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‘I ask you to get some crossbows and windlasses to fire them with, together with quarrels… two or three short poleaxes… and as many [protective] quilted jackets as you can.’ This letter, written in 1448, might sound like the request of a military commander, but in fact it was composed by Margaret Paston, a young wife and mother based in rural Norfolk. Her husband was away in London, and she was in dire straits. A local lord had besieged the Pastons’ manor house at Gresham, and in her husband’s absence Margaret was marshalling the defence of their property. Even in these trying times, however, she was still juggling domestic responsibilities, closing her letter with a rather more conventional shopping list, asking for a pound each of almonds and sugar, and cloth to make gowns for their children and a hood for herself.
This vivid account is preserved in the Paston Letters, a remarkable collection of correspondence relating to a family of socially ambitious landowners stemming from a village of the same name 20 miles north of Norwich. Around 1,000 personal missives survive, spanning 1422-1509 and containing not only instructions for the management of their estates, but also a wealth of personal details worthy of medieval soap opera. Together with snippets of family news, gossip, and advice, we find records of rivalries and estrangements, illicit love affairs and match-making attempts, and a wealth of other intimate insights into the minutiae of daily life that seldom survive across the centuries.
What makes these letters especially valuable, however, is that the Paston women seem to have been particularly prolific correspondents (over 100 letters survive for Margaret alone), opening a unique window on female experiences, opinions, and aspirations from this period. Medieval histories have traditionally been dominated by kings, male church authorities, and military leaders, whose deeds are more likely to have been set down for posterity. Recent decades of scholarship have done much to rebalance this picture, but stubborn stereotypes persist of medieval women leading marginal (and marginalised) lives, with little power to steer their own destiny or leave any lasting mark on the world around them. As an exhibition currently running at the British Library attests, however, there is a rich repository of women’s stories – side-lined, not silenced – to be found in the archives, and of course archaeological evidence adds to this picture.
Spanning AD 1100-1500, and covering Britain, continental Europe, and the world of the Crusades, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words draws together over 140 manuscripts and artefacts from the British Library’s collections and external loans. Through these sources, we can appreciate that, while female opportunities were undeniably constrained by cultural expectations of the time, many were still able – and eager – to advocate for their rights; to strive for scholarly, creative, or commercial success; and to influence those around them, both within and beyond their households. Some defied medieval mores to lead armies, others undertook intrepid journeys abroad, and still more were content to devote their lives to their family or their faith. Their interests were as individual as the women themselves, as we will explore here, focusing primarily on English and Welsh material from the displays (see ‘Further information’ below for more details of the wider exhibition and its accompanying book).
Home: Where the heart is?
Unless they intended to become a nun (of which, more later), medieval women were expected to find a husband. Love matches did exist – particularly lower down the social scale where less was at stake – but many matches were pragmatic arranged affairs, intended to secure financial or political alliances, or simply to unite two families. Within the exhibition, a document written in Hebrew agrees the terms of a betrothal between Judith and Aaron (both children; the marriage was planned for four years later) in Lincoln’s 13th-century Jewish community, while the Paston Letters also include a note from a family friend discussing potential suitors for John’s sister.
For those who defied parental wishes, the consequences could be severe. Another letter on display reveals that Margaret and John’s daughter Margery fell in love with their estate manager – a prospect that the upwardly mobile Pastons did not welcome – and when the star-crossed pair wed in secret, Margery was cast out. In a later letter written to her eldest son John II, Margaret coldly condemns her daughter as a ‘brethel’, or worthless person – yet men who engaged in illicit affairs do not appear to have been held to the same standards. When John II himself strayed outside his parents’ plans, fathering an illegitimate daughter with a woman called Constance Reynforth, he was not shunned like his sister. Instead, the baby (but not her mother, whose fate is unknown) was taken in by the Pastons, and the long roll of parchment that preserves the details of Margaret’s will, displayed close to the letters described above, includes a bequest to her.
Even when a match was desired by all parties, matters could still be fraught. Affection shines through the letters exchanged by John Paston III (Margaret’s second son) and his sweetheart Margery Brews; their notes even include what is thought to be the oldest surviving Valentine’s Day message in English. Writing in 1477, Margery addresses John III as her ‘right well-beloved Valentine’, asserting that ‘my heart commands me to love you truly above all earthly things for evermore.’ Yet other letters express anxiety about the ongoing negotiations between their parents (the proposed dowry was a particular sticking point), and it appears that the match almost fell through – until Margery’s mother intervened, after which marriage swiftly followed.
