Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Dower for Life: Understanding the Dowers of England’s Medieval Queens

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts

Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

  • 254 Accesses

Abstract

Dower is a commonly used term in the discussions surrounding royal marriages and generally implies the income to be received by the future bride if she ever became a widow. However, though dower and dowry have been studied by numerous historians, royal dowers and those held by England’s medieval queens have only been analysed in limited terms. This chapter surveys the institution of queens’ lands across the later medieval period analysing key themes surrounding queenly landownership and the queens’ dower lands. Discussion surrounds the granting, holding, value, and composition of queenly dower and analysis of the queen’s position as a landowner. This chapter shall build upon a currently untouched element of medieval English queenship with a view to developing our understanding of how these married women came to occupy and fulfil such a unique position as both a queen and a landowner.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Theresa Earenfight, “Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe,” Gender and History 19, no. 1 (2007): 5.

  2. 2.

    Amalie Fößel, “The Queen’s Wealth in the Middle Ages,” Majestas 13 (2005): 25; Attila Bárány, “Medieval Queens and Queenship: A Retrospective on Income and Power,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 19 (2013): 149.

  3. 3.

    Kristen Geaman, “Queen’s Gold and Intercession: The Case of Eleanor of Aquitaine,” Medieval Feminist Forum 46, no. 2 (2010): 11; Louise Tingle, “Aurum Reginae: Queen’s Gold in Late Fourteenth-Century England,” Royal Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (2020): 77–90.

  4. 4.

    Marc Anthony Meyer, “‘The Queen’s Demesne’ in Later Anglo-Saxon England,” in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. Marc Anthony Meyer (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), 76; Lisa Benz, “Conspiracy and Alienation: Queen Margaret of France and Piers Gaveston, the King’s Favourite,” in Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060–1600, ed. Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 126.

  5. 5.

    See: Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward II: Volume 2, 1313–1317 (London: HMSO, 1894), 5; Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward II: Volume 3, 1317–1321 (London: HMSO, 1903), 116, 270.

  6. 6.

    Anne Crawford, “The Queen’s Council in the Middle Ages,” English Historical Review 116, no. 469 (2001): 1193–1194.

  7. 7.

    Janet S. Loengard, “‘Of the gift of her husband’: English Dower and its Consequences in the Year 1200,” in Women of the Medieval World, ed. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 216–218.

  8. 8.

    Loengard, “‘Of the gift of her husband’,” 224; Conor McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature and Practice (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 147.

  9. 9.

    McCarthy, Marriage, 147.

  10. 10.

    Jennifer C. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1992), 25.

  11. 11.

    CPR 1292–1301, 453–454; CPR 1317–1321, 115–116.

  12. 12.

    CPR 1292–1301, 4514–4553, 453–454.

  13. 13.

    CPR 1317–1321, 115–116.

  14. 14.

    CPR 1327–1330, 501; CPR 1330–1334, 55–56; “Henry VI: November 1422,” in The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson, Paul Brand, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry, and Rosemary Horrox, 16 vols. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/parliament-rolls-medieval/november-1422.

  15. 15.

    CPR 1381–1385, 125–126; CPR 1401–1405, 213.

  16. 16.

    CPR 1381–1385, 127; CPR 1401–1405, 213.

  17. 17.

    Hilda Johnstone, “The Queen’s Household,” in The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, ed. James F. Willard, William Alfred Morris, Joseph R. Strayer, and William Huse Dunham, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1940–1950), 1:253.

  18. 18.

    Margaret Howell, “The Resources of Eleanor of Provence as Queen Consort,” English Historical Review 102, no. 403 (1987): 380–384.

  19. 19.

    Howell, “Resources,” 372–378, 385, 387, 389–391; Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 263.

  20. 20.

    John Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 122.

  21. 21.

    Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 69, 75–76, 96, 141–143.

  22. 22.

    Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols. (London, 1767–1777), 5:118–120; CPR 1446–1452, 56; CPR 1361–1467, 430, 433–434, 445, 480–482, 525.

  23. 23.

    Michele Seah, “The Material Foundations of Queenship in Late-Medieval England, 1445–1503” (PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, Australia, 2019), 25–26.

  24. 24.

    CPR 1401–1403, 213; “Henry VI: November 1422,” PROME.

  25. 25.

    Rotuli Parliamentorum, 5:118–120.

  26. 26.

