Married Women’s Litigation in the English Court of Chancery, 1698-1758

This thesis examines married women’s litigation by a next friend, against their husbands and others, in the English court of Chancery during the period 1698 to 1758. Contributing to existing debates concerning married women’s use of legal agency during the early modern period, it explores the extent to which married women had independent access to justice, could manage their separate property, and could make law in eighteenth-century England. Many historians have shown that the theoretical strictures of coverture were not as suffocating as they appear during this period. Reflecting this, Chancery treated women not entirely as feme covert or feme sole, but bestowed upon them something in between – pseudo-feme sole status. The law impacted the extent to which married women could use legal agency, but each married woman’s ability to exercise pseudo -feme sole status was also, in part, dictated by those closest to her- her husband, family, friends and acquaintances. The main focus of this thesis is the relationship between married female litigants and those whom we may term quasi-legal actors: Individuals who were generally not legal professionals, but fulfilled a legal role as well as a social or personal role in the married female litigant’s life. Examining the law regulating quasi-legal actors, and the actions and attitudes of those appointed to these positions, aids our understanding of married women’s litigation as a socio-legal practice and the strong link between the courtroom and the community. The extent to which a married woman could exercise legal agency was dependent on the actions, both positive and negative, of her other legal agents. Trustees facilitated married women’s property holding, next friends enabled married women’s access to justice, husbands might become defendants in a marital dispute, and neighbours turned deponents if a case progressed to the stage of providing proof. In every instance, the relationship between a married woman and these various actors created different balances of power between them. These relationships existed within the broader conversational relationship present between litigants and judges within the legal system.

Author dc:creator

• Ireland, Emily

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Prest, Wilfrid
• Barclay, Katie
• Lemmings, David

• Law
• Chancery
• equity
• women
• married women
• wives
• next friend
• eighteenth century

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/2440/129205

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digital.library.adelaide.edu.au:2440/129205