Daughters, Parents, Violence, and Marital Consent in the Late Middle Ages

This paper looks at 15^th century court records from the archdiocese of Armagh (Ireland), specifically at a number of cases where women claimed they had been forced into marriage by their families, and the ways their mothers participated in the coercion. It compares these cases with others from elsewhere and questions why mothers and daughters ended up on (apparently) different sides, and suggests that both the initial consent and the claims of coercion may have been part of family strategies.