:Women and Property in Early Modern England

Abstract

The economic condition of women is enormously important to our understanding of any society. Historians have made many assumptions about women's property in the early modern period in an attempt to generalize about legal development, about family relations, and about women's status in the past. Using original research into probate documents and court records, Amy Erickson argues that many of these assumptions are wrong. By explaining how multiple and overlapping legal systems affected women as daughters, wives and widows, and comparing this legal structure with the actual distribution of property among ordinary people, she shows that early modern Englishwomen owned and managed far more money, goods and property than has ever been recognized by historians. Erickson uses virtually unknown sources to combine legal, social and women's history in an imaginative way. In testing out the extent, the limits and the contradictions of women as property owners, fascinating material about their daily lives and their relationship emerges.