Never having been divorced I have no idea of exactly how fussy the law is when it comes to sharing property. Well, I know they still have to list things, but I certainly didn’t know what was expected in medieval times when a couple finally parted. I had reason to check upon what amounted to divorce and what to annulment, and happened upon this interesting site.
I have Henrietta Leyser’s book Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500, but had forgotten the following extract, which appears at the above site. It is from the laws of Hywel Dda, and lists who gets what when a marriage ends.
“….Pigs go to the man, sheep to the woman. Eldest and youngest son to the father, middle son to the mother. Milking vessels, except one pail, to the woman. All drinking vessels to the man. The man gets the hens and one cat. The woman gets all the flax and linseed and wool, all the opened vessels of butter and the opened cheese and as much as she can carry of flour by the strength of her own hands and her knees from the larder to the house. The bedclothes which are over them to the woman and those which are under them to the man, until he takes a wife. After he takes a wife, they belong to the woman. If the wife who comes to the husband sleeps on them, she must pay compensation to the first wife….”
Can you imagine crawling on hands and knees with bags of flour? Maybe they’d be piled on one’s back, like a mule? Or paying the first wife because you slept on her sheets? And if the husband got one cat, what if it was the only cat? Was it shared, six months with him, six months with you? Or maybe you were left catless? The house mice would have been delighted if it were the latter.
Oh well, it made me smile, so I hope it does you too—or sigh in sympathy. Or utter a dictionary of cuss words about the sheets!
murreyandblue 