¹ See a series of articles by Goody, J., ‘Inheritance, property and marriage in Africa and Eurasia’, Sociology, iii (1969), 55–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Bridewealth and dowry in Africa and Eurasia’, in Goody, J and Tambiah, S.J., Bridewealth and Dowry (Cambridge, 1973), 1–58Google Scholar, ‘Inheritance, property and women: some comparative considerations’, Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe 1200–1800, ed. Goody, J., Thirsk, J. and Thompson, E. P. (Cambridge, 1976), 10–36Google Scholar.

² Smith, R. M., ‘Some issues concerning families and their property in rural England 1250–1800’, in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. Smith, R. M. (Cambridge, 1984), 40–6Google Scholar developing estimates in Wrigley, E. A., ‘Fertility strategy for the individual and the group’, in Historical Studies of Changing Fertility, ed. Tilly, C. (Princeton, N.J., 1978), 235–54Google Scholar and Goody, J. and Harrison, G.A., ‘Strategies of heirship’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, xv (1973), 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Goody, J., Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain (Cambridge, 1976), 10–36Google Scholar.

⁴ Leyser, K., Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottoman Saxony (1979), 58–62Google Scholar; Wemple, S. F., Women in Frankish Society, Marriage and the Cloister 500 to 900 (Philadelphia, 1981), 120–3Google Scholar; Duby, G., Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France (1978)Google Scholar; Duby, G., Le Chevalier, La Femme et Le Prilre (Paris, 1981Google Scholar; Eng. trans. 1983); Moore, R.I., ‘Family, community and cult on the eve of the Gregorian Reform’, ante, 5th ser., xxx (1980)Google Scholar; Searle, E., ‘Women and the legitimisation of succession at the Norman Conquest’, Proc. of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, iii (1980), 159–70Google Scholar; Holt, J. C., ‘Feudal society and the family in early medieval England: IV The heiress and the alien’, ante, 5th ser., xxxv (1985), 1–28Google Scholar; Searle, E., ‘Seigneurial control of women's marriage; the antecedents and function of merchet in England’, Past & Present, lxxxii (1979), 3–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gold, P. S., The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, 1985), 116–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One notable historically-minded anthropologist has taken this possibility of a centrifugal pull upon property still further and proposed a thesis that portrays the early medieval Christian Church as creating a doctrine and law of marriage that undermined the capacity both of lord and patrilineage to restrict the relative freedom of women to dispose of their property as they pleased and facilitated their marriage in ways that eventually maximized their freedom of individual choice in the matter so long as partners were sought outside rather than inside a strictly defined kin group. This interpretation, ultimately and ostensibly materialist in character, sees such a pattern as leading to a veritable haemorrhage of land, at least among the higher status groups, away from lineages and towards ecclesiastical ownership. From this argument developed in Goody, J., The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, it should be obvious that ‘diverging devolution’ has come to constitute a set of foundations upon which quite elaborate, indeed grandiose, edifices are thought to rest.

⁵ E. Power wisely wrote of women that their ‘…position in theory and law is one thing, their practical position in every day life another’. See ‘The Position of Women’ in The Legacy of the Middle Ages, ed. Crump, C. G. and Jacob, E.F. (Oxford, 1926), 401Google Scholar.

⁶ Stenton, D. M., The English Woman in History (1957), 76–9Google Scholar.

⁷ Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1968), 399–436Google Scholar; Plucknett, T. F. T., Legislation of Edward I (Oxford, 1949), 120–2Google Scholar; The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. Hall, G. D. G. (Nelson's Medieval Texts, 1965), chs. 6–7Google Scholar; Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England ed. Woodbine, G. trans., Thome, S. (4 vols., Cambridge Mass., 1968–1977), fos., 17–24Google Scholar, 60–61b, 92–8, 296–317, 312–23, 438–9; Donahue, C., ‘What causes fundamental legal ideas? Marital property in England and France in the thirteenth century’, Michigan Law Review, lxxix (1979), 64–7Google Scholar.

⁸ Raftis, J. A., Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Medieval Village (Toronto, 1964), 36–42Google Scholar.

⁹ Hilton, R. H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), 97Google Scholar; see too the particularly relevant discussion by Martine Segalen raising issues of significance for questions bearing upon female status in north-west European agricultural societies at all periods in herMari et Femme dans la societi paysanne (Paris, 1980Google Scholar; Eng. trans., 1983), 73–111 and Bennett, Judith M., ‘Women in late medieval England’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (12, 1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Searle (1979), 42.

