3. Reading ravishment: gender and ‘will’ power in early Tudor Star Chamber, 1500–50*

Deborah Youngs

A woman’s ability to wage law and petition courts in early Tudor England and Wales was compromised by the gendered roles and systems she had to negotiate. Nevertheless, historians of several major courts in England, those of Chancery, parliament and Star Chamber, have seen them as offering a more conducive environment for success than the larger common-law courts.¹ Such calculations have often been based on the proportion of women listed among their litigants, yet these figures alone cannot provide the whole picture of women’s involvement in the courts, and how they fared across different types of cases. The records of Star Chamber provide an opportunity to consider more fully the female experience in court, particularly because they share with other narrative petitions the advantage of being ‘more expansive’ than common-law records.² In exploring women in Star Chamber, this chapter focuses on the suits of ravishment that came before the court in the first half of the sixteenth century. While not solely a ‘women’s issue’, ravishment largely concerned female victims and included accusations both of abduction and rape (forced coition), which may also have featured in the proceedings as seduction, adultery and elopement. The chapter considers the framing of these narratives and the language used as it examines closely how women as litigants and victims were presented in the suits. A specific focus is the consent of the alleged abductee, her ‘will’, and how that was assessed both by those directly involved and in the legal counsel advising the case. The relative lack of formality in the writing up of the proceedings and in the proofs enables Star Chamber records to provide considerable insight into the kind of fraught and furious internal family politics that have filled courtrooms across the centuries.

The sources

The chapter draws on material from the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and hence is based on research undertaken in STAC 1, STAC 2 and STAC 10.³ At this early stage in the court’s development, the council had a broad jurisdiction, and dealt with both civil and criminal cases. Its principal purpose was to investigate breaches of the peace, with suits referring to riot, assault, murder and trespass, and covering accusations relating to debt, slander, forgery, the perversion of justice or violations of royal protocol. Unfortunately, many of these records have suffered from neglect and poor archival decisions, which have led to significant losses and dispersed cases; frustratingly almost no decrees, orders or awards from the period are extant.⁴ Rarely do these suits comprise a full set of pleadings and proofs. Bills of complaint are the most common survival, although on occasion much of the case has to be reimagined from an answer or replication.⁵ Nevertheless, even in the early sixteenth century, Star Chamber has better prospects than Chancery for interrogatories and depositions to survive, which offer a greater range of viewpoints. The cases under discussion comprise all those where the abduction or rape of a woman was the main allegation levelled against a defendant.⁶ The discussion does not account for all instances of rape and abduction found in Star Chamber records: further references may be found in the background to other suits, or as one potential offence in a broader range of misdemeanours.⁷ It also cannot be known whether cases that describe women as being procured or moved to ‘commytte with hym fornycation’ were actually consensual acts (see below).⁸ For the purposes of inclusion, what matters here is whether the plaintiff or defendant perceived the action as ravishment. On this basis, just over sixty suits have been found that fall under that label. Most of these suits (forty-two) concerned the taking away of women, which may or may not include sexual activity, while a small number (five) were sexual assault cases alone and where no abduction was mentioned. Seven involved young girls and potential wards, and there are similarly fourteen cases concerning the contested custody and abduction of boys, most of whom were wards.⁹ These latter suits have been included in table 3.1 for the sake of comparison, but this chapter focuses exclusively on the forty-seven cases of female ravishment. Together they span the whole of the first half of the sixteenth century, the earliest dating to 1502 (the sole case in Henry VII’s reign) while the latest is 1546/7; it also includes two STAC 2 cases where the issues began in Henry VIII’s reign but where depositions continued into Edward VI’s reign. While it has been possible to date thirty-three of these forty-seven ravishment cases, the surviving records of Star Chamber do not consistently provide this information. Such a small and incomplete sample makes it difficult to consider any pattern in the frequency of cases, which has been tracked in other records and for earlier centuries by Seabourne and Dunn.¹⁰ What can be said is that, setting aside the single suit in Henry VII’s reign, cases gradually increased as the volume of Star Chamber proceedings expanded, and they averaged around one to two cases a year.

