No other crime requires a victim definition before and after the act; the wildly illogical understanding of rape comes from the stories of courtly love glamourising rape as an irresistible act by an attractive man, raising doubt over his ability, and her intention, to stop.

  It did not take long for even the most squalid assault in real life to get a sprinkle of courtly glamour. A Sussex court in January 1481 summoned William Pye of Lewes, a ‘clerk’ – a low-level churchman – on the ‘12th day of September in the 20th year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth after the Conquest [that is, 1480]’. The court accused William Pye of two assaults. The first was on his ‘mistress’, Alice Martin, in her marital home. The court was told that William Pye ‘by force and arms, viz. with sticks and knives, broke and entered the close and house of Thomas Martin of Southover near Lewes in the said County, and then and there made an assault on Alice, wife of the said Thomas’.

  The clerk of the court, writing in Latin, described the assault: ‘and with his stones stoned her and struck her’, and then adopted the language of poetry: ‘with his carnal lance wounded and maltreated her’. The poetic language conceals the violence of the attack. William Pye may have stoned his former lover, or he may have sexually assaulted her with his ‘stones’ his testicles. He certainly violently raped her; his penis romantically described as his ‘carnal lance’ (‘ipsam cum lancea sua carnali vulnerabat’), and she was so severely injured, ‘so that her life was despaired of’.

  A second assault by William Pye – a violent attack on members of the jury – was not enhanced with any metaphors at all. As a physical assault on a man it required no poetic description. The court heard that Pye ‘made an assault on Thomas Piper, one of the said jurymen, by force and arms, viz. with sticks and knives, and struck, wounded and maltreated him, against the peace of the lord King’.119

  Between the clerk, William and Alice, the wife of another man, now stretch centuries of deliberate confusion over whether men can stop before satisfaction and if a woman’s ‘no’ does indeed mean ‘no’, only to find it heralds a rape which is described in court in the language of love poetry.

  Part 3

  1455–1485

  Women at War

  Women at War

  Women stepped into roles of military leadership and civil authority during the disruption of the thirty years of civil war between the two rival families who descended from the sons of Edward III – the houses of York and Lancaster. Later named the ‘Wars of the Roses’, after the emblem of the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York, the long struggle could equally well have been named ‘the Mothers’ Wars’, given that the royal houses were headed by determined women who plotted, spied, suffered imprisonment and mustered armies to get their sons on the throne.

  Queen Margaret of Anjou (1430–82) led her army into battle, fighting for her comatose husband and his heir, their son. Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, rode with the Lancaster army supporting Margaret and was with her queen when she was defeated at the Battle of Blore Heath in 1459, when Margaret was said to have turned the horseshoes on her horse so that no one could track her escape. Later, Jacquetta would famously change sides to support her daughter Elizabeth Woodville, who married the newly victorious young king, Edward IV of York, in a secret ceremony on May day morning.

  During one of the York reverses, King Edward fled into exile, and Elizabeth hid in sanctuary with her daughters. Jacquetta was arrested, charged, tried and found guilty of bewitching the king and causing her daughter’s marriage using magic charms – even producing the enchanted figures as evidence in court. Jacquetta was only saved from imprisonment or execution for witchcraft by the triumphant return of her son-in-law, Edward, who ordered her release.

  Elizabeth Woodville, the first common-born woman to take the throne as a queen of England, fought through years of warfare, once in sanctuary, once in the Tower of London during a siege, before finally enjoying years of peace. On the death of her husband Edward, she fled into sanctuary again as Richard III claimed the throne and was crowned with his wife Anne in a joint ceremony. Elizabeth Woodville launched a rebellion to free her sons, bribing Margaret Beaufort – the sole surviving heiress to Henry VI and the House of Lancaster – with a promise that her son Henry Tudor should marry Elizabeth’s daughter Princess Elizabeth of York as reward for her support.

