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Gender & History ISSN 0953–5233
Becky R. Lee, ‘Men’s Recollections of a Women’s Rite: Medieval English Men’s Recollections Regarding the Rite of the
Purification of Women after Childbirth’
Gender & History, Vol.14 No.2 August 2002, pp. 224–241.
Men’s Recollections of a
Women’s Rite: Medieval English
Men’s Recollections Regarding
the Rite of the Purification of
Women after Childbirth
Becky R. Lee
The medieval rite of the purification of women after childbirth, commonly
spoken of today as churching, is unique in western Christianity, in that
it was a rite reserved to women. Over the past two decades, historians
have examined postpartum purification and the customs surrounding it,
throughout Europe and England, in order to illuminate the female world
of pre-modern childbirth, and to explore the ways this rite served as a
forum in which medieval and early modern women negotiated their
worlds.1 Because postpartum purification presents a unique vantage point
from which to view women, scant attention has been paid to the role that
this rite played in the lives of medieval men.
Evidence from an under-exploited class of documents, proof-of-age
inquests, allows us to reinsert men into the picture of medieval English
postpartum purification. These documents, which are comprised of men’s
recollections of the events surrounding the birth of an heir, reveal that
men also contributed to and benefited from this women’s rite in significant ways. In particular, proof-of-age inquests document a widespread
custom among men of the nobility and gentry of hosting a feast on the day
of their wives’ purifications. Rather than being a women’s affair, these
men’s recollections situate postpartum purification within the festivities
celebrating the birth of a man’s heir. For them it was a public event
celebrating paternity and lineage. The rite of the purification of women
after childbirth, and the customs associated with it, served as a forum in
which medieval English men also negotiated their worlds.
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Attention to medieval men and masculinities is a relatively recent
development. A collection of essays edited by Clare Lees in 1994, Medieval
Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, drew the study of men
and masculinities to the attention of medievalists. This was followed
in 1997 by the publication of Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, a collection of essays edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler. In
1999 two more collections were published, Masculinity in Medieval Europe,
edited by Dawn M. Hadley, and Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, edited by Jacqueline Murray.2 To date,
the work on medieval men and masculinities has focused on recovering
the varieties of male experience and the diverse forces shaping them.
In much the same way that historians of women began by recovering
women’s lives and women’s experiences in order to reinsert them into the
historical picture, those studying medieval masculinities have concentrated
on male organisations and activities, such as: chivalry, the military and
clerical life; homosocial and homoerotic relationships; and male gender
identity formation as it was reflected and reinforced through texts and
rituals.
This study of men’s participation in the women’s rite of purification
attempts to take the study of medieval men and masculinities a step
further. As Jacqueline Murray observes, ‘gender is only meaningful in
relational terms. Men and women must be studied not so much in opposition to [or in isolation from] each other, as in relation to each other.’3
This will allow us to ‘arrive at richer, deeper, fuller, more complex, more
meaningful understandings of medieval society’. The evidence in proofof-age inquests takes the study of medieval masculinity into mixed company, illuminating the interactions of medieval men within the context of
a women’s rite.
Proof-of-age inquests include a surprising number of references to
postpartum purification, which as a commonplace women’s activity went
largely undocumented until the religious debates of the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in England.4 This is particularly surprising because
these records are comprised of anecdotal testimony by men. They are
the records of the legal proceedings conducted in order to ascertain if a
feudal heir, that is, an heir to land held in knight-service to the crown, was
of age and could therefore take control of her or his estate. If a feudal heir
was underage, she or he became a ward of the lord, the tenant-in-chief,
who not only administered the ward’s lands until she or he came of age,
but also assumed responsibility for her or his education and marriage. In
England there was no official system for recording births until 1538 when
Thomas Cromwell ordered parish registers to be kept. Instead, living
memory was called upon to prove the age of heirs to property.5 At the end
of the twelfth century, Glanvill prescribed a jury of male neighbours to
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determine the age of such heirs.6 By the reign of Edward I (1272–1307),
it had become customary for those juries to include the testimony of the
jurors along with their verdict in the records of their proceedings. These
proceedings were both entered on the plea rolls of the King’s Bench and
returned into the Chancery. The testimony of the jurors includes a wide
assortment of memories comprising significant events that served to fix
the date of an heir’s birth in the jurors’ minds. Some of the events recalled
took place around the time of the heir’s birth; for example, accidents,
historic events, marriages, other births, pilgrimages, appointments to
office. Others were events connected to the heir’s birth itself, including
presence at the birth, participation in, or witnessing of, the baptism, and,
of particular interest to this study, attendance at the purification of the
heir’s mother.
Of the 1,019 extant pre-Reformation proofs-of-age found in the
Chancery records, 106 mention postpartum purification.7 Those 106
records encompass a wide geographic area ranging from Cumberland in
the north to Devon in the south and from Norfolk in the east to Herefordshire in the west. They span a century and a half from 1288 to 1445. The
events they describe took place some fourteen to twenty-one years earlier,
from approximately 1266 to 1430, for knights came of age at age 21,
women of that order came of age at age 14 if married, age 16 if single.
The view of postpartum purification provided by proof-of-age inquests
is a very particular one. Only men were permitted to testify, normally
neighbours from the county of the heir’s birth, although the testimony of
women such as midwives was admitted second-hand.8 Also, their testimony
pertains to the purifications of the mothers of feudal heirs, a very select
group of women. Jurors were not limited to a particular social stratum
however. They came from all walks of life, chosen for their knowledge of
the age of the heir in question rather than their social standing.