¹¹ Milsom, S. F. C., The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (Cambridge, 1976), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Searle (1979), 18–29.

¹³ Ibid., 39.

¹⁴ The need for the lord's permission is readily evident in a dower plea cited by G. C. Homans from the abbot of St Albans, Herts, manor of Barnet in 1303 in which the wife's claim to dower, although it had been granted to her ad hostium ecclesiae, was nullified by the fact that it had not at that moment, through the payment of the license fee, gained the lord's approval, Homans, G. C., English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), 179–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See too, Smith, R. M., ‘Marriage processes in the English past: some continuities’, in The World We have Gained. Histories of Population and Social Structure, ed. Bonfield, L., Smith, R. and Wrightson, Keith (Oxford, 1986), 65–66Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Homans, 177–82; Searle (1979), 38–9.

¹⁶ Titow, J. Z., ‘Some differences between manors and their effects on the condition of the peasantry’, Agricultural History Review, x (1962)Google Scholar; Ravensdale, J., ‘Population changes and the transfer of customary land on a Cambridgeshire manor in the fourteenth century’, in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. Smith, R. M. (Cambridge, 1984), 197–225Google Scholar and Smith, R. M., ‘Some thoughts on “hereditary” and “proprietary” rights in land under customary law in thirteenth and early fourteenth century England’, Law and History Review, i (1983), 123–6Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Searle, (1979), 35.

¹⁸ A view that has received a forceful challenge from Hatcher, J., ‘English serfdom and villeinage: towards a reassessment’, Past & Present, xc (1981), 3–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see too, Harvey, P. D. A., ‘Custom and lordship in the medieval English village’, Medieval Village Research Group Thirteenth Annual Report (1983), 36Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Harvey, B. F., Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), 297Google Scholar; Bennett, H. S., Life on the English Manor, 1150–1400 (Cambridge, 1937), 244–5Google Scholar; Levett, A. E., Studies in Manorial History (Oxford, 1938), 236–7Google Scholar; Homans, 187–9; Searle (1979). 41.

²⁰ The abbots of Ramsey, for instance, seem to have been particularly disposed to behave in this fashion; see The Court Rolls of The Abbey of Ramsay and the Honour of Clare, ed. Ault, W. O. (New Haven, 1929), 207, 211, 270, 277 and Homans, 188Google Scholar.

²¹ On the Worcs. manor of Halesowen the annually recorded merchets constituted a marriage rate that rarely exceeded 5 per 1000, an implausibly low figure; see Razi, Z., Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270–1400 (Cambridge, 1980), 48Google Scholar, Table 8. For details of the calculations producing this estimate see Poos, L. R. and Smith, R. M., ‘“Legal windows onto historical populations”? Recent research on demography and the manor court in medieval England’’, Law and History Review, ii (1984), 145–6Google Scholar. In similar fashion, calculations based on 107 recorded merchets in the court proceedings of the two Essex manors of Great Waltham and High Easter, 1327–89, the 262 servile marriages on the abbot of Bury St Edmunds' Suff. manor of Redgrave, 1260–1319, the 440 marriage fines for 5 manors of the prior of Spalding in Lines., 1252–1300, and the 530 marriage fines paid 1297–1366 on the manors of Ivingho, East Meon and Adderbury, all in the estate of the bishop of Winchester, suggest marriage rates for customary females if based on recorded merchets, that never exceeded 7 per 1000 and were in fact much lower. See Poos, L. R., ‘Population and Resources in Two Fourteenth Century Essex Communities: Great Waltham and High Easter, 1327–1389’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Cambridge, 1984), 159–84Google Scholar based upon PRO DL30/63/790–841, Essex Record Office D/Dtu M239, BL Cotton Ch. xiii. 5 and PRO DL 43/2/32; University of Chicago Libr. (hereafter UCL), Bacon MSS 1–15 and 805; Myntling Register: Spalding Gentlemen's Soc. Libr.; Hallam, H. E., ‘Some thirteenth-century censuses’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., x (1958), 340–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, ‘Age at first marriage and age at death in the Lincolnshire Fenland, 1252–1478’, Population Studies, xxxix (1985), 55–70; Williams, J. P., ‘Marriage among the Customary Tenants of the Bishops of Winchester, 1297–1366’ (unpublished Fellowship dissertation, Trinity Coll., Cambridge, 1984), 12–14Google Scholar.