Table 3.1. Suits and their plaintiffs.

Sources: TNA, STAC 1, STAC 2, STAC 10

The litigants

Table 3.1 records those who brought the suits, or at least in whose name(s) the bills were composed; it should not be overlooked that plaintiffs might have been persuaded into petitioning or completely unaware of a suit pursued in their name (as a number of defendants argued).¹¹ They share the characteristics of Star Chamber litigants more generally in that they came from a broad spectrum of society, albeit with some access to resources. Landed gentry feature prominently, but suits were also generated by a yeoman, a husbandman and a shoemaker, while a few of the alleged victims were in service, such as Mary Trotter who was apprenticed to be a silkwoman. Though late medieval statutes against abduction were written with elite concerns in mind, these examples reinforce the view that suits did not come solely from the upper echelons of society.¹²

It is immediately evident that more men brought suits claiming abduction than the female victims themselves. Of the forty-seven cases in the sample, just seventeen (36%) included a female plaintiff: eight as the sole petitioner and nine alongside a male relative, usually the husband. There are also only nine cases where a woman petitioned her own abduction: eight as a single female plaintiff and one alongside her husband. In the remaining nine, women pleaded on behalf of their daughters.¹³ This is to be expected for several reasons, not least because male litigants dominated in all legal jurisdictions. A search through the records of STAC 1, STAC 2 and STAC 10 more broadly reveals approximately 735 cases that contain at least one female plaintiff, or around 14% of the surviving material.¹⁴ Similar statistics have been calculated for other jurisdictions, largely reflecting women’s legal limitations, especially if married and subject to coverture, when a woman’s legal identity was covered by her husband’s.¹⁵ More specifically relevant here is that, in common law, women could bring appeals only for their rape, not their abduction, and the legal process was gruelling.¹⁶ Late medieval statutes also gave greater motivation and opportunity for men to prosecute the abduction of their female kin. By the early sixteenth century, not only did the nearest male relatives of the abducted women have the right to sue for felony, but they could also recover any property gained by the ravisher if a subsequent marriage had been solemnized, or any other obligations a woman had consented to under duress.¹⁷ As a consequence, the majority of plaintiffs in Star Chamber were a group of fathers, stepfathers, male guardians and husbands who sought redress from the loss of power over the abductee’s body and, through it, control over inherited property and chattels.

It is a familiar pattern found across all records of abduction. Where women petitioned Chancery concerning an abduction it was mostly in relation to their children or other relatives.¹⁸ Mark Ormrod identified thirty-three cases of rape and abduction in late medieval parliamentary petitions, of which twenty-two had male petitioners. ¹⁹ Nevertheless, as in parliament, so in Star Chamber, the presence of female plaintiffs in a third of these cases is a notably higher proportion than seen elsewhere. Ormrod’s suggestion that this figure reflected parliament’s status ‘as a place of special refuge for those, including women and the poor, who claimed that the common law could not protect them’ can also be applied to Star Chamber.²⁰ During the early Tudor period it became seen as a court to which plaintiffs turned to circumvent the limitations of common law and, as a prerogative court, it was less formulaic and more flexible and could be appealed to for help when other remedies had failed.²¹

Of the female plaintiffs who saw an opportunity in Star Chamber over half were single women, a number bolstered by the cases of rape, which four petitioners sued alone. Among these plaintiffs we might have expected to see a large proportion of widows, a common occurrence in other courts and other types of cases. Dunn’s statistics show that widows were more likely than maidens to initiate their own abduction prosecutions, relying less on family members. She suggested this was because widows were more independent and, conversely, more likely to be victims of bride-theft if wealthy.²² This is not the pattern in Star Chamber, however, where only three cases were brought by widow-plaintiffs, of which two were for their own taking away. Wife-plaintiffs feature more prominently, but rarely sued for their own abduction; the sole exception is a case of attempted rape where a married woman petitioned alongside her husband. This is to be expected because a wife would not be able to sue the perpetrator if he became her husband following an abduction.²³ The marriage could be challenged, but it would require the involvement of the ecclesiastical court for it to be dissolved. As in Chancery, therefore, the majority of abduction cases pursued by wife-plaintiffs were those involving remarried women who were appealing alongside their current husbands concerning the abduction of children borne of a previous marriage.

