This is a will from a woman in 1349 who has an apprentice. It is printed in R.R. Sharpe, Wills enrolled in the Court of Hustings London I (London, 1899), p. 106]. The original is in the London Metropolitan Archives Catalogue ref: CLA/023/DW/01/076

This is a will from an apothecary in the City of London. An apothecary prepared and sold medicines and drugs. He leaves his wife Cecilia in charge of his apprentices [those learning the trade] and also leaves her his houses in the city. [Printed in R.R. Sharpe, Wills enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London II. (London, 1890) p. 299]. The original is at London Metropolitan Archives Catalogue ref: CLA/023/DW/01/120

Christine de Pizan was the most famous female author of the middle ages. She was Italian and wrote in France in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries about politics, women’s lives and history. One of the manuscripts of her work is in the British Library, which has a picture of Christine working in her study. This text is from an early translation into English of Christine’s most famous work, The Book of the City of Ladies (Tempe, Arizona; 2004) I.27.

This source is an example of a fourteenth-century will [printed in R.R. Sharpe, Wills enrolled in the Court of Hustings, London I (London, 1889), p. 445.] The original is in the London Metropolitan Archives Catalogue ref: CLA/023/DW/01/068

This is an extract from a fourteenth-century poem, ‘How the Good Wife taught her daughter’ from ‘Women in England c1275-1525 : Documentary sources, translated and edited by P. J. P. Goldberg (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 97-103. One of the manuscripts is London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 853 (image).

This is an extract from the Parliament Roll of 1406. It was published in ‘The Statutes of the Realm: a collection of the Acts of the Parliament of England from earliest times until 1707’. Catalogue ref: C 65/68 m. 2.

This is an indenture, a rental agreement between Agnes Allesley, the Prioress of Catesby Abbey and the family of John Horewood of Staverton, in Northamptonshire. March 1457, Catalogue ref: E 326/8274.

This is a petition from Maud de Lacy’s cousin, Agnes de Vescy dated between 1272 and 1283, Catalogue ref: SC 8/124/6174.

This document from September 1283 shows that Henry III appointed two men to look into what Agnes de Vescy had done in Yorkshire. Catalogue ref: C 66 /102 m. 10 from 1283

This is a petition sent to Philippa of Hainault by Jacques de Artevelde, burgess [townsman] of Ghent. 16 January [1343] Catalogue ref: SC 1/56/57