²² Based on evidence from Great Waltham and High Easter (Essex) where the mean holding size of families with daughters paying merchet was nearly double that of the average holding and Redgrave (Suff.) where only 50% of the tenants listed on an extent in 1289 had daughters paying merchet in the manorial court but held over 80% of the customary land area; see Poos and Smith (1984), 147–8.

²³ Ibid., 148 n.63.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Williams, ‘Marriage’, 18–20Google Scholar.

²⁶ It should, however, be noted that Rosamond Faith using the evidence in the court book of Park, a manor of St Albans, has taken issue with this view on finding what are certainly higher proportions of the customary tenantry paying for license to marry. However, almost 40% of tenants (a high figure even when allowance is made for the fact that not all men would have had daughters born or surviving to marry) appear not to have left evidence of marriage fines for daughters which she seems unable to explain. Faith, R., ‘Debate: Seigneurial control of women's marriage’, Past & Present, xcix (1983), 144Google Scholar. Nonetheless it is perhaps too easy to see this monitoring of marriage and the property transfer associated with it as encouraging endogamous marriage between the villeins of an individual manor in so far as it might be thought that a bride's or heiress's land could all too easily slip into the possession of a free tenant or under the control of another lord. It has been suggested that marrying out or to a foreigner was a privilege that had to be purchased indeed a liberty paid for with large sums of money. On the 3 Cambs. manors of the abbot of Crowland, 1324–39, 66% of first marriages described as providing the merchet payer with permission to marry extra homagium or ubicumque voluerit. The merchet sums do not suggest that the abbot was preoccupied with imposing fiscal disincentives for women marrying exogamously, for although the average sum paid for brides marrying infra homagium was approximately 2s that paid by out-marriers was only marginally larger at 2s 8d and those distinguished as marrying ubicumque voluerit paid amounts that were generally below 2s od. (See Cambridge University Libr. (hereafter CUL), Queens' Coll. Box 3; Smith, R. M., ‘Hypothèses sur la nuptialité en Angleterre aux XII^e–XIV^e siècles’, Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations xxxviii (1983), 55–6Google Scholar.) On the Winchester manors of East Meon, Nailsborne, Ivingho and Adderbury the differences between the fines paid for marriages within and outside the fee were not particularly large. 93% of recorded manorially endogamous marriages from a total of 225 were fined at 2s od or less and 83% of 253 exogamous marriages were for similar amounts. Furthermore sums were not evidently larger when the groom was classified as being a freeman. (See Williams, , ‘Marriage’, 31–3Google Scholar.)

²⁷ For example, Redgrave courts of 24 July 1261, 1 Nov. and 21 Nov. 1264 (UCL, Bacon MS 1), 27 Feb. 1281 (MS 4), 31 Dec. 1300 (MS 8) and 28 Feb. 1308 (MS 11); Wakefield court 9 Feb. 1333, The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield from October 1331 to September 1333, ed. Walker, S. S. (Yorks. Archeol. Soc., 1983), xii, 109Google Scholar; Select Pleas in Manorial and Other Seigneurial Courts ed. Maitland, F. W. (Selden Soc., 1888), 105Google Scholar, 107, 108, 112–20, 122, 128.

²⁸ I am grateful to Dr Hyams for allowing me to read his stimulating paper, ‘What did English villagers mean by Law’. See too Beckerman, J. S., ‘Customary Law in English Manorial Courts in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1972), 59Google Scholar.

²⁹ Smith, , ‘Some thoughts’, 98–107Google Scholar and Beckerman, , ‘Customary Law’, 30–111Google Scholar.

³⁰ Smith, , ‘Some thoughts’, 107–11Google Scholar.

³¹ Redgrave court, 27 Apr. 1289, UCL, Bacon MS 2.

³² Cashio courts of 12 Nov. 1259 and 9 Apr. 1263, BL, Add. MS 40626, fos. 9r, 10v.

³³ Redgrave courts of 29 Jan. 1261, 14 Mar. 1263 and 17 Sept. 1269, ULC, Bacon MS 2.

