Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England 0582405130, 9780582405134

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Publisher’s acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Notes and references
1 Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England
Appendix: Attitudes to pregnancy, from a woman’s spiritual diary, 1687–8
Notes and references
2 Sexual knowledge in England, 1500–1750
Medical and theological knowledge in early medieval England
Popular knowledge about sexuality
Notes and references
3 The construction and experience of maternity in seventeenth-century England
Notes and references
4 Blood and paternity
Cultural discourses: blood, medicine and law
The fictions of the law
Fathers and children of ‘base’ blood
‘Children of his own’
Notes and references
5 ‘The sucking child’: adult attitudes to child care in the first year of life in seventeenth-century England
Notes and references
6 Katharine and Philip Henry and their children: a case study in family ideology
Notes and references
7 Sibling relationships
Who were siblings? Consanguinity and affinity
Siblings and inheritance
The obligations of siblings
Siblings and the sense of self
Notes and references
Further reading
Index

Citation preview

Blood, Bodies and Families

WOMEN AND MEN IN HISTORY

This series, published for students, scholars and interested general readers, will tackle themes in gender history from the early medieval period through to the present day. Gender issues are now an integral part of all history courses and yet many traditional texts do not reflect this change. Much exciting work is now being done to redress the gender imbalances of the past, and we hope that these books will make their own substantial contribution to that process. We hope that these will both synthesise and shape future developments in gender studies. The General Editors of the series are Patricia Skinner (University of Southampton) for the medieval period; Pamela Sharpe (University of Bristol) for the early modern period; and Penny Summerfield (University of Lancaster) for the modern period. Margaret Walsh (University of Nottingham) was the Founding Editor of the series. Published books: Imperial Women in Byzantium, 1025–1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology Barbara Hill Masculinity in Medieval Europe

D. M. Hadley (ed.)

Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy

Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (eds)

Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (eds) Gender, Church and State in Early Modern Germany: Essays by Merry E. Wiesner Merry E. Wiesner Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage English Masculinities, 1600–1800

Elizabeth W. Foyster

Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen (eds)

Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 Tony Henderson Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England, 1760–1860

Ruth Watts

Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress, 1790–1930 Mary Hilton and Pam Hirsch (eds) Women and Work in Russia, 1880–1930: A Study in Continuity through Change Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar More than Munitions: Women, Work and the Engineering Industries, 1900–1950 Clare Wightman Women in British Public Life, 1914–1950: Gender, Power and Social Policy Helen Jones The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830–1960 Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden Women and the Second World War in France, 1939–1948: Choices and Constraints Hanna Diamond Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Britain 1660–1800

Philip Carter

Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850–1950: Gender and Class Shani D’Cruze (ed.) Women and Ageing in British Society Since 1500

Lynn Botelho and Pat Thane (eds)

Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300

Elisabeth van Houts (ed.)

Family Matters: A History of Ideas about Family since 1945 Michael Peplar Domestic Service and Gender, 1660–1750

Tim Meldrum

Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England Patricia Crawford

Blood, Bodies and Families In Early Modern England

Patricia Crawford

First published 2004 by Pearson Education Limited Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2004, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Patricia Crawford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-0-582-40513-4 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book can be obtained from the Library of Congress Set in 9/13.5pt Stone Serif by 35

Contents

Acknowledgments Publisher’s acknowledgements Abbreviations

Introduction

vii x xi

1

Notes and references 13

1

Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England

19

Appendix: Attitudes to pregnancy, from a woman’s spiritual diary, 1687–8 38 Notes and references 40

2

Sexual knowledge in England, 1500–1750

54

Medical and theological knowledge in early medieval England 55 Popular knowledge about sexuality 63 Notes and references 72

3

The construction and experience of maternity in seventeenth-century England

79

Notes and references 102

4

Blood and paternity Cultural discourses: blood, medicine and law 113 The fictions of the law 121 Fathers and children of ‘base’ blood 124 ‘Children of his own’ 130 Notes and references 132

113

vi

BLOOD, BODIES AND FAMILIES

5

‘The sucking child’: adult attitudes to child care in the first year of life in seventeenth-century England

140

Notes and references 162

6

Katharine and Philip Henry and their children: a case study in family ideology

175

Notes and references 197

7

Sibling relationships

209

Who were siblings? Consanguinity and affinity 211 Siblings and inheritance 214 The obligations of siblings 217 Siblings and the sense of self 223 Notes and references 231

Further reading

239

Index

245

Acknowledgements

Putting together a collection of my essays has led me to reflect on my work as an early modern historian in Western Australia, and to recall with gratitude the kindness and generosity of many people. A national and international community of early modern scholars and friends has, over the years, sustained and supported my research. I thank especially my teachers at the University of Melbourne, Don Kennedy and the late George Yule. When I began my postgraduate studies at the University of Western Australia, library resources were limited, and there was a vast scepticism about the possibilities of working on seventeenth-century England from Australia. I am very grateful to the scholars who encouraged me in those early years, especially to Valerie Pearl who voluntarily supervised my doctoral studies. In Australia, we now have a strong body of early modernists, and I warmly thank them all, especially Sybil Jack, Donna Merwick, Carolyn Polizzotto, Wilfrid Prest, Judith Richards, Alison Wall and Charles Zika. Discussions of early modern history extend across several continents and I thank in Britain, the United States and Canada, all those historians who have helped with ideas, sources and references, in particular Judith Bennett, Jeremy Boulton, Sylvia Bowerbank, Amanda Capern, Miranda Chaytor, David Cressy, Lee Davidoff, Natalie Davis, Amy Erickson, Frances Harris, Felicity Heal, Cynthia Herrup, Ann Hughes, Anne Laurence, John Morrill, Mary O’Connor, Margaret Pelling, Mary Prior, Alexandra Shepard, Paul Slack, Joan Thirsk, Barbara Todd and Blair Worden. The late Gerald Aylmer encouraged my studies from 1966, and was always, with Ursula, a generous and hospitable friend. The late Geoffrey Elton was always willing to discuss history. To Sir Keith Thomas I owe a special thank you, for his inspiration and guidance. His intellectual contribution has made it possible for many of us to pursue some different questions in our historical studies. Over the last two decades, I have valued the feminist collaboration with my dear friends Sara Mendelson and Laura Gowing, and good conversations with Phyllis Mack and Lyndal Roper.

