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DOI: 10.1177/036319900202700202
2002 27: 92 Journal of Family History
Becky R. Lee
Men: Men's Recollections of Childbirth in Medieval England and A Company of Women

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JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY / April 2002 Lee / A COMPANY OF WOMEN AND MEN
A COMPANY OF WOMEN AND MEN:
MENS RECOLLECTIONS OF
CHILDBIRTH IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Becky R. Lee
The events that took place in medieval English birthing chambers were witnessed
and assisted by a company of women. Although these events may have been iso-
lated, they did not exist in isolation. Rather, they interacted in complex ways with
the lives and activities of the men in the manor hall. This article examines those
interactions as they are evidenced in proof-of-age inquests, legal documents that
record the recollections of husbands, fathers, and male relatives and neighbors
regarding the events surrounding the birth of an heir to crown land. It concludes
that even though men rarely entered the birthing chamber, their dynastic interests
and social politics routinely penetrated its walls, blurring the boundary between
private and public spheres, female and male space.
On February 30, 1390, William Asshelegh and William Orum were in the hall of the
manor of Walton in Essex attending to some business with the lord of the manor, Wil-
liam de Botreaux, when his newborn heir, a son also named William, was carried into
the hall by some of the women who had attended his birth.
1
Like most medieval births,
the birth of William de Botreauxs heir was witnessed and assisted by a company of
women in the chamber, removed from the everyday activities of the manor and from
prying male eyes. The female control of the medieval birthing chamber even nowpro-
tects women prevy sekenes
2
from prying eyes. The silence in the historical record sur-
rounding childbirth, because it was primarily the concern of women, continues to
obscure our viewof the events that took place there. Nevertheless, historians are mak-
ing inroads into the silence surrounding the medieval birthing chamber by broadening
the search to consider all the kinds of texts written and unwritten that might throw
light on the subject.
3
For example, Gail McMurray Gibson has plumbed the mystery
92
Becky R. Lee is an assistant professor at York University, Toronto, Canada, cross-appointed to the Division
of Humanities and the School of Womens Studies. Her publications include the following: The Medieval
Hysteric and Psychedelic Psychologist: A Revaluation of the Mysticism of Margery Kempe in the Light of
the Transpersonal Psychology of Stanislav Grof (Studia Mystica, forthcoming), The Purification of
Women after Childbirth: A Windowonto Mediaeval Perceptions of Women (Florilegium, 1995-1996), and
The Treatment of Women in the Historiography of Late Medieval Popular Religion (Method and Theory
in the Study of Religion, 1996). Her current research projects include an investigation of medieval attitudes
toward the mothers of illegitimate children and a book-length study of churching in medieval England.
Journal of Family History, Vol. 27 No. 2, April 2002 92-100
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plays of early English drama for glimpses into the ceremonies of childbirth.
4
Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinsky has examined the iconography of caesarian birth. And Jacque-
line Made Musacchio has studied the decorative art created to commemorate child-
birth in Renaissance Italy.
5
Accompanying this examination of newsources has been a reexamination of famil-
iar documentary evidence. The shift in emphasis, which has occurred over the past two
decades, from recovering womens history to gender analysis, with its focus on the
interrelationships between and among the various factors that shape identity and
power relations, has generated a new question, or a new perspective, from which to
approach those familiar sources for insight into medieval childbirth.
6
Although not
intended to document the ordinary activities of womens lives such as childbirth, many
medieval documentary sources allow glimpses into the birthing chamber because the
events that took place there, although isolated, did not exist in isolation but interacted
in complex ways with the lives and activities of the men in the hall.
7
When viewed from
this perspective, records documenting mens lives and interests become potential ave-
nues into the female world of the birthing chamber. For example, Peter Biller and
Monica Green have reexamined medical treatises, legal statutes and ordinances, and
court records to discover much more expanded roles for priests and medical men in
medieval birthing chambers than was previously assumed. Similarly, Fiona Harris
Stoertzs reexamination of saints lives, miracle stories, and medical collections has
challenged our assumptions about medieval attitudes toward the women giving birth.
