Legal records illuminate womens' use of legal processes, with regard to the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage and children, women as traders, etc. Determined and largely successful effort to read behind and alongside legal discourses to discover women's voices and women's feelings. It adds usefully to the wider debate on women's role in medieval society. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW What is really new here is the ways in which the authors approach the history of the law: they use some decidedly non-legal texts to examine legal history; they bring together historical and literary sources; and they debunk the view that medieval laws had little to say about women or that medieval women had little legal agency. ALBION The legal position of the late medieval woman has been much neglected, and it is this gap which the essays collected here seek to fill. They explore the ways in which women of all ages and stations during the late middle ages (c.1300-c.1500) could legally shift for themselves, and how and where they did so. Particular topics discussed include the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage, care, custody and guardianship (with particular emphasis on the rights of a mother attempting to gain custody of her own children within the court system), women as traders, women as criminals, prostitution, the rights of battered women within the courts, the procedures women had to go through to gain legal redress and access, rape, and women within guilds. NOELJAMES MENUGE gained her Ph.D. from the Centre of Medieval Studies at the University of York. Contributors: P.J.P. GOLDBERG, VICTORIA THOMPSON, JENNIFER SMITH, CORDELIA BEATTIE, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, NOEL JAMES MENUGE, CORINNE SAUNDERS, KIM M. PHILLIPS, EMMA HAWKES

Wardship literature in romance used to illuminate the reality of wardship, and to further an understanding of legal history. Studies of wardship in medieval England have so far only seriously concentrated on legal concerns, thus overlooking the intricacies and subtleties of wardship discourse as they are revealed in romance literature. Menuge explores how wardship literature in romance may be used in studies of wardship, and how it may complement an understanding of legal history. Wardship discourse is examined in a variety of sources - legal treatises, cases, and romance - andis discussed in the light of medieval and current perceptions of wardship. Questions are raised as to why and how wards, guardians, lords and families are constructed in the sources, and how these may be read as "narrative fictions" to tell us more about wardship construction and perception in author and audience alike. The issues addressed are those to do with inheritance, waste, legal age, marriage and guardianship care, while the dominant theme is the importance of the father and his legacy to the ward within this discourse. NOEL JAMES MENUGE gained her D. Phil from the University of York.