Another factor must also be taken into account when considering the
evidence provided by proofs-of-age. There are some suspiciously similar
testimonies to be found among these records.9 It is likely that as the
procedure for taking proofs-of-age became routine, a tradition of stock
recollections gradually developed.10 Nevertheless, for the purposes of this
discussion, while some of the memories recounted by the jurors may have
been invented, proofs-of-age do reveal the kinds of activities normally associated with the purification of the mother of a feudal heir, thus affording
some insight into men’s participation in the customs surrounding the
purification of women among the English nobility and gentry in the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century.11
Proof-of-age inquests reveal that the women’s rite of postpartum
purification played a significant role in men’s lives, for the heads of aristocratic families capitalised upon this rite and the customs surrounding it to
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safeguard continued family control over the family estate. As Sue Sheridan
Walker points out, ‘since a minor’s succession to a feudal estate in medieval
England meant wardship and the family’s loss of the profits of the estate,
the heir’s right to be considered an adult was a matter of the utmost legal,
social, and economic significance’.12 In order to ensure a later successful
proof-of-age inquest, parents of feudal heirs attempted to fix the date of
their heir’s birth in the minds of potential jurors by presenting them with
gifts on the occasion of the birth, writing down the date of birth in a parish
service book or chronicle, and planning elaborate baptismal ceremonies.
Proof-of-age inquests reveal that at least one more strategy should be added
to that list: making memorable the purification of the heir’s mother.
The customs and practices surrounding childbirth, including the ritual
purification of the new mother, were remarkably similar throughout
England and Europe in the medieval period, although they were coloured
by regional differences.13 In England, the earliest documentary evidence
of the rite of purification, and the customs surrounding it, dates back to
the twelfth century. From the twelfth to the sixteenth century in England
it was customary for a woman to go to her parish church accompanied
by a cohort of her women relatives, friends and neighbours to receive a
blessing some four to six weeks after having given birth. Before mass, the
new mother would kneel at the door of the church with a candle in her
hand. There the priest would greet her, sprinkle her with holy water while
reciting a psalm and a prayer, and take her by the hand to lead her into
the church. At the offertory she and her companions would process to the
altar with special offerings, and at the end of mass they would be first to
receive the blessed bread, or pax bread.14
This rite was the culmination of what Arnold van Gennep calls ‘the
ceremonies of childbirth’.15 In medieval and early modern England, a
woman customarily retreated from normal society in the latter stages of
her pregnancy to be tended by the local midwife and a company of her
women relatives, friends and neighbours until her purification.16 During
that time, which lasted approximately six weeks, the puerperal woman
was largely exempt from her normal duties and obligations, including
household tasks like cooking and marketing, and sexual relations with her
husband. Instead, she and her company of women, or gossips, gathered
in the birthing chamber, which was specially decorated for the occasion,
where they commiserated and shared special food and drink. Women
from all strata of society engaged in this sort of seclusion, known as lyingin, although the length of time, the nature and decoration of the birthing
chamber, and the type of refreshments, no doubt, varied according to
their financial means.17
The rite of purification was the last gathering of a newly delivered
mother and her cohort. Scholars debate the meaning of this rite, and its
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impact upon the women participants, because of the complex interplay of
themes evident within it. It was a rite of re-incorporation, signalling and
effecting the new mother’s transition from her puerperal seclusion to the
mundane world with its daily routines, obligations and interactions.18
Assembling for one last time in the birthing chamber, the cohort of women
escorted the new mother to the door of the parish church, where the
priest led her by the hand across the threshold, symbolically and literally
returning her to the church and the sacraments, and to the company of
her neighbours.
It was also a rite of thanksgiving. After being welcomed at the door of
the church and led over the threshold, the new mother processed with her
company to a special pew reserved for them.19 From there she offered her
gifts, walked to the altar steps to receive the blessed bread, and processed
out at the end of the mass. As Susan Karant-Nunn observes, ‘churching
provided one of the two occasions when a woman was prominent in the
public eye’, the other being her first marriage.20 The new mother was conspicuously reintroduced into the worshipping community, which joined
her in prayers of thanksgiving for her safe delivery, and petitioned God
for her continued safety in this life and the next.
Thirdly, it was a rite of purification. The transition the purification rite
signalled and effected was from a state of isolation from the worshipping
community, due to her pregnant and postpartum state, to a restoration
to that community via ritual purification. The same pew, which served as
a place of honour, also signified the new mother’s impure or dangerous
state, isolating her from the rest of the congregation.
Routine religious observances such as postpartum purification embody
and communicate messages about the world, the self and others.21 Those
messages are made familiar and are absorbed through repetition. Throughout her adult life, a medieval woman participated in the rite of postpartum
purification many times, after the births of her own children and in the
company of her newly delivered relatives, neighbours and friends. A
commonplace activity in women’s lives, this rite reflected and reinforced
medieval gender stereotypes of woman as wife, mother and daughter
of Eve. Routine religious observances also provide an opportunity for
participants to redefine themselves and their world as they interpret and
elaborate the received traditions. Even as the rite of postpartum purification
reflected and reinforced societal gender stereotypes, it validated the society
of women gathered around a puerperal woman, its exemptions from
everyday routines, and the roles women played within that society, in the
public forum, thereby subverting prevailing gender roles.
Scholarly attention has focused upon the role postpartum purification
has played in the lives of women. Nevertheless, although this rite may
have been reserved to the puerperal woman and her company of women,
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it was not celebrated in isolation. In medieval towns and villages, business
and entertainment as well as sacramental matters brought people to the
parish church.22 On any given day it was the centre of much activity.
Women’s purifications, even those of the mothers of feudal heirs, were
conducted in the midst of that activity. Male jurors at proof-of-age inquests
attest to having been at the purification ceremony at the church. On the
day in 1304 that the wife of John Evenyg of Estbourne, Sussex, was in the
church to be purified, Geoffrey, son and heir of William le Bat, was also
being baptised.23 In 1355, John Tymperson of Cumberland relates witnessing the purification of the wife of John de Eglesfeld, while he was in the
church to bury his mother, and in 1383, John Blyssot testifies, he was at
the church to hear mass on the day that the mother of Geoffrey Lotterell
was purified.24
There is some ambiguity in the language of the testimonies though.
In the records that will be discussed below, the jurors explicitly state that
they were present at a feast held on the day when the mother of the heir
was purified. Others simply report having been at the purification of the
mother.25 It is likely that those invited to the feast were also present at the
purification ceremony. This is attested in accounts of purifications occurring in three different counties between 1340 and 1379.26 Nevertheless,
the celebration of the rite, at least when conducted in the parish church,
appears to have been a much more inclusive affair than was the feast.