8
Another documentary source that allows glimpses into medieval English birthing
chambers but has been overlooked by historians is proof-of-age inquests. These legal
documents are even more amenable to this sort of reexamination, for they are a direct
product of the interaction between the events in the birthing chamber and the activities
of the men in the hall.
9
Proof-of-age inquests are the legal proceedings conducted to ascertain if a feudal
heirthat is, an heir to land held in knight-service to the crownwas of age and could
therefore take control of her or his estate. If a feudal heir was underage, she or he
became a ward of the lord, the tenant-in-chief, who not only administered the wards
lands until she or he came of age but also assumed responsibility for her or his educa-
tion and marriage.
10
These legal records comprise mens recollections of their activi-
ties at the time of the heirs birth, solicited and recorded in support of patrilineal con-
trol over the family estate. As such, they provide an unprecedented view of the
interaction between the company of women in the birthing chamber and the society of
men in the hall. The glimpse of medieval childbirth these mens recollections provide
suggests that even though men rarely entered the birthing chamber, they were not
excluded from the events that took place there.
In England, there was no official system for recording births until 1538.
11
Instead,
living memory was called on to prove the age of heirs to property.
12
At the end of the
twelfth century, Glanvill prescribed a jury of male neighbors to determine the age of
such heirs.
13
By the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), it had become customary for those
juries to include the testimony of the jurors along with their verdict in the records of
their proceedings. These proceedings were both entered on the plea rolls of the Kings
Bench and returned into the Chancery.
14
At proof-of-age inquests, only men were permitted to testify, normally neighbors
from the county of the heirs birth, albeit the testimony of women such as midwives
was admitted secondhand.
15
Although their testimony pertains to the births of feudal
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heirs, a very select group within the population, jurors were not limited to a particular
social stratum. They came fromall walks of life, chosen for their knowledge of the age
of the heir in question rather than their social standing. The testimony of the jurors
includes a wide assortment of memories comprising significant events that served to
fix the date of an heirs birth in the jurors minds. Some of the events recalled took
place around the time of the heirs birth, such as accidents, historic events, marriages,
and appointments to office. Others are events connected with the heirs birth itself. It is
those recollections that are of particular interest here.
16
These mens recollections confirm that men were not normally admitted to the
birthing chamber during labor and delivery.
17
For example, Simon de Seyles of
Spaldyngton recounts that on the day of the birth of John, son and heir of John de York
in 1401, he dared not enter the house for the cries of the said Johns mother in child
birth.
18
Evidence in the proofs-of-age also confirms that husbands were not normally
present in the birthing chamber.
19
There is some evidence of expectant fathers waiting
out the labor with male friends and acquaintances. For example, Thomas Dodyngton,
John Holbech, John Clerc, John Assheley, and Geoffrey Sutton all recall dining in
London with Guy de Briene in a house close to that in which Elizabeth [his daughter]
was born in 1381.
20
Similarly, Henry Seint Jon recounts having been at lunch with
Peter de Bratton of Somerset when a servant came and announced the birth of his son
Thomas in 1378.
21
There is more evidence to suggest that expectant fathers carried on
with business as usual while their wives were in labor. William de Botreaux, men-
tioned above, was in the hall conducting business with two neighbors when his heir
was born.
22
John Pope recalls walking with John atte Hull . . . in a field called
Weryscroftto look at some oxen which he was buying when a man came to announce
the birth of his son Nicholas in 1368.
23
Jahn Yaweyn, Nicholas Boughton, Richard
Foxeley, and John Wheolar remember being in the company of John de Awre at
Gloucestre before the justices of assize when the news of the birth [of his daughter
Joan] was given him in 1372.
24
And Thomas Hileyerd of York was at a funeral when
he learned of the birth of his daughter Elizabeth in 1318.
25
The proofs-of-age also confirm that men could be called into the birthing chamber
to assist in extraordinary circumstances such as a difficult or a precipitous labor.
26
In
1353, for example, Simon de Folifayt of York is reported to have revived his newborn
daughter.
