Category Archives: Women

The catalogue of the archive of Averil Cameron –available soon!

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Women

Averil Cameron is a historian of late antiquity, classics and Byzantine studies. She was professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at King’s College London and Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1994 to 2010.

She has been associated with various academic societies including as founding director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. Since 2018 she has been President of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.

She has published several works, including; Agathias (1970), History as Text (1989) and The Byzantines (2006). The archive comprises papers and correspondence mainly relating to Cameron’s academic work. This includes books, published and unpublished lectures, and articles.

This collection will be available soon.

Catalogue of the archive of Averil Cameron

Three books of Averil Cameron

The catalogue of the archive of Dr Emilie Savage-Smith – available soon!

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Modern, Newly available (2023), Sciences, Women,

Dr Emilie Savage-Smith is a historian of science specialising in Islamic celestial globes. Islamic celestial globes are spherical maps of the sky that give the viewer a ‘God’s’ eye view of the stars and constellations, with Earth at the centre, originating from lands where Islam was the predominant religion.

Celestial globe

Savage-Smith graduated from DePauw University in 1962 and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1969. She was professor of the History of Islamic Science in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2019, and a fellow and archivist of St Cross College, Oxford, 2004-2021.

She has authored several books, including Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction and Use, 1985. She was named a fellow of the British Academy, 2010, and the Medieval Academy of America, 2020.

Celestial globe

This collection is the largest research archive of material on Islamic celestial globes in the world, with over two-hundred globes and instruments dating back to 1080 featured. It comprises her papers, photographs and drawings collected over the course of her career. Her collection of objects was donated to the History of Science Museum.

This collection will be available soon.

Catalogue of the archive of Dr Emilie Savage-Smith

Science in the Islamic World | History of Science Museum

 

‘On the roll’: a brief history of matriculation

16th century, 17th century, 19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Early modern, Modern, Oxford University Archives, Spotlight, Women,

It’s that time of year again when a new cohort of undergraduates arrives in Oxford to matriculate at the University. Matriculation is the formal admission of a student to membership of the University. Students, who have already been admitted to their colleges (which are legally and administratively separate from the central University), are then presented by that college to the University for matriculation. In celebration, the University Archives’ blog for October looks at matriculation through some of the records we hold of this longstanding Oxford tradition.

The history of matriculation is somewhat obscure for the University’s early years. Before the existence of colleges, students lived in private lodgings and were under the supervision of individual teaching masters. It’s generally understood that the University required every scholar to be on the roll or in the register (in rotulo or in matricula) of one of these masters. It appears, however, that this requirement was not enforced and there are, sadly, no surviving rolls or registers in the Archives documenting these early students. For the first few centuries of its existence, the University repeatedly tried, and seemingly failed, to get its students systematically recorded.

In 1420 a royal ordinance was issued which enacted that all scholars should reside in a college or hall, under the guardianship of a principal and that they, and their servants (more about them later), should swear an oath to observe the University’s statutes. The fact that this ordinance had to be revived in 1552, and the continued absence of any records of this process, suggests that it, also, was ignored. The 1552 ordinance is in fact the reason behind the creation of the earliest surviving list of persons residing in colleges and halls of the University. This list appears in a Chancellor’s register of the period, a register used for a wide range of University business.

Christ Church members 1552

Entry listing members of Christ Church in the Chancellor’s register, 1552 (OUA/Hyp/A/5, fol 68v)

The list is divided into sections for each college and each starts with the senior members of that college: masters (magistri in Latin) being denoted by the prefix ‘Mr’, and doctors, by ‘D’. It then goes on to list the junior members, ie students. There is no information about when a particular person entered the University or how long they’d been at the college. It isn’t, strictly-speaking, a record of matriculation at all, merely a list of names providing a simple snapshot in time.

In 1564 the University appointed a committee to look again into matriculation and draw up new regulations governing it. Their work culminated in the University’s first matriculation statute introduced in 1565. This required all scholars and privileged persons (more about them later, too) who, if 16 or over, should swear to observe the University’s statutes. The 1565 statute required students to be registered within seven days of their admission to a college or hall (or if living in the town under the supervision of a master), and to give the University certain personal information such as their age and place of residence.