William Weston and William Barker of Bedfordshire, for example, both
attest to having been at the church on the day of the purification of the
mother of John Conquest in 1379. Afterwards, William Weston attended
the feast while William Barker, a servant in the kitchen, recounts serving
in the hall.27
This gathering at the church provided an occasion for men from across
the socio-economic spectrum to interact. There are several accounts of
business being transacted among men present at the purification of the
mother of an heir. This would not have been an unusual occurrence within
the church precincts. In three of those accounts, men relate repaying a
debt owed to the father of the heir while attending the purification of his
wife, and receiving a letter of acquittance from him by which they know
the date of the heir’s birth.28 Given the importance of a successful proofof-age inquest, this could have been a deliberate strategy on the part of an
heir’s father to fix the date of his offspring’s birth in the minds of potential
jurors. A receipt dated on an occasion related to his heir’s birth would be
a convenient record. It could also have been a deliberate strategy on the
part of the debtors. Being in attendance at the purification of the mother
of a man’s heir and repaying a debt on that occasion established a man as
a potential juror at the proof-of-age inquest. Normally, jurors for local
courts, both rural and urban, were selected from among the ‘respectable
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and stable’29 adult male population. The juries assembled for proof-of-age
inquests differed from those of the local courts in that they were assembled
ad hoc, and the jurors were selected for their knowledge of the age of the
heir rather than their standing among their neighbours.30 Serving as a
juror both reflected and established a man’s respectability. His duties,
which allowed him to exercise local power and influence, also enhanced
his status. In this capacity he would not only have an opportunity to
participate in politically significant deliberations, but it would also allow
him to interact with men from across the social spectrum, potentially
enhancing a man’s status and influence among his neighbours. Whether
this interaction was initiated by the father of an heir or by a debtor,
settling a debt at the time of the purification ceremony of the mother
of an heir to crown land had the potential to create and legitimate a new
and different bond between two men who may have been of markedly
different backgrounds and economic status. It also opened a window of
opportunity for the debtor to renegotiate his status among his neighbours.
At the same time, the gathering at the church also served to reinforce
the social order. Not just the father of the heir conducted business at
such times. John Mosse of Lincolnshire recalls that in 1329 ‘at the time
of the [purification] of the lady of Roos there was proclamation of a
tournament, where many magnates were gathered together, on which day
he purchased a piece of land in Leyk’.31 Similarly, John Ware remembers
purchasing a tenement from John More on the day in 1310 that Reynold
de Cobham’s mother was purified in Surrey, and Robert Warant of
Yorkshire attests to having sold a toft in Sutton on Hull to John Wright
at the purification of Alice Salvayn in 1410.32 These transactions at the
church took place between propertied peers.
More than half of the references to postpartum purification found
among the proofs-of-age relate to purification feasts or banquets, which
appear to have been widespread throughout England from the midthirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century.33 Gervase Rosser has described
the feasts held by religious fraternities as ‘social politics in action’.34 The
same can be said of purification feasts. The recollections of medieval
men regarding these feasts found in proof-of-age inquests reveal complex
interactions among medieval men.
Purification feasts provided a notable occasion. John de Vere of
Yorkshire testifies that in 1318 ‘he made a feast with his neighbours’ on
the day that Margaret his wife was purified.35 According to the testimonies
found in the proofs-of-age, purification feasts were an event planned and
presided over by the father of the heir. Most explicit in this regard is the
testimony of one Devon man who testified to having received a letter
of invitation (litteratorie) to a purification feast from the heir’s father.36
Other jurors, in speaking of such feasts, refer to them using such phrases
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as: ‘the said Robert made a feast’, ‘the said John … held a feast’, ‘at the
said Philip’s feast’,37 or recollect celebrating with the heir’s father: William
de Whatcombe of Somerset recalls ‘feasting with John de Dynham’ on the
day John’s wife Margaret was purified. Robert de Byfield of Oxfordshire
relates that he was at dinner with John de Stafford on the day John’s
wife was purified of his heir, and William Weston of Bedfordshire
recollects being ‘at the feast with Henry Conquest, the father [of the
heir]’, the day of his wife’s purification.38
These feasts were lavish affairs in order to fix the date of the heir’s birth
in the memory of those male members of the neighbourhood eligible to
testify to it. In 1355, John Keverney and Eustace Payn relate, there was
such a great feast when Pernell, the mother of Edward (brother and heir
of John de Bensted of Hertfordshire), was purified that ‘the kitchen of
the manor was nearly burnt down’.39 Jurors at several inquisitions recall
the wine, ale and victuals provided for such feasts.40 One relates having
gone hunting with the father of an heir in order to provide venison for a
purification feast.41 Minstrels were employed, and new robes were worn
by both the mother and the father of the heir.42 At one such celebration,
held during a local tournament in Northamptonshire in 1334, it is even
reported that one of the guests ‘pledged the lady’, that is, fought as her
champion.43
Tokens were distributed by the father of the heir to further reinforce
memories of the occasion. At one purification feast, John Inge of
Somerset is reported to have given five of his guests an arrow ‘that they
might have knowledge of the birth of his said heir’, confirming that this
was one of the motives behind such gatherings.44 In a similar vein, all the
yeomen present at a purification feast in Lincolnshire in 1348 were given
a pair of black hose, a gesture at least one of those present remembered
twenty-one years later.45 Making this motive even more explicit is an
account of John de Forstebury of Wiltshire having asked at least eleven
men present at the banquet on the purification day of his wife after the
birth of his son in 1286 to testify to the day and year of that son’s birth.46
Similarly, in 1347, Richard Major of Somerset testifies, John le Warre
invited him and his wife to a dinner on the day of the purification of his
wife, and ‘then asked him to bear witness to and keep in mind the age of
the said heir’.47
Purification feasts not only served to safeguard the future of a family’s
influence and control over family property, however. In England, the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw a growing stratification within the
ranks of the propertied and the titled and increasing mobility among them.