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At UWA I thank those who contribute to early modern studies and postgraduate seminars, especially Pamela Sharpe, who encouraged me to put this collection together; postgraduate students with whom I have talked about history, and especially my colleagues Philippa Maddern and Jacqueline Van Gent. Susan Broomhall, Jane Long and Stephanie Tarbin have kindly read specific chapters. Katharine Massam and Claire Walker have continued to discuss history with me, though they now live on the other side of the country. The Scholars’ Centre at the UWA library has been a wonderful resource, and I thank particularly Dr Toby Burrows for his scholarly librarianship. For their excellent research assistance in managing the inter-library loans, converting the files, and proof-reading, I thank Kellie Abbott, Paul Laffey, Alicia Marchant and Kate Riley. I acknowledge the generous support of the Nuffield Foundation for a fellowship in 1974, and the Folger Shakespeare Library for a short-term fellowship in 1991. Most significantly, the ARC has funded my research projects from the 1970s. At that date, UWA was only just removing policies which prohibited the employment of married women on other than temporary contracts. The importance of the ARC not just for money but for recognition and support cannot be underestimated. Currently in Australia it is devastating to see the discouraging effects of the lack of adequate research funds on the next generation of medieval and early modern scholars. I warmly thank the ARC for the funding of my current work on parents and children. For chapters published earlier, there are specific additional acknowledgments. For chapter 1, H. Copeman, for medical comments and contacts; Michael MacDonald, Alan Macfarlane, Wilfrid Prest, the late Gareth Roberts, friends in the Department of History, and especially Keith Thomas. For chapter 2, the late Roy Porter; for chapter 3, Valerie Fildes; and for chapter 6, the Trustees of the Dr Williams’s Library and the Congregational Memorial Hall Trust (1978) Ltd. for allowing me to consult manuscripts, and to Dr. Geoffrey Nuttall for help with sources. P. J. Warburton-Lee Esq., of Redbrook, near Broad Oak, kindly allowed me to consult manuscripts in his possession. I thank Barry Smith for his valuable comments, and Ann Hughes for inviting me to give an earlier version of the chapter at Manchester University. At Longman Pearson, I thank Heather McCallum for her enthusiasm, patience and support, Hilary Shaw, the commissioning editor, and the editorial team. Families, as I argue, matter to individuals. I thank my family in England, especially Mary and Ken Green, who have looked after me on my research trips; in Australia, my parents, the late Enid and Jimmy Clarke; my husband

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ian, my son Rupert, his partner Mandy Williamson, and her sons Xavier and Michael. I dedicate this book to my family and friends. University of Western Australia November 2003

ix

Publisher’s acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: The Past and Present Society for ‘Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenthcentury England’, Past & Present, 91 (May 1981), pp. 47–73; Local Population Studies for ‘Attitudes to pregnancy, from a women’s spiritual diary, 1687–8’, Local Population Studies, 21 (1978), pp. 43–45; Cambridge University Press for ‘Sexual knowledge in England, 1500–1750’ in Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (eds), Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), pp. 82–106, and ‘The Sucking Child: Adult attitudes to child care in the first year of life in seventeenth-century England’, Continuity and Change, part 1, vol. 1 (1986), pp. 23–52; Routledge and Dr Valerie Fildes for ‘The construction and experience of maternity in seventeenth-century England’ in Valerie Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England (Routledge, London, 1990), pp. 3–38; The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for ‘Katharine and Philip Henry and their children: a case study in family ideology’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 134 (1984), pp. 39–73. In some instances we have been unable to trace the owners of copyright material, and we would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.

Abbreviations

BL

British Library, London

Bodl.

Bodleian Library, Oxford

CCRO

City of Chester Record Office, now Chester Archives

DRO

Dorset Record Office

DWL

Dr Williams’s Library, London

fo./fos.

folio/folios

Guildhall

London, Guildhall Library

JRL, MUL

John Rylands University Library of Manchester

KAO

Kent Archives Office, now Centre for Kentish Studies

NRO

Northamptonshire Record Office

NUL

Nottingham University Library

OCRO

Oxford County Record Office, now Oxford Archives

RO

Record Office

sig.

signature, letters or figures printed at the foot of the first page of sections to show the correct sequence for binding

S.T.C.

A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (eds), A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640 (London, 1926). Reissued in 2 vols. in 1976 and 1986; references in text refer to the 1926 edition

WIL

Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London

Dates are cited in old style, but the year is taken to begin on 1 January.

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Introduction

H

ow is the writing of history transformed if we include women and their experiences? These chapters, written over the last two decades around the subjects of blood, bodies and families, were designed to show the possibilities of new approaches to the past. Blood and bodies, apparently unprepossessing subjects, had histories; families look different if we take gender into account. Most of the following chapters take women as their starting point, and all of them are concerned with gender. Blood, the first subject, had complex and multiple meanings in early modern England.1 Blood was life, and health depended on it. Blood was influenced by temperament and humours. The humours of the two sexes were thought to be different; men were hot and dry, women cold and moist. The letting of blood was necessary for the restoration of mental as well as physical health.2 Migration overseas drew off the ‘multitudes of inhabitants’ from London who might otherwise ‘like too much blood, infect the whole city with plague and poverty’.3 Both men and women produced seed, the matter for reproduction, from blood: as a physician explained in a popular medical treatise in the eighteenth century, blood ‘being still further digested to the highest degree of perfection, it is called seed’.4 Overindulgence in food produced too much blood, which in turn produced excessive seed which provoked lust. Spare diet and exercise were advised to reduce sexual impulses. From surplus blood, women nourished the foetus in the womb, and then converted their blood to milk to feed the infant at their breasts. Their blood was unstable, constantly changing in form. In other contexts, it was endowed with magical powers and linked with witchcraft. Court records tell of women scratching those suspected of witchcraft to break their power; thus in 1604, when Joan Guppy complained of a bloody assault on her by a group of women, one of the leaders alleged that ‘to scratch and

