Tag Archives: laws

01/3/13

Child Rearing in the Middle Ages

It’s hard to get a handle on what child care was like in the Middle Ages–or what exactly was the prevailing philosophy.  Certainly, the ideal childhood of today’s middle class in the US or Europe, did not exist during the Middle Ages.

Sources that describe what child rearing was like are all over the map, in terms of the degree of care, love, maternal obligations, and how long childhood lasted.  A child’s life was also circumscribed the class into which he was born.

Certainly infants were viewed as needing loving and attentive care:  ”Writing around 1250, Bartholomew the Englishman said that if it is too hot or too cold when a baby comes from the womb into the air, the baby becomes miserable and cries. Following the advice of medical writers, he suggested that to cleanse the infant’s limbs of their stickiness, they should be washed in rose petals pounded with salt and that the midwife should rub the child’s gums and the roof of its mouth with honey to cleanse and soothe its mouth and stimulate the baby’s appetite. He also advised that the infant should be bathed frequently and anointed all over with the soothing oil of myrtle or roses, and he warned that the newborn should lie in a dim room because too bright a light would hurt its young eyes.”  http://www.bookrags.com/history/medieval-europe-family-and-social-trends/sub26.html

Someone nursed a child (in the upper classes, this would be a wet nurse) until they were 18 months to 2 years old.  True childhood lasted until around the age of 7, at which point, depending upon the class and gender, a child went to school, was apprenticed in a craft, was sent away to be trained as a knight (upper class boys), was put to work for the family’s benefit, or continued under the tutelage of the mother for training in adult, household responsibilities (girls).  http://science.jrank.org/pages/8600/Childhood-Child-Rearing-Training-Education-Circulation-Children.html

“Childhood has become such a distinct period that it is hard to imagine that it was not always thought of in that way. However, in medieval times, laws generally did not distinguish between child and adult offenses. After analyzing samples of art along with available publications, historian Philippe Aries concluded that European societies did not accord any special status to children prior to 1600. In paintings, children were often dressed in smaller versions of adult-like clothing.

Some believe that children were actually treated as miniature adults with no special status in medieval Europe. Aries interpretation has been criticized, however. He primarily sampled aristocratic, idealized subjects, which led to the overdrawn conclusion that children were treated as miniature adults and not accorded any special status. In medieval times, children did often work, and their emotional bond with parents may not have been as strong as it is for many children today. However, in medieval times, childhood probably was recognized as a distinct phase of life more than Aries believed. Also, we know that in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome rich conceptions of children’s development were held.”  http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/medieval3.html

Education for girls, though allowed in certain places and more common in some countries than others, was not the rule by any means:  “The subject of education for women, however, was a hotly debated issue throughout the Middle Ages. As education was directly connected with the church it was inevitable that the church’s views of women should have led predominated. St. Thomas of Aquinas,1225-1274, who was perhaps one of the great teachers of the period declared what was clearly a widely supported notion regarding women:

“The woman is subject to man on account of the weakness of her nature . . . Man is the beginning of woman and her end, just as God is the beginning and end of every creature. Children ought to love their Father more than they love their mother.”

Medieval society, and particularly the powerful domains of church and state, clearly had no place for well-educated women.”  http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/medieval3.html

08/9/12

Forest Laws in the Middle Ages

One of the hallmarks of the feudal system that William of Normandy imposed on England after 1066 were laws.  In the case of forest laws, Norman law superseded the prior Anglo-Saxon laws in which rights to the forest (not necessarily just woods, but also heath, moorland, and wetlands) were not exclusive to the king or nobles, but were shared among the people.  Feudal forest laws, in contrast, were harsh, forbidding not only the hunting of game with in the forest, but even the cutting of wood or the collection of fallen timber, berries, or anything growing within the forest.

The New Forest was set aside by King William in 1079 as his right, primarily for hunting deer.  “‘Forest’” in a medieval sense was a legally defined area  . . . where the “beasts of the chase” (deer & wild pig) and their food were protected for the pleasure of the monarch. It was not necessarily a wooded area in the modern meaning – nearly half the New Forest is open heath, grassland and bog.

The laws enacted to preserve the deer for the royal pleasure were the Forest Laws. The odious penalties of Forest Law for interference with the king’s deer and its food (“browse”) became less severe over the centuries, but remnants of the legal structure that policed the area for the Crown are still present in the New Forest as the Verderers’ Court.”  http://www.newforest.hampshire.org.uk/introduction.html

The height of enforcement of the forest laws were the 12th and 13th centuries, where up to 1/3 of England, including whole counties, were subject to them.   The king subsequently  charged a fee for certain uses of the forest, bringing him substantial income, which he increased by setting aside more expansive tracts of land.