Although status and power were attained through wealth and lineage,
they were maintained through lifestyle and social networks.48 Purification
feasts provided an opportunity for the father of an heir to reinforce and
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enhance his social and economic ties and standing among his peers
and neighbours through displays of material wealth and largesse such as
those noted above. The father of an heir could also establish, reaffirm or
renegotiate his relationships among his peers and neighbours through the
selection of those he chose to invite. It was not unusual for men to attest
to having been present at these celebrations hosted by the father of an
heir ‘with other neighbours’, or ‘among others of the countryside’.49 Who
those neighbours were comprised of is difficult to ascertain however.
Most jurors are identified simply by their name, age and distance from
the place of birth of the heir in order to establish their competency as
jurors, although knights are identified by their rank. Nevertheless, the
description of the guests at the purification feast hosted by John de Grey
of Oxford in 1300 as ‘abbots, priors and almost all the other good men
(probi homines) of these parts’50 suggests that those invited were most
likely of equal or higher status than their host.
But not all the guests were members of the aristocracy. There are two
examples among the proofs-of-age of men who most likely did not belong
to the nobility or gentry participating in such celebrations. Richard Barker
of Lincolnshire relates having been invited to the purification feast hosted
by the Earl of Athol after the birth of his daughter Philippa in 1362;
he was invited by one of the earl’s household officers who had come to
pay his wife for ale.51 In Herefordshire in 1379 William Weston recounts
having ridden as bailiff to the feast with the rector; we know he attended
the feast, because William Barker, a servant in the kitchen, remembers
serving him there.52 While these men cannot be numbered among the
nobility or gentry, it is probable that they were men of substance and
influence. As Judith Bennett notes, ‘the households of some ale-wives
were headed by males who wielded considerable political and economic
influence’, as did most local officeholders such as bailiffs.53
The father of an heir could also use the purification feast to renegotiate
his relationships among his peers and neighbours through exclusion.
William de la Haye of Gloucestershire testifies to the significance of such
feasts when he is still able to recall twenty-one years later his anger at
not being invited to the purification feast put on by Robert de Stallinge in
1283:
William de la Haye, aged 48, agrees, and knows it [the year the heir was born]
because on the day that the said Maud was purified the said Robert made a feast for
all his neighbours, but did not invite him, at which he was angry.54
This contrasts with the testimony of three other jurors, who remembered
the date of the birth because at that time they ‘had a great friendship with
Robert the father’, suggesting that de la Haye was indeed deliberately
excluded from the celebration. Nevertheless, he agreed to testify at the
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proof-of-age inquest of Robert de Stallinge’s heir. He is not the only man
to use the jury as a forum in which to air a long-held grievance. Three jurors
testifying to the age of Robert, son of Richard de Beyvyll the Younger, in
1373, paint a very unflattering picture of Richard:
Thomas Beyvyll … knows because his father was then collector of the fifteenth
there, and when he asked for the fifteenth of the said Robert’s father at which he
was assessed the latter threatened him in life and limb so that he dared not approach
the house for a fortnight, and by the dates of the rolls of assessment of that fifteenth
he knows that the said Robert was of full age.
Richard Bonde agrees and says that he was and is a carpenter, and at the time of the
birth he made within the manor of the said Robert’s father a cowhouse, part of his
pay for which is still in arrears.
Richard le Smyth agrees and says that he was a tenant of Lora, godmother of the
father of the said Robert, until he was turned out of his tenements by Richard, father
of the said Robert, whereby he lost his goods and chattels, and this was in the year
of the birth of the said Robert.55
Given the acrimony evident in these testimonies, it is unlikely that
Thomas Beyvyll, Richard Bonde and Richard le Smyth were invited
to celebrate the birth of Richard de Beyvyll the Younger’s heir or the
purification of his wife. For those who were invited, purification feasts
provided occasions to establish, reaffirm or enhance economic and social
relationships among their neighbours through association with the family
of the heir and the other invited guests.
Servants, tradesmen and household officers who were called to
attest to the age of an heir recount providing services related to these
celebrations, not attending them.56 Nevertheless, the economic benefits
and prestige attached to the goods and services they provided had the
potential to enhance their economic and social status. Their participation
in the events surrounding the feast also made them potential jurors for
the proof-of-age inquest, as is evidenced by the presence of their testimonies
in the records. Although the servants, tradesmen and household officers
were excluded from socialising among the nobility and gentry at the
feasts, participation on the jury would have enabled them to interact with
men from across the social spectrum some fourteen to twenty-one years
later.
