Now! Then! Leeds’s borough charter seeks to encourage female publicans

12 November 1207: Leeds’s borough charter seeks to encourage female publicans

John Le Patourel, Ed. 1957. The Borough Charter, 1207. Documents Relating to the Manor and Borough of Leeds, 1066-1400. Leeds: Thoresby Society. Get it:

Excerpt

No woman shall pay custom in our borough for selling beer.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Le Patourel suggests 12 November as the most likely candidate for “the morrow of the feast of the Blessed Martin.”

Confusingly, James Wardell has “No woman shall pay toll in our borough who is to be sold for slavery” (Wardell 1846), but Le Patourel thinks he has relied on Whitaker (Whitaker 1816), who himself regards his source as unreliable. LP’s reconstruction of the Latin text is “Nulla femina dabit consuetudinem in burgo nostro pro ceruisia uendenda.”

I hope Clifford Lackey’s first comment is true:

In medieval times women were evidently the brewers and retailers; they are often mentioned specifically in beer regulations.

Tetleys have marked the connection of the Paynel family with the Leeds area by naming the banqueting hall in their Lawnswood Arms, Otley Road, “The Paynel Suite.” The Paynels owned large areas of land including that on which the Lawnswood Arms tsands. Ralph Paynel held the tenancy of the Manor of Leeds from Ilbert de Lacey, one of William the Conqueror’s vassals.

(Lackey 1985)

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