The statute also established a scale of fees at matriculation whereby different amounts were charged depending on the matriculant’s social status. At the top of this list were the sons of princes, dukes and marquises (who paid 13 s 4d to matriculate). There then followed (in descending order) the sons of counts or viscounts; barons, bishops or baronets; esquires, deacons or archdeacons; knights and gentlemen. Until finally, at the bottom, the sons of plebeians (who paid only 4d). The ranks were peculiarly arranged – higher status individuals were separated into very small categories whilst the remaining 90% of the population were lumped together, effectively, as ‘plebs’.

The statute also made provision for a register or book of matriculations to be kept by the University. The very first matriculation register of the University was created that year. It is divided into sections, one for each college or hall. At first the entries are very much like the 1552 list of names, simply a snapshot roll-call for certain years, and not proper matriculation records. There are also long gaps in the register in which hardly any entries are recorded. Clearly the colleges were still not co-operating with the new matriculation statute. But the University persisted and in 1568 it set up yet another committee to look at the issue. The first proper matriculation entries in this register begin in c1571, presumably as a result of their efforts. In Christ Church’s entry (the first college listed in the register), for example, the first dated matriculation is in 1572. But there are still gaps in the register after that which suggest that matriculations were not being systematically recorded.

From 1581, a new restriction on matriculation came into force. From that date all matriculating students over the age of 16 were required to declare their assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, the Book of Common Prayer and the oath of Royal Supremacy. In order to demonstrate this assent, the matriculating student swore the oath of supremacy and signed his name on pages bound up in a register with a copy of the Thirty-Nine Articles. This effectively barred anyone who was not a member of the Church of England from entering the University; students who were Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or non-conformist protestants, for example, were now excluded.

The University appears to have tightened up its recording of matriculations after this and the entries in the register become fuller and more comprehensive. Each student was now required to provide the following information to the University: his age, the rank or status of his father, and his county of origin. Age was required by the University as it determined whether or not the student was required to take the oath of supremacy (if under 16, he was not required to do so). The father’s rank or status was still required in order to determine the matriculation fee. The county of origin was useful to colleges, as certain college fellowships and scholarships were limited to those born in specified counties, but it is not clear why the central University needed that information. From 1616, the registers begin to note whether the person matriculating was the eldest or second son, etc. Eldest sons of certain ranks were granted privileges relating to their studies, such as dispensations from particular University requirements. From 1622, the matriculation registers also contain the name of the student’s father and (it is not clear exactly which), either the parish in which the student was born, or the parish in which the father resided.

Christ Church matriculations 1570s

The first Christ Church matriculations, 1570s (OUA/SP 1, fol 20v)

What is also clear from the earliest matriculation entries, such as those of Christ Church, is that the ages of students matriculating ranged more widely, and, by and large, students were much younger than today. In the list pictured, Robert Sydney matriculated aged only 12; Edward Montague, aged 13. Putting aside the possibility of less-than-truthful entries, it is certainly the case that students matriculated at a younger age in centuries past. In the late 16th century, their ages ranged between 7 and 30, with one record found of a five-year old, Audley Mervin, matriculating in June 1618 (but it is suspected this might be a clerical error for ‘15’). The general trend has been for students to get older over the centuries until they reach the, more usual, age of 18+ as today.

Some students may have wanted to avoid having to assent to the beliefs of the Church of England and so deliberately came up to Oxford before they were 16 (at which age it became compulsory). Some may have been young boys sent to Oxford at the same time as an older brother. What other records held here show is that most of these very young matriculants rarely proceeded to a degree.

The information given by the matriculants was not checked or verified, as far as we know, and so was not necessarily entirely accurate. Like many records kept by archives, the information these registers contain has its limitations. It is what someone wanted the University to believe, not necessarily what was the case. Some students deliberately understated their social rank in order to pay smaller fees, for example; there’s evidence from college records that students sometimes assigned themselves a lower status to the University, and a much higher one to their college.

There’s also evidence that not every student at a college even matriculated. The University’s matriculation records contain errors and omissions when compared to college admission records. Students unwilling to subscribe, for example, might avoid matriculating entirely. It appears, however, that attendance at colleges without matriculation was rare by the end of the 17th century and had mostly ceased by the middle of the 18th.