Protection in pregnancy
A woman’s ability to bear children was a key facet of her social value – heirs were, after all, vital to keeping lands, property, and titles within a family, and, at the highest levels, ensuring royal succession and political stability – but childbirth itself brought with it very real dangers. It therefore comes as no surprise that many pregnant women sought reassurance from a range of protective items, which may have included a 15th-century gold ring – loaned to the exhibition by the British Museum – depicting St Margaret of Antioch. St Margaret’s legend describes her escaping unharmed from the belly of a dragon, for which reason she was revered as the patron saint of pregnancy and childbirth, and her likeness cherished as a talisman for expectant mothers.
Broadly contemporary with the ring and displayed nearby, a 15th-century book contains a Latin Life of the same saint, concluding with a prayer for safe birth and an image of a successful delivery: baby safely swaddled, smiling mother sitting up to welcome the new arrival. Poignantly, this picture has become smudged, possibly from repeated devotional kissing by women hoping for similarly happy outcome.
A third 15th-century artefact associated with childbirth is a visually striking strip of parchment measuring over 1m long but less than 10cm wide. Colourfully covered with various prayers and protective images, it is a birthing girdle, one of only nine surviving from medieval England. ‘If a woman be travailing of child [in labour], lay this or set this on her,’ one section of text advises, promising protection from a dizzying range of threats. Elsewhere on the girdle, a large, red, diamond-shaped illustration represents the spear wound inflicted in Christ’s side; its centre is visibly worn, with bare parchment showing through the pigment. Perhaps, like the Life of St Margaret described above, it had been anxiously stroked or kissed by the women it was intended to protect, giving tangible form to timelessly relatable emotions.
Women’s work
For a medieval wife and mother, the home would have formed a key focus of her life. There she performed chores and practised private religious devotion, educated children, and managed her household. If, like Margaret Paston’s, that household encompassed multiple estates, buildings, and staff to maintain, this last task could be a job in itself, akin to running a small company – but less well-off women were often expected to balance domestic duties with some form of paid work. Weaving, small-batch brewing, and milling were all common sources of income, while agricultural labour was another key way for rurally based women to support their families.
A particularly characterful depiction of this last option can be found in the Luttrell Psalter, an elaborately illustrated manuscript created for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (d. 1345), Lord of Irnham in Lincolnshire. At the bottom of one page, three women are shown reaping with short sickles. Two are busily engaged in their work, while the third rises from stooping to stretch her aching back. Behind this trio, a man gathers the severed stalks to bind them. If men and women did work side-by-side in the field, however, they were not always treated the same by their employer. Another medieval document displayed nearby is a farmer’s roll listing payments for the 27 men and 16 women who were hired to bring in the harvest at Stebbing, Essex, in 1483-1484. Even a quick glance at its figures reveals that talk of a gender pay gap is nothing new: the male labourers were receiving four pence per day, and their female peers only three.We do know of some women who were able to push for better pay, however: the exhibition includes a petition from Joan Astley, chief wet nurse to the infant Henry VI. In 1424, she asked for her annual salary to be doubled from 20 to 40 pounds, and this request was granted.
Many other women would have worked in what were essentially family businesses, practising a trade alongside their husband or relatives. In the displays we encounter Pola of Rome, a professional Hebrew scribe within a whole family of scholars in 13th-century Italy; and Jeanne de Montbaston, who produced vividly illuminated manuscripts in a workshop that she ran with her husband in 14th-century Paris. In the exhibition’s accompanying book we learn, too, of Katherine la surgiene, whose father and brothers were also listed as surgeons in 13th-century London. Although only men could receive a university education or be licensed as physicians in medieval England, women did work as medical practitioners, from folk healers, combining medicine with what we might call magic, to midwives and monastic infirmaresses, while other individuals are recorded carrying out bloodletting, cupping (using heated glasses believed to draw out toxins from the skin), and even skilled surgical tasks. Among the displays, we also find Joan du Lee petitioning Henry IV for paperwork to enable her to practise ‘fisik’ in 1403.
Notably, Joan was a widow – a status that may have empowered her to travel and work independently. Under English common law, married women were not permitted to trade under their own name, and it is interesting to see how many women in family businesses chose to run them alone after their husband’s death rather than remarrying. These include Alice Claver, who was married to a wealthy cloth merchant and continued their silk business through 30 years of widowhood, supplying elite clients including Edward IV. We also find Licoricia of Winchester (d. 1277), a widowed moneylender who rose to become one of the wealthiest Jewish women in medieval England, and one of Henry III’s chief financiers.
A particularly influential figure among these independent individuals was Christine de Pizan (d. 1431), who lived in France and is hailed as Europe’s first professional female author. Christine began writing to support her family after her husband died, and her works were popular across medieval Europe (including in England; a London-made manuscript of her Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry is on display). She has a strikingly modern style, unafraid to criticise her male peers for misogynistic themes in their writing, and her most famous work, The Book of the City of Ladies, is an allegorical celebration of female achievement.
