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1. The Impact of Magna Carta on Widows: evidence from the Fine Rolls 1216–1225

Over the academic year 2006–2007, several students reading for the MA in Medieval History at King’s College London wrote essays based on material in the fine rolls. One of these by Julie Kanter – The Four Knights' System and the Evidence for it in the Fine Rolls – appeared as the Fine of the Month for March 2007. Over the next few months it is planned to publish more of these essays starting, for the fine for November, with Susanna Annesley’s ‘The Impact of Magna Carta on Widows: evidence form the Fine Rolls 1216–1225’. Susanna, funded by the AHRC, is now working on a doctorate at King’s on the countesses of thirteenth century England.

1.1. Introduction

⁋1In his definitive study on the fraught political situation leading up to Magna Carta, Sir James Holt asserted that the ideals enshrined within the charter, ‘took root during the minority of Henry III’. ¹ Primarily concerned with clauses seven and eight of Magna Carta, ² which aimed to protect widows by exempting them from paying for access to their dower and inheritance, and from forced remarriage at the hands of the king, I hope to ascertain the truth of Holt’s assertion in relation to relicts. Concentrating on the presence of widows in the fine rolls, between the first issue of the Great Charter in 1215 and the definitive and final version of 1225, I will focus firstly on entries related to the remarriage of widows, followed by those related to dower. I hope to reveal the impact that these new provisions had on their lives, and how far practice conformed with the new laws laid down in the charter. Finally, although not directly stipulated in Magna Carta, I will survey the fine roll evidence which bears on the ability of widows to gain control of wardships, thus placing the position of relicts within a wider social context.

⁋2Before answering such questions it is first necessary to turn to the secondary and primary source material on which this paper will be based. In Holt’s Magna Carta, scant attention is paid to its effect on women, with reference to widows appearing on less than ten pages all-told. More recently, the ever-growing interest in the history of medieval women has heralded some important contributions to this field of research. Janet Loengard deserves particular mention for her two seminal articles relating to dower, both before and after the implementation of Magna Carta. ³ Yet, surprisingly, thus far no detailed study has been attempted which analyses the impact of clauses seven and eight on widows in the immediate aftermath of the charter’s introduction. It is crucial to analyse the decade leading up to the final draft of the charter in 1225 in order to ascertain the degree to which the new laws in Magna Carta were being obeyed and enforced, and to what extent the provisions for women were cementing themselves into the political and social fabric of Henry’s reign.

⁋3In order to undertake such a study I shall utilise the fine rolls of Henry III’s minority government. Their first purpose ‘was to note the money promised the king in return for concessions and favours.’ These included grants of marriages and wardships, and permission for baronial widows to stay single or marry as they wished.’ ⁴ They also reveal to what extent widows had to pay to gain control over their dower, inheritance and maritagium. As such the fine rolls are ‘central to the study of royal patronage [and] family structures’ ⁵ on which this paper will be based. There are, however, inevitable limitations to a study that relies entirely on one source. The fine rolls relate largely to the widows of tenants-in-chief, as those of under-tenants would fine directly with their lord. As such they represent only a select and elite group of relicts. Furthermore, while the rolls reveal the increasing number of writs purchased by widows to initiate cases under the early common-law procedures, they do not show details of the litigation process itself. For this important and illuminating material one must turn instead to the eyre rolls and bench rolls. The simple and formulaic language in the rolls also conceals the complex series of relationships and negotiations that could lie behind the entries, a point that will be discussed further in relation to a widow’s potential role behind-the scenes in the arrangements of wardship.

1.2. The Remarriage of Widows and the Effects of Magna Carta in the Fine Rolls

⁋1In clause eight of the 1215 Magna Carta the barons asserted that ‘no widow shall be compelled to marry so long as she wishes to live without a husband, provided that she gives security that she will not marry without [the crown’s] consent if she holds of us, or without the consent of the lord of whom she holds, if she holds of another.’ ⁶ The wording of this chapter was carried, fundamentally unaltered, throughout the three further re-issues of the charter in 1216, 1217 and 1225. This clause went much further than the ‘vague promise’ ⁷ in Henry I’s coronation charter not to marry widows without their consent for, in theory, the king was now void of his power to distrain them to do so.

