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Hampshire Women as Landholders: Common Law Mediated by Manorial Custom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Sylvia Seeliger
Sylvia Seeliger
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK.
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The traditional idea of a landowner is inextricably bound up with concepts of maleness. The most frequently used word for a landowner is simply ‘landlord’, with the corresponding feminine form ‘landlady’ carrying quite different connotations. The law with regard to inheritance and marriage lends weight to this interpretation, since common law, until the mid-nineteenth century, decreed that married women could not own property or make contracts as individuals, in theory leaving only spinsters and widows as potential landowners. Yet scrutiny of manorial, enclosure, tithe and land tax documentation reveals that women commonly held land either as owners or occupiers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

References

1. Some examples are Bonfield, L., ‘Marriage Settlements and the “Rise of the Great Estates”: the Demographic Aspect’ Economic History Review, 32 (1979), 483–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonfield, , Marriage Settlements, 1601–1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (1983)Google Scholar; Clay, C., ‘Marriage Inheritance and the Rise of Large Estates’, Economic History Review, 21 (1968), 508–18Google Scholar; Habbakuk, H.J., ‘The Rise and Fall of English Landed Families, 1600–1800’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 29 (1979), 187–207: 30 (1980), 199–221:199–221; 31 (1981), 195–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. This is an expanded version of a paper given to the 16th session of the European Standing Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape at Turin in September, 1994. I would like to thank Dr. John Chapman, Dr. Keith Snell and an anonymous referee for their very helpful and constructive comments.

3. Baker, J.H., An Introduction to English Legal History (London, 1979), p. 232.Google Scholar For a very full discussion of the legal position of married women in relation to property see Holcombe, L., Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women's Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England (Toronto & Buffalo, New York, 1983)Google Scholar, particularly chapter 2, pp. 18–36 and chapter 3, pp. 37–47, and also Staves, S., Married Women's Separate Property in England 1660–1833 (Cambridge, Mass. 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7. Searle, E., ‘Seigneurial control’ pp. 30–31.Google ScholarBrand, and Hyams, (‘Seigneurial Control of Women's Marriage’, Past and Present, 99 (1983), 123–33)CrossRefGoogle Scholar take issue with Searle on the origins of merchet and prefer to see it primarily as a payment on marriage indicating villein status for the peasantry, though they do not dispute the inheritance issues in the honorial courts. Faith, Rosamond (also in ‘Seigneurial Control of Women's Marriage’, Past and Present, 99 (1983), 133–48)CrossRefGoogle Scholar inclines to the same view, but Searle's research highlights the tensions experienced on the practical level between the demands of primogeniture, the effects of common law on women' marriage and property, and the fluctuations of demography.

8. Franklin, P., ‘Peasant Widows’ “Liberation” and Remarriage before the Black Death’, Economic History Review, second series 39: 2 (1986), 186–204.Google Scholar For a fuller discussion of the workings of free bench, see Bennett, J., Women in the Medieval Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague (Oxford, 1987).Google Scholar Richard Smith considers peasant jointures and deathbed transfers as the main source of security for medieval widows and as a means of dealing with the problems of patriarchy in Kermode, J. (ed.), Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England (1993).Google Scholar

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10. Erickson, A.L., Women and Property in Early Modern England, (London, 1993).Google Scholar

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13. W(inchester) C(athedral) A(rchives) T2A/3/1 and T4/2/6/35 (interim catalogue) Exton manorial court rolls 1683–1852.

14. WCA, T2A/2/1/6–21 and T4/2/6/30–6.

15. H(ampshire) R(ecord) O(ffice) 15M52/27–29.

16. WCA T2A/2/1 /66–100, manor of Crondall surrenders, 1650–1870.

17. WCA T2A/2/1/66–100, 1650–1870.

18. HR0 4M51/61.

19. WCA T4/2/6/32.

20. For example, Hobsbawm, E.J., Industry and Empire (London, 1969), p. 98.Google Scholar

21. Reed, M., ‘The Peasantry of Nineteenth-Century England: a Neglected Class?’, History Workshop Journal, 18 (1984), 53–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reed, M., ‘Nineteenth-Century Rural England: A Case for “Peasant Studies”?’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 14 (1986–1987), 78–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howkins, A., ‘Peasants, Servants and Labourers: The Marginal Workforce in British Agriculture, c.1870– 1914’, Agricultural History Review, 42 (1994), 49–62.Google Scholar

22. Reed, M., ‘The peasantry’, p. 59.Google Scholar

23. HRO, 15M52/27–30, 33.

24. WCA, L(edger)B(ooks), XII, 18–19, 1671–18. In this preliminary survey, 10 out of the total 65 leaseholders were women, either by themselves or with others.

25. See Kain, R.J.P. and Prince, H.C., The Tithe Surveys of England ana Wales, (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar

26. These are Dogmersfield, Upeldon and Ovington.

27. These are Soberton, Hambledon, Catherington, Blendworth, Bedhampton, Kingston, Portsea, Farlington, Wymering, Widley, West Boarhunt, Portchester, Wicor, and Wickham. The award is HRO Q23/2/U/1.

28. The instances are in Faccombe, Fareham, Farringdon, Hamble, Hurstbourne Tarrant, Kingsclere and Wickham.

29. Return of Owners of Land, Vol. II, Part I, 1875, HMSO.

30. Jones, E.L., Agriculture and the Industrial Revolution, (Oxford, 1974).Google Scholar

31. See, for instance, HRO 102M71/E43, dated 1806.

32. In fact, the male minor tenants I have been looking at may not have been entitled to vote anyway. In most cases the properties concerned were too small to meet the copyhold and leasehold qualifications. For a discussion of the question of rural deference, see Nossiter, T.J., Influence, Opinion and Political Idioms in Reformed England: Case Studies from the North-East (1975).Google Scholar

33. Erickson, , Women and Property, pp. 223–36.Google Scholar