    See: CPR 1461–1467, 430; CPR 1485–1494, 75–76; “Edward IV: June 1467,” PROME, 13.

  27. 27.

    Seah, “Material Foundations,” 121–168.

  28. 28.

    Lisa Benz St. John, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 82.

  29. 29.

    See: CPR 1301–1307, 118–119; Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward I: Volume 5, 1302–1307 (London: HMSO, 1908), 276.

  30. 30.

    See: CPR 1330–1334, 439; CPR 1381–1385, 203.

  31. 31.

    Meyer, “Queen’s Demesne” 85–86, 90; Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London: Leicester University Press, 1980), 102–103.

  32. 32.

    Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 71; Heather Tanner, “Queenship: Office, Custom, or Ad Hoc? The Case of Queen Matilda III of England (1135–1152),” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 136–138.

  33. 33.

    Geaman, “Queen’s Gold,” 18–24; Tanner, “Queenship,” 136–138; Howell, “Resources,” 383–384.

  34. 34.

    Howell, “Resources,” 372, 385; Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 250; Louise Tingle, “Royal Women, Intercession, and Patronage in England, 1328–1394” (PhD thesis, Cardiff University, 2019), 138, 164, 168–169; J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: England Queenship, 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 239–240.

  35. 35.

    Elizabeth A.R. Brown, “The Political Repercussions of Family Ties in the Early Fourteenth Century: The Marriage of Edward II of England and Isabelle of France,” Speculum 63, no. 3 (1988): 578–579; Anne Curry, “Two Kingdoms, One King: The Treaty of Troyes (1420) and the Creation of the Double Monarchy of England and France,” in ‘The Contending Kingdoms’: France and England, 1420–1700, ed. Glenn Richardson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 35–41.

  36. 36.

    Anne Curry, “Richard II and the War with France,” in The Reign of Richard II, ed. Gwilym Dodd (Stroud: Tempus, 2000), 35.

  37. 37.

    Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 235.

  38. 38.

    Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 172.

  39. 39.

    Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 235.

  40. 40.

    See: CPR 1381–1385, 511; CPR 1385–1389, 338; CCR 1392–1396, 3.

  41. 41.

    Elena Woodacre, “Mapping the Lands of an Acquisitive Queen: Joan of Navarre,” paper presented at the Kings and Queens 5 Conference at Clemson, Greenville, USA, 8–9 April 2016.

  42. 42.

    Robert Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, Volume 1: 1265–1603 (London: Chancellor and Council of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1953), 140–154; Helen Castor, The King, the Crown, and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power, 1399–1461 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 38–39.

  43. 43.

    TNA SC8/116/5775; “Henry VI: November 1422,” PROME; Castor, The King, 40.

  44. 44.

    TNA C49/30/2; Seah, “Material Foundations,” 96–97.

  45. 45.

    Seah, “Material Foundations,” 84–85.

  46. 46.

    Seah, “Material Foundations,” 28–32, 86–90; Laynesmith, Last Medieval Queens, 235.

  47. 47.

    CPR 1358–1361, 237–239; CCR 1313–1318, 527, 538, 543; CCR 1318–1323, 57.

  48. 48.

    Seah, “Material Foundations,” 276–294.

  49. 49.

    CPR 1307–1313, 96, 216–217; CPR 1317–1321, 46, 131–132, 201–203; CPR 1321–1324, 40; CPR 1327–1330, 66–69; CPR 1330–1334, 161; CPR 1334–1338, 206–207; CPR 1381–1385, 192; CPR 1396–1399, 40; Calendar of the Fine Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 22 vols. (London: HMSO, 1913–1939), 4:173; “Henry VI: November 1422,” PROME; Seah, “Material Foundations,” 276–294; Woodacre, “Mapping the Lands.”

  50. 50.

    CPR 1327–1330, 66–69; CPR 1330–1334, 195, 529–530; 1343–1345, 447–448; CPR 1358–1361, 237–239; CPR 1381–1395, 125–126; CPR 1388–1392, 157; Seah, “Material Foundations,” 276–294; Lois Huneycutt, “Alianora Regina Anglorum: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Her Anglo-Norman Predecessors as Queens of England,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 126; Meyer, “Queen’s Demesne,” 113.

  51. 51.

    Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 76.

  52. 52.

