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Title: British freewomen
Their historical privilege
Author: C. C. Stopes
Release date: August 15, 2023 [eBook #71414]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1894
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRITISH FREEWOMEN ***
BRITISH FREEWOMEN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRITISH FREEWOMEN
_THEIR HISTORICAL PRIVILEGE_
BY
CHARLOTTE CARMICHAEL STOPES
DIPLOMÉE, EDIN. UNIVERSITY
“I do own for myself that Seneca the Declaimer saith, that I take
pleasure in going back to studies of antiquity, and in looking behind me
to our grandsires’ better times.”
As saith another poet:
“Antique, buried in rubbish, old and musty,
Which make one verst in customs old and new,
And of Laws, Gods, and Men giving a view,
Render the careful student skilled and trusty.”
_Inner Temple_ Dec. 25, 1610.
John Selden’s Janus Anglorum, translated by Redman Westcott, _alias_
Littleton.
LONDON
_SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO._
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1894
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
[Illustration]
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. ANCIENT HISTORY AND BRITISH 1
WOMEN
II. THE MODERN BASES OF PRIVILEGE 15
III. ROYAL WOMEN 27
Queens Consort 27
Queens Regnant 28
Queens Regent 33
IV. NOBLEWOMEN 35
They paid Homage 36
They received Homage 37
They held Courts Baron 37
They held by Military Service 40
They could be Knights 42
They could inherit Public 42
Offices
They could be High Sheriff 43
They could be Earl Marshal 45
They could be High Constable, 47
High Steward, High Chamberlain
They could be Champion, 48
Governor of Royal Castles
They could be appointed to 51
various offices
They could act as Femes Soles 51
when married
They had the Cure of Churches 53
As Peeresses summoned to 53
Parliament in person or in
proxy
V. COUNTY WOMEN 60
Could be Freeholders 61
Could act as Femes Soles when 61
married
Could hold by Military Tenure 62
Paid and received Homage 63
Could present to Churches 63
Could hold Motes and attend 64
Motes
Could be Suitors at County 64
Courts, Pares, Judges or Jury
Could elect Knights of the 67
Shire
Could elect Members of Private 69
Boroughs
VI. FREEWOMEN 77
Could be Members of Guilds 79
Could have Guilds of their own 83
Were free of the City of 84
London
Were free in other Boroughs 86
Could be Members of 90
Corporation
Could vote for Members of 94
Parliament
VII. THE LONG EBB 99
The Errors of Sir Edward Coke 99
A Believer in Coke’s Views 107
Protesting Women 112
Anne Clifford 112
Mary Astell’s Protest 124
Mary Wolstonecroft Godwin 127
Legal Cases decided in their 128
favour
The Reform Bill of 1832 136
The Reform Bill of 1867 139
Chorlton _v._ Lings 140
VIII. THE TURN OF THE TIDE 146
Something has been done 147
Municipal Franchise—School 148
Boards
Married Women’s Property Acts 149
Lady Sandhurst’s Case 150
What a Woman can do 152
Women and the Universities 155
IX. OTHER WOMEN 159
The Test of Civilisation 162
Labour the basis of Property 165
The Unrecorded Increment of 166
Women’s Labour
The Duality of Humanity 176
The Woman God’s Fellow-worker 178
APPENDIX
Eldest Daughters 180
The Countess Lucy 180
Women’s Service 180
Women’s Guilds 181
Free Kent 181
The Learned Selden 181
Sir Edward Coke 181
Judge or Jury 182
Physical Force Argument 182
Women and the Universities 182
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
[Illustration]
IN the spring of 1885, when planning to attend the British Association
meeting in Aberdeen that summer, it struck me that I might prepare a
paper on a Woman’s Subject, and try to find an opportunity of reading it
before the Section of Economics and Statistics there. The paper divided
itself into two, which I carefully entitled—I. The History and
Statistics of Woman’s Privilege; and II. The Economic Effects of the
Abstention of Women from Voting.
They were, as might have been expected, both rejected. I was told that,
though they formed valuable contributions to Constitutional History, the
Committee felt they would certainly lead to political discussion, which
must not be risked. At a public meeting in Aberdeen the same week, I
gave a resumé of my arguments, and the materials then collected I have
frequently used since in Drawing-room Addresses, and in private
conversation; in public papers, and in friendly correspondence. So many
have been surprised at the facts, and interested in the results, that,
at the present crisis, I thought it advisable to spend another six
months in careful verification of details, and in grouping apparently
disconnected data, so that their full import might be seen at a glance.
My first authorities were Sydney Smith’s “Enfranchisement of Woman the
Law of the Land” (1876), and Mr. Chisholm Anstey’s Book and Papers on
“The Representation of the People’s Acts” (1876).
Thence I went through the materials of Constitutional History, the
Statutes, Rolls of Parliament, State Papers, Parliamentary Writs,
Journals of the House of Commons, Reports of Cases, Works on Law,
History, and Archæology, both printed and manuscript.
Just as my paper was complete enough for the purpose in hand, M.
Ostrogorski’s book upon “Women’s Rights” appeared. But he had considered
the question in regard to all women, I, only in regard to British
Freewomen. He was the more general, I the more special, and I had noted
several points which had escaped him in regard to the prime question of
the day.
I consulted Miss Helen Blackburn, Editor of the _Englishwoman’s Review_,
and she urged me to bring out what I had prepared. She had always
thought the work necessary, had intended to undertake it herself, when
she could find leisure, and thought that now was the most fitting time
to publish.
She generously placed her notebooks at my disposal, whence I have
gleaned many interesting facts in support of my own. Therefore this
little book may be taken as her voice as well as mine. The points I
specially wish to be considered, are:—
1st, The Ethnological.—The racial characteristics of our ancestors. They
reverenced women.
2nd, The Philological.—All old Statutes are couched in _general_ terms.
Through a deficiency in the English language, the word “man” is a common
term, including woman as well as man, even by Statute.
3rd, The Legal.—The Late Laureate speaks of the liberties of men as
widening down from precedent to precedent. We find that the liberties of
women have, on the other hand, been narrowed down from precedent to
precedent. Sir Edward Coke, the technical cause of this limitation, is
only a fellow mortal, liable to error.
4th, The Historical, in which facts speak for themselves.
5th, The Biblical, in which prejudice and mistranslation have confused
the ideas of readers on this point. Some may disagree with my
conclusions, but I trust they may accept the facts, and do what they can
with them.
No one can deny that it is _just_ to grant women the Suffrage, no one
can deny that it would be _advantageous for them_ to receive it. There
is no reason that a thing should be because it has been, but when the
only objection brought against a thing is, that it has not been, it is
time to test if that statement be really true. We have not found the
received assertions true in regard to this subject. Hence the
publication of this little book.
Thus far I had written as Preface to the little Brochure that I printed
for the use of the Women’s Suffrage Societies a month ago. But as the
whole Thousand was ordered before it came from the printers, it was
evident that I ought to publish my work formally, with the many
additions I had held back from lack of space, and with the article from
the _Athenæum_, No. 3475, which I had been permitted to incorporate.
Amongst the Labour-saving appliances of the day, may be classified
collections of verified facts. I trust these may reach the hands of
those for whom I write, _brave women_ and _fair men_.
CHARLOTTE CARMICHAEL STOPES,
31 TORRINGTON SQUARE, W.C.
_6th June, 1894._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRITISH FREEWOMEN
THEIR HISTORICAL PRIVILEGE
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
__PRELIMINARY.__
ANCIENT HISTORY AND BRITISH WOMEN.
“Let us look at the beginnings of things, for they help us to
understand the ends.”
THOUGH early British traditions may survive in later Literature, we
cannot accept them for critical purposes. The century of the birth of
Christ is the earliest date of our authentic history. The words of the
Romans, strangers and enemies, are unexceptionable witnesses. Nothing
impressed the Romans more than the equality of the sexes among the
Northern nations; the man’s reverence for womanhood, the woman’s
sympathy with manhood, and the high code of morality that was the
natural outcome of this well-balanced society.
Plutarch (“de Virtut Mul.”) says, “Concerning the virtues of women, I am
not of the same mind with Thucydides. For he would prove that she is the
best woman concerning whom there is least discourse made by people
abroad, either to her praise or dispraise; judging that as the person,
so the very name of a good woman ought to be retired and not to gad
abroad.... And seeing that many worthy things, both public and private,
have been done by women, it is not amiss to give a brief historical
account of those that are public in the first place.” Among the examples
he cites, there is that of the continental Celts, kindred to the
British. Some of these wandered north-west, and some due south. “There
arose a very grievous and irreconcilable contention among the Celts
before they passed over the Alps to inhabit that tract of Italy which
now they inhabit, which proceeded to a civil war. The women, placing
themselves between the armies, took up the controversies, argued them so
accurately, and determined them so impartially that an admirable
friendly correspondence and general amity ensued, both civil and
domestic. Hence the Celts made it their practice to take women into
consultation about peace or war, and to use them as mediates in any
controversies that arose between them and their allies. In the league,
therefore, made with Hannibal, the writing runs thus—If the Celts take
occasion of quarrelling with the Carthaginians, the governors and
generals of the Carthaginians in Spain shall decide the dispute; but if
the Carthaginians accuse the Celts, the Celtic women shall decide the
controversy.” The Romans were much struck by the similar position of
women among the Britons, Belgic and Celtic alike. Elton, on the
authority of Ammianus Marcellinus, says of the women, “that their
approximation to the men in stature was the best evidence that the
nation had advanced out of barbarism.” Cæsar tells us (“Eng.” 117) that
the British women were made use of in Court, in Council, and in Camp,
and that no distinction of sex was made in places of command or
government. Selden, in his chapter on “Women” in the “Janus Anglorum,”
reminds us, that “Boadicea so successfully commanded the British armies
as to beat and conquer the Roman Viceroy, and no doubt that noble lady
was a deliberative member of the Council where the resolution was taken
to fight, and that she should command the forces.” Tacitus (“Vita
Agric.,” c. xv.) says, “Under the leadership of Boadicea, a woman of
kingly descent (for they admit of no distinction of sex in their royal
successions), they all rose to arms. Had not Paulinus, on hearing of
this outbreak, rendered prompt succour, Britain would have been lost.”
He owns elsewhere that had the Britons but been able to unite among
themselves, the Romans could not have conquered them; and he more than
once notes the bravery of the women in stimulating the warriors.
More fully in his “Annals” (B. xiv.), Tacitus describes how Suetonius
Paulinus attacked Mona (Anglesea) the stronghold of the Druids; and how
the women priestesses dashed about clothed in black, like furies, with
dishevelled hair, and with torches in their hands, encouraging and
threatening the soldiers, and when all was lost, perishing bravely among
the flames kindled by the conqueror. This is told, not in the tones with
which one belauds compatriot heroines, but in those of an enemy, to whom
these women added new terrors and increased troubles. Meanwhile, in the
East, the Roman statue of Victory had fallen from its place in the
temple of Claudius at Camalodunum; evil signs and omens weakened the
hearts of the Roman soldiers, and frantic Priestesses encouraged the
hopes of the British force thereby. Boadicea, having succeeded in
uniting some of the neighbouring tribes, had driven Catus over the sea,
had subdued Petelius Cerialus, had destroyed the Colonia at Camalodunum,
had sacked Verulam, and marched on London, building an intrenched camp
near what we now call Islington. Suetonius Paulinus, fresh from the
slaughter of the sacred Druid host, advanced to meet her. Tacitus
describes the position of the armies, and reports her speech. Not being
“unaccustomed to address the public,” she called her army to witness
“that it was usual for the Britons to war under the conduct of women,
but on that occasion she entered the field, not as one descended from
ancestors so illustrious to recover her kingdom and her treasure, but as
one of the humblest among them, to take vengeance for liberty
extinguished, her own body lacerated with stripes, and the chastity of
her daughters defiled.... They would see that in that battle they must
conquer or perish. Such was the fixed resolve of a woman; the men might
live if they pleased and be the slaves of the Romans.” “Neither was
Suetonius silent at so perilous a juncture, for though he confided in
the bravery of his men, yet he mingled exhortations with entreaties. ‘In
that great host were to be seen more women than efficient men.
Unwarlike, unarmed, they would give way the instant they felt the sword
and valour of those victorious troops, etc.’” Then follows the account
of the battle. “The soldiers spared not even the lives of the women, nay
the very beasts, pierced with darts, seemed to swell the heaps of the
slain. The glory gained that day was signal indeed, and equal to the
victories of ancient times, for there are authors who record that of the
Britons were slain almost 80,000, of our men about 400, with not many
more wounded.”
That Boadicea’s defeat was gloried in as being such a triumph to the
Roman arms is in itself a witness to her prowess. The numbers of the
slain did not likely represent warriors alone. The carriages with their
wives and children lined the field. The Romans thought that the defeated
Britons _could not_ fly past these. They _would not_. Husbands, wives,
and babes were slain together, and reckoned together, perhaps the very
beasts of burden among the heaps of the slain were reckoned too.
Anything to increase the Roman “glory.”
There is no picture more touching in the history of our country! The
forces of oppression and lust, the spirit of Nero himself, then Emperor,
were ranged against this woman. With superhuman energy, as patriot, as
mother, and as _individual_, she struggled against these in defence of
country, home, and honour. And _she failed_! Had circumstances been but
slightly altered, had the brave Caractacus been but able to hold out a
little longer, and take shelter with her, instead of trusting the rival
Queen Cartismandua, how differently might our British history have read
to-day.
Cartismandua was a Queen, too, in her own right, wedded freely to the
neighbouring Prince Venutius, but nevertheless personally elected as the
supreme ruler and leader of the united tribes of the Brigantes, making
contracts and treaties for all. Caractacus, after his nine years’
struggle, had fled for shelter and for help to her in the year 50 A.D.
But as Elton says in his “Origin of English History,” “she was farseeing
enough to see the hopelessness of contest with the Romans.” Already
Romanised in heart and spirit, she betrayed her countryman, cast off her
husband, forfeited her honour, and finally lost the crown of her
inheritance.
The blameless Boadicea suffered for her sins twelve years later, in that
sad year of 62 A.D. That defeat rang the death-knell of the freedom of
British womanhood, and of the spirit of British manhood. In such a
crisis it is _not_ the fittest who survive. They who lived to tread upon
her grave were born of lower possibilities. Yet she _has lived_, the
typal woman of the British past.
I know that I may be expected to speak of the Empress Helena, claimed by
Camalodunum (now Colchester) as the only daughter of its Coel II., the
wife of Constantius, the mother of Constantine, the Christian convert,
the finder of the true cross. Good as she was, refined and cultivated
too, she was, nevertheless, but a Romanised Briton, a Roman wife, a
Roman mother, under Roman Law. And the Roman Law was a meaner
foster-mother for feminine virtues than the free old British Law.
The withdrawal of the Roman troops for home affairs hastened a new
crisis, in which the Britons, made limp by protection and an alien
government, were unable to hold their own against invading tribes. No
longer was the British wife the brave help-meet, the counsellor, the
inspirer of the British man. Roman customs had completed what the Roman
arms and the Roman laws had begun, and the spirit of British Womanhood
had no reserve force in itself to spare. Then came an infusion of new
blood into the land, fortunately not of Latin Race, but of a good
northern stock, that reverenced woman still. Speaking of that stock in
earlier times, Tacitus (“Germ.” c. viii.) says, “The women are the most
revered witnesses of each man’s conduct, and his most liberal
applauders. To their mothers and their wives they bring their wounds for
relief, who do not dread to count or search out the gashes. The women
also administer food and encouragement to those who are fighting.” “They
even suppose somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the
female sex, and, therefore, neither despise their counsels nor disregard
their responses. We have beheld, in the reign of Vespasian, Veleda, long
reverenced by many as a deity. Aurima, moreover, and several others,
were formerly held in similar veneration, but not with a similar
flattery, nor as though they had been goddesses (c. xviii). Almost alone
among barbarians they are content with one wife.... The wife does not
bring a dower to the husband, but the husband to the wife.... Lest the
woman should think herself to stand apart from aspirations after noble
deeds, and from the perils of war, she is reminded by the ceremony which
inaugurates marriage (in which she is handed a spear) that she is her
husband’s partner in toil and danger, destined to suffer and to dare
with him alike in peace and in war....” “She must live and die with the
feeling that she is receiving what she must hand down to her children,
neither tarnished, nor depreciated, what future daughters-in-law may
receive, and may so pass on to her grandchildren” (c. xix). “Thus with
their virtue protected, they live uncorrupted by the allurements of
public shows or the stimulant of feastings. Clandestine correspondence
is equally unknown to men and women. The young men marry late, and their
vigour is unimpaired. Nor are the maidens hurried into marriage.
Well-matched and vigorous they wed, and the offspring reproduce the
strength of their parents” (Church’s Translation).
These racial peculiarities also marked the early Saxon invaders, though
there were no foreign witnesses to note them with surprise. The native
writers took them too much as a matter of course to consider them worth
noting. It is only indirectly that we can glean the state of affairs
from public records. Samuel Heywood, in his “Ranks of the People among
the Anglo-Saxons,” says (p. 2), “The word Cwen[1] originally signified a
wife in general, but was by custom converted into a title for the wife
of a king.... It was customary for Saxon monarchs to hold their courts
with great solemnity three times a year. The Queen Consort, at these
assemblies, wore her crown also, and was seated on a throne near the
King. When an assembly of the nobles met at Winchester to adjust the
complaints of the secular clergy against St. Dunstan, the King presided,
having his Queen seated by his side (“Eadmer de Vita St. Dunstan,” 2
Aug. Sacra., 219)....”
Footnote 1:
“Cwen” originally meant a wife, but it also meant a _companion_ or
_peer_, hence in old French Histories we see it used instead of Count,
as “Thibaut Cwens de Champagne.” In a roll in the Tower of London,
Simon de Montfort is called “Quens of Leycester” (Selden’s “Titles of
Honour”).
“The Queen Consort had her separate household and attendants....” “It is
highly probable that in ancient as well as modern times the Queen
Consort was considered as _feme sole_ in all legal proceedings. Sir
Edward Coke being called on to prove that this was the common law before
the Conquest, produced a charter made by Ethelswurth, Queen of the
Mercians, in the lifetime of her husband, giving away the lands in her
own power, her husband being only an attesting witness. We find Queens
Consort acting in all other respects as _femes soles_ in tenure,
management, and alienation of real property. Emma, Ethelred’s Queen,
gave a munificent grant to St. Swithins, Winchester. Alswythe, the Queen
of King Alfred, began to erect a house for nuns at Winchester, finished
by her son Edward. Queens attested their husband’s grants, and recorded
their assents to acts done and engagements made. Queens Dowager were
also present, and subscribed their names to Royal grants as being
content with them.”
Though, of course, the Royal rank increased the woman’s power, the law
and custom for Queens was but the reflex of the common law and custom of
the time for all women. Selden says, “Ladies of birth and quality sat in
the Saxon Witenagemot,” and Gurdon, in his “Antiquities of Parliament,”
vol. i., p. 164, adds, “Wightred, the next Saxon legislator, summoned
his Witas to the Witenagemot at Berghamstead, where his laws were made
with the advice and consent of his Witas (which is a _general_ term for
the nobility), for the laws were signed by the King, Werburg his Queen,
the Bishops, Abbots, Abbesses, and the _rest_ of the Witas” (_see_ “Sax.
Chron.,” 48). In Spelman’s “Concilia Britannica,” p. 190, we find also
that Wightred’s council at Beconceld (694) included women, for the Queen
and Abbesses signed the decisions along with the King and the Abbots (p.
192). The charter to Eabba the Abbess is granted by Wightred and his
Queen (p. 486).
The charter to Glastonbury is signed, after the name of the King, “Ego
Eilfgiva ejusdem Regis Mater cum gaudio consensi” (p. 533). In the
“Diploma Comiti, Regis Angliæ,” after the King’s name, “Ego Emma Regina
signo crucis confirmo.”
The second charter of Edward the Confessor to St. Peter’s at Westminster
contains not only the signature of the sainted King, but “Ego Editha
Regina huic donationi Regiæ consentiens subscripsi” (p. 631). And at the
council summoned to consider the Bull of Nicholas the Pope to Edward the
Confessor, after the King, signs “Ego Edgida Regina omni alacritate
mentis hoc corroboravi.” The different expressions used, show that the
signatures were no mere accident, no vapid formality.
In the council held to grant privileges to the Church “præsentibus etiam
clarissimis Abbattissis, hoc est, Hermehilda, Truinberga and Ataba
reverenda, ut subscriberent rogavi” (p. 198).
“King Edgar’s charter to the Abbey of Crowland (961) was signed with the
consent of the nobles and abbesses, for many Abbesses were formerly
summoned to Parliament” (Plowden’s “Jura Anglorum,” p. 384. Also William
Camden’s “Antiquity of Parliament”).
“Ego Ælfrith Regina” signs the Charter that the King of Mercia grants to
the Abbey of Worcester. “Ethelswith Regina” subscribes with Burghred,
King of Mercia or Mercland, in the Register of Worcester.
Edward the Confessor’s charter to Agelwin is confirmed by his wife, “Ego
Edgith Regina consentio.”
So in a charter of King Knut to St. Edmundesbury, his wife, Alfgwa,
signs, “Ego Alfgifa Regina” (Selden’s “Titles of Honour”).
There had been amid the Saxons, Queens Regnant as well as Queens
Consort. William of Malmesbury writes in admiration of Sexburga, the
Queen Dowager of Cenwalch, King of the West Saxons, 672, A.D., “that
there was not wanting to this woman a great spirit to discharge the
duties of the kingdom. She levied new armies, kept the old ones to duty,
governed her subjects with clemency, kept her enemies quiet with
threats, in a word, did everything at that rate that there was no other
difference between her and any King in management except her sex”
(“Malmesb. Gest. Reg.,” b. i.). Ethelfleda, too, the daughter of the
great Alfred, called the Lady of Mercia, ruled that kingdom after the
death of her father and her husband for eight years, and completed the
work that her great father had begun in finally defeating and
subjugating the intruding Danes. Women landowners sat in the Shire
Gemote, or held Motes of their own; women Burgesses were present at
Folkmotes, or at Revemotes. In short, the privileges of women in the
Saxon times were nearly equal to those they held in British times.
The Abbess Hilda presided over the monastery at Streneshalh, Whitby,
where was a man’s wing, and a woman’s wing, the church coming between
them. Among her disciples were educated many learned bishops. An
ecclesiastical synod met at her abbey (664), at which she presided, that
the calm of her presence and the influence of her control might soothe
excitement on the vexed questions of the day, chiefly those regarding
Easter. There were delegates from Rome, from the Scots, from the Angles,
and the Britons (_see_ lib. 3, c. xxv., and lib. 4, c. xxiii., xxiv.).
Also Spelman’s “Concilia” (p. 145) describes “Synodis Pharensis rogatu
Hildæ illic Abbatissæ celebratæ.” The earliest British writer still
extant, Gildas of Alcluid (now Dumbarton), reports this fact without
comment or surprise. Spelman preserves also (p. 205) “Epistola Johannis
Pa. VII.,” to “Ethelredum Regem Merciorum.” “Episcopus suo more
obnitentibus beatissima virgo Elfleda soror Alfridi, Abbattissa post
Hildam de Streneshalh, terminum negotio fixit dicens Dimissus ambagibus
testamentum fratris mei, cui præsens interfui, profero,” etc. Other
women held similar positions in England, as well as St. Bridget of the
Abbey of Kildare in Ireland.
The Norman invaders swept like a whirlwind over old institutions, yet
some of the strongest stood firm. They were, after all, of the same
Church, and Church and Cloister preserved the records of Saxon
liberties, and the customs of Saxon times. The clerical and lay powers
of many Abbesses were handed down unimpaired to their successors in
Norman times. The conquest was not one of extermination but of
superposition. The great mass of the _people_ remained Saxon in heart.
The Normans were, too, of a kindred race, though they had come from a
long sojourn in a land where language, thought, and custom had become
Latinised, a land that already held the principles of the Salic Law.
William promised to respect the laws of the country, but there is no
appeal against a conqueror’s will, or a soldier’s sword.
The lands they wrested from the Saxons, the Normans held of the King by
Feudal Tenure or by Military Service. Their laws, customs, and language
dominated the Saxons, as did their swords. But only for a time. The
struggles with France formed, through a common antagonism, a united
nation of the varying races in the island. To complete the union, the
nation went back to the language of the Saxons, and, when opportunity
for freedom called, went back to their old laws as a basis of the new.
That women suffered more than men did from the Norman invasion might
only have been expected. But that they did not do so nearly to the
extent that it is commonly supposed, can be proved by reference to
competent authorities, by whom the limitations of their privileges are
shown to proceed on definite and comprehensible lines.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
THE MODERN BASES OF PRIVILEGE.
“All rights arise out of justice.... Justice is a constant and
perpetual will to award to each his right.... Jurisprudence is
the knowledge of divine and human things, the science of what is
just and unjust.”—BRACTON. DE LEGIBUS ANGLIÆ.“Of acquiring the
dominion of things.”—_Temp. Hen. III._
THE relation between property and privilege has been the determining
principle in Constitutional Evolution, and the distinction between the
sexes in the matter of Property has been the radical cause of the
distinction between them in regard to Privilege. It is necessary to
trace this. The custom of Military Tenure made male heirs more valuable
to the Crown than female heirs, inasmuch as personal service was more
effective and reliable than representative service; and, therefore, in
early Norman days, when all lands lay in the King’s gift, he was eager
to confirm each succeeding son of the last owner in his possessions,
before _any_ of the daughters. But the principles of justice, the
customs of the land, and the springs of human nature, combined in
opposition to a further exercise of the Royal will, so that _all_ the
daughters succeeded before any of the collateral heirs, before uncle,
cousin, or nephew. Husbands and fathers would not have risked their
lives freely in the King’s wars, if they knew that wives and daughters
were to lose their estates, at the same time as they lost the protection
of their strong right arms. A survival of Saxon opinion strangely
affected further the position of daughters, when the chaos of custom
took form in law. An eldest-born son could inherit to the detriment of
his younger brothers, following the Norman custom of primogeniture, but
the eldest-born daughter held no privilege over her younger sisters, who
were all _co-parceners_ with her as regarded the inheritance, in the
manner that children of both sexes inherited among the Saxons, and among
the representatives of the Saxons, the free men of Kent. An indivisible
inheritance, such as a title, fell in abeyance among daughters until
decided by the selection of the Crown, though it was generally granted
to the eldest daughter.[i.] Unless a woman, therefore, was an only
child, she did not succeed to the entire advantages of “the heir,” but
as only child, and sole heiress, she inherited to the full the rights
and privileges of her father, brother, or ancestor. Sex-in-itself did
not _disqualify_ a woman from anything. There was no excusing a woman a
duty, and _consequently_ no denying her a privilege. “_Essoin de
servitio regis_ lyeth not where the party is a woman” (Statutes 33, Ed.
I.). The only advantage granted her, that of “sending a deputy,” she was
allowed in common with men, frail or infirm, or over the age of bearing
arms.
The Feudal System has been credited with limiting Personality and
Privilege to males; therefore it startles some students of history to
find that it was only on the extinction of the Feudal System, and the
translation of service-payments into money-payments, that women lost the
definite place assigned to them. Women’s rights came second in Feudal
Times, because they had to be protected by men’s swords; women’s rights
came nowhere in later times, when freedom towards property would have
made them able to protect themselves. The encroachments naturally took
place first in regard to married women. In ancient times even a married
woman could be “free,” both as an inheritor and as an earner. In the
very highest ranks she remained so. She was free to contract, to sign,
to seal, to act as a _feme sole_. On her marriage she conferred her
title on her husband, as men did theirs upon their wives. The lands were
held in common. The responsibilities she could not undertake herself, he
fulfilled as her representative. When she died he lost his
representative character; his tenure of her lands was only “by
courtesy,” and that only if he had a child by her; if not, they reverted
at her death to the donor. (_See_ “Statutes of Realm,” vol. i., p. 220.)
But a widow also could hold her husband’s lands under certain
conditions, either by her marriage settlement, her husband’s will, the
King’s gift, or “the courtesy of England.” Many examples of widows doing
so are given later. Even where there were heirs, and her husband died
intestate, a widow had a legal right to the third part of her husband’s
property. In Kent she had a right to the half till she married again, as
a man held the half of his wife’s property till he married again. (_See_
“The Customal of Kent.”)
The Laws of Chivalry refined the Upper Classes, inculcating Truth,
Loyalty, Chastity, Courtesy, Liberality, Reverence for Women and
Generosity to the Weak. But the real foundation of Privilege in
Chivalric times was practically Strength, Courage and Success among men.
Beauty, Grace and Honour among women. These qualities being temporary,
were not synonymous with Justice. The position of Divinity is an
unstable one, depending on the attitude of the worshippers. When
Chivalry faded out of men’s hearts, women felt that the outer shell of
custom meant little. It only set them on the shelf.
A tone of Chivalry affected the hearts of the traders and manufacturers
of Chivalric Times, a tone healthier, because more founded on justice
and equality. There was even then a confusion of ideas between
return-value of labour abroad, and labour at home; but there was no
confusion about the return-values of similar labour performed by men or
by women. Women were equal in all social guilds, and trading women were
equal in trading guilds.
The notion that partnership in toil could justify the assumption of the
whole proceeds of the common labours to the use and will of one of the
partners did not dawn on the simpler minds of our ancestors. It took
centuries of mistranslations of the first principles of government to
let this partial idea develop into its modern complexity. In Prynne’s
“Fundamental Rights of English Freemen,” p. 3, art. 7, we read, “That it
is the ancient and undoubted right of every freeman that he hath a full
and absolute propriety in his goods and estate. And that no taxes,
taillages, loans, benevolences, or other charge ought to be commanded,
imposed, or levied by the King or his ministers, without _common_
consent by Act of Parliament.” In order that husbands might have this
absolute proprietary right over the whole of the common property, it was
gradually extinguished among wives; and the second right for them
naturally lapsed in consequence of the other. The absorption of a
married woman’s property by her husband developed for her a massive code
of legal restrictions, and a stern doctrine of civil disabilities. She
was dissociated first from property, thence from privilege, finally she
became property. This was but the natural outcome of the non-recognition
of her Personal and Proprietary Rights. In any history, therefore, of
British Freewomen, we must practically follow legal precedent, in
assuming the non-existence of the _feme couverte_.
Through the different principles of inheritance, there have always been
fewer heiresses than heirs; through the success of the various methods
of protecting male professional and trade industries against female
competition, there have always been fewer female owners of earned
property; through the lower rate of women’s wages, and various causes
tending to disable single women even in the retention of property, these
owners represented smaller incomes than did men of their own class.
Representative Freewomen, therefore, have always been in a small
minority. The dominance of a _temporary majority_ sends a minority into
the Opposition; in which exile it lays plans for future action, when in
the see-saw of political change its turn comes to rise again. The
majority has always to consider the minority in its calculations and
actions. But a _permanent majority_, consciously or unconsciously,
labours to oust a _permanent minority_ from recognised and recognisable
existence even as an Opposition. By _always_ being able to overbear
opinion, it makes the expression of opinion futile. Either it is
concordant and unnecessary, or discordant and inoperative. The
expression of either becomes a waste of time, and is soon denied. And
thus women have been ousted by degrees from the building up of the
superstructure of the English Constitution, in whose foundations they
had been considered. The privilege of British Freewomen remained a
recognised quantity for ages. Though that quantity became “small by
degrees and beautifully less,” it was not finally annihilated till the
heart of the nineteenth century.
The process of diminution was hastened in periods of spasmodic activity
through association of principles that should have worked in the
opposite direction, had the principles been understood and applied in
their purity. No doctrine is more antagonistic to the spirit and
teaching of Christ than that of the subjection of women, and yet, though
the change from the Druidic religion to the worship of Odin affected
them but slightly, the changes within the Christian Creed mark epochs in
their gradual enthralment; as, for instance, the sixteenth century
Reformation and the seventeenth century Revival On the Suppression of
the Monasteries, Abbots and Abbesses were alike extinguished. But the
power and privilege of the Abbot in the House of Peers as in the Church,
survived in the Bishop. The extinction of the Abbess, without successor
either in Church or State, took away finally the right of one class of
representative women to sit in the Upper House. The suppression of the
Social and Religious Guilds founded and supported by women in common
with men, gave a seeming reason for later exclusion of Freewomen from
trade guilds.
The loudest Puritan cry of the seventeenth century was, it is true, “No
Bishop;” but the practical work Puritanism was really allowed to do in
politics was to make the representation of women in the Lower House
theoretically impossible.
As antagonistic to the doctrine of the subjection of women are the
Principles of Liberty. How can men become truly free that ignore, for
others, the liberties founded on the same reasonings by which they
enfranchised themselves? Yet every great era in the Evolution of
so-called _Popular Liberty_ has been marked by contemporary restrictions
of Feminine Freedom. Hence, in the seventeenth century, when hereditary
serfdom was finally abolished, and when slavery, by purchase, became
impossible in Britain, we first find the doctrine promulgated that
tended to disfranchise women. When outbursts of fervid eloquence on
“Liberty” were preparing the nation to lay out its millions in
enfranchising even its colonial slaves, in 1832, the disfranchisement of
women was effected by the use of a single statutory word. When, on the
29th of June, 1867, William Lloyd Garrison, the champion of Negro
Emancipation, was receiving an ovation at St. James’ Hall, men were
discussing in St. Stephen’s whether to give women political existence or
not. Though the single excluding word was erased from the statute book,
the House and the Courts of Law next year determined that its spirit
lingered there. When a new extension of the Suffrage took place in 1884,
the claims of women were again disallowed. The new rights of men
emphasised more strongly the old wrongs of women. A lowered
qualification for the Franchise protected property, not only inherited
or earned, but that which was only in the process of earning. This
privilege of prospective property increased the opportunities of earning
enormously. But _only_ when its possession was vested in a man. Women’s
possession of property, more difficult to acquire through laws of
nature, custom, inheritance, marriage, and the protection of male
industries, was further rendered less stable by their exclusion from the
faintest voice in determining laws, taxation, and home and foreign
policy. The progress of education has enriched public ideas, has altered
the Content of public Conscience, has facilitated public discussion of
facts and theories. The relations of representation to taxation are
assailed. New bases of privilege are being proposed. There are those who
hold that Property is no sound foundation on which to build a
Constitution. Some would put in its place the notion of Justice, which
others name the right of the Individual. But those who accept this are
divided into two great classes, the first considering Justice in its own
nature, and treating Individuals as the indivisible units to which
Justice is to be applied, units not to be segregated by _any_ test into
groups receiving Justice or no Justice. The second class also considers
Justice applicable to all individuals, but adds a rider, that, in their
opinion, _individuals can be only masculine_. Something in the
construction of their minds permits them to harmonise, to their own
satisfaction, two discordant ideas. Masculinity seems to them a natural
basis of privilege—a solid foundation of Justice.
