Women in the Northern Courts: Interpreting Legal Records of Familial Conflict In Early Fifteenth-Century Yorkshire

Abstract

In her pioneering study of medieval English nunneries Eileen Power brought to light the plight of Katherine Northfolk, a young heiress in fifteenth-century Yorkshire. The tale evoked Power's pity in her discussion of nunneries as locations for the disposal of certain sorts of girls: the illegitimate, die deformed, the mentally ill, and the young heiress. Katherine Northfolk's enforced entrance into the monastery of Wallingwells is one of four cases which Power drew from legal sources to support her assertion that many "little heiresses" were hurriedly and unwillingly professed with little or no recourse to the law. Power's rendition of Katherine's case was as follows: