Intra-Familial Violence in England, 1300-1600

Abstract

Violence was both a hallmark of social and political order, when rightly exercised, and a corruptor of this order, when inappropriately perpetrated, in medieval and early modern society. The perceived line between legitimate and illegitimate violence shifted throughout the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Social attitudes towards violence within the family is the focus of this thesis. Rightly exercised, the correction of wives, children, wards, servants, and apprentices guaranteed the hierarchical order of society. Wrongly implemented, household violence had the potential to undermine the social and political basis of society, which was the family. The proper place for every person in medieval and early modern society was within a family, either under the control of a paterfamilias or being the head of a household. In England throughout the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries social attitudes towards the perpetrators of intra-familial violence hardened and levels of violence previously accepted by the community became increasingly unacceptable. On the basis of records from common law, equity, and ecclesiastical courts social attitudes towards acceptable and unacceptable household violence can be discerned. The legal evidence increasingly suggests that people were taking cases of household violence to a variety of courts and jurisdictions and therefore were expecting legal involvement and solutions on matters that had previously been familial concerns resolved through informal dispute resolutions. Litigants involved in suits alleging unacceptable levels of intra-familial violence believed that the courts were an appropriate avenue to address these issues and that the court personnel would share their understandings of acceptable/unacceptable violence. The structure of the court systems gave significant discretion to juries, for common law civil and criminal cases, presiding officers, for Church court cases, and the chancellor or council, for equity court cases, when making their decisions. This allowed social attitudes towards household violence to influence both the types of cases brought before a court and the way decisions were made in cases alleging unacceptable family violence. Excessive intra-familial violence undermined the claims to authority made by men who controlled households. Household violence had the potential to disrupt social and political structures which used the hierarchical nature of the family to validate hierarchies embedded in society. Thus enforcing appropriate levels of chastisement was a way of ensuring social and political stability.