The men’s recollections recorded in the proofs-of-age also include
women, allowing us to glimpse the roles they played in the social politics
being considered here. The mother of the heir was present at the feast.57
At the conclusion of the mass during which a queen was purified, the Liber
regie capelle (a manual for the clergy attached to the royal household)
notes, those gathered were to return to the queen’s chamber, where her
reinstatement to court life was celebrated.58 Similarly, the feast celebrating
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the purification of the mother of an heir to crown land marked the
resumption of her duties as lady of the manor. Although medieval English
wives did not enjoy the economic, legal and political prerogatives of their
husbands, the wives of the nobility and the gentry wielded substantial, if
informal, influence and power. Also, noble and aristocratic wives would
have been just as intent upon ensuring continued family control over the
family estates as their husbands. Rowena Archer notes,
Nowhere can the partnership between men and women be more consistently viewed
than in the preservation of the landed inheritance which had been created by the
union of husband and wife and bonded by the birth of an heir. A common interest
in expanding and maintaining the property in their charge promoted a sense of common purpose in which both parties played complementary and overlapping roles.59
To that end, the mother of an heir to crown land would have collaborated
with her husband in making the purification feast memorable. Such
collaboration is evident in the testimony of Richard de Boseville,
who attended the purification feast of the wife of Philip de Hastang in
Northamptonshire in 1309:
Richard de Boseville, aged 44 years and more, agrees, and knows it because he was
[feasting] with the said Philip de Hastang when the mother of the said Beatrice was
purified from her, and with other neighbours saw the said Beatrice in the chamber
after dinner, and her mother then showed her said daughter to him.60
The clothing worn by the mother of the heir may also have played a part
in the social negotiations at purification feasts. According to Diane Owen
Hughes, during the economic and social transformations of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries ‘cloth, along with the costumes produced from it,
quickly became a pre-eminent mark of social status and a signal of social
mobility, as well as a means of fashioning social and political distinction’.61
The power of clothing to reinforce and shape social reality is attested by
the sumptuary laws regulating both female and male attire that pervaded
Europe throughout the high and late medieval period. Three proofs-ofage mention new clothing having been bought for the mother of an heir
to wear on the day of her purification. One of those indicates that new
robes were worn by both the mother and the father of an heir. Alexander
de Oxeneye testified that in 1307 ‘he was sent to Ipre to buy two whole
cloths for the robes of the said Nicholas de Kyriel and Rose his wife,
mother of the said John, against the purification of the said Rose’.62
Unfortunately, no more detail is provided. The Act of Apparel passed by
Parliament in 1363 indicates that a hierarchy of apparel, not only between
but also among the ranks in English society, was established by that time.63
For example, knights were allowed to wear fabrics that distinguished
them from esquires and gentlemen who ranked below them. Then further
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distinctions were made between knights. Those whose land and rent
revenues were worth less than £200 per annum were allowed to spend a
maximum of 6 marks (c. £4) a year on clothes, and forbidden to wear
garments made of gold cloth or trimmed with ermine or embroidered
with precious stones. Whereas, all knights and ladies worth between 400
marks (c. £267) and £1,000 per annum were permitted to ‘dress at their
pleisure’, except for ermine, which was reserved to the nobility.
The statute also indicates that it was necessary to include among
the upper strata those whose wealth was not derived from land during
this period. For example, merchants and burgesses possessing goods and
chattels worth £500 enjoyed the same costume privileges as gentlemen
owning land worth £100 per annum. Families owning possessions worth
£1,000 equalled esquires worth £200 per annum. No doubt, the new robes
commissioned and worn by the parents of an heir, such as Nicholas de
Kyriel and his wife Rose, were designed to display to their advantage
the wealth and social status of the family, thereby reinforcing it among
the guests at the purification feast.
Women also participated as guests at the feast. Several jurors recount
attending such feasts with their wives.64 There are also two reports which
suggest that unattached women were invited to the purification feast.
William de Clopham of Kent remembers being with Lady Lora de Otteham
at the purification feast hosted by Sir Robert de Hugham in 1293. In
Cumberland, John de Karlton recalls his mother, who was probably a
widow, having been invited ‘to a feast at the house of John de Eglesfeld’
when his wife was purified after the birth of his daughter, Joan.65
Their presence underscores another element at work in the social
politics of purification feasts. Alongside medieval men, women also had
their own social networks which both interacted with, and intersected,
those of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. For the families of the
nobility and the gentry, ‘marriage was primarily about the orderly transmission of property and the forging of family alliances’.66 The mothers of
heirs to crown land played an important role in maintaining and fostering
relations with their own kin as well as other peers and neighbours. Their
pregnancy and delivery also occasioned a society of women. Studies of
childbearing in early modern England have demonstrated that a complex
web of ties and allegiances, grounded in friendship, duty and socio-economic
status characterised that society, creating a network which could span the
socio-economic spectrum. Those ties and allegiances were a source of
both tension and cohesion among the women accompanying a woman
through her pregnancy, birthing, lying-in and purification.67 Although the
type of court cases, and the diaries, letters and autobiographies early
modernists draw upon do not exist for the medieval period, the evidence we
do have suggests that medieval women’s interactions were no less complex.
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The infant heir was also in evidence at purification feasts.68 This is
not surprising, since one of the purposes of these feasts was to ensure a
successful proof-of-age inquest later. On another level, the presence of
both the infant heir and its mother proclaimed to all gathered the potency
of their host. A woman’s purification not only marked her return to
church, but also signalled her return to the conjugal bed. The infant heir
testified to the activity therein. As Clare Lees observes, in the medieval
period there was a complex interrelationship of the concepts of potency,
power, patriarchy and politics.69 In medieval England, a man attained
social maturity and political agency when he became the patriarch of a
household, taking a wife and producing heirs.70 Consequently, as the men’s
recollections found in the proof-of-age inquests attest, the customs and
practices surrounding the birth of a child were as integral to men’s lives
as they were to women’s. For the male jurors at proof-of-age inquests,
postpartum purification was part of the festivities celebrating the birth
of a man’s heir, festivities over which he presided. While a company of
women gathered around the newly delivered mother in the birthing
chamber, the father of the heir distributed gifts, organised an elaborate
baptismal ceremony71 and hosted lavish banquets in order to fix his child’s
birth in the memories of family, friends and neighbours. These public
celebrations of paternity and lineage not only ensured continued family
control over the family estate, but played a significant role in male social
politics, providing a forum for the father of the heir and all the men
present to establish, reaffirm and renegotiate their relationships among
their neighbours.