There are nevertheless instances in Star Chamber where women forced into marriage petitioned the court against their abductor-husband, refusing to accept that they were espoused.²⁴ Margaret Kebell is the best-known example thanks to her lengthy and tenacious battle against her abduction and forced marriage in 1502 by Roger Vernon of Wirksworth. Margaret had originally appealed her abductors of felony at assizes in Derbyshire and Staffordshire and pursued three civil actions in King’s Bench and another in Common Pleas. She failed in all of them because she was married and she struggled to prove the marriage had occurred under duress.²⁵ She therefore turned to the king and his counsel, submitting a formal bill against members of the Vernon family.²⁶ Here she presented herself as a widow, using her deceased husband’s surname, and hence able to sue her own case; yet her opponents’ first line of defence was to assert she was married to Roger Vernon, not named in the bill, and therefore the suit should ‘abate’.²⁷ That the counsel continued to investigate is a good example of the flexibility in approach that married women could experience in Star Chamber.

Building a case

In petitioning Star Chamber, plaintiffs needed to attract the attention of its judges, and to have their cases seen as suitable for the court’s consideration. Much has been written on the crafting of legal petitions and how their construction was a product of the particular jurisdiction and action taken.²⁸ Accounts of abduction were partly shaped by legal, statutory requirements, which plaintiffs and their counsel needed to meet in order to indicate an offence had taken place. The most recent legislation on abduction had been issued in 3 Henry VII (1487) – the ‘Acte against taking awaye of women against theire willes’ – which reaffirmed that abduction was a felony and stipulated not only that those who took ‘any woman against her will’ were committing a crime, but so too their procurors, abettors and receivers. Like previous legislation, notably the anti-ravishment statutes of 1382 and 1453, it was more concerned with abductions for forced marriage than sexual assault more generally. Significantly, the 1487 act also had the practical effect of making kidnapping – or abduction for any reason – a felony.²⁹

The terminology used was important. One of the challenges for historians working on medieval ‘ravishment’ records has been the use in the Latin and French sources of raptus and ravissement, which were often employed interchangeably to mean both rape as sexual assault and abduction.³⁰ This is less apparent in the English-language petitions that went to Chancery, parliament and Star Chamber. They were more varied in their use of phrases and less ambiguous in their choice of verbs; they were far less likely to conflate rape and abduction.³¹ The writers of early Star Chamber bills commonly used the phrases ‘taken’, ‘led’, ‘carried’ or ‘conveyed away’, with the regular refrain of ‘against her will’ echoing closely the terminology of the 1487 act. The verb ‘to ravish’ features on far fewer occasions, but it is instructive to note the specific contexts in which it appeared: in cases where rape was alleged; where plaintiffs wished to indicate that a sexual act had occurred following the abduction (as in ‘ravished and carnally knew her’); and where wards or children under twelve had been taken, resonating with the formulation ‘ravishment of wards’.³² An example can be found in the suit of Kathryn Robert of Neath in 1529, which claimed that her assailant had ‘felonously ravished her and toke and caried her away’ and forced her to marry.³³ The bill refers to Kathryn’s failed attempt to appeal a case of rape in the town court at Neath, which suggests that ‘ravished’ had been deliberately chosen in the Star Chamber bill to indicate sexual assault alongside her abduction. The English term ‘rape’ was rarely deployed, although its presence in another Welsh case shows that it was still being used to mean abduction in the sixteenth century. While the bill of complaint in Jane Howell’s abduction suit described her as being taken away against her will, those sent to investigate the events referred to it as a rape. This included an enraged Bishop Rowland Lee, who described the incident as a ‘case of rape’, when referring to how her abductor had forcibly carried away ‘a wedowe against her will out of a churche’.³⁴ The suit itself does not suggest that a sexual assault had taken place, so the ambiguity and connotations from those who wished to see a conviction are likely to have been deliberate.

