This book offers the first regional study of women in thirteenth-century England, making pioneering use of charters, chronicles, government records and some of the earliest manorial court rolls to examine the interaction of gender, status and life-cycle in shaping women's experiences in Lincolnshire. The author investigates the lives of noblewomen, gentlewomen, townswomen, peasant women, criminal women and women religious from a variety of angles. Not only does she consider how far women were partners alongside men, especially within the family, but she also explores whether they might have been both at once constrained and yet, to an extent, empowered by religious and biological ideas about gender difference which found expression in inheritance practices and the common law. Valuable light on the avenues for political influence open to elite women is shed through case studies of Nicholaa de la Haye [d. 1230], sheriff of Lincoln, Hawise de Quency [d. 1243], countess of Lincoln, and Margaret de Lacy [d. 1266], countess of Lincoln. The book also addresses women's roles within the rural and urban labour markets before the Black Death. LOUISE J. WILKINSON is Lecturer in History, Canterbury Christ Church University.
Reviews
Offers a readable and informative survey [and] makes a real contribution to Lincolnshire historiography, and to broader understanding of thirteenth-century English society. LINCOLNSHIRE HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGYContribute[s] significantly to the study of medieval Englishwoman of all estates below the royal family. SPECULUM
Offers a readable and informative survey, which considers women in context, and firmly in relation to men; it is not just a 'women's history' volume. It makes a real contribution to Lincolnshire historiography, and to broader understanding of thirteenth-century English society. Prof. R.N. SWANSON, LINCOLNSHIRE HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY
Providing a fascinating glimpse into the lives of medieval women, those researching the society of medieval Lincolnshire, as well as those exploring women's history, will find this study valuable. THE LOCAL HISTORIAN [A]n accessible and valuable addition to the growing corpus of studies on medieval Englishwomen. Indeed, this wide-ranging volume cries out for similar, comparative works on other counties of thirteenth-century England; I wonder whether a series ought to be founded on Wilkinson's model. JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES, vol. 47, no. 3, July 2008
