interesting facts about John Rykener, also known as Eleanor, gleaned from a prosecutorial investigation concerning his sexual conduct and behavior in London in 1395
Rykener was arrested in the process of a sexual act with another man, but it was first assumed that he was merely a female prostitute - his client claims he did not know Rykener's sex until they were arrested, and he approached Rykener dressed as a woman
Rykener confessed to having sex with both men and women, but he says his liasons with the women, married and single, were never part of his 'business'
the majority of Rykener's alleged male partners were clergymen, including several Friars, a Rector, and three chaplains (and three Oxford students, who were clergymen of a sort themselves) - Rykener reports that this was because they paid more
throughout the document, it is stated exactly which gender he held at any given point; that is, each time he is said to have had sex with a man, it is "as a woman" (tamquam a mulieri; cum femina) and vice versa (ut vir). while the report labels his actions "abominable", it's interesting to me how the context seems to imply this is common euphemism for 'homosexual sex'. That he was going back and forth between genders is part of the narrative, but not specifically commented upon.
Rykener didn't just play a woman as his night job - other documents confirm that he actually worked as a seamstress and a barmaid in a pub in Oxford, under the name and identity of Eleanor.
His secret life was not a secret to all - Rykener names a London madam as the woman from whom he learned the art of fashioning clothing, and the person who first dressed him as a woman, and indeed exposed him as such to some of her (male) clients - though it also alleges she prostituted her own daughter.
