing on a wide body of evidence, the book argues that the support of women was vital to the persistence of piracy around the British Isles at least until the early seventeenth century. The emergence of long-distance and globalized predation had far reaching consequences for female agency.

Drawing on a wide range of legal and literary sources, this book offers a comprehensive investigation into the acceptability of violence in marriage at a time when social expectations of gender and marriage were in transition.