27
Proofs-of-age also testify that priests were allowed into the birthing cham-
ber when the life of the mother was in danger. Thomas Bell of Croft remembers accom-
panying Robert Rukeby, chaplain, carrying a lantern with a candle, to see the newly
delivered mother of Robert, son of Robert de Stodhowe, who was very ill.
28
The testimonies in the proofs-of-age also suggest more routine interaction between
the lying-in chambers of the mothers of heirs to crown land and the company of men in
the hall. The purpose of proof-of-age inquests was to ensure continued family control
over the family estate. As Sue Sheridan Walker points out, Since a minors succession
to a feudal estate in medieval England meant wardship and the familys loss of the
profits of the estate, the heirs right to be considered an adult was a matter of the utmost
legal, social, and economic significance.
29
To ensure a later successful proof-of-age
inquest, parents of feudal heirs attempted to fix the date of their heirs birth in the
minds of potential jurors by making the birth memorable. To this end, they wrote the
date of birth in a parish service book or chronicle and planned elaborate baptismal cer-
emonies and churching celebrations. It was also customary for them to present poten-
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tial jurors with gifts on the occasion of the birth. For example, in 1335, Thomas Cary of
Dorset distributed bows to the servants and retainers of a neighbor on the birth of his
son so that they might have a testimony and memorial of [his] heir.
30
Proofs-of-age reveal that not only the father of an heir but also the newly delivered
mother of an heir distributed gifts to potential jurors. John Michel testifies that on the
Thursday following the birth (of Margaret Blount in 1346), he held a court at
Childefrome, and after the court he visited Agatha, mother of the same Margaret, in her
lying-in (puerperio), and she gave hima silk purse to remember the birth of her daugh-
ter.
31
In Somerset, WilliamWhite, Thomas Dynham, WilliamMajor, and Walter Davy
say that on the day of John (Denbouds) baptism (in 1348), they visited Joan his
mother, then in childbed, and she gave each of them a silk purse that they might
remember and bear witness to her sons age.
32
These cryptic accounts are not evidence
that those male friends and neighbors were welcomed into the lying-in chamber. They
do indicate, however, that even when considering the enclosed space of the birthing
chamber, at least for the mothers of heirs to crown land, the division between private
and public spheres, or female and male space, is ambiguous.
33
Although medieval English wives did not enjoy the economic, legal, and political
prerogatives of their husbands, the wives of the nobility and the gentry wielded sub-
stantial, if informal, influence and power. Also, noble and aristocratic wives would
have been no less intent on ensuring continued family control over the family estates
than their husbands. As Rowena Archer notes,
Nowhere can the partnership between men and women be more consistently viewed
than in the preservation of the landed inheritance which had been created by the union
of husband and wife and bonded by the birth of an heir. Acommon interest in expand-
ing and maintaining the property in their charge promoted a sense of common purpose
in which both parties played complementary and overlapping roles.
34
Noble and aristocratic wives not only shared in the management of the affairs of their
large households and families but also took over the management of family estates and
the running of the household from their husbands during the frequent absences
required of those in the kings service.
35
Those responsibilities entailed establishing
and maintaining networks of other landholders and their servants and retainers, trades-
men,
36
lawyers, and various civic officials.
37
Hospitality, patronage, and gift exchange
were the vehicles through which those networks were established and maintained.
38
The evidence in the proof-of-age inquests suggests that those interactions crossed the
threshold of the birthing chamber, figuratively if not literally. Men not only testify that
women friends and neighbors visited newly delivered mothers,
39
but they also testify to
having visited themthemselves. Besides the accounts of men having received gifts that
have already been mentioned, Alexander de Scalebrok of Oxford recounts that on the
day in 1295 that Fulk, son and heir of Fulk de Rucote, was born, he went with Lady
Cecily de Scalebrok his mother, daughter of Fulk de Rucote the father, and sawthe said
Fulk (the younger just) born.
40
And WilliamVaux recalls that in 1346, he among oth-
ers rode to comfort [the mother of Richard de Kirkebride of Cumberland] because she
was in peril of death after the birth.