⁋2If Henry felt frustrated by such limitations he could have laid the blame for ‘this much-needed corrective’, not only on the behaviour of his rapacious father John, but also on that of Richard I and Henry II before him. In the last year of his reign, ‘Richard’s sweep of eligible widows appears to have been little less than act of extortion…the pipe rolls…[have] no fewer than 39 [new] entries showing fines made by women not to marry or to marry as they chose.’ ⁸ However, it was following John’s succession in 1199 that payments for marriages and wardships are revealed in the fine rolls as part of a calculated programme of ‘financial exploitation’, ⁹ far exceeding previous reigns. For the ability to stay single or choose their own husbands baronial widows were charged an average of £185 each, a situation which occurred 149 in times in John’s reign. This is a marked increase on the sixty-eight occasions averaging £144 under Richard. ¹⁰ In a particularly extreme example of 1212, the countess of Aumale offered the king £3,333 not to be given in marriage for a fourth time. ¹¹ In Holt’s mind such proffers reveal ‘one of the first great stages in the emancipation of women’, offering widows a direct route to freedom from a forced marriage, and empowerment over their dower and inheritance. ¹² He asserts that ‘to let widows have their way was to encourage the acceptance of the principle that they should have their way’, hence the seeds of chapters seven and eight were sown. ¹³ Yet it is important not to underestimate the deep hostility and bloody conflict that led to Magna Carta. The charter was, in large measure, born out of direct opposition to the extortions of the crown, and fines related to marriage ranked high among the baron’s list of grievances. ¹⁴

⁋3This paper is, however, primarily concerned with the effects rather than the causes of Magna Carta, and the former are immediately apparent in the fine rolls following John’s death. In the roll of 1217–18 the importance of a widow’s consent to her remarriage is stipulated in no uncertain terms. Henry de Neufmarché gave the king forty marks to have as his wife a widow named Frethesenta, ‘if she wishes’. The entry goes on to state that he should gain access to all the land of her inheritance without delay, ‘if she will show her assent to this.’ ¹⁵ Thus, in a short entry consent and free choice have been emphasised twice. Likewise, in the following year, ‘Otto son of William…made fine with the king by six palfreys’ to have in marriage a widow named Matilda. Yet, he is only to have full seisin of her lands if the sheriff of Buckinghamshire ‘can establish by Matilda’s letters patent that she offers her assent and will to this’. ¹⁶ However, the real significance of these two entries lies in their peculiarity. Nowhere else in the decade covered by this paper is any widow’s consent specifically referred to again, making this pair of examples an intriguing anomaly. ¹⁷ The widow Frethesanta is identified by Sanders as an heiress in her own right, having inherited a quarter of the barony of Hooton Pagnell in Yorkshire. ¹⁸ Thus, it is possible that her wealth and status afforded her a genuine bargaining power in the marriage. Yet, there is also something a little ambiguous in the way that her consent is described. Neufmarché had already made his fine with the king and set out a clear payment plan, yet from the language in the fine roll entry it would appear that the certainty of Frethesenta’s consent had yet to be ascertained. It does not state that having given her consent the fine was levied, only ‘if she will give her assent to this’, which implies a speculative element still at-hand in the negotiations. But, with the sheriff already being ordered to take security from Henry for the sum, in order that Henry might gain immediate access to her land, the references to her consent seem suspiciously like an after-thought in an already-done deal.

