Women's Legal Capacity -- Was the 13th century a turning point?

The analysis of elite women’s access to and use of power in the last 50 years has been conducted within a construct built upon 19^th- and 20^th-century models of power and governance – e.g. constitutions, office-holding, separation of powers, and bureaucracies. Embedded in these models is the dichotomy of public-private spheres and a socially constructed norm of politics as a masculine activity and preserve. Thus, elite women have been inserted into the established analyses and narratives of medieval governance from the rise of feudalism, the establishment of administrative kingship to the development of the new monarchs of the early modern period. If we are to formulate a new interpretative model of medieval rule, we need to determine what aspects of rule were gendered and which were not. Authority and power, throughout the Middle Ages, were based upon land, which had rights of law, governance, and revenue collection associated with it. Moveable wealth allowed one to build networks of friends and clients. Elite women inherited between 10-30% of northwestern European counties in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, as well as being provided with dowries. Women’s control of this property, their legal capacity, is widely held to have been sharply curtailed during the 13^th century, especially during marriage, thereby reducing their ability to exercise power. Building upon Cynthia Neville’s work, I argue that women’s legal capacity throughout their life-cycle was not as sharply curtailed as has been argued. Thus, elite women’s power remained more central to governance in the central Middle Ages.