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Centre for Law and History Research Publication: 'Women in the Medieval Common Law'

Gwen Book

18 May 2021

A new book by Professor of Legal History Gwen Seabourne, 'Women in the Medieval Common Law', published by Routledge, argues for re-examination of some previous conclusions on the relationship between women and the common law.

Legal history, as taught in law schools, has not always been particularly interested in exploring the place within the common law of those other than free white men. In fact, a line in an 1897 letter from F.W. Maitland, one of the ‘fathers’ of the discipline, gives some hint of an idea of women as a distraction from the legal historian’s core business:

‘Meanwhile there are these women - drat them’[i]

The medieval period, which was Maitland’s great interest, was an era during which the common law expanded its scope, developed its institutions and procedures and came to be the domain of professional lawyers. None of these changes was without a gender dimension, though one would not necessarily know this, from a great deal of ‘classical’ legal history writing in the tradition of Maitland.

Professor Gwen Seabourne’s new book, Women in the Medieval Common Law, argues that, more than a century on, there is still a great deal more which could, and should, be done to bring women into the mainstream of legal historical study. Doing so would enable legal history to re-connect with, benefit from and contribute to wider legal scholarship and historical scholarship, in both of which close consideration of women, sex and gender has rightly become standard practice.

Women and the Medieval Common Law examines the views of women held by medieval lawyers and legislators, and considers medieval women’s treatment by and participation in the processes of the common law. Surveying a wide range of points of contact between women and the common law, from their appearance (or not) in statutes, through their participation (or not) as witnesses, to their treatment as complainants or defendants, it argues for re-examination of some previous conclusions on the relationship between women and the common law, and highlights the interest, the complexity and the many outstanding questions which are missed or glossed over, if the common law of medieval England is examined without attention to sex and gender.

The book aims to encourage current and future heirs of Maitland, whilst building on his formidable work, not to ‘drat’ women, but to adopt a different view:   

‘Meanwhile there are these women – include and study them!'

Further information

For further information about this publication, please contact Gwen Seabourne.

Gwen Seabourne is Professor of Legal History in the University of Bristol Law School. She specialises in medieval legal history, and has written on medieval crime, economic regulation and medieval women.

The Centre for Law and History Research brings together  internationally-recognised expertise in the history of law over many centuries and several jurisdictions, with a variety of academic perspectives. The Centre exists to fosters excellent research in this field, individual and collaborative, and to forge links between disciplines and institutions, amongst scholars with an interest in examining law in its historical dimension.

 

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