Krista Kesselring

Krista J. Kesselring is a University Research Professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. She has previously published works on early modern English law, crime, and politics, with monographs on the royal pardon, the Northern Rebellion of 1569, and, most recently, on homicide. She has a series of articles and book chapters on such topics as felony forfeiture, riot, adultery, and the Court of Star Chamber. She has also edited or co-edited several volumes of essays and primary sources, including a collection of essays on the history of coverture co-edited with Tim Stretton: Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law World (2013). More recently, she co-edited with Natalie Mears Star Chamber Matters: An Early Modern Court and Its Records (2021), available open access on the University of London Press site. The volume contains several essays relevant to the subject of this gathering, including one by Kesselring entitled “Consent and Coercion, Force and Fraud: Marriages in Star Chamber,” pp. 97-114. Another monograph, Marriage, Divorce, and Separation in England, 1500-1700, co-authored with Tim Stretton, is due to appear in spring 2022. She co-edits a collaborative academic blog with Sara M. Butler and Katherine D. Watson, www.LegalHistoryMiscellany.com; several of her posts discuss material relevant to this gathering, including, e.g., “Disparaging Marriage in Early Modern England.”