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fetche blood of such as doe harme in that quality is a meanes to cure them that be hurte’.5 Blood was beneficial in one context, harmful in another. Blood was a central symbolic concept for the kinship structure of early modern England. While blood relationships could be ambiguous, it was widely assumed that common blood made for affection, and that those of common blood would band together against outsiders. As a gentleman wrote when soliciting support for a relative in a law suit, he expected ‘that you will ever state a difference betwixt him (in whose veynes your own blood streames) & his adversaries’.6 From kinship groups, blood extended to the social structure: honourable blood distinguished the nobility from the rest of the population. ‘Blood’ was also a metaphor linking paternity, families and nation. Blood had powerful symbolic meanings as both sacrifice and pollutant. When blood was shed, and crossed the margins of the body, its power depended on the context. The sacrificial blood that Christ shed on the cross could save. Similarly, the blood of Charles I shed on the scaffold was believed to have healing power, and many in the watching crowd struggled for drops of his blood on their handkerchiefs. Patriots during the civil wars could claim that they had shed their blood voluntarily for healing of their country, yet the shedding of innocent blood could defile the land.7 Blood could be corrupted. After she was raped, Shakespeare’s Lucretia protested that her mind was unsullied, ‘though my gross blood be stain’d with this abuse’.8 Corrupted blood could pollute. Although a woman’s monthly shedding of her menstural blood was widely believed to be necessary for her health, the blood itself could endanger men and children. Yet the system of beliefs about women’s menstrual blood has not always been recognized as a suitable subject for historical study. When Past & Present published my study of attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England, included as the first chapter in this book, a reviewer of the first 100 issues of the journal cited it as an example of ‘uneasy trendiness’: ‘You should work on problems not periods’, he joked to his colleagues.9 Two decades ago, the ‘real’ historian saw no interest in the apparently timeless mutability of women’s bodies, which bled, reproduced, and lactated. Bodies, the second subject of these chapters, are central to the history of early modern people.10 If the cultural norms about the body were different, how, as Phyllis Mack has questioned, did these translate ‘into subjective attitudes and physical perceptions’?11 Feminist historians, seeking to historicise women’s embodied experiences, have argued that menstruation, lactation, giving birth and dying all occur in specific historical circumstances, and have different symbolic meanings across times and cultures. We cannot assume,

INTRODUCTION

as Laqueur did, that ‘ordinary people’ shared the same broad view of how the body functioned as did the authors of learned treatises.12 Women in particular may have found that the Galenic model of the body, widely influential among the learned, resonated little with their own bodily experiences. ‘Touch, sex and violence’, as Laura Gowing’s recent study brilliantly argues, takes us into another world from literate discourses.13 Motherhood, much more than fatherhood, was a profoundly embodied experience. Men’s uncertainties about their bodily connection with a child affected their attitudes to paternity, as we shall see. The family, my third subject, was an institution of major significance, widely assumed at the time to be the foundation of society, a little church, a little commonwealth.14 Modern historians and sociologists have continued to identify the family as the basic social unit.15 It is, demographic historians Wrigley and Schofield assert, ‘the prime institutional form in population history’.16 Certainly families mattered. Women and men were born into families, and families of origin taught infants the meaning of gender, class and race. Parents established patterns of behaviour and values, which children reacted against or absorbed but could never totally ignore. Families sustained a gender order that advantaged men. At all social levels, families transmitted an inheritance of emotions and beliefs mediated by gender and class to their children, many of whom in turn became parents and transmitted similar values to their own offspring. Yet the family is not the best starting point for understanding early modern gender relations. The history of the family inevitably obscures women’s lives; since a woman changed her name on marriage and on remarriage and was absorbed into another kin line, to which ‘family’ did she belong? Demographic historians were aware of the problem but lacked methodological solutions.17 Miranda Chaytor’s detailed work on one particular community demonstrated the limitations of demography for the history of women.18 Furthermore, the assumption that the family was the fundamental social unit immediately makes marriage the norm for adult women, echoing the early modern commentator who declared that a woman was either married, or about to be married.19 Yet we know that marriage was late, around the mid 20s for ordinary women for much of the early modern period, and that never-married women, singlewomen, were a large proportion – up to 20 per cent – of the population. Not all women wanted to marry. Their decision was influenced by complex social, economic and personal circumstances.20 Yet despite the ubiquity of singlewomen, histories of the family usually obscure their adult experiences.21 Historians have focused on the relationship between husband and wife at the expense

3

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BLOOD, BODIES AND FAMILIES

of other relationships.22 Sibling relationships have been comparatively neglected in the early modern period.23 Furthermore, the family is itself an uncertain social unit. Historians have debated whether its character was nuclear or extended. Over the lifetime of the individual, the notion of ‘who was family?’ blurred. Children themselves became parents – ‘the son was now the father’24 – and brothers and sisters extended into uncles and aunts. As David Cressy convincingly argued in 1986, kinship relationships change over the individual’s lifetime, and kin beyond the nuclear family were of varying importance at different stages of life.25 The unit of parents and children is frequently ‘only a stage’ in the history of a family.26 The difficulty of defining the family is apparent in the administration of the poor laws. From the late sixteenth century, civic authorities had to resolve the question of who was family for the purposes of entitlement to and responsibility for poor relief. In 1755, Richard Burn sought to give some guidance to hard-pressed local officials. Firstly, he explained, ‘children are part of the father’s family’.27 Thus if the father died, his widow could give her ‘settlement rights’ to her children, because ‘they are as much hers as the father’s’. If she remarried, however, her settlement depended upon her new husband: ‘it is then not her family, but her husband’s; and she cannot give the children any sustenance without the husband’s leave’. Her children ‘are no part of her second husband’s family’.28 Poor children, then, could lose their ‘family’ on the remarriage of their mothers. Secondly, Burn showed that the poor law authorities might deny the kinship bond between adult children and their parents. Although poor law proceeded ‘uppon a supposition that the children are part of the father’s family’, he cited a case that determined that a son of 60 years of age was not part of his father’s family for the purposes of determining his settlement.29 During the early modern period, administrators of the poor laws increasingly manipulated the composition of ‘the family’ among the poor. Parishes would attempt to relieve those whom the overseers deemed to be ‘overcharged’ with children, by placing children at a comparatively early age in apprenticeships.30 Effectively, civic authorities dismembered the families of the poor, for although in most families children left home during their teens, poorer children were more likely to be sent away from home at a younger age. Most parishes and towns had policies against the reception of migrating relatives, people whom they feared would become a burden on the rates.31 Poor children thus faced the world with less family support, although some social reformers of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries hoped that workhouses could provide substitute family groups who