While Christine is the first European woman known to have made a living from writing, many others commissioned and composed texts to express their personalities, interests, and deepest desires. These include Marie de France who, despite her name, is thought to have been based in late 12th-century England, composing fables and short romance stories. Rather more daring fare, meanwhile, is attributed to Gwerful Mechain (d. 1502), a Welsh woman who composed joyfully candid poetry celebrating the female form and unashamed enjoyment of sexuality. In the example cited in the exhibition, Gwerful pokes fun at men who write poetry praising all aspects of a woman’s body apart from one – and redresses this imbalance with her own ode to that pleasure-giving part.
Over in late 15th-century Ceredigion, the abbess of a small Cistercian nunnery at Llanllyˆr is a particularly appealing example of a woman putting poetry to persuasive use. Annes wanted a pet monkey (an animal associated with high-ranking laywomen, though less commonly with nuns), so much so that she commissioned a bard to write a poem about her wish and perform it in front of an influential knight in the hope that he would get one for her.
While some women evidently found empowerment in employment, though, others experienced only exploitation. Slavery was not legally recognised in later medieval England, but we know that enslaved individuals lived within these shores, often brought here by ‘owners’ from Spain or Italy. Their stories seldom survive, but we know the name of Maria Moriana thanks to her determination to defend herself. Given her surname (which derives from ‘Moor’), Maria was probably a woman of colour, perhaps from Islamic Iberia or North Africa. She had served a Genoese merchant, based in Southampton, for 20 years, but he then attempted to sell her to another man in London. Maria appealed to the Court of Chancery, and its records for 1486-1493 include her eloquent account, recorded by court clerks to whom she referred to herself as ‘your oratrice’.
Precarious power
So far, we have focused mainly on women of common birth, but if we are exploring female influence, the most potent symbol of feminine power is the queen regnant, holding her position by right of birth rather than by marriage. The exhibition cites 20 such figures ruling in Europe between 1100 and 1600, as well as Melisende, who governed the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem in 1131-1143, and Shajar al-Durr (d. 1257), who rose from slavery to become the first reigning Sultana of Egypt and Syria. In England, however, the mere suggestion of a female successor to Henry I was enough to spark civil war. Following Henry’s death in 1135, his nephew Stephen seized the crown for himself – and after Henry’s intended heir, his daughter Matilda, led an invasion in defence of her own claim, bloody battles continued to rage for over a decade. Matilda never did gain the throne (though her son succeeded Stephen as Henry II), but a document bearing her seal demonstrates how she asserted her royal status. Issued in 1141-1142, the charter from Bordesley Abbey in Devizes, Wiltshire, names Matilda as ‘Empress, daughter of King Henry, and lady of the English’, while its large wax seal depicts her regally enthroned with crown and sceptre.
Medieval queens were more commonly queens consort – wives of kings – and, although they were officially the junior partner in their marriage, they could still wield considerable influence at home and further afield, as religious and cultural patrons, diplomats, and regents acting during their husband’s campaigns abroad. Their marriages were often arranged to strengthen alliances or secure peace between warring nations, and were celebrated with great pomp and ceremony. When Margaret of Anjou married Henry VI in 1445, she was brought to England in splendid style. According to royal account books, she was even accompanied by a lion, which was to join the royal menagerie at the Tower of London. During excavation of the Tower’s moat in the 1930s, the skull of a Barbary lion was found, and later radiocarbon dated to 1420-1480. Now held by the Natural History Museum, which has loaned the skull to the exhibition, could this represent the remains of Margaret’s lion?
However prestigious their position, queens consort depended on the stability of their husbands – and, when Henry VI became incapacitated through mental illness, Margaret found herself leading the Lancastrian side during the Wars of the Roses, raising funds and forces and directing troops as she strove to secure the throne for her young son. In the exhibition, this is represented by the Fishpool Hoard (a British Museum loan), which was found in Nottinghamshire and represents Britain’s largest hoard of medieval gold coins. Many of its 1,237 coins are newly minted from locations in Scotland, France, and Burgundy – all Lancastrian allies whose courts Margaret is known to have visited in 1461-1463 while drumming up support for her cause.
Queens were reliant, too, on the good will of their husbands. The monumental stone crosses raised by a grieving Edward I to mark Eleanor of Castile’s final journey after her death in 1290 show how strategic royal matches could grow into genuine affection – but the story of Isabella of France highlights the danger of alienating a royal spouse. She was initially a loyal wife to Edward II, but after the king demeaned her position and displaced her with his unpopular favourites, the Despensers, Isabella rebelled. During a diplomatic mission to France, she allied with the exiled nobleman Roger Mortimer, and in 1326 led an invasion that saw Edward deposed in favour of his and Isabella’s son, Edward III. Isabella was condemned for her ‘unwomanly’ acts, however: the displays include satirical badges depicting the queen threatening her son with a stick and steering a boat with a phallic prow.