³⁴ Hyams, P. R., Kings, Lords and Peasants in Medieval England. The Common Law of Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1980), 267–8Google Scholar.

³⁵ For examples see Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen, ed. Chibnall, M. (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, new ser., v, 1982)Google Scholar. See too the discussion in Harvey, P. D. A., Manorial Records (1984)Google Scholar.

³⁶ King, E., Peterborough Abbey, 1086–1310: A Study in the Land Market (Cambridge, 1973), 103–4Google Scholar and Bean, J. M. W., The Decline of English Feudalism (Manchester, 1968), 79–126Google Scholar.

³⁷ The classic view is to be found in Vinogradoff, P., Villeinage in England (Oxford, 1892), 70Google Scholar.

³⁸ Bracton's Mote Book, ed. Maitland, F.W. (1887) 24, 170, 194bGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Hyams, P. R., ‘The origins of a peasant land market in England’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xxiii (1970), 24–5Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ For example, in the Barnet court of 27 Sept. 1247, ‘Gilbertus Sali dat domino xiiijd ut habeat licentiam accipiendi iij acras de Anicie filie Brithiene tenenda de domino sibi et heredibus suis …’ BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.1r. At Cashio in the Oct. court of 1242 Adam son of Walter received 3 acres and 1 messuage ‘de Johanne de Levesendene tenenda et habenda sibi et heredibus suis …’ BL, Add. MS 40626, fo.3r.

⁴¹ In the Cashio court 28 June 1238 Robert son of William ‘cepit x acras terre in hereditate de dono patris sui defuncti …’ BL, Add. MS 40626, fo.1r and at Park in 1237' Galfridus Bruman cepit terram Willelmi Gosewell in feodum et in hereditatem et dat de gersuma xijd' BL, Add. MS 40625, fo.1r. For earlier developments in the meaning of the phrase in feodo et hereditate see Holt, J. C., ‘Feudal society and the family in early medieval England: II. Notions of patrimony’, ante, xxxiii (1983), 210–18Google Scholar.

⁴² The typical entry so characteristic of the period 1260–90 took on forms such as are found in transactions from Bramfield's manor court in 1270, ‘Walterus atte Strate reddidit sursum in manu domini j acram et dimidiam terre que jacent juxta pratum et Ricardus atte Dene seisitus est inde faciendo inde servicia debita et dat ijs’ or ‘Ricardus Partrigh reddidit sursum in manu domini quamdam particulam terre que jacet ad le Brodehoke et dominus seisivit Thomam de Alderden et dicta placia faciendo etc. et dat pro seisina habenda vjd’, Herts. RO, 40702, fo.7r.

⁴³ For instance at a Bramfield court of 27 June 1299 ‘Mariota Partrich reddidit sursum in manu domini viij acras terre. Et Radulphus de Chelse dat domino dimidiam marcam pro dicta terra tenenda sibi et suis in villenagio faciendo inde servicia debita et consueta et dabit tallagium et merchettum ad voluntatem domini, Herts. RO, 40702, fo. 13V. In entries such as these, rather than saying that the grantee was seised, the transfer makes it very clear that he or she held in villeinage at the lord's will. It is therefore possible to identify three phases in the development of formulae used to record land transactions on the estates of the abbot of St Albans. For example, at Cashio, 1238–60 approximately 60% of the permanent transfers were made sibi et suis, but in the following period, to 1300, approximately 5% were so designated. After 1300 the transfer is made sibi et suis in almost 99% of cases. BL, Add. MS 40626, fos. 1–68. A similar chronology is to be found at Barnet where 65% of permanent transfers 1245–54 were sibi et suis, 1272–81 none and 1300–09 91%. BL, Add. MS 40167, fos. 1r–5r,14r–8r,26r–36v. At Park the phrase sibi et heredibus suis appears in 54.1% of permanent transfers, 1237–49, in 9.5% 1250–99 and in 94.3% 1300–49; at Codicote the comparable percentages are 56.2, 7.1 and 98.6. See Slota, L. A., ‘The Village Land Market on the St. Albans Manors of Park and Codicote 1237–1399’ (unpublished University of Michigan Ph.D. 1984), 104Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ The East Anglian court rolls of the abbot of Bury St Edmunds, beginning mostly in the early 1260s, while showing from that date occasional evidence of land surrendered to the use of another do not seem to have designated that land as held sibi et heredibus suis until the 1280s. At Redgrave in 1284, for instance, an effort seems to have been made to employ a standard form for inter vivos transfers incorporating both elements. See, Smith, ‘Some thoughts’, 108–9Google Scholar. Similar developments are detectable in the early 1280s on the prior of Norwich's Norfolk manors of Sedgeford, Newton and Hindringham. See Williamson, J., ‘Norfolk: thirteenth century’ in The Peasant Land Market in Medieval England, ed. Harvey, P. D. A. (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, 58 and Williamson, J., ‘Peasant Holdings in Medieval Norfolk Villages in the Thirteenth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1976), 113Google Scholar. For the arrival of these forms in the 1290s in Great Waltham and High Easter see the court held 11 June 1295, PRO, DL 30/62/772, and in the early 14th century on the Cambs. manors of the abbot of Crowland, see Page, F. M., The Estates of Crowland Abbey, A Study in Manorial Organisation (Cambridge, 1934), 336, 346Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Hyams, , King, 44 n.33Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ The later start to the series of manorial court proceedings on the abbot of Bury St Edmunds' manors makes it impossible to establish whether that administration had during the 1260s and 1270s changed from an earlier practice in not using the phrase sibi et heredibus suis in the recording of inter-personal land transfers among its customary tenants.