⁋4Alongside these specific mentions of consent stand various instances in which widows resemble commodities to be bought and sold. To cite one example, in the fine rolls of 1218-19 Margaret de Say obtained a writ ordering the sheriff to give her rightful dower from the lands of her deceased husband Robert de Mortimer. ¹⁹ It would seem that here we have a widow acting for herself to secure her dower. It is also interesting to note that she is described by what seems to be her natal name of ‘Say’ rather than as ‘Margaret, widow of Robert de Mortimer’. Yet, only the following year William de Stuteville had made fine with the king to take her as his wife ‘with all the lands and tenements that fall to her by inheritance…without delay.’ ²⁰ It is possible Margaret may have been grateful for the protection offered by marriage. On the other hand, she may have regrettted a union which wrenched from her grasp the freedom to control what now stood at two sets of dower and her inheritance. ²¹

⁋5Another quick remarriage is apparent in the fine rolls of 1217–18. The entry relates to an £100 fine charged to Agnes and her first husband, Robert of Bassingham, so that she might rightfully inherit half a barony from her deceased brother John of Odell. However, it is actually William fitz Warin, ‘[the king’s] faithful man, to whom the king has given Agnes in marriage’, who is liable for the fine with Agnes. ²² As Agnes’s first husband died in 1218 she must have only been single for a matter of months before her second betrothal. ²³ As in the case of Margaret de Say, she may well have felt bitterly disappointed that she was unable to enjoy her inheritance and dower free from the control of a new husband. But, with a relief fine of £100 still hanging over her head she was hardly in a position to withhold her consent for the second marriage from the minority government. Thus, while the king could no longer force a widow to marry, it is clear that ‘consent’ was a murky and ambiguous term which was not necessarily synonymous with freewill.

⁋6Further instances in which a widow’s consent to her remarriage is never raised appear when recently married widows, or more specifically their new spouses, are fined for marrying without the king’s licence. ²⁴ In a typical example from 1218-1219 ‘Thomas of Gravenley…made fine with the king for 20 marks for having a pardon for [trespass] because he took Joan…whose marriage pertained to the king, to wife without license.’ Having laid out the terms of his payments Thomas gained immediate access to Joan’s inheritance. ²⁵ Time and again it would seem that as long as the king was compensated for the misdemeanour, whether or not the widow had consented to the union was of no consequence. Of course the events leading to the fine are impossible to ascertain, but it is certainly possible that Joan was pressured into a marriage against her will.

⁋7Such a bad situation could be made worse if a new bride found herself held personally accountable for partaking in the ceremony. In 1220 the crown took all the land of Helewise, previously the wife of Hugh Poinz, into its possession because she married without the king’s license. The phrasing of this entry is particularly interesting, stating that ‘Helewise has married without the king’s license.’ ²⁶ It is the only example of its kind in the ten years covered by this paper, in which a woman is described as actively taking a husband without the king’s consent. In all the other entries relating to such marriages, it would seem that the husband is deemed the main, culpable offender. He alone is described as trespassing against the king ²⁷ or as taking a new wife without license of the crown ²⁸ and, as such, is always wholly responsible for the resulting fine. Such terminology implies a more passive role on the part of the new bride, which perhaps did not apply in the case of Helewise – hence the confiscation of her lands. Yet, in a subsequent entry of February 1221, the role of Helewise’s new husband, Robert de Muscegros is revealed. It is he who ‘made fine with the king by 300 m. for having his benevolence…in that he took to wife Helewise’, ²⁹ and it is he who was to gain full seisin of his wife’s lands after offering security for payment of the fine. ³⁰ Thus, while it is impossible to gauge the extent of Helewise’s initiative in the marriage, it remains clear from either entry that it is the king or her husband who stood to benefit financially from the union, with Helewise having little to gain and much to lose.

