Love, hate, and the law in Tudor England : the three wives of Ralph Rishton / L. R. Poos.
Love, Hate, and the Law in Tudor England reconstructs the life of Ralph Rishton, a member of the sixteenth-century Lancashire gentry who was a child bridegroom and a serial wife discarder, who bribed church officials to obtain a forged annulment, defrauded a kinsman out of his inheritance, and adroi...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Ebook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford :
Oxford University Press,
[2022]
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | Oxford Academic.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Click here to view this book |
| Summary: | Love, Hate, and the Law in Tudor England reconstructs the life of Ralph Rishton, a member of the sixteenth-century Lancashire gentry who was a child bridegroom and a serial wife discarder, who bribed church officials to obtain a forged annulment, defrauded a kinsman out of his inheritance, and adroitly manipulated his own and other people's land. The dozens of lawsuits in which the Rishtons were involved, in many different courts, elucidate one family's engagement with law in Tudor England: how they used and misused law, how it shaped their perceptions of rights and mutual obligations, and how it framed litigants' and witnesses' language. Drawing upon trial and estate records, the core of this book is the central narrative of Ralph Rishton and his three wives, of litigiousness and violence, marriage and property, and the pursuit of equitable resolutions to disputes, along with countless smaller narratives that vividly capture a culture in its time and place. Alongside that central narrative, the book uses the Rishton stories as a starting point for analysing child marriage, the construction of memory, and the development of local historical identity through antiquarians and the Victorian and Edwardian local press, demonstrating how-from the time of the Rishtons into the twentieth century-historical narratives were continually reshaped and repurposed. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (336 pages) : illustrations. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 019268860X 9780192688606 |