A far greater range of people were admitted to membership of the University at this time than today. One large group of these were privileged persons. Privileged persons (personae privilegiatae) were, generally, of two types: servants or tradesmen. Servants (servientes) could be either personal servants or common servants. Any University member could bring his personal servant to Oxford with him and have him admitted to the status of privileged person. ‘Common servants’ included lower-ranked University officers such as bedels, or college servants such as manciples or cooks. The other type of privileged person were tradesmen and workmen of the town (privilegiati), people such as booksellers, brewers or carriers. Privileged status conferred on them the right to trade with the University and its members and gave them access to a large and wealthy customer base that the non-privileged tradesman did not have. Privileged persons appear in the matriculation registers until the late 18th century, often in a separate list at the back of the volumes.

In 1870 the University introduced a new system for recording student information at matriculation: the matriculation form. Completed by each matriculating student, in their own hand, this asked for personal information. For the first 20 or so years, the form was very small, requiring students to give much the same type of information as they had done for years past: ie name, age, whether the matriculant was the eldest or second child, place of birth, father’s name and ‘quality’, date of matriculation and college.

Oscar Wilde's matriculation form

Matriculation form of Oscar Wilde, 1874 (from OUA/UR 1/1/6)

Dates of birth, school and father’s present address were added to the form in 1894, a useful addition for both the University at the time and the genealogist of the future. But one has to wonder how practically useful some of the other information on the form now was. The University had asked for the same kind of information from its students for centuries, long after some of it was of any use at all. Would the fact that a student was a third son be of any relevance in 1890? One suspects not, as the privileges that status had once offered had long since disappeared.

The social ranks had also changed quite dramatically over time and the particular terms used had changed, or lost, their meaning so much that by the 19th century they’d become rather meaningless. Matriculating students were using, and misusing, outdated terminology established over 200 years earlier. In 1891 the confusion felt on all sides led the University to change the question from father’s rank or ‘quality’ to occupation.

A very significant change to matriculation took place in 1871. Subscription at matriculation remained obligatory until 1854 when it was abolished by the Oxford University Act. But religious tests for membership of the University were not finally abolished until 1871 when the Universities Tests Act enabled those of all faiths and none to matriculate. This began the opening up of matriculation to a greater number and range of people.

The University took a little longer to allow women to matriculate. Although women had been studying in Oxford, at the women’s colleges set up in the city from the 1870s onwards, they were still not allowed to matriculate. Women could sit and pass University examinations but until they could matriculate, under the University’s longstanding regulations, they were not allowed to graduate. This finally changed in 1920.

Isobel Matthew's matriculation form

Matriculation form of Isobel Millicent Matthew, 1920 (from OUA/UR 1/2/1)

The first woman to matriculate, Isobel Millicent Matthew, did so on 7 October 1920. As her matriculation form shows, the University had to change its standard male-centric matriculation form for its new women matriculants. But instead of taking the opportunity to review the forms and see whether the information they were asking for was relevant to the 20th century, the University decided to simply tweak them, change their colour, and replace all masculine vocabulary with feminised versions. As a result, the form now asked its female matriculants for some entirely irrelevant information: no-one in the University would ever need to know whether the matriculant was an eldest daughter. This had no bearing on any University procedure. The men’s forms were also restructured into this new, enlarged format, but the redundant information continued to be collected.

The matriculation registers continued to be maintained after the forms were introduced in 1870. These were completed, as they always had been, by University administrative staff and from the 1870s, they simply copied the information from the forms into the registers, effectively creating a second (often much more legible) copy of the information. By 1924, however, the time taken to maintain the parallel series of matriculation registers could no longer be justified and the University decided to stop keeping them. From then on, the forms themselves were to be the official record of matriculation. The last register entries were made in 1925.

The University continued using the matriculation forms all through the twentieth century. The occasional review added another piece of required information to the form (such as the type of school attended, nationality, or proposed subject of study) as demands grew on the University to report statistics of the nature of its student body. It therefore had to add to the forms the kind of information which it needed to answer the questions being asked of it by others (such as social origin, class, income and background). By and large, however, the content, and purpose, of the forms remained the same.

