The New Murrey and Blue blog

Here at this link (Runaway Wives in Medieval London | History Workshop) is a very interesting article about what drove medieval wives to flee from their husbands. But the link comes with a warning: “This post discusses violence against women.” How very modern.

Sadly, the medieval world considered us to be, quite literally, the property of our menfolk (being our own property is a very recent development, believe me) and those menfolk had the right to do anything and everything except actually murder us. The law actually supported them in this assault and battery! As you can imagine, some men didn’t know (or care about) when to stop. This was true across the entire spectrum of class, from a peasant to the highest lords. If they actually murdered their wives, punishment was forthcoming.

But some women managed to leave before things reached that point, and escaped to new lives.

After describing the general legal situation, and how narrow the chance of gaining a legal separation—pretty much it came down to the husband’s impotence or incest—the author, Charlotte Berry gives some interesting examples of women who did make that break.

Here is one from “our” period:

“….Additional protection could be sought in the walled precinct of a religious house. In 1463, Eleanor Browning fled to the house of the sisters in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, just to the west of London, when escaping from her husband who was chasing her with a knife. The hospital sisters admitted her and closed the door against Alexander, an action which, in the judgement of a brother of the hospital, saved her life. Most medieval women like Eleanor ultimately relied on the intervention of family or members of the community when fleeing an abusive husband, a decision that, for many, meant forging an uncertain living on the fringes of urban law and society….”

We complain today about how badly women are still treated, but at least a husband pursuing his wife with a knife would be arrested and locked up. (I hope!)

Charlotte Berry’s article is very interesting and informative. She has also written a book The Margins of Late Medieval London 1430-1540 , published in 2022 in the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives series by University of London Press. The above link takes you to the book as it appears at JSTOR. The printed book is available online at Ebay etc., but I cannot find it at Amazon.

There are numerous articles dealing with this subject, so I won’t select any more in particular. Just search “medieval women treated badly”.