Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/623

 England is the law by which a man holds the lands of his wife after her death if she has borne him a child that cried. By some lawyers it was affirmed that he "might be inforced to prove that the Childe sent forth some voyce or cry arguing life and naturall humanity; for if it bellowed, bleated, brayed, grunted, rored, or howled, there accrued no courtesie from the birth of such an uucivill urchin."

As for dower, our old friend has not much regard to that. "I could never heare of any woman that needed buy new bootes to ride a wooing," he says, and he repudiates the notion that "English men were so dainty and coye they must be inticed, or our women so unamiable that unlesse it were by purchase they would have no husbandes." Then he goes on to a consideration of what the dower is, and what seisin is requisite in a husband, &c., until he comes to the "endowment at the church doore nowe a dayes seldom in use," when a man seized in fee simple and of full age, coming to the church door to be married, did there "affirm, affiance, and endow his spouse of all his lands, or of part or of half as he listed," which endowment held good after his death, and enabled his widow to enter into her dower without assignment.

The end of the first part of this old book is very characteristic. "I have held young maides now indeed somewhat long in the old endowments, and I would proceed to instruct them in the dower of the new learning jointures, I meane, for my desire is, that they should be able to have when they are widdowes a coach or at the least an ambler, and some money in their purses. But they are of the minde for themselves, I perceive, that Themistocles was in for his daughter, he desired a man rather without money than money without a man; here is a wise advice yee say; I tell you of the Dower, of the Widdowes Estate, and God knowes whether ye shal ever have the grace to be widdowes or no, you would know what belongeth to wives, or there in a good way. I have brought you to the church door, if ye be not shortly well married I pray God I may."

A woman, as soon as she is married, is, as it were, veiled, clouded, overshadowed; and continually under the power of her husband. Bracton terms her under the sceptre of her husband; her new self is her superior, her companion her master. The mastership she has fallen into may be called "leonina societate," and she must take the name of her husband. "Alice Greene becommeth Alice Musgrave; shee that in the morning was Faireweather, is at night perhaps Rainebow or Goodwife Foule, Sweetheart going to church, and Hoistbrick comming home." The rest follows. "Justin Brooke affermeth plainly that if a man beat an outlaw, a traitor, a Pagan, his villein, or his wife, it is dispunishable, because of the law common these persons can have no action. God send gentlewomen better sport or better companie."

However, the law took the case of the beaten gentlewomen to heart, and it was ordained that if a wife was threatened by her husband to be beaten, "mischieved," or slain, she might sue out of chancery to compel him to find surety of honest behaviour towards her; and that he do her no worse bodily damage than belonged to his office of a husband for lawful and reasonable correction.

"But the prerogative of the husband is best discerned in his dominion over all externe things in which the wife by combination divesteth herself of proprietie (property) in some sort, and reflects it upon her governour; for if the man have right and title to enter into lands, and the tenant enfeoffe the baron and feme, the wife taketh nothing. The very goods which a man giveth to his wife are still his own; her chains, her bracelets, her apparell, are all the good man's goods. A wife, how gallant soever she be, glistereth but in the riches of her husband, as the morne hath no light, but it is the sunnes. Yea, and her Phœbe borroweth sometime her own proper light from Phoebus."

Of one thing must a wife be careful if she wishes to save her dower. She may cut her husband's throat, and it is no forfeiture of dower; neither if she refrains to visit him when sick and wounded in a foreign shire; but if she elopes, she forfeits her dower. "Elopement, by the sound and quality of the offence, might seeme to be derived from alopex, a foxe, for it is when a woman seekes her prey farre from home, which is the foxe's quality." There was a question of the dower of Anne, who,

But whether the lady got her dower after her misbehaviour is not clear.

And here again the old lawyer comes out as the champion of equality, in even stronger form than is allowed at the present day. "Methinks," he says, "here wanteth