That both medieval men and women contributed to and benefited from
the rite of postpartum purification may help explain its survival after the
Reformation in England. Many other sacramentals were abrogated as
the Church of England distanced itself from the Church of Rome. This
rite was hotly debated between Church of England reformers and nonconformists of various persuasions in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.72 It is those debates that first brought postpartum purification
in England to the attention of historians. Two issues lay at the centre of
those debates, the focus or intention of the rite, and the form in which the
rite was celebrated. The second Edwardian Book of Common Prayer,
published in 1552, expurgated all references to purification, and renamed
the rite ‘The Thankesgeving of Women after Childebirth, Commonly
Called the Churchynge of Women’. Non-conformists, unhappy with the
conservative nature of the reforms generally, criticised the superficiality
of the changes made to this rite in particular, unconvinced that the change
in name constituted a change in intention.73 In 1572, John Field and
Thomas Wilcox published ‘An Admonition to Parliament’ which, among
other accusations of Jewish and popish remnants in the Book of Common
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Prayer, claimed that despite the name change, the ‘churching of women
after child-birth smeleth of Jewish purification’.74 Some non-conformists,
usually radical clergy, rejected the new rite of thanksgiving altogether. But
most clergy and laity, while rejecting some aspects of the rite, advocated
some form of thanksgiving ritual to mark the end of a woman’s puerperal
confinement, and this customarily concluded with a banquet or feast. Even
during the period between 1645 and 1660, when the rite of thanksgiving
after childbirth, along with the Book of Common Prayer, was abrogated
under the Commonwealth, some people, especially royalist gentry, continued to celebrate it. With the exhaustion of the post-Reformation
controversies in the 1680s, the rite of thanksgiving once again became
routine and unremarkable.
David Cressy, whose examination of early modern English churching
is the most thorough to date, suggests that the survival of the rite of
thanksgiving after childbirth is attributable to the ‘multiple meanings’ of
this rite, and the customs surrounding it. According to Cressy, for
Protestant controversialists, both critics and apologists for the Church
of England, the churching of women provided a locus for ‘academic,
theological and casuistical’ debate.75 The church hierarchy ‘saw the
enforcement of churching as part of the task of securing conformity to
the Book of Common Prayer … allowing the church to assert its
authority over the laity, and particularly over women’. For the minister
who officiated at the rite, churching had spiritual and disciplinary
connotations, as well as providing a supplementary source of income.
And for the woman who had recently given birth, this rite involved the
church and the community in her recovery from childbearing, and offered
her the comforts of religion.
Cressy notes that the husbands and other male participants in the
rite of thanksgiving after childbirth are absent from his deliberations. This
may be due, in part, to the limitations of his sources. It is also a consequence
of the way he has framed the question, focusing primarily on the significance of the rite of postpartum thanksgiving for women. The evidence
in the proof-of-age inquests demonstrates that the husbands and other
male relations of the women participants in the rite also had a stake in
its survival. In the seventeenth century, religious rhetoric, including the
rhetoric regarding the rite of thanksgiving after childbirth, both reflected
and contributed to an idealisation of the patriarchal family, and a concomitant identification of manhood with headship over a prosperous,
well-ordered, hierarchical household.76 What better way for a man to
assert his paternity, status and wealth than a celebration occasioned by his
wife’s safe delivery of an heir? The men’s recollections in proof-of-age
inquests suggest that the rite of thanksgiving after childbirth survived the
English Reformation because throughout the medieval and early modern
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periods this rite, and the customs surrounding it, played an important role
in the lives of women and men.
Notes
Many thanks to Kit French for introducing me to proof-of-age inquests, and to Kit and Shannon
McSheffrey for their encouragement, their careful reading of previous drafts of this paper, and
for their helpful suggestions. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
supported research for this paper.
1. See W. Coster, ‘Purity, Profanity, and Puritanism: The Churching of Women, 1500–1700’,
in Women in the Church, ed. W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 377–87;
D. Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, in Birth, Marriage,
and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 197–229; G. M. Gibson, ‘Blessing from Sun and Moon: Churching as
Women’s Theater’, in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in
Fifteenth-Century England, ed. B. A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (University of Minnesota
Press, 1996), pp. 139–54; B. R. Lee, ‘The Purification of Women After Childbirth: A Window
onto Mediaeval Perceptions of Women’, Florilegium, 14 (1995–6), pp. 43–55; P. Rushton,
‘Purification or Social Control? Ideologies of Reproduction and the Churching of
Women after Childbirth’, in The Public and the Private, ed. E. Gamarnikow and others
(Heinemann, 1983), pp. 118–31; W. von Arx, ‘The Churching of Women after Childbirth:
History and Significance’, in Liturgy and Human Passage, ed. D. Power and L. Maldonado,
trans. S. Twohig (Seabury, 1979), pp. 63–72; A. Wilson, ‘Participant or Patient? SeventeenthCentury Childbirth from the Mother’s Point of View’, in Patients and Practitioners: Lay
Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. R. Porter (Cambridge University Press,
1985), pp. 129–44; and ‘The Ceremony of Childbirth and its Interpretation’, in Women as
Mothers in Pre-Industrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren, ed. V. Fildes
(Routledge, 1990), pp. 68–107.
2. Lees (University of Minnesota Press); Cohen and Wheeler (Garland); Hadley (Longman);
Murray (Garland).
3. Murray, Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities, p. x.
4. This is discussed in more detail below.
5. I am indebted to S. S. Walker, ‘Proof of Age of Feudal Heirs in Medieval England’,
Mediaeval Studies, 35 (1973), pp. 306–23, and J. Bedell, ‘Memory and Proof of Age in
England 1272–1327’, Past and Present, 162 (1999), pp. 6–12, for the background information
on proof-of-age inquests in this section.
6. Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie qui Glanvilla vocatur, ed. G. D. G. Hall
(1965), 7:9, pp. 82–3; cited in Walker, ‘Proof of Age’, n. 7, p. 308.
7. Eighty-nine of those records are published in Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and
Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office (20 vols, 1904–95), which
covers the period from 1 Henry III (1216) to 5 Henry V (1418) inclusively, and the reign of
Henry VII (1485–1509). Hereafter cited as IPM. The proofs-of-age recorded during the
years 6 Henry V to 2 Richard III (1418–1483) have yet to be published. These are held at
the Public Record Office. Among them, seventeen references to postpartum purification
recorded between 1418 and 1445 are to be found. There is no mention of purification
among the seventy-six unpublished proofs-of-age dating between 24 Henry VI (1445/6) and
2 Richard III (1484/5), nor among the twenty-two proofs-of-age dating from the reign of
Henry VII (1486–1509) published in IPM, Second Series (3 vols, 1898–1955).
8. E.g. IPM 6/188: ‘John le Carpentir, aged 41, says the like [agrees that the heir is of age], as
appears certain to him by the statements of Christine her mother and of near neighbours,
on the day of the feast of her purification.’ See also IPM 3/429.
