Women, property, power and the state in medieval England, 1154-1227

This dissertation considers some problems in gender history and the engendering of reference tools. It illustrates some of these historiographical problems in fuller detail by focusing on a careful examination of the Pipe Rolls, a permanent written record of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin bureaucracy and its operations in medieval England which enables the historian to examine a particular group of elite women and their relationship to the Crown between 1154 and 1227.;The findings of the dissertation raise important questions about women's agency in medieval England. First, the bureaucratic visibility of these elite women is striking. Second, the trend toward engendering the payment of fines is marked by the reign of John (1199-1216). Third, these elite women used a calculus to weigh the risks of taking their own action and the payment to the king for short-circuiting his royal prerogatives. Fourth, these same records also shed light on the engendering of family politics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially on the Welsh and Scottish borders. Not incidental to the question of women's agency in this dissertation is both the predatory and responsive aspects of kingship revealed in the Pipe Rolls, especially royal policies regarding elite widows.;The Pipe Rolls have the advantage of offering important insights into the formation of the category of the elite widow in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The bureaucracy produced the conditions of possibility for the agency of the widow and then insisted upon the exercise of such agency. In choosing to remain a widow an elite woman could both be challenging family strategies (natal and affinal) and reinforcing them depending on the circumstances. It is precisely that play between challenge and reinforcement which rendered widows important contenders in the feudal politics of Angevin England.