Others hold the older doctrines in a modified form, believing that
individuality without qualification of individuals cannot provide a
stable basis. If the idle and improvident, by mere force of numbers, are
to dominate the industrious and the provident, the ends of justice would
be defeated. By property or industry tests those are included who have
interests to preserve. Those who help to support the State should have a
voice in determining its action. No one is excluded from Enfranchisement
thereby. A very moderate degree of industry or success will make it
possible to any one to attain the franchise. A worthy incentive to
labour is a moral good. Amidst these thinkers there are also two
classes: those who consider that the rights of women in themselves, and
in the property they inherit or acquire, are as important as those of
men, and should be made as stable; and those that, by combining two
principles of Enfranchisement, make a logical cross division, importing
the totally unconnected dividing principle of sex into the consideration
of the rights of property. What is simply _unjust_, when individuals are
selected on the basis of sex, becomes both _illogical_ and _unjust_ when
questions of sex are imposed on those of property. Sex is an inseparable
accident, and when accepted as the Basis of Justice, closes the
question; property is a separable accident, and must be considered upon
different lines. The various objections to any simple, logical,
homogeneous, and just arrangement of the Bases of Privilege, while
depending on the doctrine of sex, are worked out by two sub-sections of
thinkers upon different lines. One section says boldly, “when persons
qualified by property are also qualified by masculinity, we grant them
privilege.” The other section analyses the attributes of masculinity,
and apply each as a separate test to the person qualified by property.
“The physical force argument is the foundation of government, most men
are stronger than most women, therefore no women must interfere in
government.” Women would “require an improved understanding to vote for
a member of Parliament.” “Women cannot understand mathematics, nor
master the classics,” and when they proved they could, the principle was
sent back further into statements that “their brains were not heavy
enough,” “their moral force not strong enough.” “Women have not written
Shakespeare, composed Beethoven, painted Raphael, built St. Peter’s.”
The understanding of proportional representation, and the far-reaching
economic results of bi-metallism, have been seriously proposed as tests
for women. But have the whole series, or _any one of them_, ever been
applied to the mere male electors of the realm? When pressed hard on
this point, these objectors, in their confusion, fall back upon
precedent and on authority to prove that to be _legal_ which they cannot
prove to be _just or reasonable_. It is no argument in favour of
anything that _it has been_, or else reformation would be impossible.
But when the sole argument against its _being_ is that it _has not
been_, the consideration of Legality and of Precedent becomes a
necessity to the advocates of Justice. Many mistakes have been taken for
facts, many fallacious arguments based upon erroneous premises. A Review
of the History of Women that have hitherto ever exercised any privilege
is necessary for generalisations to be based thereon. For by this
process we may unite the followers of Legality and Precedent with the
worshippers of Justice and Equality, and the union of the two forces,
like those of the sun and moon upon the sea, may raise the high “tide in
the affairs of women that leads on to fortune.”
The Review is encouraging in two aspects. In the light of the modern
doctrine of Heredity, we see that our far-away ancestors held opinions
to which we may hope that our successors may yet _revert_; and from
Ancient History we find that a recognition of the existence of women in
the State, far from being novel or revolutionary, would only be the
fulfilling of the fundamental principles of the English Constitution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
ROYAL WOMEN.
“The country prospers when a woman rules.”
IN order to simplify and classify the mass of material at hand, it is
advisable to take by their degree the ranks of women among the
Anglo-Normans. Among the Queens, only because they precede in order of
time and of number, we may take first
=Queens Consort.=—In Doomsday Book, Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror,
is entered as holding of the King, many lands forfeited by the Saxons.
“She was made the feudal possessor of the lands of Beortric, Earl of
Gloucester, hence the practice of settling the Lordship of Bristol on
the Queen generally, prevailed for centuries. On her death in 1083, her
lands went back to the King by feudal tenure. The Conqueror kept them in
his own hands, meaning them for his and her youngest son Henry, who
afterwards succeeded.” (Seyer’s “Memoirs of Bristol,” chap. iv., p.
318). Later queens had separate establishments, officers and privy
purse. “The Aurum Reginæ, or Queen’s Gold, is distinguished from all
other debts and duties belonging to the Queen of this Realme. All other
revenues proceed to her from the grace of the King, this by the common
law ... which groweth upon all fines paid to the King, licenses,
charters, pardons, of which she receives one-tenth part. After her death
the King recovers his right to hold this tenth. This duty hath been
enjoyed by the Queens from Eleanor, wife of Henry II. to Anne, second
wife of Henry VIII.” (Hakewell’s speech in Parliament on Aurum Reginæ.
Addit. MSS., Brit. Mus. 25, 255.)
Even to our own days Queens Consort have had the privilege of acting as
_femes soles_. But in early times they exercised considerably more power
in the State than we realise to-day. They sat in the Councils, even in
the presence of the Kings, and gave their consent to measures along with
Kings and Nobles. “The Queen-wife of England also superscribed her name
_over_ their warrants or letters of public direction or command,
although in the time of Henry VIII. the fashion was that the queens
wrote their names over the left side of the first line of such warrants,
and not _over_ them as _the Kings do_” (Selden’s “Titles of Honour”).
But as many of the Queens Consort, though thus entitled to be ranked
among “Freewomen,” were not of native extraction; we do not dwell upon
all their privileges, preferring to hasten on to those that indubitably
were British Freewomen.
=Queens Regnant.=—The first critical moment in the History of Queens
Regnant occurs at the death of Henry I., who had, as he considered,
arranged satisfactorily for the succession of his daughter Matilda. His
attempt proved that the French Salic Law had not been made law in
England. A quaint account of his proceeding occurs in the “Lives of the
Berkeleys,” published by the Gloucester Archæological Society, 1835, p.
2. “King Harri the first, third sonne of King William the Conqueror, had
issue remaining one daughter named Maude ... the sayd King Harri send
for his foresayd daughter Maude the Emparice into England, and in open
Parliament declared and ordeyned her to bee his eire. To whom then and
there were sworen all the lordes of England, and made unto her sewte,
admittinge her for his eire. Amongs whom principally and first was
sworen Stephen Earle of Boleyn, nevowe of the sayd King Harri the
first.” But as Selden says, “I do very well know, that our perjured
barons, when they resolved to exclude Queen Maud from the English
throne, made this shameful pretence, ‘that it would be a shame for so
many nobles to be subject to one woman.’ And yet you shall not read,
that the Iceni, our Essex men got any shame by that Boadicea, whom
Gildas terms a lioness” (Janus Anglorum). The same author, in noting the
laws made by various kings, enters the reign of Stephen as that of an
unrighteous king who had no time to make laws for the protection of the
kingdom, because he had to fight in defence of his own unjust claim. “In
1136 Henry of England died, and Stephen Earl of Boulogne succeeded. At
Mass on the Day of his Coronation, by some mistake, the peace of God was
forgotten to be pronounced on the people” (“Antiquitates,” Camden).
Prynne calls him “the perjured usurping King Stephen.” The general
uncertainty of the succession is betokened in the struggle. Very
probably had there not been a Stephen to stir up the nobles, the country
might have rested peaceably under the rule of Matilda.
It seems strange that the oldest Charters of the express Creation of the
title of Comes (Count or Earl) are those of Queen Maud, who first
created the Earldom of Essex and the Earldom of Hereford. To Aubrey de
Vere also she granted the Earldom of Cambridge, or another title if he
preferred it, and he chose the Earldom of Oxford. A struggle like the
Wars of the Roses was closed by the death of Stephen and the peaceable
succession of Matilda’s son, Henry II.
Another lady of the family was supplanted by the proverbially “cruel
uncle.” King John in 1202 made prisoners of his nephew, Arthur, Duke of
Brittany, and the Princess Eleanor, his sister, called “The Beauty of
Brittany.” Arthur is supposed to have been murdered by his uncle, and
Eleanor was confined for forty years in Bristol Castle. A true daughter
of Constance, she is said to have possessed a high and invincible
spirit, and to have constantly insisted on her right to the throne,
which was probably the reason that she spent her life in captivity.
(_See_ the close Rolls of the Tower of London, and the Introduction
xxxv.)
But the second real crisis was that which closed the Wars of the Roses.
Another Stephen appeared in Henry VII., who, fortunately for the people,
simplified matters by marrying Elizabeth of York, the rightful heir.
Jealous in the extreme of his wife’s prerogative, he used his high hand
as the conqueror of Richard and the Kingdom, delayed her coronation as
long as he dared, ignored her in his councils, and magnified his
relation as husband, to the extinction of her glory as Queen.
Henry VIII. enjoyed to the full the advantage of an undisputed
succession. He restricted the rights of Queens Consort, as his father
had ignored the rights of Queens Regnant. A strange Nemesis followed,
foretold in the so-called prophecies of Merlin. That these really were
talked of, before the events occurred, can be proved by MSS. among the
uncalendared papers temp. Henry VIII. Public Record Office. There is in
full “the Examination of John Ryan of St. Botolphs, Fruiterer,
concerning discourses which he heard at the Bell on Tower Hill,
Prophecies of Merlin, that there never again would be King crowned of
England after the King’s son Prince Edward, 22nd August, 1538.” James V.
of Scotland had sadly said on his death-bed, “The Kingdom came with a
lass, and it will go with a lass.” So was it to be in England. The pale
sickly youth who succeeded, third of the Tudors, died without wife or
child, and on the steps of the throne stood four royal women, whose
lives form the most interesting period of national history. Each of them
had a special claim. Mary, pronounced illegitimate by the Protestant
party, and by statute of Parliament, inherited through her father’s
_will_ alone; Elizabeth, pronounced illegitimate by the Catholic party,
and by a similar statute, stood second in that will; Mary, Queen of
Scotland and of France, showed flawless descent from Margaret, the elder
sister of Henry VIII.; and Lady Jane Grey proved like flawless descent
from Mary, Henry’s younger sister.
Henry, a despot even “by his dead hand,” had, failing Edward, left the
crown to Mary, then to Elizabeth, then to Lady Jane Grey. Edward VI.,
not a minor by the laws of England that allowed Government to commence
at fourteen years, considered both his sisters illegitimate under his
father’s statutes, preferring of the two Elizabeth’s claim. But for the
peace of the kingdom he left by _will_ the crown to Lady Jane Grey,
ignoring, as his father had done, the prior claims of Mary, Queen of
Scotland and of France. The results of the complication are too well
known to be here rehearsed.
The first act of Mary was to establish her own legitimacy, the honour of
her mother, and the power of the Pope; her second was to establish the
office of Queen Regnant “by Statute to be so clear that none but the
malitious and ignorant could be induced and persuaded unto this Error
and Folly to think that her Highness coulde ne should have enjoye and
use such like Royal Authoritie ... nor doo ne execute and use all things
concerning the Statute (in which only the name of the King was
expressed) as the Kinges of this Realme, her most noble Progenitours
have heretofore doon, used and exercised” (1 Mar., c. iii.)
Both she and her sister, at their coronations, were girt with the sword
of State, and invested with the spurs of knighthood, to show that they
were military as well as civil rulers. Fortunately for her country, and
for herself, Elizabeth lived and died a maiden Queen. The bitter
consequences of her sister’s Spanish alliance taught her the importance
of independence as a ruler. Whatever we may individually think of her
character, all must allow her reign to have been in every way the most
brilliant in the history of our country, only equalled in our own times
by that of a Matron Queen, who has held the reins of Government in her
own hand and whose husband came to the land but as Prince Consort. Queen
Anne’s reign is also worthy of note, and can bear comparison with that
of most Kings, for its military successes, and its literary activities.
=Queens Regent.=—Selden argues against Bodin of Anjou, who upheld the
Salic Law, “are not discretion and strength, courage, and the arts of
Government more to be desired and required in those who have the tuition
of kings in their minority, than in the kings themselves till they are
come of age?” He considers the French use of Queens as Regents to be
destructive of their own theories.
Queens as Regent-Tutors of young kings have not held the same position
in England as they did in France or in Scotland. But as governing
Regents and Viceroys they have often done good service. William of
Normandy more than once left the country in charge of his Queen. Richard
I., by commission, appointed his mother, Eleanor, to be Regent of the
Kingdom in his absence, and wrote to her to find the money for his
ransom when imprisoned abroad. She sat as Judge in the Curia Regis,
taking her seat on the King’s Bench by right of her office. She granted
concessions to the inhabitants of Oléron (to women as to men) even down
to the reign of John (1 John; _see_ “Rymer’s Fœdera”). Edward III. found
his Queen Philippa a Queen Regent worthy of himself. Henry V. appointed
his mother as Regent in his absence, and even Henry VIII., when he went
abroad on his last French War, left his Queen, Catherine Parr, Governor
of the Kingdom. I have gone through their correspondence in the Public
Record Office, and it bears ample testimony to her capability and his
trust in her judgment. In “Olive _versus_ Ingram,” 1739, it is noted,
“Queen Caroline was once appointed Regentor of the Kingdom.”
It was with little less than Vice Regal splendour and power that Joan,
Dowager Countess of Pembroke, ruled the Palatinate for nine years in the
reign of Edward I.; or Isabel de Burgo in that of Edward II., or Agnes
de Hastings in that of Edward III.; ruling in the stead of their sons
until the youths attained majority at the age of twenty-one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV.
NOBLEWOMEN.
“Noblesse Oblige.”
IN Selden’s “Titles of Honour,” iii., 890, he says, “Of feminine titles
some are immediately created in women, some are communicated by their
husbands, others are transmitted to them from their ancestors, and some
also are given them as consequents only of the dignity of their husbands
and parents.” Of “immediate creation” he gives the example of Margaret,
Countess of Norfolk, created by Richard II. Duchess of Norfolk, wherein
the investiture is mentioned by the patent to be by putting on her the
cap of honour “recompensatio meritorum.” Henry VIII. created Anne Boleyn
Marchioness of Pembroke. James I. created Lady Mary Compton the Countess
of Buckingham in her husband’s lifetime, without permitting him to share
the honour. He also created Lady Finch, first Viscountess of Maidstone,
and afterwards Countess of Winchilsea, limiting inheritance to heirs of
her body.
Anne Bayning, wife of James Murray, was created Viscountess Bayning of
Foxley in 1674. Several titles have been granted for discreditable
causes, too few for “recompensatio meritorum.” Men that were merely rich
have been made peers. Women that have been truly noble have not been
made Noble by Letters Patent. The Baroness Burdett Coutts is the only
modern example I can recal.
The titles that women received from their husbands were doubtless
intended more as an honour to their husbands than to themselves, though
they carried, at times, considerable privileges along with them. They
bore them as widows until their death, sometimes with the full honours
and powers their husbands had borne.
There are some curious cases of titles being _assigned_. Randol, Earl of
Chester and Lincoln, granted the Earldom of Lincoln to his sister, the
Lady Hawise de Quency. She afterwards granted the title to John de Lacy,
who had married her daughter Margaret, a grant confirmed by the King in
a charter, limiting the inheritance to the heirs of Margaret.
I have already noted the two limitations of a daughter’s inheritance of
property. The same affected titles. But having inherited, she became
endowed with every privilege to the full; and every duty was exacted of
her to the utmost.
=Women paid Homage.=—In spite of many careless remarks to the contrary,
women paid homage. “John, heir of the Devereux, died under age; his
sister Joane, making proof of her age, and doing her homage, had Livery
of the Lands of her Inheritance” (2 Ric. II., Dugdale, 117).
The summons to Ladies as well as to Lords for aids to the King was “de
fide et homagio.”
It is true that at some periods widows did not pay Homage for the lands
of their deceased husbands; but neither then did men pay Homage for the
lands of their deceased wives, holding only by “the Courtesy of
England.” “Because if Homage be given, it might never return to the
lawful heir” (“Statutes of the Realm, Lands held by Courtesy,” vol. i.,
p. 220).
=Received Homage.=—Many examples are given in the “Rotuli Hundredorum,”
“Testa de Nevil” and “Kirkby’s Inquest.” Isabella and Idonea de
Veteripont insisted on Fealty and Homage from the inhabitants of
Appleby. 4 Edward I., as did Anne Clifford later (Nicholson’s “History
of Westmoreland,” v. 2). One curious distinction comes in here between
the sexes, as a result of the system of _coparceny_ among sisters. A
brother might pay Homage to his brother, but not a sister to her sister.
The statute of 20 Henry III. (1236) enacted that “the law regarding
sisters, co-heirs, be used for Ireland as in England, that the eldest
sister only pay Homage to the Overlord or to the King in her own name
and that of her sisters, but that the sisters do not pay Homage to the
sister for that would be to make her Seigneuress over the other sisters”
(Rot. Parl., 20 Henry III.).
=They could hold Courts Baron.=—A petition, 16 Richard II., appears,
praying that no Liegeman should be _compelled_ to appear at the Courts
and Councils of the Lord or of the Lady to reply for his freehold.
In Rot. Hundred, Edward I., many women were entered as holding Courts of
Frank-pledge and Assizes of Bread and Ale, and as having a Gallows in
their Jurisdiction, as Johanna de Huntingfeud held view of Frank-pledge
in the Hundred of Poppeworth, Canterbury, vol. i., p. 53. Elena de la
Zouche also, Agnes de Vescy, and Elena de Valtibus in Dorsetshire, the
Countess of Leycester at Essedon in Buckinghamshire. (“Relation of Women
to the State in past times.” Helen Blackburn, _National Review_, Nov.,
1886.)
The Countess Lucy kept her Courts at Spalding during the banishment of
her first husband, Yvo de Taillebois. (Selby’s “Genealogist,” 1889, p.
70.) The Pipe Roll of 31 Hen. I. shows that she had agreed to pay the
King 100 marks for the privilege of administering justice among her
tenants (homines).
In Anne Clifford’s Diary, Harl. M.S., 6177, appears: “1650. This time of
my staying in Westmoreland, I employed myself in building and reparation
at Skipton and Barden Towers, and in causing ye bounds to be ridden and
my Courts kept in my sundry mannors in Craven....”
“1653. In the beginning of this year did I cause several Courts to be
kept in my name in divers of my mannors in this Country.”
“1659. And ye Aprill after, did I cause my old decayed Castle of Brough
to be repaired, and also the Tower called the Roman Tower in ye said
Castle, and a Court-House for keeping of my Courts.”
There is preserved in Swansea a charter granted, 2 Edward III., to
Aliva, wife of John de Mowbray, of the land of Gower. It recites and
confirms various previous charters of the land of Gower, with the
appurtenances, and _all manner of Jurisdictions_, and all Royal
Liberties, and free customs which Gilbert de Clare the son of Richard de
Clare theretofore Earl of Gloucester and Hertford had, in his land of
Glamorgan. (Report of Municipal Corporations, 1835, p. 383.)
This practice seems to have long survived in modified forms. In same
Report, p. 2850, regarding the Borough of Ruthin, “It was in evidence,
and was indeed frankly admitted by the deputy-steward, that, upon
impanelling the jury at the Borough Court Leet it is the uniform
practice for some agent of the Lady of the Manor to address a letter,
which is delivered to the foreman of the jury in their retiring-room,
recommending two persons as aldermen, who are invariably elected. As a
part of this system, it was proved that in many instances the duties and
fees payable on the admission of burgesses to their freedom had been
defrayed by the Lady of the Manor; and that the uncontrolled power of
impanelling the jury was left to her agent. The only answer furnished by
the deputy-steward was that he had taken for his guide the usage of the
place, as pursued by his predecessors, without reference to charters,
which had only of late years come under discussion.” Also in page 2840,
regarding Rhuddlan, “As far as any ruling body or corporation can be
said to subsist in a borough thus circumstanced, the Lady of the Manor
must be considered to elect that body; for the Steward of the Court Leet
is appointed by her during pleasure; and he gives the constables a list
of the persons who are to serve on the jury by whom the two bailiffs,
the only subsisting officers of the corporation, are chosen.” The Lady
of the Manor there also paid the Constables.
=Held by Military Service.=—There were 15 ladies summoned for military
service against Wales “de fide et homagio,” in 5 Edward I., and again in
10 Edward I. Among these were Devorgilla de Balliol, Agnes de Vescy,
Dionysia de Monte Canisio, and Margaret de Ros. A writ was issued to
Isabella de Ros, commanding her “in fide et homagio” to send her service
to the muster at Portsmouth for the King’s expedition to Gascony, 14th
June, 1234. Elena de Lucy was summoned from the county of Northampton
“to perform military service in parts beyond the sea. Muster at London,
7th July, 25 Edward I.” Joan Disney of Lincoln was summoned “to perform
military service against the Scots. Muster at London, 7th July, 25
Edward I.” These are but a few selected from many others that appear in
Palgrave’s Parliamentary Writs. It is true that a substitute might be
sent by anyone, _male or female_, with reasonable excuse. “On 16th
April, 1303, proclamation was made that all prelates, persons of
religion, women and persons who were unfit for military service, who
were willing to commute their service by fines, might appear before the
Barons of the Exchequer at York on 17th May ensuing. Otherwise they, or
their substitutes, must appear at the muster at Berwick on the 26th
May.”
Palgrave’s Parliamentary Writs give long lists of women holding castles,
towns, and military feods in 9 Edward II., and Harl. MS., 4219, in
“Hundreds, Civitates, Burgi, and Villæ in Comitatu Norfolk et _Domini_
eorundem,” gives many names of women.
Margaret, widow of Lord Edmund Mortimer, was charged with providing one
hundred men for the wars in Scotland out of her lands at Key and
Warthenon. Dugdale’s “Peerage and Baronetage,” vol. i., p. 173.
In 3 Edward II. writs docketed “De summonicione servicii Regis” were
issued to Abbots and Abbesses alike for military aid against the Scots,
“de fide et dilectione;” and to Nobles, Lords and Ladies alike in “fide
et homagio.” On the 13th September following Domina Maria de Graham
proffers the service of two knights’ fees for all her lands in England,
performed by four servants with four barded horses; and many noble
ladies offer equivalent service.
Joane Plantagenet, the Fair Maid of Kent, inherited from her brother the
Earldom of Kent, and from her mother the Barony of Wake, by which she
was styled the Lady of Wake. She married Sir Thomas de Holland, who,
through her, became Earl of Kent without creation. Her son Thomas
succeeded both. His widow Alicia died possessed of 27 manors held by
direct feudal or military tenure, beside many freeholds. (_See_
“Inquisitions Post Mortem”; 4 Henry IV.)
=They could be Knights.=—Not only in Romances, not only in Spenser’s
“Faery Queene,” but in books of Chivalry, we may see that women could be
knights. Mary and Elizabeth were made knights before they were made
Queens. Abergavenny Castle was held by knight’s service. William, Baron
Cantilupe, by marrying Eva, daughter and co-heir of William, Lord
Braose, obtained the Castle and Lands. Her tomb in St. Mary’s Church,
Abergavenny, 1246, is of interest as being the earliest stone effigy of
a woman known in England. Her daughter, Eva de Cantilupe, succeeded to
the barony and the castle, and was a knight. Her tomb is the only
instance known of the stone effigy of a woman adorned with the insignia
of knighthood, 1247. In 1589, Edward Neville sued for the Barony against
Mary, Lady Fane, as being entailed in the Heir Male. His suit was
refused. The Lord Chief-Justice Popham determined “that there was no
right at all in the Heir Male; the common Custom of England doth wholly
favour the Heir General ... and Her Majesty would require to make a new
creation to prefer the Heir Male to the Heir Female” (Sir Harris
Nicolas’ “Historic Peerages,” p. 15).
=Inherited Public Office associated with the Title or Property.=—The
story of Ela of Salisbury illustrates the views with which the early
Normans regarded heiresses. She was born in 1188. Her father, the Earl
of Salisbury, died 1196, leaving her sole heir. She inherited both title
and lands before his three brothers. Her mother conveyed her away
secretly to a castle in Normandy, to save her from possible dangers
during her minority. An English knight, William Talbot, romantically
undertook, as a troubadour, to discover her whereabouts, and, after two
years, brought her back to England. King Richard betrothed her as a
royal ward to his half-brother, William Longespée, son of Fair Rosamund,
who became, through her, Earl of Salisbury. At King John’s coronation at
Westminster, William, Earl of Salisbury, is noted as being present among
the throng of nobility. (_See_ “Roger Hoveden.”) He died 1226, leaving
four sons and four daughters. Though besieged with suitors, Ela
preferred a “free widowhood” to selecting another Earl Salisbury. When
her son came of age he claimed investiture of the Earldom, but the King
refused it _judicialiter_, by the advice of the Judges, and according to
the dictates of Law. The Earldom and the government of the Castle of
Sarum were vested in Ela, not in her dead husband.
=The office of Sheriff of Wiltshire=, her right by inheritance, she
exercised in person until 21 Hen. II., when, probably to facilitate her
son’s entrance into the Earldom, she retired as Abbess to the Abbey of
Lacock, founded by herself. Even then, however, the youth did not
receive the title, and she survived both son and grandson. The note to
this Biography adds, “Though the law of female descent, as applied to
baronies by writ, has long ceased to govern the descent of earldoms, it
certainly did during the first centuries after the Norman conquest.”
(Bowle’s “History of Lacock Abbey.”)
Isabella and Idonea de Veteripont, who afterwards married Roger de
Clifford, and Roger de Leybourn jointly held the office of =High Sheriff
of Westmoreland=, and insisted on the Burghers bringing their cases to
them personally, 15 Ed. I. The office was held afterwards, also in
person, during the reigns of the Stuarts, by the brave Anne de Clifford,
Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, and Baroness of
Westmoreland. In virtue of her office, she sat on the Bench of Justices
in the Court of Assizes at Appleby. (Durnford and East’s “Term Reports,”
p. 397; Nicholson’s “History of Westmoreland,” vol. ii., p. 20.) “As the
King came out of Scotland, when he lay at York, there was a striffe
between my father and my Lord Burleigh, who was then President, who
should carie the sword; but it was adjudged to my father’s side, because
it was his Office by Inheritance, and so it is lineally descended on me”
(Anne Clifford’s Diary, Harl. MSS., 6177). We may add here, though
belonging properly to the following chapter, a parallel case:
“William Balderstone had two co-heiresses, Isabel and Jane. Isabel
married Sir Robert Harrington of Hornby, and Jane, first Sir Ralph
Langton, and second Sir John Pilkington. When Jane was “the young widow”
of Sir Ralph Langton, in 1462, she, along with her sister Isabella and
Sir Robert Harrington, her sister’s husband, appeared in court to
vindicate their right to the offices of the =Baylywicks of the
Wapentakes= of Amoundernes and Blakeburnshire, peacefully occupied by
their ancestors time out of mind, and claimed by one Giles Beeston, on
the plea of Letters Patent. Giles not appearing, judgment was given in
their favour, and a precept issued accordingly to the Sheriff at the
Castle of Leicester, 28th May, 2 Ed. IV. (Townley MSS.; “History of
Whalley,” vol. ii., p. 358, 4th edition, 1876, by Whittaker.)
The word, Bailiwick, was then applied to the office of a Sheriff. (_See_
4 Henry IV., c. v.; Statutes, vol. ii.) “Every Sheriff of England shall
reside within his Bailiwick.”
“Guy de Beauchamp, late Earl of Warwick, held the manor of Southanton as
of inheritance from his deceased wife, Alicia, by the Sergeanty of
bearing a Rod before the Justices in Eyre in the county. (9 Edward II.;
Blount’s Tenures.”)
=Marshal.=—Isabel de Clare, only daughter of Richard de Clare, Earl of
Pembroke, brought the Earldom into the family of the Marshals of England
by marrying William le Marshal. She had five sons (each of whom
succeeded to the Office, without leaving an heir) and five daughters.
The eldest of these, Maud, Countess of Norfolk, received as her share of
the family property the Castles of Strigail and Cuniberg, and, with
them, the office of Marshal, and in the 30th Hen. III. “received Livery
by the King himself of the Marshal’s Rod, being the eldest who by
inheritance ought to enjoy that great Office by descent from Walter
Marischal sometime the Earl of Pembroke. Whereupon the Lord Treasurer
and the Barons of the Exchequer had command to cause her to have all
rights thereto belonging and to admit of such a deputy to sit in the
Exchequer for her as she should assign.” (Dugdale Peerage, vol. i., p.
77.) Her son Roger exercised it during the remainder of her life and
succeeded her.
Alicia de Bigod, his widow, succeeded him in his honour. I find among
the petitions to the Council of 35 Edward I, held in Carlisle, one of
“Alicia de Bygod Comitissa Mareschall” to be allowed to send two proxies
to the Parliament of the King, “posuit loco suo, Johem Bluet militem,
vel Johem de Fremlingham ad sequend pro dote sua coram Rege et consilio
suo.” This must have been granted, for these proxies do appear in her
name in the Parliament Roll of 35 Edward I. But she was summoned by writ
personally (22nd January), in right of her office, to meet Edward II.
and his bride at Dover on or about 4th February. (1 Edward II.;
Palgrave’s “Parliamentary Writs.”)
The office of Marshal and title of Earl of Norfolk were afterwards given
“in tail general” to Thomas Brotherton, son of Edward I. and brother of
Edward II. His daughter, Margaret, inherited the office with the title
and arms, as she appears as “Margaret Countess Marshal” in the
Parliament Roll of 1 Richard II. (Rot. Parl., 713.)
In the petition of John, Earl Marshal, for precedence over Earl Warwick,
he says that “Thomas of Brotherton was son of Edward I., and bore the
Royal arms. Of him came Margaret, of whom came Elizabeth, of whom came
Thomas, of whom came John, now Erle Mareschal, and so apperteneth ye
said place in yis Riall court to this Lord Earl Mareschal by cause of
the blode and armes Riall with ye said possession” (Rot Parl., iii.
Henry VI.). The office afterwards fell to the Mowbrays. Anne Mowbray,
heiress, married the young Duke of York, second son of Edward IV., at
the age of four years. She carried the office of Marshal to him, but he
died in the Tower with his brother, Edward V., and his uncle seized the
title.
“Adeline de Broc held possession of her Guildford estates by the service
of being =Marshal in the King’s court.= (Temp. Henry II.; Blount’s
Tenures.”) “It was adjudged in B.R., Car I., that the Office of Marshal
of that Court well descended to a _feme_, and that she might exercise it
by deputy if she pleased.” (Callis, 250.)
=High Constable.=—Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, held
the manors of Harlefield, Newnam, and Whytenhurst, County Gloucester, by
the service of High Constable. He left two daughters, but the elder,
Eleanor, succeeded to the office, which she conveyed to her husband,
Thomas of Woodstock, who exercised it for her; the younger sister, Mary,
marrying Henry Plantagenet of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV.
=High Steward.=—Henry, Earl of Leicester, through the Barony of Hinckley
held the office of High Steward of England. He died, leaving two
daughters, the elder of whom, having married abroad, left the dignity
free to her sister, who married John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III.
Through her right he exercised the office of Steward, which their son,
Henry IV., carried back to the Crown.
=High Chamberlain.=—Justice Ashurst, from the King’s Bench in 1788,
notes that women have served the office of High Chamberlain (Rex _v._
Stubbs). I have not yet found the name of the lady that he refers to;
but we all know that the Baroness Willoughby d’Eresby held the Office
down to our own times, though she allowed her son to exercise it as her
deputy. “Catherine, sole daughter and heir to the last Lord Willoughby
d’Eresby, became 4th wife to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. She
afterwards married Thomas Bertie, and her son was Peregrine, Lord
Willoughby d’Eresby, who married Mary, daughter of the Earl of Oxford,
whose son Robert (1 Jac. I.) inherited the title and Office of High
Chamberlain.” (Dugdale.)
“The Manor of Hornmede, Hertforde, the Lady Lora de Laundford holds as a
Serjeanty of our Lord the King by being Chamberlain to our Lady the
Queen.” (7 Edward I., Rot., 39.)
Ela, third daughter of Ela of Salisbury, foundress of Lacock, in 1285
was returned as holding the Manor of Hoke-Norton in Oxfordshire _in
capite_ by the Serjeanty of carving before our Lord the King on
Christmas Day, when she had for her fee the King’s knife with which she
cut. (Placit Coron., 13 Edward I., Rot., 30. Bowle’s “Annals of Lacock
Abbey,” p. 160.)
=Champion.=—The Manor of Scrivelby was held by the Dymocks on condition
of the possessor acting as King’s Champion. When the heiress, Margaret,
inherited the property, she inherited the Office, which her son, Thomas
Dymock, performed for her at the coronation of Henry IV.
“The office of Champion at the last coronation was in a woman, who
applied in that case to make a deputy.” (_See_ “Olive _versus_ Ingram,”
1739, and Co. Litt, 107.)
=They could be Governors of Royal Castles.=—Isabella de Fortibus held
the Borough and Camp of Plympton, and governed the Isle of Wight. In 8
and 9 Edward II. there was a settlement of Hugo de Courtenay’s petition
to succeed to his kinswoman Isabella de Fortibus in governance of the
Isle of Wight, etc. Isabella de Vesci held the Castles of Bamborough and
Scarborough.
Nicholaa de la Haye held Lincoln for the King. “And after the war it
befell that the Lord the King (John) came to Lincoln, and the Lady
Nicholaa came forth from the western gate of the castle, carrying the
keys of the castle in her hand, and met the said Lord King John and
offered him the keys as Lord; and said she was a woman of great age, and
had endured many labours and anxieties in that castle, and she could
bear no more. And the Lord the King returned them to her sweetly, and
said. Bear them, if you please, yet awhile.” This story appears in that
Royal Commission of Inquiry into the condition of the country named the
“Rotuli Hundredorum.” The King was desirous to persuade so steadfast an
adherent to continue to hold “in time of peace and in time of war” what,
in those disturbed days, was one of the most important fortresses of the
kingdom. For Nicholaa de la Haye and Gerard de Camville her husband had
stood by King John in all his troubles; their attachment to him before
he was King had brought suspicions and confiscations upon them. Gerard
had to pay a heavy sum to Richard I. to be repossessed of his own
estate, while Nicholaa paid the King three hundred marks for leave to
marry her daughter to whom she would, provided it was not to an enemy of
the King. After the death of Richard, Gerard de Camville was reinstated
as Governor of Lincoln Castle, during the remainder of his life, and at
his death John transferred the appointment to his wife, “a lady eminent
in those days,” says Dugdale. She continued at her post, and the King
also appointed her Sheriff of Lincoln. In 1217 the partisans of Louis
the Dauphin laid siege to Lincoln. Though the town sided with the
besiegers, though 600 knights and 20,000 foot soldiers came to reinforce
them, Nicholaa continued her defence of the castle till the Earl of
Pembroke arrived with an army to her relief. In the next year she was
again appointed Sheriff of Lincoln by Henry III. But this closed her
public career, and she died in peace at Swaynston in 1229. (“Sketches
from the Past,” _Women’s Suffrage Journal_, March, 1888.)
