Chapter 2 Women, land and property

This chapter explores the relations between women, land, property and the law. The first part of the chapter outlines single, widowed and married women’s legal position as property owners, paying particular attention to the doctrines of primogeniture and coverture and their impact on women’s prop...

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Hoofdauteur: McDonagh, Briony
Formaat: Online
Taal:Engels
Gepubliceerd in: Taylor & Francis 2021
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author McDonagh, Briony
author_browse McDonagh, Briony
author_facet McDonagh, Briony
author_sort McDonagh, Briony
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description This chapter explores the relations between women, land, property and the law. The first part of the chapter outlines single, widowed and married women’s legal position as property owners, paying particular attention to the doctrines of primogeniture and coverture and their impact on women’s property rights. It explores the circumstances by which women most commonly became landowners, outlining the four main routes to landownership for women, as well as the practices by which married women were sometimes able to circumvent the restrictions of coverture. As a corollary to this, it also explores the impact of various changes to the early modern legal system – including the shift from dower to jointure arrangements, the emergence of strict settlement and the declining power of the ecclesiastical courts – on women’s property rights. The second half of the chapter sets out to assess the significance of women as a class of landowners in Georgian England, quantifying the scale of women’s landholding in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries using a large sample of data drawn from the parliamentary enclosure awards. In doing so, it responds to considerable uncertainty about the scale of women’s property ownership. Little quantitative information is available on the proportion of land owned by women, although a handful of studies have used rentals and leases to examine female landholding – as opposed to landownership – within small groups of manors. The results of the sampled enclosure awards are presented below, comparisons between this data and the earlier, smaller studies explored, and the new data used to throw light on four key issues: the legal and marital status of female landowners, the scale of individual female landowners’ holdings, the geography of female landownership and the thorny issue of change over time.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-287752025-07-21T15:58:39Z Chapter 2 Women, land and property McDonagh, Briony women land property law thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day This chapter explores the relations between women, land, property and the law. The first part of the chapter outlines single, widowed and married women’s legal position as property owners, paying particular attention to the doctrines of primogeniture and coverture and their impact on women’s property rights. It explores the circumstances by which women most commonly became landowners, outlining the four main routes to landownership for women, as well as the practices by which married women were sometimes able to circumvent the restrictions of coverture. As a corollary to this, it also explores the impact of various changes to the early modern legal system – including the shift from dower to jointure arrangements, the emergence of strict settlement and the declining power of the ecclesiastical courts – on women’s property rights. The second half of the chapter sets out to assess the significance of women as a class of landowners in Georgian England, quantifying the scale of women’s landholding in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries using a large sample of data drawn from the parliamentary enclosure awards. In doing so, it responds to considerable uncertainty about the scale of women’s property ownership. Little quantitative information is available on the proportion of land owned by women, although a handful of studies have used rentals and leases to examine female landholding – as opposed to landownership – within small groups of manors. The results of the sampled enclosure awards are presented below, comparisons between this data and the earlier, smaller studies explored, and the new data used to throw light on four key issues: the legal and marital status of female landowners, the scale of individual female landowners’ holdings, the geography of female landownership and the thorny issue of change over time. 2021-02-10T12:58:18Z 2019-10-17 13:55:51 2020-04-01T10:19:29Z 2018 chapter 1005051 OCN: 1135845203 http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25046 9781315579078 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/28775 eng Studies in Historical Geography open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg n/a n/a n/a n/a https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25046/1/9781409456025_oachapter2.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25046/1/9781409456025_oachapter2.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25046/1/9781409456025_oachapter2.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25046/1/9781409456025_oachapter2.pdf Taylor & Francis Routledge fa69b019-f4ee-4979-8d42-c6b6c476b5f0 Elite Women and the Agricultural Landscape, 1700–1830 9781315579078 Routledge 25 open access
spellingShingle women
land
property
law
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
McDonagh, Briony
Chapter 2 Women, land and property
title Chapter 2 Women, land and property
title_full Chapter 2 Women, land and property
title_fullStr Chapter 2 Women, land and property
title_full_unstemmed Chapter 2 Women, land and property
title_short Chapter 2 Women, land and property
title_sort chapter 2 women land and property
topic women
land
property
law
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
topic_facet women
land
property
law
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
url 1005051
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