41
The servants and retainers of Thomas Carys
neighbor, mentioned earlier, testify to having begged leave of . . . their lord, to go to
the house of Thomas Cary, . . . to visit Alice his wife . . . who was lying in childbirth.
42
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Although these records do not indicate that those men entered into the birthing cham-
ber, they do suggest that male relatives, friends, and neighbors went to be in attendance
to the mother after the birth of an heir to crown land.
Similarly, proof-of-age inquests record male relatives, friends, and neighbors send-
ing or taking gifts to a newly delivered mother on the occasion of the birth. Those rec-
ollections are very specific about these being gifts to the mother. Most telling in this
regard is the proof-of-age inquest for Edmund Holand, brother and heir of Thomas,
earl of Kent, born in 1382. At that inquest, Thomas Colyngton and John Polayn
recount having taken gifts to the father of the child. Thomas Colyngton brought
twelve partridges to the father, and John Polayn presented a wild boar to the father.
Whereas John Wallop and John Harryes report having taken gifts to the mother of the
child, John Wallop says he took two swans to Brockenhurst and gave themto Alice,
countess of Kent, the mother. John Harryes also reported having presented twelve
capons and twenty-four hens to the mother.
43
Other men recall having taken gifts to
new mothers on their own behalf or on behalf of their masters or mistresses. These
include lampreys, cartloads of hay, venison, and braces of pheasants.
44
Several records
even describe men delivering or sending wine for the caudel imbibed by the women in
the birthing chamber. For example, when John Watts heard that Margaret, wife of John
de Wauton, knight, had delivered a son, he sent her a gallon of sweet wine.
45
These recollections of gifts and visits paid to newly delivered mothers of heirs to
crown land attest that even though men rarely stepped foot into the birthing chamber,
their dynastic interests and social politics routinely penetrated its walls, blurring the
boundary between private and public spheres, female and male space. This boundary
was further obfuscated by traffic going the other way. Female attendants often
announced the birth to the father of the heir and his companions. For example, when
Margaret de Bovill was born in 1311, the midwives came into the hall, and announced
the birth to [her father] and [the] others [with him].
46
Female attendants also spread
news of a birth as they carried the newborn child off to be baptized. WilliamSmith and
John Rother of Essex remember that Joan, the wife of WilliamSeman, was with Eliza-
beth Pekenhamin 1378 when she gave birth to her son Robert. Joan carried Robert to
the church, and coming from the church told them of [the birth].
47
In that same year,
John Delasis recalls having met a group of women carrying William de Carnaby of
Northumberland to the church for baptism. Among themwas his niece Katharine, who
told him that Isabel mother of William was in danger of dying.
48
In telling of a birth to the males excluded from the birthing chamber, these women
played an essential role in furthering the dynastic interests shared by both the father
and the mother of an heir to crown land by attesting to the birth of a legitimate heir and
ensuring a later successful proof-of-age. As John Delasiss testimony reveals, they
also shared the secrets of the birthing chamber. At another inquest, Nicholas de
Kingesmulle and Williamde Mertok both remember their wives tales of having spent
eight days and nights with Pernell, wife of Thomas de Sancto Omero, as she labored
with her daughter Alice in 1340.
49
Gail McMurray Gibson suggests that male interest
in the news from the birthing chamber was self-interested in that it was focused on
the production of an heir and the maintenance of patrilineal control.
50
Proof-of-age
inquests confirm that was of considerable importance to the men and women of the
nobility and gentry. However, Fiona Harris Stoertz warns against portray[ing] medi-
eval women in childbirth as victims whose sufferings were meaningless to society, or
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as baby machines.
51
As important as dynastic concerns and male networking may
have been, simple human interest and human concern ought also to be read between
the lines of these records.
Wet nursing is one more aspect of childbirth documented in the proof-of-age
inquests that also occasioned interaction between the birthing chamber and the men in
the hall. Proofs-of-age confirm that it was customary for the children of the English
nobility and gentry to be wet-nursed throughout the period covered by these records,
the late twelfth to the late fifteenth centuries.