“Several Charters in one of the Duchy of Lancaster’s Cowcher Books,
prove that the Constableship of Lincolnshire, the Wardenship of Lincoln
Castle, and the Barony of Eye or Haia, always went together. They
belonged successively to Robert de Haia, Richard de Haia, and Nicholaa
de Haia, who became the wife of Gerarde de Camville.” (Selby’s
“Genealogist,” 1889, p. 170.)
=They could also be appointed to various Offices.=—As Nicholaa de la
Haye was made =Sheriff=, so was the wise and renowned Lady Margaret,
Countess of Richmond, made =Justice of the Peace= in the reign of Henry
VII.; and the Lady of Berkeley under Queen Mary held the same office.
Lady Russell had been appointed Custodian of Donnington Castle for her
life, at a Salary of one pound and twopence halfpenny a day, but for
Contempt of her Overlord, she was tried in the Star Chamber, Mich., 4
James I. (_See_ “Moore’s Law-Cases.”)
=They could act as Femes Soles when married, or as Partners.=—The
Countess Lucy [ii.] was one of the few Saxon heiresses that carried her
property down into Norman times. She had three Norman husbands, Ivo de
Tailleboys, Earl of Anjou, Roger Fitzgerald de Romar, and Ranulph, Earl
of Chester. Among the various Charters to the Monastery of Spalding are
two, granting and confirming the grant of the Manor of Spalding to the
Monks there. The exact words of the second Charter are these, “I, Lucy
Countess of Chester, give and grant to the Church and Monks of St.
Nicholas of Spallingis with Soc and Sac, and Thol and Them, with all its
Customs, and with the liberties with which I best and most freely held
in the time of Ivo Tailleboys and Roger Fitzgerald and the Earl Ranulph
my Lords in almoign of my soul, for the Redemption of the soul of my
father and of my mother, and of my Lords and relatives,” etc.
“Inspeximus by Oliver Bishop of London 1284.” (Selby’s “Genealogist,” p.
70, 71.) In the lives of the Berkeleys, from the Berkeley MSS., 1883,
published for the Bristol and Gloucester Archæological Society, some
interesting particulars are given of the Lady Joane, daughter of Earl
Ferrars and Derby, and wife of Lord Thomas of Berkeley, second of the
name. “It appears by divers deeds that in the xxvith yeare of Edward the
first, as in other yeares, this lady by hir deeds contracted with
Richard de Wike and others as if she had been a _feme sole_; and for her
seale constantly used the picture of herself holding in her right hand
the escutcheon of her husband’s arms, the chevron without the crosses;
and in her left hand the escutcheon of her father’s family,
circumscribed Sigilla Johannæ de Berklai,” vol i., p. 206.
Elizabeth, Lady of Clare, had buried three husbands, and had retained
her maiden name through their time as holding the honour and the Castle
of Clare,[2] which she inherited on the death of her brother, the last
Earl of Gloucester and Hereford, at Bannockburn. Her daughter, Elizabeth
de Burgh, married her cousin Lionel, third son of Edward III., in whom
the Earldom of Clare became the Dukedom of Clarence.
Footnote 2:
The petition of her “humble Chapeleyns Priour et chanoyns de sa
priourie de Walsingham,” that she would not allow the Franciscan
friars to settle in their neighbourhood, is communicated by the Rev.
James Lee-Warner of Norwich to the _Archæological Journal_, vol.
xxvi., p. 167 (1869). One reason they bring forward is that if the
intruders were to propose an indemnity, it could only be “par serment,
ou par gages, ou par plegges,” and that such security is of no avail,
as the claims of the apostolic See are beyond computation.
In the Act of Resumption of 1 Henry VII., the King excludes the lands of
his wife, his mother, Cecile, Duchess of York, and others. And in the
Act of Restitution of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, “she was to hold
her lands as any other sole person, not wife, may do,” though she was
married at the time to the Earl of Derby.
=Had the Cure of Churches.=—The Abbesses of certain convents inherited
the right of dominating the religious succession in some churches (_see_
“Dyer on Grendon’s Case”), “divers churches were appropriated to
prioresses and nunneries, whereof women were the governesses” (Callis,
250). In Colt and Glover _v._ Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield about a
presentation to a church, the evidence shews that many women before the
Reformation had the Cure of Churches; that an Archbishop could not
legally appropriate a benefice with the Cure to a nunnery between 25 H.
8., and the dissolution of monasteries, though the Pope did.
“Mrs. Foulkes is the Lay-rector of Stanstey, and takes the tithes. She
pays one shilling a year as quit-rent to the Lord of the Manor of
Stanstey, County Denbigh” (Blount’s “Tenures”).
“That all appropriated churches shall have secular vicars” (_see_
“Statutes,” vol. ii., Henry IV., c. 13).
=They could be Peeresses in their own Right, and liable to Summons to
Parliament in Person.=—Sir Harris Nicolas says, “The usual form of a
writ of summons to Parliament is common. There is one solitary instance,
however, of an express limitation of the dignity to heirs male, _i.e._,
in the Barony of Vesci”[3] (“Historic Peerages and Baronies by Writ”).
In Lady Spenser’s case (M. 11, Henry IV., f. 15) it was decided that it
was clear law at all times that a Dame might be “Peer de Realm and
entitled to all the privileges of such.”[4] “All peers of the realm are
looked on as the King’s Hereditary Councillors” (_see_ Jacob’s “Law
Dictionary”).
Footnote 3:
It is strange that this unique exception should have occurred in this
barony, which had come through a woman, and had been held by a woman.
Yvo de Vesci came over with William the Conqueror, and married Alda
Tyson, daughter and heir of the Lord of Alnwick. Their daughter
Beatrix was sole heir, and married Eustace of Knaresborough, their son
taking his mother’s name of De Vesci.
Footnote 4:
_See_ also “Statutes,” vol. ii., p. 321. Noble ladies shall be tried
as peers of the realm are tried, when they are indicted of treason or
felony, 20 Henry VI.
The opinions of Peeresses as representing property, were always
considered in the councils of the King. In the early Norman days they
sat among “The Magnates Regni” in right of their fees and communities.
“In the Constitutions of Clarendon, Henry II., we find that ‘Universe
Persona Regni, qui de Rege tenent in Capite’ were to attend the King’s
Court and Council.” (Report of the Lord’s Committee on the Dignity of a
Peer of the Realm.) The Abbesses, especially those of Shaftesbury,
Barking, Wilton and St. Mary of Winchester, holding directly of the
King, were summoned to Anglo-Norman Parliaments, as they had been
summoned to Anglo-Saxon Witenagemots. Selden mentions their Summons of 5
Edward I. as being extant in his time; their Summons, twenty-nine years
later, to the Parliament of 34 Edward I. is still extant, written in the
same manner and terms as those of the other clergy. (Palgrave’s
“Parliamentary Writs”; 34 Edward I.)
Other Peeresses were summoned according to their inheritance, which, we
have seen, followed different lines from what it does to-day, or =by
proxy=. By an exemption, intended as a privilege in these days of rough
travelling and dangers, a peeress was permitted “to chuse and name her
lawful proxy to appear for her _ad colloquimn et tractatium coram rege_
on her behalf.”
Alicia de Bigod sent her two proxies to Parliament, 35 Edward I. (_See_
Rot. Parl., 189.) Selden and Gurden mention “_nine_ peeresses so
summoned to the Parliament of 35 Edward III.” There were in reality ten.
But there was not a _Parliament proper_ that year, no writs having been
issued for the Commons. It was rather a council of Peers and Peeresses,
especially of those holding lands in Ireland, who were summoned to
consult with the King what should be done in that country, and what aid
they would grant the King. “Anno 35 Edward III., null summoniciones but
summons to council 11 Comitissæ summonitæ at mittend. sede dagnos ad.
colloq.” (Harl. MS., 6204).
“De consilio summonite pro Terras habentibus in Hibernia 35 Edward III.,
Maria Comitissa Norfolk, Elianora Comitissa Ormond, Anna le Despencer,
Pha. Comitissa de la Marche, Johanna Fitz Walter, Agnes Comitissa
Pembroch, Maria de Sco Paulo Comitissa Pembroch, Margeria de Ros,
Matilda Comitissa Oxon, Katherina, Com. Atholl, Nulla summonitii
Parliamenti” (Harl., 778). Dugdale gives the same names (“Summons to
Parliament,” p. 263) as summoned by their faith and allegiance to send a
deputy to consult with the King and his council at Westminster.
“Consimiliæ Brevia diriguntur subscriptis, sub eadam Data, de essendo
coram Rege and consulo suo ad dies subscriptos viz., Ad Quindenam Paschæ
Mariæ Comitissa Norfolciæ, Alianora Comitissa de Ormond, Annæ le
Despenser, Ad tres Septimanas Paschæ Philippæ Comitissæ de la March,
Johannæ Fitz-Wauter, Agneti Comitissa Pembrochiæ, Mariæ de S. Paulo
Comitissa Pembroc., Margeria de Roos, Matildæ Comitissæ Oxon, Katarinæ
Comitissæ Atholl,” 35 Edward III., claus in dorso m. 36. These because
they had property in Ireland.”
The proxies,[5] however, do not imply that the ladies themselves would
not have been admitted had they chosen to appear, as the special summons
of Margaret, Countess Marshall, in 1 Richard II., clearly proves. Men
also were allowed to send proxies. “The Bishop of Bath and Wells being
infirm and old is allowed to send a proxy to Parliament.” “Ralph
Botiller Miles, Lord of Sudeley, has the same permission” (6 Rot. Parl.,
app., ex Rot. Parl., 1 Edward IV., p. 1, m. [19] 227, a. b.).
Footnote 5:
Plowden notes on this, that the privilege of voting by proxy is a
privilege of the House of Lords. (“Jura Anglorum,” p. 384.)
The husband’s succession to his wife’s titles was in order to grant her
a permanent and interested “proxy.” In Dugdale’s “Summons to
Parliament,” p. 576, there is “A catalogue of such noble persons as have
had their summons to Parliament in right of their wives.”
This proves:—
(1) That a man not entitled to be summoned in his own right could be
summoned in his wife’s right, but that in doing so he must take her name
and title, whether higher or lower than his own: “George, son and heir
to Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, having married Joane, the daughter and
heir to John, Lord Strange of Knockin, had summons to the Parliament
under the title of Lord Strange” (22 Edward IV., 1 Richard III., 3, 11,
12 Henry VII.).
(2) That a woman held her husband’s titles and possessions till her
death by “the courtesy of England,” and could even transfer these while
she was alive to another husband. “Ralphe de Monthermer, having married
Joane of Acre, daughter of King Edward I. and widow of Gilbert de Clare,
Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, possessing lands of great extent in her
right, which belonged to these earldoms, had summons to Parliament from
28 Edward I. to 35 Edward I. by the title of Earl of Gloucester and
Hertford. But after her death, which happened in the first year of King
Edward the Second, he never had the title of Earl of Gloucester and
Hertford, and was summoned to Parliament as a Baron only from the second
to the eighteenth of that King’s reign” (Dugdale’s “Summons to
Parliament”). There are twenty other cases of nobles summoned in the
name of their wives. This, therefore, may be taken to illustrate the
representative power in Peers. At the period of Ela of Salisbury the
heiress of the Albemarles had conferred her title on three husbands, by
the second of whom, William de Fortibus, she had an heir.
“Isobel of Gloucester likewise had two Earls” (Bowle’s “History of
Lacock Abbey”).
Margaret de Newburgh, Countess of Warwick, married John Marshall of the
Pembroke family, and he became Earl of Warwick, _Jure Uxoris_. She
re-married John de Plessetis, who also bore her title. Her cousin,
William Mauduit, succeeded her, and then Isabel, his sister, who married
William de Beauchamp, making him Earl of Warwick. Their daughter, Anne
de Beauchamp, succeeded as Countess of Warwick. (Burke’s “Extinct
Peerages.”)
Dugdale also mentions “the names of such noble persons whose titles are
either the names of such heirs female, from whom they be descended, or
the names of such places whence these heirs female assumed their titles
of dignity: of whose summons to Parliament by these titles the general
index will show the respective times.” There are twenty-eight of them.
The eldest sons of earls were sometimes summoned to Parliament by their
father’s second title in their father’s lifetime, and these titles were
often inherited from an ancestress.
That the right of Peeresses to be consulted in relation to aids or
subsidies assessed on their property, was acknowledged, can be learned
from an interesting document still preserved.
The Commons in 1404 voted a grant to the King (Rot. Parl., iii., 546).
“La grante faite au Roy en Parlement. Vos pauvres Commons ... par assent
des Seigneurs Spirituelx et Temporels ... grauntont à vous, en cest
present parlement deux Quinzismes et deux Dismes pour estre levez des
laie gentz, en manere accustume ... Et les Seigneurs Temporelx pur eux,
et les _Dames Temporelx_, et toutz autres persones temporelx pour la
depens suis dit grauntont ... Et purtant que cestes subside soit grantez
à vous ... lesqueux die soient executy ne mys en œuvre avant la dit
Quinzisme de Seint Hiller q’alors ceste graunt entier soit voide et
tenue pur null ne levable, ne paiable en null manere ... Protestantz que
ceste graunt en temps à venir ne soit pris en ensample de charger les
ditz Seigneurs et Communes de Roialme ... sil ne soit par les voluntées
des Seigneurs et Communes de vostre Roiaume et ces de nouvell graunt a
faire en plein Parlement.”
This, therefore, affirmed not only the rights of the Ladies Temporal to
be considered at the time, but the grand principle of _non tallagio, non
concedendo_, to all time for all classes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
COUNTY WOMEN.
“Earls, Lords, and Ladies, Suitors at the County Courts.”
THE Statutory history of Individual Privilege is not clear in very early
times, before the Norman Customs and Saxon Laws coalesced. Magna Charta
was wrested from John in 1215, and confirmed by succeeding monarchs. It
is written in Latin, and the word Homo is applied throughout to both
sexes. When it is intended to distinguish males from females other words
are used. The most important clause in that Charter is, “To none will we
sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay the right of Justice.”
There were then no doubts in the mind of the people, no quibblings in
the courts of law as to whether or not it extended to women. All early
laws are couched in general terms, however they may have suffered from
later legal and illegal glosses. Coke upon Littleton, Inst. II., 14, 17,
29, and 45, explains that “Counts and Barons” represent all other
titles, whether held by men or women; that Liber Homo meant _freeman_
_and freewoman_. “Nullus liber homo. Albeit _homo_ doth extend to both
sexes, men and women, yet by Act of Parliament it is enacted and
declared that this chapter should extend to Duchesses, Countesses, and
Baronesses. Marchionesses and Viscountesses are omitted, but,
notwithstanding, they are also comprehended within this chapter.”
=County women inherited freeholds= under the same conditions as
Noblewomen.
If an heiress married a man of an inferior family or a smaller property,
she could, if she chose, raise him to her rank, and make him take her
name. Thomas de Littleton, upon whose Digest of English laws Coke
exercised his talents, received arms, name, and estate from his mother,
“who, being of a noble spirit, _whilst it was in her power_, provided,
by Westcote’s assent, that her children should bear her name.” In other
words, the heiress of the Littletons married Westcote, but while she was
yet a freewoman imposed conditions. (_See_ “Life of Littleton” prefixed
to his works.)
=When married could act as femes soles.=—Among “ancient deeds and
charters, drawn up by landowners in the time of Edward III. and Richard
II.” (Harl. MS. 6187), there are many executed by women, many sealed by
women alone, their husbands being alive, many sealed by women along with
their husbands.
A grant by William Faber de St. Briarville and Sarra his wife is sealed
by the name of Sarra Hathwey alone, and another deed by her son is
signed by William Faber, son and heir of Sarra Hathwey.
Robert de la Walter de Staunton and his wife Marjory combine in a deed,
and both seals affixed. So Thomas Waryn and his wife Julia, daughter of
Thomas Baroun, Richard de Pulton and Agnes his wife, and others.
=They owed also military service= either to their Overlord or to the
King directly. We find this abundantly illustrated in Palgrave’s
“Parliamentary Writs,” and in any of the Domestic Series of State Papers
in the Public Record Office recording service assessed. All names are
used in common. For instance, “Names of _gentlemen_ furnishing light
horses and lances, 1583: Bramber, Dorothy Lewknor, 2; Pevensey,
Elizabeth Pankhurst, 1, etc.; Domina Gage, 2;[6] John Gage, 2; Elizabeth
Geoffrey, 1” (Harl. MS., 703, f. 87).
Footnote 6:
These were “the two Gages” mentioned in connection with the Copleys of
Gatton.
There are many women returned in the “Rotuli Hundredorum,” Ed. I., as
holding under military tenures in capite. “Eve de Stopham held her
estate by finding for the King one footman, a bow without a string, and
an arrow without feathers” (Blount’s “Tenures”). “Lady Custance de
Pukelereston holds Pukelereston by finding one man and a horse, with a
sack and an axe, at the summons of the King” (“Testa de Nevill,” 252).
The Manor of Gatton, known as the scene of contested elections in after
years, was held by the service of a knight’s fee and the payment of
Castle guard to Dover Castle.
The “Testa de Nevill” compiled in the reign of Henry III. and Edward I.,
gives the list of many holding in capite and of Overlords by military
service.[iii.]
=They also paid and received Homage.=—In the Harl. MS. (6187) many of
the tenements are conveyed by women, on condition of Homage rendered and
service given; as, for instance, in the cases of Sibilla de Bruneshope,
widow; Johanna de Muchgross, daughter of Willian de Muchgross; Agnes de
Bellecores; Agnes, daughter and heir of Henry de Munsterworth; Cecilia
Blundell de Teynton.
Among the Records of Banham Marshall, Beckhall and Greyes, there is one
transferring lands to a certain Dorothy Gawdy, 31st March, 1659. “At a
court held by the Homage”—“to which said Dorothy here in full courte is
delivered thereof seisin. To hold to her and to her heires by A Rodd att
the will of the Lords, according to the custom of this Manor, by the
rents and services therefore due and of right accustomed and she giveth
to the Lords a fine. Her fealty is respited for a certain time.” Five
days later this Lady died, and a new transfer was made to her heirs male
in same form.
=They could present to Churches.=—In 16 Edward II. Eleanor, wife of
Thomas Multon of Egremond, petitions the King and Parliament against the
Bishop for interfering with her appointment of a clerk, as she was
endowed with the advowson of the Church of Natlugh in Ireland. Order
that justice be done to the said Eleanor (Tower Rolls).
Matilda de Walda was patron by inheritance of Saint Michael’s of
Canterbury. (See “Rotuli Hundredorum,” Edward I., vol. ii., 392.)
The Lady Copley presented to Gatton living in 1552.
The list, however, of ladies holding advowsons and gifts of churches, is
so long, that more need not be noted, especially as this right is not
denied to-day.
=They could hold Motes.=—We may find the local duties of County women
illustrated in the “Rotuli Hundredorum,” and other authorities already
quoted.
“Benedicta, widow of Sir Thomas Uvedale, granted a lease to Thomas Brown
of 2½ acres and foure _dayewarcs_ of land ... by the yearly rent of 2s.
6d., and suit at her court of Wadenhalle every three weeks” (“Surrey
Archæological Collection,” vol. iii., p. 82).
=They could attend Motes.=
=They could be free Suitors to the County Courts, and there act as Pares
or Judges.=
Women combined with men to elect Knights of the Shire to defend in
Parliament the rights of their property and themselves from unequal
assessment of subsidy and undue exactions of the King.
In Sir Walter Raleigh’s treatise on the Prerogative of Parliaments, he
traces back the origin of the House of Commons to 18 Henry I. on rather
slender bases. At the time of the struggle with John it was clearly
perceived that irresponsible kings could not be trusted to observe all
the clauses of Magna Charta, and general councils were provided for.
John promised to summon _all classes_ to consult with him when it was
necessary to assess aids and scutage. But John’s word was not worth
much.
The first _clear_ Summons appears to be that of 38 Henry III. (1254),
when a Writ was issued requiring the Sheriff of each County to “cause to
come before the King’s Council two good and discreet Knights of the
Shire, whom the _men_ of the County shall have chosen for this purpose
in the stead of all and of each of them, to consider, along with Knights
of other Shires, what aid they will grant the King.”
In 49 Henry III. (1265), writs were issued for “two Knights of the Shire
to be chosen by _the annual suitors at the County Courts_,” and two
Citizens from each Borough. Their expenses were to be paid by those who
sent them.
The Statute passed in the Parliament of Marlebridge (52 Henry III.) by
members elected in this manner, more clearly defined this method of
election, and confirmed the more ancient Statutes regarding _the County
Courts_. Hallam and Lewis trace their origin to the Anglo-Saxon
Shiregemote, Folkmote, or Revemote, and prove that the Sheriffs and
dignitaries possessed only directory and regulative powers; that the
Freeholders, who were obliged to do “suit and service,” were the Pares
or Judges, as well as the Electors of the Knights of the Shire, and of
the Sheriffs themselves.
Concerning this court, it had been provided (43 Henry III.), “that
Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Barons, or any religious Men or Women,
should not be forced to come thither unless their presence was
especially required.” Their goods could not be distrained for
non-attendance. That this was intended as a Franchise of Privilege, not
inducing a penalty of exclusion, is perfectly clear, not only in the
reading of the Act itself, but in its effect upon later laws.
So Coke, (Inst. II., 119,) elucidating the laws of Marlebridge, made
three years later, says, “Note. A woman may be a free Suitor to the
Courts of the Lord, but though it be generally said that the free
suitors be Judges in these courts, it is _intended of men and not of
women_.”
This “priestly intention” sprang only from Coke’s own mind. He cites no
authority for his opinion, nor could he have found one. To have deprived
a female “Suitor” of her right to express her opinion and thereby help
to determine the questions brought before the Court, in the light of her
own interests, inclinations, or opinions, would have taken away her
prime _raison d’être_. Her second privilege was that of giving her
voice, with other freeholders, towards the election of a knight, “in the
stead of all and of each of them,” to go to the King’s parliament,[7]
and defend her interests there. Upon the petition of the Commons that
proclamation should be made of the day and place of the meeting of the
County Court, it was decreed, “All they that be there present, as well
_suitors_ duly summoned, as _others_, shall attend to the election of
the Knights of Parliament.... And after they be chosen, the names of the
persons so chosen shall be written in an _Indenture_,[8] under the
_seales_ of all them that did chuse them, and tacked to the said writ of
Parliament” (7 Henry IV., c. xiii.). A certain limitation, therefore, of
electors, must have been caused through the necessity of possessing
seals. In 8 Henry VI. the suitors at the County Court were limited to
those who had not less than a 40s. freehold. It was soon made clear that
the House of Commons was only intended to represent those not eligible
in person or in representation to the Upper House; so that the county
elections became limited to county freeholders below the rank of Peers.
But there is no question, at any time, of altering the Franchise from
the general terms to others that would limit it to the masculine being.
That women did frequent the courts in person is proved in Prynne’s
“Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva” (p. 152, _et seq._), where he refers to
“sundry Earls, Lords and Ladies who were annual suitors to the County
Courts of Yorkshire.” That women recorded these votes, and sealed the
indentures of the Knights elected, is also proved by Prynne. The two
points that surprised Prynne were, that the earliest preserved
indentures were _all_ signed by the Nobility of the County, and by them
alone, and also that they were all sealed by attorney, by Lords, or by
Ladies alike, down to 7 Henry VI., after which they were signed by all
Freeholders personally. He does not seem to remember that these were the
classes privileged by Act 43 Henry III., to absent themselves from the
County Courts; and that acting by proxy was considered a privilege of
the nobility. It might very well have been considered that Archbishops,
Earls, Lords, and Ladies were “especially required” at the County Court
to hear and decide on some important territorial dispute, and yet that
they could decide on the merits of a candidate at home, and send their
Attorneys to the County Court to seal for them there in the presence of
the Sheriff. One such indenture (2 Henry V.) is signed by Robert Barry,
the Attorney of Margaret, widow of Sir Henry Vavasour. In another return
from the County of York, one Attorney signs for the Earl of
Westmoreland, and another for the Countess, for the lands each held as
freeholds in that neighbouring county.
Footnote 7:
The first use of the word “Parliamentum” occurs in the Prologue to the
Statutes of Westminster in 1 Edward I.
Footnote 8:
Prynne notes that only Cedules have been preserved of the returns of
the knights before the Statute of 7 Henry IV., c. xiii.
Prynne also preserves an Indenture signed by the attorney of Lucia, the
widowed Countess of Kent (13 Hen. IV.). This lady was an Italian, a
Visconti, the daughter of the Duke of Milan, and her foreign extraction,
or her failing fortunes at the time,[9] may have induced her to exercise
her privilege as regards the Member of Parliament, while she preserved
the dignity of her nobility by voting by Attorney.
Footnote 9:
_See_ Petitions to Parliament (Hen. IV.), Burke’s “Extinct Peerages,”
“Inquisitions _Post-Mortem_.” (Hen. V.)
I have not found any example of a lady “Knight of the Shire,” but
neither have I found the shadow of a _law_ against their existence
beyond that of the electors’ choice, or the ladies’ convenience. Anne
Clifford said that if her candidate did not come forward “she would
stand herself.” (Dr. Smith to Williamson, Jan. 1668. Dom. Ser. State
Papers, Public Record Office.) But as women summoned to do military
service were _allowed_ to send a substitute, as women summoned to the
County Courts were _allowed_ to absent themselves, and _allowed_ to send
an Attorney, so were they allowed to send their knights to the House of
Commons.
If women of the Middle Ages had but realised what their ancestresses did
before them, “that they were receiving what they must hand down to their
children neither tarnished nor depreciated, what future daughters-in-law
may receive, and may so pass on to their grandchildren” (Tacitus Germ.,
c. viii.), the needs of litigation on this point might not have arisen
later.
=Could Nominate to Private Boroughs.=—Certain Boroughs formerly held by
military tenure seemed to have been included in those permitted to
return burgesses to Parliament, though belonging to one owner. When
women inherited the property and held the Borough, they returned their
one or two members, as the custom might be, in their own name. “The
members of many ancient Boroughs were often returned by the Lords, and
sometimes by the Ladies of the Manors or Boroughs” (Plowden’s “Jura
Anglorum,” p. 438). Many cases are doubtless lost among the piles of
missing records. But two very illustrative examples have been preserved
for us, just sufficient to clear away all doubts from the minds of
students of history that women sometimes exercised the privileges they
possessed.
In a bundle of Returns for 14 and 18 Eliz., Brady has preserved, and
Heywood, in his “County Elections,” has quoted, that of Dame Dorothy
Packington, the owner of the private Borough of Aylesbury. In days when
military service might have been demanded of her, she would have sent
her “substitute” to defend her sovereign; in days when subsidy service
was expected of her, she sent a “substitute” to Parliament to defend her
interests there, and she paid for both her military and civil
representatives. “To all Christian people to whom this present writing
shall come, I, Dame Dorothy Packington, widow, late wife of Sir John
Packington, Knight, Lord and Owner of the Town of Aylesbury, sendeth
greeting. Know ye me, the said Dame Dorothy Packington, to have shown,
named, and appointed my trusty and well-beloved Thomas Lichfield and
John Burden, Esquires, to be my burgesses of my said town of Aylesbury.
And whatsoever the said Thomas and George, burgesses, shall do in the
service of the Queen’s highness in that present parliament to be holden
at Westminster the 8th day of May next ensuing the date hereof, I, the
same Dame Dorothy Packington, do ratify and approve to be my own act, as
fully and wholly as if I were, or might be present myself.” She signed
their indentures, sealed them, paid “their wages” and their expenses in
whole, as others did in part. That the return was held good is
sufficient to prove its legality.[10] There is not the shadow of grounds
for a belief that she “acted as returning officer,” as some have said
who have not studied the case. Later on, when the population of
Aylesbury increased, and the ambitions of Aylesbury extended, there was
an appeal by the inhabitants for permission to share in the Returns.[11]
But the objection to the monopoly of the Family-Return did not include
an objection to the woman that exercised it.
Footnote 10:
_See_ List of Parliamentary Returns, vol. i., p. 487.
Footnote 11:
A trial in Aylesbury because some inhabitants brought a case against
the revising barrister for refusing their vote, saying that “refusing
to take the plaintiffs’ vote was an injury and damage.” (Jacob’s “Law
Dictionary.”)
Another memorable instance is preserved for us in the Journals of the
House of Commons itself.
I have found out so many curious, hitherto un-noted details about it,
that I thought it advisable fully to illustrate the conditions of the
case, so that it may not again be mistranslated, as it has so often
been. On March 25th, 1628, there was a contested election for the
Borough of Gatton. There were _two_ indentures returned, one by the
inhabitants of the borough, and the other by Mr. Copley. Though he
returned Sir Thomas Lake, and Mr. Jerome Weston, “it was held not good
that he should have returned alone.” The case was argued out before the
Committee of privileges in the House of Commons, of which Glanvil,
Hakewell, and Sir Edward Coke were members. Mr. Copley based his claim
on returns made by Roger Copley, as the _sole inhabitant_ in 33 Henry
VIII.; and by Mr. Copley in 1 and 2 Phil. and Mary, 2 and 3 Phil. and
Mary. “On the other part, in 7 Edward VI., Mrs. Copley et omnes
inhabitantes returned. In 28º, 43º Eliz. 1º, 18º Jac., the return was
made by the inhabitants, and in all later parliaments Mr. Copley joined
with the other inhabitants.”
The Committee and the other members of the House decided that “Mrs.
Copley and the other inhabitants” was the true and legal Precedent for
the form of Return. And that is the last word Parliament has had to say
upon a Woman-Elector. (_See Commons Journal_ of date.) But the
side-lights of the story are interesting. In the first place, the
_Commons Journal_ has a misprint of an “s” in two cases. Roger Copley
died in 1550-1; and from the manuscript copies of the _Commons Journal_
we may see that _Mrs._ Copley is entered as returning alone in 1 and 2
Philip and Mary, and 2 and 3 Philip and Mary. (_See_ Lansdowne MS.,
545.) Further, both the printed and the MS. copy are wrong about her
title, as she was the Lady Elizabeth Copley, or “Elizabeth Copley Domina
de Gatton.” This mistake shows that her own _seal_ was affixed to the
indenture with her Christian name, to which the Committee added “Mrs.”
instead of “Lady.” Further, she must also have returned in 4 and 5
Philip and Mary, and must have returned her son.[12] On the 5th March
young Copley of Gatton was committed to the sergeant for irreverent
words spoken of Her Majesty, and on 7th March Parliament was prorogued
till 5th November. (_Commons Journal._) This receives further
explanation in additional MS. 24, 278, collected by Sir Richard St.
George Norroy:—“Sat., 5th March, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary. For that Mr.
Copley, a member of this house, hath spoken irreverent words of the
Queenes Majestie, concerning the Bill for confirmacion of pattents,
saying that he feared the Queene might thereby give away the Crowne from
the right inheritor, the house commanded, by Mr. Speaker, that Copley
should absent himself until consultation more had thereof. And after
consultation had and agreed to be a grievous fault, Copley was called in
and required this House to consider his youth, and that if it be an
offence it might be imputed to his young yeares. The House referred the
offence by the Speaker to the Queene with a plea for mercy, and Mr.
Copley committed to the custody of the Sergeant-at-arms. Monday, 7th
March, Mr. Speaker declared that he had declared to the Queenes Majestie
the matter touching Copley, wherein hir pleasure was that he should be
examined whereof fresh matter did spring. Nevertheless, Her Majestie
would well consider the request of the House in his favour. In the
afternoon Parliament prorogued” (_Commons Journal_). “Elizabeth, the
second wife and widow of Sir Roger Copley, daughter of Sir William
Shelley, Justice of the Common Pleas, presented to the Church of Gatton
in 1552, as did her son Thomas in 1562; but after that time, the family,
being Roman Catholics, it was vested in trustees, 1571” (Manning and
Bray’s “Surrey”). The troubles of the Copleys and Gatton arose from
_recusancy_, not women’s elections. Elizabeth died in 1560, “seized of
Gatton,” held of the Queen in fealty for 1d. rent, and 20s. castleguard
to Dover Castle. (_See_ “Inquisition _Post-Mortem_,” 29 April, 2 Eliz.)
It must, therefore, have been settled on herself. The daughter of Sir
William Shelley would surely be well advised of her legal rights, and,
perhaps, her association of the other inhabitants with herself in her
election of 7 Edward VI., arose from an appreciation of the tendency of
popular opinion in favour of an inhabitant suffrage, instead of a
freeholding one.
Footnote 12:
“Thomas Copley Armiger, Thomas Norton Armiger, Gatton.” Names supplied
from the Crown Office in place of original returns. (Parliamentary
Returns, vol. i., p. 398.)
In Harl. MS., 703, Burghley writes to the Sheriff of Surrey:—“Whereas
there are to be returned by you against the Parliament two Burgesses for
Gatton in that Countie of Surrey, which, _heretofore_, have been
_nominated by Mr. Coplie_, for that there are no Burgesses in the
Borough there to nominate them, for as much as by the death of the said
Mr. Copley and minoritie of his sonne, the same which his lands are
within the survey and rule of the Court of Wards, whereof I am her
Majestie’s chiefe officer, you shall, therefore, forbeare to make
returne of anie for the saide towne, without direction first had from me
therein, whereof I praie you not to faile” (St. James, 13th Nov., 1584).