Around these phrases, narratives were constructed to indicate a person’s unwillingness to go with her abductor. Statutory law remained a determining factor, but we also see the influence of other literatures as compelling accounts were written to tug on the readers’ emotions.³⁵ There were regular motifs. In its proceedings Star Chamber’s familiar tales of riotous behaviour could be used to underline forceful acts, while in the interrogatories witnesses were asked about broken windows or doors and other kinds of destruction that signified unlawful entry or harassment.³⁶ Signs of suspicious behaviour, such as approaching a house after dark, were seized upon, as was any type of disguise. Witnesses to the supposed abduction of Maud and Dorothy Barry, for example, were questioned over the face coverings of the accused; Margaret Barley responded that one of the abductors had something over his face, either a hood or a visor, while another had a kerchief on his head.³⁷ Similarly, there was a focus on where a person was conveyed. Travelling to multiple places was suspicious behaviour and an indication that individuals were trying to cover their tracks.³⁸ The case could be made stronger if the places travelled were in marginal lands, or indeed ‘wild’ lands that were perceived as out of the way and potentially beyond the scope of local jurisdictions. Those living in English counties in the Marches of Scotland or Wales might see abductees taken across the borders.³⁹ The manner of their travelling also came under scrutiny. Being taken away on a horse was a common trope, but it made a difference whether the woman rode behind or in front of her abductor, and whether she was bound while spirited away.⁴⁰

What were not so well detailed were acts of personal violence inflicted on women. Early Star Chamber bills themselves have been read as documents rarely focusing on the suffering of women. For C. G. Bayne, writing on Star Chamber cases in Henry VII’s reign, ‘accusations of cruelty to women’ were noticeably few and far between.⁴¹ Bills can indeed be perfunctory in describing the suffering of the alleged victims, and while the situation was regularly described as riotous and violent, it often seems more to provide an explanation of why male onlookers were not able to rescue a woman rather than the threat to the woman herself. At most, interrogatories asked if the abductee had ‘cried out’ or showed some physical signs of resistance,⁴² and crying more generally features when describing those who failed to stop an abduction rather than the emotional response of the abductee. Yet it needs to be remembered that the absence of detailed violence in these bills was largely because it was superfluous to constructing the case. Such was the focus on consent in late medieval English abduction laws, that all the bill had to specify was that the taking away was with force or against her will, however that was enacted.⁴³ Where more detailed descriptions of physical violence were required, then they were recorded, and it is noticeable that these occurred in the rape cases rather than abduction claims. Isabel White’s assailant clamped his hand over her mouth while holding her down; Elizabeth Bransby, widow, of Bardney (Lincs) suffered a miscarriage in her rough handling; Agnes Typlary was thrown to the ground, causing her leg to break in the fall. When Joan Stanton accused her master, Hugh Fenne of Chigwell, of raping her in Waltham Forest she maintained he had beaten her, broken her head and left her with a limp. That the interrogatories focused on whether Joan’s smock had been covered in blood on her return from the forest reflects the legal procedures in determining a physical sexual rape.⁴⁴ The modulation in the use of violence was, therefore, that of the creators of the bills and not the supposed assailants. This means that where we do find more detailed forcefulness in abduction suits, it is worth noting. Anne Salwayn’s abduction was unusually brutal in that her attackers apparently dragged her out of the house by her leg and laid her on the back of a horse ‘lyke a sak of vyle burdeyn’, binding her with cart rope.⁴⁵ However, whether such an image was the product of overly zealous abductors or of the plaintiff’s counsel is unknown.

Jurisdiction and types of cases

In explaining why these matters should be considered by the king’s council in Star Chamber, the petitioners regularly recounted why they were unsuitable for the common law courts. This was usually expressed on the grounds of the poverty of the plaintiff; the relative wealth and powerful reach of the defendant; or the threat or exercise of violent action; reasons also regularly seen in Chancery and in parliament.⁴⁶ Similarly, many of the suits going to Star Chamber had already been considered in other courts or were still being pursued there.⁴⁷ References were made to cases heard in local town or borough courts and in county sessions, while allusions to perpetrators languishing in gaol intimate earlier actions. These often came with complaints about the ineffectiveness or misconduct of officials, and there was some stated dissatisfaction with the enforcement of remedies in the regular courts and in gaining access to them. Kathryn Robert’s bill recounted how her bid to see her rapist tried at the town court in Neath had been derailed by his supporters, and so she had followed her accused to London where she had him arrested and put in the gaol at Bread Street.⁴⁸

