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Labour the basis of Property 165

The Unrecorded Increment of 166 Women's Labour

The Duality of Humanity 176

The Woman God's Fellow-worker 178

Eldest Daughters 180

The Countess Lucy 180

Women's Service 180

Women's Guilds 181

Free Kent 181

The Learned Selden 181

Sir Edward Coke 181

Judge or Jury 182

Physical Force Argument 182

Women and the Universities 182

PREFACE

They were, as might have been expected, both rejected. I was told that, though they formed valuable contributions to Constitutional History, the Committee felt they would certainly lead to political discussion, which must not be risked. At a public meeting in Aberdeen the same week, I gave a resum? of my arguments, and the materials then collected I have frequently used since in Drawing-room Addresses, and in private conversation; in public papers, and in friendly correspondence. So many have been surprised at the facts, and interested in the results, that, at the present crisis, I thought it advisable to spend another six months in careful verification of details, and in grouping apparently disconnected data, so that their full import might be seen at a glance. My first authorities were Sydney Smith's "Enfranchisement of Woman the Law of the Land" , and Mr. Chisholm Anstey's Book and Papers on "The Representation of the People's Acts" .

Thence I went through the materials of Constitutional History, the Statutes, Rolls of Parliament, State Papers, Parliamentary Writs, Journals of the House of Commons, Reports of Cases, Works on Law, History, and Archaeology, both printed and manuscript.

Just as my paper was complete enough for the purpose in hand, M. Ostrogorski's book upon "Women's Rights" appeared. But he had considered the question in regard to all women, I, only in regard to British Freewomen. He was the more general, I the more special, and I had noted several points which had escaped him in regard to the prime question of the day.

She generously placed her notebooks at my disposal, whence I have gleaned many interesting facts in support of my own. Therefore this little book may be taken as her voice as well as mine. The points I specially wish to be considered, are:--

CHARLOTTE CARMICHAEL STOPES, 31 TORRINGTON SQUARE, W.C.

BRITISH FREEWOMEN

THEIR HISTORICAL PRIVILEGE

ANCIENT HISTORY AND BRITISH WOMEN.

"Let us look at the beginnings of things, for they help us to understand the ends."

THOUGH early British traditions may survive in later Literature, we cannot accept them for critical purposes. The century of the birth of Christ is the earliest date of our authentic history. The words of the Romans, strangers and enemies, are unexceptionable witnesses. Nothing impressed the Romans more than the equality of the sexes among the Northern nations; the man's reverence for womanhood, the woman's sympathy with manhood, and the high code of morality that was the natural outcome of this well-balanced society.

Plutarch says, "Concerning the virtues of women, I am not of the same mind with Thucydides. For he would prove that she is the best woman concerning whom there is least discourse made by people abroad, either to her praise or dispraise; judging that as the person, so the very name of a good woman ought to be retired and not to gad abroad.... And seeing that many worthy things, both public and private, have been done by women, it is not amiss to give a brief historical account of those that are public in the first place." Among the examples he cites, there is that of the continental Celts, kindred to the British. Some of these wandered north-west, and some due south. "There arose a very grievous and irreconcilable contention among the Celts before they passed over the Alps to inhabit that tract of Italy which now they inhabit, which proceeded to a civil war. The women, placing themselves between the armies, took up the controversies, argued them so accurately, and determined them so impartially that an admirable friendly correspondence and general amity ensued, both civil and domestic. Hence the Celts made it their practice to take women into consultation about peace or war, and to use them as mediates in any controversies that arose between them and their allies. In the league, therefore, made with Hannibal, the writing runs thus--If the Celts take occasion of quarrelling with the Carthaginians, the governors and generals of the Carthaginians in Spain shall decide the dispute; but if the Carthaginians accuse the Celts, the Celtic women shall decide the controversy." The Romans were much struck by the similar position of women among the Britons, Belgic and Celtic alike. Elton, on the authority of Ammianus Marcellinus, says of the women, "that their approximation to the men in stature was the best evidence that the nation had advanced out of barbarism." Caesar tells us that the British women were made use of in Court, in Council, and in Camp, and that no distinction of sex was made in places of command or government. Selden, in his chapter on "Women" in the "Janus Anglorum," reminds us, that "Boadicea so successfully commanded the British armies as to beat and conquer the Roman Viceroy, and no doubt that noble lady was a deliberative member of the Council where the resolution was taken to fight, and that she should command the forces." Tacitus says, "Under the leadership of Boadicea, a woman of kingly descent , they all rose to arms. Had not Paulinus, on hearing of this outbreak, rendered prompt succour, Britain would have been lost." He owns elsewhere that had the Britons but been able to unite among themselves, the Romans could not have conquered them; and he more than once notes the bravery of the women in stimulating the warriors.

