The history of lethal violence has been dominated by accounts of the incidence of homicide over long periods, within which the paucity of women as defendants is generally taken for granted. Several studies, however, compare men's and women's conviction rates. Pre-modern women are often said to have benefited from lenient treatment relative to men within the criminal justice system. Explanations for such leniency differ. Some historians seem to argue that despite some notable exceptions – the benefits of clergy and belly and the characterisation of husband-killing as petty treason – the law offered both sexes a rough equality in theory, but in practice female offenders benefited from chivalric attitudes on the part of judges and jurors. However, the noted exceptions would seem to undermine the general point about equality before the law even in theory. And it is unclear how the judiciary squared an abstraction of feminine frailty with the alleged acts of the women before them. Others have argued that law itself failed to provide a comparable means of sentencing women and men. Women's ineligibility to claim benefit of clergy led judges and jurors to treat female defendants less severely than males. Yet the view that women were the recipients of peculiar leniency, whether to compensate for the unavailability of clergy or because of chivalric attitudes, is perhaps misconceived. The argument that the sentencing of women was lenient (or harsh, for that matter) judges women's treatment before the courts by the male standards that were embodied in law.