With the advent of computerised student systems in the 1980s, the University revised the matriculation form yet again, with a view to standardising data collection and speeding up the production of statistics. The inevitable progress of technology meant that the decision to stop creating paper matriculation forms at all was finally taken in 2005.

Much has been written about the University’s early matriculation records. A good discussion of the period between 1571 and 1622 can be found in Andrew Clark’s Register of the University of Oxford Vol II, Part I, (published by the Oxford Historical Society in 1887).

For further information about how to access the information in the matriculation records, please see the guidance on the University Archives’ website at https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/universityarchives/guides/past-members. The guidance includes links to published registers, available online, of those who matriculated before 1892. It also provides contact details for sources of information regarding students matriculating after 1892.

For a detailed look at the changing student body of the University over time, see Lawrence Stone’s chapter entitled ‘The Size and Composition of the Oxford student body 1580-1910’ in The University in Society, Vol I Oxford and Cambridge from the 14th to the Early 19th Centuries (Princeton, 1974).

The University recently commemorated the 150th anniversary of the 1871 Universities Tests Act with the creation of the ‘Opening Oxford 1871-2021’ website at  https://openingoxford1871.web.ox.ac.uk/

For information about matriculation today, see the University’s main website at https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/new/matriculation

Photographer Helen Muspratt’s archive is now available

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Photography, Women, , , , ,
A bride in a flower-decorated Oxford punt, being steered by the groom or a groomsman, c. 1960s

The punting bride, a wedding photograph by Helen Muspratt, Ramsey & Muspratt, c. 1960s, ©Bodleian Libraries

The archive of the portrait and documentary photographer Helen Muspratt is now catalogued and available in the Weston Library.

Helen Muspratt (1907-2001) first made her name as a skilled, experimental portrait and documentary photographer in the 1930s.

Muspratt was introduced to Lettice Ramsey (1898-1985) by their mutual friend Fra Newbery, the retired head of the Glasgow School of Art. Lettice Ramsey was a Cambridge graduate and a widowed young mother of two who had excellent contacts in Cambridge and in the winter of 1932, Muspratt joined her in Cambridge to create the studio Ramsey & Muspratt. They soon expanded into Oxford. Some of those Ramsey & Muspratt photographed during this period were the intellectual and left-wing luminaries of the day, including Virginia Woolf, C.P. Snow, Dorothy Hodgkin, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, as well as Julian Bell, who was Lettice Ramsey’s lover. Muspratt’s photographs in the 1930s are notable for her experimental approach, including the use of double negatives and solarisation, inspired by the photographer Man Ray.

Muspratt met her husband, Oxford University graduate and Communist Party organiser Jack Dunman (d. 1973) in Cambridge where he was working for the railway. In 1936 Muspratt went on a tour of the Soviet Union with a group organised by the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, and her photographs from the trip were used in lecture tours to drum up support for the Soviet Union during World War II. With a commission from the Left Book Club in 1937, Muspratt did her last major documentary series, producing haunting photographs of out-of-work miners and labourers in South Wales and Liverpool, and she also joined the Communist Party. Ramsey and Muspratt’s business partnership was formally dissolved at the end of February 1945, but their respective Cambridge and Oxford studios retained the name Ramsey & Muspratt, and the pair remained friends.

From World War II onwards, while her husband worked as a full-time, rural Communist Party organiser and editor of The Country Standard, Helen Muspratt supported her family as a hardworking studio photographer. From her studio on Cornmarket Street in Oxford she staged lively portraits of everyone from babies to brides to new graduates. Muspratt also loved to photograph architecture, and she photographed Oxford and its environs for John Betjeman. She did a final documentary series when she was commissioned in 1946 by a group of campaigning doctors to photograph elderly patients in the Victorian workhouse-like conditions of the Poor House near Wantage.

Her archive, which mainly comprises prints and negatives, is a wonderful window into Oxford and its environs in the latter half of the twentieth century, as well as pioneering experimental photography of the 1930s. It also includes correspondence with her husband and her parents that are relevant to British Communist Party and left-wing political history. Muspratt’s work, including her 1930s experimental portraiture, is celebrated in the book Face: Shape and Angle by her daughter Jessica Sutcliffe (available from the Bodleian shop).

