Visionaries--Part Two--Chapter Fourteen

[Elkhound]

As I noted earlier, women did not sit on juries and they simply played no part at all in the legal process, other than the very limited situations where a jury of matrons was required.

King John appointed two women as Sheriffs; iirc, they were in one case the widow and the other the unmarried grown daughter of the former sheriff, and they had been essentially doing the job for some months while their husband/father was too ill.  And--although this was much later--Margaret Brant acted as a judge and even served as acting governor of Maryland.  I could probably come up with some other examples, except I'm posting from home and not the library, but it goes to show that while women doing such things may have been unusual it wasn't impossible.