Women, Agency and the Law, 1300–1700

'[an] exciting collection. The desire to recover the female voice is a thread that runs throughout the volume ... should appeal to a wide readership but, most especially, to those interested in women's studies, gender studies, and legal history.' Parergon 'the collection brims with original and provocative thinking and will appeal to anyone interested in the histories of women, gender, and law.' Renaissance Quarterly 'This collection of essays provide new insights for those less familiar with the early courts and offer new interpretations of depositions, often dismissed as a legal construct, and in doing so their respective authors uncover female voices from the archives.' Rhiannon Markless, C18th Girl 'The publication of Women, Agency and the Law, 1300-1700 is an occasion of note for all those interested in the history of women. Its ten excellent essays also mark a novel stage in that field, as it brings together the lives of women and the legal systems which defined, constrained, but also empowered them.' Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London

• Preface, Bronach Kane, Fiona Williamson; Introduction, Bronach Kane, Fiona Williamson; Chapter 1 Your Oratrice: Women’s Petitions to the Late Medieval Court of Chancery, Cordelia Beattie; Chapter 2 Echoes, Whispers, Ventriloquisms: On Recovering Women’s Voices from The Court of York in the Later Middle Ages, Jeremy Goldberg; Chapter 3 Women, Memory and Agency in the Medieval English Church Courts, Bronach Kane; Chapter 4 ‘Utterly and Untruly he Hath deceived Me’: Women’s Inheritance In Late Medieval England, Rosemary Horrox; Chapter 5 ‘She Hym Fresshely Folowed and Pursued’: Women and Star Chamber in Early Tudor Wales, Deborah Youngs; Chapter 6 Women and the Hue and Cry in Late Fourteenth-Century Great Yarmouth, Janka Rodziewicz; Chapter 7 Gender and the Control of Sacred Space in Early Modern England, Amanda Flather; Chapter 8 The Travails of Agnes Beaumont, Bernard Capp; Chapter 9 Parish Politics, Urban Spaces and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Norwich, Fiona Williamson; Chapter 10 ‘With a Sword Drawne in Her Hande’: Defending the Boundaries of Household Space in Seventeenth-Century Wales, Nicola Whyte Appendix;