⁴⁷ Smith, R. M., ‘Families and their land in an area of partible inheritance: Red-grave, Suffolk 1260–1320’, in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, 151–9Google Scholar; Smith, , ‘Some thoughts’, 115–18Google Scholar; Campbell, B. M.S., ‘Population pressure, inheritance and the land market in a fourteenth-century peasant community’ in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, 107–27Google Scholar. Clarke, C., ‘Peasant Society and Land Transactions in Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, 1277–1325’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1985), 92–5Google Scholar; Slota, , ‘Village Land Market’, 68, 146–50Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Cashio court 8 Dec. 1315, BL, Add. MS 40626, fo.38v.

⁴⁹ Cashio court 21 Apr. 1296, BL, Add. MS 40626, fo.25v.

⁵⁰ Codicote court 3 May 1331, BL, Stowe MS 849, fo.54r.

⁵¹ ‘Alditha le Colesmyth et Ricardus filius reddiderunt sursum in manu domini j messuagium et x acras terre in le Uppehende … Et Celleraria posuit in seisinam Beatriciam filiam suam et dat domino ijs per plegium Rogeri Prepositi’, court held 18July 1291, BL, Stowe MS 849, fo.20v.

⁵² For example, in the curia regis rolls of 9–10 Hen. III, nearly 200 entries, or about 20%, of the business related to disputed dower and they very frequently concerned land alienated by husbands to which the wife's dower right was attached. See Hall's, G. D. G. review of Curia Regis Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 9–10 Henry III, in English Historical Review, lxxiv (1959), 108Google Scholar.

⁵³ Pollock, and Maitland, , The History of English Law, ii. 413Google Scholar and Loengard, J. S., ‘“Of the gift of her husband”: English dower and its consequences in the year 1200’, in Women of the Medieval World, ed. Kirshner, J. and Wemple, S. F. (Oxford, 1985), 223–4Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Redgrave court held 1 July 1270, UCL, Bacon MS 2.

⁵⁵ ‘Cecilia Walshegge venit et petit versus Philipum Sellic dotem suam de uno parvo messuagio cum diraidiam acram terre et dictus Philipus venit et defendit et dicit quod non debet habere inde dotem eo quod etc. et postea concordatum sunt. Ita quod predicta Cecilia venit et reddidit sursum ad opus dicti Philipi totum jus et clameum quod habuit in demando dicte dotis pro xijd quos dedit eidem Cecilie et domino vjd per plegium Willelmi le White', Barnet court held 24 Oct. 1259, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo. I2v.

⁵⁶ Bramfield court held 5 Dec. 1259, Herts. RO, 40702, fo.5r.

⁵⁷ Loengard, ‘Of the gift’, 224–7 for the conditions under which this would have applied in the case of free land.

⁵⁸ Redgrave court 20 May 1269, UCL, Bacon MS 2.

⁵⁹ Rickinghall court 22 July 1299, BL, Add. Ch. 63411.