More fully in his "Annals" , Tacitus describes how Suetonius Paulinus attacked Mona the stronghold of the Druids; and how the women priestesses dashed about clothed in black, like furies, with dishevelled hair, and with torches in their hands, encouraging and threatening the soldiers, and when all was lost, perishing bravely among the flames kindled by the conqueror. This is told, not in the tones with which one belauds compatriot heroines, but in those of an enemy, to whom these women added new terrors and increased troubles. Meanwhile, in the East, the Roman statue of Victory had fallen from its place in the temple of Claudius at Camalodunum; evil signs and omens weakened the hearts of the Roman soldiers, and frantic Priestesses encouraged the hopes of the British force thereby. Boadicea, having succeeded in uniting some of the neighbouring tribes, had driven Catus over the sea, had subdued Petelius Cerialus, had destroyed the Colonia at Camalodunum, had sacked Verulam, and marched on London, building an intrenched camp near what we now call Islington. Suetonius Paulinus, fresh from the slaughter of the sacred Druid host, advanced to meet her. Tacitus describes the position of the armies, and reports her speech. Not being "unaccustomed to address the public," she called her army to witness "that it was usual for the Britons to war under the conduct of women, but on that occasion she entered the field, not as one descended from ancestors so illustrious to recover her kingdom and her treasure, but as one of the humblest among them, to take vengeance for liberty extinguished, her own body lacerated with stripes, and the chastity of her daughters defiled.... They would see that in that battle they must conquer or perish. Such was the fixed resolve of a woman; the men might live if they pleased and be the slaves of the Romans." "Neither was Suetonius silent at so perilous a juncture, for though he confided in the bravery of his men, yet he mingled exhortations with entreaties. 'In that great host were to be seen more women than efficient men. Unwarlike, unarmed, they would give way the instant they felt the sword and valour of those victorious troops, etc.'" Then follows the account of the battle. "The soldiers spared not even the lives of the women, nay the very beasts, pierced with darts, seemed to swell the heaps of the slain. The glory gained that day was signal indeed, and equal to the victories of ancient times, for there are authors who record that of the Britons were slain almost 80,000, of our men about 400, with not many more wounded."

Cartismandua was a Queen, too, in her own right, wedded freely to the neighbouring Prince Venutius, but nevertheless personally elected as the supreme ruler and leader of the united tribes of the Brigantes, making contracts and treaties for all. Caractacus, after his nine years' struggle, had fled for shelter and for help to her in the year 50 A.D. But as Elton says in his "Origin of English History," "she was farseeing enough to see the hopelessness of contest with the Romans." Already Romanised in heart and spirit, she betrayed her countryman, cast off her husband, forfeited her honour, and finally lost the crown of her inheritance.