Sir Thomas died abroad, 1584, aged 49, leaving William, his son and
heir. Apparently Francis Bacon and Thomas Busshop had been nominated by
Burghley; because the next letter preserved, dated 24th Nov., 1584,
tells the Sheriff to appoint Edward Browne, Esq., in the place of Bacon,
who had been returned for another borough. In 11th Sept., 1586,
Walsingham instructs the Sheriff of Sussex to send up Mrs. Copley of
Rossey to the charge of the Warden of the Fleet, and the two Gages, and
they are to have no conference. Jan. 29th, 1595, Buckhurst writes to Sir
Walter Covert and Harry Shelley, Esq., to apprehend “the Lady Copley and
certaine other daungerous persons remayning with her as it is enformed,
where very dangerous practizes are in hande” (Harl. 703, f. 87).
“The Queen, by reason of —— Copley, Esq, going beyond sea and not
returning according to Parliament, presented Ralph Rand, M.A., to the
Church of Gatton, 8th Feb., 1598.”
On 7th Feb., 1620, the House considered the return of Gatton in Surrey.
One Smith, a burgess for that town, and a son of Mr. Copley appeared.
Mr. Copley, lord of the town, a recusant convict, with six of his
lessees, no freeholders, made their choice the Tuesday before; the
freeholders made their choice, on the Wednesday, of Sir Thomas Gresham
and Sir Thomas Bludder. The first return held void. Sir Henry Brittayne
asked leave to speak; he said “the writ was directed Burgensibus, and
delivered to Mr. Copley. The town was but of seven houses, all but one
Copley’s tenants. That the election by them good not being freeholders.
That all the freeholders, except one, dwelt out of the town, and only
held of the manor in the town.” “Sir Edward Coke spoke against Copley’s
return, and moved for a new election, _in case of danger from Copley_”
(_Commons Journal_). (_See_ also Lansd. MS., 545; Hakewell’s “Report of
the Gatton Case.”)
This, therefore, makes the controversy comprehensible that, in 1628, was
illustrated by the records.
Mr. William Copley was not inclined tamely to resign the ancient
privilege of his family of sending up Burgesses for their own Borough;
he attempted to do so again, in spite of the decision of 1620, and
through the adverse decision in his case, Parliament affirmed, and Sir
Edward Coke with it, the right of a woman to vote.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI.
FREEWOMEN.
“Preserve your Loyalty, defend your Rights.”
—_Anne Clifford’s Sundial Motto._
IN days when the word “Free” had no doubtful signification, women could
be “Free” in several different ways. They could be Freeholders in towns
by inheritance or by purchase. They could be Free of “Companies,” in
some of them by patrimony, service, or payment; in others through being
widows of Freemen only. In some cases a widow’s “Freedom” was limited by
the conditions of her husband’s will, but in almost all of the
Companies, at least, in London, _some_ women could be Free. They could
be Free in Boroughs, under the same conditions as men, by paying
brotherhood money, and by sharing in the common duties of Burgesses, as
“Watch and Ward,” “Scot and Lot,” and the service of the King; they
could be “Free” as regards the Corporation, and they could be “Free” as
regards voting for members of Parliament.
I have preferred to use the word “Freewomen” as more definite than any
other. The “Widows and Spinsters” phrase of to-day does not carry back
to old history. Under certain limited conditions married women could be
“Free”; under certain other conditions they could be “Spinsters.”
“The case of a wife trading alone. And where a woman coverte de Baron
follows any craft within the city by herself apart, with which the
husband in no way interferes, such woman shall be bound as a single
woman as to all that concerns her craft. And if the husband and wife are
impleaded in such case, the wife shall plead as a single woman in a
Court of Record, and shall have her law and other advantages by way of
plea just as a single woman.” She has her duties and penalties as well
as her privileges, can be imprisoned for debt, etc. (_See_ “The Liber
Albus of London,” compiled 1419, translated by J. Riley, Book III., p.
39.)
(_See_ also “Historical Manuscripts Commission,” vol. x., appendix iv.,
p. 466, _et. seq._ Report on papers found in Town Hall, Chelmsford.)
There, among several lists of women, wives, and mothers, are many
designated “Spinsters.” Among “presentments for neglecting to attend
church” (23 Eliz.) were ten women—“Margareta Tirrell, spinster, alias
dicta Margaretta Tirrell uxor Thomae Tirrell armigeri”: “Maria Lady
Petre, spinster, alias dicta Maria Domina Petre uxor Johannis Petre de
Westhornden prædicta Milites.” Many others appear as “wife of” at the
same time as “spinster.” The writer of the Report believes that
“spinster” in these cases was equivalent to “generosa,” and notes that
it is insisted on when women have married men of meaner descent. I
myself am inclined to think that a Guild of women had arisen out of the
silk-spinning industries of Essex, and that the word “Spinster” implied
membership of that Guild.
=Members of Guilds.=—In the old social and religious guilds which seem
to have been established for good fellowship during life, for due
burial, prayers and masses after death, and for charitable assistance of
needy survivors, there was perfect equality between the sexes.
Brotherhood money is exacted from “the sustren” as well as from the
brethren. In 1388 (12 Richard II.) an order was given that all Guilds
and Brotherhoods should give “returns of their foundation.” Women appear
as the Founders of some of these. The Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Kingston-upon-Hull, was founded by 10 men and 12 women (p. 155). The
Guild of Corpus Christi, Hull, founded in 1358, by 18 women and 25 men
(p. 160, “Early English Gilds,” J. Toulmin Smith). The Guild of the Holy
Cross, Stratford-on-Avon, had half of its members women, as also the
Guild of Our Lady, in the Parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, whose
original manuscripts I have read. Even when the guild was managed by
priests, as in the Guild of Corpus Christi, York, women were among the
members. In St. George’s Guild, Norwich, men were charged 6s. 8d. and
women only 3s. 4d. for brotherhood. These guilds had “Livery” of their
own in some cases. They had a beneficial effect on society, moral good
conduct being necessary to membership, and a generous rivalry in
self-improvement a condition of distinction. They taught an equal moral
standard for both sexes. Hence the treatment of vicious men and vicious
women was the same. (_See_ “Liber Albus,” p. 179, 180, etc.)
They also did many good works towards the public weal.
The Guild of the Holy Cross in Birmingham, to which belonged the
well-disposed men and women of Birmingham and the neighbouring towns,
had Letters Patent in 1392. The Report of its Condition in the reign of
Edward VI. says, “It kept in good reparacions two great stone Bridges
and divers foule and dangerous wayes, the charge whereof the town, of
hitselfe ys not hable to manteign, so that the lacke thereof will be a
great noysaunce to the Kinges Majesties subjects passing to and from the
marches of Wales, and an utter ruyne to the same towne, being one of the
largest and most profitable townes to the Kinges Highness in all the
Shyre” (Toulmin Smith’s “English Gilds,” pp. 244-249).
These might have weathered the storms of the Reformation by giving up
candles and masses, had not Henry seized their revenues and revoked
their foundations.
The Trades Guilds in early days were also semi-religious in their
character, and also admitted women as sisters.
William Herbert’s “History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies” gives
many details interesting to us. All the Charters of the Drapers’ Company
expressly admit Sisters with full rights; the wearing of the Livery, the
power of taking apprentices, sitting at the election feasts, making
ordinances among themselves for better governance, etc. (vol. i., p.
422). So also did the Clothworkers.
So also the Brewers’ Company. In 5 Henry V. there were 39 women on the
Company’s Livery paying full quarterage money. In 9 Henry V. there are
entries in the books, of the purchase of cloth for the clothing of the
Brethren and Sistern of the Fraternity of the Brewers’ Craft. So also
the Fishmongers (p. 59), the Weavers,[13] and other companies. “The
office of Plumber of the Bridge granted to the Widow Foster, 1595.”
(Guildhall Records.)
Footnote 13:
_See_ “Liber Customarum,” p. 544, etc.
The Clockmakers’ Company, though only founded in 1632, had female
apprentices sanctioned by the company so late as 1715, 1725, 1730, 1733,
1734, 1747.
Among the Memoranda of the Grocers’ Company, 1345, we may note “each
member of the fraternity shall bring his wife or his companion to the
dinner.” “And that all the wives that now are, and afterward shall
become married to any of our Fraternitie; they shall be entered and
esteemed as belonging to the Fraternitie _for ever_ to assist them and
treat them as one of us, and after the decease of her husband the widowe
shall still come to the said election dinner, and shall pay 40d. _if she
be able_. And if the said widow is married to some other, who is not of
our Fraternitie, she shall not come to the said dinner so long as she be
‘couverte de Baroun,’ nor ought any of us to meddle with her in
anything, nor interfere on account of the Fraternitie so long as she is
‘couverte de Baroun’” (_see_ Mr. Kingdon’s translation of the Books of
the Grocers’ Company, 1341-1463, printed in 1886). On a second widowhood
she might return to the company. At a later date they did not seem to be
so severe. One widow, interesting to me on other literary grounds, made
her second and third husbands free of the company through the rights she
gained from her first. Widows paid Brotherhood money, held Apprentices,
traded and received all benefits of the Guild.
The Company of Stationers seems to have followed similar customs. Many
women carried on their husband’s business, and received apprentices, as
Widow Herforde, Widow Alldee, Widow Vautrollier. (_See_ Arber’s reprint
of “Stationer’s Registers” and Ames’ “Typographical Antiquities.”)
In the “Journal of the House of Commons,” vol. ii., p. 331, December
3rd, 1641, we find two entries, “Ordered that the Committee for printing
do meet to-morrow at eight of the clock in the Inner Court of Wards, and
the printing of the Book of Queries is referred to that Committee.”
“Ordered that Elizabeth Purslow, who, as this House is informed, printed
the pamphlet entitled ‘Certain Queries of some Tender-Conscienced
Christians,’ be summoned to attend the Committee appointed to examine
the business.”
In Timperley’s “Cyclopædia of Literary Typographical Anecdote” we find:
In 1711 died Thomas James, a noted printer in London, according to
Dunton, “something the better known for being husband to that She-State
politician, Mrs. Eleanor James.” This extraordinary woman wrote two
letters to printers, one to Masters, and one to Journeymen, the first
beginning, “I have been in the element of printing above forty years,”
and ending, “I rest your sister, and soul’s well-wisher, Eleanor James.”
Her husband, Thomas James, left his fine library to the use of the
public, and the President and Fellows of Sion College were indebted to
Mrs. James for giving them the preference. She also presented them with
her own portrait, with that of her husband, and his grandfather, Thomas
James, first librarian to Bodleian Library. “Her son, George James, who
died in 1735, was City Printer. His widow carried on the business for
some time, when the office was conferred on Henry Kent.” (Timperley;
_see_ also Reading’s “Catalogue of Sion College Library.”)
=Women could also have Guilds of their own.=—[iv.] In 3 and 4 Edward
IV., there was a “Petition from the Silkewomen and Throwsters of the
Craft and occupation of Silkework within the cite of London, which be,
and have been craftes of women within the same cite of tyme that noo
mynde renneth to the contrarie, nowe more than a M” (_i.e._, 1000 in
number), praying protection against the introduction of foreign
manufactured silk goods. (Parliamentary Rolls, 1463.) And various Acts
for their protection are passed, down to 19 Henry VII., c. xxi.
There seems also to be somewhat of the nature of a Guild among the
Midwives of London, who had a certain social standing and certain laws
and conditions of office. Many of the Royal Midwives received annuities.
One appears in Rot. Parl. XIII., Ed. IV., Vol. VI., p. 93. Among the
exclusions from the Act of Resumption we find, “Provided alwey that this
Act extend not, nor in any wise be prejudiciall to Margery Cobbe, late
the wyf of John Cobbe being midwyf to our best-beloved wyfe Elizabeth
Queen of England, unto any graunte by us, by owre Letters Patentes of
£40 by year, during the Life of the said Margery.” Even in early times,
their male rivals tried to limit the extent of their professional
activities. Among the Petitions to Parliament is one from Physicians who
pray that “no woman be allowed to intermeddle with the practice of
Physic.” I. Rot. Parl., 158.^a
The Rolls of the Hundreds make mention of women among the great Wool
Merchants of London, “Widows of London who make great trade in Wool and
other things, such as Isabella Buckerell and others.” Vol. I., pp.
403-4.
=They might be Free of the City of London.=—The freedom of the city of
London became vested in those that paid Scot and Lot, as women did. The
Jews were not allowed to pay Scot and Lot, and were never “free of the
city.” “And the King willeth that they shall not, by reason of their
Merchandize, be put to Scot or Lot, or in any taxes with the men of the
cities or Boroughs where they abide; for that they are taxable to the
King as his bondmen, and to none other but the King” (Statutes, vol. i.,
page 221). “That all Freemen shall make contribution unto taxes and
taillage in the city” (Liber Albus III., pt. i., 235). “For watch and
ward. Let all such make contribution as shall be hostelers and
housekeepers in each ward” (p. 102). “And deeds and indentures, and
other writings under seal may be received; and cognizances and
confessions of women as to the same recorded before the Mayor and one
Alderman” (p. 16). “Where women in such cases (_i.e._, of debts) are
impleaded and wage their law,” they make their law with men or women at
their will (p. 37).
Waller _v._ Hanger. Moore’s Cases, 832. Pasch. 9, Jac. I. Frances
Hanger. “El plead que el fuit libera fœmina de London, and plead le
Charter” that “the Freemen of London should pay no dues upon their
wines.” These points are important to remember in the light of a
petition presented by the widows of London (17 Richard II.) to be freed
from taxes and taillage made in the city without authority of
Parliament; praying the King to remember that it had been granted them
that no such tax would be imposed; and asking him to see that this
present Parliament would prevent the Mayor and Sheriff of London from
levying on them this new imposition not levied by Act of Parliament.
(Rot. Parl., vol. iii., 325.) The Mayor and Aldermen present a counter
petition saying that the tax was for restorations, and praying that the
present Parliament should ordain that the widows may be contributors
according to proportion of the aforesaid fine, for their tenements and
rents in the city and suburbs according to right and reason, ancient
custom and charters of the city, that those who _per commune_ have
advantage of the restoration ought by right to be contributors in cost,
etc. (_Ibid._).
That women were no indifferent and over-timid members of the community,
we may see in the petition of the Mercers of London to the King against
the oppressions of Nicholas Brember, Grocer and Mayor of London, 1386,
10 Richard II.:—
“Also we have be comaunded ofttyme up owre ligeance to unnedeful and
unleweful loose doynges. And also to withdrawe us be the same
comandement fro things nedeful and leeful, as was shewed when a company
of gode women, there men dorst nought, travailled en barfote to owre
lige Lorde to seeke grace of hym for trewe men as they supposed, for
thanne were such proclamacions made that no man ne woman shold approche
owre lige Lorde for sechynge of grace, etc.” (Rot. Parl., vol. iii., p.
225).
=They could be Free in other Boroughs.=—The female burgesses of Tamworth
are recorded in Domesday Book as having been free before the conquest,
and as being still free in later times. If they took it upon them to
trade as _femes soles_, they made themselves liable to all the common
burdens of the “mercheta,” over and above their proper borough duties of
watch and ward.
The Ipswich Domesday Book gives more than one instance of a woman having
“hominal rights,” and as being liable to the “hominal duties”
corresponding thereto. To any _feme sole_ the Franchise and even the
Guild was open on the same terms as to the men of the place. There was
no essoign of female burgesses whereby to decline attendance at the
motes (30 Edward I.).
Amongst liberi homines, liberi homines tenentes, or liberi homines sub
regia, in every English shire, the Domesday Book records the names of
_Freewomen_. (_See_ Chisholm Anstey’s “Supposed Restraints.”)
I have personally searched the records of Stratford-upon-Avon. There
women could be burgesses. One entry, noted for another purpose, I may
here quote: “At a Hall holden in the Gildehall, 9th September, 1573,
Adrian Queeney and John Shakespeare being present, the town council
received of Christian White for her sisterhood, 6s. 8d.; Robert Wright
for his brotherhood, 6s. 8d.”
York. “Women being free of the city, on marrying a man who is not free,
forfeit their freedom. Persons are entitled to become free by birth, by
apprenticeship, or by gift or grant. Every person who has served an
apprenticeship for seven years under a binding by indentures for that
period to a freeman or freewoman inhabiting and carrying on trade in the
city is entitled to become free. The indentures may be assigned to
another master or mistress being free. The privileges of freemen are
extended to the partners of freemen and to their widows.” (“Report of
Municipal Corporation Committee, 1835,” p. 1741.)
The customs of Doncaster seem somewhat similar. (_See_ same report, p.
1497.)
The City of Chester followed the custom of London. (_See_ “The Mayor’s
Book of Chester, 1597-8.”)
Letter from Lord Burleigh to the officers of the Port of Chester,
authorising them to enter without tax the Gascony wines of a city
merchant’s widow:—
“After my hartie commendacions, Whereas I understand that you
have made scruple to take entrie of certeine Tonnes of Gascoigne
wynes brought into that port in december laste, being the proper
goodes of Ales Massy, wydowe, late wife of William Massy,
merchant, of that cittie, deceased, as also of certeine other
Tonnes of Gascoign wynes, brought in thither by William Massey,
his sonne, late merchant and free citesin of that cittie, also
deceased, whose administratrix the said Ales Massy is.
For-as-much as I fynde by a graunte by privy scale, from hir
Majestie, dated the 21st daye of Maye, in the ninth yere of hir
raigne, that her pleasure is (for good consideracion in the said
pryvye scale specified) That all merchants, inhabitants, and
Free Citizens of that Cittie shal be freed and discharged from
payment of any Imposte for such wynes as they bring into that
port. And forasmuch as also I have receyved a Lettre from the
Maior and Aldermen of that cittie, whereby they doe certifye
unto me that all Freemen’s wydowes of that cittie, during their
wydowehood, by the Custome of the said Cittie, have used, and
ought to have and enioie all such trades, Fredomes and Liberties
as their husbandes used in their life tyme, which custome hath
bene used and allowed of tyme out of mynde. Therefore, these are
to will and require you to take entrie of all the aforesaid
wynes of the said Wydow Massies as well those that she hath as
administratrix to Wm. Massey, as of hir owne proper wynes,
without taking or demaundinge Impost for the same wynes. And
this shal be your discharge in that behalf. From my house at
Westminster, the xiiith of April, 1598.
“Your lovinge frende,
“W. BURGHLEY.
“To my loving frendes, ye Officers of ye Port of Chester.”
“Recepta per nos viii. die Maii per manus Richardi Massy.
THO. FLETCHER, Maior.”[14]
Footnote 14:
Transcribed by Dr. Furnival for his present work on Chester MSS.
In 1597, by the same books, some money was distributed to twenty poor
people, having been free of the city twenty years at least; among these
were five women.
In the Town of Winchester women could be free. In an old Customary of
that town we may find “Every woman selling Bread in the High Street, not
having the freedom, pays to the King 2s. 5d. a year, and to the City
Clerk 1d., if she sells by the year, if less, in proportion. Every woman
who brews for sale is to make good beer. No Brewer not free of the City
(nul Brasceresse hors de Franchise) can brew within the City
jurisdiction without compounding with the Bailiff.” (_Archæological
Journal_, vol. iv., 1852.)
In the Hall-book of the corporation of Leicester 1621:
“It is agreed by a generall consent that Wm. Hartshorne, husbandman,
shall be made ffreeman of corporacon payinge such ffine as Mr. Maiour
and the Chambleyns that now be shall assess. But he is not allowed any
freedom or privilege by reason that his mother was a ffreewoman. Neither
is it thought fit that any woman be hereafter made free of this
corporacon.” (_Notes and Queries_, vol. v., 5th series, p. 138.)
This note is important as showing the period of the change of tone and
spirit.
=Women could be on the Corporation.=—In 1593, in the Archives of the
Borough of Maidstone, Kent, appears, “That the 11th of September, 1593,
Rose Cloke, single woman, (according to the order and constitutions of
the town and parish of Maidstone aforesaid) was admitted to be one of
the corporation and body politique of the same town and parish, from
henceforth to enjoy the liberties and franchises of the same in every
respect, as others the freemen of the said town and parish. And she was
also then sworn accordingly, and for some reasonable causes and
considerations then stated she was released from paying any fine, other
than for her said oath, which she then paid accordingly” (_Notes and
Queries_, vol. xii., 5th series, 318). The transcriber doubts the
“legality” of Miss Rose Cloke’s election. But it was not till a very
long time after this date that any attempt was made to interfere with
the liberty of the electors in choosing whom they would.
Queen Elizabeth is said to have reproached the women of Kent for not
more fully exercising their privileges. It may have been in connection
with this illustration as to what their privileges might be. I had long
meditated on the inner meaning of this reproach, before I came upon the
elucidation. The freemen of Kent alone, in England, rose in arms against
William the Conqueror, and would not lay them down until their ancient
laws and customs were confirmed to them. The Custumal of Kent,
therefore, based on the ancient Saxon laws, gave wider privilege to
women than the Normanised laws of the rest of the country. Inheritance
was equal and independent of sex, either in relations of descent or of
marriage. The children all inherited equally, with a certain special
tender consideration for the _youngest_, male or female. A widow had the
half of her husband’s property till she married again; a widower had the
half of his wife’s property, _while he remained single_. This equality
in property necessarily gave the women of Kent fuller privilege. The
recognition of the freedom of womanhood naturally made the men of Kent
more free. “Of all the English shires, be ye surnamed the Free.”
(Drayton’s “Poly-Olbion, 18.”) [v.]
Yet some of the English shires did not lag far behind Kent. We may note
“A customary or note of such customes as hath bin used, time out of mind
in Aston and Coat in ye parish of Bampton in ye county of Oxon, and is
att this time used and kept as appeareth by ye _sixteens_ who hath
hereunto, with ye consent of ye inhabitants of ye said Aston and Coat,
sett their hands and seals the sixt September, in ye 35th yeare of Queen
Elizabeth, Anno Dom. 1593.” The “customary” contains twelve articles
regulating the election and duties of the sixteens, of which the first
is: “The Custome is that upon our Lady-day Eve every yeere, all the
_Inhabitants_ of Aston and Coat shall meet at Aston Crosse about three
of ye clock in ye afternoone, or one of everye House to understand who
shall serve for ye sixteen for that year coming, and to choose other
officers for ye same yeere. (2) Ye said sixteens being known, ye hundred
tenants of ye same sixteens doe divide themselves some distance from ye
Lords Tenants of ye said sixteens. And ye Hundreds Tenants do chuse one
grasse Steward and one Water Hayward, and the Lords Tennants do choose
two Grasse stewards and one Water Hayward, etc. This antient custome
have ben confirmed in ye 35th yeare of Queen Elizabeth, 1593, by most of
ye substantiall inhabitants of Aston and Coat, videl:
“Roger Medhop (gent).
The mark of Richard Stacy.
The mark of Eliz. Alder.
The mark of John Humphries.
The mark of Margery Young.
The mark of John Bricklande.
The mark of Will. Young.
The mark of Thos. Walter.
The mark of Will. Wagh.
The mark of John Newman.
The mark of Richard Thynne.
The mark of Robt. Carter.
The mark of Will. Haukes.
The mark of Ann Startupp.
The mark of Will. Tisbee.
The mark of John Pryor.
The mark of John Church.”
(_Archæologia_, vol. xxxv., p. 472), which adds, “Similar customs were
formerly practised in Sussex, and may be found in the Sussex
Archæological Collections.”
We find another case in “Grant’s Treatise of the Law of Corporations,”
p. 6.
“In general women cannot be corporators, although in some hospitals they
may be so, and there is one instance in the books of a Corporation
consisting of Brethren and Sisters and invested with municipal powers to
a certain extent, in The Pontenarii of Maidenhead (vid Rep. 30).
(Palmer’s “Cases,” p. 77, 17 Jac., B.R.) Quo Warranto vers Corporation
de Maydenhead in Berkshire, pur claymer de certaine Franchises and
Liberties, un Market, chescun Lundie, Pickage, Stallage, Toll, etc.”
(Rot. Cor. 106.) They pleaded that the Bridge had been repaired by a
Fraternitie, time out of mind, which was dissolved, and that the King by
Letters Patent, on condition that they repaired the Bridge, granted them
a market every Monday with all Liberties.... “Et le veritie fuit que
Hen. 6 ad incorporate un Corporation la per nomen Gardianorum Fratrum et
Sororum Pontenariorum, and concessit al eux and leur Successors quod
ipsi and Successores sui haberent mercatum quolibet die lunae prout ante
habuissent simul cum Tolneto, Pickagio, Stallagio, etc.” The opinion of
three Judges were “que Toll fuit bien grant non obstant que le quantitie
de Argent d’estre pay pur Toll pur chescun chose ne fuit expresse, Mes
Montague Ch. Justice fuit cont. Mes que le Corporation enjoyera les
Privileges non obstant cest action port.” In page 626 of Grant’s
Treatise, we see “A Corporation Sole is a Body Politic having perpetual
succession, and being constituted in a single person.... Corporations
Sole are chiefly Ecclesiastical, one or two instances only of Lay
Corporations Sole occurring in the Books.... The most important
Corporation of this nature that claims attention is the King.... It is
as a Body Corporate that the King is said to be immortal (Howell’s
“State Trials,” 598).... A Queen Regnant is precisely and in the same
way and to all intents a Corporation, and, indeed, there is nothing
inconsistent with the principles of the old Law in this; it was
everyday’s experience before the Reformation to find female subjects as
Corporations Sole, as Lady Abbesses, etc., but since that era it is
superfluous to observe, females cannot be invested with this description
of incorporation, though, as we have seen, they may be Corporators of
Hospitals, Railways, and other trading bodies.” (Note. _See_ “Abbess of
Brinham’s Case.” Yearbook, Ed. III., vol. xxiii.; 2 Rol. Abr. 348, l.
33; and Colt _v._ Bishop of Coventry, Hob. 148, 149.)
=They could vote for Members of Parliament.=—To their Municipal Rights
were added, in the reign of Henry III., their Parliamentary Rights.
In 25 Edward II., De tallagio non concedendo, “It was there declared
that no tallage or aid shall be levied by us, or by our heirs in the
realm, without the goodwill and assent of ... Knights, Burgesses, and
other Freemen of the Land.”
As women were Burgesses and Liberi Homines, the right was _given_ to
them as well as to men. Plowden (“Jura Anglorum,” p. 438) remarks that
“the Knights of the Shire represented landed property, the Burgesses the
interests of manufacture or trade”; as women could be Traders they were
recognised as having the rights of Traders.
The qualifications of Electors in Boroughs were very far from uniform or
certain, as may have been noted in the Gatton case.
In Bath the Franchise was limited to the Mayor and Corporation.
Sometimes it was limited to freeholders, sometimes to freeholders
resident, at other times to inhabitants, in other cases to inhabitants
paying Scot and Lot.
In London the Franchise was exercised by all paying Scot or Lot.
In Newcastle-on-Tyne, the Parliamentary Franchise devolved on a
Freeman’s widow, who could also carry on his business. (Brand’s “History
and Antiquities of Newcastle,” vol. ii., p. 367.)
The ordinances of Worcester (6 Edward IV., 49)—“Also that every eleccion
of citizens for to come to the Parliament, that they be chosen openly in
the gelde Halle of such as ben dwellynge within the fraunches and by the
moste voice, accordinge to the lawe and to the statutes in such cases
ordayned and not privily” (“Early English Gilds,” J. Toulmin Smith).
In Shrewsbury, prior to the Reform Act, the right of returning members
of Parliament for the Borough was vested exclusively in _Burgesses_
paying Scot and Lot. (“Mun. Com.,” p. 2014.)
Rhuddlan—“Here, as in the other contributory boroughs to Flint, the
franchise is exercised by all resident inhabitants paying Scot and Lot.”
(“Mun. Com.,” p. 2840.)
In the Reports of Controverted Elections, Luders mentions that of Lyme
Regis, 1789. The dispute was whether non-resident burgesses could record
their vote. Among the old burgess lists brought forward to elucidate the
qualifications for electors, that of 29 Sept., 19 Eliz., was produced.
The first three names on the list were of three women—“Burgenses sive
liberi tenentes Elizabetha filiæ Thomæ Hyatt, Crispina Bowden Vidua,
Alicia Toller Vidua,” then follow the names of several men. To these
were added in 21 Eliz. two names of “liberi burgenses jure uxoris.”
Later records show an increased number of women’s names on the register
of this borough.
The case of Holt _v._ Lyle or Coats _v._ Lisle in 14 James I., in
discussing the right of a clergyman to vote, affirms as a side issue
that “a _feme sole_, if she have a freehold, can vote for a Parliament
man, but if she is married, her husband must vote for her.” A limitation
again expressed in Catherine _v._ Surrey, preserved in Hakewell’s
“Manuscript Cases.”
As some have attempted to throw doubts on the authenticity of these
cases, quoted as they were by the Lord Chief-Justice from the Bench in
1739, it may be well to note here that “William Hakewell was a great
student of legal antiquities, and a Master of Precedents” (“Dictionary
of National Biography”). He left parliamentary life in 1629, the year
after he had, in the Committee of Parliamentary Privileges, helped to
decide on the Gatton case. He was one of the six lawyers appointed to
revise the Laws, and was thereafter created Master of Chancery. So one
might be tempted to consider him rather an exceptionally good and
trustworthy witness. He helped to decide other points in connection with
the Franchise, which it is important for us to remember. He not only
decided that inhabitant suffrage must supersede freeholding, that
taxation gave the right to representation, but that, from its very
nature, no desuetude could take away the right of voting. “On 9th April,
1614, it was pleaded, Sithence Durham last drawn in to charge to join in
petition to the King that Durham may have writs for Knights and
Burgesses. Said to be dumb men because no voices. Mr. Ashley said, They
of Durham had held it a privilege not to be bound to attendance to
Parliament. On 31st May was read An Act for Knights and Burgesses to
have places in Parliament, for the County Palatine, City of Durham and
the Borough of Castle Barnard.” “On 14th March, 1620, members were
allowed for the Palatinate of Durham, which had hitherto sat free from
taxation, and consequently sent no members to the House of Commons. It
was allowed without discussion by the House,” taxation and
representation being constitutionally inseparable. (_See_ _Commons
Journal_, 14th March, 1620.)
“Regarding towns that had discontinued long sending of any burgesses,
and yet were allowed.” Hakewell had discovered this of “Millborne Port,
County Somerset, and Webly, County Hereford, that, either from poverty
or ignorance of their right, or neglect of the Sheriff, had ceased
voting. After 321 years they elected again.” “In 21 Jac. I. also,
Amersham, Wendover, Great Marlowe, in Buckinghamshire, were in the same
condition, but received writs for return upon application.” (_See_
Addit. MS., Brit. Mus. 8980.) Thus the doctrine that the right to the
Franchise never lapses, and that _non-user_ never deprives an Elector of
this privilege, was affirmed by the Committee of Privileges in the
Parliament of which Coke and Hakewell were members.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII.
THE LONG EBB.
“Ye have made the law of none effect by your tradition.”
=The Errors of Sir Edward Coke.=—In a historical treatise it is not
necessary fully to analyse causes. Facts must be left to speak for
themselves. It is a patent fact that, early in the seventeenth century,
men’s views regarding women became much altered, and the liberties of
women thereby curtailed. But there is generally one voice that in
expressing seems to lead the opinion of an age. The accepted voice of
this period, on this subject, was not that of the “learned Selden”
[vi.], but of the “legal Coke.” He first pronounced an opinion on the
disability of women, and, as every other _so-called authority_ depends
upon his, it is necessary to examine the grounds of his opinion first,
as with him all his followers must stand or fall.
When he was speaking against the Procuratores Cleri having a voice in
Parliament, it was urged on him that it was unjust that persons should
have to be bound by laws which they had had no voice in making. To this
he replied, “In many cases multitudes are bound by Acts of Parliament
which are not parties to the elections of knights, citizens or
burgesses, as all they that have no freehold, or have freehold in
ancient demesne; and _all women having freehold or no freehold_, and men
within the age of one and twenty years” (“Fourth Institute,” 5). He
quotes no record, he suggests no authority, he adduces no precedent. He
could not. Yet from this one _obiter dictum_ of his, uttered in the heat
of his discussion against clergymen, recorded in loose notes, and
published without correction after his death, has arisen all consequent
opinion, custom and _law_ against the Woman’s Franchise. So terrible can
be the consequences of the by-utterances of a Judge when _careless,
prejudiced, or wilfully ignorant_. That Coke could be all three it is
easy to prove.
(1) In Prynne’s “Introduction to the Animadversions on the Fourth Part
of the Lawe of England,” he says, “My ardent desires and studious
endeavours to benefit the present age and posterity to my power by
advancing learning ... by discovering sundry misquotations, mistakes of
records in our printed law books reports, especially in the Institute of
that eminent pillar of the Common Law, Sir Edward Coke, published, with
some disadvantage to him and his readers since his death, whose
quotations (through too much credulity and supineness) are generally
received, relied on, by a mere implicit faith, as infallible Oracles,
without the least examination of their originals.”
Male credulity in regard to Coke has been the cause of so much direct
and indirect suffering to women that it is not surprising that they now
attempt to get behind “the Oracle,” and question the Spirit itself of
the English Constitution. Many other writers besides Prynne refer to
Coke’s want of care. “In 1615 the King told him to take into
consideration and review his Book of Reports; wherein, as His Majesty is
informed, be many extravagant and exorbitant opinions set down and
published for positive and good law.” (Chalmers’ Biog. Dict.) “The
Institutes published in his lifetime were very incorrect. The 4th part
not being published till after his death, there are many and greater
inaccuracies in it.” One example in the contested passage may be noted.
He says that those who had no freehold had no vote. He did not die until
1634, and the notes for the “Fourth Institute” were the last work of his
life. But Granville’s “Reports” prove that by the Parliaments of 1621
and 1628 the Franchise was declared to be vested in _inhabitant
householders whether freeholders or not_, so he was incorrect as to that
statement at least.
(2) That, through prejudice, he could be blinded to Justice can be seen
in that picture preserved by his Biographers of his hounding Sir Walter
Raleigh to his death by virulent unjudicial denunciations; or in that
other when he and his followers made a riot with swords and staves in
seizing his daughter from the home in which his wife (formerly Lady
Hatton) had placed her. The King’s Council severely reprimanded him for
his illegal action then. (_See_ “The Letter of the Council to Sir Thomas
Lake regarding the Proceedings of Sir Edward Coke at Oatlands,” “Camden
Miscell.,” vol. v.)
