Offensive weapons: gender, violence and metaphor in the records of medieval English common law: North American Conference on British Studies, Montreal, 2025.

An entry on the King’s Bench plea roll for Easter 1435 tells us about proceedings against a Norfolk clerk, Thomas Hervy of Testerton.[ KB 27/697 Rex m.5. Linked scan from AALT.] Amongst other things, he was alleged to have broken into the house of John Serjeant of Colkirk, on 1st October 1433, and to have wounded Margaret, John’s wife, by stabbing her with a lance or dagger. Medieval legal records are full of accusations of non-fatal injuries of one sort or another, and we know that carrying a knife or dagger (if not a lance) was commonplace; this case, however, is one in which it really is neither a dagger, nor yet a lance, that we should see before us, but a penis. In all likelihood, the real allegation was not one of stabbing, but of a sexual offence. This case, and a small number of others, refer to injuries inflicted with suggestively-named ‘carnal lances’ and/or ‘bollock-hafted daggers’, and may contain further material making it tolerably clear that the context was one of sexual offence. Literary scholars are familiar with the long tradition of imagery centring on fighting and weapons, in connection with sex and with male genitals, but its appearance in legal sources is less well-known. This paper considers what such examples might add to scholarship on rape and sexual offences in medieval law, and offers some thoughts on the gendered use of metaphor in medieval law more generally.