It would be wrong, however, to see these cases as all arising from a stated failure of the local or lower courts. Some litigants had also faced (or were still facing) each other in the Court in the Marches of Wales or in Chancery, using Star Chamber to countersue. Not surprisingly, given the centrality of marriage, fornication and adultery to many abduction cases, there were several references to the ecclesiastical courts under whose jurisdiction these issues usually fell. By recasting marital issues such as desertion and non-cohabitation as abduction, petitioners could make them fit within the purview of the secular courts.⁴⁹ There are not a large number, suggesting that Star Chamber was not inclined to encroach regularly on the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts when issues of marriage – its formation or dissolution – were under scrutiny.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, Star Chamber could still be seen as a potential mechanism to challenge their judgements. Indeed, in one instance, an accusation of abduction was levelled at the legal counsel. Robert Howard of Tilney, Norfolk, accused Edmund Bonner (the future bishop of London) of instructing his servant, John Hubberd, to abduct Howard’s wife, Margaret, and convey her to Bonner’s house in Stoke Newington, where she was kept for several weeks before marrying Hubberd.⁵¹ Bonner, by then a doctor of civil law, responded by explaining that he had been assigned the counsel for Hubberd by Wolsey’s court of audience in a suit against Margaret, and Hubberd had won his case. Hubberd and Margaret had married and were together until Robert Howard, by unlawful means, had taken possession of Margaret once again. In other words, the Star Chamber case reads as one where the couple, or at least the ex-husband, had refused to accept the legal divorce decreed by the ecclesiastical court. Bonner was clearly not happy at having his actions examined too closely by another court. While he provided an answer, he was not willing to be subjected to further questioning. When the interrogatories were put to him, he stated that he had given a response and was not bound to say anything more unless it could be shown that his answer was wrong.

These suits had also reached Star Chamber because petitioners and their counsel saw their circumstances as ones where common law or statute law could not be applied. This might be because the victims were not heiresses or women of substance; because husbands wanted to recover property and goods taken when their spouses were abducted; or because they wanted restitution of the abducted women, which was not possible under common law.⁵² They were complex and difficult cases, or at least they could be made to appear so. As might be expected, many were the result of internecine disputes over marriage formation, legitimation and dissolution. They included fathers or remarried mothers and spouses trying to get (step)daughters back or prevent their marriage; husbands trying to recover their wives; remarried mothers contesting rights of guardianship; and fathers and husbands battling over which man had married a woman first.

It is also the case that while legislators appear to have specific scenarios or events in mind when drawing up their statutes, those plaintiffs pursuing a case of ravishment in Star Chamber might do so for various reasons. Like Chancery, this was a court that dealt with a large number of petitions concerning property matters, and accusations could arise in the course of disputes or proceedings over land, with the stealing of women part of a wider quarrel or attempt at revenge.⁵³ At times, a suit was a bid to force someone to take particular actions unconnected to marriage. A case in point is that of George Habington of Suckley, Worcestershire, who accused John Blount of Bromyard and other men of breaking into his house and, with force, having ‘toke & caryed away felonyously’ his wife Elizabeth against her will.⁵⁴ Subsequent pleadings and interrogatories reveal that Blount was Elizabeth’s son and he had a case pending against her at the Court in the Marches of Wales.⁵⁵ This had resulted in letters commanding Elizabeth to appear before its commissioners in Shrewsbury. Blount claimed that it was but a series of coincidences that saw his servant present when the letters were delivered to Elizabeth, and him travelling at the same time as his mother when she made the journey towards Shrewsbury, including an overnight stay at Leominster. Once Elizabeth had delivered her answers, she had left of her own free will. While laws of abduction were not developed to cover a son frogmarching his mother to court, Habington saw it as an appropriate action with which to sue Blount.