New: Catalogues of the Archives of Enid Starkie and Joanna Richardson

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Cataloguing, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Women

Enid Starkie (1898-1970) was a literary critic whose love of France lead her to study and write on authors such as Baudelaire, Gide, Flaubert and Rimbaud. She was a fixture of the Oxford academic scene from her first arrival at Somerville College in 1916 until her death in 1970.

When Starkie started at Oxford in 1916 women were not allowed to matriculate and therefore could not obtain a degree. It was only in October 1920 that women were permitted to matriculate and, using their previously gained examinations, were awarded degrees for the first time. Starkie, having completed her examinations in Modern Languages with distinction in June 1920, matriculated and graduated as BA on 30 October 1920.

After a brief period away from Oxford to obtain her doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris and to teach at Exeter University, she returned to Somerville as the Sarah Smithson Lecturer in French literature. She made her home at Somerville becoming a fellow, and later reader in French literature. During her career she successfully campaigned for the Professor of Poetry at Oxford to be a poet, rather than a critic, and helped raise the profiles of those she wrote about, including securing honorary doctorates for Gide and Jean Cocteau.

After her death, Starkie’s papers were deposited in the Bodleian for use by her friend, and former student, Joanna Richardson to write her biography.

Dr Joanna Richardson (1925–2008) studied Modern Languages at St Anne’s Society, Oxford, and after graduating with a third-class degree began graduate study under Enid Starkie. Her thesis was rejected and she was not awarded a DPhil at the time, it was only in 2004 she was awarded DLitt from the University of Oxford for her published body of work. She published her first biography in 1952 on Fanny Brawne, muse of poet John Keats. This started a fascination with the subject and during her life she wrote biographies on British and French 19th-century figures including Keats, Tennyson, Baudelaire and Verlaine. She was awarded the prix Goncourt for biography for Judith Gautier, 1989, the first time someone outside of France, and a woman, won the prize.

These collections consist of Starkie’s papers, along with Richardson’s working notes, as well as some personal papers of Richardson’s.

Collecting COVID: Oral Histories now available

21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Digital archives, Humanities, Medical, Newly available (2022), Sciences, Social Sciences, Women, , ,

The Collecting COVID project has been underway at the Bodleian Libraries and History of Science Museum since late 2021, with an active collecting programme achieving a range of material acquisitions relating to the University’s research response to COVID-19.  To complement the physical COVID-19 collections established at both institutions, the Bodleian has also been collecting oral history interviews, all conducted by writer and broadcaster Georgina Ferry.

The first batch of born digital audio files have now been made publicly accessible through the University Podcasts website.

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/collecting-covid-oral-histories

Consisting of 20 episodes relating to the interviews of 13 researchers and academics spanning across academic divisions, the interviews reveal an insight into some of the incredibly impactful work happening behind the scenes during the height of the pandemic. From drug discovery/repurposing, vaccine trials and development, government policy tracking and development of mass testing programmes, the interviews offer the listener a window into our recent past and into the immense efforts taken to combat a global health emergency.

The Collecting COVID project is funded by the E. P. A. Cephalosporin Fund.

The Earls of Clarendon catalogue is now online

16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Early modern, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2022), Social Sciences, Women, ,

You can find the new catalogue of the family and working papers of seven Earls of Clarendon (2nd creation) online at Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts.

The archive adds considerably to the Bodleian’s existing collections of Clarendon family papers, which include the seventeenth-century state papers of the very first Earl of Clarendon (1st creation) who was chief advisor to Charles I and Lord Chancellor to Charles II. His heirs in the Hyde and Villiers families took up the mantle and continued to serve the British government and the royal family well into the twentieth century. Notable postings included the 4th Earl of Clarendon serving as Viceroy of Ireland during the Great Famine and later as Foreign Secretary, and the 6th Earl of Clarendon serving as Governor-General of South Africa in the 1930s.