9. See, e.g., IPM 8/673; IPM 9/244; IPM 10/646. See Walker, ‘Proof of Age’, p. 320, for other
examples.
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10. See Bedell, ‘Memory and Proof of Age’, pp. 6–12.
11. See L. R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge
University Press, 1991), p. 190.
12. Walker, ‘Proof of Age’, p. 306.
13. For discussions of postpartum purification: in Germany, see S. C. Karant-Nunn, ‘Churching,
a Woman’s Rite’, in The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany,
Christianity and Society in the Modern World (Routledge, 1997), pp. 72–90; in France, see
P. M. Rieder, ‘Between the Pure and the Polluted: The Churching of Women in Medieval
Northern France, 1100–1500’ (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Urbana, IL, 2000); in Czech and Slovak Republics, see P. Williams, ‘Childbed Curtains
and Churching Shawls: Ritual Cloths in the Czech and Slovak Republics’, Ars Textrina, 21
(1994), pp. 65–83; in Norway and Iceland, see J. Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society
(Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 41, 80.
14. For transcriptions of the Sarum, York and Pontifical rites of postpartum purification, see
Manuale et processionale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis, ed. W. G. Henderson,
Surtees Society, vol. 63 (Andrews & Co., 1875), pp. xix, 23, 213–14.
15. A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee (1908; trans.
University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 10–11.
16. See Wilson, ‘The Ceremony of Childbirth’, pp. 70–78; and Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving
and the Churching of Women’, pp. 201–5.
17. See A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household,
Made in Diverse Reigns from King Edward III to King William and Queen Mary. Also see
Receipts in Ancient Cookery, ed. Lort, and others (Society of Antiquaries, 1790), p. 125;
Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, p. 201; Wilson, ‘Participant
or Patient?’, p. 139.
18. See Karant-Nunn, ‘Churching, a Woman’s Rite’, pp. 84–5; and Wilson, ‘Participant or
Patient?’, pp. 138–9.
19. See B. R. Lee, ‘‘‘Women ben purifyid of her childeryn”: The Purification of Women after
Childbirth in Medieval England’ (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1998), pp. 40–42.
20. Karant-Nunn, ‘Churching, a Woman’s Rite’, p. 85.
21. See Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford University Press, 1992),
pp. 98–109, 204–11; also Mary Collins, ‘Critical Ritual Studies: Examining an Intersection
of Theology and Culture’, The Bent World: Essays on Religion and Culture, ed. John R. May
(Scholars, 1981), pp. 131, 142.
22. See K. L. French, ‘Local Identity and the Late Medieval Parish: The Communities of Bath
and Wells’ (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1993), pp. 1–2. A revised version of this
thesis has been published, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval
English Diocese (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
23. IPM 6/756.
24. See IPM 13/66 and IPM 19/158. See also IPM 2/697; IPM 3/427; IPM 4/55; IPM 5/544; IPM
6/240; IPM 6/435; IPM 8/536; IPM 8/673; IPM 9/244; IPM 10/274; IPM 10/331; IPM 10/646;
IPM 16/1057; IPM 19/665.
25. See IPM 2/697; IPM 3/427; IPM 4/55; IPM 5/544; IPM 6/240; IPM 6/435; IPM 8/536; IPM
8/673; IPM 9/244; IPM 10/274; IPM 10/331; IPM 10/646; IPM 16/1057; IPM 19/665.
26. IPM 10/334; IPM 10/336; IPM 18/665.
27. IPM 18/665. See also IPM 8/536.
28. IPM 8/673; IPM 9/244; IPM 10/646.
29. S. McSheffrey, ‘Jurors, Respectable Masculinity, and Christian Morality: A Comment
on Marjorie Mcintosh’s Controlling Misbehavior’, Journal of British Studies, 37 (1998),
pp. 271–2; see also A. R. DeWindt, ‘Local Government in a Small Town: A Medieval Leet
Jury and Its Constituents’, Albion, 23 (1991), pp. 627–54.
30. Regarding the development of the procedure used in proof-of-age inquests, see Bedell,
‘Memory and Proof of Age’, pp. 4–8.
31. IPM 9/593.
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32. IPM 12/389; IPM 19/781.
33. See IPM 3/427; IPM 3/430; IPM 3/431; IPM 3/432; IPM 3/483; IPM 3/484; IPM 4/328; IPM
5/113; IPM 5/542; IPM 5/543; IPM 6/62; IPM 6/192; IPM 6/336; IPM 6/434; IPM 6/754; IPM
6/756; IPM 7/171; IPM 7/174; IPM 7/245; IPM 7/249; IPM 7/251; IPM 7/309; IPM 7/540; IPM
7/544; IPM 8/477; IPM 9/63; IPM 9/679; IPM 10/201; IPM 10/262; IPM 10/334; IPM 10/336;
IPM 12/268; IPM 12/381; IPM 12/382; IPM 13/60; IPM 13/290; IPM 14/304; IPM 14/346; IPM
16/74; IPM 18/665; IPM 19/158; IPM 19/341; IPM 19/349; IPM 19/1000; Public Record
Office (hereafter cited as PRO) C 139/31/72. The purification feasts to which they refer
date from 1276 to 1411, and took place in nineteen counties across England.
34. G. Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late
Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), p. 438.
35. IPM 7/544.
36. IPM 6/62.
37. IPM 4/328; IPM 5/113; IPM 7/251.
38. IPM 7/540; IPM 10/334; IPM 18/665. Purification feasts have also been documented in
France and Germany. In France, men also planned and participated in the feasts, see
Rieder, ‘Between the Pure and the Polluted’, pp. 203–32. In Germany, it was restricted
to the new mother and her attendants and close women relatives. See Karant-Nunn,
‘Churching, a Woman’s Rite’, p. 81.
