4 Poor Law, Coverture, and Maintaining Relations in King’s Bench, 1601–1834

Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents v
3. Figures and Tables vii
4. Preface ix
5. Introduction: Coverture and Continuity 1
6. Discourse on the Nature of Coverture in the Later Medieval Courtroom 24
7. Coverture and Its Discontents: Legal Fictions on and off the Early Modern English Stage 45
8. Poor Law, Coverture, and Maintaining Relations in King’s Bench, 1601–1834 64
9. Coverture and the Criminal Law in England, 1640–1760 88
10. Women and Property Litigation in Seventeenth-Century England and North America 113
11. The Sailor’s Wife, War Finance, and Coverture in Late Seventeenth-Century London 139
12. Written in Her Heart: Married Women’s Separate Allegiance in English Law 163
13. Tapping Reeve, Nathan Dane, and James Kent: Three Fading Federalists on Marital Unity 192
14. “Concealing Him from Creditors”: How Couples Contributed to the Passage of the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act 217
15. Coverture and Women’s Agency: Informal Modes of Resistance to Legal Patriarchy 240
16. Conclusion 264
17. Contributors 273
18. Index 277