(2): Estovers of Common.

Is the third item here mentioned simply another name for either dos or maritagium? Or, is it something different? It is possible that “the inheritance which her husband and she held on the day of the death of that husband” denotes lands that had come to the lady as heiress on the decease of relations, not as a gift at her marriage. Such lands might be described as held by both spouses; for a husband might even attend Parliament as a baron on the strength of his wife’s barony.

Magna Carta confirmed her right to the family home for forty days, known to later lawyers as the widow’s quarantine. The charter of 1216 notes an exception, on which John’s Charter is silent: if the husband’s place of residence had been a castle, the widow could not stay there; feudal strongholds were not for women. In such cases another residence must be substituted. In later days, widows were provided with a writ, “de quarentina habenda,” directing the sheriff to do her right.

The widow required more than the protection of a roof; until her dower lands had been assigned to her, no portion of the produce of her husband’s manors could be strictly called her own. The estate was held “in common” between her and her husband’s heir. It was only fair that, until her rights were ascertained, she should be allowed a reasonable share of the produce. Neither John’s Charter nor the first issue of Henry III. said anything on this head. The reissue of 1217 supplied the omission, expressly confirming her right to rationabile estoverium suum interim de communi. Many explanations of the word estovers might be cited: from Dr. Johnson, who defines it broadly as “necessaries allowed by law,” to Dr. Stubbs, who narrows it to ”firewood.” It was the right to supply one’s personal or domestic wants: this varied in extent from full supply of all things necessary for the maintenance of life, down to a right to take one kind of produce for one specific purpose only.

In this passage the word bears its wider signification. Such was Coke’s view, who held that it implied the widow’s right to “sustenance” of every kind, including the right to kill such oxen on the manor as she required for food. Estovers “of common” should thus be read as extending the widow’s right of consumption for her own and her household’s use over every form of produce held “in common” by her and the heir’s guardian prior to a final division. She could not, however, cut down trees.