The archive includes approximately 800 letters from Queen Victoria and correspondence with monarchs and statesmen including Frederick the Great of Prussia and Viscount Palmerston. It also includes intimate family and estate papers, including letters between mothers and sons and husbands and wives.

I have been blogging about interesting items I’ve found along the way, ranging from 19th-century condoms to letters from the front during the American War of Independence (plus one extremely cute dog) and you can find those posts all here at the Archives and Manuscripts blog.

The happiest day of your life (#ArchivesAreYou)

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Event, Humanities, Modern, Photography, Spotlight, Women, , , , , ,
A bride in wedding dress and veil posing for the camera holding a corgi dog, c. 1960s

Bride + corgi, c. 1960s, ©Bodleian Libraries

Helen Muspratt (1907-2001) was a skilled experimental and documentary photographer of the 1930s who produced haunting photographs of pre-war Russia and Ukraine as well as the Welsh valleys in the depths of the Great Depression. For most of her life, however, she was a hardworking studio photographer. From her studio on Cornmarket Street in Oxford she staged lively portraits of everyone who crossed the threshold, from playful toddlers to students celebrating degree days. And she was also a skilled wedding photographer, a job which consumed many Saturdays. Our collection of her wedding photographs spans the 1940s to the 1970s and showcases ordinary people, usually unnamed, in a beautiful array of wedding fashions.

 

New catalogue: Archive of John Hungerford Pollen and the Pollen family

19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Cataloguing, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2022), Women, , , , , , ,

The archive of John Hungerford Pollen and the Pollen family has now been fully catalogued and made available to readers. The catalogue is available to view online via Bodleian Archives and Modern Manuscripts.

The collection contains a wide range of correspondence, including letters sent between John Hungerford Pollen and John Henry Newman. While most of these letters relate to the creation of Newman’s University Church in Dublin, they also bear testament to a lifelong friendship. Other notable correspondents in the collection include Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Evelyn Waugh, and the poet and artist David Jones.

The archive also contains many visual pieces such as numerous sketchbooks belonging to John Hungerford Pollen and various photographs, including a portrait of John Hungerford Pollen by the renowned early photographer Julia Margaret Cameron as well as family photographs of home life at Newbuildings.

Photograph of the Pollen Family (John and Maria Hungerford Pollen with their ten children)Photograph of the family of John Hungerford Pollen (with beard, standing centre), unknown photographer, Archive of John Hungerford Pollen and the Pollen Family, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. 17906 Photogr. 3.

Personal records in the collection include: an account by John Hungerford Pollen’s wife Maria of the aid she and her daughter Margaret gave to Italian police to recover some stolen Burano lace; a transcript of the diary of Anne Pollen between 1870 and 1881 detailing her life prior to becoming a nun at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton; and the wartime diaries kept by her sister Margaret between 1914 and 1919.

More information on the collection and Pollen family can be found in a series of blogposts posted in November 2020 to mark the bicentenary of John Hungerford Pollen’s birth.

-Rachael Marsay

“Procuring, Prostitution, and Perjury”

15th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Medieval, Oxford University Archives, Spotlight, Uncategorized, Women,

Perhaps unsurprisingly for an institution that did not formally admit women as members until 1920, the early records of the University are dominated by men – with academic progress records documenting their achievements; the minutes of Congregation and Convocation recording their appointments, actions and voices; and accounts noting how they chose to spend money. In contrast, the actions of women are seldom documented, unless they happened to be wealthy and gave large parcels of land for the use of the University.

An exception to this comes from a quirk of Oxford’s history – the existence of the Chancellor’s Court. The Chancellor’s Court was effectively the University’s own judicial system. Believed to have originated in 1214, when the Award of the Papal Legate ensured that arrested clerks would be handed over to the Chancellor, the powers of the Court grew over the years. By 1290, it had the power to hear all cases where one party was a University member; by 1341 the Chancellor had the right to banish people from the city; and by 1355, the Court had powers to enforce the peace of the city (by punishing those carrying weapons, for example). It is the records of the Court that detail the daily lives of “lower class” women and attitudes towards them.