⁶⁰ Redgrave court 25 July 1272, UCL, Bacon MS 2.

⁶¹ Beckerman, , ‘Customary Law’, 170Google Scholar, citing Sidney Sussex Coll., Abbots Langley court book, fo.5v.

⁶² The first such entry in Redgrave is to be found in a court held 26 Feb. 1296, UCL, Bacon MS 8, and at Rickinghall in a court held 12 Sept. 1293, BL, Add. Ch. 63406.

⁶³ Norton court held 5 Aug. 1255, Herts. RO, 65498, fo.4r. For some early references to examinations of or assent obtained from wives in transactions involving land held jointly with her husband, see Barnet court 15 July 1272, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.13v and Bramfield court 21 May 1275, Herts. RO, 40702, fo.8v.

⁶⁴ Codicote court held post pascham 1281, BL, Stowe MS 849, fo.16r; for the gift to Alice from her father of 2 acres of land see Codicote court 17 Nov. 1271 (fo. 11 v); for a further gift from Alice's father to both her and Robert Faber see court held 15 Nov. 1272 (fo.11v).

⁶⁵ In the Bury estates the terminology of the transfer is amended slightly such that A & B, uxor euis examinata invariably appear as joint vendors or grantors of customary property. Terminology of a similar kind was in fairly widespread use on the St Albans estate by the third decade of the 14th century. For instance, in the decade preceding the Black Death, of the 18 recorded alienations by conjugal pairs on the manors of Codicote and Park, 12 indicate that the wife was formally examined and consented.

In one instance where no examination is noted the land reverted to the couple for their lives and in another a grant in fee tail was made to a daughter with reversion in the event of the daughter dying without direct heirs of her own. See BL, Stowe MS 849, fos. 64r–74v and BL, Add. MS 40625, fos. 72r–92v.

⁶⁶ Court held at Norton 8 June 1289, Herts. RO, 65500, fo.10v. See too Levett, A. E., Studies in Manorial History (Oxford, 1938), 335Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ See courts held at Codicote 12 Oct. 1329 and 5 May 1331, BL, Stowe MS 849, fos.52r and 54r.

⁶⁸ For instance, at Redgrave 1260–9 there are 13 instances in the surviving court rolls of widows reaching settlements with persons who had acquired parcels of land that were the whole or part of their rightful dower. However, there is only one such case in the same manor's courts 1300–9 at a time when the traffic in inter vivos transfers had shown a two-fold increase over the level to be found in the 1260s. UCL, Bacon MSS 1, 2,8–11.

⁶⁹ Slota, , ‘Village Land Market’, 109Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Clarke, , ‘Peasant Society’, 183Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Smith, , ‘Families and their land’, 187Google Scholar.

⁷² Slota, , ‘Village Land Market’, 110Google Scholar; Smith, , ‘Families and their land’, 187Google Scholar. At Redgrave 1260–94 62% of conjoint transactions were ‘sales’ while in the following quarter-century 72% of transactions show husbands and wives as grantors rather than grantees.

⁷³ Clarke, , ‘Peasant Society’, 183Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Slota, , ‘Village Land Market’, 110; figures for Bramfield are based upon transactions involving married couples in the court book, Herts. RO, 40702, fos.14–25 and 40703, fos. 1–12Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Developments of this kind were as relevant for women who held freely as well as by customary tenure. See Loengard, , ‘Of the gift’, 218Google Scholar; Palmer, R., ‘Contexts of marriage in medieval England: evidence from the king's court circa 1300’, Speculum, lix (1984), 51–6Google Scholar and Bonfield, L., Marriage Settlements 1601–1740, ch. 1Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ On the problematic nature of ‘custom’ as a concept, see Smith, ‘Some thoughts’, 123–26Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Court held at Rickinghall, 26 Sept. 1281, BL, Add. Ch. 63399. This has the appearance of a maritagium although no mention is made of the marriage in the property transfer.

⁷⁸ See, Smith, , ‘Some thoughts’, III n.71Google Scholar; for other early examples see Coldicote court held 30 Mar. 1266, BL, Stowe MS 849, fo.gv; court held at Barnet 4 Aug. 1262, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.8v; Bramfield court held 9 Oct. 1248, Herts. RO, 40702, fo.4r.