The petition of Sir Francis Michell to the House of Commons, 23rd
February, 1620, contains trenchant criticisms on Coke’s conduct as
partial and passionate. Though they may be somewhat discounted by the
writer’s position, they must have had some basis of truth. Michell said
that when summoned before the Bar, Sir Edward Coke prejudiced his cause
by saying aloud, “When I was Chief-Justice, I knew Sir Francis Michell;
he is a _tainted man_,” which saying discouraged his friends from
speaking on his behalf. He repeats elsewhere that Coke was wont “to make
invectives by the hourglass”; and indeed adds many other more serious
charges. Michell was put out, as was the custom, when his case was being
discussed. In his absence, he was condemned to go to the Tower, and on
being re-admitted, thought he was to be allowed to defend himself as was
the custom, and “asked leave to speak for himself, which Sir Edward Coke
_hastened to refuse_” (Sir Simon d’Ewes’ Papers, Harl. MSS., 158, f.
224). “His rancour, descending to Brutality was infamous” (Dict. Nat.
Biog.). Sir Francis Bacon writes to him, “As your pleadings were wont to
insult our misery and inveigh literally against the person, so are you
still careless in this point to praise or dispraise upon slight grounds
and that suddenly, so that your reproofs or commendations are for the
most part neglected and contemned, when the censure of a Judge coming
slow but sure should be a brand to the guilty and a crown to the
virtuous.... You make the laws too much lean to your opinion, whereby
you show yourself to be a legal tyrant” (Foss’s “Lives of the Judges”).
James I. is known to have called him “the fittest engine for a tyrant
ever was in England.”
He was an only son with seven sisters, which position probably made him
overvalue his own sex. His well-known matrimonial disputes probably
helped to increase his prejudice against the other sex.
(3) That he could be _wilfully ignorant_ there is abundant ground to
believe. He married again five months after his first wife’s death,
without Banns or Licence, and to escape Excommunication, he pleaded
Ignorance of the Law!! “Not only does he interpolate, but he is often
inaccurate; sometimes, as in Gage’s case, he gives a wrong account of
the decision, and still more often the authorities he cites do not bear
out his propositions of law. This is a fault common to his Reports and
his Institutes alike, and it has had very serious consequences upon
English Law” (Dict. Nat. Biog.). Holt _v._ Lyle, and Catherine _v._
Surrey had been decided when he was Attorney-General. These affirmed
that “a _feme sole_ could vote for a Parliament man.” The Gatton case
had been decided in a Parliament, and by a Committee of which he was a
member; and whether he had concurred in it or not, he cannot but have
been aware that other members of Parliament, even in his day, allowed
the woman’s privilege.
Others have accused him of suppressing and falsifying legal documents.
(_See_ Chisholm Anstey’s “Supposed Constitutional Restraints.”) Chief
Justice Best from the Bench said, “I am afraid that we should get rid of
a good deal of what is considered law in Westminster Hall if what Lord
Coke says _without authority_ is not law.” 2 Bing, 296.
One other case which afterwards told heavily upon women we may note.
“Coke artfully inserted in the marriage settlement of his fourth son
John, with the daughter and heiress of Anthony Wheatley, a clause of
reversion to _his own heirs_ to the exclusion of heirs female, which was
not discovered until 1671, when John having died, leaving seven
daughters, their mother’s paternal inheritance passed away from them to
their uncle Robert, Coke’s fifth son.”
“His legal propositions may often be unsound in substance, but in his
mode of stating what he believes or wishes to be law he often reaches
the perfection of form” (Dict. Nat. Biography). This “_form_” may be
sufficient to satisfy legal technicalities, but I think I have brought
forward enough to show that intelligent women have reason to object to
him as a “tainted” authority. [vii.]
Coke tells us in his “Fourth Institute,” what properties a Parliament
man should have. “He should have three properties of the elephant;
first, that he hath no gall; second, that he is inflexible and cannot
bow; third, that he is of a most ripe and perfect memory. First to be
without gall, that is without malice, rancour, heat and envy.” We have
shown that Coke was deficient in the first quality prescribed by
himself for just judgment. His abject submission to the Archbishop
after his Breach of the Canon Law, shows that he could bow very low to
escape the consequences of his wrongdoing; his groveling in the dust
before James, when he had roused the King to wrath, shows that he
could do the same when he thought he was right, “from which we may
learn that he was, as such men always are, as dejected and fawning in
adversity as he was insolent and overbearing in prosperity” (Chalmers’
“Biography”). We must now prove that he was deficient in the third
quality also. His memory was imperfect. He forgot one Statute when he
was criticising another; he forgot what he had written in the “Second
Institute,” when he was preparing his manuscript for the Fourth. It is
only by self-contradiction that he can hold the opinion now under
discussion. From his own works we must judge him on this count (Coke
_v._ Coke). In the “Fourth Institute,” 5, he classifies women with
minors. In the “Second Institute,” c. iii., 96, his authorised and
corrected work, he says on the contrary, “Seeing that a _feme sole_
that cannot perform knight’s service may serve by deputy, it may be
demanded wherefore an heir male being within the age of twenty-one
years may not likewise serve by deputy. To this it is answered, that
in cases of minoritie all is one to both sexes, _viz._, if the heire
male be at the death of the ancestor under the age of one and twenty
years, or the heire female under the age of fourteen, they can make no
deputy, but the Lord will have wardship. Therefore, Littleton is here
to be understood of a _feme sole_ of full age and seized of land,
holden by knight’s service,[15] either by purchase or descent.” One
would have thought this clear enough for a legal mind to follow. Women
do not, therefore, come into the same class as minors in regard to
their appointing deputies. But they do come into the class of
Electors. (“Second Institute,” 119.) “A woman may be a free suitor to
the Courts of the Lord, and though it be generally said that the free
Suitors be Judges [viii.] in these courts, this is intended of men and
not of women.”
Footnote 15:
In discussing the “Parliament of Marlebridge” (52 Henry III., chap,
vi., p. 3) he says: “Albeit the heir be not _primogenitus_, but an
heir female, or male lineal or collateral, yet everyone of them be
within the same mischief.”
We have already noted the illegal character of this opinion; but we
repeat it here intentionally. Coke does not see that in avoiding one of
the horns of a dilemma he throws himself on the other. If “women could
be suitors,” and were “not intended to be judges” or pares, the only
other duty left them as suitors, would be “to elect their knights of the
shire!”
The study of the original statutes supports the freedom of women as to
both duties, as well as the fact of their having exercised that freedom.
In Howell’s “State Trials,” 19 (Entinck _v._ Carrington, 6 George III.),
there is a question asked and answered, worthy of repetition here—“Can
the judges extrajudicially make a thing law to bind the Kingdom by a
declaration that such is their opinion? I say no. It is a matter of
impeachment for any judge to affirm it. There must be an antecedent
principle or authority from whence this opinion may be fairly collected,
otherwise the opinion is null, and nothing but ignorance can excuse the
judge that subscribed it.” That women had to submit then is no reason
that they should submit now, as the same case explains—“It would be
strange doctrine to assert that all the people of this land were bound
to acknowledge that as universal law which a few had been afraid to
dispute.”
=A believer in Coke’s views= and methods of perpetuating them was Sir
Simon d’Ewes, High Sheriff of Suffolk. At the elections of 1640, Oct.
19th and 22nd, Sir Roger North and his Royalist friends had charged him
with partiality towards the Puritan candidates. He cleared himself
eagerly and then added, “It is true that by the ignorance of some of the
Clarkes at the other two tables, the =oaths of some single women that
were freeholders= were taken without the knowledge of the said High
Sheriff, who as soone as he had notice thereof instantly sent to forbidd
the same, conceiving it a matter verie unworthie of any gentleman, and
most dishonorable in such an election, to make use of their voices,
_although in law they might have been allowed_. Nor did the High Sheriff
allow of the said votes, upon his numbering of the said Poll, but with
the allowance and consent of the said two Knights themselves, discount
them and cast them out” (Sir Simon d’Ewes’ Papers; Harl. MS., 158). Thus
in a second illustrative case, personal opinion and prejudice were
allowed to counteract law and privilege. And the law-abiding women
yielded to what they were told was law, and, being kept in ignorance,
they knew no better.
But in the very next year women showed that they took a strong interest
in public affairs.
In vol. ii., p. 1673, Parliamentary History, is preserved the Petition
to the Commons for Redress of Grievances, Feb. 4th, 1641. On the last
day of sitting many women had been observed to crowd much about the door
of the Commons, and Sergeant-Major Skippon applied to the House to know
what to do with them, they telling him that where there was one now
there would be 500 next day. The House bade him speak them fair.
Next day they presented their petition (printed by John Wright at King’s
Head in Old Bailey).
“To the Honourable Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the House of
Commons assembled in Parliament, the Humble Petition of the Gentlewomen,
Tradesmen’s Wives, and many others of the Female Sex, all inhabitants of
London and the Suburbs thereof, with the lowest submission showing,
etc.”
They acknowledge the care of the House in the affairs of State. They
have cheerfully joined in petitions which have been exhibited “in behalf
of the purity of religion and the liberty of our husband’s persons and
estates.” “We counting ourselves to have an interest in the common
privileges with them.”
“It may be thought strange and unbeseeming to our sex to show ourselves
by way of petition to this Honourable Assembly. But the matter being
rightly considered of ... it will be found a duty commanded and
required. (1) Because Christ hath purchased us at as dear a rate as he
hath done men, and therefore requireth like obedience for the same mercy
as men. (2) Because in the free enjoying of Christ in His own laws, and
a flourishing estate of the Church and Commonwealth consisteth the
happiness of women as well as of men. (3) Because women are sharers in
the common calamities that accompany both Church and Commonwealth, when
oppression is exercised over the Church or Kingdom wherein they live;
and unlimited power given to the prelates to exercise authority over the
consciences of women as well as men: witness Newgate and Smithfield, and
other places of persecution, wherein women, as well as men, have felt
the smart of their fury,” etc.
“The petition was presented by Mrs. Anne Stagg, a gentlewoman and
brewer’s wife, and many others with her of like rank and quality. Mr.
Pym came to the Common’s door, addressed the women and told them that
their petition had been thankfully accepted and would be carefully
considered.”
Coke’s papers had been seized by the King at his death in 1634, but on
the 12th May, 1641, the House of Commons ordered Coke’s heir to print
them, and thus his views on this point were perpetuated.
On the 13th February, 1620, Coke had committed the House to
extraordinary doctrine in another relation to women. Among Mr. Lovell’s
witnesses was a lady, Mrs. Newdigate, “the House calling to have them
called in. Sir Edward Coke out of St. Barnard said, A woman ought not to
speak in the congregation. Examination hereof committed to a committee”
(_Commons Journal_). It is strange that Sir Edward Coke should have gone
so far afield as St. Barnard when St. Paul might have come in as
conveniently. Had he read the gospels as carefully as he had read St.
Barnard, he would have seen that one of the first two preachers of
Christ was Anna the prophetess, who spake of Him in the temple to all
them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem (Luke ii. 36), and that it
was through women that Christ sent the first message to the Apostles and
Disciples, that became the watchword of early Christianity, “Christ is
arisen” (Matthew xxviii., Luke xxiv., John xx.). Coke’s precedent on
this point was reversed in his own century.
On the 17th November, 1666, “Some debate arising whether Mrs. Bodville,
mother of Mrs. Roberts, should be admitted as witness, the matter being
debated in the House, the question being put whether Mrs. Bodville be
admitted, it was resolved in the affirmative, and Mrs. Bodville, with
several other witnesses was examined” (_Commons Journal_).
His utterance on the Women’s Franchise has coloured the minds of willing
disciples until to-day. In Add. MS. 25, 271, Hakewell on impositions,
says, “To make a man judge in his own cause and especiallie ye mightie
over ye weake, and that in pointe of profitt to him that judgeth, were
to leave a way open to oppression and bondage.” So women proved. There
is no doubt that Puritanism on the one hand, and the frivolity of the
fashions of the Restoration on the other, tended to make women content
with their narrowed political privileges, and restricted educational
opportunities. Only among the Society of Friends, commonly called
Quakers, did women retain their natural place. Though there were some
brilliant exceptions, the majority of women, by the procrustean methods
of treatment in vogue were reduced to the state of incompetency that
society came to believe was natural to them. “It was unwomanly for women
to think and act for themselves.” “Women had no concern in public
affairs.” “Men knew much better than women did what was good for them,”
were proverbs.
By losing one privilege they lost others. New laws were made prejudicial
to their interests, and old laws retranslated in a new and narrow
spirit. Precedent gained power to override statute; the notions of
justice between the sexes became warped and distorted.
The laws of inheritance were altered, the rights of women in their
property further ignored. Sophistical Labour Creeds were introduced to
support masculine property privilege. Work was ignoble for _ladies_,
except when done without remuneration; domestic work was not cognisable
in coin of the realm, therefore women were said to be _supported_ by
their male relatives, though they might labour ten times as much as
they. It was natural to educate them little, so that they should not
know; it was natural to take privileges from those who knew not what
they lost.
=Protesting Women.=—But the Suppression of the Sex did not go on without
various Protests on the part of women during the 200 years of this
Backdraw in the tide of Civilisation. We cannot spare time for every
detail; but three illustrative women must be noted—the first born in the
16th Century, protesting against the infringement of the Inheritance
Laws in relation to women; the second born in the 17th Century, against
the withdrawal of their educational advantages; the third born in the
18th Century, against their social, civil and political degradation.
Anne Clifford, born in 1590, was the only daughter of George, Earl of
Cumberland, and of his good wife, Margaret Russel. She and her two noble
sisters, Elizabeth, Countess of Bath, and Anne, Countess of Warwick,
were distinguished for family affection, and all other womanly virtues.
The Countess of Warwick was Elizabeth’s favourite Lady-in-Waiting. Anne
was much with this aunt in her youth, was a favourite of Queen
Elizabeth, and was destined for her court. Her father refused to allow
her, like other noble ladies of her time, to learn ancient and modern
languages, so she made the most of the opportunities to be found in her
own. “Her instructor in her younger years was the learned Mr. Daniel,
the Historiographer and Poet. She was much interested in searching out
old documents about her ancestors and very jealous of preserving her
rights.” (_See_ in Nicholson and Burn’s “History of Cumberland and
Westmoreland, the Autobiography of Mr. Sedgwick, who was her
Secretary.”) She was well prepared by her beloved mother and respected
tutor for the exigencies of her future life. The Queen died in 1602-3,
and her father in 1605. A woman being considered of age at 14, she chose
her mother as her guardian, who initiated the proceedings against her
brother-in-law, the new Earl of Cumberland, which lasted until his
death. The Earldom of Cumberland had been entailed in Heirs Male, but
the secondary Titles, the Baronies of Clifford, Westmoreland, and Vescy,
with all the Lands and Castles in Westmoreland belonging to them, were
entailed in the Heir General. Her uncle, however, took possession, and
favoured by the King, the power of wealth, and Sex Bias among those in
power, he was able to hold them against her, in spite of her private and
public petitions. His son, Henry, was summoned to Parliament by the
title of Lord Clifford, a right which should have been hers, as she
bitterly complained. Meanwhile, in 1609, she married Richard, Earl of
Dorset. “On 25th July, 1610, my cousin, Henry, married Lady Francis
Cecil, daughter to Robert, Earl Salisbury, which marriage was purposely
made that by that power and greatness of his the lands of mine
inheritance might be worsted and kept by strong hand from me” (Harl.
MS., 6177, Anne Clifford’s Diary). 16th July, 1615, “the great trial for
my lands in Craven.” Her husband agreed with the Earl of Cumberland to
leave it to the King’s arbitration, which she would never agree to,
standing upon her rights. In 1617 she was brought before King James in
Whitehall to give her consent to the arbitration, “which I utterly
refused, and was thereby afterwards brought to many and great troubles.”
Her uncle offered £20,000 as a compromise for the Westmoreland estates,
which she would not hear of, but which her prodigal husband urged her to
accept. Indeed, he attempted to strain his marital rights, and backed by
the King, signed the agreement with her uncle, which she refused to
acknowledge, and defeated the plans of the trio by her firmness. For she
was a true descendant of the old stock of women, and wished “to live and
die with the feeling that she is receiving what she must hand down to
her children neither tarnished nor depreciated, what future
daughters-in-law may receive, and so pass on to her grand children”
(Tac. Germ. c. 19). She was determined to hold by her rightful
inheritance. Her husband died on 28th March, 1624, and the contest went
on with renewed vigour.
In the Domestic Series “State Papers,” vol. cxxvi. 7, 1628, there is
preserved “Reasons to prove that by the Common Law dignities conferred
by Writ of Summons to Parliament descend to females, where there is a
sole heir, and not co-heirs; being the reasons alleged for Mary, Lady
Fane, in her suit for the Barony of Abergavenny in 1587, with other
reasons alleged to show that such dignities by custom and reason descend
to heirs female, produced on behalf of Anne claiming to be Lady
Clifford.”
Also in same series, April, 1628, there is “The Petition of Anne,
Countess Dowager, late wife of Richard, Earl of Dorset, deceased, and
daughter and sole heir of George, Earl of Cumberland, Lord Clifford,
Westmoreland and Vescy, to the King. On the death of her father, the
titles of Clifford, Westmoreland and Vescy descended to the petitioner,
yet Francis, Earl of Cumberland, has published that the name of Lord
Clifford and that of Lord Vescy pertain to him; and Henry Clifford,
Chivaler, was summoned to this present Parliament, and styles himself
Lord Clifford ... prays the King to admit her claim to the dignities of
Clifford, Westmoreland and Vescy, and to order the Earl of Cumberland
and Henry, his son, to forbear to style themselves by these names.”
In 1630 she married Philip, Earl of Montgomery, who shortly afterwards
became the Earl of Pembroke by the death of his brother, and she again
claimed her inheritance, still, however, in vain. In 1641 died her
uncle, leaving one son, Henry, and one daughter, Elizabeth, married to
the Earl of Cork. Two years later her cousin Henry died without heir
male, and without further dispute, Anne stepped into her inheritance,
thereby proving her original right. She had not sold it! “1644. So by
the death of this cousin German of mine, Henry Clifford Earl of
Cumberland, without heirs male, ye lands of mine inheritance in Craven
and Westmoreland reverted unto me without question or controversie after
y^t his father Francis Earl of Cumberland and this Earl Henry his son
had unjustly detained from me the antient lands in Craven from ye death
of my father and ye lands in Westmoreland from ye death of my mother
until this time, yet had I little or no profit from ye estate for some
years after by reason of ye civil wars.” On the death of her second
husband in 1649, she retired to the north, and began to fortify her
castles. The parliamentary forces demolished them, but she said that as
often as Cromwell pulled them down she would build them up again. After
a time, admiring her spirit, the Protector gave orders she should not be
molested. She was not even yet free from litigation, as at first she had
troubles with her tenants. In every case, however, through knowledge,
experience, and firmness she finally triumphed. A cloth-worker having
bought a property held under her by the yearly rent of one hen, he
refused to acknowledge her as his Seigneuress by paying that small rent.
But she sued him successfully, and though she spent £200, she secured
that hen, and the right of which it was the symbol.
She asserted all the privileges connected with her inheritance. In her
Diary she says, “As the King came out of Scotland, when he lay at Yorke,
there was a striffe between my father and my Lord Burleighe who was then
President who should carie the sword; but it was adjudged on my father’s
side, because it was his office by inheritance, and so is lineally
descended upon me.” She became High Sheriff of Westmoreland also by
right of her inheritance, and exercised its duties in person for a time.
“The 29th December, 1651, did I sign and seal a patent to Mr. Thomas
Gabetis to be my Deputy Sheriff of ye County of Westmoreland.”
Looking back on her life in the quiet of her northern home she said, “I
must confess, with inexpressible thankfulness that I was born a happy
creature in mind, body, and fortune, and that those two Lords of mine to
whom I was afterwards by the Divine providence married, were in their
several kinds worthy noblemen as any were in this Kingdom. Yet was it my
misfortune to have contradictions and crosses with them both, with my
first Lord about the desire he had to make me sell my rights in ye lands
of mine inheritance for money, which I never did nor never would consent
unto, insomuch as this matter was the cause of a long contention betwixt
us, as also for his profuseness in consuming his estate.” Her dispute
with her second husband arose because she would not compel her daughter
by her first husband, against the girl’s desire, to marry his son by his
first wife. The consequence of these two disputes, in both of which she
was in the right, was that “the marble halls of Knoll and the gilded
towers of Wilton, were often to me the Bowers of secret anguish.” She
was not what has been called a man’s woman, but she was essentially a
woman’s woman. All good women were her friends, her cousin the Countess
of Cork, daughter of her usurping uncle; her sister-in-law the Countess
of Dorset, wife of her brother-in-law, whom she considered her greatest
enemy. Though King James was against her, Queen Anne was her warm
friend. She had no children by her second husband; and her two sons by
Earl Dorset died young. She had great consolation in the affection first
of her mother, then of her two daughters, and also of her grandchildren.
It was in connection with one of these that an important incident
occurred, necessary to be fully explained here.
I have been allowed to utilise some critical points communicated by me
to the _Athenæum_, No. 3475, p. 709, June 2, 1894.
In an article on “Letter-writing,” published in _The World_, April 5th,
1753, Sir Horace Walpole quotes the famous and often repeated letter by
Anne Clifford, Dowager-Countess of Pembroke, to the Secretary of State,
who wanted her to nominate his follower for Appleby:—
“I have been neglected by a Court, I have been bullied by a
usurper, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man
sha’n’t stand.
“ANNE DORSET, Pembroke and Montgomery.”
Lodge and other writers doubt its genuineness. The author of the
“Dictionary of National Biography” gives as reasons for doubting it,
that Sir Joseph Williamson, to whom it was supposed to be addressed, was
not made Secretary of State until 1674; that Anne died in 1675, and that
there was no election between these dates; also, that it was not in the
style of her correspondence, and the signature was unusual, because she
always signed her titles in the order of creation—Pembroke, Dorset, and
Montgomery—and not in the order of her two marriages. None of the
critics, however, seem to have followed out the correspondence in the
Domestic Series of “State Papers” at the Public Record Office, which,
though it does not include the contested letter, yet illustrates it in a
remarkable manner.
The Parliament elected in 1661, 13 Charles II., has been called “The
Long or Pensionary Parliament,” lasting till 1678. (_See_ “Parl.
Returns,” vol. lxii., part i., p. 530.) John Lowther, Esq. of Hackthrop,
and John Dalston, Esq. of Accornbank, were Burgesses for Appleby. John
Lowther’s death necessitated a new election, and in January, 1667-8,
there was great excitement in and about Appleby. From Anne’s position as
High Sheriff of the County, she had the right to nominate a Candidate;
from her great goodness and bounty to the place, the Corporation were
willing to gratify her by electing whom she would. She determined to
have one of her grandsons the Tuftons, sons of her daughter, Countess
Thanet, four of whom were over 21, and in need of occupation. Failing
them, she meant to have selected her kinsman, Anthony Lowther. But
Joseph Williamson, Secretary to Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State,
had set his heart on that seat, and by all means in his power, open and
underhand, attempted to secure it. He was a native of those parts, and
had friends and relatives there, who all bestirred themselves in his
favour. Everybody “plied the Countess,” Williamson himself, his brother
and friends, the neighbouring gentry, the Justices of the Peace, the
Bishop of Winchester, Lord Arlington himself. Her replies at first were
very kindly, but they gradually became more and more “definite.”
Anne’s first letter, explaining how her interest was engaged, dated Jan.
16th, 1667-8, was addressed to “Mr. Secretary Williamson at Whitehall,”
showing that there is no weight in the argument as to Williamson’s
appointment not taking place till 1674, as being Under-Secretary, he
could be addressed so. Further, it is evident that the contested letter
was not addressed to Williamson, but to Lord Arlington, about
Williamson, though it may certainly have been re-addressed, and sent to
him later, and may have been found among his papers.
To Lord Arlington on Jan. 17th, she writes, “Mr. Williamson, being of so
eminent an ingenuity, cannot miss a Burgess-ship elsewhere.” On Jan.
25th, Arlington writes again to her on behalf of his Secretary. On Jan.
29th, George Williamson writes to his brother: “Unless the three Tuftons
be taken off by Lady Thanet’s means, it is impossible for any man to
oppose.... Dr. Smith fears the taking off of the old Lady, but if done,
we shall be joyful.” Feb. 4th, Dan Fleming writes to Williamson about
plying the Lady Pembroke: “If you cannot accomplish this, you should
stay the Writ as long as you can, until you have a good account of your
interest in Appleby.” The same day Dr. Smith wrote to Williamson telling
him of his friend’s work: “The success of it will be seen by her answer
to Lord Arlington, whereof she showed me a copy. I cannot see how it is
possible to do any good unless her grandchildren be taken off.” George
Williamson writes same date to his brother, that Lord Arlington had been
urging Thomas Tufton to withdraw. “Neither Arlington nor the Bishop make
any impression on the wilful Countess.” On Feb. 6th, Lord Arlington
writes again, to whom Anne replies: “It was myself and neither my
daughter of Thanet, nor any of my children, that made me attempt making
one of her sons a Burgess for Appleby.” “If it should happen otherwise,
I will submit with patience, but never yield my consent. I know very
well how powerful a man a Secretary of State is throughout the King’s
dominions, so am confident that by your Lordship’s favour and
recommendation you might quickly help this Mr. Williamson to a
Burgess-ship without doing wrong or discourtesy to a widow that wants
but two years of fourscore, and to her grandchildren whose father and
mother suffered as much in their worldly fortunes for the King, as most
of his subjects did.”
One can see that the spirited old lady has been kindled to white heat,
and that very little more would make her say something very like what
has been preserved by Walpole.
As to her style, she employed a Secretary, Mr. Sedgwick. That Secretary
was absent from Skipton Castle for a few days at this time. It is just
possible that the young Candidate, Thomas Tufton himself, became her
clerk on the occasion, and transmitted his grandmother’s words as he
thought she said them, without anything of Sedgwick’s clerkly polish.
On Feb. 9th George Williamson writes to his brother, enclosing a letter
from Dr. Smith, “If the town be left to their own freedom, your brother
will carry it, but I doubt that the Countess will never let it come to
that, being resolved to present one to them. If none of her
grandchildren will accept, she will pitch upon Anthony Lowther. She has
been heard to say that if they all refuse, she will stand for it
herself, by which you may imagine what the issue is likely to be.”
Feb. 13th. Sir John Lowther to Williamson says, that he had taken off
his kinsman from the candidature. “I believe that her Ladyship will
prevail in her resolution with regard to her relatives,” “and will
neither desire, seek, nor need, anybody’s help to make whom she
desires.” I know this by a letter from the Mayor.
Feb. 23, Thomas Gabetis, Under-Sheriff, writes to Mr. Williamson, that
he studied to serve him, but the Countess had planned otherwise. “The
Corporation being disposed to gratify her for her great nobleness and
bounty to the place. My station obligates me to render service with
obedience to her commands, especially in this particular.”
Here comes the period at which the undated letter preserved by Walpole
might well have been written. But between him and the printers it seems
to have disappeared. There is no further letter now on the subject among
the State Papers.
But in her Diary, Harl. MS., she writes, “And on ye second day of March
in this year my grandchild, Mr. Thomas Tufton, was chosen Burgess of ye
Town of Appleby to serve in the House of Commons in Parliament therein
assembled, and sitting in Parliament at Westminster, in ye place of Mr.
John Lowther, my cosin’s son, who dyed; so as Mr. Thomas Tufton, my
grandchild, begann first of all to sitt in ye said House of Commons at
Westminster as a member thereof, the 10th day of March, he being ye
first grandchild of mine yt ever sate in ye House of Commons.”
On 21st Sept., 1668, in 1670, and in 1674, this Mr. Thomas Tufton
visited his grandmother and his constituency, still Burgess.
So she had her way with the Secretary of State, as she had had with the
King, the Protector, and her noble husbands. Her motto, it may be
remembered, was “Preserve your loyalty, defend your rights.”
Many other women have been right in their contentions, but to very few
have been given with the spirit and courage, the wealth, power, patience
and opportunity to secure success. Her struggle was no purely personal
one; it was the first Protest against the invasion of the rights of her
sex. She saw how “legal precedent” was drifting.
Mr. Joshua Williams on Land Settlement says, “I have not been able to
discover any trace of a limitation of an estate, tail, or any other
estate to an unborn son prior to 3 and 4 Philip and Mary” (“Judicial
Papers,” vol. i., part i., p. 47).
We have already noted the decision of Judge Popham in the case of Lady
Fane, which Anne Clifford quoted as precedent for her own case in vain.
She utilised every opportunity of improving herself and blessing her
fellow-creatures. She would not go where she could do no good. Being
invited to the Court of Charles II. she replied, “I could not go, unless
I were to wear blinkers, like my horses!”
Dr. Donne said of her, that she “was able to converse on any subject,
from predestination to slea-silk.”
In her Funeral Sermon, preached by Bishop Rainbow, he mentioned her
learning, hospitality, and encouragement of letters, and reckoned among
her many virtues, Courage, Humility, Faith, Charity, Piety, Wisdom.
“Thus died this great wise Woman, who, while she lived, was the Honour
of her Sex and her Age, fitter for a History than a Sermon.”
=In 1694 Mary Astell protested= against the state of things in her day
in a small anonymous publication, “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, by
a Lover of their Sex.” Speaking of the repute learning was held in about
150 years ago, she says, “It was so very modish that the fair Sex seemed
to believe that Greek and Latin added to their charms, and Plato and
Aristotle untranslated were frequent ornaments of their closets. One
would think by the effects that it was a proper way of educating them,
since there are no accounts in history of so many great women in any one
age as are between 1500 and 1600.” She refers to Mr. Wotton’s
“Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning,” p. 349, and makes clear
that her proposal is to found an institution for the higher education of
women, to be dedicated to the Princess Anne of Denmark. In 1696 she also
published “An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, by a Lady.” Defoe next
year in his “Essays on Projects,” proposed to establish Academies for
women, and criticises “the Lady” who had suggested the idea under the
conditions of a Monastery.
“Reflections upon Marriage” appeared in 1700. In the third edition of
the latter, 1706, answering objections, in the Preface, she says, “These
Reflections have no other design than to correct some abuses which are
none the less because power and prescription seem to authorise them.
’Tis a great fault to submit to Authority when we should only yield to
Reason,” ... “designing nothing but the Pubic Good, and to return, if
possible, the native Liberty, the Rights and Privileges of the
Subject.... She did not indeed advise women to think men’s folly wisdom,
nor his brutality that love and worship he promised in the matrimonial
oath, for this required a flight of wit and sense much above her poor
ability, and proper only to masculine understandings.... ’Tis true,
through want of learning and of that superior genius which men, as men,
lay claim to, she was ignorant of the natural inferiority of our sex,
which our masters lay down as a self-evident and fundamental truth. She
saw nothing in the reason of things to make this either a principle or a
conclusion, but very much to the contrary, it being Sedition, at least,
if not Treason, to assert it in this Reign. For if by _the natural
superiority of their Sex_ they mean that every man is superior to every
woman, which is the obvious meaning, and that which must be stuck to if
they would speak sense, it would be a sin in any woman to have dominion
over any man, and the greatest Queen ought not to command, but to obey
her Footman, because no municipal Laws can supersede or change the Laws
of Nature. If they mean that some men are superior to some women, that
is no great discovery. Had they turned the tables they would have found
that some women are superior to some men. Or, had they remembered their
Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, they might have known that one woman
is superior to all the men in the Kingdom, or else they have sworn to
very little purpose, and it must not be supposed that their Reason and
Religion would suffer them to take Oaths contrary to the Law of Nature
and the Reason of Things.” “That the Custom of the World has put women,
generally speaking, into a state of subjection, is not denied; but the
right can be no more proved by the fact than the predominance of vice
can justify it. They say that Scripture shows that women were in a state
of subjection. So were the Jews, under the Chaldeans; and the Christians
under the Romans. Were they necessarily inferior? That ingenious
theorist, Mr. Whiston, argues, ‘that before the Fall woman was the
superior.’ Woman is put into the World to serve God. The service she
owes a man at any time is only a business by-the-bye, just as it may be
any man’s business to keep hogs. He was not made for this, but if he
hires himself out to such an employment, he ought conscientiously to
perform it.... We do not find any man think any the worse of his
understanding because another has more physical power, or conclude
himself less capable for any post because he has not been preferred to
it.... If all men are born Free, how are all women born slaves? Not
Milton himself would cry up Liberty for Female Slaves, or plead the
Lawfulness of resisting a private Tyranny.... If mere power gives a
right to rule, there can be no such thing as Usurpation, but a
Highwayman, so long as he has Strength to force, has also a right to
command our obedience. Strength of mind goes along with Strength of
body, and ’tis only for some odd accidents, which philosophers have not
yet thought worth while to inquire into, that the sturdiest porter is
not also the wisest man.... Sense is a portion that God has been pleased
to distribute to both sexes with an impartial hand; but learning is what
men have engrossed to themselves, and one cannot but admire their
improvements.” She winds up with another Eulogy on the good Queen Anne.
But society did not then reform itself upon her suggestions.
Before the close of the eighteenth century, however, =Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin blew a loud trumpet blast=, in her indignant
“Vindication of the Rights of Women.” She treats the subject on lines
that men and women are only now beginning to learn to read. “There can
be no duty without reason. There can be no morality without equality.
There can be no justice when its recipients are only of one sex. Let us
first consider women in the broad light of human creatures, who, in
common with men, are placed upon the earth to unfold their faculties.”
“Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partakes with him the gift
of reason? Do you not act a tyrant’s part when you force _all_ women by
denying them civil and political rights, to remain immured in their
families, groping in the dark? Surely you will not assert that a duty
can be binding that is not founded on reason.” “Women may be convenient
slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading both the
master and the abject dependent.” “It is time to effect a revolution in
female manners, time to restore to women their lost dignity and to make
them labour by reforming themselves, to reform the world.” She was too
much in advance of her times to be successful in spreading her views,
especially as they were entangled with other opinions even more
unpopular in her day. Yet she sowed the seed that is still growing. The
society she pictures gives a painful illustration of the effects of the
exclusively masculine creeds of her century.
Yet, during that dark age of women’s privilege, there were =some Legal
Cases tried= and decided, refreshing in their results, as they showed
that dispassionate judges could still do something for women, when they
followed the ordinary principles of Philology, and decreed that a common
term could stand for woman as well as for man, even when it meant a
privilege.