Will and consent

Cases like Habington’s illustrate the differing ways women can appear in abduction cases; sometimes as a silent victim, sometimes as a navigator of competing family factions. Yet in its focus on a woman’s personal and real property, and through whom these might descend, we see the familiar drivers behind almost all abduction cases. An argument can be made that litigants, and the statutes to which they referred, gave little thought to the welfare of the female victim and were more concerned with the potential loss of property, or in Dunn’s words, ‘with patrimony than matrimony’.⁵⁶ As women lost control of their real and personal property on marriage, statutes appear to reflect ‘the increasing emphasis on the damage which could be caused through women, rather than the damage caused to them’.⁵⁷ This offers up a reading where male voices are dominant, and female will and consent is irrelevant.⁵⁸

This should not be taken too far, however. Historians have pointed to the emotive language used in pleas of ravishment, and political society’s ‘general revulsion of unreasonable violence towards women’. Ormrod’s reading of discussions in parliament convinced him that the Commons did not simply see the crime as a matter of property rights.⁵⁹ As mentioned above, cursory comments in Star Chamber should not be taken as a sign of indifference to the extent of harm inflicted on women and young girls; abducted women were also not simply passive units of exchange. One of the more interesting aspects of abduction cases, as Garthine Walker has clearly shown, is that they ‘often depended on the agency of the women supposedly stolen away’. It is where rape and abduction cases differ, because victims of the latter were more often described as strong-willed.⁶⁰ This was partly in response to the need to show resistance (against her will), and to avoid all suspicion of collusion. Late medieval statutes against abduction had been particularly concerned with women who consented to their own abduction; legislators had tried to ensure no benefits were conveyed by rulings that included barring dower to those women considered co-conspirators. Most of these anxieties reflected male fears of having daughters and widows stolen away, and historians have become sceptical about claims that there were widespread elopements. They argue that there were far fewer cases of collusive actions than medieval ruling classes imagined.⁶¹

Star Chamber cases suggest a broad spectrum of ‘realities’ behind abduction claims, including those we might consider consensual. Some alternative readings can be detected in the bills themselves, notably those where adultery cases seem to be masquerading as wife-abductions. Ieuan ap Hugh ap Robert of Denbigh, North Wales, accused John Holland of taking away his wife Alice, as well as goods and chattels, on 18 June 1531, yet he asked for the subpoena to be issued to both John and Alice.⁶² In other instances, answers and depositions provide different versions of the events described in the plaintiff’s bill. While it is not possible to know how many suits proceeded beyond the bill stage, and bearing in mind archival losses, there are still around thirty suits, nearly two-thirds of the total, where a response from the defendants is known. These range from brief denials and tenuous defences to robust responses that appear to offer an equally convincing narrative of events. We see scenarios where girls have run away with lovers; consensual marriages have taken place; tussles between ‘husbands’ on who married a woman first; and debates over wardship in which both sides accuse each other of ravishment. All illustrate the difficulties, then as now, of deciding whether an abduction had actually occurred.

Nonetheless, what is particularly noteworthy is how central the woman’s will was in the court’s attempt to understand what had happened. This does at times appear to move beyond the legal narratives of abduction, as relayed in the bills, to the actual, more complicated and potentially malleable issue of consent as recounted by female abductees. In these instances direct testimony was crucial and, as elsewhere in Europe, such declarations appeared to give the woman ‘a conscious and active role’.⁶³ In the Star Chamber cases these statements may have been received in direct response to interrogatories drawn up for investigating commissioners or through witness statements garnered in previous legal proceedings: for example, jurors testified that Jane Howell had declared her collusion before them at the sessions in Gloucester.⁶⁴ More frequently, where the suit turned on the legitimacy of marriage, female abductees had been questioned by church authorities as to their intentions; free consent, of course, was central to the Church’s laws on marriage. Mary Trotter was examined by the bishop of Chester, president of the Council of Wales, as to her age and her motivations.⁶⁵ Agnes Browne made her confession to Harry Mote, curate of St Margaret’s, London. Mote had stated that he would not marry Agnes and her intended, William Johnson, until they had been examined by Dr Barber, doctor of law and commissary of the abbot of Westminster in his peculiar jurisdiction.⁶⁶ Similarly, deponents in the case of Denise Bolt claimed that she had confessed contentment at her marriage during her examination before the ordinary, which was then written down under his seal.⁶⁷ The stories these women told were often emotionally driven and conformed to romantic notions of love and chivalry. The reported speech in the cases of Agnes Salwayn, Jane Howell, Agnes Browne and Jane Barrenton produced similar narratives involving secret assignations and requests to lovers for assistance. Jane Barrenton stated that she had pleaded to be taken away because she had been evilly treated by her husband’s household and made to do all the drudgery, but mainly because she could not find it in her heart to love her husband. When she left with her alleged abductor, she did so with her ‘owne volentary mynde’.⁶⁸

