“The office of Champion at the last coronation was in a woman, who applied in that case to make a deputy.” (See “Olive versus Ingram,” 1739, and Co. Litt, 107.)
They could be Governors of Royal Castles.—Isabella de Fortibus held the Borough and Camp of Plympton, and governed the Isle of Wight. In 8 and 9 Edward II. there was a settlement of Hugo de Courtenay’s petition to succeed to his kinswoman Isabella de Fortibus in governance of the Isle of Wight, etc. Isabella de Vesci held the Castles of Bamborough and Scarborough.
Nicholaa de la Haye held Lincoln for the King. “And after the war it befell that the Lord the King (John) came to Lincoln, and the Lady Nicholaa came forth from the western gate of the castle, carrying the keys of the castle in her hand, and met the said Lord King John and offered him the keys as Lord; and said she was a woman of great age, and had endured many labours and anxieties in that castle, and she could bear no more. And the Lord the King returned them to her sweetly, and said. Bear them, if you please, yet awhile.” This story appears in that Royal Commission of Inquiry into the condition of the country named the “Rotuli Hundredorum.” The King was desirous to persuade so steadfast an adherent to continue to hold “in time of peace and in time of war” what, in those disturbed days, was one of the most important fortresses of the kingdom. For Nicholaa de la Haye and Gerard de Camville her husband had stood by King John in all his troubles; their attachment to him before he was King had brought suspicions and confiscations upon them. Gerard had to pay a heavy sum to Richard I. to be repossessed of his own estate, while Nicholaa paid the King three hundred marks for leave to marry her daughter to whom she would, provided it was not to an enemy of the King. After the death of Richard, Gerard de Camville was reinstated as Governor of Lincoln Castle, during the remainder of his life, and at his death John transferred the appointment to his wife, “a lady eminent in those days,” says Dugdale. She continued at her post, and the King also appointed her Sheriff of Lincoln. In 1217 the partisans of Louis the Dauphin laid siege to Lincoln. Though the town sided with the besiegers, though 600 knights and 20,000 foot soldiers came to reinforce them, Nicholaa continued her defence of the castle till the Earl of Pembroke arrived with an army to her relief. In the next year she was again appointed Sheriff of Lincoln by Henry III. But this closed her public career, and she died in peace at Swaynston in 1229. (“Sketches from the Past,” Women’s Suffrage Journal, March, 1888.)
“Several Charters in one of the Duchy of Lancaster’s Cowcher Books, prove that the Constableship of Lincolnshire, the Wardenship of Lincoln Castle, and the Barony of Eye or Haia, always went together. They belonged successively to Robert de Haia, Richard de Haia, and Nicholaa de Haia, who became the wife of Gerarde de Camville.” (Selby’s “Genealogist,” 1889, p. 170.)
They could also be appointed to various Offices.—As Nicholaa de la Haye was made Sheriff, so was the wise and renowned Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, made Justice of the Peace in the reign of Henry VII.; and the Lady of Berkeley under Queen Mary held the same office. Lady Russell had been appointed Custodian of Donnington Castle for her life, at a Salary of one pound and twopence halfpenny a day, but for Contempt of her Overlord, she was tried in the Star Chamber, Mich., 4 James I. (See “Moore’s Law-Cases.”)
They could act as Femes Soles when married, or as Partners.—The Countess Lucy [[ii].] was one of the few Saxon heiresses that carried her property down into Norman times. She had three Norman husbands, Ivo de Tailleboys, Earl of Anjou, Roger Fitzgerald de Romar, and Ranulph, Earl of Chester. Among the various Charters to the Monastery of Spalding are two, granting and confirming the grant of the Manor of Spalding to the Monks there. The exact words of the second Charter are these, “I, Lucy Countess of Chester, give and grant to the Church and Monks of St. Nicholas of Spallingis with Soc and Sac, and Thol and Them, with all its Customs, and with the liberties with which I best and most freely held in the time of Ivo Tailleboys and Roger Fitzgerald and the Earl Ranulph my Lords in almoign of my soul, for the Redemption of the soul of my father and of my mother, and of my Lords and relatives,” etc. “Inspeximus by Oliver Bishop of London 1284.” (Selby’s “Genealogist,” p. 70, 71.) In the lives of the Berkeleys, from the Berkeley MSS., 1883, published for the Bristol and Gloucester Archæological Society, some interesting particulars are given of the Lady Joane, daughter of Earl Ferrars and Derby, and wife of Lord Thomas of Berkeley, second of the name. “It appears by divers deeds that in the xxvith yeare of Edward the first, as in other yeares, this lady by hir deeds contracted with Richard de Wike and others as if she had been a feme sole; and for her seale constantly used the picture of herself holding in her right hand the escutcheon of her husband’s arms, the chevron without the crosses; and in her left hand the escutcheon of her father’s family, circumscribed Sigilla Johannæ de Berklai,” vol i., p. 206.
Elizabeth, Lady of Clare, had buried three husbands, and had retained her maiden name through their time as holding the honour and the Castle of Clare,[[2]] which she inherited on the death of her brother, the last Earl of Gloucester and Hereford, at Bannockburn. Her daughter, Elizabeth de Burgh, married her cousin Lionel, third son of Edward III., in whom the Earldom of Clare became the Dukedom of Clarence.
[2]. The petition of her “humble Chapeleyns Priour et chanoyns de sa priourie de Walsingham,” that she would not allow the Franciscan friars to settle in their neighbourhood, is communicated by the Rev. James Lee-Warner of Norwich to the Archæological Journal, vol. xxvi., p. 167 (1869). One reason they bring forward is that if the intruders were to propose an indemnity, it could only be “par serment, ou par gages, ou par plegges,” and that such security is of no avail, as the claims of the apostolic See are beyond computation.
In the Act of Resumption of 1 Henry VII., the King excludes the lands of his wife, his mother, Cecile, Duchess of York, and others. And in the Act of Restitution of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, “she was to hold her lands as any other sole person, not wife, may do,” though she was married at the time to the Earl of Derby.
Had the Cure of Churches.—The Abbesses of certain convents inherited the right of dominating the religious succession in some churches (see “Dyer on Grendon’s Case”), “divers churches were appropriated to prioresses and nunneries, whereof women were the governesses” (Callis, 250). In Colt and Glover v. Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield about a presentation to a church, the evidence shews that many women before the Reformation had the Cure of Churches; that an Archbishop could not legally appropriate a benefice with the Cure to a nunnery between 25 H. 8., and the dissolution of monasteries, though the Pope did.