Litigating Women by Teresa Phipps Deborah Youngs

Author:Teresa Phipps, Deborah Youngs [Teresa Phipps, Deborah Youngs]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367230289
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Law and culture in the north-east

In many of the locations in north-eastern England examined here, female tenants were active in court much like their male counterparts; these north-eastern courts exhibited degrees of concern over women’s behaviour alongside varying actions by and views of women. The exception was Durham priory, where female tenants were declining and women were more likely to appear as scolds or fornicators if they appeared in court at all. In the courts examined in this essay, women were more active in the lay-held manor of St Helens Auckland, and involved in more types of litigation, than any other estate. Unfortunately, there are so few records that there is no way to say if this is the random luck of surviving court rolls. The second distinction is that women on the bishopric estate and St Helen’s Auckland usually were plaintiffs pursuing their own pleas, whereas on the Durham priory estate women were more likely to appear as defendants in pleas of trespass, or for disorder as perpetrators and victims. This pattern is rooted in or at least correlative with landholding, as discussed above. Along with this, the bishopric villages were more stable in terms of interpersonal relations than the priory villages, at least as reported to the court.

The ability of women to act in north-eastern courts seems to correlate with places with more female tenants. Where women were active and successful litigants, women also appear in other more visible activities such working the land, breaking bylaws, and marketing of agrarian produce – not selling food products such as bread and ale but the raw grains, or providing wool for processing. Most persons involved in these activities were men, and as such men dominated local society and the courts. But women had some access to these roles, could occupy them, and succeed in them (even if they could not rise as high as some men). When they encountered people not of this group, such as servants or the landless, their legal success is not surprising. Women who were not tenants, and especially female servants, appeared in court mainly for activities that were more domestic (such as brewing and selling ale out of the house) or for verbal and sexual misbehaviour; and they were more likely to fare poorly in court.

The connection between women as tenants and women as litigants indicates that the space for women to act as a litigant in the courts of north-eastern England depended on their access to roles predominantly occupied by men, which intersected with the intensity and focus of patriarchal culture in those localities. Women as tenants serve as the primary example of this argument. Where women formed a regular if small proportion of tenants and participated actively in the land market, namely in the Durham bishopric villages and Wakefield manor, men in authority focussed on tenant status rather than their gender. This correlated with a less negative view of women overall and a greater likelihood of women generally (and not just female tenants)

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