⁷⁹ For instance, in a Cashio court of 13 May 1311 Reginald de la Lee granted all the land called Lechalseyerd with 5 acres and their appurtenances along with 3 acres of meadow and annual rents of 14d and 2s 4d 'et Reginaldus filius Reginaldi atte Lee fecit finem cum domino pro dicto tenemento, terra, prato et redditibus cum pertinenciis tenenda sibi et heredibus de se procreatis sine vasto pro servicia inde debita et consueta. Et si idem Reginaldus heredes de se non habeat dictum tenementum et terra et pratum et redditus ad Johannem fratrem suum et heredes de se procreatis remanebunt pro servicia inde debita et consueta’, BL, Add. MS 40626, fo.35r. In a Norton court of 1307 ‘Isabella filia Radulphi filius Willelmi reddidit sursum in manu domini unam dimidiam virgatam terre cum pertinenciis quam dictus Radulphus pater tenuit in vita sua. Et dominus seisivit Ricardum filium Thome Cok de Newenham ad dictam Isabellam tenendam sibi et heredibus de se exuntibus in villenagio faciendo inde servicia … Et si contingat quod predicti Ricardus et Isabella heredes inter se non habeant tune post obitum dictorum Ricardi et Isabella ad heredes dicta Isabella plene revertatur. Et dictus Ricardus dat domino pro dicta seisina et pro licentia se maritandi cum dicta Isabella j marcam, Herts. RO, 65500, fo. 17r.

⁸⁰ In theory maritagium under Common Law had emerged as a means of providing by gift from the wife's father for the children of the marriage and was ‘not merely an estate for life, but estate of inheritance’, Plucknett, Legislation, 129. If it so happened that the marriage was childless it was specified that the land should revert to the donor. For that reason the gift could in no way be made to the donee ‘and their heirs’ for it could descend to collateral heirs in the absence of issue, transforming it to a fee simple freely alienable without restriction and quite clearly contrary to the donor's wishes. For the background to the procedures allowing the donor's wishes to be thwarted see Plucknett, ibid., 130-1 and his A Concise History of the Common Law (5th edn., 1956), 549–51.

⁸¹ Plucknett, ,Concise History, 551–2 and Legislation, 131–5Google Scholar.

⁸² See cases in Redgrave courts 26 Apr. 1290, 6 Aug. 1290 and 11 Dec. 1290, UCL, Bacon MS 6. The last mentioned was a grant from Annicia daughter of Hugh de Bosco of a messuage and appurtenances to Walter son of William le Leche ‘et heredes suorum de se procreatis … Et si ita contingat quod predictus Walterus sine heredibus de corpore sue exeuntibus obierit tota predicta terra et tenementum cum pertinenciis revertantur predicte Annicie et heredibus’.

⁸³ For instance, an especially detailed maritagium is to be found in the Barnet court of 8 Apr. 1260. The donor, William Caunce gave with his daughter 3 acres and certain annual rents worth 4d to Richard Faber ‘sub hac forme quod predictas tres acras terre et predicte iiijd redditus eisdem Ricardo et Matilde et heredibus suis de predicta Matilda exeuntibus sine aliquo demanda remaneant. Et etiam si contingat dictam Matilda sine herede de se exeunte et predicto Ricardo vivente decedere liceat predicto Ricardo predictas tres acras terre et predictos iiijd redditus ad totam vite sue cursum retinere. Ita quod post decessum eiusdem Ricardi ad dictum Willelmum ul ad heredes suos predicte tres acras terre: et predicti iiijd redditus integre et plenarie retinentur’, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.7v.

⁸⁴ Maitland, , Select Pleas, 40Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Slota, , ‘Village Land Market’, 121Google Scholar. Similar patterns are to be found at Cashio where no entails are specifically recorded before 1293 whereas 26 out of 171 permanent grants recorded in the following years to 1348 contained them, BL Add. MS 40626, fos. 1–68. In Bramfield an almost identical chronology can be detected with no entails before 1293 but 28 out of 182 in the period leading to 1348 entailed, Herts. RO, 40702, fos. 1–25; in the court book of the large Bucks, manor of Winslow where no records have survived of land transactions during the reigns of Edward I and II, 95 out of 487 permanent grants 1327–48 contained entails, CUL, MS Dd.7.22, fos.1–49.

