Jane Statham (original) (raw)

Jane Statham (c. 1450/1455 – after 1537) was an English heiress and petitioner for law reform. Born in the early 1450s, Jane was heiress to the manor of Morley in Derbyshire. Soon after the death of her first husband John Sacheverell at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Jane was abducted by Henry Willoughby of Wollaton and forcibly married to his brother Richard. Jane was restored to her family, and her forced marriage annulled, after she petitioned Parliament for assistance. Her experience almost certainly triggered a change to the law in England to make abduction of a property-owning woman a felony. Later in life, Jane became the last Prioress of Markyate Priory before it was dissolved in 1536.