How one interprets these women’s confessions is challenging. What this ‘will’ or ‘volentary mynde’ meant, and what was understood as consent, is problematic. As Seabourne has pointed out, modern researchers need to be cautious in reading what a medieval lawyer or legislator saw as a consent case, commenting that there was a ‘whole spectrum between wholehearted agreement and active refusal’.⁶⁹ It should be remembered, as Margaret Kebell found in the common-law courts, that marriage in itself was seen as evidence for assent or collusion. Women may well have subsequently accepted their marriage because they had no alternatives: a decision made after the event rather than before it.⁷⁰ In addition, Delameillieure has found cases in medieval Brabant where women declared their consent despite the record stating that the abduction was against their will. She suggests that women’s consent may have been prompted by concepts of sexual purity and a desire to save their honour, and argues against the potential ‘slippage between consent and choice’, seeing the former as a ‘passive form of acquiescence’.⁷¹

These are important considerations in reading female consent, but such a focus places the sole responsibility on the will of the woman, whether she was expressing her true feelings or acting as a mouthpiece for others. Yet, as the Star Chamber evidence shows, consent was hardly a straightforward issue in the early sixteenth century. Nor was it a question only for women, but something debated and mulled over by men and by those who carried out the crime. Abduction was, after all, a felony, and high risk for all involved. How was a lover to respond when asked by a woman to be ‘rescued’? Was the often-provided chivalric narrative merely a predictable retort to justify predatory actions or hot-headed desire? Such defence statements usefully show that deliberation and perhaps reluctance on the side of an abductor could be considered mitigating factors, and some sought reassurances to this effect before taking action. One such example can be seen in the answers and depositions of those accused of assisting Peter Hering in abducting Jane Barrenton. Their defence was that Jane had desperately wanted to leave her new husband and had asked Peter Hering, a regular visitor to the house, to carry her away.⁷² Peter Hering was a young lawyer at Clifford’s Inn, and undersheriff of Hertfordshire, and therefore in an ideal position to consult with associates at Clifford’s Inn and the Temple along with two doctors at the Arches – Dr Lyell and Dr Leson – concerning the legalities of such actions. ⁷³ He was apparently told that the law would support the case if no carnal copulation had taken place – addressing questions about the legality of the marriage – and, so long as it was not against her will, he could convey her away and it would not be unlawful. He admitted, however, that he had married her hurriedly, without licence; no doubt the reason why his witnesses comprised four men from Clifford’s Inn and one from Temple. Such advice did not prevent Peter from being pursued by the law, or his associates ending up in the Fleet, but it shows he was sufficiently aware of the dangers arising from his actions.

The abductor-lover’s motivation was the prize of marriage, but what of those who supported him? As mentioned earlier, allies in an abduction had been targeted from the early fifteenth century, and the 1487 statute had pronounced that accessories were henceforth to be ‘judged as principals’.⁷⁴ Family and friends could find themselves inadvertently caught up in abduction cases for providing shelter to an offending couple. Others, like those assisting Peter Hering, may have thought they had right on their side, but that did not save them from gaol. Many of those named in abduction suits argued their innocence by presenting countersigns that their actions were in accordance with a woman’s will. We would expect deponents to have received some coaching on what to say, but they do at least show a popular understanding that asking a woman about her intentions was a useful defence. There are several examples where accessories claimed to be responding to a woman’s request as much as the man they were assisting. In the depositions of those accused of taking away Anne Salwayn, they claimed that they had been told by Stephen Miles that Anne had wanted to be fetched and she had written letters to that effect. When Anne had been led from her chamber ‘with a mery countenaunce’, one of the men had specifically asked her if she was ‘contente to go with Stephen Myllys or no’ and she had confirmed that she did for ‘why shuld I have sent for hym ells’.⁷⁵

