... for women in England were equity law and ecclesiastical law, which both provided some remedy for the common law’s severity toward women. common law England equity law Maryland coverture ecclesiastical law estate administration New England New York Pennsylvania South Carolina Dissenters...

...This chapter offers a quantitative analysis of female litigants in courts across three jurisdictions during the seventeenth century. Though the percentage of female litigants in common law courts remained low, an increasing number of women sought legal redress under equity law in England. In those...

...This chapter examines the expansion of the economy and how the development of equity law posed an increasing challenge to coverture and patriarchy in the eighteenth century. The legal regimes of England and the southern colonies gave women wide latitude to pursue investment and trade, and allowed...