Product Description
In late medieval England, cloistered nuns, like all substantial property owners, engaged in nearly constant litigation to defend their holdings. They did so using attorneys (proctors), advocates and other "men of law" who actually conducted that litigation in the courts of Church and Crown, following the increased professionalism of legal practitioners during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, although lawyers were as crucial to the economic vitality of the nunneries as the patrons who endowed them, their role in protecting, augmenting or depleting monastic assets has never been fully investigated. This book aims to address the gap. It relates the nuns of such important houses as Dartford, Bruisyard and Syon to the legal profession; and looks at representative cases from both ecclesiastical and royal courts that illustrate the work of lawyers on behalf of these clients. Elizabeth Makowski is Ingram Professor of History, Texas State University.