52
And just as Christiane Klapisch-Zuber
has demonstrated for Renaissance Florence,
53
the testimonies in the proof-of-age
inquests reveal that men played an important role in the hiring and supervision of wet
nurses in medieval England. However, unlike Florence, where wet nursing was mens
business, the responsibilities surrounding wet nursing appear to have been shared by
English men and women, once again blurring the boundary between the company of
women in the birthing chamber and the society of men in the hall. Most explicit in this
regard are two records in which men recount having consulted with the midwife and
the other women who were present at the birth to locate a good wet nurse for the heir.
Another record, wherein a man recalls attending the baptism of a child for whom he
had found a nurse, confirms that those men were responsible for finding the wet
nurse.
54
However, the records just cited do not indicate on whose behalf those men
were actingthe father, the mother, or another relative. Other testimonies suggest that
they were acting as agents for the mother of the heir. In his testimony on behalf of John
Alkham, who was born in Guston by Dover in 1354, Thomas Marigge recalls having
entered the house of Johns father while exercising his office as borsholder of Guston.
55
While there, the childs mother complained to himthat she had no milk to nourish her
child, and asked him to provide a nurse.
56
In two other records, the mother of the heir
is named as the one who hired the wet nurse.
57
An heirs father is never named as the
one hiring the wet nurse, although two witnesses recall being sent by the father to fetch
the wet nurse on the day of the birth.
58
The one record documenting the supervision of a
wet nurse also attests to the male-female interaction that characterizes these mens rec-
ollections of the activities associated with the birthing chamber. Thomas Turvylle
recounts being sent by the aunt of a young heir to the home of the wet nurse to see how
the heir was kept and nursed.
59
Although proof-of-age inquests add little to our knowledge of women prevy
sekenes, they do reveal some of the ways in which the events within the birthing cham-
ber interacted with the activities of the males in the hall. While men may not have
entered the birthing chamber literally, these mens recollections suggest that we can-
not therefore assume that they were excluded from the events that took place there.
Proof-of-age inquests reveal much awareness of and involvement with the women and
the activities within the birthing chamber on the part of medieval English men. From
the perspective of the mens recollections recorded in proof-of-age inquests, it was a
company of women and men that surrounded a puerperal woman.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Katherine L. French for introducing me to proof-of-age inquests.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the 36th International Congress on
Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2001.
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NOTES
1. Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortemand Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the
Public Record Office, 20 vols. (London: HMSO, 1904-1995), 19:999.
2. B. Rowland, ed., Medieval Womans Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological
Handbook (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), 58.
3. G. McMurray Gibson, Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval
Childbirth, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29, no. 1 (1999): 10.
4. See Gibson, Scene and Obscene; see also Blessing fromSun and Moon: Churching as
Womens Theater, in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fif-
teenth-Century England, ed. B. A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1996), 139-54; and her forthcoming book, Texts, Talismans, and Cultural Perfor-
mances of Medieval Pregnancy and Childbirth.
5. See R. Blumenfeld-Kosinsky, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth
in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), and J. Made
Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1999).
6. See J. Murray, Thinking about Gender: The Diversity of Medieval Perspectives, in
Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. J. Carpenter and S.-B. MacLean (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1995), 1-3.
7. See Gibson, Scene and Obscene, 10; M. Green, Womens Medical Practice and
Health Care in Medieval Europe, in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Bennett
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 64; and U. Rublack, Pregnancy, Childbirth and
the Female Body in the Early Modern Germany, Past & Present 150 (1996): 84-111.
8. See Green, Womens Medical Practice; P. Biller, Childbirth in the Middle Ages, His-
tory Today 36 (1986): 42-49 and Birth-Control in the West in the Thirteenth and Early Four-
teenth Centuries, Past & Present 94 (1982): 3-26; F. Harris Stoertz, Suffering and Survival in
Medieval English Childbirth, in Medieval Family Roles: A Book of Essays, ed. C. Jorgensen
Itnyre (New York: Garland, 1996), 101-20.
9. I am indebted to Katherine French for introducing me to these records.
10. Knights came of age at age twenty-one; women of that order came of age at age fourteen
if married, age sixteen if single.