INTRODUCTION

would care for orphans and the aged.32 These visions of the workhouse as ‘family’ were sadly far from children’s experiences of institutional life.33 ‘The family’, as conceptualised by contemporaries and by historians, excludes illegitimate children. By legal definition, since such children lacked a father, they had no family. The poor law authorities conceded that mothers might care for very young children, since ‘by Natures Instinct’, the mother was bound to nourish the child who lacked a legal father:34 but a mother was not ‘a family’ that the law recognized. As Burn explained: ‘The question then is whether the bastard is included under the word family or children; and we take it he is not’.35 Natural bonds between the illegitimate infant and the mother ceased when the child reached seven years of age. Thereafter, the child’s future was determined by the parish authorities, those whom Burn termed ‘civic fathers’.36 In practice, illegitimate children blurred the family boundaries, for kin were frequently involved in their births (and deaths).37 Families differed in size and structure according to material circumstances and social status. The demographic characteristics of élite families differed from those of the majority of the population. There was usually a great age gap between wealthy men and their brides, who were often aged around 20 years or so. In contrast, the majority of the population married when the man was in his mid to late 20s, and the woman around 24. Although more children were born to élite women whose husbands could afford to employ wet nurses, the survival rate of the infants may have been lower.38 Historians committed to the concept of ‘the family economy’ assume a community of interest between husbands and wives, which allows a romantic view of the family as a harmonious unit in the past. Yet in early modern England the economic interests of individuals within the household – of husband and wife, parent and children, employers and servants – all differed. Gender structured working lives and the distribution of resources (and even affection) within families and households. Women were given less training for paid work than men of the same social level, and lower pay for comparable employment.39 ‘The family’ did not work as a little craft unit for most of the early modern period. The ‘family workshop economy’ was restricted to certain occupations at the middling and lower social levels. The labouring poor lacked the training and the tools of trade to set up workshops; men, women and children went out each day to scratch a living. Men as husbands and fathers may have spent much of their time in separate physical spaces from their wives and children, since getting a living could take the labouring poor in different directions to different employers each day.40

5

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In seeking to elucidate women’s lives, it is no more useful to focus on the ‘household’ instead of the family as the unit of study. Some of the objections are the same as those I have argued against using ‘the family’ as the basic social unit – ‘household’ prioritises the husband and master as head, obscures women’s experiences, and falsely assumes common economic interests. Like the family, the household was a dynamic unit with changing and uncertain boundaries. Frequently there were kinship bonds within the household, as Miranda Chaytor demonstrated many years ago. She argued that demographic historians who identified all those present in a household above a certain age with a different name as servants, not kin, erred seriously.41 Service and kinship could be combined: in 1608 a man presented to the Southampton Assembly for having a ‘churrmayd’ in his household claimed that she was ‘his wyves sister and his howshold servant’.42 Language about family, household and kinship was complex, and we have to pay careful attention to people’s terminology.43 As we have seen, men as civic authorities may have constructed the ‘family’ very differently from how they saw it in their own letters, diaries and novels. Thus, although families and households are profoundly important, to take either as the basic social unit is to replicate the ideological categories of early modern administrators. Instead, we should think more about individuals, for individuals were embodied, and bodies are always gendered. The individual is positioned in a web of bonds and relationships that change, but are still present in some form. From the perspective of an individual, we may see that kinship was more important for some than others, and that the individual’s family changed its composition and significance over a lifetime. To be aware that each individual experience of family life differed makes us take account of the gendered nature of assumptions about family life, both then and now, allowing us to discuss the different emotional content and meaning of family relationships in the lives of women and men. The relative importance of family roles may vary according to gender: most men were expected to have working relationships and local duties outside their households. Fatherhood encompassed less of men’s roles in the nineteenth century, as Davidoff et al. have pointed out, than motherhood did in the lives of women.44 Being a father was not the ideal state of a man per se in early modern England; it was rather a valued component of a man’s public persona, a prerequisite for another status, such as being a soldier, statesman or governor. If family relationships were but a part of men’s lives, were they but a part of women’s? Perhaps we have assumed too readily that ‘family relationships’ were a core component of women’s emotional lives.

INTRODUCTION

This assumption has affected how we have viewed women’s friendships ‘outside’ the family. Only recently have love and sexuality between women been the subject of study.45 If we take account of gender, we can take a fresh view of the impact of the Protestant Reformation. Some early modern historians have insisted, like their Protestant forbears, that families were fundamentally changed by the Reformations of the sixteenth century, and that the position of women improved.46 Others have observed that there were continuities with the medieval family,47 as communities were much governed by patterns and structures of authority from previous eras. During the sixteenth century, ideas about heterosexuality and sexual transgression still shaped the transition from child to adolescent, and the routine disciplining of sin continued. The family remained the place where gender distinctions were established and reinforced.48 The dependent status of women and children within families was determined by so many social, economic and legal constraints that the alteration of one element of Christian belief, from Catholic to Protestant, had only limited effect. Furthermore, as I argue in the case study of the Henry family (below), the ideal Protestant family was similar to other Christian families in that it advantaged men. ‘Gender’ as a concept was rarely used until the 1980s, but has now become widely adopted to describe how social meanings intersect with bodily differences.49 ‘Gender’ is a complex term referring to the ascription of difference on the basis of ideas about the appearance of bodies. As Jill Matthews has usefully explained, every society has a ‘gender order’, a set of cultural assumptions about the natures and roles of women and men.50 Part of the task of early modern historians is to examine how the gender order was established and experienced, and to consider how it changed over time. Many early modern writers puzzled about variations from the ‘norm’ of the division of people into two sexes: they worried about hermaphrodites and the destabilizing of the simple binary between men and women that a third sex or intermediate sex seemed to pose.51 Since it was believed that women could turn into men by masturbation, or men degenerate into women, anxieties about gendered identities are not surprising. Judith Butler’s concept of gender as performance challenges the notion of a simple link between bodies and social roles.52 In early modern society some men and women cross-dressed, performing the social roles of the opposite sex. On the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, men dressed as women, to the disgust of Puritans, who considered such deception a dishonouring of God. Women donned male garb to travel more safely, to pursue their lovers into ships or armies, for greater freedom, or even in order to marry another