One such woman is Lucy Colbrand. She appears in the first volume containing records of the Chancellor’s Court, the Chancellor’s Register 20 March 1435 – 3 March 1469 (Reference: OUA/Hyp/A/1). The Register is not an easy document to penetrate. The entries (written on a mixture of parchment and paper sheets) are thought to be in handwriting of individual Chancellors and their representatives (known as Commissaries). Furthermore, there is evidence that these entries were made hurriedly, perhaps even verbatim. The entries also use “scribe specific” abbreviations – just as we now have our own ways of shortening words when writing under time pressure. It’s rather like trying to read the prescriptions of dozens of different doctors!

Image of handwritten Latin on page from the Chancellors' Register

The page in the Chancellor’s Register, documenting Lucy’s transgressions (OUA/Hyp/A/1)

Fortunately, we are able to turn to the Reverend H.E. Salter’s two-volume transcription of the Register (Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis 1434-1469 (1932)) which removes the need to decipher handwriting, but still preserves the entries in their original Medieval Latin, the formal written language of this period. The entry relating to Lucy, dated 13 March 1443/4, can be found on pages 92 to 93 of Volume I.

A translation of the passage reads:

In that same year, namely the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1443 on the day after the day of St Gregory the pope, Lucy Colbrand, procuress and whore, was publicly banished for numerous insurgencies and perjuries for which she had previously sworn that she would leave outside the University and its precincts forever. However, notwithstanding her oath, she did not leave but she was, within the University, the cause of ensuing quarrels, whoredoms, arguments and murders; therefore because she was thus the reason and cause for further evils and disturbance of the peace, and because she herself [was] incorrigible and unreforming after imprisonment, therefore on the aforesaid day she was banished publicly in the presence of many doctors and masters in writing in the form which follows:
‘In the name of God, Amen. We, Thomas Gascoigne, acting Chancellor of the University of the school of Oxford, do decree that you, Lucy Colbrand – who have been in the presence of the official judicially and at other times lawfully convicted of the frequent disturbance of the peace, of procuring, prostitution, perjury and many other outrageous trespasses and offences, and have confessed the same, and are wholly incorrigible — are to be banished on account of the aforementioned matters. According to this writ we banish you, warning you the first time, the second time, and the third and final time that you must leave and depart within three days from this University of Oxford and beyond its precincts, not to return again under the penalties and threats according to the privileges granted to us on that account.’
Enacted on the day of St Benedict the Confessor at Oxford at Carfax; and the punishment of incarceration is imposed on anyone who illicitly receives her into the University or its precincts.

The Medieval Latin of the original immediately presents its own challenges to understanding the entry. By the Medieval period, Latin had evolved to include words for new concepts, often specific to the context in which they were used. Even more of a headache for the would-be reader, sometimes words changed their meanings from those used in Ancient Rome. For example, in the first line, Lucy is described as “pronuba et meretrix”. “Meretrix” is straightforward, translating as “prostitute”, but in Classical Latin “pronuba” means “bridesmaid”, a word that does not fit comfortably in this context! An investigation of this word in its medieval context indicates that there was a complex vocabulary surrounding the sex industry active during this period. There were specific words, not just for prostitute, but also for brothels (lupanaria), brothel keepers (fautor lenocinli), and pimps (leno). “Pronuba” was sometimes used to describe a female pimp, but it was also specifically used to mean “procuress”, meaning someone who received money from a client for providing the introduction to a sex worker, perhaps the equivalent of running a modern-day escort agency.

The passage also gives us insight into the punishments used (not only towards prostitutes) at the time. The least harsh penalty was abjuration. In this context, it can be interpreted as a promise to withdraw from the University to a set radius (for example, five miles) for an agreed period of time (for example, one year). Imprisonment was another punishment option, probably deeply unappealing at a time when the city’s prison had been nicknamed the “Bocardo”, thought to have been derived from the word “Boggard”, meaning toilet. Finally, the Chancellor had the power to exile individuals from the University and its precincts (technically within two miles of Carfax tower, although in 1444 the King gave the Chancellor permission to banish disturbers of the peace to a distance of 12 miles), a punishment that also carried public shame as it was announced at Carfax on market days.

detail of map of Oxford in 1400 showing the Bocardo and CarfaxAs well as transcribing the Chancellor’s Register, Salter also “retro-created” a map of how Oxford might have looked in 1400. The Bocardo would have been located within the North Gate, and Carfax is by St Martin’s Church (only the tower of the church remains today, known as “Carfax Tower”). This vibrant modern update of Salter’s work is an extract from the brand new “British Historic Towns Atlas, Volume VII, Oxford” and is kindly provided by and is copyright of The Historic Towns Trust, 2021. 