⁋8In the light of such examples it is little wonder that widows were still prepared to fine for the right to stay single or marry whom they wished. Some historians have viewed such payments as evidence of a direct breech of the charter by the crown. Loengard has inferred that because ‘a widow could not be compelled to remarry’ it therefore followed that she ‘need not fine for the freedom not to [be compelled to do so]’. ³¹ At no point, however, does the charter directly prohibit widows from paying for matrimonial privileges. This is in notable contrast to the famous chapter in Magna Carta, which specifically denied the sale of justice. ³² In fact, when it stated in clause eight that ‘no widow shall be forced to marry…provided that she gives security not to marry without…consent’, might it not be tacitly implied that this security could, or should, be reinforced and substantiated through a gift or fine? Such payments might not have been deemed unfair or extortionate in a culture immersed in the feudal traditions of exchanging gifts and offerings to ratify agreements. It needs also to be stressed that the Charter acknowledged that the king did still need to consent to the marriage of a baronial widow, and did not forbid payment for it to be given. Thus, as Michael Ray has shown, the fine of Margaret de Redvers in 1229 did not breech the Charter since it was for ‘the freedom to choose whom she liked [as a husband] provided that her groom was not an enemy of the king.’ ³³ There are eleven similar ‘offers for freedom to marry’ in the fine rolls from 1215-1234, four of which appear before 1225. In three of these four cases the wording reflects that of the Margaret de Redvers’ entry, ³⁴ allowing each widow the right to marry whomsoever she pleased, so long as her intended spouse was not an enemy of the crown. ³⁵

1.3. Access to Dower in the Fine Rolls

⁋1The new rights of widows pertaining to remarriage had a direct impact upon the effective implementation of clause seven in Magna Carta, which related to dower and inheritance. Before 1215 Loengard asserts that ‘dower and the obligation to remarry had very frequently been entwined’, for a widow might either lose her dower if she refused a chosen spouse, or else be forced to surrender it in order to pay the hefty fine to remain single. ³⁶ Although subject to a number of amendments and additions in later re-issues, the fundamental principle of chapter seven remained unaltered and should have put an end to such a predicament. It stated that ‘after her husband’s death, a widow shall have her marriage portion and her inheritance at once and without any hindrance; nor shall she pay anything for her dower, her marriage portion, or her inheritance which she and her husband held on the day of her husband’s death’. ³⁷

⁋2In the majority of cases between 1216 and 1224 widows do indeed appear to have been receiving their dower with relative ease. ³⁸ There are fifteen widows who feature in fines dealing with their dower or inheritance to be entered in the fine rolls, ³⁹ yet alongside these cases stand fifty relief payments offered by heirs who have recently inherited, as well as a further twenty-nine additional fines to inherit where relief is not specifically mentioned. Although their existence is purely speculative, it is thus possible that in many of these cases a recently bereaved widow might be in the process of receiving her dower and further property rights unhindered and thus unmentioned. Moreover, in ten out of the sixteen cases related to the fifteen widows mentioned above, the widows appear to be in the process of gaining immediate access to their share, with absolutely no question of having to pay to do so. ⁴⁰ In six of these ten successful dower cases the widow’s rights are automatically safeguarded on the fine rolls within the conditions of an heir’s inheritance. ⁴¹ In a typical example from 1218 it is stipulated that, ‘Vitalis Engayne gives to the king 10 m. for having seisin of the manor of Upminster…saving the rightful dower in the same manor to Ada.’ ⁴² Another notably successful dower transaction, in which a recently bereaved widow received favourable treatment and swift compensation, concerns the widow of Gilbert de Tany. Following his death in 1221 all of his lands and chattels were taken into the king’s hands, preceding the partition of the estate between his heirs. Yet in spite of their confiscation, his widow was immediately granted a ‘reasonable estover’ ⁴³ of these chattels until her dower was assigned by her husband’s heirs later in the year. ⁴⁴

⁋3However, in six cases the widows do seem to have found themselves in a difficult and less straightforward predicament. Following the death of Adam Butler in 1224 his widow Joan successfully received her dower land. ⁴⁵ However, she was less lucky in gaining access to her marriage-portion. Her husband had leased it out for a period of eight years, only four of which had passed by the time of his death. Joan found herself having to pay a five-mark fine to gain back this one carucate of land, which was, in fact, rightfully hers all along. ⁴⁶ In the three instances when a widow’s dower and inheritance were disputed between her and a second party, the fine rolls offer scant background information to the proceedings, making it impossible to ascertain whose claim is justified. Yet, in two of these three cases one finds the widow offering the half-mark to have the case brought before the courts, ⁴⁷ highlighting the conviction women had in their inherent right to receive their dower and marriage portion following their husbands’ deaths. ⁴⁸