Ordinary women, too, could express political discontent. Thirty female names appear in a list of royal pardons for the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, and one woman has a starring role in an account of when the Revolt reached Cambridge. While rioters burned university documents in the marketplace, Margaret Starre scatters ashes into the air with a defiant cry: ‘Away with the learning of clerks!’
Get thee to a nunnery
Other than marriage, the other main path that was socially approved for medieval women led to holy orders. In the period covered by the exhibition, women more commonly became nuns voluntarily in adulthood, rather than being dedicated to a religious life by their parents. This decision no doubt reflected sincerely held beliefs, but it must have also presented a tempting escape from domestic expectations and the attendant risks of childbirth. While many nuns experienced austere, enclosed lives, they could enjoy educational opportunities that were denied to many of their secular sisters, as well as the freedom to devote themselves entirely to their religious and creative interests in a community of like-minded women. Artistic activities were actively encouraged: the Benedictine principle of ora et labora – ‘prayer and work’ – saw the production of religious texts and images as a form of worship in its own right, and elaborate examples in the exhibition attest to convent communities writing and commissioning devotional works, creating and colouring woodcuts of sacred scenes, composing music, and embroidering altar cloths. An enormous example of this last kind of object represents the only piece of medieval English embroidery where the name of the maker is known. The 14th-century frontal band is skilfully fashioned from silk and silver-gilt thread, and its creator has used more thread to proudly declare: ‘Lady Joan of Beverley, a nun, made me’.
While many religious women found fulfilment in female fellowship, others took a more individual approach to their faith. Anchoresses were religious recluses who lived permanently shut in a cell adjacent to a church (male equivalents, called anchorites, also existed, but female uptake outnumbered them five to two). This may seem an extreme choice – a 15th-century book on display, advising bishops on the proper rites for enclosing an anchoress, includes funerary prayers and hymns in the proceedings – but such individuals were not entirely cut off. They could employ servants to bring food and remove waste; receive visitors; and, according to the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse or ‘Anchoresses’ Guide’, keep a cat.
The remains of one possible anchoress were uncovered during On-Site Archaeology’s excavation of the ruins of All Saints Church, Fishergate in York (see CA 245 and 397). Within the apse, they found the crouched burial of a woman who suffered from very poor health. Given her grave’s prestigious location, she was interpreted as possibly Lady Isabel German, an anchoress known to have lived at the church in 1428-1455.
Other anchoresses are known to us through their writings, which highlight another way in which women could steer theological thinking: religious visions. Mystics could exert enormous influence – but only if their visions were validated by male church authorities. In the exhibition, a letter dictated and signed by Joan of Arc in 1429 serves as a reminder not only of how women could defy gendered expectations (she writes to request gunpowder and military equipment ahead of a planned siege) but of the tragic fate that could befall those whose visions were rejected as heretical.
The visions of Julian of Norwich (d. 1416) were believed by many to be divinely inspired. They began after Julian suffered a near-fatal illness in 1373; soon afterwards she became an anchoress and, from her cell, composed two versions of her Revelations of Divine Love, the first work in English definitely written by a woman. Other celebrated medieval mystics included Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373), and Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), and another English visionary was Margery Kempe from 15th-century King’s Lynn.
An illiterate miller and brewer, Margery dictated her life story to create the earliest autobiography in the English language. From this, we learn that she had 14 children, but traumatic experiences during pregnancy and labour triggered what we might today call post-partum psychosis. This crisis culminated in multiple visions of Christ, after which Margery took a vow of chastity and travelled widely on pilgrimages. For a long time, The Book of Margery Kempe was known only from two early 16th-century printed versions containing extracts that presented Margery as a pious anchoress and erased her distinctive voice. The truth was only revealed when a manuscript of the full text, dating to 1445-1450, was rediscovered in 1934.
Many of the mystics mentioned above held political sway through their letter-writing as well, and on a smaller scale abbesses and prioresses had authority within their communities, running estates and commissioning building projects. Some evidently also won the affection of their nuns and the wider religious community. The exhibition ends with the mortuary roll of an Essex prioress called Lucy of Hedingham. Such commemorative scrolls were circulated so other religious houses could add their own words, and Lucy’s roll, created between 1225 and 1230, is over 6m long, using ten sheets of parchment. After her successor’s opening text, which expresses the intense grief of her bereaved nuns, some 122 religious communities have added thoughts, prayers, and even poetry. While many women’s stories still wait to be rediscovered in historical records, it is clear that, to those who knew them, they were unforgettable.
Further information:
• Medieval Women: In Their Own Words is at the British Library in London until 2 March 2025. For more details, see http://www.bl.uk/whats-on/medieval-women
• Eleanor Jackson and Julian Harrison (eds), Medieval Women: voices and visions (British Library Publishing, £30, ISBN 978-0712355902).
All images: © British Library Board, unless otherwise stated
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