39. IPM 14/304. See also IPM 6/336.
40. See IPM 9/592; IPM 14/346; IPM 19/158; IPM 19/349, IPM 19/780 and PRO C 139/116/38.
There are also references to the expenses incurred by such feasts. See IPM 6/336; IPM 7/90;
IPM 10/334; IPM 19/1000.
41. IPM 9/63.
42. IPM 12/382; IPM 7/249; IPM 19/158; IPM 19/349.
43. IPM 10/262. C. Shenton, ‘Four Weddings, Twelve Churchings and a Funeral: Edward III’s
Celebrations of Dynasty, 1327–1355’ (unpublished paper, International Medieval Congress,
University of Leeds, 1997), has found evidence of three tournaments held as part of the
purification celebrations of Philippa, wife of Edward III, in 1332, 1338 and 1342.
44. IPM 13/60; also 12/268. Similarly, John de Moeles (Dorset, 1326) gave the men who joined
him hunting venison for the purification feast after the birth of his heir ‘a bow for coming,
and that they might have knowledge of the birth of his said daughter’. See IPM 9/63.
45. IPM 12/382.
46. IPM 5/113.
47. IPM 12/259.
48. See S. H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages (St Martin’s, 1995), pp. 190–205;
C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33
(1994), pp. 340–80.
49. E.g. IPM 7/251; IPM 12/381; and PRO C 139/13/50.
50. IPM 6/336.
51. IPM 14/346.
52. IPM 18/665.
53. J. M. Bennett, ‘The Village Ale-Wife: Women and Brewing in Fourteenth-Century
England’, Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed. B. A. Hanawalt (Indiana University
Press, 1986), p. 24. See also A. DeWindt, ‘Peasant Power Structures in Fourteenth-Century
King’s Ripton’, Mediaeval Studies, 38 (1976), pp. 236–67.
54. IPM 4/328. Men recall not having attended purification feasts in two other records. See IPM
3/431 and IPM 3/432.
55. IPM 11/550; see also IPM 12/87; IPM 13/229; IPM 15/160. In her study of postpartum
purification in northern France, Rieder, ‘Between the Pure and the Polluted’, pp. 203, 224–5,
documents two arguments taking place at purification feasts that led to fist-fights and
murder. The source of her information regarding purification feasts is letters of remission
issued by the royal chancery in the name of the king, granting pardon from capital offences,
usually murder.
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56. For servants, see IPM 7/249; IPM 8/536; IPM 12/382; IPM 18/665. For tradesmen, see IPM
19/158; IPM 19/349. For household officers, see IPM 7/90; IPM 9/592; IPM 19/1000.
57. See IPM 7/249; IPM 19/158; IPM 19/349.
58. See Liber Regie Capelle, ed. W. Ullman (Henry Bradshaw Society, 1961), p. 73.
59. R. E. Archer, ‘“How Ladies … Who Live on Their Manors Ought to Manage Their
Households and Estates”: Women as Landholders and Administrators in the Later Middle
Ages’, in Women in Medieval English Society, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg (1992; repr. Sutton, 1997),
pp. 149–50. See also J. C. Ward, ‘The English Noblewoman and Her Family in the Later
Middle Ages’, ‘The Fragility of Her Sex’? Medieval Women in Their European Context, ed.
C. R. Meek and M. K. Simms (Four Courts, 1996), pp. 133–4.
60. IPM 7/251. See also IPM 5/542; IPM 10/331.
61. D. O. Hughes, ‘Regulating Women’s Fashion’, A History of Women, vol. 2, Silences of the
Middle Ages, ed. C. Klapisch-Zuber (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 139.
62. See IPM 7/249; IPM 19/158; IPM 19/349.
63. See 37 Edward III, chs 8–14 (1363), in The Statutes of the Realm (11 vols, Dawson of Pall
Mall, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 380–81; N. B. Harte, ‘State Control of Dress and Social Change in
Pre-Industrial England’, Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England, ed.
D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), pp. 132–65; A. Hunt,
Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (St Martin’s, 1996),
pp. 295–324.
64. See IPM 3/430; IPM 5/542; IPM 7/90; IPM 12/259; and PRO C 139/7/55; PRO C 139/13/51;
PRO C 139/13/52; PRO C 139/13/55; PRO C 139/20/48; PRO C 139/36/77; PRO C 139/61/52.
65. See IPM 5/542; and IPM 13/66.
66. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages, p. 267. See also, B. A. Hanawalt, ‘Lady
Honor Lisle’s Networks of Influence’, in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Erler
and M. Kowaleski (University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 192–4.
67. See L. A. Pollock, ‘Childbearing and Female Bonding in Early Modern England’, Social
History, 22 (1997), pp. 286–306; and L. Gowing, ‘Secret Births and Infanticide in SeventeenthCentury England’, Past and Present, 156 (1997), pp. 87–115.
68. IPM 7/251. See also IPM 5/542; IPM 10/331.
69. See Lees, Medieval Masculinites, p. xxi.
70. See J. M. Bennett, ‘Public Power and Authority in the Medieval English Countryside’, in
Women and Power in the Middle Ages, pp. 18–36.
71. L. Haas, ‘Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in the North of England, 1250–1450’ (MA thesis,
Ohio State University, 1982), pp. 65–89, provides a detailed description of medieval English
baptismal practices based upon the evidence found in proof-of-age inquests.
72. Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, pp. 205–29, traces these
debates from the 1570s to the 1680s. For a concise discussion of English non-conformist
sects and their activities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see ‘English Dissenters’,
ExLibris, 25 February 2001, <http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/puritans.html>
(24 December 2001).
73. See K. R. McPherson, ‘Great-Bellied Women: Religion and Maternity in SeventeenthCentury England’ (PhD diss., Emory University, 1998), p. 120.
74. Quoted in Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, p. 122. I am
indebted to Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, pp. 122–44,
for the information in this section.
75. See Cressy, ‘Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women’, p. 228–9. See also
McPherson, ‘Great-Bellied Women’, pp. 111–46.
76. See E. A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (Longman,
1999), pp. 65–7, 87–91; A. Shepard, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern
England c. 1580–1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000), pp. 75–106.
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