(1): Dower.

A wife’s dower is here the portion of her husband’s lands set aside to support her in her widowhood. It was customary from an early date for a bridegroom to make provision for his bride on the day he married her. The ceremony formed a picturesque feature of the marriage rejoicings, taking place literally at the church door, as man and wife returned from the altar. The share thus set apart for the young wife was known as her dos (or dowry), and would support her if her husband died. In theory, the transaction between the spouses partook of the nature of a contract. The wife’s rôle, however, was a passive one: her concurrence was assumed. Yet, if no provision was made at all, the law stepped in, on the presumption that the omission had been unintentional, and fixed the dower at one–third of all his lands.

John’s Magna Carta contents itself with the brief enactment “that a widow shall have her dower.” The Charter of 1217 goes farther, containing an exact statement of the law as it then stood:—“The widow shall have assigned to her for her dower the third part of all her husband’s land which he had in his lifetime unless a smaller share had been given her at the door of the church.” Lawyers of a later age have, by a strained construction of the words in vita sua, made them an absolute protection to a wife against all attempts to lessen her dower by alienations granted without her consent during the marriage. Magna Carta contains no warrant for such a proposition, although a later clause (chapter 11) secures dower lands from attachment by the husband’s creditors, Jews or others.