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woman.53 Women and men lived their lives in families and households within the context of anxieties about the instability of gender. Some historians, seeking drama in the apparently uneventful history of domestic relations, have posited a ‘crisis of gender’54 in the period before 1640 parallel to the ‘crisis of the seventeenth century’, and the ‘crisis of the aristocracy’.55 Others have pointed out that gender relations in early modern England seem in a perpetual state of tension; any conflicts between men and women could quickly escalate into crises. We simply do not know enough about the history of relations between women and men to posit an overall crisis in the pre-Civil War period. Changes were more subtle than the language of ‘crisis’ suggests.56 Ultimately, gender may be more protean than other social relations, transforming itself to remain the same, even while material life alters.57 As Judith Bennett’s studies of women’s work across the ‘great divide’ of medieval and early modern history have shown, gender always affects work practices. From her studies of women’s actual work, Bennett argued that historians should be devoting more attention to the continuities in women’s working lives – including their low pay and low status jobs – rather than seeking dramatic turning points.58 How we explain some of these continuities in the history of the gender order is still an issue. Gender, social class and ethnicity were interrelated.59 Or, to put it slightly differently, in the terms used by Sonya Rose, gender was constitutive of all social relations and can be traced in the surviving representations of those events.60 Yet gender and class are not analogous categories, for as Gowing has pointed out, class relations were differently embodied.61 Class shaped women’s lives, which varied according to the social status of their families of origin. Ethnicity, like gender, was in the body, and literary critics have begun to discuss how ethnicity affected understandings of bodies and of social difference.62 Social status, of fundamental importance to early modern society, requires a brief introduction. Most historians would agree that early modern England was a complex society in which hierarchy and status counted: it was not yet a class society. For convenience, I have used a rough tripartite division of society. A wealthy, titled nobility held a large proportion of landed property, lived in grand houses, and ostentatiously displayed their social status in consumption. They socialized and intermarried with the wealthy gentry. Similarly, wealthy merchants in London and in provincial cities lived in large households and increasingly emulated patterns of conspicuous consumption.63 I have referred to these wealthy people collectively as ‘the élite’, for although there were obvious differences between them in material resources and social status, this minority of the population was

INTRODUCTION

advantaged compared with the majority. Below the élite, the ‘middling sort’ lived in households with some servants. Increasingly numerous and important in English society, they too were a diverse group in terms of geographical location, education, occupations and wealth. Urban business families were a group growing in significance.64 The sermons preached by the married Protestant clergy articulated ideals of family life particularly appropriate for those who worked for their living but aspired to independent households.65 Thirdly, there were the poor, comprising between a quarter and a third of the population, living a life of makeshifts, and suffering different degrees of poverty at different stages and circumstances of life.66 From the Tudor period onwards, the poor were increasingly perceived as a social problem. Regardless of internal social divisions, nationalism set the English apart from other nations, and during the early modern period, England was transformed into Britain, an imperial power. Overseas possessions were instrumental to the well-being of England and its body politic, for as John Donne explained in a sermon in 1622, plantations were ‘not only a spleen to draw the ill humours of the body, but a liver, to breed good blood.’67 The ‘good blood’ of English men and women set them apart as members of a chosen nation, viewing others as inferior.68 To sum up, then, just as there is no such thing as ‘the family’, only families, varying in size, composition and wealth, constantly changing over the lifetimes of their members, so there is no ‘individual’ existing as a fixed or neutral entity, for individuals too are a gendered construct: all we have are people configured as women, men and boys and girls whose lives were shaped by gender, class and nation. The relationship of these individual gendered subjectivities to culture is one of my major concerns – and I am especially concerned with how the negative and restrictive discourse of society about women affected their sense of self, their subjectivities. Here the roles of families, and the mechanisms by which they transmit cultural values to their offspring, become crucial. Mothers, fathers and siblings all affected the individual child. The chapters of this book mark different stages of my thinking about women and gender. From the later 1970s, a major part of the feminist project was to make women visible, recover source materials, and write a transformed history in which women and their experiences were central. By the 1990s, a majority of historians had recognized that gender was of significance, although for some, a focus on ‘gender’ represented a shift in attention away from women, a return to the proper study of men. Studies of men as

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gendered beings can be part of a feminist endeavour, designed to challenge existing values, even if some men’s studies have been profoundly conservative in political intention and effect. Certainly critical interrogation of the construction of masculinity in the early modern period is necessary. Because children were socialized in families, the respective roles of mothers and fathers in the transmission of cultural values merit discussion. In the debates about whether parents loved their children in the past, historians such as Lawrence Stone, Ralph Houlbrooke and Linda Pollock have come to different conclusions, without considering mothers and fathers separately.69 Women’s and men’s relationships to sexuality, reproduction and children were shaped by their bodily experiences, by discourses about women and men, and by the actuality of daily family life. Two chapters here – one on maternity, the other on paternity – take different approaches to analysis of gender and parenting. The chapter on maternity was written in the 1980s, in a context in which feminist scholars stressed the significance of ideology for gender roles, and argued that the family had a central role in the oppression of women.70 Theories of social constructionism influenced Western feminist thinking about maternity.71 In the 1970s, feminists had insisted that maternity was not a natural, biological given, but historically contingent, varying across time and cultures. Challenging the dominant assumption that women’s social position was a reflection of her ‘natural’ maternal roles that unfitted her for labour outside the private sphere, feminists optimistically assumed that if families could be changed, relationships between women and men would become more equal. By the 1990s, optimism had waned, and historians’ interests had focused more on the process of cultural transmission: how were roles such as mother and father learned, and how did they change? What did fatherhood mean for men? In the burgeoning field of studies of masculinities, fatherhood has been the subject of a great deal of American literature and widespread popular reporting, but comparatively little historical scholarship.72 Although in early modern England paternity was difficult to establish – the embodied nature of fatherhood was very different from that of motherhood – being a father of his ‘own’ children obsessed men, who demanded heirs of their ‘own blood’. How ideas about blood affected men’s attitudes to their children is discussed in Chapter 4. Paternity and maternity were different social roles for men and women. At all social levels the caregivers in the child’s first years of life were mothers or other women, while fathers were usually physically absent, as suckling was women’s work and men’s own duties of providing maintenance for their families took them elsewhere. Maternity was the focus for

