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SUMMARY:Coverture: The Medieval Perspective - Dr Cordelia Beattie (Edinbur
 gh)
DTSTART:20131010T160000Z
DTEND:20131010T173000Z
UID:TALK48037@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Sian Pooley
DESCRIPTION:Until the Married Women’s Property Acts of the late nineteen
 th century\, the legal concept of coverture is held to have shaped what it
  meant to be a married woman in England: no independent legal identity or 
 control of property. Yet\, while it is a commonplace in the historiography
  on women and the law to see married women as hidden from view\, obscured 
 by their husbands in the legal records\, this claim perhaps owes more to t
 he enduring influence of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the La
 ws of England (1st edn\, 1765). First\, we should note that Blackstone dea
 lt only with common law: the wife’s position under customary law\, canon
  law and equity were all different. Second\, Frederick William Maitland ca
 utioned back in 1895 that medievalists should be on their guard against th
 e common belief that a ‘unity of person’ between husband and wife was 
 a consistently operative principle. In this paper I would like to add some
  further caveats based on research undertaken for a co-edited book on Marr
 ied Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe (2013). 
LOCATION:Graham Storey Room\, Trinity Hall
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