Wales was never conquered by William and was thus not subject to this change in husbandry.  The people of Wales also were not Anglo-Saxon, and held to the laws of Hywel Dda, codified around 950 AD.  These laws were extensive and are considered by historians to be ‘laws of the people’, lacking stress on royal power, as opposed to the Anglo-Norman ‘laws of the King’ which were imposed by the state.

Forest laws in Wales, then, only existed in respect to the infringement upon the right of ownership by one landowner to another.  And unlike the English kings, the princes of Wales did not claim all the land in their country for themselves, which they then parceled out to those who pleased them.

The English forest laws, on the other hand, ”were set up to protect the beasts of the chase and their habitats including  the vert. They precluded poaching and taking wood from the forest. The punishments for breaking these laws were severe and ranged from fines to, in the most severe cases, death.

Because of these forest laws the local peasants who lived on the land faced severe restrictions on their lifestyles. They were banned from enclosing their land by fencing or other means as this restricted the hunt. The forest laws were therefore extremely unpopular with the local population, who were unable to continue in their way of life that had existed up until the Norman rule. They were not allowed to protect their crops by fencing, they could not use the timber from the woodland for building houses and they were not allowed to hunt game to provide food for their families. As the ‘underwood’ was also protected they also faced a severe restriction on the availability of fuel.”  http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/history1-forweb.pdf

05/8/12

Inheritance and Welsh Law

The Laws of Hywel Dda, codifed formally before 950 AD.  The historical consensus is that the laws had been effect for  hundreds of years, but Hywel Dda ruled much of Wales and that allowed a more cohesive approach to the law.

“Most of the surviving manuscripts of Welsh law start with a preamble explaining how the laws were codified by Hywel. The introduction to the Book of Blegywryd is a typical example:

“ Hywel the Good, son of Cadell, by the grace of God, king of all Wales… summoned to him from every commote of his kingdom six men who were practised in authority and jurisprudence… to the place called the White House on the Taf in Dyfed. … And at the end of Lent the king selected from that assembly the twelve most skilled laymen of his men and the one most skilled scholar who was called Master Blegywryd, to form and interpret for him and for his kingdom, laws and usages…[1] ”
The description of Hywel as “king of all Wales” suggests a date between 942 and Hywel’s death in 950 for this council. However the Welsh laws have many points of similarity to the Brehon laws in Ireland and some parts probably date from long before Hywel’s time. What was produced by Hywel’s council was not a set of entirely new laws, rather as described in the preamble to the Book of Iorwerth:
“ And by the common counsel and agreement of the wise men who came there they examined the old laws, and some of them they allowed to continue, others they amended, others they wholly deleted, and others they laid down anew

A surviving manuscript (from the thirteenth century) is in the National Library of Wales. It was a ‘pocket’ book, designed for lawyers to carry around in their scrip, rather than left on a library shelf.
You can view it here: http://digidol.llgc.org.uk/METS/lhw00003/physical

Later on, with the Norman Conquest, Welsh law proved to be a rallying point for the Welsh resistance. The Normans objected to many of the laws (paying money instead of a sentence of death for various crimes, the status of women, divorce, etc), but the most contentious of all were rights of inheritance.  In Wales, illegitimate sons and legitimate ones were treated identically.

That’s worth repeating, by Welsh law, illegitimate sons would inherit equally with legitimate ones.  In my book,  The Good Knight, Prince Rhun, as the oldest, was his father’s favorite.  If Owain Gwynedd had died in 1246, most likely Rhun and Hywel, both illegimate sons, would have split the kingdom between them in some fashion, possibly with Rhun taking precedence.  Each of Owain’s other sons would have received something, but only Iorwerth might have been of age by that point. “The law of the church says that no-one is entitled to patrimony save the father’s eldest son by his wedded wife. The law of Hywel adjudges it to the youngest son as to the eldest, and judges that the father’s sin and his illegality should not be set against the son for his patrimony.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_law

The consequences of upholding this law were varied.  For the Welsh themselves, it meant that kingdoms were split among many sons and son fought son to consolidate their inheritance.  This wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but it did mean that if the eldest son was less fit to rule than a younger son, that younger son could triumph (Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is a case in point).