INTRODUCTION

many powerful emotions in early modern England. Part of the context for witchcraft accusations was tension around the nurture of children. Lyndal Roper, in her brilliant study of witchcraft and fantasy, argued that when infants failed to thrive, mothers themselves projected hostility onto the lyingin maids who were the child’s nurses in the first days of its life.73 Deborah Willis, in Malevolent Nurture, has argued that witchcraft should be understood in terms of bad mothering. Instead of nurturing, the witch allowed demons to suckle her, and damaged rather than nourished the young.74 Men’s ambivalent feelings about mothers, as both the source of all infant nurture, and the focus of infant rage for their failure to meet the infant’s needs, in part explain their contradictory attitudes to the mothers as carers for infants, as Chapter 5 argues. The questions to which I have been drawn require qualitative rather than quantitative sources. How can the historian find out about daily life in families, where interactions were emotionally charged, and when only one person’s perceptions of the family drama usually survive? Furthermore, if we want to write a history that includes the illiterate, sources are a particular problem. Women had lower rates of literacy than men. They did not keep the records of government and administration, and wrote fewer letters, diaries and autobiographies than men. First-person women’s writing is confined to a literate minority. Studies of female subjectivities to date have understandably referred to a socially restricted group.75 The documentation of general beliefs, as historians have long recognised, is difficult. An example ‘proves’ nothing, and the multiplication of examples still ‘proves’ little more than that there are many instances of a belief. Consequently many historians have been drawn to the methodologies of anthropology and ethnohistory to attempt to explore the meaning of social actions through ‘thick description’. These methodologies have been used with great success by historians including Robert Darnton, Rhys Isaac, and Lyndal Roper.76 A fruitful approach to literary sources has been suggested by Greg Dening, who has distinguished accounts of what people did in their day-to-day lives from accounts of what they thought they should be doing and from representations in literary texts. Dening argues that we can use the surviving evidence about what people said they did. While we should not mistake these accounts of ‘actuality’ for ‘reality’, for the record is always coloured by cultural norms, a concept of ‘actuality’ does provide the historian with a way of using different kinds of evidence.77 Details about actual specific family interactions allow us to analyse examples of behaviour in a social context.

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Family stories, words about small moments in family histories, and reflective accounts of what a particular family was like can all offer insights; even though these fragments represent only moments in long histories, they resonate with the otherness of historical experiences.78 Such stories may, as Davidoff and others have argued, help us to bridge the gap between the discursive construction of families and the records of day-to-day events.79 Family stories reveal that parents and children viewed the past very differently. ‘Time’ in family narratives is not even-paced as is chronological time: memories of childhood stretch into a vast time with few clear markers even of before and after. Another approach to histories of beliefs and emotions is the deployment of several different types of source material. Each surviving source was created with a particular purpose. Each has its own context, but the use of different sources with their different perspectives offers multiple lenses through which we may view the past. Like the surveyor who seeks to triangulate on a point, so our deployment of different perspectives may increase our understanding of the ultimately unknowable realities of past lives. Thus early modern treatises about family life can be analysed as ideology, to show how early modern preachers attempted to impose a particular set of beliefs on society as God-given and natural, while correspondence and diaries can be used as sources for how people behaved. The study of the Henry family in Chapter 6 shows how one family deliberately shaped the archive of their family’s history. To find out about the lives of ordinary women below the élite requires reading sources against the grain, as Sara Mendelson and I observed in our introduction to Women in Early Modern England.80 Historians’ understanding of the significance of language, and how we might interpret words, has been much advanced by recent studies, such as those of Laura Gowing and Diane Purkiss.81 The records of the church courts, whose use Martin Ingram pioneered with careful historical scholarship, offer rich examples, extending the range of stories that historians can analyse to illuminate contemporary attitudes and values.82 Conventional sources can be reread, as Lyndal Roper’s compelling studies of early modern witchcraft beliefs reveal, showing psychic conflicts in the very poorest members of society.83 The subjectivities of the poor are receiving increasing historical attention.84 How women and men think about themselves today has been influenced by the early modern English shaping of subjectivities. An agenda for research on the history of individuals and families which takes gender seriously raises new questions and opens up different ways of thinking and knowing. The classic distinctions between public and private life can be shown to have obscured the connectedness of human experiences.

INTRODUCTION

The family and the household are not the only contexts for women’s lives, and can no longer be set apart as part of the private sphere.85 Yet if we can reconfigure families and households as dynamic social units in which gendered individuals shape their identities, then the family may prove to be the most fruitful point of entry for dialogue between social, cultural and political historians of early modern England. After three decades or so of feminism within universities, the number of women working as academic historians is still comparatively few. While many women are professional historical writers and authors, and the number and proportion of women students has grown, comparatively few women are established in academic departments, let alone in senior positions.86 Nevertheless, the impact of feminist approaches to early modern British history is beginning to be reflected in current research. Undergraduate and postgraduate students have responded positively to the study of gender. The rethinking of conventional historical narratives is a challenge, since the inclusion of women’s lives and experiences is not an add-on extra, but involves a fundamental rethinking of what history is about. These chapters invite readers to be part of that exciting discussion.

Notes and references 1 ‘Cultural histories of blood in early modern Europe’ was the subject of a conference convened by Alexandra Shepard and Natasha Glaisyer, 17–18 September 2001, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. 2 Michael Macdonald, Mystical Bedlam Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 191–2. 3 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (4 vols., New Haven, 1964), vol. i, p. 134. 4 John Crawford, Cursus Medicinae; or a Complete Theory of Physic (London, 1724), p. 232. 5 G. J. Davies, Touching Witchcrafte and Sorcerye, Dorset Rec. Soc., vol. 9 (1985), pp. 29–30; Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550–1700 (Ithaca, 1994), p. 188. 6 Richard Cust (ed.), The Papers of Sir Richard Grosvener, 1st Bart. (1585–1645), Rec. Soc. of Lancashire & Cheshire, vol. 134 (1996), p. 41. 7 See my ‘ “Charles Stuart, that man of blood” ’, Journal of British Studies, 16 (1977), pp. 41–61. 8 Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece. 9 J. P. Kenyon, ‘Past & Present No 100’, Times Literary Supplement (5 August 1983), p. 834.

