Medieval Scots were less sexist than Victorians? Historic document suggests so

Unlike some Victorians, Robert the Bruce doesn't appear to have insisted that women were 'civilly dead' in relation to property matters (Picture: Culture Club) | Getty Images

Once upon a time in Scotland, married women were, spectacularly rudely, considered to be “civilly dead” in terms of property ownership, “making it impossible for them to enter contracts or own land in their name”, according to an article in the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland.

This finally began to change with the Married Women’s Property (Scotland) Act of 1881, which “granted married women the right to own property independently of their husbands” and represented the “first legislative step toward recognising women’s economic activity, although it took decades for women to achieve anything close to equal status in property ownership”.

However, if you think the Victorians were more enlightened than their medieval ancestors, you might be wrong. For a royal charter dated to Robert the Bruce’s reign records the transfer of lands including Moidart, Arisaig and Morar, to Artur Caimbeal from one “Christina of the Isles”, in what an expert said was a “significant” early example of a woman asserting ownership of land in her own right.

Something to ponder the next time you use ‘medieval’ as a term of abuse for something particularly backward.