Stepmothers at law in early modern England

Maternity and Justice in the Early Modern English Court of Chancery

“…Women acting as proxy mothers found themselves particularly susceptible to representation by other litigants (including mothers) as coercive maternal figures who were parasitic on children. 62 In 1628, Elizabeth Waterhouse was portrayed by her own younger sister, Dorothy Copley, as well as by friends and neighbors in her natal village, as distinctly unmaternal for withholding her sister's inherited portion of £573. Waterhouse had acted as a proxy mother/guardian to her sister for sixteen years and felt entitled to some reimbursement out of the family estate.…”