The Church viewed this aspect of Welsh law as a horrifying deviance from Holy Scripture:  ”When he wrote to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in October 1279 complaining of the Prince’s infringement of liberties of the Church, Peckham showed knowledge of the laws of Hywel Dda, though only by hearsay: ‘contra quae opponitis leges Howeli Da, quae Decalogo dicuntur in diversis articulis obviare’. When, in November 1282, after the terms of peace proposed by him had been rejected, Peckham sent his letter of general denunciation of the morality of Llywelyn and the Welsh, he twice referred to the laws of Howelda and makes it clear that this time it was a written text he had seen: ‘ac Howelda in lege sua, quam vidimus’.  In this letter Peckham included among the sins of the Welsh their casual regard for the indissolubility of marriage and their allowing inheritance to illegitimate offspring.”  http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/browse/viewpage/llgc-id:1277425/llgc-id:1285311/llgc-id:1285326/getText

 

01/24/12

Women in Celtic Society

It is a stereotype that women in the Middle Ages had two career options:  mother or holy woman, with prostitute or chattel filling in the gaps between those two.  Whether we like it or not, for the most part this stereotype is accurate and the status and role of women in that era revolved around these categories.

This is one reason that when an author sets fiction in this time, it is difficult to write a self-actualized female character who has any kind of autonomy or authority over her own life.  Thus, it is common practice to make fictional characters either healers of some sort (thus opening up a whole array of narrative possibilities for travel and interaction with interesting people) or to focus on high status women.  Such women may or may not actually have had more autonomy, but their lives didn’t consist of drudgery and child care from morning until night.

This is not to say that men in the Middle Ages weren’t equally restricted in their ‘careers’.  A serf is a serf after all, of whatever gender.  Men as a whole, however, did have control of women, of finances, of government, and of the Church, and thus organized and ruled the world.  Literally.

There are obvious exceptions—Eleanor of Aquitaine, anyone?—but women such as she were one out of thousands upon thousands who were born, worked, and died within five miles of their home.

At the same time, within Celtic cultures, women at least had the possibility of greater personal autonomy.  InIreland, where the Roman Church had less influence, women had a viable place both within the Druid religion and within the Celtic/Irish Church. Walestoo was less subject to the restrictions of the Church.  There, women had a higher status than in Christendom as a whole, including the right to divorce her husband and societal acceptance of illegitimate children.

The Laws of Women (part of the Laws of Hywel Dda http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/?p=236) included rules that governed marriage and the division of property if a married couple should separate. Women usually married through contract, but elopement was allowed, with the provision that if the relationship lasted seven years, a woman had the same entitlements as if she’d been given to her husband by her kin.

In every one of my books, one of the most challenging tasks is to make the character understandable to modern people, but firmly fixed in her own time.  Even in Daughter of Time, one aspect of the book that I found very interesting to write was Meg’s reaction to the status and role of women in medieval Wales.  How would a modern woman deal with it?   How would you?

09/11/11

Anglo-Saxon Law (to 1066)

Anglo-Saxon law didn’t come to an end with the coming of William of Normandy in 1066, but it was definitely changed.

Norman law was based in feudalism and heavily influenced by the Church.  Anglo-Saxon law had been developed over a long period of time and while influenced by Christianity in later centuries, was more egalitarian.  It was based on a system of courts, the main one being the ‘hundred court’.  “The hundred court met every four weeks, in the open if possible and usually at a prominent local landmark that gave its name to the hundred. The king’s reeve usually presided over the court. It had many functions, and was a mixture of parish council business meeting, planning enquiry, and magistrates’ court.  . .

Edward the Elder decreed that the hundred courts were to judge the worthiness of every law-suit and to appoint a day for it to be heard and settled. They did not have to hear the case there and then. Above the hundred court was the shire court which met twice a year, usually about Easter and Michaelmas (29th September), and was presided over by the ealdorman, the bishop and the king’s senior reeve in the area, the shire-reeve (or sheriff), with all the major landowners in the shire, or their reeves, present. Law-suits made up only a small part of the shire court’s time, which was filled up with all the other business essential to the smooth running of the shire. Law-suits could be passed up to the shire court from the hundred court, though we are not sure why this would be necessary. Presumably, it would occur in cases where the hundred court was unable to reach a judgement, or where disputes crossed the boundary between two hundreds.”  http://www.regia.org/law.htm

As to the specifics of the laws, compared to the laws in Wales, this following pages have extensive lists of what they actually entailed:  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/560-975dooms.html