“A woman was appointed by the Justices to be a _governor_ of a workhouse
at Chelmsford in Essex, and Mr. Parker moved to quash the order because
it was an office not suitable to her sex, but the Justices upheld the
appointment” (2 Lord Raymond, 1014). “My Lady Broughton was _keeper_ of
the Gatehouse Prison” (3 Keble, 32). “A woman was appointed clerk in the
King’s Bench” (_see_ Showers’ P.C.).
A lady’s appointment to be _Commissioner_ of Sewers was also contested,
but it was “decided that as the office by statute” shall be granted to
such _person_ or persons as the said Lords should appoint, “the word
_person_ stands indifferently for either sex ... and though women have
been discreetly spared ... yet I am of opinion, for the authorities and
reasons aforesaid, that this appointment is _warrantable in law_. Women
have been secluded as unfit, but they are not in law to be excluded as
incapable,” _i.e._, the election determined eligibility; and so the
Countess of Warwick was allowed to retain the benefits of her election.
(_See_ Callis. 250.)
In Hilary Term, 1739, the case of Olive _v._ Ingram was heard before Sir
William Lee, Chief-Justice, Sir Francis Page, Sir Edmund Probyn, Sir
William Chappel, Justices, to decide whether a woman could vote for a
sexton, and whether she could be a sexton. A woman candidate for the
office of sexton of the Church of St. Botolphs without Bishopsgate had
169 _indisputable_ votes and 40 _women’s votes_; the plaintiff had 174
indisputable votes and 22 women’s votes. The woman had been declared
elected.
The case was considered so important that it was heard four times.
First, whether a woman could vote? The counsel against argued that women
could not vote in this case, as they did not do so in others; that they
did not vote for members of Parliament, quoting Coke. The counsel for
argued that non-user did not imply inability; that women paying Scot and
Lot had a right to vote on municipal affairs; that they voted in the
great Companies; that it had been decided in Attorney-General _v._
Nicholson that women had a right to elect a preacher. If they could
elect to a higher office, how could they not do so to a lower? It had
been decided in Holt _v._ Lyle and Catharine _v._ Surrey, according to
Hakewell, “that a _feme sole_, if she has a freehold, may vote for a
Parliament man.” Women did come to the old County Courts, though not
compellable thereto. Women are _sui juris_ till they are married.
The Lord Chief-Justice said the case of Holt _v._ Lyle is a very strong
case, but as I am not bound now to say whether a woman can vote for a
Parliament man, I will reserve that point for further consideration. The
question here is, whether a woman can be included in “all _persons_
paying Scot and Lot.” It was a just rule that they who contributed to
maintain the elected should themselves be electors. There is a
difference between exemption and incapacity. If women are qualified to
pay Scot and Lot, they are qualified to keep a sexton. They who pay must
determine to whom they will pay. He decided that women could vote for a
sexton. Justice Page agreed with Chief-Justice Lee on the general
question, but added, “I see no disability in a woman for voting for a
Parliament man.” Justice Probyn agreed that they who pay have a right to
nominate. It _might be thought_ that it required an _improved
understanding_ for a woman to vote for a Parliament man, but the case of
Holt _v._ Lyle was a very strong case.
The woman having thus secured a majority of “indisputable votes,” the
next question was, could she hold office? The objection was that women
could not hold places of trust, of exertion, of anything to do with a
church.
Chief-Justice Lee said a woman is allowed to be a Constable, an
Overseer, a Governor of a Poorhouse, a Gaoler, a Keeper of a Prison, a
Churchwarden, a Clerk of the Crown in the King’s Bench. Very high
offices have been held by Ladies. In regard to the Church, women have
been allowed to baptise; there have been Deaconesses, and female
servants _circa sacra_. (Romans xvi. 21.) Women have presented to
churches. He decided that a woman _could be sexton_. The others
concurred. (Leach’s “Modern Term Reports,” vol. vii.)
Strange, the opposing counsel, in reporting the case shortly and
confusingly, says that he knew many women sextons at the time. (_See_ 27
Strange.)
In the case of Rex _v._ Chardstock, where “the parish was obstinate in
not having another Overseer than a woman,” Justice Powell had testily
declared that a woman cannot be Overseer of the Poor, that there _can be
no custom of the parish to appoint her, because it is an Office_[16]
_created_ _by Act of Parliament_. To the petitioner’s election he
replied that there was _not to be a woman Overseer_, an _obiter dictum_
reversed in the King’s Bench in 1788 in Rex _v._ Stubbs. “Can a woman be
Overseer of the poor?” the only qualification necessary by the
Statute[17] (43 Eliza.), is that the Overseer be “a substantial
householder.” A woman can be “a substantial householder, and therefore
she is eligible.” Justice Ashurst referred to the other offices that
women had held, as quoted above. “This office has no reference to sex.
The only question is whether there be anything in the nature of the
office that should make a woman incompetent, and we think _there is
not_” (Durnford and East’s “Term Reports”).
Footnote 16:
Yet before the said creation of the Statute (43 Eliz.; even in 7
Eliz.) there were Overseers of the poor in Westminster, (_see_ p. 148
_Athenæum_, No. 3458, February 3rd., 1894).
Footnote 17:
_Ibid._
Yet before the time that male rivals contested the election with a
woman, women had exercised the office without objection. “In the
township of Gorton, parish of Manchester, 1748, Widow Waterhouse was
overseer of the poor. In 1775 Sarah Schofield played the flute in the
chapel choir. In 1826 Mary Grimston appointed sexton. In 1829 the vestry
sent for Ruth Walker to come and break stones” (_Notes and Queries_, 5th
series, vol. iv., p. 269). In the Parish Register, Totteridge,
Middlesex, March 2nd, 1802, entry—burial. Mrs. Elizabeth King, widow,
for 46 years Clerk of this Parish, in her 91st year. _Note._—As long as
she was able she attended, and with great strength and pleasure to her
hearers, read prayers. (p. 493.) Mrs. Anne Bass of Ayleston,
Leicestershire an excellent churchwarden for many years. (_Notes and
Queries_, 5th series, vol. iv., 269, 493.)
The opening of the nineteenth century was signalised by the cessation of
the Napoleonic wars; and the Peace brought wider opportunities of
leisure, learning, and literature to both sexes. Yet so powerful had
become the force of Custom in confusing men’s ideas of Justice, that
even James Mill, the pupil of Jeremy Bentham, in his masterly article on
“Government” for the Supplement to the “Cyclopædia Britannica”
(afterwards republished in pamphlet form, 1825) could allow it to blind
his eyes to the logical results of his own reasoning. In page 494 he
says, “That one human being will desire to render the person and
property of another subservient to his pleasures, notwithstanding the
pain or loss of pleasure which it may occasion to that other individual,
_is the foundation of government_. The desire of the object implies the
desire of the power necessary to accomplish the object. The desire,
therefore, of that power which is necessary to render the persons and
properties of other human beings subservient to our pleasures, is a
grand governing law of human nature.” Yet the writer of this searching
analysis of the cause and need of government says elsewhere (p. 300),
“One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose interests
are indisputably included in those of other individuals, may be struck
off from political rights without inconvenience. In this light may be
viewed all children up to a certain age, whose interests are involved in
those of their parents. In this light, also, women may be regarded, the
interest of _almost all of whom_ is involved in either that of their
fathers or that of their husbands.” Yet even at that early date a man,
inspired by a woman, rose up to protest against this sweeping assertion.
William Thompson, in 1825, published a little book, dedicated to Mrs.
Wheeler, that puts the whole question in a broad modern light, “_The
Appeal_ of one Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of
the other Half, Men, to retain them in Political, and thence in Civil
and Domestic Slavery. In reply to a paragraph of Mr. Mill’s celebrated
article on Government.” This interesting book was the first voice of a
nineteenth century man against the degradation of women. He points out
that Mill has not nearly reached the level of his master, Bentham, in
his conception. He asks, what is to become of those not included in the
“nearly all”? what of those that are? “Why are women’s interests
included in those of men? Mr. Mill’s article seeks to evade the equal
claims of the other half of the human race to similar protection against
the abuse of the same power, against the application of the general
principle of security to women.” “In order to include women in the
proscription of children, a fiction must be manufactured, as none of the
good reasons applicable to children would be found to apply to women,
and this romance of an identity of interest is the ingenious, say
rather, the vulgar, the audacious fiction devised” (p. 15). “From this
examination it results that the pretext set up to exclude women from
political rights, namely, the inclination of men to use power over them
beneficently; would, if admitted, sweep away the grand argument itself
for the political rights of men.” “We shall investigate the
philosophical pretext of the ‘article’ for the degradation of one half
of the adult portion of the human race in the following order:—(1) Does
the identity of interest between men and women, in point of fact, exist?
(2) If it do exist, is it a sufficient cause, or any reason at all, why
either of the parties, with interests thus identified, should therefore
be deprived of political rights? (3) Is there in the nature of things
any security for equality of enjoyments proportional to exertion and
capabilities, but by means of equal civil rights? or any security for
equal civil but by means of equal political rights? In regard to the
first, there are three great classes of women. First, all women without
fathers or husbands; second, adult daughters in their father’s
establishment; third, wives. The first class have no men to identify
their interests with; they are therefore the class, sometimes scornfully
called, _the unprotected_. Adult daughters can acquire legal rights as
against their fathers, but on marriage they forfeit their freedom, and
are again thrown back into the class of children or idiots.” “Involving
of interests must mean that one enjoys as much as the other, is this
true as between husband and wife?” “The very assumption of despotic
power by the husbands over wives is in itself a demonstration, that in
the opinion of husbands, a contrariety, and not an involving of
interests, exists between them and their wives. Domestic despotism
corrupts man’s moral frame.” “If it is more difficult for women to
labour, why should men further increase the difficulty by protecting
themselves? In justice to the stronger excluding party, as well as to
the weaker, all such powers of excluding ought to be withheld” (p. 149).
Many must have read, but few assimilated Mr. Thompson’s able and
generous arguments.
Meanwhile, in regard to the Representation of the People’s Acts, the
parliamentary franchises had been revised and cobbled, but in none was
any but the general term used. The Act 7 and 8 William III. describes
electors as “freeholders,” or “persons”; 18 George II., c. xviii., 19
George II., c. xxviii., use the same general terms. That of 3 George
III. limits the franchise “to persons who had taken up their freedom for
12 months.”
Those of 11 George III., c. lv.; 22 George III., c. xxxi.; 44 George
III., c. lx.; 11 George IV., and 1 William IV., c. lxxiv., confer the
suffrage on “_every_ Freeholder being above the age of 21 years, or on
inhabitant householders of same age.” There is no term ever used, that
might not include a woman. But just at the time when the tide of
civilisation and education was beginning to rise again, just after “The
Appeal of Women” had appeared, by W. Thompson and Mrs. Wheeler (1825),
all historical precedent was reversed. Concentrated social _opinion_
became boldly expressed in _law_.
=In the Reform Bill of 1832=, the word “male” was interpolated before
“persons” in the Charters of the newly created Boroughs. Never before,
and never since has the phrase “male persons” appeared in any Statute of
the Realm. By this Act, therefore, women were legally disfranchised for
the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege
of abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion. Curiously
enough, the framers seemed to have had dim notions of this, as in all
reference to older Charters the term “person” only appeared, and the
interpolating adjective “male” is suppressed. Therefore in Boroughs
holding by older Charters women were not necessarily excluded, except by
the reflex action of the 1832 Statute. (_See_ 2 William IV., c. xlv., s.
24, 25, 31, 32, and 33.)
In strange contrast to the spirit of this Act were the Bills passed in
1833 and 1834, which gave freedom, at the nation’s expense, to all
Colonial slaves.
The Municipal Franchises naturally followed the example of the
Parliamentary one, and in spite of Charter, and in spite of precedent,
limited their privileges to “male persons.”
For many years these readings remained in uncontested force, not without
protest on the part of women and of the friends of justice. In 1851,
Lord Romilly’s Bill, otherwise called Lord Brougham’s Bill, “for
shortening the language of the Acts of Parliament,” was passed. This
decided that the word “man” should always include “woman” except where
otherwise expressly stated. In that year the Earl of Carlisle presented
a Petition drafted at a public meeting in Sheffield for the extension of
the Parliamentary Suffrage to women. Sympathetic minds were stirred by
the great American Convention of the subject, and in the _Westminster
and Foreign Quarterly_, July, 1851, appears the notable article on “The
Enfranchisement of Women,” by Mrs. Mill. “That women have as good a
claim as men have to the suffrage and to be jury, it would be difficult
for any one to deny.” “It is one axiom of English freedom that taxation
and representation always go together; it is another that all persons
must be tried by their peers, yet _both_ are denied to women.” “A reason
must be given why what is permitted to one person is interdicted to
another.” “Far from being _expedient_, the division of mankind into two
castes, one born to rule the other, is an unqualified mischief, a source
of perversion and demoralisation both to the favoured class and to those
at whose expense they are favoured, producing none of the good which it
is the custom to ascribe to it, and forming a bar to any really vital
improvement either in the character or the social condition of the human
race.”
“It is the boast of modern Europeans and Americans that they know and do
many things which their fore-fathers neither knew nor did; it is the
most unquestionable point of their superiority that custom is not now
the tyrant that it formerly was. Yet in this case prejudice appeals to
custom and authority.” “Great thinkers from Plato to Condorcet have made
emphatic protests in favour of the equality of women.” “We deny the
right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or
any individual for another individual what is and what is not their
‘proper sphere.’ The proper sphere of all human beings is the largest
and highest they can attain to.”
=The Bill of 1867.= Again the “Representation of the people” came before
the House in 1867. The word “man” was exchanged for “male persons” of
the 1832 Charter. John Stuart Mill redeemed his father’s errors and
moved an Amendment that it should be made expressly to include women.
“We ought not to deny to them what we are conceding to everyone else, a
right to be consulted; of having, what every petty trade or profession
has, a few members who feel specially called on to attend to their
interests, to point out how these interests are affected by law.” “The
want of this protection has affected their interests vitally. The rich
can make private laws unto themselves by settlements, but what of the
poor?”
“Educational endowments founded for both sexes have been limited to
boys. The medical profession shuts its doors when women strive to enter
in. The Royal Academy shut its doors when women began to distinguish
themselves. There is no meaning in the objection that women have no time
to attend to politics. Do all enfranchised men take time?” “What is the
meaning of political freedom? Is it anything but the control of those
that make politics by those who do not?” (p. 7). His Amendment was lost.
But so also was the Amendment that the phrase “male persons” of 1832
should be replaced. The Bill enacted that every man of full age, and not
subject to legal incapacity, “duly qualified and registered,” should
have the right to vote. During the discussion, the Hon. G. Denman,
Justice of the Common Pleas, asked the following question—“Why, instead
of the words ‘male person’ of the Act of 1832, the word ‘man’ had been
substituted in the present Bill? In the fifth clause of the Bill he
found that after saying that every ‘man’ should be entitled to be
registered, it proceeds to say, ‘_or a male person_ in any university
who has passed any senior middle examination.’ In the light of Lord
Romilly’s Act, if the Court of Queen’s Bench had to decide to-morrow on
the construction of these clauses they _would be constrained_ to hold
that they _conferred the_ suffrage on _female persons_ as well as on
males.” The Government did not answer the question, but it passed the
Bill as it stood. This, therefore, to ordinary, as well as to logical
minds, seemed to reinstate women in their ancient though neglected
privileges, which the advance of education had taught them now to
appreciate. Therefore, next year, 5,347 women had themselves duly
registered in the town of Manchester alone, in the neighbouring town of
Salford about 1,500, and large numbers in other places. Great
uncertainty prevailed as to how to treat them, but most of the revising
barristers threw them out. The Manchester women consolidated their
claims and appealed against their decision.
=The case of Chorlton= _v._ =Lings= was heard before the Court of Common
Pleas in Westminster, Nov. 7th and 10th, 1868, Lord Chief-Justice Bovill
and Justice Willes, Keating and Byles, sitting on the Bench. The facts
can be found in the Law Reports, and it is good that they should be
recalled to the minds of the rising generation.
Yet they are treated in a more lively manner in the pages of _The
Times_. Mr. Coleridge, Q.C., and Dr. Pankhurst appeared on behalf of the
women, Mr. Mellish against. Miss Becker, the woman’s champion, was
present, and many other ladies. Mr. Coleridge stated that there were
5,347 women duly registered in the town of Manchester, qualified _except
by sex_ to be electors. The Chief-Justice asked him if he had found any
cases of women exercising political privileges before then? He said he
had not![18] But he added that the Statute for the County Courts _might_
have included both sexes. The Chief-Justice interpolated, “The Common
Law existed before the Statute Law. There is no trace, so far as I know,
of women having been admitted to the assemblies of the wise men of the
land!”[19] (Laughter.) Mr. Coleridge gave the examples of the Countess
of Westmoreland voting by attorney and Mrs. Copley signing the
indenture. Justice Willes interposed, “She might have been a returning
officer, which office she unquestionably might fill!”[20] Mr. Coleridge
then quoted Luders as to the women burgesses of Lyme Regis; the Statute
of Henry VI., which limited suitors to forty shilling freeholders and
the citizen burgesses, as all being enacted of “chusers” or “electors”
in common terms. Hallam (ch. xiii.), states that “all Householders
paying Scot and Lot, and Local Rates, voted for members of Parliament.”
Women could be freeholders, householders, citizens, burgesses, suitors,
taxpayers, therefore they could vote. It is true that the Reform Bill of
1832 read these as only applied to “male persons,” but the Bill of 1867
used the term “man,” while Lord Romilly’s Act had decided the term “man”
should include woman, unless where it was otherwise expressly stated. It
was not “otherwise expressly stated” in the Statute of 1867. There was
no legal restraint against women voting, and he quoted the case of Holt
_v._ Lyle, which affirmed that a _feme sole_ had a right to vote for a
Parliament man.
Footnote 18:
_See_ Ante to the contrary p. 64.
Footnote 19:
P. 10.
Footnote 20:
P. 70.
Mr. Mellish, in opposition, said that Manchester was a new Borough in
1832, and claimed by its Charter the franchise for “male persons.” The
Bill of 1867 stated that it would not alter existing franchises. The
ground of women being excluded was their _legal incapacity_. It is true
no statute took their right away, because they never had it! “As well
suitors as others,” of 52 Henry III., did not necessarily mean women.
“They could not be Esquires or Knights.” Justice Willes interposing—“Not
only in Books of Romance but in Books of Chivalry we see they can!” “The
case quoted by Mr. Coleridge is valueless. If a lady were not present to
vote, it was clearly illegal for her to do so by attorney. Mrs. Copley
was Patron of the Borough, and probably acted as returning officer. In
Olive _v._ Ingram the majority of the Judges were against the woman’s
claim.[21] Peeresses could not sit in the House of Lords.” Justice
Willes interposing—“Yet peeresses marrying commoners, the commoners
became Peers, and sat _jure mariti_. Is not that, at least,
representative of a woman?” Mr. Mellish then referred to the parallel
case that had been tried in Scotland. Judgment was against the women,
first, because they were legally incapacitated; and second, because to
_give_ them a vote would be against public policy, as it was a premium
on ladies to remain unmarried in order to retain their votes, and a
premium to them to desire that their husbands might die in order that
they might become enfranchised as widows.” Mr. Coleridge said that the
Scotch case had no bearing on this. Lord Chief-Justice Bovill was
obliged to concede that “it is quite true that a few women being parties
to indentures of returns of members of Parliament have been shown, and
it is quite possible that there may have been some other instances in
early times of women having voted and assisted in legislation. Indeed,
such instances are mentioned by Selden. Yet the fact of the right not
having been asserted for centuries raises a very strong presumption
against its ever having had legal existence.”[22] And though he
acknowledged that in many statutes “man” may be properly held to include
women, he decided against this interpretation here. The rest of the
judges agreed with him.
Footnote 21:
He could only have read the short and misleading report by Strange,
the counsel for the opposition, as the assertion does not seem borne
out by the case _in extenso_. As Strange also affirmed that women
could not hold by military tenure, his judgment regarding them on
other points may well be doubted.
Footnote 22:
The last recorded example of women proffering their vote was in 1640,
less than 260 years before, p. 99. While Amersham and other towns had
not voted for 321 years, p. 92.
The second case, Chorlton _v._ Ressler, a woman freeholder at Rusholme
with a county qualification with no relation to the 1832 Charter of
Manchester, they refused to hear. Dr. Pankhurst was silenced. The Lord
Chief-Justice said to him—“Do you expect to convince us that we are
wrong, and that we ought to alter our judgment just given?” Dr.
Pankhurst—“Your judgment is inchoate, and might be altered during the
term. (Laughter.) This is not a point of Common Law but of
Constitutional Law.”
The next case was Wilson _v._ Town Clerk of Salford; Martha Wilson
having appeared on the Overseer’s List, and not having been objected to,
wanted to know why she had been struck out. She was curtly referred to
the decision in Chorlton _v._ Lings.
The next case, Bennet _v._ Bromfit, was a consolidated appeal of men and
women against the revising barrister at Ormskirk, who had held that
certain notices of objection were valid, without the reasons of
objection being stated. Here the Revising Barrister had decided that
Ellen Ashcroft was qualified to vote. The Lord Chief-Justice
interposed—“The Revising Barrister may have decided that Ellen Ashcroft
had a right to vote, but we have decided that she has not.” “But, your
Lordship, what has to become of Birch, Roberts and the other men
concerned in this appeal?” “It is laid down that where appeals are
improperly consolidated they cannot be heard.”
And thus, in a Court of Common Law, amid peals of amused laughter, the
Constitutional Privilege of British Freewomen was taken from them, as a
Justice worded it, “_forever_.”
Yet Coke himself had declared “Judges ought not to give any opinion of a
matter of Parliament because it is not decided by the Common Law, but
_secundum legem et consuetudini_ Parliamenti” (“Fourth Institute,” 15).
In 1704, the Commons had resolved that “they cannot judge of the right
of elections without determining the right of electors; and if the
electors were at liberty to prosecute suits touching the right of giving
voices in other courts, there might be different voices in other courts
which would make confusion and be dishonourable to the House of Commons,
and that such an action was a breach of privilege.”
But this decision was accepted from the Common Law Courts, and, by
Christmas, 1868, there was not a “Freewoman” left in Britain, except the
_One_ who sat on the throne, holding her privileges, not as her female
subjects did, by Statutes written in general terms, but by Statutes
where the language designates the male sex alone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TURN OF THE TIDE.
1868-1894.
“Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.”
IT was not only the seven thousand women from Manchester and Salford who
were disappointed in the results of their appeal. Women began on all
sides to analyse the grounds of the judgment, and to take steps towards
counteracting its baneful influence. An ever-increasing body of
generous-hearted or far-seeing men joined their party, and worked with,
and for them, both within and without the House of Commons. Meeting
after meeting has spread enthusiasm. Petition after Petition has been
presented. Bill after Bill has been brought forward. Amendment after
Amendment has been proposed hitherto without success. As Mr. Stuart,
M.P., once wittily said at a public meeting, “Petitions sent up by the
Unrepresented, are like Bell-handles rung outside of a door, that have
no bell attached at the other end. They occupy the attention of those
outside of the house, but do not disturb those that are within.” The
strongest plea has been taken from women. By the extension of the
Franchise in 1884, the Service Clause disallowed the doctrine that
taxation was the qualification for representation, and reversed the
prime reason of members being first called to the House in the reign of
Hen. III. If women had felt it hard that their payment of taxes had not
been sufficient to purchase their right of representation, they felt it
harder that their payment of taxes, invalid and inoperative as regards
themselves, was valid and operative as providing the qualification of
their male servants, that, in short, the qualification had been altered
fundamentally. Yet some good has come out of the evil. It has provided a
_reductio ad absurdum_.
It has made women see clearly that no qualification, but that of sex,
lies in the modern readings of the Statutes. They cannot alter the sex,
but they may alter the Basis of Privilege. Such things have been done
ere now. Ripe scholars in Mathematics have been excluded the
Universities because they could not subscribe to the articles of the
English Church. Political Economists have been excluded the House of
Commons because they were of Jewish descent. These disabilities have
been removed for men. The disabilities of sex must ere long be removed
for women.
=Progress has been very rapid since 1868.=—The “woman’s question” no
longer provokes somnolence nor awakes mirth: it is treated as a question
of gravity. The publication of John Stuart Mills’ “Subjection of Women,”
in 1869, educated many minds. The humorous treatment of the question in
_Fraser’s Magazine_ in the article entitled, “Latest News from the
Planet Venus,” where logical objections against Male Enfranchisement are
supposed to be urged by women, taught others that there were two sides
to the principles of exclusion, and that those against the
Enfranchisement of men, were, to say the least of it, quite as valid, as
any that have ever been brought against the Liberty of Women. Many other
interesting volumes and articles have been written, making the views of
women known.
Women have begun to speak for themselves, and to speak clearly—with no
uncertain sound.
No new elucidation of the 1867 Charter has taken place except one very
remarkable one. “If a woman’s name were to get on an _election list by
mistake_, and she afterwards tenders her vote, that vote must be
accepted” (_see_ “Warren on Election Law”). The humour of the remark is
great. As by the mistakes of some men women lost their rights, by a
further masculine mistake they may regain them. Is this what it imports?
If not, what?
The 1868 Decision threw back civilisation theoretically 2000 years. But
it necessitated opposition. One clear sign of this effect was given in
1869 when Mr. Jacob Bright moved a resolution in the House that women
should vote in Municipal affairs, and it was adopted almost without
discussion. The Bill was modified, but reconfirmed in 1882. The right
has been exercised by women since that time without any overturning of
the social fabric.
In 1870 the vote for the School Board, and eligibility thereto, was
conferred upon them. Ancient rights allowed them to vote for Poor Law
Guardians; and in 1888 they were allowed to vote for County Councillors.
In 1893 they were made electors, and eligible for election on Parish
District Councils.
Many Bills have been passed in their favour through the toil and energy
of devoted women, and the co-operation of broad-minded men.
=The Married Women’s Property Acts= of 1870 and of 1882 have secured the
earnings of industrious wives from the clutches of grasping or drunken
husbands to a certain degree. A slight improvement has taken place in
regard to the Custody of Infant Children. The Criminal Law Amendment Act
of 1884 took a step in the right direction, though sadly crippled by its
overriding conditions. (_See_ Mrs. Fawcett’s pamphlet on “The Criminal
Law Amendment Act of 1884.”)
Various other moral Bills have showed the woman’s spirit working behind
the scenes in favour of justice and mercy and chastity.
And the famous Clitheroe case, in 1891, which sent back the Judge,
through lack of Precedent, to the original Statutes to find a decision
as to the imprisonment of a wife, bewildered the populace, and reduced
the demand for wife-kicking boots.
Public Conscience is beginning to be awakened to the errors of its
judgments in regard to women. The disproportionate awards of punishment
to those who steal food when hungry, and those who maltreat their wives
through tyranny, do not so often now arouse the indignation of those who
read the Law Reports in newspapers.
Yet the tide has not been uniform in its motion. It is the way of waves
to retire before and after a rise.
I forbear enlarging on the last great decision regarding women’s
disabilities, by which the Judge, following the example of his
predecessor in Rex _v._ Chardcroft, refused the electors of Brixton a
right to elect Lady Sandhurst as County Councillor, and put another in
her place that the majority of them had not elected; refused also to the
County Councillors themselves their right of electing Miss Cons among
their Aldermen. On May 16th, 1889, in the Queen’s Bench Division, was
tried the case of Beresford-Hope _v._ Lady Sandhurst. The other
candidates had given notice of objections to the Lady, but the Deputy
disallowed these, studying only the Statute. There were 1986 votes
recorded in favour of Lady Sandhurst, and 1686 in favour of
Beresford-Hope, who appealed. It was allowed, that the office being new,
there was no precedent to guide them; that the Municipal Act of 1882 had
enacted that “for all purposes connected with the right to vote at
municipal elections, words in this Act importing the masculine gender
include women.” It was allowed that the Local Government Acts of 1888
contain no enactments against women.
One Judge stated that it was a new office, but that no woman had ever
sat in a Municipal Corporation. That Anne Clifford was a _solitary_
instance of a woman being Sheriff.[23] That it was necessary that a
statute should give express permission to women to be elected, because
Lord Brougham’s Act does not apply to this.
Footnote 23:
_See_ “Ante,” pp. 43, 44.
Another Judge stated that his opinion would have been in favour of the
women’s claim, but for the 63rd Section of the Act of 1888. But the
majority of those concerned, accepting the assertion “that a more
learned Judge never lived than Justice Willes,” who had checked the
Historical arguments in the case of Chorlton _v._ Lings, accepted also
the decision in that case as the grounds of their Ruling. “I take it,
that neither by the Common Law nor the Constitution of this country,
from the beginning of the Common Law until now, can a woman be entitled
to exercise any public function.”
One at least they forgot whom they might have remembered, it was the
Woman from whom they held their Seals of office.
Thus Lady Sandhurst, after helping her colleagues, her country and her
sex, for a year, with two other brave women were turned out, and the
Council and the Country were alike the sufferers thereby. “Who will take
care of the Baby Farms, the Pauper Lunatic women? the many small details
that a man cannot know by accident, and prides himself in not knowing by
experience?”
If they have been defeated on the County Councils, the success of women
as Poor Law Guardians is undeniable. The spirit of tenderness for those
who receive charity in their old age, the healing spirit of sympathy for
those that have been tempted; the spirit of exact investigation of
accounts, and of economy in expending the ratepayers’ money, has
certainly been fostered by the presence of women on the Boards. The same
may be said of women on the School Boards. They have offered themselves
for many public appointments and offices. Sometimes they are accepted
gladly; sometimes they are only not ejected because the law for doing so
cannot be found.
A self-sacrificing worker in the cause of women has collected together
and tabulated all the elections a woman may at present join, all the
public offices she may at present fill. “The elections at which women
may vote at present are: The House of Keyes, Isle of Man; Town Councils
in England, Scotland, and Belfast; County Councils in England and
Scotland, District Councils in Scotland, School Boards, Boards of
Guardians, Local Boards of Health, Improvement Commissioners, Waywardens
and Highway Boards, Road Surveyors, Burgh Commissioners in Scotland,
Parochial Boards in Scotland, Select Vestries and District Boards in
London, Burial Boards and Common Vestries.
They can be elected to School Boards, Boards of Guardians; also to
Parochial Boards in Scotland and many other boards. They can be elected
now to very many public offices, can be Members of Royal Commissions,
Visitors of Lunatic Asylums, Inspectors of the Poor in Scotland,
Inspectors of Nuisances, Registrars of Births, Deaths, and Marriages;
Collectors of Poor Rates, Members of Dispensary Boards, Road Surveyors,
Overseers of the Poor, Churchwardens, Sextons, Parish Clerks, Local
Government Board Inspectors, County Council Inspectors of Baby Farms,
Noxious Trades, etc.; Factory and Workshop Inspectors under the Home
Office, Post-mistresses and Clerks in the Post Office, Census Clerks”
(_see_ “The Civil Rights of Women,” by Mrs. Eva Maclaren).
Some of these duties are, of course, performed without remuneration, but
in others they are paid at a fair rate, in some cases, at the same rate
as men.
I take in a separate paragraph some questions regarding work and its
returns, but it seems necessary first to show the advance of education
during the period. I have always felt that our sex owes much to our
Queen simply for _being_ what she is. At the time of the Reform Bill of
1832, she was being trained wisely for her future duties. The
intellectual powers of a girl, when educated under favourable
conditions, were brilliantly illustrated in her. The young Queen
succeeded in 1837, and from the commencement of her reign there has been
a constantly expanding view of the educatability even of ordinary girls.
The want of good secondary schools was at first severely felt; but women
began to patch up their education by private study or at public
Lectures. The Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, providing
Lectures, Library, and Reading-Room, founded in 1846, was open from the
first to women, as well as to men, and in many a large town were similar
opportunities.
Mr. Thomas Oliphant of that city, in the same year, started a large
School in Charlotte Square, to which he added two “Advanced Classes” for
the elder girls. There were taught Literature and Science in new and
suggestive methods, that many women, still living, have rejoiced in. The
Normal Schools for training Teachers had always been open to women; but
these “Advanced Classes” were intended for women of leisure, those who
had been accustomed to leave a Ladies’ Finishing School, to become the
Butterflies of Ball-Rooms, or better-class domestic drudges. A host of
imitators showed the demand for schools of Mr. Oliphant’s style.
In London, the Public Day School Company, since 1871, has done splendid
work, and trained thousands of girls; and higher schools and colleges
all over the country, have given solid education to a class of young
women, to whom, formerly, the most superficial smattering was considered
sufficient.
Meanwhile, the Secondary Education of women having succeeded, the higher
education was attempted. When the University Local Examinations were
commenced, they were opened to girls as well as to boys, to women as
well as to men. They soon proved that they were able to take advantage
of their opportunities. Strong efforts were made in many quarters to
have them admitted to the Universities on equal terms with men. Failing
this, there were strenuous attempts made to secure, at least, the
education, if not the other privileges of a University career.
=The earliest University Classes for Women= were opened in Edinburgh in
the winter of 1867-8, when 265 women enrolled themselves as students in
Professor Masson’s class on English Literature alone. In 1868-9, three
branches of the Arts Curriculum were offered in Literature, Natural
Philosophy, and Logic and Mental Philosophy; opportunities which spread
until the whole field was covered. In October, 1869, Hitchin Temporary
College was opened for women in similar connection with Cambridge
University. In 1873, the Oxford Association for the Education of Women
took shape. In 1876, Glasgow and St. Andrews joined the work, and other
opportunities all over the country had to be arranged to meet the
ever-increasing demand.
The first University to grant degrees to women on equal terms was
London, in the new Charter of 1878. As a non-teaching university,
however, its gift of Degrees was limited by the opportunities opened to
women of acquiring professional education in recognised colleges.
The Royal University of Ireland in Dublin opened in 1880, and in its
original Charter grants equal terms for men and women; and the Victoria
University in 1880, allowing women instruction and examination in some
departments, granted Degrees where they had passed sufficient
examinations.
In 1892, the Scotch Universities were opened simultaneously.
Durham offered, under certain conditions, to admit women, conditions not
finally arranged, when it found by its Charter that it could not do so.
Education is, however, granted women in the affiliated colleges of
Newcastle, and Titles, if not Degrees, allowed.
Cambridge admits women to its examinations, grants them a recognised
place, but no Degrees. Oxford examines them, but also excludes them from
full privileges. [x].