Buoyed by the abductee’s statement, these men had carried out the abduction. Others, however, chose to step back and call on legal assistance. Again, men knew they had to make a choice in committing an abduction. A notable example comes from those accused of abducting Denise Bolt in the winter of 1512. They deposed that they had been asked by their master, Sir Robert Brandon, to bring Denise to him, whom he claimed was his ward, but to do so quietly and not to break down any doors (which would have shown unwanted entry). By stealth, they managed to enter the house unobserved and found Denise in the hall. She tried to avoid their attempts to apprehend her, but she was finally taken out into the yard. The defendants conceded that there was much ‘ado’: Denise and her friends made great lamentation; a neighbour attempted to defend Denise with a bat, while a priest held on to her; weapons were drawn. These were recognizably signs of force around which a case could be made. The accused admitted that they knew at that point she had been taken out of the house unwillingly and realized that she would not go quietly ‘but aygenste her wyll & with vyolenc’. As a result, all parties agreed to deliver Denise to the local constable. She was taken on his horse peacefully to Sir Robert’s house, alongside her mother and stepfather. In Brandon’s own deposition, he stated that he could not say whether she was taken against her will, but he pointed to the presence of the constable and her parents as mitigating evidence.⁷⁶ Brandon’s servants, therefore, had stepped back from using force and invited the law to step in.

Conclusion

Ravishment suits provide excellent examples of the kind of complex cases that found their way to Star Chamber in the early sixteenth century, and the evidence of associated issues of consent and female agency with which such suits were concerned. Their multiple viewpoints ensured that both parties had the opportunity to present convincing and conflicting narratives of an abductor’s or abductee’s intentions. Plaintiffs had either tried at other courts or felt that they had a better option in Star Chamber; this might be to expedite a matter or to prolong an already long-running dispute. The bills also demonstrate that while the listed litigants are important and tell us much about the drivers behind the suits, they alone are never the whole story. The proceedings and proofs provide insights into earlier actions and accusations that led to the suit being filed, and show the different motivations lying behind the complaints of abduction. The 1487 act allowed a broad range of possibilities in relation to women, and claims of ravishment could be deployed against anyone taking away someone’s next of kin for any reason. While for males, only dependants, largely wards, could be ravished, with female abductees age did not matter as there was never a sense that women would reach a point where they had full control over their bodies.

Nevertheless, women had choices. These are sometimes visible in their involvement as litigants, but more often in the various instances where they were accused of acting against the wishes of family or friends. Some Star Chamber suits were very likely elopements. Historians have recently downplayed the number of these cases, countering the ravishment statutes’ implications of widespread consensual abduction. Yet there is sufficient evidence from Star Chamber to show that women were not simply positioned as passive victims, or ones without a voice, and various motivations were attributed to them: the loveless marriage, a fear of a forced marriage, romantic notions, or too much housework. These were all positions from which they needed to negotiate an alternative life, to engineer a solution. A consensual abduction did not necessarily mean one entirely freely entered; a choice can be between a rock and a hard place. But there was a recognition that the will of the woman was crucial to advancing or defending an abduction suit. While it might be a subordinate consideration to family desires, a woman’s will was not immaterial. The deliberations of the men who initiated or joined an attempt to spirit women away also knew this, which adds to our knowledge of the popular understanding of the law. Some planned their movements more carefully than others and ensured compliance could be demonstrated before they acted; others may have clutched at straws afterwards. Yet the Star Chamber records, particularly the proofs, illustrate the extent to which consent mattered in late medieval and early Tudor England and Wales, and that it was an issue for both men and women alike.