Women’s Wills From Anglo-Saxon Times To Post War Feminists
Since ancient times, wills and inheritance have a long, recorded history and Britain is no different. A history of a thousand years of the wills of women offer a rare but rich glimpse into their often otherwise secluded and unreported lives. Women’s lives and women’s voices are hard to discover in British history books. Until modern times the statesmen and leaders of the nation, soldiers and generals, sailors and admirals, judges, politicians and ambassadors were almost always male. The same is true for those owning the largest estates, stately homes and aristocratic titles, though these often involved a good marriage to a wealthy heiress, but this implied her inheritance was passed by marriage on to other families.
An Anglo-Saxon King and his witan – women were often excluded in history (Public Domain)
Through their wills the lost voices of women allocating their personal belongings speak up and their wills introduce the recipients of these bequests. Books and a filigree brooch, property and gold, armbands and wild horses, a red tent, household items such as bed curtains, bedding and a holy veil, all of these are mentioned in the wills of Anglo-Saxon women. Recipients including family and friends and loyal servants, the church, priests and even slaves to be manumitted upon the death of the lady, may feature in a Saxon will. Some bequests were extremely valuable, such as farmsteads and estates and livestock as in the year 990 when a wealthy woman Aethelgifu left 20 sheep to the church in Ashwell, Hertfordshire.