⁋4In Loengard’s extensive research on similar cases, she has asserted that ‘many or most dower actions were begun in earnest and were vigorously litigated.’ ⁴⁹ She has stressed the inherent family dynamics underlying disputes – ‘dower was a family affair, and it was as much subject to mistake, anger, dislike and affection as any other intra-family arrangement.’ ⁵⁰ Accordingly, there were a number of ways ‘disgruntled sons and stepsons, brothers-in-law, and lords [could] circumvent chapter [seven]: by simple inaction, by negotiation, by collusive suit [or] by violence’. ⁵¹ Through raising objections that questioned the legitimacy of a marriage, or the extent of the land a widow claimed, relatives had the power to stop a widow’s access to her dower or make entry to it an arduous and expensive process, thus forcing her through the courts to stake her claim. Loengard has described how ‘many heirs’ attempted to frighten and buy off widows due to an inherent hostility to the concept of dower, which ‘ran counter to the strong desire…of feudal England to keep landholdings undivided in the hands of the heir.’ ⁵² With such a mountain of possible problems facing them, it seems miraculous that, in such a climate, any widow got her dower at all. Yet, the fact that a great number did so with ease ⁵³ lends itself to the possibility that Loengard has overemphasised the opposition and hostility facing widows in connection with their dower. In fact, a widow’s right to dower was very much enshrined within the laws and customs of the kingdom. This view is reinforced by a fine roll entry of 16 February 1217, which stated that Thomas Murdac ‘is to assign rightful dower to Matilda who was the wife of Robert Murdac [his brother], which falls to her according to the customs of England.’ ⁵⁴

⁋5If Loengard is possibly too pessimistic over dower, the reverse may be the case when it comes to the Charter’s stipulation in clause eleven that a widow should not have to pay the debts of her late husband out of her dower. ⁵⁵ Although it was dropped from the later re-issues Loengard belives that ‘the provision appears to have reflected widespread practice, and the thinking behind it persisted.’ ⁵⁶ Yet, on the three occasions when the issue of a widow’s liability for her husband’s debt is raised in the fine rolls, each time this ‘widespread practice’ appears ambiguous and unresolved. In September 1223 the justices were still to decide if Eustachia de Courtenay should pay the debts owed by her husband to the Jews ‘when she holds nothing…formerly of her husband…except by way of dower,’ ⁵⁷ and in 1224 the widow of Roger of Beauchamp had her dower land replevied to her, it having been previously confiscated by the king to pay the debts of her husband’s grandfather, of whom Roger was heir. ⁵⁸ Thus, nearly a decade after the clause was dropped from Magna Carta the courts were, in fact, still unsure whether to hold a widow accountable for her husband’s debts, when her assigned dower was all she held of his lands. ⁵⁹

