Post by Sara M. Butler, 28 August 2024.

The word raptus has long perplexed and exasperated medieval scholars. While the tendency among modern scholars has been to translate it as “rape,” it in fact means “seizure” and was understood as such by medieval scribes who sometimes used the term to indicate standard theft: a man could rapuit a cow, for example.

Nonetheless, in legal records raptus most commonly was used in reference to a multitude of diverse acts:

1. sexual assault, usually indicated with a conjunctive term (such as, concubivit) intended to clarify the sexual nature of the crime;
2. non-consensual abduction/ravishment, often of an heir, heiress, or widow, usually with the intent to marry in order to profit from the victim’s inheritance; and,
3. consensual abduction/ravishment of either a young woman hoping to elope without her father’s consent, or of a married woman eager to escape her marital home.

At first glance, not much unites these distinct scenarios. It is only by returning to the concept of “seizure” that we can make sense of it. Each one of these scenarios originally (that is, under the Romans) was conceived as making a man (either the woman’s father or her husband) a victim of seizure, that is, he had lost ownership of his daughter’s/wife’s sexuality or her guardianship.

Why medieval jurists continued to use just one term to cover such a vast array of acts is not clear: that jurors felt the need to use clarifying terminology demonstrates that they too found the term problematic.

Confusion about raptus has made its way into the spotlight of late with the revelation that Cecily Chaumpaigne’s quitclaim of Geoffrey Chaucer for the crime of raptus had nothing to do with rape, but rather centered on a labor dispute in which Chaucer had “stolen” Cecily’s service away from her previous employer, presumably by offering better wages. This discovery has been discussed at length on our blog site by Euan Roger and Sebastian Sobecki. Cecily’s case is a useful exemplar to demonstrate just how wrong it is to translate raptus as rape.

But I would argue that even when raptus did refer to sexual assault, and it was sued as a plea of the crown (i.e. as a felony), “rape” is still not the right translation. Because it did not refer to just any rape. As Kim Phillips, among others, has observed, in this circumstance raptus meant  specifically the rape of a virgin.[1] Given that women could be lawfully married by the age of twelve, “virgins” were children. In this case, raptus referred to the rape of a child.

Of the various legal treatises, only Bracton offers some support to this interpretation. Bracton speaks of the “rape of virgins” (de raptu virginum).[2] Other treatises are more inclusive: Britton, for example, speaks of raptus as a “felony committed by a man by violence on the body of a woman, whether she be a virgin or not.”[3] Yet, in legal practice, judges and jurors were far more sympathetic to underage victims. As Gwen Seabourne has written, the “rape of virgins was the paradigm” for rape prosecutions.[4]

This does not mean that no one cared when an adult woman was sexually assaulted. Of course they did! But they did not necessarily see it as a matter worthy of corporal punishment (that is, blinding or castration) or capital punishment. A woman had a much better chance of success if she sued a civil suit for damages and compensation than a felony appeal of raptus.[5]

When it comes to the rape of children, however, they did everything in their power to make sure the perpetrator was punished as a felon. This is made abundantly clear in the trial record of the prosecution of Master John of Windsor, appealed by Idonea daughter of Godfrey the Chesemonger (also Furmager and Formager) for raptus.[6]

The record does not tell us that Idonea was a child. Indeed, the record treats her as a fully capable, independent being, describing how she had raised the hue and cry, presented her case from parish to parish and ward to ward, appealed the defendant of rape at the husting, and found pledges to guarantee her appearance at trial. Yet, a 1287 letter attributed to Idonea and surviving among the king’s ancient correspondence reveals that she was in fact under the age of seven at the time of the rape, and thus must have been coaxed and assisted in the performance of her various legal duties. The letter also explains the relationship between plaintiff and defendant: Master John, a member of the clergy, was her legal guardian.[7] Her father had passed away in the twelfth year of Edward I’s reign (1283/84), leaving behind Idonea and her brother Lambert, as well as their mother, Alice, presumably the individual working behind the scenes to make sure that Idonea’s rapist was prosecuted.[8]

The trial record was unusually detailed, indicating that jurors were keen to ensure justices of oyer and terminer had all the evidence necessary to convict. On the Wednesday after the feast of St John before the Latin Gate [6 May], in the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward I [1286], around the hour of matins, “namely at the hour before sunrise,” Idonea was about to enter the church of St Mary Magdalene Old Fish Street in Castle Barnard ward in the city of London when she was attacked by John of Windsor.

The record is crafted to emphasize the heinousness of John’s actions. The term “felony” is employed seventeen times. Jurors not only describe his actions as a felony, but they remark how he behaved “feloniously” and “feloniously as a felon.” The act was done with force (seven times), contrary to Idonea’s will (three times), with stealth (twice) and premeditation (twice), and in violation of not only the king’s peace but also his crown and dignity. John’s callousness is laid bare by the fact that after the rape, he “left her there as if dead.” His status as a fugitive is also mentioned twice, a point worth underscoring at a time when flight was generally interpreted as an admission of guilt.

The record is also remarkably specific when it comes to the movements of John and Idonea. The trial record creates a verbal map of their neighborhood, detailing the precise location of the church Idonea intended to enter in relation to the home where John was hiding. Why include these finer points? James Brundage has argued that a successful case of raptus incorporated evidence of both sexual assault AND abduction.[9] Thus, one could not be assaulted at home: at a minimum, the perpetrator had to drag the girl down the street before assaulting her in order to qualify as raptus. While Brundage was speaking of the church courts, this jury seems keen to “check all the boxes.” Given that Idonea was John’s ward, she probably lived with him. Accordingly, jurors needed to work harder to show that he was guilty of abduction as well as rape.

