England is the law by which a man
holds the lands of his wife after her
death if she has borne him a child that
cried. By some lawyers it was affirmed
that he "might be inforced to prove that
the Childe sent forth some voyce or cry
arguing life and naturall humanity; for if
it bellowed, bleated, brayed, grunted, rored,
or howled, there accrued no courtesie from
the birth of such an uncivill urchin."

As for dower, our old friend has not
much regard to that. "I could never heare
of any woman that needed buy new bootes
to ride a wooing," he says, and he
repudiates the notion that "English men were
so dainty and coye they must be inticed, or
our women so unamiable that unlesse it
were by purchase they would have no
husbandes." Then he goes on to a consideration
of what the dower is, and what seisin
is requisite in a husband, &c., until he comes
to the "endowment at the church doore
nowe a dayes seldom in use," when a man
seized in fee simple and of full age, coming
to the church door to be married, did there
"affirm, affiance, and endow his spouse of all
his lands, or of part or of half as he listed,"
which endowment held good after his
death, and enabled his widow to enter into
her dower without assignment.

The end of the first part of this old book
is very characteristic. "I have held young
maides now indeed somewhat long in the
endowments, and I would proceed to
instruct them in the dower of the new
learning jointures, I meane, for my desire
is, that they should be able to have when
they are widdowes a coach or at the least
an ambler, and some money in their purses.
But they are of the minde for themselves, I
perceive, that Themistocles was in for his
daughter, he desired a man rather without
money than money without a man; here is
a wise advice yee say; I tell you of the
Dower, of the Widdowes Estate, and God
knowes whether ye shal ever have the
grace to be widdowes or no, you would
know what belongeth to wives, or there in
a good way. I have brought you to the
church door, if ye be not shortly well
married I pray God I may."

A woman, as soon as she is married, is,
as it were, veiled, clouded, overshadowed;
and continually under the power of her
husband. Bracton terms her under the
sceptre of her husband; her new self is
her superior, her companion her master.
The mastership she has fallen into may
be called "leonina societate," and she must
take the name of her husband. "Alice
Greene becommeth Alice Musgrave; shee
that in the morning was Faireweather,
is at night perhaps Rainebow or Goodwife
Foule, Sweetheart going to church, and
Hoistbrick comming home." The rest
follows. "Justin Brooke affermeth plainly that
if a man beat an outlaw, a traitor, a Pagan,
his villein, or his wife, it is dispunishable,
because of the law common these persons
can have no action. God send gentlewomen
better sport or better companie."

However, the law took the case of the
beaten gentlewomen to heart, and it was
ordained that if a wife was threatened by
her husband to be beaten, "mischieved,"
or slain, she might sue out of chancery to
compel him to find surety of honest behaviour
towards her; and that he do her no
worse bodily damage than belonged to his
office of a husband for lawful and reasonable
correction.

"But the prerogative of the husband is
best discerned in his dominion over all
externe things in which the wife by combination
divesteth herself of proprietie
(property) in some sort, and reflects it upon
her governour; for if the man have right
and title to enter into lands, and the tenant
enfeoffe the baron and feme, the wife taketh
nothing. The very goods which a man
giveth to his wife are still his own; her
chains, her bracelets, her apparell, are all
the good man's goods. A wife, how gallant
soever she be, glistereth but in the riches
of her husband, as the morne hath no light,
but it is the sunnes. Yea, and her Phœbe
borroweth sometime her own proper light
from Phœbus."

Of one thing must a wife be careful if
she wishes to save her dower. She may
cut her husband's throat, and it is no
forfeiture of dower; neither if she refrains to
visit him when sick and wounded in a
foreign shire; but if she elopes, she forfeits
her dower. "Elopement, by the sound and
quality of the offence, might seeme to be
derived from alopex, a foxe, for it is when
a woman seekes her prey farre from home,
which is the foxe's quality." There was a
question of the dower of Anne, who,

    Frankly of her own accord,
    Left her husband and her lord,
    And to Bednall Greene she ran,
    With Mathew Rochlie, gentleman.

But whether the lady got her dower after
her misbehaviour is not clear.

And here again the old lawyer comes
out as the champion of equality, in even
stronger form than is allowed at the present
day. "Methinks," he says, "here wanteth