  Henry Tudor took the crown after the victory of his mother’s husband’s army and through his mother’s right. He married the princess that his mother had chosen and he governed the country with his mother’s advice. Margaret Beaufort invented a new title for herself, ‘My Lady, the King’s Mother’, and signed her name ‘Margaret R.’, which could have meant Margaret of Richmond (her title) or Margaret Regina – Margaret the Queen. Carefully, she never defined the initial. After using her husband to get her son the throne, Margaret put him aside and became a ‘vowess’ – a secular woman, living by monastic hours – and led an independent life as a celibate woman, the greatest landowner after her son the king, and the uncrowned queen of his court, where she dominated her daughter-in-law Elizabeth of York.

  The wars – really a series of battles, fought intermittently over 28 years, between the royal houses of York and Lancaster – were sometimes no more than local fights between rival lords sometimes represented by the women. Alice Knyvet defended Buckingham Castle at Norfolk against Sir Gilbert of Debenhem in 1461. Perhaps raising a siege was the lesser of two evils: she shouted from the battlements that she would rather die in battle ‘than be slayne when my husband cometh home, for he charget me to kepe it’.1

  Margaret Paston defended, but lost her manor at Gresham in Norfolk.2 With men away at war (or, like John Paston, regularly absent on business), it fell to aristocratic and ordinary women to defend their communities from passing armies and to run their landholdings in difficult times. Elizabeth Treffry held her house, Place, at Fowey in Cornwall in 1457 against Breton pirates, mustering her workers from the corn, tin and wool business to defend the house from attack and looting. She is credited with the technique of pouring molten lead on the raiders.3

  That pirate siege was an exception to the usual skirmishes of the Cousins’ Wars, as battles were usually encounters in open country or outside towns, so few women landowners had to defend their homes against siege. Disruption to civil and political society was local and temporary and did not give elite women much opportunity to move into leadership roles, as men were not absent for very long.4

  The disruption of wartime and the absence of protective men from their homes may have increased violence against women from strangers. Incidents of abduction, kidnap and rape of wealthy women for forced marriage were increasingly feared and reported.5 A new act in 1487 made it clear that the law was to protect the property of the woman, not the woman’s person.6

  The absence of labouring men from home, even for a short time, threw families into poverty and left the woman as sole breadwinner; some moved into trades during the wartime labour shortage. Some women travelled with armies to support their husbands and some saw the passing army as an entrepreneurial opportunity, offering cooking, laundry and sexual services as ancillary workers. Probably some women enlisted and fought; but left no records.

  The end of the wars came as a relief to most women, who had suffered from the social disruption, damage to property and finances, and from personal loss. Wives and widows of defeated men often shared their punishment, going into exile or paying fines.7 With the injury, death or disappearance of their partner, many women faced hardship and many children were orphaned – creating extra numbers of the poor.

  Women’s Work

  In the years of peace, the Plantagenet courts aspired to be as centralised, ritualised and grand as the famously sophisticated court of Burgundy. Upper-class women were educationalists: Margaret of Anjou founded Queens’ College, Cambridge – exclusively for men. Elizabeth Woodville continued the patronage and encouraged Thomas Caxton, the printer, to come to England in 1476 with the first printing press, which caused a revolution in book and pamphlet production. Elizabeth herself helped translate and edit the Histoire des Philosophes, and may have encouraged publication of Le Morte d’Arthur, the retelling of the Arthurian courtly love legends. Courtly love rituals and jousts were famously undertaken at her court. Margaret Beaufort also supported Queens’ College and endowed lectureships in theology at both Oxford and Cambridge, and founded St John’s College, Cambridge.8 Aristocratic women copied the elegance of the queens’ courts, educating and training young kinswomen, visiting women, apprentice girls and servants, creating domestic institutions under female leadership.9