11. Thomas Cromwell ordered parish registers to be kept in 1538. W. Coster, Popular Reli-
gion and the Parish Register 1538-1603, in The Parish in English Life 1400-1600, ed. K. L.
French, G. Gibbs, and B. Kmin (Manchester, 1997), 97, notes that a number of surviving regis-
ters antedate Cromwells injunction, suggesting that the keeping of registers had already
become customary in some localities. On the other hand, S. S. Walker, Proof of Age of Feudal
Heirs in Medieval England, Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973): 323, points out that due to faulty
keeping of parish registers, living memory continued to be relied on into the nineteenth century.
12. I am indebted to Walker, Proof of Age, 306-23, and J. Bedell, Memory and Proof of
Age in England 1272-1327, Past & Present 162 (1999): 6-12, for the background information
on proof-of-age inquests in this section. J. Hurstfield, The Queens Wards: Wardship and Mar-
riage under Elizabeth I (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1958), esp. 157-72, also dis-
cusses proofs-of-age.
13. Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur, ed. G.D.G.
Hall (London: Nelson, 1965), 7.9: 82-83. Cited in Walker, Proof of Age, 308, note 7.
14. The Chancery records are calendared in Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortemand Other
Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, 20 vols. (London: HMSO,
1904-1995), which covers the period from 1 Henry III (1216) to 5 Henry V (1418) inclusively
(hereafter cited as IPM). Proofs-of-age from the reign of Henry VII (1486-1509) are published
in IPM, Second Series, 3 vols. (1898-1955). The proofs-of-age recorded during the years 6
98 JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY / April 2002
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Henry 5 to 2 Richard 3 (1418-1483) have yet to be published. These are held at the Public Record
Office, London (hereafter cited as PRO).
15. For example, IPM6/188: John le Carpentir, aged 41, says the like [agrees that the heir is
of age], as appears certain to him by the statements of Christine her mother and of near neigh-
bours, on the day of the feast of her purification. See also IPM 3/429.
16. When considering the evidence provided by proofs of age, it must be noted that there are
some suspiciously similar testimonies to be found among these records. It is likely that as the
procedure for taking proofs of age became routine, a tradition of stock recollections gradually
developed. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this discussion, while some of the memories
recounted by the jurors may have been invented, proofs of age do reveal the kinds of activities
normally associated with the birth of a feudal heir, thus affording some insight into mens partic-
ipation in the customs surrounding childbirth in England in the thirteenth to the fifteenth centu-
ries. See Bedell, Memory and Proof of Age, 6-12; L. R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black
Death: Essex 1350-1525 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 190; Hurstfield,
The Queens Wards, 159-63; R. C. Fowler and M. T. Martin, Legal Proofs of Age, English His-
torical Review 22 (1907): 101-2, 526-27.
17. See Gibson, Scene and Obscene, 9; Stoertz, Suffering and Survival, 110-11. See also
J. Glis, History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe, trans. R.
Morris (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1991), 101-2; A. Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery:
Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1.
18. IPM7/485. Other men also recall hearing the cries of women laboring in childbirth from
outside the birthing chamber. See IPM 5/228, IPM 6/754, IPM 7/245, and IPM 9/125.
19. The exception to this rule was royal birth (e.g., according to Glis, History of Childbirth,
102); the king of France was always present at the confinement of the queen.
20. IPM 18/314.
21. IPM 17/1317. See also IPM 18/1178.
22. IPM 19/999.
23. IPM 20/272. See also IPM 19/999; IPM 2:1/1250.
24. IPM 16/1054. See also IPM 10/196; IPM 16/75.
25. IPM 7/544. Similarly, Elias Martel of Lincoln was at a wedding when his son was born;
see IPM 8/64.
26. See Blumenfeld-Kosinsky, Not of Woman Born, 91; Green, Womens Medical Prac-
tice; Biller, Childbirth in the Middle Ages, 47-49; Glis, History of Childbirth, 101-2.
27. This testimony is found in a York consistory court record of a hearing called to determine
if the principals in a marriage were old enough to contract marriage. It is, in effect, a proof of age.
