With men so often gone to fight, their wives managed the household
alone. The typical wife had maidens of equal class to whom she
taught household management, spinning, weaving, carding wool with
iron wool-combs, heckling flax, embroidery, and making garments.
There were foot-treadles for spinning wheels. She taught the
children. Each day she scheduled the activities of the household
including music, conversation, dancing, chess, reading, playing
ball, and gathering flowers. She organized picnics, rode horseback
and went hunting, hawking to get birds, and hare-ferreting. She
was nurse to all around her. If her husband died, she usually
continued in this role because most men named their wife as
executor of their will with full power to act as she thought best.
The wives of barons shared their right of immunity from arrest by
the processes of common law and to be tried by their peers.
For ladies, close-fitting jackets came to be worn over close-
fitting long gowns with low, square-cut necklines and flowing
sleeves, under which was worn a girdle or corset of stout linen
reinforced by stiff leather or even iron. Her skirt was
provocatively slit from knee to ankle. All her hair was confined
by a hair net. Headdresses were very elaborate and heavy, trailing
streamers of linen. Some were in the shape of hearts, butterflies,
crescents, double horns, steeples, or long cones.
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