In none of these Universities can women, either as Undergraduates or
Graduates, vote for the University Member of Parliament. The same
anomaly exists as existed in relation to a property qualification. The
real qualification in a University is based upon attending certain
classes, passing certain examinations, living under certain conditions,
and paying certain fees. Women fulfil all these duties, but they do not,
even from their Alma Mater, receive the same privilege as their
brothers, on a University Qualification; because the Reform Bill of
1867, while granting it to all men on property qualification, by clause
5, limited it to “male persons in Universities.” It is possible that,
after a little more of the Higher Education, it will be found that they
have attained “an improved understanding,” enough to allow them even to
vote by the side of the navvy and the pot-boy.
The twenty-six years have not been lost, however, even in regard to
Women’s Suffrage. Meanwhile have been growing up young men and young
women, educated under the broadening effect of more equal privileges in
learning. The old restrictions seem to them meaningless in the new light
of reason. A generous youth, in the older Universities, who has been
beaten by a woman in a mathematical examination, feels his brow flush
when he receives the reward that is denied to her, and feels shame
instead of pride that he has to be protected against her competition. He
would never dream of suggesting that she would “require an improved
understanding to vote for a Parliament man.” In the youth of the country
lies hope, if the youth be but trained aright.
The result of the educational opportunities has been to give women
personal capability of entering professional life. But the Professions
have certain powers of excluding competitors, and they have all done
what they could to make entrance difficult or impossible. Women are now
admitted to the Medical Profession. Several original professions they
have invented for themselves, and they have done their best with the
old. They have therefore gained new powers of acquiring property. Their
energy and self-dependence have revolutionised the thoughts of men as
regards their capability.
John Stuart Mill, in his “Subjection of Women,” p. 99, says: “If
anything conclusive can be inferred from experience, without
psychological analysis, it would be that the things women have not been
allowed to do are just those that they succeed best in doing.”
Association of ideas is doing its work in forming customs and in
moulding habits of thought. No longer is a woman an incongruous sight in
Halls of Learning or of Research, in Scientific Societies or on Boards
of Guardians. Those who exclude women are learning that they themselves
suffer by the exclusion.
They welcome them eagerly as Canvassers at elections. Ere long they will
find it both natural and desirable to invite them to co-operate with
them through the Ballot-box, “to choose a Knight of the Shire or a
Burgess from a Borough, in the stead of all and of each of them, to go
to the Parliament House, and there consulting with the Knights of other
Shires,” to defend the interests of _those who sent them_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX.
OTHER WOMEN.
“All sisters are _co-parceners_ one with another. The elder-born has no
privilege over the younger.”
IF in these pages I have not noted the great majority of women who never
have had, under any condition, any privilege of any kind, it is not
because I have forgotten them. The needle-workers, whose toil is doubled
and whose pay is halved by self-enriching sweaters; the labouring women,
toiling in unfavourable conditions alongside of men now privileged with
voices powerful enough to control their earnings; the tempted women,
whose temptations are made strong and dangerous for them through false
social and economic views; the poor married women, who may be happy only
according to the degree that their husbands are better than the Law
allows them to be; the poor mother to whom Slave Law is still applied in
regard to their children. But the principles of Method lead us to take
one step at a time; the doctrines of Logic prevent us confusing two
ideas; and the Precedents of the Law Courts teach us that “where claims
are improperly consolidated they cannot be heard” (_see_ Bennet _v._
Bromfit, Queen’s Bench, 1868).
To lose the possible reward of any effort by misplacing it, is, to say
the least of it, unwise.
Men have placed all women in one class now. We are all sisters, and
“co-parceners” one with another. They have extended political privileges
to all, under conditions very easy to fulfil, except to Aliens, Minors,
Lunatics, Criminals, and _Women_. The Aliens may become naturalised, the
Minors may attain majority, Lunatics may regain their reason, and when a
Criminal has served his time he may become once more a free British
Elector. The noblest and the best, the most learned and philanthropic of
women, classed with the worst, are reckoned as something lower than the
lowest Criminal. He may, combining with others of his class, urge on his
narrow, selfish views; they may not enrich the world by advancing the
high, generous ideals that lie nearest their hearts. If any women, on
any qualification, become enfranchised, the disability of sex-in-itself
will be removed, and to all others thereby will be given a ray of hope.
It has seemed to me, through following a Psychological study of the
springs of human action, that the class most likely to receive
Enfranchisement first, is that which formerly had it. Therefore I, with
others who would not be immediately concerned in the success of our
efforts, join hands in toil to help forward the claims of those who have
been British Freewomen, as that section of the community which can claim
most on Historical grounds and by Legal Precedents. We hope that they,
being given the chance, will help their less fortunate sisters.
We must not forget, that the very Charters, that have so mightily
multiplied the legions of _Freemen in Esse_, have likewise increased the
number of _Freewomen in Posse_.
When the light increases, so that men can see to read aright, then women
may be able “to take up their Freedom too.”
M. Talleyrand Perigord,[24] once Bishop of Autun, observes “that to see
one half of the human race excluded by the other, from all participation
in Government, is a political phenomenon that on abstract principles it
is impossible to explain.” We think the phenomenon very capable of
explanation, but the reason is to be found, not in the perfection of
human nature, but in its incompleteness.
Footnote 24:
_See_ Dedication of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’s “Vindication of the
Rights of Women.”
The Romance of the old world was carried on by the “fair women and brave
men,” little being said of the _plain women_ and the _weak men_.
Civilisation has advanced far enough to recognise the claims of the
_weak men_; we want it to go further, and help wisely the cause of the
_weak women_. For that we require, reversing the adjectives, armies of
“brave women and fair men,” _brave women_ who seek not their lost
birthright with futile tears, but with self-sacrificing energies, and
heart-inspired sympathies; and _fair men_ who can understand that none
lose through another’s gain, and that theirs is not Liberty but License,
that use a self-asserted power to the restriction of the rights and
privileges of others.
Various tests have been proposed to mark different degrees of
Civilisation. I believe that the common-place man of to-day might
suggest that the multiplication of Machinery is the most satisfactory
index. More thoughtful men would consider a recognition of the first
principles of Justice a safer ground. Some of these assert that the
position of women is the surest test of the Civilisation of a Country
and of a Time. If this be so, Nineteenth Century men must look to their
character as posterity will judge it, for the Century is very near its
close. They are apt to be judged not by what they have done, but by what
they have left undone.
In reality one cause of the existence of so much statutory evil is this,
that the majority of men are so much better than the laws—they do not
understand their full bearing.
Victor Hugo has said, “Man was the problem of the eighteenth century,
Woman is the problem of the nineteenth.” To understand and solve that
problem, a totally different set of reasonings must be applied than have
hitherto been used by the majority of men. The so-called “Physical Force
Argument” is, after all, but the ghost of a Dead Argument raised to
scare the timid in the night. It can be valid only in Savage times, when
Might makes Right. It is inoperative in Civilisations, where Justice
even _pretends_ to decide the rights of men. Even under the “physical
force argument,” some women might be free. Many women are stronger than
many men; and many women have been known to signalise that strength, not
only in disguise as soldiers, or as navvies, but openly fearless and
free.[ix.] The courage of Nicholaa de la Haye and Black Agnes of Dunbar;
of the Countess of Derby and the Marchioness of Hamilton during the
Civil War has been emulated by many others. Some men assert scornfully
that women are not fit for privilege or power. To assert a thing is not
to prove it. If women are not fit for the Franchise, perhaps it may be
made fit for them. It is perfectly certain that they are fitted to enjoy
justice and to benefit by freedom. Some sentimentalists say that women
are too pliable and delicate to be exposed to the roughnesses of
political life. It would destroy their charm. To such objectors I would
answer, Look out into the flat meadows where sluggish streamlets wind,
and see in the inartistic clumps of pollard-willows an illustration of
the manner in which “woman’s nature” has been treated by such men.
Though their roots and leaves are the same, though their upward
aspirations are permanent, and their vital energies restorative, yet
through top-pruning at the will of others, for the use of others, the
growth and the ideals of the trees have been marred for ever. Nothing
can ever restore to a Pollard-Willow its natural place in the
picture-gallery of trees. But its distortion has only been individual,
its offspring through freedom may develope into a perfect tree, really
sweet and graceful, and not artificially so.
Other sentimentalists say that women are angels, and their purity must
not be contaminated by contact with the great outer world of vile
realities. They mistake fragile butterflies for God’s angels. These are
spirits strong in His strength, whose inward purity gives them power to
pass unscathed through external impurity, whose sympathy gives them
knowledge and whose presence purifies and refines the moral atmosphere.
The more a woman is like an angel, the more is she needed to counsel and
to work with men.
That women do not want it, is another futile objection. No classes or
masses ever unanimously want saving regeneration of any kind, until the
few have made it seem desirable to them. We know that at least a quarter
of a million women in this country do want it, and have set their hands
to the present great “Appeal to the Members of Parliament” to grant them
political freedom for weighty reasons. To refuse that quarter million
what the other millions do not ask, is like refusing to the Eagle and
the Lark the right to fly, because the Ostrich and the Swan do not care
for the exercise.
Others boldly say that this is a man’s world, and in it men must rule.
It is true that man has long led in the Song of Life, with words and
music written at his will, and woman has but played an Accompaniment.
Sometimes in their Duets she has been forced to sing a shrill second, or
a piping Bass, in notes that have no meaning when they are sung alone.
But he did not see or hear, and she dared not say, that this was not the
sole part that she could sing or play. In the many-voiced Concert of the
Universe, where harmonious “parts” should combine in balanced
perfection, there are constant discords and recurrent “clangs,” because
man has misunderstood the Rules of Harmony. The Bass voices are
necessary for perfection, but too much Bass becomes monotonous to the
listening ear, and overpowering the finer notes, spoils the Conception
of the Whole. If there is anything in this Analogy, it is the Woman’s
voice that should lead the Melody and express the meaning, and the man’s
voice should support her notes and enrich the Harmony. One need not
analyse the various other objections. None of them are based on Truth,
Justice, Logic, or History.
In my second Chapter I spoke somewhat of women’s privilege as heiresses,
but I would like here to add a few words about unprivileged earners.
=Labour is the Basis of Property.=—I do not wish now to analyse all the
Economic Theories regarding the relations of Property to Labour, but
only the one that touches our question. In olden times Labour was paid
in kind. Money is an arbitrary sign of labour, as speech is of thought.
Money is an easy medium by which the returns of labour can be
transferred, either in purchase of other property or of other labour, or
as a free gift or inheritance.
In ancient times fighting was considered a kind of labour, the highest
kind. The Service of the King was the most honourable, save that of the
Service of the Church. Fighting and praying were alike paid in land, or
in coin, and the land or the coin could be inherited by those who
neither fought nor prayed. Hard-working traders and farmers also earned
coin and land, and sometimes left their gains to idle children. Hence
owners have not always been earners. Some writers on National Economy
have inveighed against the principle of inheritance. To me it seems
natural and right that what a man has produced by labour, he may leave
to his descendants, at least, when he does so by old Saxon Law. There
has been much virulent denunciation of Landlords, especially in relation
to the _unearned increment of property_ in thriving towns. I do not know
any however, who have discussed a question, that bears much upon the
Argument of this book.
=The Unrecorded Increment of Woman’s Labour.=—Earners are not always
owners. Except where a woman brought some fortune at her marriage it has
been supposed that her husband “supported her.” But in the majority of
respectable middle-class or workmen’s dwellings, this is very far from
being the case.
The woman labours as well as her husband. If property is the result of
labour, both can be expressed in figures. Let us take a man earning 30s.
a week for eight hours’ work a day, and five hours on Saturday,
forty-five in all. The payment for each hour is 8d. As the woman spends
no time walking to and from her work; as she has no rest on Saturdays or
Sundays except through extra work on other days; as she on these other
days works very many more hours than her husband, she has bettered the
common stock by the amount of ninety hours of work; which taken at half
the wage, rises to the same sum, so that the common income should be
reckoned at 60s. instead of 30s. But her share being received in kind,
it is unrecognised and unrecorded. This may be made clear by supposing
that some other person had fulfilled the wife’s duties. In transferring
flour into bread she earns what the baker otherwise would gain in the
difference between flour and the price of the loaf. In washing and
ironing the family linen she earns what the laundress would charge for
the same, minus the cost of soap and coals. In carrying a heavy basket
from the distant stores, she earns what the local grocer would have done
in the difference between wholesale and retail prices; in making clothes
for her children out of her own frayed garments, she earns what the
draper would have charged for similar material, and what the dressmaker
would have required for making it up. If she patches her husband’s
clothes, she earns the tailor’s charge. Her daily scrubbing and cooking
may be reckoned at charwoman’s wages, and thus, multiplied by the hours
of labour, the proportion may come out. Both she and her husband dimly
feel that she has saved expenditure, they never realise that she has
acquired property.
The spending also must be reckoned. The result of the man’s labour has
been translated into coin, a more convenient form in which to pay rent
and taxes, the Club-money and direct Shop-purchases for both. Of the
common diet the man has the larger and better share. Beyond this he
generally has a daily paper, a pipe, and beer. At the lowest estimation
these cost 3s. 6d. a week. If he has no vices, there may be 3s. in his
pocket at the end of the week, and that 3s. may be put into a Savings
Bank in his name, which after years of saving, _by modern_ law, he may
will away from his wife and children.
What of her toil, her earnings, her increment of property? It has seemed
to vanish, but it has really enriched him. This may easily be seen if,
leaving her domestic employments, she goes out to labour as charwoman in
the house of others at 2s. 6d. a day of ten hours. She there also
receives food. The position then is this. The common house-property is
increased by the expenditure on her food being saved. She still saves
somewhat to the family in comfort and money by working overtime. Her
husband has either to do without some of his comforts or her economies,
or spend some hours of his relaxation in home-work. But at the end of
the week, there is the visible increment of fifteen shillings. Before
1870 all that belonged legally to the husband, since that time it
belongs nominally to the wife. That is the meaning of the Married
Women’s Property Bill. A husband should support a wife, but the money
she earns she may keep to herself. But it is hard on wives and mothers
that their share in the common property should be unrecognised when
their toil is continued under the ordinary domestic conditions; but be
recognised when circumstances or inclination make it possible for them
to seek a visible money reward elsewhere.
We will take another example from a higher rank. Suppose a man has £300
a year, and is left a widower with four young children, he at once feels
the diminution of his income, through the increase of his needs. He must
have a housekeeper, at a salary, at least, of £25. Her keep costs him
another £30. He must find a daily governess to teach the children, and
walk with them. Without keep that may cost another £25. He has to pay
the dressmaker for making and repairing the children’s clothes, at least
£10. He has to pay workmen to hang pictures, put up curtains, to paint
the back-garden fence, or enamel the nursery bath; to cover the
drawing-room chairs, or patch the dining-room sofa, quite £10 a year.
His wife’s whole keep had been saved through greater care in purchasing
and managing food, and higher skill in cooking than either his
housekeeper or assistant-girl possesses; and the man has not only lost
the love and comfort of his wife, but the £100 a year which she
indirectly earned for him. He thought his income was £300 and was all
his own; he finds it had been really £400, as compared to the present
receipts of expenditure, and that the missing £100 had been earned by
her. He would have found this out had he allowed her to give
music-lessons as she wished to do, a light labour that she loved. Or she
might have written that weekly letter to the country paper she was asked
to do. She might have earned £100 a year at that, and that money would
have been _her own_ to spend in luxury or charity if she pleased, or to
have saved up for her children’s future. But then his tradesmen’s bills
would have been increased. It is absurd, therefore, to believe that a
wife’s earnings are limited to those hours that she takes from her
husband’s service and sells to some other employer of labour, who pays
her in so much coin of the realm.
But the _partner_ that touches the coin seems always to take the lead.
We may see this in the circumstances where the positions are altered,
as, for instance, among many fishing communities. There, though the men
go out at night and fish, the women not only do their domestic work, but
receive the fish, go out and sell it, make the necessary purchases, and
“bank” the remainder of the money. The superior intelligence and
relative social position of the women in fishing communities has often
been noted. I have heard it scornfully said of a fisher-girl, “She
marry? Why, she is not able to keep a man!” In this illustrative case,
the woman holds the purse, and her share in the family earnings is
recognised.
Now, if privilege is based on property, and property is based on labour,
how is an industrious woman shut out from the benefits of both? Why must
the man only have the earner’s vote? One vivifying revelation of our
half-century is the recognition of the nobility of labour. No one has so
gracefully expressed it as Mrs. Barret Browning in “Aurora Leigh,” when,
urging all to work, she adds:
“Get leave to work;
In this world ’tis the best you get at all,
For God in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than man in benediction.”
But even with her it was too much work for its own sake. It has taken
fuller education, even since her time, for women to recognise that it is
equally noble and just for them to receive the reward of toil in earning
as it is for a man; and to be able to keep or use these earnings as they
will. A century ago, men suffered somewhat from the state of things they
had themselves initiated. An eldest son that received all the
inheritance and privilege had therewith to support the women of his
father’s family as well as of his own. It was disgraceful for him as
well as for them that they should _earn money_. But they gave him
labour, acting as upper servants, butts of ridicule, as the case might
be, or blind worshippers when all the outer world had learned to
disbelieve in him. Their recreation was the manufacture of useless
Berlin-wool monstrosities; or self-sacrificing work in pauperising the
poor of the parish, under the misdirection of a callow curate. Higher
education was discredited; literary aspiration a shame-faced secret.
Miss Austen had to hide her pen and ink and manuscripts by a piece of
fancy-work kept handy, lest her world should know and speak its mind of
her and her dreadful doings. The only profession open to a lady was
matrimony; and the chances of happy matrimony were thereby enormously
decreased.
If the dignity of being able to earn money has raised women immensely in
social life, their higher education has made this earning possible.
Dependent sisters need no longer hang their heads in shame before
supporting brothers. If they are not needed in their homes, they may go
forth into the world, eat the sweet bread of honest labour, and become
individuals.
But the woman is fettered still by the trammels of custom, by the
protection accorded to males; false social and economic creeds which
teach that man’s work must be paid higher than woman’s, whether it is
better done or not; by men’s power of place, which gives them power of
veto; by inherited thought-fallacies and linguistic inaccuracies; by the
nature of the medium through which things are seen.
Bacon wisely advised men to study all things in the “lumen siccum” or
dry light of science, lest vapours arising from the mind should obscure
the vision. He also pointed out that “There are four classes of Idols
which beset men’s minds. To these for distinction sake I have assigned
names—calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of
the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-place; the fourth, Idols of the
Theatre” (“Novum Organum,” Article xxxix., p. 53; also in lix.). “But
the Idols of the Market-place are the most troublesome of all; idols
which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words
and names. For men believe that their reason governs words; but it is
also true that words react on the understanding.” Is the word “man” a
common or masculine term?
After an impartial analysis of the laws regarding women, can men say
that they are just? Can they continue to assert that they know better
than women do what they need, and wish, and strain after; and if they
know, will they _do_ the thing that is necessary? With the best will in
the world, which I believe the majority of men have, they do not know
how. Only the foot that wears the shoe knows just where it pinches, and
feels keenly the need of alteration.
Why must a woman be unable to free herself from an unfaithful husband if
his hand is restrained from personal cruelty?
Why may a noble and loving mother have less power over the children she
bore, and toiled for, than a selfish, indifferent father, who still “has
sacred rights, because he has sacred duties” that he has despised?
Why must strong men inherit their father’s unwilled property before weak
women?
Why must a bad workman be paid higher wages than a good workwoman?
Why are all laws in regard to vice notoriously unequal?
Why have labouring men the right injuriously to determine the conditions
and opportunities of the labour of women working by their side?
It is because men are represented in Parliament and women are not.
“The House of Commons is as sensitive to the claims of the Represented
as the mercury is to the weather.” If women, oppressed by various
burdens, wish their will should reach the House, they must be given a
voice. The only method by which the needs and wishes of women can be
considered duly is by classing them once more among the “represented.”
In vain otherwise will they look to their friends in the House to help
various Bills they desire to pass, or to restrain other Bills they
desire not to pass. It is not their friends they require to affect, it
is their opponents. And their opponents can only be converted to the
woman’s cause when women become Electors. That Bills affecting the
liberties of more than half of the whole population should be left in
the hands of “private members,” that they should be left to the chance
of a private members’ ballot, that a Machinery Bill, or any other Bill
affecting the interests of the smallest class of Electors, should be
allowed to “talk out” the limited time allowed for the discussion of a
question of such magnitude, shows the peculiar and sinister aspect in
which Bills affecting the “unrepresented” can be viewed.
Archimedes of old said that he could move the world if he had but a
“place where to stand.” If women want to move their world, to affect its
destinies and their own, they too must have a place where to stand, and
the place where to stand is the Suffrage.
“I trust the suffrage will be extended on good old English principles,
and in conformity with good old English notions of representation”
(“Essay on the Constitution,” by Lord Russell).
What these were I have attempted to show.
Apart from the special measures urgently needed on behalf of women, most
public measures affect them equally with men.
A woman grocer is as much interested in Sugar Bounties and in Tea-taxes
as her male rivals.
A woman housekeeper needs as much to be protected against the imposition
of frozen home or foreign meat, at fresh English prices, as does the
burdened British farmer.
All women suffer as much in War, and gain as much by Peace as men do.
Noxious trades, impure air, bad drainage, poison women as they do men.
Women have as much interest in the character and wisdom of the members
of the house as men have, because they also suffer from the consequences
of their unwise actions. How, therefore, can anyone say—these things do
not concern women?
It would be better for men too, if women were represented. They would
then understand the meaning of Justice, and enjoy the return blessings
of fair-play. They would discover that in the very difference of women
lies one great argument for their being consulted.
If public-spirited women continue to be denied the power of offering
their judgment in the consensus of public opinion on political matters,
the nation will be the poorer. It will ere long recognise this. But it
does not yet.
How can any Assembly be said to be “Representative of the People,” when
the best half of the People are not represented there; the best half in
numbers, through the working out of the modern doctrine of the Survival
of the Fittest; the best half by Statistics, as there are five times as
many male criminals as female; the best half, by the position in which
God placed woman at the Creation, at the Fall, and the Redemption. If it
starts under false pretences how can it do the best possible to itself?
There is a strange suggestive duality even in our physical frame. We
have two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet, many other dualities, and
two lobes of the brain to control them. If by any cause one lobe of the
brain is injured, it is the _other side_ of the body that becomes
paralysed, but the whole body suffers with its members. If men persist
in using only one eye, they not only see things out of focus, but
restrict their range of vision. They can only see things on the near
side of them. A Government that only uses the masculine eye, and sees
but the masculine side of things, is at best but a _one-eyed_
Government. The builder that only toils with one hand impoverishes
himself, and makes meaner the design of the great Architect. The
traveller that through some brain-sick fancy imagines one of his feet to
be decrepit, can get along but by hops and jerks, or by using crutches
made of dead wood, instead of living limbs that make motion graceful,
equal, and rapid. Yet thus men do, wondering, meanwhile, that the “times
are out of joint.”
Let them apply reason to their time-worn aphorisms, and the scales of
justice to their out-worn Customs. Let them look at Humanity as it is,
and as it ought to be.
Two comparisons will help them in the review, their comparison with
their ancestors in this respect, and their comparison with “the perfect
man in Christ Jesus,” and his “perfect Law of Liberty.”
For Revelation has enriched our education. Through much misconstruction
and misconception the vision of Creation has been coloured by the
prejudice of men.
God made man in His own image, male and female; man has made him
altogether male. The Creator said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
His creature asserts, “It is best for us to be alone.” But it never has
been good; it is not good now. Only in following out the lines of God’s
conception can _man_ (_homo_) remain in the image of God. Early names
were all connotative, recording some special quality or association, and
the early name of Adam was “Dust,” and the meaning of Eve is “Life.” The
Titanic and Earth-born Physical force of which Adam was made the
representative, must be united to that which _lives and brings Life_, to
make one perfect being. Only through the spiritual and practical union
of Man with Woman can society be regenerated. When Woman ate of the Tree
of the knowledge of Good and Evil, she learned more clearly to
distinguish the good from the evil and to choose that good. Therefore,
God chose the Woman as His fellow-worker in the scheme of Redemption. As
part of the curse of Satan it is part of the primeval blessing of
Humanity, that “I will put enmity between thee and the Woman.” The hands
that restrict the Woman’s power, and limit her opportunity of fulfilling
her mission, are fighting against God’s Will.
The words of God, “Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and he shall
rule over thee,” is a prophecy of man’s wrong and not a statute of man’s
right. To understand this we have only to collate the passage with that
other in which God speaks to Cain before he slew his brother—“If thou
doest well shalt thou not be accepted, and if thou doest not well sin
lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt
rule over him.”
The result of the first “physical force argument” was the death of the
“righteous Abel.” The result of the same argument, through centuries of
human existence, has been the death-in-life of the Woman whom God
opposed to Satan. And the paralysis of the half has affected the whole
body Social and Politic.
The Divine and Human are united through the Woman.
It is only by the representative Woman that Christ becomes the “Son of
Man.” i
Christ, as His Father did, took women to be His friends and
fellow-workers. Women never forsook Him. Woman watched by His cradle and
spread the “glad tidings” ere yet He had opened His lips. Fearless women
stood by His Cross and saw the last of His life; faithful women went to
the Tomb and learned first of His Resurrection.
Through the ages, the contest between Satan and the Woman and between
the Seed of Satan and the Seed of the Woman, has been made unduly hard
both for Man and Woman, because of the Woman being bound both hand and
foot. “The Dragon was wroth with the Woman and went to make war with the
Remnant of her Seed which keep the Commandments of God, and have the
Testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev. xii. 17).
Let her have Freedom and Fair Play. Let her show what, God helping her,
she can do, when men cease hindering her in the development of
_Herself_. They also will be gainers thereby. It will seem a new
Creation when the earlier-born _Freeman_ meets the later-born
_Freewoman_ and recognises at last that it was not good for him to have
been so long alone. For any Moral Regeneration, or for any Political
Stability, men must learn to distinguish Good from Evil, Justice from
short-sighted Selfishness, and to see, in the recognition of Woman as a
help-meet for them _in all things_, the fulfilment of God’s Will in
regard to both.
The Truth shall make you _Free_!
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_APPENDIX_.
[i.—“Eldest daughters,” page 16.] This custom was not clear among the
Normans. In one well-known case at least, the younger sisters were made
Abbesses or otherwise disposed of, and the eldest made by the Norman law
sole heir. Mabile, eldest daughter of Robert Fitzhaymo, was heir of all
his lands, and King Henry I. wished to marry her to his illegitimate son
Robert. This she long withstood, giving as her reason that she would not
have a man for her husband that had not two names. When the King
remedied that by calling his son Fitz Roy, she said, “That is a fair
name as long as he shall live, but what of his son and his descendants?”
The King then offered to make him Earl of Gloucester. “Sir,” quoth the
maiden, “then I like this well; on these terms I consent that all my
lands shall be his” (Robert of Gloucester’s “Brut,” and Seyers’ “Memoirs
of Bristol,” p. 353).]
[ii.—“The Countess Lucy,” page 51.] It is accepted that Anglo-Saxon
Earls had only official dignity which was not hereditary. But the
inheritance of the lands generally carried the other privileges. Lucy
was certainly made Countess of Chester by her third husband, but in some
authorities she is entitled Countess of Bolingbroke, as in her own
right. In Selby’s “Genealogist,” 1889, there is a long discussion on the
point, Who was the Countess Lucy? She is ordinarily considered the
grand-daughter of Leofric, Earl of Mercia (who died in 1057), and of his
wife the famous Lady Godiva, who survived the Conquest. Their son
Alfgar, Earl of Mercia, twice rebelled against the Confessor, and died
in 1059. Lucy’s two brothers were Edwin, Earl of Mercia, and Morcar,
Earl of Northumbria; her sister Edgiva married first, Griffith of Wales,
and second, King Harold. Edwin and Morcar were almost the only English
nobles permitted by the Conqueror to retain their lands. Lucy inherited
much from her father, probably with the Saxon privilege of the “youngest
born,” and afterwards more from her brothers. She married three Norman
husbands, with whom she held the position of a great heiress. This is
the view Dugdale takes. Others imagine, from her longevity, there must
have been two Lucys. The writer in “The Genealogist” thinks, with good
reason, that this Lucy was not the daughter of Alfgar, but the only
daughter and heiress of Thorold, the Sheriff of Lincoln.]
[iii.—“Women’s service,” page 63.] “Margeria de Cauz has the gift of the
lands of Landford, held by the Serjeanty of keeping the Falcons of our
Lord the King” (Berkshire Survey. Testa de Neville. Ed. III.)
Many other women are entered as performing military service, or paying
other duties.]
[iv.—“Women’s Guilds,” page 83.] Ed. III. imposed limitations upon men’s
labour, but leaves women the privilege to work free. “Mais l’intention
du roi et de son conseil est que femmes cestassavoir brasceresces,
pesteresces, texteresces, fileresces, et œvresces si bien de layne come
de leinge toille, et de soye, brandestesters, pyneresces de layne et
totes autres que usent œveront œveraynes manuels puissent user et œverer
franchement come els ont fait avant ces hures sanz mal empeschementou
estre restreint par ceste ordeignance.” (Rot. Parl., 37 Ed. III., c. 6.)
This is important in relation to modern legislation about women’s
freedom to labour.]
[v.—“Free Kent,” page 91.]
“Oh, noble Kent, quoth he, this praise doth thee belong,
The hard’st to be control’d, impatientest of wrong;
Who, when the Norman first with pride and horror swayed,
Threw’st off the servile yoke upon the English laid;
And with a high resolve, most bravely didst restore
That liberty so long enjoyed by thee before,
Not suffering foreign laws shall thy free customs bind.
Then only showd’st thyself of th’ ancient Saxon kind.
Of all the English Shires be thou surnam’d the Free,
And foremost ever placed, when they shall reckoned be.”
(Drayton’s “Poly-Olbion.” Ed. 1738, Song 18th, p. 33.)
In Testa de Neville, and Rotuli Hundredorum, the large proportion of
women’s names as owners of land, in Kent, proves the difference wrought
by the working of the Saxon Inheritance Laws.]
[vi.—“The learned Selden,” page 99.] Selden writes warmly in favour of
women, and quotes many authorities in support of his opinion. Besides
those that have been quoted, we may notice that he refers to Sir Thomas
More’s Utopia. “Plato allowed women to govern, nor did Aristotle
(whatever the Interpreters of his Politics foolishly say) take from them
that privilege. Vertue shuts no door against anybody, any sex, but
freely admits all. And Hermes Trismegistus, that thrice great man, in
his Poemander, according to his knowledge of Heavenly concerns (and that
sure was great in comparison of what the owl-eyed Philosophers had) he
ascribes the mystical name of MALE-FEMALE to the great Understanding, to
wit, God the Governor of the Universe” (“Janus Anglorum”).]
[vii.—“Sir Edward Coke,” page 104.] In Foss’s “Lives of the Judges of
England,” VI. 112, he says, “In the trial of Essex, he gave the first
specimen of that objurgatory and coarse style, which makes his oratory
so painfully remembered.” He also tells about his unhappy second
marriage, and its ominous opening. In the Trials for the Murder of Sir
Thomas Overburg, Foss says, “Guilty, as the parties undoubtedly were,
Coke conducted the Trial most unfairly.” In regard to the suspicions
attending the death of Prince Henry, Sir Anthony Weldon records—“It was
intended the Law should run in its proper channel, but was stopt and put
out of its course, by the folly of that great Clerke, though no wise
man, Sir Edward Coke” (“The Court and Character of King James”). Sir E.
Conway writes in 1624—“Sir Edward Coke would die, if he could not help
to ruin a great man once in seven years.” “Butler notices that Coke had
not studied the Feudal Law” (“Dict. Nat. Biog.”). This may account for
his ignorance of the powers of women. “The Lord Coke in his Preface to
Littleton, thinks Littleton’s Tenures were first printed in 24 Hen.
VIII; my Lord was _mistaken_” (J. Anstiss Nicholl’s “Illustrations of
Literature”).
In 1620 Coke was intrusted with the drawing up of the Charge against
Bacon. Macaulay says, “For the first time in his life, he behaved like a
gentleman.” He who drew up the famous “Petition of Rights” for men, has
by his careless or premeditated words drawn up also the plea of
disfranchisement for women.]
[viii.—“Judge or Jury,” page 106.] There are numerous instances in old
records of women acting as Judges or Jury, at least in women’s cases.
“On 1st February, 1435, Parochia Edlyngeham, Margareta Lyndseay contra
Johannem de Longcaster, Johannem Somerson, Johannem Symson, Diflamata
quod fuit incantatrix ... negavit et purgavit se cum Agnete Wright,
Christiana Ansom, Alicia Faghar, Emmota Letster, Alicia Newton, et
restituta est ad famen, et Johannes Longcaster, Johannes Somerson,
Johannes Symson, moniti sunt sub pœna excommunicationis quod de cetero
talia non prædicent de ipsa.”
On 3rd October, 1443, “Beatrix Atkynson and Margareta Donyll habent ad
purgandum se cum 6th manu mulierum honestarum vicinarum suarum”
(“Depositions from the Court of Durham, Surtees Society,” p. 28, 29).
See also “Liber Albus.”]
[ix.—“Physical Force Argument,” page 163.] “The Lord Marquis of
Hamilton’s Mother commands a Regiment, and leade them into Edenboroughe
with a case of pistols at her saddle, and a case at her side. Our ladys
are not more skilfull in curlinge and poudringe then the Scotchwomen in
charging and discharging their pistols.” (Letter from Sir Henry Herbert,
Edinburgh, June, 1639. “Letters of the Herbert Family.”) The Women
Volunteer Movement of to-day shews that the spirit of courage and
patriotism is not yet extinct.
In Somerset, “One of the ferdell-holders (_i.e._, holder of a quarter of
a virgate of land) found all the Blacksmith’s work for the Lord’s horses
and ploughs, and at the time of the compilation of the Custumal of
Bleadon in the 13th Century,” this RENT for her land was paid by the
widow Alicia as Common Smith of the Vill or Manor. (“Papers on the
Custumal of Bleadon, as illustrative of the History and Antiquities of
Wilts,” 1857, p. 193.)]