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10 Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing (eds), Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (London, 2000), p. 13. 11 Phyllis Mack, ‘Preface’, in Jane Long, Jan Gothard and Helen Brash (eds), Forging Identities; Bodies, Gender and Feminist History (Perth, 1997), p. xi. 12 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), p. 68. 13 Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 2003), pp. 2, 19 and passim; see also Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Boston, Mass., 1987), pp. 195–7. 14 Dolly MacKinnon, ‘The godly family and household of the seventeenth century and John Howard’s Australia’, in Delys Bird, Wendy Were and Terri-Ann White (eds), Future Imaginings: Sexualities and Genders in the New Millennium (Crawley, 2003). 15 Charles Phythian-Adams (ed.), Societies, Culture and Kinship, 1580–1850 (Leicester, 1993), p. 19; Richard Price, British Society 1680–1880: Dynamism, Continuity and Change (Cambridge, 1999), p. 202. 16 E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), p. 484. 17 Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (eds), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 88–9. 18 Miranda Chaytor, ‘Household and kinship: Ryton in the late 16th and early 17th centuries’, History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980), pp. 25–60; Pamela Sharpe, Population and Society in an East Devon Parish: Reproducing Colyton 1540–1840 (Exeter, 2002). 19 T. E., The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights (London, 1632), p. 6. 20 Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), pp. 165–74. 21 Judith Bennett and Amy Froide (eds), Singlewomen in the European Past 1250 –1800 (Philadelphia, 1999). 22 Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke, 1988), pp. 92–3. 23 C.f. Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (London, 1995), pp. 206–26. 24 Peter Porter, ‘Where we came in’, in Jennifer Strauss (ed.), Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family (Melbourne, 1998), p. 130. 25 David Cressy, ‘Kinship and kin interaction in early modern England’, Past & Present, 113 (1986), pp. 38–69. 26 Sylvie Perrier, ‘The blended family in Ancien Régime France: a dynamic family form’, The History of the Family, 3 (1998), pp. 459–71.

INTRODUCTION

27 Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer (2 vols., London, 1755), vol. ii, p. 201. 28 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 202 –3. 29 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 201–2. 30 Pamela Sharpe, ‘Poor children as apprentices in Colyton, 1598–1830’, Continuity and Change, 6 (1991), pp. 1–18. 31 Richard Wall, ‘The age at leaving home’, Journal of Family History, 3 (1978), pp. 181–202. 32 Timothy V. Hitchcock (ed.), Richard Hutton’s Complaints Book: The Notebook of the Steward of the Quaker Workhouse at Clerkenwell, 1711–1737, London Record Society, 24 (1987), p. xiii. 33 Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (Manchester, 2000). 34 [ J. Brydell?], Jus Primogeniti: Or, The Dignity, Right, and Privilege of the First-Born (London, 1699), pp. 2–3. 35 Burn, Justice of the Peace, vol. i, p. 128. 36 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 198. 37 Laura Gowing, ‘Secret births and infanticide in seventeenth-century England’, Past & Present, 156 (1997), pp. 87–115. 38 See Chapter 3, this book. 39 Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 258–63. 40 Ibid., pp. 205–12. 41 Miranda Chaytor, ‘Household and kinship in Ryton in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, History Workshop, 10 (1980), pp. 25–60. 42 [ John Brydall] (ed.), The Assembly Books of Southampton, Southampton Rec. Soc., vol. 19 (1917), i (1602–8), p. 96. I am very grateful to Alexandra Shepard for referring me to these records. 43 Naomi Tadmor, ‘The concept of household-family in eighteenth-century England’, Past & Present, 151 (1996), pp. 111–40; Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage (Cambridge, 2001). 44 Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830–1960 (London, 1999). 45 Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (New York, 1995); Alan Bray, ‘Homosexuality and the signs of male friendship in Elizabethan England’, History Workshop Journal, 29 (1990), pp. 1–19; Katherine Hodgkin, ‘Thomas Wythorne and the problems of mastery’, History Workshop Journal, 29 (1990), pp. 20–41; Janice Raymond, A Passion for Friends: Towards a Philosophy of Female Affection (Boston, 1986); Emma Donoghue, Passions Between Women:

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British Lesbian Culture, 1668–1801 (London, 1993); Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 231–42; Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2002). 46 Collinson, Birthpangs of Protestant England, pp. 92–3. 47 Kathleen Davies, ‘ “The sacred condition of equality”: how original were Puritan doctrines of marriage’, Social History, 2 (1977), pp. 563–80; Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England 1500–1720 (London, 1993), pp. 38–52. 48 Crawford, Women and Religion, pp. 38–52; see also Chapter 6, ‘Katharine and Philip Henry and their children: A case study in family ideology’. 49 Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988). 50 Jill Matthews, Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth-Century Australia, Sydney, 1984, pp. 14–16. 51 Here I differ from Thomas Laqueur who posits a simple one-sex model: Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); c.f. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, ‘The hermaphrodite and the orders of nature: Sexual ambiguity in early modern France’, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 1 (1995), pp. 47–80. 52 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990), pp. 24–5. 53 Patricia Crawford and Sara Mendelson, ‘Sexual identities in early modern England: The marriage of two women in 1680’, Gender and History, 7 (1995), pp. 362–77. 54 David Underdown, ‘The taming of the scold: the enforcement of patriarchal authority in early modern England’, in Anthony Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985). 55 See Trevor Aston (ed.), Crisis in Europe 1560–1660: Essays from Past and Present (London, 1965), for several contributions to the debate; Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965). 56 Martin Ingram, ‘“Scolding women cucked or washed”: a crisis in gender relations in early modern England?’, in Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker (eds), Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (London, 1994); Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), p. 28. 57 Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 431–5. 58 Judith M. Bennett, ‘“History that stands still”: women’s work in the European past’, Feminist Studies, 14 (1988), pp. 269–83; Judith M. Bennett, ‘Medieval women, modern women: across the great divide’, in David Aers (ed.), Culture and History 1350–1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing, London, 1992, pp. 147–75; Judith Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600 (New York, 1996). For debate,

INTRODUCTION

see Bridget Hill, ‘Women’s History: a study in change, continuity or standing still?’, Women’s History Review, 2 (1993), pp. 5–22. 59 A useful introduction to the large body of theoretical literature on this issue is provided by Scott, Gender and the Politics of History; Joan Wallach Scott (ed.), Feminism and History (Oxford, 1996), Introduction. 60 Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley, Ca., 1992), p. 4. 61 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 5. 62 Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, 1995); for a later period, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995), pp. 4–5. 63 Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, pp. 547–86; John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993); Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500–1700 (London, 1994). 64 See the recent study by Richard Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism: Marriage, Family, and Business in the English-Speaking World, 1580–1740 (Cambridge, 2001). 65 Jonathan Barry, Introduction, Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks (eds), The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1994), pp. 1–27, and passim. 66 For an account of the ‘makeshift economy’ of poor women, see Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 256–300. 67 Henry Alford (ed.), The Works of John Donne (6 vols., London, 1839), vol. vi, p. 231. 68 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992). 69 Stone, Family Sex and Marriage; Ralph A. Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450 –1700 (London, 1984); Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge, 1983). 70 See Sylvia Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford, 1999), pp. 90–108. 71 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1967); Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London, 1977). 72 Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London, 1999); Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen (eds), English Masculinities 1660 –1800 (London, 1999); Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800 (London, 2001); Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003); see also, Louis Hass, The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence 1300 –1600 (New York, 1998); R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Sydney, 1995); Michel Roper and John Tosh (eds), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London, 1991).