  Luxury work for the court encouraged craftspeople all around England as the retinue moved from one palace to another. Courtiers needed specialist clothing skills such as laundry, tailoring, embroidery, starching and headdresses, creating business for women entrepreneurs who visited court and took commissions back to their workplaces. Women weavers were introduced to a new textile when Margaret of Anjou encouraged silk weavers to come to London from Lyon, in her native France, and settle at Spitalfields. She founded the ‘Sisterhood of Silk Women’ to enter the trade.10 Ellen Landwith (d. 1481) was a London silkwoman who trained three female apprentices in her first husband’s workshop, which was a cutler’s business. She bought gold thread and raw silk direct from Venetian merchants, and in 1465 supplied the saddle decorations and silk banners for the coronation for Queen Elizabeth (Woodville). Ellen Landwith was so successful as a silkwoman that she was invited to join both her first husband’s guild, the Cutlers’ Company, and her second husband’s guild, the Tailors’ Company.11

  In 1469, Margaret Cobb, Elizabeth Woodville’s midwife, received a life pension of £10 a year, as did Alice Massey, who attended Elizabeth of York in 1503.12 Margaret Cotton cared for the nieces and nephews of Queen Elizabeth of York from 1502–3 while their mother, Katherine Courtenay, attended court.

  In 1400, widows were responsible for about a third of all property transactions in London, but by 1474 this had changed and the market was dominated by men, who had increased their share from 65 per cent in 1374 to 85 per cent.13 Some widows continued the pattern of making a fortune from good inheritances and well-judged second marriages. Guild widows in particular concentrated wealth in families by marrying inside the guild. Thomasine Bonaventure (1470–c.1530) made a remarkable transition from Cornwall shepherdess to highly wealthy London widow. She joined the household of the city’s bridgemaster Thomas Bumsby as a servant and married him. On his death, she married his colleague Henry Gall; on his death, she married Sir John Perceval, Lord Mayor of London, in 1498; and when he died, she enjoyed the widow’s dower from three city fortunes. She was one of the many wealthy widows who consolidated London wealth, merged businesses under one experienced management and solved succession problems. Thomasine, now Lady Percival, used her considerable fortune to pay for a bridge, a school and a library in her home of Week St Mary, Cornwall, where she is still honoured today.14

  Some women entrepreneurs continued their success in all industries and trades. Alice Shevyngton, a London servant maid, cured her master and built up a clientele for her remedy for sore eyes in 1480; London widow Joanna Rowley imported sugar from Lisbon in 1479, and in 1480 shipped oil and wax from the Portuguese capital and wood and wine from Spain. Ship-owner Margery Russel in Coventry seized two Spanish ships as legal compensation for the loss of her own ship to Spanish pirates.15 In 1495, the Holy Cross guild’s annual feast in Stratford-upon-Avon bought massive amounts of cream (8½ gallons), curds and milk from five local suppliers, four of them women.16

  A woman’s word still had no legal weight unless she were registered as a femme sole. In 1496, in the consistory court held by the prior and convent of Durham, Christina Fressell complained that Joan Lambert, wife of Nicholas, had slandered Christina saying that she had caught her having sex with Nicholas. Christina brought a defamation case against the married couple to defend her good name.

  Three weeks later, when the court sat again, Christina stood in the dock: accused of the ‘crime of fornication with Nicholas Lambert’. The claim of slander that she herself had raised had been turned against her. The court believed Joan Lambert and punished Christina Fressell for having sex with Nicholas. She was given a day to ‘purge’ herself – confess and take a church punishment, probably a fast. Nicholas Lambert – guilty either of slander or adultery – went unpunished.17

  Marriage

  Marriages of propertied families were mostly arranged with a view to consolidating fortunes and providing a reliable wife and mother for the family and their business. But there were marriages for love. The royal marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was undertaken so quickly and secretly that it would be evidenced at a trial for witchcraft and provide the basis for a legal challenge from Richard III. Jacquetta Rivers’s second marriage was a love match and she had to pay a fine for wedding the man of her choice. The Pastons were unlucky when Margery Paston (1449–79) fell in love with the family land manager. Her parents tried to send her away from her home to separate the young couple. Her mother reported in 1469, ‘we be . . . wary of other’.18