    Lisa Benz, “In the Best Interest of the Queen: Isabella of France, Edward II and the Image of a Functional Relationship,” in Fourteenth Century England VIII, ed. J.S. Hamilton (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 31; Hilda Johnstone, “The Queen’s Household,” in Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber and the Small Seals, ed. T.F. Tout, 6 vols. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1920–1933), 5:269.

  53. 53.

    CPR 1292–1301, 451–453, 453–454; Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 157–197.

  54. 54.

    Ana Maria S.A. Rodrigues and Manuela Santos Silva, “Private Properties, Seignorial Tributes and Jurisdictional Rents: The Income of the Queens of Portugal in the Late Middle Ages,” in Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Theresa Earenfight (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 212.

  55. 55.

    Crawford, “Queen’s Council,” 1193–1194.

  56. 56.

    Anne Crawford, “The King’s Burden?: The Consequences of Royal Marriage in Fifteenth Century England,” in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths (Gloucester: Sutton, 1981), 41.

  57. 57.

    Michael Hicks, “Crossing Generations: Dower, Jointure and Courtesy,” in The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions ‘Post Mortem’: A Companion, ed. Michael Hicks (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012), 38.

  58. 58.

    Seah, “Material Foundations,” 81.

  59. 59.

    See: CPR 1292–1301, 451–453, 453–454; CPR 1358–1361, 237–239; CCR 1313–1318, 527; Seah, “Material Foundations,” 81–82.

  60. 60.

    Seah, “Material Foundations,” 83, 117–120; Howell, Eleanor of Provence, 263.

  61. 61.

    TNA SC1/41/85; Helen Maurer and B.M. Cron, eds., The Letters of Margaret of Anjou (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2019), 58.

  62. 62.

    Anne Crawford, ed., Letters of the Queens of England, 1066–1547 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994), 99; Maurer and Cron, Letters, 58.

  63. 63.

    Rodrigues and Santos Silva, “Private Properties,” 213.

  64. 64.

    Rodrigues and Santos Silva, “Private Properties,” 214–219.

  65. 65.

    CPR 1367–1370, 84; CPR 1391–1396, 387.

  66. 66.

    Crawford, “Queen’s Council,” 1194–1195.

  67. 67.

    Benz St. John, Queens, 89, 93–94.

  68. 68.

    Benz St. John, Queens, 91–94.

  69. 69.

    Meyer, “Queen’s Demesne,” 76, 104.

  70. 70.

    Bárány, “Medieval Queens,” 173.

  71. 71.

    Maurer and Cron, Letters, chapters 1 to 7.

  72. 72.

    Michelle Beer, “A Queenly Affinity? Catherine of Aragon’s Estates and Henry VIII’s Great Matter,” Royal Studies Journal 6, no. 2 (2019): 5–25; Benz St. John, Queens, 65.

  73. 73.

    CPR 1396–1399, 40; Laynesmith, Medieval Queens, 236.

  74. 74.

    Benz St. John, Queens, 63–65.

  75. 75.

    Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 80.

  76. 76.

    Laynesmith, Medieval Queens, 238.

  77. 77.

    See: CPR 1301–1307, 118–119; Benz St. John, Queens, 87–88.

  78. 78.

    Benz St. John, Queens, 87.

  79. 79.

    CFR 1319–1327, 300–302, 308, 335; CCR 1323–1327, 223–260; TNA E403/210, m.14.

  80. 80.

    Michael Jones, “Between France and England: Jeanne de Navarre, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of England (1368–1437),” in Between France and England: Politics, Power and Society in Late Medieval Brittany, ed. Michael Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 19–20.

  81. 81.

    William Campbell, ed., Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, 2 vols. (London, 1873–1877), 2:148; Sean Cunningham, Henry VII (London: Routledge, 2007), 54–55.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The AGC Museum, Winchester, UK

    Katia Wright

Authors
  1. Katia Wright
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Campus North Lincolnshire, England, UK

    Aidan Norrie

  2. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Carolyn Harris

  3. University of Reading, Reading, UK

    J.L. Laynesmith

  4. York, UK

    Danna R. Messer

  5. University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Elena Woodacre

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Wright, K. (2023). A Dower for Life: Understanding the Dowers of England’s Medieval Queens. In: Norrie, A., Harris, C., Laynesmith, J., Messer, D.R., Woodacre, E. (eds) Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94886-3_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94886-3_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-94885-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-94886-3

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation