It is evident that in the eye of the law women ranked on an equality with men. Narrow as was the view taken by legislators of industrial life, and absurd as many of the enactments seem now, it was reserved for modern times to set up an artificial barrier between the sexes, to push the working woman down a step, and rank her with children and “young persons.”
The sense of the community was in advance of the legal conception which merged the personality of the wife in that of the husband. The gilds took care, by special ordinances, to remedy the defects of the law. Having admitted women to the full privileges of their order, and regarding them as workers with individual rights and duties, they naturally reasoned that women should not be exempted from the responsibilities of their own acts because they were married. In the ordinances of the Worcester Gild, founded 1467, is the following:—
“Also yf eny man’s wyf becom detto^r or plegge, or by or sylle eny chaffare or vitelle, or hyn eny house by har lyf, she to answere to hym or hur that hath cause to sue, as a woman soole marchaunt; and that an acion of dette be mayntend agenst hur, to be conceyved aftr the custom of the seid lite, wtout nemyng her husband in the seid accyon.”[9]
It has been pointed out that under the gild system women were employed to a much smaller extent in manufactures than under the domestic system which followed.[10] An ordinance of the fullers of Lincoln places a restriction on the indiscriminate employment of women, and limits it to the wives and servants of the masters. Whatever their position in the lower branches of trade, they had full access to the higher departments. They had governing power and the privileges which belong to members of corporate bodies. The changes that followed on the break-up of the gilds tended to throw women into the rank and file of workers and to exclude them from the more responsible posts.
The principle of equality is everywhere apparent in the ordinances relating to labour. In the reign of Edward IV. an ordinance was made in the borough of Wells, that apprentices of both sexes to burgesses would become burgesses themselves when their term of service was accomplished. No distinction was made between male and female. Statutes relating to apprentices in London and elsewhere apply equally to both girls and boys. It was taken as a matter of course that a parent might wish to apprentice his daughter just as much as his son. The proclamation in 1271, relating to the woollen industry, expressly permitted “all workers of woollen cloths, male and female, as well of Flanders as of other lands,” to come to England to follow their craft. Sometimes, indeed, the women appear to have enjoyed an advantage, as in the statute of 1363 which ordered that “handicraftsmen should use but one mystery,” while workwomen were free to work in their accustomed way. In later times a theory grew up that women were competitors, not co-workers, with men. There are numbers of people who on this ground would hinder women from engaging in commercial pursuits and earning their own livelihood. They argue that it is better for women to be dependent upon their male relatives than to make their own way in the world. That women should seek to achieve economic independence was, until recently, quite against the general sentiment. But the force of circumstances has proved stronger than theories: a surplus female population and changes in social life have upset the notion that women were created solely for family life, and that they were to be the spenders, not the providers.
CHAPTER V.
THE MEDIÆVAL NUN.
Dominance of the Church in the Middle Ages—The Conventual System—Occupations of the Nuns—Power of the Abbesses—Disputes between Religious Houses and the Laity—Latitude allowed to Nuns—Convents Educational Centres—Effects of the Suppression of Convents—Complaints of the Laity.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Church was the dominant power in England. It may seem absurd to characterize a period extending over several centuries by any one feature, but the supremacy of the Church is so marked as to stamp the whole of that changeful time. The relationship of the Church to the laity was that of guardian and ruler, in temporal as well as spiritual matters. Where the Church did not inspire reverence it inspired fear, and where there was not willing obedience there was dependence.