Notes
1. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of the Family, trans. Robert Baldrick (London, 1962). Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York, 1977).
2. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prioress's Tale, VII.586-590. All Chaucer references are to The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd. ed., ed. Larry Benson (Boston, 1987). Subsequent references will be given by fragment and line numbers.
3. The Miracles of King Henry VI: Being an Account and Translation of Twenty-three Miracles Taken from the Manuscript in the British Museum (Royal 13 c.viii), ed. Ronald Know and Shane Leslie (Cambridge, Eng., 1923). The collection of miracles was put together under the direction of Henry VII with the intention of moving toward the canonization of Henry VI. The collection of the miracle stories pertaining to children is very similar to the coroners' inquests over the death of children.
4. Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A translation of the Principal Libri Penitentiales, trans. John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer (New York, 1938) has very little on the parent-child relationship. Nicholas Orme, "Children and the Church in Medieval England," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994), pp. 563-587 speaks of the sparse reference to children other than baptism and the duties of the godparents to teach the basic prayers.
5. Miracles of Henry VI, p. 66.
6. The recording of accidental deaths had its roots in the Anglo-Saxon practice and the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxons, having a tender concern for the souls of people who died suddenly without the opportunity of confessing their sins, had imposed the deodand on the community. When someone died suddenly and violently the price of the instrument that killed him or her was charged on the community and the proceeds were to go to prayers for the salvation of the soul of the deceased. The Normans continued the practice but kept the profits for the crown. For a fuller account of the source see R. F. Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner (Cambridge, 1961). The coroners' rolls are preserved in the Public Record Office in London under the classification of Just. 2. Hereafter referred to as P. R. O. Just. 2/.
7. Barbara A. Hanawalt, "The Voices and Audiences of Social History Records," Social Science History, 15 (1991), pp. 159-175 for a more complete discussion of the narratives to be found in coroners' inquests.
8. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London (New York, 1993), pp. 79-80 for a discussion of the customs surrounding St. Gregory and the boy bishops.
9. Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the City of London, A. D. 1300-1378, ed. Reginald R. Sharpe (London, 1913), pp. 63-64.
10. Miracles of Henry VI, pp. 50-54 (Latin transcript given in footnote).
11. Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Childrearing Among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (1977): 1-21.
12. Miracles of Henry VI, pp. 35, 85, 115.
13. Canterbury Tales, VII.548-554. Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom (Chicago, 1982) pp. 19-47 for the character of child saints.
14. The Miracles of Henry VI, pp. 35-37, 116-117. See also pp. 55, 56, 85 ("The news roused the whole household; the men servants came round shouting, or ran to and fro lamenting aloud."
15. Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986), p. 176.
16. P. R. O. Just. 2/18 ms. 42d, 45; 2/104 m. 18d.; 2/200 m. 2; 2/199. Bedfordshire Coroners Rolls, trans. R. F. Hunnisett, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 41 (1961), pp. 25, 45.
17. V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin, 1968), pp. 25-29, 96-98.
18. Miracles of Henry VI, pp. 88, 104, 171-176, 179-181, 195.
19. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 87-89.
20. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 141-155. See also Martine Segalen, Mari et femme dans la soci‚t‚ paysanne (Paris, 1980) and Historical Anthropology of the Family, trans. J. C. Whitehouse and Sarah Matthews (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), pp. 205-219.
21. Albert P. Iskrant and Paul V. Joliet, Accidents and Homicide (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 23, 138.
22. P. R. O. Just. 2/113 m. 37. See also Just. 2/113 ms. 32, 33, 46.
23. P. R. O. Just. 2/109 m. 8. See also Just. 2/106 m. 1d., 2/77 m. 5d.
24. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 158-159.
25. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 272-273 for tables on children's activities and place of death; p. 171 for tables on adults.
26. Figures from Miracles of Henry VI.
27. Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 6 vols., ed. A. H. Thomas and Philip E. Jones (Cambridge, Eng., 1926-1961), 5: 11-12, 1439.