The withdrawal of the Roman troops for home affairs hastened a new crisis, in which the Britons, made limp by protection and an alien government, were unable to hold their own against invading tribes. No longer was the British wife the brave help-meet, the counsellor, the inspirer of the British man. Roman customs had completed what the Roman arms and the Roman laws had begun, and the spirit of British Womanhood had no reserve force in itself to spare. Then came an infusion of new blood into the land, fortunately not of Latin Race, but of a good northern stock, that reverenced woman still. Speaking of that stock in earlier times, Tacitus says, "The women are the most revered witnesses of each man's conduct, and his most liberal applauders. To their mothers and their wives they bring their wounds for relief, who do not dread to count or search out the gashes. The women also administer food and encouragement to those who are fighting." "They even suppose somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the female sex, and, therefore, neither despise their counsels nor disregard their responses. We have beheld, in the reign of Vespasian, Veleda, long reverenced by many as a deity. Aurima, moreover, and several others, were formerly held in similar veneration, but not with a similar flattery, nor as though they had been goddesses . Almost alone among barbarians they are content with one wife.... The wife does not bring a dower to the husband, but the husband to the wife.... Lest the woman should think herself to stand apart from aspirations after noble deeds, and from the perils of war, she is reminded by the ceremony which inaugurates marriage that she is her husband's partner in toil and danger, destined to suffer and to dare with him alike in peace and in war...." "She must live and die with the feeling that she is receiving what she must hand down to her children, neither tarnished, nor depreciated, what future daughters-in-law may receive, and may so pass on to her grandchildren" . "Thus with their virtue protected, they live uncorrupted by the allurements of public shows or the stimulant of feastings. Clandestine correspondence is equally unknown to men and women. The young men marry late, and their vigour is unimpaired. Nor are the maidens hurried into marriage. Well-matched and vigorous they wed, and the offspring reproduce the strength of their parents" .

These racial peculiarities also marked the early Saxon invaders, though there were no foreign witnesses to note them with surprise. The native writers took them too much as a matter of course to consider them worth noting. It is only indirectly that we can glean the state of affairs from public records. Samuel Heywood, in his "Ranks of the People among the Anglo-Saxons," says , "The word Cwen originally signified a wife in general, but was by custom converted into a title for the wife of a king.... It was customary for Saxon monarchs to hold their courts with great solemnity three times a year. The Queen Consort, at these assemblies, wore her crown also, and was seated on a throne near the King. When an assembly of the nobles met at Winchester to adjust the complaints of the secular clergy against St. Dunstan, the King presided, having his Queen seated by his side ...."

Footnote 1:

The charter to Glastonbury is signed, after the name of the King, "Ego Eilfgiva ejusdem Regis Mater cum gaudio consensi" . In the "Diploma Comiti, Regis Angliae," after the King's name, "Ego Emma Regina signo crucis confirmo."

The second charter of Edward the Confessor to St. Peter's at Westminster contains not only the signature of the sainted King, but "Ego Editha Regina huic donationi Regiae consentiens subscripsi" . And at the council summoned to consider the Bull of Nicholas the Pope to Edward the Confessor, after the King, signs "Ego Edgida Regina omni alacritate mentis hoc corroboravi." The different expressions used, show that the signatures were no mere accident, no vapid formality.

In the council held to grant privileges to the Church "praesentibus etiam clarissimis Abbattissis, hoc est, Hermehilda, Truinberga and Ataba reverenda, ut subscriberent rogavi" .

"King Edgar's charter to the Abbey of Crowland was signed with the consent of the nobles and abbesses, for many Abbesses were formerly summoned to Parliament" .

"Ego AElfrith Regina" signs the Charter that the King of Mercia grants to the Abbey of Worcester. "Ethelswith Regina" subscribes with Burghred, King of Mercia or Mercland, in the Register of Worcester.

Edward the Confessor's charter to Agelwin is confirmed by his wife, "Ego Edgith Regina consentio."

So in a charter of King Knut to St. Edmundesbury, his wife, Alfgwa, signs, "Ego Alfgifa Regina" .

There had been amid the Saxons, Queens Regnant as well as Queens Consort. William of Malmesbury writes in admiration of Sexburga, the Queen Dowager of Cenwalch, King of the West Saxons, 672, A.D., "that there was not wanting to this woman a great spirit to discharge the duties of the kingdom. She levied new armies, kept the old ones to duty, governed her subjects with clemency, kept her enemies quiet with threats, in a word, did everything at that rate that there was no other difference between her and any King in management except her sex" . Ethelfleda, too, the daughter of the great Alfred, called the Lady of Mercia, ruled that kingdom after the death of her father and her husband for eight years, and completed the work that her great father had begun in finally defeating and subjugating the intruding Danes. Women landowners sat in the Shire Gemote, or held Motes of their own; women Burgesses were present at Folkmotes, or at Revemotes. In short, the privileges of women in the Saxon times were nearly equal to those they held in British times.

