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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Economic history
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The Wealth of Wives - Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London (Paperback)
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The Wealth of Wives - Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London (Paperback)
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London became an international center for import and export trade
in the late Middle Ages. The export of wool, the development of
luxury crafts and the redistribution of goods from the continent
made London one of the leading commercial cities of Europe. While
capital for these ventures came from a variety of sources, the
recirculation of wealth through London women was important in
providing both material and social capital for the growth of
London's economy. A shrewd Venetian visiting England around 1500
commented about the concentration of wealth and property in women's
hands. He reported that London law divided a testator's property
three ways allowing a third to the wife for her life use, a third
for immediate inheritance of the heirs, and a third for burial and
the benefit of the testator's soul. Women inherited equally with
men and widows had custody of the wealth of minor children. In a
society in which marriage was assumed to be a natural state for
women, London women married and remarried. Their wealth followed
them in their marriages and was it was administered by subsequent
husbands. This study, based on extensive use of primary source
materials, shows that London's economic growth was in part due to
the substantial wealth that women transmitted through marriage. The
Italian visitor observed that London men, unlike Venetians, did not
seek to establish long patrilineages discouraging women to remarry,
but instead preferred to recirculate wealth through women. London's
social structure, therefore, was horizontal, spreading wealth among
guilds rather than lineages. The liquidity of wealth was important
to a growing commercial society and women brought not only wealth
but social prestige and trade skills as well into their marriages.
But marriage was not the only economic activity of women. London
law permitted women to trade in their own right as femmes soles and
a number of women, many of them immigrants from the countryside,
served as wage laborers. But London's archives confirm women's
chief economic impact was felt in the capital and skill they
brought with them to marriages, rather than their profits as
independent traders or wage labourers.
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