1.4. Widows and Wardships in the Fine Rolls

⁋1Over a century before Magna Carta Henry I’s Coronation Charter of 1100 had pledged to widows custody of their underage children, along with the land that pertained to them. It had proved an empty promise and was not to be repeated in 1215 – ‘a century of royal exploitation meant that control over wardship was something no king would give up.’ Widows obtained control over wardships only occasionally during Henry III’s reign, and less frequently than in the preceding century. ⁶⁰ In the reigns of Richard and John, 15.6 percent of recorded fines for wardships were offered by widows, compared with only seven percent of the total recorded fines after 1217. ⁶¹ I have found only five examples of widows securing wardship over their children between 1215 and 1225. ⁶² Two of these fines are recorded at only ten marks ⁶³ and fifteen marks, ⁶⁴ with a further two standing at eighty marks ⁶⁵ and forty marks each. ⁶⁶ The latter sum not only gave the widow wardship, but also guaranteed her the freedom to marry whom she wanted. Such sums are much lower than the ‘intense exploitation of wardships…as a financial resource [under John]’. The £9,213 recorded in proffers in the ten years under Richard had risen to £24,253 in the first ten years of John’s reign. ⁶⁷ While an element of this large increase can be attributed to inflation it was also due to ‘human miscalculation’, which led John to ‘foolishly turn patronage management into a weapon.’ ⁶⁸ In 1208, for example he charged Isolte, the widow of Henry Biset, £1000 to have custody of her late husband’s heirs and freedom over her marriage, if the king consented to her choice. ⁶⁹ However, such astronomical fines were not altogether abolished during Henry’s reign. Six women fined in sums ranging from 1000 to 10,000 marks for custody of heirs and one of these widows appears in the fine roll for 1221. ⁷⁰ Isabella de Bolbec, widow of the Earl of Oxford, offered 6,000 marks to gain custody of her late husband’s lands and their son and heir. ⁷¹ This extraordinarily large sum doubtless relates to the value of the Oxford lands, but it may also reflect ‘the deep attachment between a widowed mother and her infant children’, and the lengths that some were prepared to go in order to prevent ‘the harsh intrusion into that relationship’ which royal lordship could cause. ⁷² Such an intrusion is visible in 1220 when William de Cantilupe fined in 500 marks to gain the wardship of the heirs of Robert de Chandos along with all the latter’s lands. ⁷³ While he is told to provide Robert’s wife Sarra with her dower, one can imagine the pain she must have felt at losing control over her son Robert who was aged only ten years old at the time. ⁷⁴ She would, no doubt, have been powerless to resist such an important royal official and prominent member of the minority government.

⁋2However, the one-dimensional view of wardships evident in the fine rolls does not reveal the complex relationships and negotiations that could underpin these arrangements. One gets a tantalising glimpse of a widow’s possible involvement in the proceedings in a fine roll entry of 1223. When Simon de Senlis made a thirty-mark fine with the king for the custody of the land and heirs of Richard Crossbowman it was ‘at the instance of Isabella’, who was the latter’s wife and mother of the heir. ⁷⁵ It is impossible to know how often a widow might have played an assertive role in such preparations – encouraging a political or familial ally to fine for wardship so that she might maintain an active role in the child’s future. Similarly, if an individual at court received a wardship as ‘a recipient of royal favour’ they regularly proved willing to grant custody back to those with a more vested connection in the child, thus ‘acting as a conduit for the transmission of the king’s feudal rights from the centre back into localities [with] widows and kin especially benefit[ing] from this secondary distribution of feudal rights.’ ⁷⁶ Such private arrangements would, of course, be undetectable in the entries of fine rolls.

⁋3When viewed in its entirety, the evidence from the fine rolls, in the first decade after Magna Carta, does appear to show a marked improvement in the quality of widows’ lives following John’s death. Although the practice of fining widows for freedom over their remarriages continued, it was implemented less often and at a far lower rate. As a result a significantly larger number of ‘formidable widows’ ⁷⁷ emerged in the thirteenth century when compared with the twelfth, with women such as Isabel, countess of Arundel and Margaret de Lacy enjoying long, independent and lucrative widowhoods. ⁷⁸ Yet it was not just baronial widows who felt able to defend their rights and assert themselves following Magna Carta. There are, in the fine rolls, over a dozen instances of seemingly non-baronial widows purchasing writs and ‘pones’ to initiate legal procedures against those they felt owed them money, chattels or land. ⁷⁹ In 1221 a particularly defiant widow named Juliana had a writ to summon eleven men and one woman before the justices to answer for an array of debts she felt were hers by right. ⁸⁰

⁋4However, evidence of widows struggling through these same courts to access their dower highlights that while dower and inheritance were free in principle, a widow could still have to pay significant court-costs to enter them. It is also clear that, following Magna Carta, the crown could still use a widow’s dower as a bargaining tool regarding her remarriage. While the king could no longer distrain a widow to force her to accept a husband, by the end of the thirteenth century the latter could only enter her dower lands after swearing an oath to the king that she would not marry without royal licence – ‘which in practice meant swearing an oath to the king that she would not marry.’ ⁸¹ Thus, for all the undeniable benefits of Magna Carta there were still considerable loopholes that the king could exploit and widows often still found themselves at the mercy of a male overlord, whether he be a member of their own family or the king himself.