⁸⁶ Court held at Barnet 11 July 1308, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.33v. Similar cases involving land clearly given in maritagia that had been alienated contrary to the wishes of the donor can be found in the Barnet courts of 9 Dec. 1269 and 2 Sept. 1304 where once again the disputed land was stated to be liberum maritagium but in this case the plaintiff was unsuccessful as the disputed land had been sold with the assent of the heir, BL, Add. MS 40167, fos. I2r, 31V.

⁸⁷ This is the view of Bonfield, , Marriage Settlements, 17Google Scholar. Clearly a much more detailed assessment of their durability on customary land is needed than is attempted here where only those that were or were claimed to have been broken come to our attention as the object of a plaint in the manor court.

⁸⁸ In the court of 14 Oct. 1332 she appears to have surrendered all rights in the land previously claimed, although a memorandum notes that she was under age when she made the renunciation. The plaint is renewed at the court of 27 Apr. 1340 and finally resolved in Alice's favour on 12 Oct. 1340, BL, Stowe MS 849, fos.56r,56v,65r,65v.

⁸⁹ The transfer to Robert Donne was registered in a court of 5 May 1329 and the critical entail upon which Alice's claim was based is to be found in the court of 9 June 1315, BL, Stowe MS 849, fos.37r, 52r.

⁹⁰ Macfarlane, K. B., The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1978), 65Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Redgrave court 8 Oct. 1292, UCL, Bacon MS 6.

⁹² Winslow court held 2 Nov. 1334, CUL, MS Dd.7.22, fo.22r. More variety is found in cases where the wife is the original donor when the contingency clause may specify that in the event of there being no heirs of their bodies the land should revert to ‘her heirs’, e.g. the jointure initiated by Lucia le Lornh with her husband Walter Molendinarius at Codicote, 15 Nov. 1313, BL, Stowe MS 849, fo-35r. Sometimes, and not at all infrequently it will be specified, as in this jointure implemented at Barnet by Agnes Bernard in her marriage with John Wrench, that ‘si heredes inter eos non habeant quis eorum alterium supervixerit ilia et heredibus suis dictum messuagium et terram cum pertinenciis saluo jure cuiuslibet remaneant’, court held 12 Nov. 1313, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.39r. Such arrangements might allow the survivors of a childless marriage greater individual freedoms in the management or disposal of the jointure than was provided by the maritagium or entail. Jointures were also made in which the couple held the land jointly ad totam vitam eorumdem but with a remainder to someone other than the offspring of the marriage, e.g. court held at Winslow 28 July 1342, CUL, MS Dd.7.22, fo.27v.

⁹³ Court of 28 May 1342, CUL, MS Dd.7.22, fo.28v. See too a jointure of Geoffrey Kyde and Alveline his wife, involving a messuage, 1 acre of arable and ½ an acre of meadow to be held by them and ‘heredes et assignatis eorumdem’, Winslow court held 3 Nov. 1343, (fo.31v).

⁹⁴ Poos, , ‘Population and Resources’, 232–3Google Scholar. The extent of such practices is not widely known but see n.8. A tenancy for two lives however not involving husband and wife did not avoid a liability for heriot on the death of one of the two lives on the manors of the abbot of St Albans. For instance, at Barnet when in 1336 Robert Mulleward surrendered a cottage, curtilage and their appurtenances to Margery, wife of John atte Mulle and William, Margaret and Marjorie her children and the children's heirs ‘utraque eorum dabit heriettam quotiens accident etc’, BL, Add. MS 40167, fo.63r.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 234–6 where it is noted that the first of these transactions can be detected in 1361.

⁹⁶ Macfarlane, , Nobility, 69Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Clarke, , ‘Peasant Society’, 100–3Google Scholar, citing a case from a court of 1312/13 whereby a husband quite evidently was able to favour his wife at the expense of his son.

⁹⁸ Hilton writes of the growth of jointure and ‘the extra security to widows’ it entailed, ‘analogous to freehold jointure’ in his regional study of the west midlands, referring however, to developments that appear to have taken place in the last third of the 14th century rather than the first third which have been the focus of our discussion. See English Peasantry, 100–1. These developments are furthermore seen in the context of a transformation of tenancies-at-will to tenures for two or more lives, Faith, cf. R., ‘Peasant families and inheritance custom in medieval England’, Agricultural Review, xiv (1966), 91–2Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Harvey, , Westminster Abbey, 277–98Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 298.