Note 157 — Chapter XI · HISTORY OF SEPARATION AND DIVORCE UNDER ENGLISH AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAW
Reading edition
Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, II, 299 ff., conjectures that during the Middle Ages there must have been many irregular self-divorces; and he cites the famous case of William Paynel and Margaret his wife who, in 1302, "petitioned the king for the dower that was due to her as widow of her first husband John de Camoys," who with her consent had "openly and before witnesses 'given, granted, released, and quit-claimed' the said Margaret to 'her chivalric knight,'" the said William. The court refused the dower on the ground of desertion and adultery. Cf. on this case Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of Eng. Law, II, 393, 394.