a contract, obtain an education against her husband's wishes, or keep a salary for herself. If a wife was permitted to work, under the laws of coverture, she was required to relinquish her wages to her husband. On the other hand, a feme couvert could not be sued or sue in her own name. In certain cases, a wife did not have individual legal liability for her misdeeds since it was legally assumed that she was acting under the orders of her husband, and generally a husband and a wife were not allowed to testify either for or against each other. A queen of England, whether she was a queen consort or a queen regnant, was generally exempted from the legal requirements of coverture, as understood by Blackstone. History The system of feme sole and feme covert developed in England in the High and Late Middle Ages as part of the common law system imposed following the Norman Conquest in 1066, as its French linguisitic origin indicates. The legal reforms of Henry II and other medieval English kings did constitutionalize rights of women, including through the Treatise of Glanvill. Medieval legal treatises of Catholic adherent monarchs, such as that known as Bracton, described the nature of coverture and its impact on married women's legal actions. Bracton states that husband and wife were a single person, being one flesh and one blood, a principle known as 'unity of person'. Husbands also wielded power over their wives, being their rulers and custodians of their property. While it was once assumed that married women had little or no access to legal recourse, as a result of coverture, historians have more recently complicated our knowledge of coverture in the Middle Ages through various studies of married women's legal status across different courts and jurisdictions. Collectively, many of these studies have argued that 'there has been a tendency to overplay the extent to which coverture applied', as legal records reveal that married women could possess rights over property, could take part in business transactions, and interact with the courts. In medieval post-conquest Wales, it has been suggested that coverture only applied in certain situations. Married women were responsible for their own actions in criminal presentments and defamation, but their husbands represented them in litigation for abduction and in interpersonal pleas. The extent of coverture in medieval England has also been qualified by the existence of