Women's Property Rights Under Customary Law: Some Developments In The Thirteenth And Fourteenth Centuries

Abstract

MEDIEVAL England fell into that broader Eurasian region within which property from conjugal estates devolved on both men and women, either by inheritance or by certain mechanisms of pre mortem endowment. Although males were generally preferred heirs, demographic realities ensured that women would be found in a sizeable minority of instances as residual heirs. Given likely conditions of mortality and fertility, a wife would often have needed to bear at least four children to secure a sixty per cent chance of furnishing a son who would survive his father to inherit the estate. Indeed in stationary demographic conditions roughly twenty per cent of families would have only surviving daughters and no sons at the father's death. This female inheritance potential combined with the possibility of the transmission of pre mortem dowry to daughters in those families who were blessed with at least one male heir implies that considerable reorganization of land might occur at every generation.