28. Miracles of Henry VI, p. 164.
29. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, VII.530: "His felawe, which that elder was than he . . . ." VII.544-5: "His felawe taughte hym homward prively,/ Fro day to day, til he koude it by rote."
30. Calendar of Coroners' Rolls of the City of London, pp. 34-35.
31. Miracles of Henry VI, pp. 159-161.
32. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 154-157 for a discussion of evidence for infanticide. For a discussion of the legal basis for a pardon for infanticide see Naomi D. Hurnard, The King's Pardon for Homicide before A. D. 1307 (Oxford, 1969), p. 169. The law did not clearly state until the sixteenth century that a mother was culpable of murder when she killed her infant. Jurors were thus unsure about whether indictments could be brought or not and, if they were, what was to be done with the woman who proved to be guilty of killing her newborn child.
33. Richard H. Helmholz, "Infanticide in the Province of Canterbury during the Fifteenth Century," History of Childhood Quarterly 2 (1975), 384.
34. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, p. 58. One curious figure comes from the London court of orphans. At the time that children entered wardship 780 or 45 percent were females and 951 or 55 percent of the children were male. The shortfall of females should not have occurred because of inheritance since male and female children inherited equally. The figure will need more investigation.
35. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, p. 181.
36. C. A. Sneyd, ed., The Italian Relation of England, Camden Society 37 (London, 1847), p. 24. One of the most naive uses of the quote is Barbara Kaye Greenleaf, Children Through the Ages: A History of Childhood (New York, 1978) who has distilled Ariès into a book for education students.
37. Sue Sheridan Walker, "The Feudal Family and the Common Law courts: The Pleas of Wardship in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century England," Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988), 13-31.
38. Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London, A-L, 11 vols., ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1899-1912). Hereafter referred to as Letter Book with an alphabetical number. Letter Book C, p. 207, Letter Book I, pp. 220-221. Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London, ed. Henry Thomas Riley (London, 1861), pp. 95-96. See also Elaine Clark, "City Orphans and Custody Laws in Medieval England," American Journal of Legal History 34 (1990), 168-187.
39. Letter Book C, pp. 81-82; Letter Book E, p. 121; Letter Book G, p. 91.
40. Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, A. D. 1258-A. D. 1688, ed. Reginald Robinson Sharpe (London, 1889-1890) for the years 1300-1500.
41. These included uncles or aunts of the child, grandparents, elder sons, and a nephew.
42. Letter Book G, p. 95 (1358) records the terms of a will in a wardship enrollment. Thomas Bedyk gave to Simon Fraunceys, mercer, the wardship, custody, and marriage of his son Henry during his minority.
43. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 221-225. Cicely Howell, "Peasant Inheritance Customs in the Midlands, 1280-1700," in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, ed. Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson (Cambridge, Eng., 1976), pp. 112-155 has a good discussion on strategies of inheritance and responsibilities of the widow should she have young children.
44. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, pp. 97, 103.
45. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound, pp. 250-253. Adoption, as we know it, was not one of those aspects of Roman law that passed into the medieval tradition. Foundling homes were also not common although some hospitals for unwed mothers were established, thus recognizing the problem.
46. John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York, l988).
47. Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 2: xxxiii-xxxv. Steve Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), pp. 77-84.
48. Corporation of London Record Office, hereafter referred to as CLRO with manuscript reference. MC1/2/5, MC1/2/116. See Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, pp. 157-163 for a more complete discussion.
49. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, pp. 146-149, 157-163.
50. Miracles of Henry VI, pp. 65-72, 84-87, 206-210.
51. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, pp. 170-171 for the close relationship between masters and apprentices as seen largely in wills.
52. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, pp. 33, 43. Charles Pendrill, London Life in the Fourteenth Century (1925; repr. Port Washington, N. Y., 1971), pp. 173, 183-85, 198.
53. Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 6: 129-130.