Lucy seems to have, through numerous infractions, worked her way through the system of punishments to the most severe available, obviously trying the Chancellor’s patience in the process. It’s clear that at some point previously, she did abjure, and thus her reoffending is referred to as a “perjury”, a breaking of her oath. It is notable, however, that at the time of abjuration, Lucy’s crimes must have been substantial, for the period of withdrawal was “forever”. It’s evident that she had also already spent some time incarcerated (“after imprisonment”) – again, given the structure of the wording, most likely for the same crimes. Her refusal (or inability due to financial circumstances) to stop offending seems to have infuriated the authorities – the words “incorrigible” and “unreforming” are often amplified by words of repetition and continuation – “previously”, “ensuing”, “numerous”, “further”, contributing to the impression that Lucy seems to have been before the Chancellor a number of times in the past.woodcut print of a line drawing showing a woman on a cart in a market placeSource: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

This sense of exasperation is supported by the immediacy of the writing. Although, this provides some challenging palaeography, it nevertheless, in this circumstance, conveys the feelings of the author. The first paragraph heaps up her crimes: although it is clear that the crimes of sexual immorality are the focus of the punishment, it is made plain that she is an “unseemly” woman – she is not quiet and submissive. She quarrels, argues, and is disruptive. The second paragraph apparently gives us the precise words spoken by the Chancellor when handing down his sentence, possibly in the very speech that Lucy would have heard. Although recorded for administrative purposes, the direct language places the reader in Lucy’s shoes: “You… have been… lawfully convicted and… have confessed… we banish you… you must leave”. The use of the “the first time, the second time, and the third and final time” conveys a sense of rhythmic emphasis given to this warning – we can practically hear the speaker’s delivery when reading the piece.

pen and ink sketch of document with seal

A piece of marginalia from later in the Register depicts the form of official decrees (OUA/Hyp/A/1)

The order in which Lucy’s crimes are listed is also of interest, as the crimes do not fit our preconceptions of importance. As identified above, those regarding sexual immortality are front and centre, but the list goes on – she does not respect authority, she breaks her oath, and causes arguments. It is one of the last crimes listed that provides the surprise, as the passages cites her involvement in murders (plural). It is not clear from the passage to what extent Lucy was involved or how active a participant she was. It may perhaps have been a passing involvement, as it is not mentioned at all in the direct speech of the second paragraph. Yet, it does seem to convey the sense that involvement in murder is of the least concern to those in power, certainly behind being a quarrelsome and argumentative woman!

Unfortunately, this is the first and last we hear of Lucy in the University’s records. She makes no further appearance in the Chancellor’s Court records. A cursory search of non-University contemporary judicial documents (such as Rogers’ Oxford City Documents and Salter’s Records of Mediæval Oxford and Munimenta Civitats Oxonie) appear not to record her name. We have no information on whether Lucy continued to exercise her profession and her temper outside the city boundaries, or whether the Chancellor’s harshest punishment finally “reformed” her character. It would seem that, to quote Laurel Ulrich, “well-behaved women seldom make history”.

For further information on the Chancellor’s Court and prostitution in Medieval Oxford the following sources are a good starting point:

Salter, H. E. Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, 1434-1469. Oxford, 1932. Print. Oxf. Hist. Soc. (Ser.) ; v. 93-94.

Kavanagh, H. (2020) The Topography of Illicit Sex in Later Medieval English Provincial Towns. MPhil thesis. Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/files/37318718/2020KavanaghHMphil.pdf (Accessed: 8 December 2021)

Karras, RM. “The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14.2 (1989): 399-433. Web.

Mazo Karras, Ruth. “The Latin Vocabulary of Illicit Sex in English Ecclesiastical Court Records.” The Journal of Medieval Latin 2 (1992): 1-17. Web.