Agnes Hotot
Joane Agnes Hotot was possibly one of the first known female duelists. Agnes was born around 1378, at a time when trial by combat was still commonly used. During the Middle Ages, people believed that God would guide the person in the right to victory. Trial by combat, therefore, was regarded as a relatively quick and decisive method of settling disputes. Just such a disagreement arose for Agnes’s own family. Her father, Robert de Hotot held the estate of Clapton or Clopton in Northamptonshire. De Hotot fell into dispute with a man called Ringsley over some land. So, to decide who had the right of the matter, the pair decided to settle the case by jousting.
However, shortly before the match was due to take place, de Hotot fell ill with gout. Unable to walk, let alone ride a horse and hold a lance, the knight looked like he would have to withdraw because of illness and so concede the fight. This sudden illness meant that de Hotot would automatically lose the argument and the land as people would interpret his gout as God’s judgment on the matter. However, help was at hand in the form of de Hotot’s only heir: Agnes.
Despite being a woman, Agnes decided that “rather than he should lose the land, or suffer in his honor,” she would take her father’s place. So, donning her father’s armor, she met Ringsley on the field of honor. Agnes must have been a practiced jouster- or else very lucky for after ” a stubborn encounter,’ she managed to unseat Ringsley and so defeat him. To add to the humiliation of this defeat, as her opponent lay unhorsed in the dirt at her feet, Agnes took great pleasure in revealing herself as a woman.
Agnes began by removing her helmet and letting down her hair. However, just to make sure no one was in any doubt of her sex, some versions of the story say she then also removed her breastplate to “disclose[d] her bussom.” Ringsley lost the land, the argument, and his honor by being thoroughly beaten by a girl. As for Agnes, her victory was seen as far from dishonoring her as a woman. When she married in 1395 to Richard de Dudley, Clopton passed into the Dudley family’s hands. However, the Dudley family decided to celebrate the victory of their newest member by commemorating her on their coat of arms: as a naked woman with disheveled hair, removing a war helmet.
Agnes Hotot was not the only woman to duel disguised as a man.