In general, like in Wales, crimes were punishable by fines, more than death or dismemberment (hallmarks of Norman law).  Similarly to Wales, women in Anglo-Saxon England had rights:  “The Law of Cnut stated: “neither a widow nor a maiden is to be forced to marry a man whom she herself dislikes, nor to be given for money, unless he chooses to give anything of his own free will.”  Cnut’s law also specified that if a woman’s husband died before they had any children, she was entitled to one-third of his land (called “dower,” under common English law,) plus her morgegifu (gifts at the time of marriage).  Despite religious expectations, divorce laws were considered lax: Anglo-Saxon King Ecelbert passed specific laws that gave women the right to abandon a marriage if she found it “displeasing.”"  http://research.uvu.edu/mcdonald/Anglo-Saxon/Anglo-Saxon%20Women/mindyMain.html

From my reading, I am unsure as to the actual status of illegitimate children and their inheritance (unlike in Wales, where illegitimate children inherited equally with legitimate ones).  William of Normandy himself was a bastard, but yet inherited in Normandy (and then conquered England), so laws on the subject are not always set in stone.

“The Anglo-Saxon legal system rested on the fundamental opposition between folkright and privilege. Folkright is the aggregate of rules, whether formulated or not, that can be appealed to as an expression of the juridical consciousness of the people at large or of the communities of which it is composed. It is tribal in origin and is differentiated on highly localized bases. Thus, there was a folkright of East and West Saxons, Mercians, Northumbrians, Danes, and Welshmen, and these main folkright divisions persisted even after the tribal kingdoms disappeared in the 8th and 9th centuries. The responsibility for the formulation and application of the folkright rested, in the 10th and 11th centuries, with the local shire moots (assemblies); the national council of the realm, or witan, only occasionally used folkright ideas. . . .

Before the 10th century an individual’s actions were considered not as exertions of his own will but as acts of his kinship group. Personal protection and revenge, oaths, marriage, wardship, and succession were all regulated by the law of kinship. What began as a natural alliance later became a means of enforcing responsibility and keeping lawless individuals in order. As the associations proved insufficient, other collective bodies, such as guilds and townships, assumed these functions. In the period before the Norman Conquest, much regulation was formalized by the king’s legislation in order to protect the individual. In the area of property, for example, witnesses were required at cattle sales, not to validate the sale but as protection against later claims on the cattle. Some ordinances required the presence of witnesses for all sales outside the town gate, and others simply prohibited sales except in town, again for the buyer’s protection.”   http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/25121/Anglo-Saxon-law#

(updating and posting again 9/11/11)

09/8/11

Laws of Hywel Dda

Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good) ruled Wales in the early 900s, one of the few Welsh kings to control the entire country. He maintained peace with Wessex, to the point of minting coins in the English city of Chester. His laws were codifications and a consolidation of the common law in Wales at the time (meaning he didn’t create them out of whole cloth), and provided the foundation for Welsh law until the Norman conquest, when many were abrogated by Edward I. A surviving manuscript (from the thirteenth century) is in the National Library of Wales. It was a ‘pocket’ book, designed for lawyers to carry around in their scrip, rather than left on a library shelf.
You can view it here: http://digidol.llgc.org.uk/METS/lhw00003/physical

The laws are divisible into several categories:

Laws of the Court
These laws set down the rights of the king and rulers of Wales, their order of precedence, ranks, titles, and obligations. It introduces the concepts of insults and fines, according to whom an offence was given. The law used payment as a form of punishment, rather than death, dismemberment, etc., which the Normans instituted in England in 1066. In that respect, Welsh law was similar to Anglo-Saxon law and it is the system of Saxon and Welsh lawyers, infighting, and suing one another that provided the precedence for the modern English/American system, rather than the feudal Norman one.

Laws of the Country

This category was further divided into laws of women, land law, and surety and contracts. Women had more rights and were of higher status than in many European groups (e.g. Norman). For example, a woman was entitled to compensation if her husband beat her for anything other than: “giving away something which she was not entitled to give away, for being found with another man, or for wishing a blemish on her husband’s beard.” (the final article indicates cultural differences between then and now)

Further laws include the consequences for homicide, theft, and fire (usually involving payments to the victim) and setting the ‘value’ of animals, both wild and tame, and for trees, equipment and parts of the human body. “The value of a part of the body was fixed, thus a person causing the king to lose an eye would pay the same as if he had caused a villein to lose an eye.” He would also have to pay sarhad, however, meaning “the payment that was due to a person in the event of an insult or injury, and this varied according to the status of the person concerned, for example the queen or the edling’s sarhad was one third that of the king.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_law

Welsh law was far more humane than Norman law, which was undoubtedly the reason the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Pecham, told Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last Prince of Wales, that the laws were inspired by the devil. He was referring, in particular, to the Welsh law that allowed illegimitate sons to inherit land from their father, provided he acknowledged them.