Kilpi, Hanna Ilona (2015) Non-comital women of twelfth-century England: a charter based analysis. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/7322/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Non-comital Women of Twelfth-Century England: A Charter Based Analysis Hanna Ilona Kilpi, MA (Hons), MLitt Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities College of Arts University of Glasgow October 2015 © Hanna Ilona Kilpi October 2015 Abstract This thesis sets out to explore the place and agency of non-comital women in twelfth-century Anglo-Norman England. Until now, broad generalisations have been applied to all aristocratic women based on a long established scholarship on royal and comital women. Non-comital women have been overlooked, mainly because of an assumed lack of suitable sources from this time period. The first aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that there is a sufficient corpus of charters for a study of this social group of women. It is based on a database created from 5545 charters, of which 3046 were issued by non-comital women and men, taken from three case study counties, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Yorkshire, and is also supported by other government records. This thesis demonstrates that non-comital women had significant social and economic agency in their own person. By means of a detailed analysis of charters and their clauses this thesis argues that scholarship on non- comital women must rethink the framework applied to the study of non-comital women to address the lifecycle as one of continuities and as active agents in a wider public society. Non-comital women’s agency and identity was not only based on land or in widowhood, which has been the one period in their life cycles where scholars have recognised some level of autonomy, and women had agency in all stages of their life cycle. Women’s agency and identity were drawn from and part of a wider framework that included their families, their kin, and broader local political, religious, and social networks. Natal families continued to be important sources of agency and identity to women long after they had married. Part A of the thesis applies modern charter diplomatic analysis methods to the corpus of charters to bring out and explore women’s presence therein. Part B contextualises these findings and explores women’s agency in their families, landholding, the gift-economy, and the wider religious and social networks of which they were a part. ii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................ ii Table of Contents ................................................................................ iii List of Tables ..................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................... vii List of Accompanying Material ................................................................ viii Acknowledgements .............................................................................. ix Author’s Declaration ............................................................................. x Abbreviations ..................................................................................... xi Introduction ........................................................................................ 1 Historiography .................................................................................. 5 Methodology .................................................................................. 10 Part A – Women in the Sources ............................................................... 23 1 Charters Issued by Women ............................................................... 24 1.1 Superscriptions ....................................................................... 26 1.2 Marital Status ......................................................................... 31 1.3 Landholding ........................................................................... 40 1.4 Pro Anima Clauses ................................................................... 49 1.5 Seals and the Sealing of Charters .................................................. 58 1.6 Co-Issuers, Consentors, and Confirmations ...................................... 61 1.7 Conclusion ............................................................................. 64 2 Women as Co-issuers and Consentors ................................................... 66 2.1 Co-issuing .............................................................................. 67 2.2 Women as Consentors in Consent clauses ........................................ 79 2.3 Conclusion ............................................................................. 90 3 Women as Witnesses ...................................................................... 92 3.1 Who are Women Witnesses for? .................................................... 96 3.2 What Grants are Women Witnessing? ............................................ 102 iii 3.3 Women’s Co-Witnesses ............................................................. 104 3.4 Affidations Witnessed by Women ................................................. 112 3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................ 114 4 Women in Government Records ........................................................ 116 4.1 Pipe Rolls ............................................................................. 117 4.2 Curia Regis Rolls ..................................................................... 124 4.3 Final Concords ....................................................................... 129 4.4 Royal Documents .................................................................... 136 4.5 Conclusion ............................................................................ 137 Part B - Social Contexts of Non-comital Women’s Charters............................. 140 5 Non-comital Women and Family ........................................................ 142 5.1 The Definition of Family ........................................................... 142 5.2 Women as Recipients of Spiritual Benefits ...................................... 148 5.3 Names and Identity ................................................................. 151 5.4 Land and Inheritance ............................................................... 157 5.5 Family networks ..................................................................... 166 5.6 Conclusion ............................................................................ 168 6 The Gift-Economy and Non-comital Women .......................................... 169 6.1 Means of Participation.............................................................. 172 6.2 Social Relationships and Countergifts ............................................ 182 6.3 Conclusion ............................................................................ 187 7 Women’s Social Networks ............................................................... 190 7.1 Networks by Marriage .............................................................. 191 7.2 Local Society ......................................................................... 197 7.3 Religious and Ecclesiastical Networks ........................................... 209 7.4 Conclusion ............................................................................ 218 Conclusion....................................................................................... 221 Appendices ...................................................................................... 227 Appendix 1: Pro Anima Clause Tables ................................................... 228 iv Appendix 2: Seals and Sealing Clauses .................................................. 232 Appendix 3: Genealogical Tables......................................................... 243 Bibliography .................................................................................... 265 Primary Sources ............................................................................. 265 Secondary Sources .......................................................................... 270 v List of Tables Table 0.1 Total of charters per county by issuer’s social status. ................................ 20 Table 1.1 Salutation clauses with non-comital women ............................................ 25 Table 1.2 Superscriptions of charters issued by women in Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Yorkshire . 27 Table 1.3 Marital status of non-comital women who grant alone, by county .................. 32 Table 1.4 Cross-tabulation of Marital Status and Superscription ................................. 38 Table 1.5 Occasions of types of lands granted by women ......................................... 42 Table 1.6 Marital status of women compared