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Women of the English Nobility and Gentry 1066-1500
A collection of 166 documents relating to the lives and affairs of English women of the higher classes from 1066 to 1500. They reveal both continuities and developments over the centuries as women without formal political power used a range of strategies and resources to shape their world, sometimes as administrators of estates or spiritual teachers, but always as daughters and usually as sisters and mothers as well. Many of the household and estate documents have never been published before. Distributed in the US by St. Martin's Press. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
252 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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August 20, 2019
Divided into six subsections (Marriage, Family, Land, Wealth and Lordship, Household and Religion), all with a short introduction, Jennifer Ward’s Women of the English Nobility and Gentry: 1066-1500 is an excellent sourcebook for the lives of noblewomen in medieval England. Ward’s choice of sources is broad in terms of form and date but also features recurring women which allows for some sense of continuity. There will be familiar names for those who know the history but also some truly lesser-known women.
Personally, I skimmed over some of the selections and read others in detail which I think is the nature of this sort of book. This isn’t a sourcebook like Christopher Given-Wilson’s Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II, where the sources are predominately taken from the chronicles and are telling a story. There’s a lot of legal and financial texts which aren’t the most fascinating but are still rich evidence of women’s lives. I was attracted to this volume for the selection of sources relating to Mary de Bohun and was not disappointed, but I was also thrilled to find a few extra interesting bits, such as the extract from Eleanor de Bohun’s will, the account of the Countess of Oxford’s support for Richard II in 1404 and the provisions made for women after 1388’s Merciless Parliament.
The only flaw with this book, as far as I can see, is that it is now out of print and second-hand copies are quite pricey.
Personally, I skimmed over some of the selections and read others in detail which I think is the nature of this sort of book. This isn’t a sourcebook like Christopher Given-Wilson’s Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397-1400: The Reign of Richard II, where the sources are predominately taken from the chronicles and are telling a story. There’s a lot of legal and financial texts which aren’t the most fascinating but are still rich evidence of women’s lives. I was attracted to this volume for the selection of sources relating to Mary de Bohun and was not disappointed, but I was also thrilled to find a few extra interesting bits, such as the extract from Eleanor de Bohun’s will, the account of the Countess of Oxford’s support for Richard II in 1404 and the provisions made for women after 1388’s Merciless Parliament.
The only flaw with this book, as far as I can see, is that it is now out of print and second-hand copies are quite pricey.
Displaying 1 of 1 review