Medieval women and urban justice

Download or read book Medieval women and urban justice written by Teresa Phipps and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed analysis of women’s involvement in litigation and other legal actions within their local communities in late-medieval England. It draws upon the rich records of three English towns – Nottingham, Chester and Winchester – and their courts to bring to life the experiences of hundreds of women within the systems of local justice. Through comparison of the records of three towns, and of women’s roles in different types of legal action, the book reveals the complex ways in which individual women’s legal status could vary according to their marital status, different types of plea and the town that they lived in. At this lowest level of medieval law, women’s status was malleable, making each woman’s experience of justice unique.