The lands they wrested from the Saxons, the Normans held of the King by Feudal Tenure or by Military Service. Their laws, customs, and language dominated the Saxons, as did their swords. But only for a time. The struggles with France formed, through a common antagonism, a united nation of the varying races in the island. To complete the union, the nation went back to the language of the Saxons, and, when opportunity for freedom called, went back to their old laws as a basis of the new. That women suffered more than men did from the Norman invasion might only have been expected. But that they did not do so nearly to the extent that it is commonly supposed, can be proved by reference to competent authorities, by whom the limitations of their privileges are shown to proceed on definite and comprehensible lines.

THE MODERN BASES OF PRIVILEGE.

The Laws of Chivalry refined the Upper Classes, inculcating Truth, Loyalty, Chastity, Courtesy, Liberality, Reverence for Women and Generosity to the Weak. But the real foundation of Privilege in Chivalric times was practically Strength, Courage and Success among men. Beauty, Grace and Honour among women. These qualities being temporary, were not synonymous with Justice. The position of Divinity is an unstable one, depending on the attitude of the worshippers. When Chivalry faded out of men's hearts, women felt that the outer shell of custom meant little. It only set them on the shelf.

A tone of Chivalry affected the hearts of the traders and manufacturers of Chivalric Times, a tone healthier, because more founded on justice and equality. There was even then a confusion of ideas between return-value of labour abroad, and labour at home; but there was no confusion about the return-values of similar labour performed by men or by women. Women were equal in all social guilds, and trading women were equal in trading guilds.

Through the different principles of inheritance, there have always been fewer heiresses than heirs; through the success of the various methods of protecting male professional and trade industries against female competition, there have always been fewer female owners of earned property; through the lower rate of women's wages, and various causes tending to disable single women even in the retention of property, these owners represented smaller incomes than did men of their own class.

The process of diminution was hastened in periods of spasmodic activity through association of principles that should have worked in the opposite direction, had the principles been understood and applied in their purity. No doctrine is more antagonistic to the spirit and teaching of Christ than that of the subjection of women, and yet, though the change from the Druidic religion to the worship of Odin affected them but slightly, the changes within the Christian Creed mark epochs in their gradual enthralment; as, for instance, the sixteenth century Reformation and the seventeenth century Revival On the Suppression of the Monasteries, Abbots and Abbesses were alike extinguished. But the power and privilege of the Abbot in the House of Peers as in the Church, survived in the Bishop. The extinction of the Abbess, without successor either in Church or State, took away finally the right of one class of representative women to sit in the Upper House. The suppression of the Social and Religious Guilds founded and supported by women in common with men, gave a seeming reason for later exclusion of Freewomen from trade guilds.

The loudest Puritan cry of the seventeenth century was, it is true, "No Bishop;" but the practical work Puritanism was really allowed to do in politics was to make the representation of women in the Lower House theoretically impossible.

ROYAL WOMEN.

"The country prospers when a woman rules."

IN order to simplify and classify the mass of material at hand, it is advisable to take by their degree the ranks of women among the Anglo-Normans. Among the Queens, only because they precede in order of time and of number, we may take first

Another lady of the family was supplanted by the proverbially "cruel uncle." King John in 1202 made prisoners of his nephew, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and the Princess Eleanor, his sister, called "The Beauty of Brittany." Arthur is supposed to have been murdered by his uncle, and Eleanor was confined for forty years in Bristol Castle. A true daughter of Constance, she is said to have possessed a high and invincible spirit, and to have constantly insisted on her right to the throne, which was probably the reason that she spent her life in captivity.

The first act of Mary was to establish her own legitimacy, the honour of her mother, and the power of the Pope; her second was to establish the office of Queen Regnant "by Statute to be so clear that none but the malitious and ignorant could be induced and persuaded unto this Error and Folly to think that her Highness coulde ne should have enjoye and use such like Royal Authoritie ... nor doo ne execute and use all things concerning the Statute as the Kinges of this Realme, her most noble Progenitours have heretofore doon, used and exercised"

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