See P.J.P. Goldberg, ed., Women in England c. 1275-1525 (Manchester, UK: Manchester Uni-
versity Press, 1995), 3, 64-65. I am indebted to Shannon McSheffrey for this reference.
28. IPM 18/953. Biller, Childbirth in the Middle Ages, 47-48, suggests priests were
allowed into the birthing chamber not only to administer the sacraments and spiritual comfort
but also for their medical knowledge. See also Stoertz, Suffering and Survival, 110. I have
found no mention in the proofs of age of a medical man being present at a birth.
29. Walker, Proof of Age, 306.
30. IPM 10/399.
31. IPM 11/129. See also IPM 11/379.
32. IPM 13/67. See also IPM 12/178.
33. Cf. B. A. Hanawalt, At the Margin of Womens Space in Medieval Europe, in Matrons
and Marginal Women in Medieval Society, ed. R. R. Edwards and V. Ziegler (Woodbridge, UK:
Boydell, 1995), 1-18.
34. R. E. Archer, How Ladies . . .Who Live on Their Manors Ought to Manage Their
Households and Estates: Women as Landholders and Administrators in the Later Middle
Ages, in Women in Medieval English Society, ed. P.J.P. Goldberg (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton,
Lee / A COMPANY OF WOMEN AND MEN 99
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1997; reprint, Woman Is a Worthy Wight, 1992), 149-50. See also J. C. Ward, The English
Noblewoman and Her Family in the Later Middle Ages, in The Fragility of Her Sex? Medi-
eval Women in Their European Context, ed. C. R. Meek and M. K. Simms (Portland, OR: Four
Courts, 1996), 133-34.
35. See Archer, HowLadies ; M. E. Mate, Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black
Death: Women in Sussex, 1350-1535 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 154-78; J.
C. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1992); A. S.
Haskel, The Paston Women on Marriage in Fifteenth-Century England, in Five Papers on
Marriage in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Leyerle (Los Angeles, 1972), 459-71; B. A. Hanawalt,
Lady Honor Lisles Networks of Influence, in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M.
Erler and M. Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 203.
36. For example, see IPM 3/483; IPM 5/152.
37. For example, see IPM 14/300.
38. See Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages, 70-79; Hanawalt, Lady
Honor Lisles Networks, 192-9; K. Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250-1600 (Oxford,
UK: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 75-139; C. Carpenter, Gentry and Community in Medieval Eng-
land, Journal of British Studies 33, no. 4 (1994): 340-80.
39. For example, see IPM 6/123, IPM 12/262, IPM 20/130, and IPM 20/142.
40. IPM 6/123.
41. IPM 12/381.
42. IPM 10/399.
43. IPM 18/979.
44. IPM 6/434, IPM 8/670, IPM 10/399, and IPM 18/999.
45. IPM 18/310. See also IPM 17/1319; IPM 17/1320.
46. IPM 7/169.
47. IPM 18/309.
48. IPM 19/1003.
49. IPM 10/336. See also IPM 18/673.
50. Gibson, Scene and Obscene, 14.
51. Stoertz, Suffering and Survival, 102. See also Ward, The English Noblewoman and
Her Family, 135.
52. See Goldberg, Women in England, 3; S. Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, trans. C.
Galai (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1990), 62-63. Valerie Fildes has studied wet nursing in
England after 1500 in detail, but there has been little study of wet nursing in medieval England.
See V. Fildes, The English Wet Nurse and Her Role in Infant Care, 1538-1800, Medical His-
tory 32 (1988): 142-73 and Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York:
Basil Blackwell, 1988), 32-48, 79-100, 159-89.
53. C. Klapisch-Zuber, Blood Parents and Milk Parents: Wet Nursing in Florence,
1300-1530, in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 132-64.
54. See IPM 18/998, IPM 18/1140, and IPM 19/666.
55. The chief of a tithing or frank-pledge.
56. IPM 14/300. See also Goldberg, Women in England, 73, 78.
57. IPM 6/192; Goldberg, Women in England, 73, 78.
58. IPM 2:2/204; IPM 2:2/208.
59. IPM 19/343.
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