[x.—“=Women and the Universities=,” page 155.]—The Universities of this
country have for some time recognised in a gracious, but far-off way,
the industrial and educational needs of outsiders. The University Local
Examinations, the University Extension Lectures, etc., instituted
through consideration of the intellectual advance of the people, have
always been open to women as well as to men. But the relations of women
to Universities, where they suffer, or have suffered disabilities on the
ground of their sex alone, are anomalous.
The younger Universities are generally more liberal to women than the
older ones. Yet there is no universal rule, based upon observable
conditions. The general uncertainty makes the position of things as they
are, worth noting. Taking the Universities, not in the chronological
order of their foundation, but in the order of their opening to women,
the oldest is the London University. It may be considered as a
foundation either old or young. In 1548, Sir Thomas Gresham founded in
London, chairs for Divinity, Music, Astronomy, Geometry, Law, Physic and
Rhetoric, a liberal course for his days. In Stow’s “Annals,” 1615, there
is a notice of “the three famous Universities of _Oxford, Cambridge and
London_.” I do not now go into its claims to the title at that period.
On 19th August, 1835, the Duke of Somerset and others petitioned for a
Charter for London University, and in November of that year the words
were added to their claim—“It should always be kept in mind that what is
sought on the present occasion is an equality in all respects with the
ancient Universities, freed from those exclusions and religious
distinctions which abridge the usefulness of Cambridge and Oxford.”
Their demand was granted, and London University refounded, but it was
only men who were “freed from those exclusions.” Its first Charter was
formally renewed in the beginning of the present reign, and a
supplementary Charter in 1850 permitted it to affiliate certain
Colleges, but later on, its duty became limited to _Examination_. The
actual Charter by which it is now governed is that of January 6th, 1863.
In 1807 another Charter conferred upon the University the power of
instituting special examinations for women. In the same year the Reform
Act gave the graduates the right to send one Representative member to
Parliament. The Examinations for Women did not thrive. It was found they
did not want a system devised exclusively for their use. After much
discussion, the Senate and Convocation agreed to accept from the Crown
in 1878 a supplemental Charter, making every Degree, Honour, and Prize
awarded by the University, accessible to both sexes on perfectly equal
terms. The University of London was thus the first Academic body in the
United Kingdom to admit women as Candidates for Degrees. This supplement
decrees that “5. All the powers and provisions relating to the granting
of Degrees and Certificates of Proficiency contained in our said recited
Letters Patent of the 6th day of January in the 26th of our reign shall
henceforward be read and construed as applying to women as well as to
men, and that, except as hereinafter mentioned, all the parts of the
same Letters Patent shall be read and construed as if the extended
powers hereby conferred were contained in the same Letters Patent.”
“6. And further, know ye that we do in like manner will and ordain that
notwithstanding anything in our said Letters Patent of the sixth day of
January in the twenty-sixth year of our reign to the contrary, no Female
Graduate of the said University shall be a member of the Convocation of
the said University unless and until such Convocation shall have passed
a resolution that Female Graduates be admitted to Convocation.” Later,
Convocation did pass that resolution. Women are now admitted to their
general Council. The recording of their vote for their member of
Parliament depends on other decisions. “The Visitor,” is a woman, our
Queen. Therefore women cannot complain much of London University. There,
they have had a fair field and no favour. The records of the results can
be followed in the University Calendars. Women have attained a very good
position, and many honours in proportion to the relative number of their
candidates.
As London University grants degrees to all capable persons whether
educated in Academic haunts or private homes, there are no Colleges that
can be said to be “affiliated.” But there are several Colleges that
prepare students definitely for the London Examinations. Chief of these
is University College, London. There, since the opening of London
University, women have been freely admitted to all the instruction in
the Science and Arts Classes, with their prizes and honours. They
require the recommendation of the Lady Principal (Miss Morison) before
admission as students, but that can be easily attained by those really
desirous of attending the classes. Wives and daughters of Members of
Senate or former Members of Senate are admitted free, and without
recommendation in the same manner as are sons of the same gentlemen.
The medical classes are, however, still closed, and women have to be
trained in Medicine in their own Medical School in 30 Handel Street,
whence they can take London Degrees. During the past year 143 women
students attended the College, and 14 have been registered as full
medical practitioners. Admission to the legal practice of Medicine is
regulated by the General Medical Council of Great Britain and Ireland in
accordance with the powers conferred by Act of Parliament upon that
body, under whom are 20 examining boards. Women educated in this school
are eligible also to the exams. of the Society of Apothecaries, London,
and to other examinations in other University centres. The British
Medical Association is now opened to them. King’s College, Strand,
admits women, but they are kept apart. What is called “The Ladies’
Department” is at 13 Kensington Square, a thriving centre. They can
there prepare for London University Exams.
The Mason College founded in Birmingham by Sir Joshua Mason, Knt., 23rd
February, 1875, opened by Prof. Huxley, in 1880, admits men and women on
the same terms.
Aberystwyth University College of North Wales was opened in 1871, and
there were women students in the musical department in its early years.
The first woman admitted to full College Course was one who took an
Exhibition of £15 in 1884. There was no mention of sex in the Charter of
the College, and therefore she only asked admission, and was received.
The number of women students gradually increased, and after various
attempts, a Hostel was founded for their reception, and residence made
compulsory for all students not living with parents or guardians. A
rapid increase ensued in the number of women students, under the wise
care of Miss Carpenter, and they now number over 120. All prizes, the
“open” scholarships, are free to women, as well as the Associateship of
the College. In the London exams. the Aberystwyth women students have
done well. Other Welsh Colleges receive women. This year the united
Colleges of Wales have applied for a University Charter, and the
Professorships, as well as Studentships, are opened to women.
We cannot go into full details of all the Colleges that send up women
students to London University Examinations.
* * * * *
Dublin University, founded in 1591, was incorporated in 1593, and other
colleges were afterwards affiliated. In 1869, women were admitted to
Queen’s College Examinations.
The Charter of the Royal University of Ireland in 1880, decided that
“all Degrees, Honours, Exhibitions, Prizes and Scholarships in this
University are open to students of either sex.” The Royal University of
Ireland, absorbing the old Queen’s University, the offices and
emoluments of the one University merely passed on to the other, with
fuller powers and wider scope. It is now also an examining body as is
London.
At the commencement of the Royal University, many qualified women
students attained the degrees thereby thrown open to them. Since that
time 665 women have been granted B.A. degrees, 90 M.A., 22 LL.D., and 20
LL.B. The old Queen’s Colleges of Belfast, Cork, Galway and others,
prepare students for the Royal University, private students having,
however, the same privileges.
As all prizes and exhibitions are said to be open to all matriculated
students of the Colleges, some time ago Miss Lee (daughter of the Late
Archdeacon Lee of Dublin), now Principal of the Old Hall at Newnham
College, was proposed for a Fellowship. She only gained 4 votes, one
being that of Archbishop Trench; but the fact of her being proposed and
voted for at all, showed that her sex did not exclude her from
competition. The Act under which the Royal University was founded,
excludes women from Convocation, unless they were members of the Senate.
Convocation at present consists of the Senate, and of qualified male
Graduates. The Senate, however, at first appointed by the Queen,
consists of 36 Senators and one Chancellor, and except 6 Graduates,
afterwards elected by Convocation, it does not exclude women. The word
used in the Charter is invariably “person.”
* * * * *
The Royal Charter of the Victoria University is dated 20th April, 1880,
which incorporates Owen’s College, Manchester; University College,
Liverpool; and Yorkshire College, Leeds, with freedom to admit other
Colleges. It makes no distinction of sex. It says:—
“IV. The University shall have power to grant and confer all such
degrees and other distinctions as now or at any time hereafter can be
granted and conferred by any other University in our United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland, to and on all persons, male or female, who
shall have pursued a regular course of Study in a College in the
University and shall submit themselves for Examination.”
Medicine and Surgery degrees are here excepted. The supplemental Charter
of 20th March, 1893, however, ordains:—
“I. The Victoria University shall have power to grant and confer to and
on all persons, whether male or female ... Degrees and Certificates of
Proficiency in Medicine and Surgery.”
The Medical Degrees are therefore theoretically open to women. But the
characteristic of the Victoria University is, that it examines those
only who have gone through a course of study in each subject of
examination in a College of the University, and the privileges of the
University depend upon the arrangements made at the Colleges. The
Medical Schools at all three Colleges are still closed to women, and
therefore the Victoria University medical degrees are practically
dependent on extraneous teaching. If women want a medical degree “they
must study for two years, in one of the affiliated Colleges, and take
their medical classes at a recognised school such as Queen Margaret
College, Glasgow, or the Medical School for Women, Edinburgh.”
Women were admitted to some classes in Owen’s College, Manchester, in
1876. All the Science and Arts classes are now open, but Biology, and
some of the Laboratories are closed. In the junior classes men and women
are taught separately, though the examinations are the same. The
Department for Women of Owen’s College, Manchester, is at 223 Brunswick
Street.
At the two younger colleges of Liverpool and Leeds; all Classes and
Laboratories are open to women, except in the Medical School.
A fair proportion of women’s names appear in the Degree Lists and in the
Prize Lists. Several women are members of Convocation, and there will
soon be more. Many of them are Associates of their College. Besides full
Degrees, there are Certificates of Proficiency granted by this
University to women. All _University_ prizes are open to women, and the
majority of College Prizes.
* * * * *
Edinburgh University was founded in 1582 on the site of the lonely Kirk
of Field, where Darnley met his death. The present building, however,
now called the Old University, was only begun in 1739. It is to this
College alone that women are as yet admitted. The University New
Buildings, commenced in 1878, were partly opened for teaching purposes
in 1880, and completed in 1888. This has been handed over to the great
“School of Medicine,” of Edinburgh University. The McEwan Hall for
public Academic Ceremonials and for the conferring of Degrees was
completed the year before last, and some women graced its first public
function.
Edinburgh retains the honour of having been the earliest place in the
British Islands where women were admitted to the advantages of a
University education. Mrs. Crudelius in 1866 conceived the idea, and
with an ever-increasing army of sympathisers, she formed in 1867 the
“Edinburgh Association for the Higher Education of Women,” afterwards
entitled the “Edinburgh Association for the University Education of
Women.” This did good work. In the session 1867-8 a class was opened in
a separate hall, in which Professor Masson delivered his University
Lectures on English Literature, 265 women enrolling themselves as
students. Encouraged by their success, in November, 1868, a second
winter session, the Association arranged for three classes in three
departments, “the Literary,” represented by Professor Masson’s on
English Literature, in which 129 women appeared; “the Scientific,”
represented by Professor Tait’s class of Experimental Physics, in which
141 women entered; and “the Philosophical,” represented by Professor
Fraser’s Lectures on Logic and Psychology, the first time such a course
had been offered to women, and 65 women took advantage of it. The
quality of the work done both in Examinations and Essays, showed that
Intellect was of no Sex. The Association worked on patiently through the
years, more and more gaining the sympathy and co-operation of the
University, which soon granted Certificates for proficiency in any three
subjects, proved in examinations of the M.A. Standard, the first of
which was gained in 1873. Separate Honours Examinations were also
instituted.
Later, a higher Certificate, called a Diploma, was offered to those who
had passed in seven subjects of M.A. Standard, one at least in Honours.
The first was gained in 1875, before any other Scottish University had
considered the needs of women, and before London or Dublin had opened
their doors. The disturbances made against the attempts by women to gain
admission to the medical school, had made it more difficult for the
Association to gain what it desired, the opening of the Art Classes and
Degrees to women. But it lived to make warm friends among members of the
University Senate who were at first its foes. The Scottish Universities
Bill coming into force the year before last, empowered the several
Scotch Universities to open their doors to women in their own time and
in their own way. Women students were to matriculate under the same
conditions as men.
Ordinance 18. IX.
“1. It shall be in the power of the University Court of each University
to admit women to graduation in such Faculty or Faculties as the said
court may think fit.
“2. It shall be competent to the University Court of each University to
make provision within the University for the instruction of women in any
of the subjects taught by the University either by admitting them to the
ordinary classes, or by instituting separate classes for their
instruction. Such classes shall be conducted by the Professors in the
several subjects, or by Lecturers specially appointed for the purpose by
the University Court, provided always that the Court shall not institute
classes where men and women shall be taught together, except after
consultation with the Senatus, and provided also that no Professor whose
commission is dated before the approval of this ordinance by Her Majesty
in council shall be required, without his consent, to conduct classes to
which women are admitted.
“3. The conditions for graduation within any Faculty in which women are
admitted to graduation shall be the same for women as for men, with the
exceptions,” that there are advantages offered at present to women which
may be classified under the name of Retrospective Recognition. “So long
as provision is not made for the education of women in any University,
qualifications gained at other recognised centres will be accepted as
preparing for examinations and degrees.”
“4. So long as provision is not made for the education of women in
Medicine, the University is empowered to admit to graduation women
trained at other home or foreign Universities. So soon as, within any of
the said Faculties in any University, provision is made for the
instruction of women in all subjects qualifying for graduation, ... the
conditions for the graduation of women within such Faculty shall be the
same as the conditions for the graduation of men.
“5. Women who had begun their studies in recognised University classes
before this date to be admitted to graduation, as if they had been
members of the University and, if they had passed in the specified seven
subjects qualifying for M.A., to receive that degree without further
examination.”
The result of this concession is that eight ladies received the degree
of M.A. of Edinburgh University, and several more will be qualified
through the next Examination. Those who take their Degree will be
admitted to the General Council. Therefore, Edinburgh stands at the head
of the Scotch Universities in the order of time of the admission of
women. She will have several women graduates before any other University
can present one. That, of course, was only made possible by her efforts
commencing earlier, and her work being more systematic. One hundred and
thirty-four women in all have taken at least three of the subjects
towards their Degree Examination. Edinburgh has simply admitted women to
mixed Classes in the Old University, with all privileges in Arts. About
one hundred and twenty women have matriculated this session. A Hall of
Residence is now being built for women, to be called the Masson Hall, in
commemoration of the life-long devotion of Professor David Masson to the
cause of Women.
The New University Building, the School of Medicine, is still closed.
But women have now fuller opportunities granted them of studying in the
“Medical College for Women,” 30 Chambers Street, Edinburgh, with liberty
of clinical instruction in the Royal Infirmary. This College was founded
by the Scottish Association for the Medical Education of Women, the
arrangements for teaching and fees being the same as those of the School
of Medicine, the Teachers and Lecturers being duly qualified Lecturers
of the School of Medicine, and the classes recognised as the Extra-Mural
School. Since degrees can be taken in London, Victoria, and elsewhere,
the prime difficulties in the medical education of women are practically
overcome. Thirty-four women at present attend these classes.
* * * * *
St. Andrews University was founded in 1411; and besides its own
colleges, it has affiliated to it, “University College,” Dundee. This
famous University has long been friendly to women. In 1876, it added to
the ordinary local Certificates a new and higher “Certificate for women”
in three subjects, of the same standard as the M.A. Degrees; and later
on an examination in seven subjects secured a Diploma with the Title
L.A., and the privilege of being allowed to wear the University Badges.
As residence at the University was not necessary, and as there was no
limiting clause as to age, though the questions were hard, and the
standard high, these examinations became very popular. In 1892, there
were 700 candidates at 36 centres, among which were Berlin, Birmingham,
Constantinople, Cork, Dresden, Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Marseilles,
Pietermaritzburg, Seville, Truro, Uitenhage, and Wolfenbüttel. They have
thus spread widely over the continent of Europe, and invitations have
been sent to form centres in America, which are now under consideration.
This Diploma is recognised as equivalent to the “Brèvet Superieur” for
admission to the Sorbonne Examinations in Paris.
Some of the St. Andrews Professors had given lectures to women in the
neighbouring town of Dundee as well as in St. Andrews. So the soil was
prepared for the passing of the Scottish Universities Bill. St. Andrews
nobly went as far as it could, in fulfilling these, and therefore in the
University Calendar for the session appears, “The University Court of
the University of St. Andrews, in consultation with the Senatus
Academicus, has resolved to open _all_ its classes in Arts, Science,
Theology and Medicine to women students. Women may henceforward
matriculate as Students of the University and be admitted to any class
or classes they may select, with a view to graduation in Arts, Science,
Theology or Medicine. In the year 1893 a sum of _£_30,000 will become
available for Bursaries or Scholarships at the University, one half of
which is reserved for women students exclusively; those who intend to
enter the Medical Profession having a prior claim to these Bursaries,
though they are tenable while Arts and Science Classes are being
attended. A Hall of Residence for women students will be instituted,
where they can live together under a head.” Mrs. Morrison Duncan of
Naughton’s liberality has made it possible to offer ten Bursaries to
women at the very outset of their career. Nineteen women matriculated in
October. The LL.A. examinations will go on all the same for those who
cannot attend the University.
* * * * *
Glasgow University was founded in 1450, by a Bull from Pope Nicholas V.
After the Reformation, in 1577, James VI. gave it a new Charter. Glasgow
University has some special claims to notice in the way that it has
followed the lines of the Scottish Universities Acts of last year.
In 1876 a movement for the University Education of Women was initiated,
and the Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women founded.
Shortly afterwards a liberal friend gave ground and funds to build a
College for women, to be called the Queen Margaret College. There the
University Professors and Assistants have lectured, good work has been
done and examinations instituted. But when the ordinances of the
Scottish Universities Acts came into force in February, 1892, the
existence of Queen Margaret College endowment enabled the Glasgow
Senatus to proceed on different lines from the other Universities. The
Executive Council of Queen Margaret’s College arranged to hand over to
the University the College Buildings, grounds and endowment, on
condition that they should be used for University Classes for Women
exclusively. Their College therefore becomes University Property and
Part of the University, and the old Executive Council is about to
dissolve. It is now governed by the University Court and Senate, who
make all the appointments and arrangements for classes; the classes
qualify for the University Degrees, in the same way as the classes at
Gilmore Hill, the Men’s University Buildings.
Students must matriculate as the men do; they have seats in the College
Chapel, use of the Libraries and Museums; the University prizes are open
to them, and graduates will be admitted to Convocation. There is a full
curriculum kept up in Arts and Medicine, and the girls who go up for
preliminary Arts, Science and Medicine Examinations and Degree
Examinations are examined along with the men, under the same conditions.
There is a good attendance at the classes, 86 having matriculated in
Arts, and 45 in Medicine, 131 in all compared with 1935 men students.
The votes of the undergraduate girls have been solicited already in the
election of the Lord Rector.
If the apparatus in the Queen Margaret College is not sufficient to
illustrate the Science and Medical Classes, the supply is supplemented
from the other building, or the girls may go there for demonstrations,
at different hours from the men. There are several women going up not
only for Preliminary exams. in Arts, but for Professional exams. in
Medicine.
The relation between the two Colleges has been sometimes called
Affiliation. This is incorrect. Affiliation supposes a separate
governing body and other details of separate existence. At one time
Affiliation was suggested, but the Rulers of Queen Margaret College
preferred that it should be taken over and become a part of the
University. The new arrangement works very well, and in a large
University like Glasgow the women prefer it to mixed classes.
The Medical Department of the College is the only active School of
Medicine for women belonging to a University in this Country. As
applications are constantly being received, the number of its students
is likely to increase rapidly. After Matriculation, women are admitted
to the Hunterian Museum, have permission for the usual attendance in the
Wards and on the clinical Lectures at the Royal Infirmary. The classes
in Medicine being University classes, certificates of attendance thereon
may be used by those who propose to become Candidates for the degrees of
the other Scottish Universities, for those of the London University,
Victoria University, and the Royal University of Ireland, as well as for
the Qualification of the Scottish Corporations, the Colleges of
Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Faculty of Physicians and
Surgeons of Glasgow (Conjoint).
Glasgow University, like that of Edinburgh, for the time being, has made
those differences in favour of women that we call Retrospective
Recognition, of those who had attended classes in Queen Margaret
College, though there are none completely ready to take full advantage
of it. As soon as arrangements are fully made for their education, the
conditions for women will be the same as for men.
* * * * *
The University of Aberdeen was founded in 1494. Women’s claims on its
attention have not been so persistent as they have been in the Southern
Universities. But it rose to the new conditions of the Scottish
Universities Acts.
Ordinance No. 18 of the Universities Commission having passed, the
University Court of Aberdeen, on the recommendation of the Senatus,
resolved to admit women to _Graduation_ in _all_ Faculties. As to their
_instruction_, women are, within the University, on the same footing as
men, in the Faculties of Arts and Divinity, Science, and in the Faculty
of Law, except _so far_ as the class of Medical Jurisprudence is
concerned, which is classified with the other Medical classes proper, in
which the University has meantime considered it not advisable to provide
the necessary instruction.
Eleven women have matriculated this year and have commenced with the
Class of Literature. In answer to a question the Secretary of the
Senatus replied, “When we have any women Graduates, questions of their
privileges will have to be considered. But I can see no ground on which
membership in our General Council can be denied to them, except there be
any legal difficulty connected with the right of every member of Council
to vote for the M.P. for Glasgow and Aberdeen.”
* * * * *
Durham University was founded in 1832-33 by the Dean and Chapter of
Durham; the Newcastle-on-Tyne College of Medicine was made an integral
part of the University in 1870, the Newcastle College of Physical
Science in 1871. There is no notice of Women in the Calendar. Women have
from the beginning been admitted to the classes of the College of
Physical Science in Newcastle, but not to the Medical College in
Newcastle nor to the Durham College itself. A strong petition was drawn
up in 1881 to admit women to _full_ privileges in Durham, but
Convocation refused to allow women matriculation unless a Hostel were
established, that is, they would have no “unattached” women students. It
is always difficult to find funds for the needs of women, and the
“Hostel” was not at once forthcoming. Convocation assented to the
following:—
“1. That female students who shall have fulfilled the requirements of
the University regarding residence and standing shall be admitted to the
Public Examinations and have first degree in Arts of the University.”
Then the University discovered, or thought it did, that by their Charter
they could not admit women to full Degrees, and so the matter dropped.
In Newcastle, however, women have gone on attending the classes. They
can go in for the same Examinations as men, and gain the Class Prizes,
but they are excluded from degrees. Titles such as A.S.C., “Associate of
Science”; C.E., “Civil Engineer”; L.S., “Licentiate in Surgery,” they
may obtain. Among the Students working for A.S.C., women are about 1 to
30. Among the ordinary matriculated students, the average of the sexes
are about equal. Among non-matriculated students who attend such classes
as Literature, Fine Art, etc., the women are about 30 to 1.
* * * * *
When we come to the older Universities, it seems but just to consider
the women-benefactors as being related somehow to the Colleges; and
through them to the University itself.
The oldest College at Cambridge, St. Peter’s, was founded in 1284. The
second, Clare College, was founded in 1326 by the Lady Elizabeth, sister
and co-heir of Gilbert, Earl of Clare. Three scholarships in this
college were founded by Mrs. Tyldesley de Bosset.
Pembroke College or Valence-Mary, 1347, was founded by Mary de St. Paul,
widow of _Aymer_ de Valence, Earl Pembroke.
Corpus Christi, 1352, was founded by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and
the Blessed Virgin Mary. These old Guilds had “sustren” as well as
“brethren” in their fraternity, and consequently women had something to
do with that foundation, however little it may generally be recognised.
Queen’s College was founded 1448, by Queen Margaret of Anjou, and
refounded by Elizabeth Widville, Queen of Ed. IV.
St. Catherine’s was founded 1473, by Dr. Robert Wodelarke, but large
benefactions from Mrs. Mary Ramsden endowed 14 scholarships. Other
benefactors were women.
Christ’s College, 1505, was refounded by Lady Margaret, Countess of
Richmond and Derby (mother of Henry VII.), and 2 scholarships were given
by Lady Drury.
St. John’s, 1511, was also founded by Lady Margaret (mother of Henry
VII.) and a fellowship was given by Lady Jane Rokeby.
Magdalen holds benefactions from the Countess of Warwick, Lady Anne
Wray, Mrs. Margaret Dongworth, and others.
To Trinity, 1546, Queen Mary added 20 scholarships. Mrs. Mednyanszky is
an important benefactor.
Sidney Sussex was founded 1594 by Lady Frances Sidney, Dowager Duchess
of Sussex.
These are some of the gifts women have given to Cambridge. It proves
that the sex valued and honoured learning.
Hitchin Temporary College was opened for women by the Cambridge
Association for the Education of Women, in Oct., 1869, and a rapid
success enabled the friends of women to incorporate Girton College,
1872, to which the students removed in 1873, and Newnham was founded in
Oct., 1875.
At first there was no connection with the University at all. Then women
were allowed to have examination papers, and to answer the questions,
but no information was given as to the Class of the Student except
privately. No official record was kept of these informal examinations.
But in 1882 by a grace of the Senate the examinations were thrown open
to women students of Girton and Newnham who had passed certain
preliminary exams, and had resided the proper number of terms, had paid
the customary fees, and had been recommended by the authorities of their
College. Class Lists have ever since been published in which the exact
place of the women is mentioned with regard to the men. Some women, such
as Miss Ramsay and Miss Fawcett, would have held the first place, had
they been allowed to take it. No Prizes or Degrees are granted them by
the University. But what is called a Degree Certificate is conferred
upon any student whose proficiency has been certified by the standard of
examinations qualifying for B.A., which entitles the holder to all the
rights and privileges of certificated students. These are signed by the
Vice Chancellor. There is no probability at present of their receiving
degrees. The objection is that this would make them eligible as members
of senate. As there is no matriculation, women cannot even become
under-graduates in Cambridge.
The Cambridge University Calendar now gives the conditions of the
admission of women to University Examinations.
* * * * *
Oxford, oldest in foundation, is youngest in regard to granting
privileges to women.
University College, Oxford, is said to have been founded in 872 by
Alfred. In it a Civil Law Fellowship was founded by Mary Anne,
Viscountess Sidmouth.
Balliol College was founded by John Balliol and Devorgilla, his wife,
1263-8. Eight scholarships were founded by Hannah Brackenbury, in Law,
History, and Natural Science.
In Exeter College, founded 1314, 2 scholarships were given by Miss
Hasker.
Queen’s College was founded 1340, by Hubert de Eglesfield, Chaplain to
Philippa, Queen of Edward III.
In Brasenose, founded 1509, Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Somerset, founded
22 scholarships, and Misses Colquilt, 3 exhibitions.
Christ Church holds 2 scholarships from Mrs. Dixon, and Miss Slade’s
exhibition.
Jesus College was founded in 1571, by Queen Elizabeth. Wadham in 1612,
by Nicholas Wadham of Merifield and Dorothy, his wife.
To Pembroke College, founded 1624, by King James I., his Queen, Anne,
attached a Canonry of Gloucester to the Mastership.
To Worcester, founded 1714, Mrs. Sarah Eaton was a benefactor.
It may be that the result of there being fewer female benefactors in
Oxford than in Cambridge may have affected the comparative want of
gratitude to women in this city. Whatever be the cause, the oldest
University is the hardest to move.
Oxford Lectures for the benefit of women were started as early as 1865,
but not in connection with the University. In 1873, another scheme was
set on foot by a Committee of Ladies. But the formation of the
“Association for the Education of Women,” such as at present exists, was
first suggested by Professor Rolleston, June, 1878.
The first series of Lectures commenced in October, 1879. In 1880 one
College Lecture was attended. At the present time students are admitted
under certain regulations to lectures in almost every College in Oxford.
The Lectures are of three kinds. Those of the University generally are
open without fee, those in the different colleges for men, for which
fees are paid, and those provided by the Association, for which fees are
paid. Until 1884, the only Oxford Examinations open to Students of the
Association were those provided for women by the Delegates of Local
Examinations. In that year, in answer to a petition put forward by the
Association and numerously signed by resident M.A.’s, a Statute was
passed by Convocation opening to women, Honour Moderations, and the
Final Honour Schools of Mathematics, Science, and Modern History. In
1888, another Statute admitted women to the Final School of Literæ
Humaniores, and in 1890, to the Honour Law School and the Final
Examination for Mus. Bac. All examinations for B.A. in Honours are now
opened to women, except Theology and Indian languages, for which no
application has been made.
The University, like that of Cambridge, does not admit women to
Matriculation, or Graduation, but it does not impose on them all the
restrictions of men.
The University Examinations for women still provide for all Pass
Subjects and for the Honour Subjects of English and Modern Languages, in
which there are no University Examinations for men.
Three Halls have been founded, Lady Margaret Hall, 1879 (Church of
England with liberty for other denominations); Somerville Hall, 1879
(non-denominational), and St. Hugh’s, 1886 (Church of England). There
are also unattached students residing in Oxford under certain
regulations. From 1879 to 1892 the number of students has been in all
539. But though women are admitted to the Oxford University Exams.,
Honours and Pass, and are ranked in Classes, they have no reward or
recognition by the University, and no notice of women appears in the
University Calendar.
Therefore in a country in which Free Trade principles have been forced
on the British farmer for the benefit of other classes of the community,
however prejudicial to his own, protection still reigns in these old
Universities, that illogically “protect” the stronger against the weaker
sex, who are thus forced to prove their capability in face of many
difficulties and overwhelming odds.
Women are admitted to the following privileges:—
1878. London:
Subordinate Colleges give Education. Examination. Degrees.
Convocation.
1880. Royal University of Ireland:
Subordinate Colleges give Education. Examination. Degrees.
Convocation.
1880. Victoria Combined Colleges:
Matriculation. Education (Partial). Examination. Degrees.
Convocation.
1892. Edinburgh:
Matriculation. Education (Partial). Examination. Degrees. General
Council.
1892. St. Andrews:
Matriculation. Education. Examination. Degrees. General Council.
1892. Glasgow:
Matriculation. Education Separate. Examination. Degrees. General
Council.
1892. Aberdeen:
Matriculation. Education (Partial). Examination. Degrees. General
Council.
Durham. . . . .Education (Partial). Examination. Titles.
Cambridge. . .Education (Partial). Examination. Certificates.
Oxford. . . . . .Education (Partial). Examination. Certificates.
FINIS.
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=19. The New York State Reformatory at Elmira.= —— ALEXANDER WINTER.
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=22. Our Destiny.= —— LAURENCE GRONLUND.
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AVELING.
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=24. Luxury.= —— Prof. EMILE DE LAVELEYE.
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life.”—_Academy._
=25. The Land and the Labourers.= —— Rev. C. W. STUBBS, M.A.
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country.”—_Manchester Guardian._
=26. The Evolution of Property.= —— PAUL LAFARGUE.
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=27. Crime and its Causes.= —— W. DOUGLAS MORRISON.
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=28. Principles of State Interference.= —— D. G. RITCHIE, M.A.
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the State.”—_Glasgow Herald._
=29. German Socialism and F. Lassalle.= —— W. H. DAWSON.
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this century it may be accepted as complete.”—_British Weekly._
=30. The Purse and the Conscience.= —— H. M. THOMPSON, B.A. (Cantab.).
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an Introductory Chapter on the English Manor, by Prof. W. J. ASHLEY,
M.A.
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=32. The English Republic.= —— W. J. LINTON. Edited by KINETON PARKES.
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=33. The Co-Operative Movement.= —— BEATRICE POTTER.
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Co-Operative Movement which has yet been produced.”—_Speaker._
=34. Neighbourhood Guilds.= —— Dr. STANTON COIT.
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question.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
=35. Modern Humanists.= —— J. M. ROBERTSON.
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purely literary criticisms bear the mark of much acumen.”—_Times._
=36. Outlooks from the New Standpoint.= —— E. BELFORT BAX.
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economics.”—_Daily Chronicle._
=37. Distributing Co-Operative Societies.= —— Dr. LUIGI PIZZAMIGLIO.
Edited by F. J. SNELL.
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=38. Collectivism and Socialism.= —— By A. NACQUET. Edited by W.
HEAFORD.
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=39. The London Programme.= —— SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B.
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=40. The Modern State.= —— PAUL LEROY BEAULIEU.
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social inquirer.”—_N. B. Economist._
=41. The Condition of Labour.= —— HENRY GEORGE.
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attention.”—_Newcastle Chronicle._
=42. The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution.= —— FELIX
ROCQUAIN. With a Preface by Professor HUXLEY.
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introduction to the study of that catastrophe.”—_Scotsman._
=43. The Student’s Marx.= —— EDWARD AVELING, D.Sc.
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Herald._
=44. A Short History of Parliament.= —— B. C. SKOTTOWE, M.A. (Oxon.).
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constitutional history.”—_Spectator._
=45. Poverty: Its Genesis and Exodus.= —— J. G. GODARD.
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Economist._
=46. The Trade Policy of Imperial Federation.= —— MAURICE H. HERVEY.
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Circular._
=47. The Dawn of Radicalism.= —— J. BOWLES DALY, LL.D.
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political instruction than any other in the world’s history.”—_Daily
Telegraph._
=48. The Destitute Alien in Great Britain.= —— ARNOLD WHITE; MONTAGUE
CRACKANTHORPE, Q.C.; W. A. M’ARTHUR, M.P.; W. H. WILKINS, &c.
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day.”—_Times._
=49. Illegitimacy and the Influence of Seasons on Conduct.= —— ALBERT
LEFFINGWELL, M.D.
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=50. Commercial Crises of the Nineteenth Century.= —— H. M. HYNDMAN.
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=51. The State and Pensions in Old Age.= —— J. A. SPENDER and ARTHUR
ACLAND, M.P.
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=52. The Fallacy of Saving.= —— JOHN M. ROBERTSON.
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system.”—_Speaker._
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=54. The Effects of Machinery on Wages.= —— Prof. J. S. NICHOLSON, D.Sc.
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=55. The Social Horizon.= —— ANON.
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=56. Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.= —— FREDERICK ENGELS.
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=57. Land Nationalisation.= —— A. R. WALLACE.
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=59. The Emancipation of Women.= —— ADELE CREPAZ.
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_Preface_.
=60. The Eight Hours’ Question.= —— JOHN M. ROBERTSON.
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=61. Drunkenness.= —— GEORGE R. WILSON, M.B.
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=63. The Agricultural Labourer.= —— T. E. KEBBEL.
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=64. Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer.= —— E. BERNSTEIN.
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=66. Theory and Policy of Labour Protection.= —— Dr. SCHÄFFLE.
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=67. History of Rochdale Pioneers.= —— G. J. HOLYOAKE.
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=70. Hours, Wages, and Production.= —— Dr. BRENTANO.
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=71. Rise of Modern Democracy.= —— CH. BORGEAUD.
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=72. Land Systems of Australasia.= —— WM. EPPS.
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=73. The Tyranny of Socialism.= —— YVES GUYOT.
Edited with Introduction by J. H. LEVY.
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