  Despite the family’s best efforts, Margery, an heiress, and the family land manager, Richard Calle, exchanged binding vows in secret. Summoned before a bishop and questioned, Margery stood by her betrothed, and the secret promise could not be overruled. Her mother expelled her from the household and disinherited her. Her brother gloomily predicted that she would end up selling ‘mustard and candles’ – since her new husband’s family were grocers.19 But he himself found love with his wife, Margery Brews, who wrote the world’s first valentine poem to him:

  And yf ye commande me to kepe me true wherever I go,

  I wyse I will do all my myght yowe to love and never no mo

  And yf my freends say, that I do amys,

  Thei shal not let me so for to do,

  Myne herte me bydds ever more to love yowe

  Truly over all ertheley thing

  And yf thei be never so wroth

  I tryst it schall be better in tyme commyng.20

  Some women chose their husbands in defiance of their families or their vows. Joan Portsmouth and Philippa King, two nuns at Easebourne Priory, Sussex, conceived children with their lovers – the chaplain of the priory and a servant of the Bishop of Chichester – and staged a ‘kidnap’ by their men in the summer of 1478.21

  Prostitution

  Elite mistresses and prostitutes were accepted at the court of Edward IV. Jane Shore, the ex-wife of a London goldsmith who appealed for the annulment of her marriage due to her husband’s impotency, took the eye of Edward IV and was praised by him as his ‘merry whore’. After the king’s death, she was publicly humiliated by his brother Richard III, who forced her to walk around the city walls wearing only a shift and carrying a lighted taper to show her shame and penitence. The London crowds were said to have been so sympathetic to her that they refused to watch her walk. King Richard himself later relented to allow Jane to marry no lesser person than the king’s solicitor general, Thomas Lynom.

  Prostitutes and brothel-owners were mostly tolerated, with London and other cities and towns licensing brothels. The port of Sandwich had a municipal brothel supervised by the town authorities, run by a married couple, offering four resident prostitutes who paid 16d a week for bed and board. They could not be beaten or overcharged for their ale. Southampton’s town-regulated brothel faced the same restrictions. Some women made a good living. Alice Stapledon, a convicted brothel-keeper from Suffolk, died in funds, leaving bequests to women friends and to charities.22

  Some towns occasionally tried to be more restrictive: in 1467, Leicester required townsmen to report any prostitutes to the authorities so that they could be expelled from the town. In Ipswich, ‘disorderly houses’ were targeted by the authorities during a plague outbreak, and in 1470 ‘harlots and bawds’ were expelled. In London, under new harsher rules, women accused of prostitution had their heads shaved for a first offence, were forced to stand in the pillory for a second offence and were banished from the city for a third. In 1473, a new mayor, William Hampton, ordered prostitutes to be publicly shamed. He demanded ‘diligent and sharp correction upon Venus’ servants, and caused them to be garnished and attired with ray [striped] hoods, and to be shown about the city with their minstrelsy before them by many and sundry market days’. He may have had little effect. In the 45 years of London commissary court records from 1471, 377 women were charged with prostitution, but only 10 confessed. The landlord of the Bell Tavern in Warwick Lane was accused of ‘harbouring suspected women’ and being a house of ‘whoredom’ in 1485, but 14 years later, tapster Joan Blond was charged with being a whore and Agnes Thurston, another employee, as a bawd.23

  Part 4

  1485–1660

  Becoming a Weaker Vessel

  Religious Change

  In 1535, Henry VIII ordered a state examination of religious houses called the Compendium Compertorum, to justify their closure. Thomas Legh, one of the king’s commissioners, visited Crabhouse Nunnery, at Wiggenhall, and found four nuns, all in poverty. He accused them of being sexually incontinent and of bearing children, including the prioress, Margeria Studefeld. He said one nun, Cecilia Barnesley, had given birth to two children, one fathered by a layman and one by a priest. Legh reported to Henry’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell that it was a ‘lewd nunnery’ and claimed the nuns were selling nunnery goods for their own profit. A later inspection cast doubt over Legh’s assessment, reporting that the house was in good repair, with valuables kept safe and bells hanging in the church: ‘Ther name ys goode . . . goode name and manner of life.’1