What is most striking about the record is its graphic description of the sexual assault. After John had hauled her into a corner of the solar, he

feloniously like a felon, with force and against her will, prostrated the said Idonea with her head towards the west and her feet towards the east and the said John with force and feloniously and against the peace of our lord the King and his Crown and his dignity, separating her legs with his legs and knees and he entered her with stealth and against her wishes he shook her and he seized her virginity and he made “waterscherd” and he broke her third rib on the left side of her ribcage and he left her there as if dead and he immediately fled after the said felony. 

Barbara Hanawalt writes that such graphic detail was meant as “a bit of fourteenth-century soft pornography for lawyers.”[10] However, because Idonea was a young child, under the age of seven, brutally injured such that her assailant assumed she had died, it seems more likely that the level of detail was included to horrify all those listening and ensure that justices would not shy away from convicting. One aspect of this passage is particularly compelling. The record states eam fecit Waterscherd, the latter a term that cannot be found in any dictionary but also appears in the 1321 trial record of the rape of eleven-year old Joan daughter of Eustace le Seler by Reymund de Limoges. The record tells us that Reymund “bruised her watershed” (li debrusa le Watershad).[11] One can only assume that this was an English loan word imported into the court documents because no Latin or French equivalent was known, and referred to that area of a woman’s body where water (that is, urine) was “shed.”[12] Thus, the violence of the rape was so brutal that Idonea experienced vaginal trauma.

Despite the jury’s best efforts, Master John did not hang for his crimes. He appeared in court, denied all the accusations, and presented multiple defenses. First, he claimed that as a member of the clergy, he must not respond without the bishop’s ordinary. Second, he pointed to inconsistencies in Idonea’s storytelling, that when she brought her appeal in the husting court, she failed to mention the day and year of the attack. Finally, he noted that raptus produced bleeding in a woman, and yet Idonea had mentioned nothing of the sort. The king’s justices had no choice but to release him sine die. Idonea was in mercy for false appeal, to be forgiven because of her age.

What is striking is that the record does not end there.

Justices then asked the jurors if they believed that John was guilty of raptus, or if he should be held exempt because of his privilege. Jurors responded that they believed him guilty; Master John was returned to prison.

Presumably, it was at this point that the 1287 letter to the king was sent in Idonea’s name. Endorsed by the justices of oyer and terminer, the letter explains that even though the appeal had been quashed on a “trivial matter,” Idonea was still owed some remedy for the “great violence he did her.” What was the king’s solution? John should remain in prison until he could make satisfaction to Idonea through payment of ten marks, with an additional forty shillings fine to the king.

One might argue that John got off lightly for his crime; at the very least, these were no small fines. Ten marks could buy seven horses, forty shillings an additional two. For Idonea, this money may well have helped her to secure a future. Presumably this is what justices John de Lovetot and Ralph of Sandwich were thinking when they reached out to the king. The efforts of both justices and jurors to punish a man they could not convict makes it clear just how despicable they believed raptus – in this case, child rape — to be.

We have no way of knowing whether the fines and the publicity of the trial had any impact on Master John’s financial stability and communal standing. He may well have been the same John of Windsor who became alderman of Cripplegate ward in the city of London in 1307, then Chamberlain in 1309.[13]   

Images:

Lucretia’s rape by Sextus Tarquinius, and her suicide (bef. 1561). Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.

Notes:

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[1] Kim M. Phillips, “Written on the Body: Reading Rape from the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries,” in Medieval Women and the Law, ed. Noël James Menuge (Boydell Press, 2000), 130.

[2] Bracton: On the Laws and Customs, ed. George E. Woodbine, trans. Samuel Thorne (Belknap Press, 1977), vol. 2, 414-15.

[3] Francis Morgan Nichols, ed., Britton: An English Translation and Notes (John Byrne & Co., 1901), 46.

[4] Gwen Seabourne, “Rape and Law in Medieval Western Europe,” in A Companion to Crime and Deviance in the Middle Ages, ed. Hannah Skoda (Bloomsbury, 2023), 348 and 351. Seabourne also writes about the case of Idonea daughter of Godfrey.

[5] See Gwen Seabourne, “Drugs, Deceit and Damage in Thirteenth-Century Herefordshire: New Perspectives on Medieval Surgery, Sex and the Law,” Social History of Medicine 30 (2017): 255-76.

[6] The National Archives [TNA] JUST 1/1256, no. 64 (AALT Images 0228 and 0229).

[7] TNA SC 8/199/9943.

[8] R.R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London: Part I, 1258-1358 (London, 1889), 66. Alice was probably also the individual who petitioned the king for a commission of oyer and terminer expressly to investigate the appeal of rape against John of Windsor, mentioned in the calendar of patent rolls dating to 20 Feb. 1287. Calendar of Patent Rolls, vol. 3: Henry III, 1281-92 (HMSO, 1901), 282.

[9] James A. Brundage, “Rape and Seduction in the Medieval Canon Law,” Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Brundage and Vern Bullough (Prometheus Books, 1982), 141-48.

[10] Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Whose Story was this? Rape Narratives in Medieval English Courts,” in her ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 1998), 137.

[11] “Seler v. Limoges,” in Helen M. Cam, ed., The Eyre of London: 14 Edward II, AD 1321 (Selden Society, v. 85, 1968), 88. Hanawalt also writes about this case in her “Whose Story was this?”

[12] OED for “shed” tells us that it can be used in the sense of a discharge of bodily fluid.

[13] John James Bradley, ed., The Aldermen of Cripplegate Ward from A.D. 1276 to A.D. 1900, with an account of the Office of Alderman of the City of London (Private distribution, 1900), 5; R.R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London: B, 1275-1312 (J.E. Francis, 1900), 230.