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From: sclark@chass.utoronto.ca (Susan Carroll-Clark)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Chastity belt an urban myth
Date: 16 Jul 1996 14:24:13 -0400

Greetings!

In a followup I seemed to have missed, someone said,
>Could you share your debunking with us? "Droit du seigneur" is cross-
>referenced in Brewer's under "Jus primae noctis"; the entry says, in
>part: "The custom seems to have existed in early medieval Europe to a
>limited extent but was more often the excuse for levying dues in lieu."
>Are you saying it didn't exist at all?

No. Few scholars of the topic will debate its existence in limited locales, usually in France, and as you say, usually for the excuse for levying a fine. Even that may be misunderstood. A recent query to the Medtextl listserv brought the following cite from Peter Binkley, which might help shed some light on the matter:

"See Alain Boureau, _Le droit de cuissage: La fabrication d'un mythe, XIIIe-XXe siecle_ (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995). It received a bravura review in the TLS , Oct. 6 1995, p.44, by Peter Linehan, who wrote: "[Boureau] is exigent in his taxonomy. Not any lordly lust will satisfy him. He will only consider cases of legal entitlement to a payment in lieu of ravishing a female feudal dependant on her wedding night. By that reckoning, all but five of the dossier's seventy-two "proofs" for the existence of the practice turn out either to be legendary or to involve a confusion with something entirely different, namely _merchet_, the payment made for "formarriage", when (in F.W. Maitland's words) "the girl married outside the vill", an event about as lubricious as a parish fete on a wet Saturday. And such is the virtuoso quality of the author's dismissal of the claims of the remainder that the reader is left regretting that there were not more of them deserving of his scalpel and his lancet." Although the myth is found as early as 1247, it flourished in the 16th century and especially around the time of the French Revolution."

The always reliable (in medievalist circles) Jim Marchand added, " According to the Book of Leinster, King Conchobar had the _jus primae noctis_ in his realm.". That must be one of the early medieva references cited by Brewer. It has also been noted that the motif appears in the epic of Gilgamesh.

In the particular case of "Braveheart", however, it seems quite easy to prove that Edward I never proclaimed it as law as a way to subjugate the Scots. Suffice it to say that it is not covered in Bracton, the most contemporary legal treatise in England, there is no mention of such a proclaimation by ANY historian of the period, there is no evidence, even allusory in any collection of legal documents dating from the reign of Edward I, and in fact, no one has yet provided even _one clear--or even unclear citation which could refer to the custom_ for England or Scotland in the period under discussion. And yes, I've looked--13th century English history is my primary field of study.

So, to wind this up....yes, the custom perhaps existed in a limited fashion in some areas of Europe, but certainly not to the extent believed in modern popular culture, and (so far) definitely not in England or Scotland during the time of Edward I. It is an exception, not a rule, in medieval law.

Susan "But Patrick McGoohan made a _great_ EdwardI" Carroll-Clark
PhD student, Medieval History, University of Toronto
sclark@chass.utoronto.ca