Dower and jointure: A legal and statistical analysis of the property rights of married women in late medieval England

This dissertation examines the effects of the fee tail and the use on the rights of married women and on the amount of property held by women in late medieval England. The fee tail was a conditional grant: if the recipient failed to have heirs, the property would return to the donor. The fee tail could be further restricted to male heirs. The use was a forerunner of the trust: the legal title was held by one person for the benefit of another. Both the fee tail and the use were created in order to guarantee continuation of family estates and to evade the burdens of feudal services.;Two principal sources were used to examine the effects of these new conveyances on the property rights of married women: Thomas Littleton's Tenures, a fifteenth century legal text; and the Year Books, informal compilations by lawyers of oral arguments.;A third source, the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem (surveys of the estates of every person holding of the king) was used to determine the effects of the new conveyances on the amounts of property women held. Almost six thousand inquisitions for men and women from the late thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were analyzed.;Both the fee tail and the use were used to create joint estates between husband and wife. The joint estate did not need to be sued for at the husband's death and provided some protection against forfeiture. Unlike the case with dower, which at common law was limited to one-third of the husband's estate after his death, a woman could conceivably hold all her husband's estate in a joint fee tail. Women did hold significantly more property after the joint fee tail became popular in the fourteenth century.;The use, on the other hand, offered the husband and his family a means to bar dower. Women held slightly less property after the use became popular in the fifteenth century, but it is uncertain to what degree the use was responsible.