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73 Lyndal Roper, ‘Witchcraft and fantasy’ reprinted in her Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994). 74 Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca, 1995). 75 For exemplary studies of literate women, see Sara Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies (Brighton, 1987); Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford, 1991). 76 Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982); Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (London, 1984); Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. 77 Greg Dening, Performances (Melbourne, 1996), p. 60. 78 Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (London, 1995). 79 Davidoff, Doolittle, Fink and Holden, The Family Story. 80 Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 6–11. 81 Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Laura Gowing, ‘Gender and the language of insult in early modern London’, History Workshop Journal, 35, pp. 1–21; Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London, 1996). 82 Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987). 83 Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. 84 Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe (eds), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (London, 1997). 85 Patricia Crawford, ‘Public duty, conscience, and women in early modern England’, in John Morrill, Paul Slack and Daniel Woolf (eds), Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G. E. Aylmer (Oxford, 1993). 86 Patricia Crawford and Myrna Tonkinson, The Missing Chapters: Women Staff at the University of Western Australia, 1963–1987 (Perth, 1988); Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle-Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (London, 1988), pp. 34–5.

CHAPTER 1

Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England I

M

enstruation is an important aspect of being female. It is also one of the biological differences between the sexes to which different cultures have given different meaning. Social roles and relations between the sexes are sustained by ideas and beliefs about menstruation. Psychologists and anthropologists have long been interested in beliefs about menstruation, which they have interpreted variously in terms, for example, of male anxieties about castration and of taboos that function to protect men from the dangers that menstruating women represent. But until relatively recently historians have preferred to write about women and their place in society without reference to this physiological process and its social meaning. Menstruation has been seen as a purely female matter of no historical importance. In addition, historians’ own repugnance and the taboo of silence may explain their lack of interest. But historians are now becoming aware that a study of apparently irrational fears and superstitions may be as illuminating for our understanding of how past societies functioned as the more conventional areas of historical investigation. A study of beliefs about menstruation is neither a mere feminist redressing of historians’ balance of interest nor a mere revelation of the superstitions of the past. It is essential for an understanding of the position of women in the society. There is no single determinant of the position of women in seventeenth-century English society – birth, wealth, ability, all played a part as well as biology – but the fact that ideally women were assigned inferior roles, which in practice they generally accepted, can be partly explained in

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terms of ideas about the nature of women.1 In this chapter I wish to explore the beliefs about menstruation, showing both how the explanations of menstruation were constructed in terms of female inferiority and how these explanations in turn were used to justify women’s inferior position in the society. Physicians who explained the functioning of the human body, the process of reproduction and with it menstruation, believed that women were inferior. They then argued that women’s physiology led them into many weaknesses and errors. Medical explanations of menstruation influenced popular understanding of the process. Unfortunately any study of the beliefs about menstruation and the associated language must be largely about the ideas and words used by men. Because male culture was dominant, these are the most important, but they are not necessarily shared by women, and women’s ideas need to be considered separately.2 Since the sources for this study relate chiefly to the literate levels of society, the experiences of the vast majority of women are unrecorded. But there is a range of source material. Medical practitioners discussed the menstrual experiences of women in general, and were curious about unusual case histories, although as their services were only for those who could afford them,3 their knowledge of country women and poor women was limited and frequently second-hand. Nevertheless medical works of one kind or another provide an account of the physiology and pathology of menstruation. Some of these were published internationally in Latin, some were written in English or at least translated. They range from original contributions to rehashes of old ideas, for there is no clear line of progress in medical knowledge during the seventeenth century. It took time for important discoveries to be accepted, and many physicians still tried to fit the new ideas into the framework of the ancient classical medical theories.4 To announce that they had ‘pressed the footsteps of the best and most approued Authors’ seemed to some writers to be the best way of guaranteeing the soundness of their work.5 During the sixteenth century, books were printed to meet a growing demand, and in the seventeenth century, during the Civil Wars, the movement for freeing medical knowledge from the monopoly control of the medical profession led to an increase in the translation of medical works and the publication of many more ‘popular’ handbooks.6 Writers of these popular works culled their ideas uncritically from a variety of traditional texts, popular customs and folklore. In considering attitudes to menstruation the source material is more diverse. There is the work of biblical commentators and preachers who explained the social implications of the biblical texts. There are also the casebooks of physicians and astrologers whom women consulted, and the diaries of some men who commented on their

ATTITUDES TO MENSTRUATION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

wives’ menstrual experiences. While the sources for women’s own attitudes are extremely limited, they do merit investigation. The major influence upon ideas about menstruation at the beginning of the seventeenth century was religious. The Bible was interpreted as an explanation of female inferiority and subordination, and in particular, the texts in Leviticus that defined menstruating women as polluted and polluting were taken very seriously. Medical theories explained and justified the biblical view of women as inferior, but it remains to be seen how both the religious and medical beliefs were influenced by the scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century.

II During the seventeenth century a wide range of language was used to refer to menstruation. The terminology ranges from the apparently poetic, ‘the flowers’, through the neutral, ‘the terms’, ‘the courses’ and ‘the months’, to expressions which emphasized aspects of female weakness, ‘sickness’, ‘monthly disease’ and ‘monthly infirmity’.7 Medical writers might use Latin or Greek terms such as menstris, menses or catamenia, but they also used general ones such as ‘monthly evacuations’ or ‘natural purgations’. Various circumlocutions were employed: ‘the time of your wonted grief’ or ‘those Evacuations of the weaker Sex’.8 In the privacy of their diaries, women and men refer simply to ‘them’ or ‘those’.9 Menstrual blood was referred to as an excrement, and the process itself as a ‘Monthly flux of Excrementitious and Unprofitable Blood’.10 Because many of the popular medical works were reprinted many times during the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, changes in language are hard to document, but the phrase ‘at those monthly periods’ was used for the time of menstruation as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century.11 What this language meant will be better understood by a consideration of contemporary medical explanations of menstruation, which are but part of a wider understanding of human reproduction. Investigations of the physiology and pathology of menstruation were numerous during the seventeenth century, but the variety of ideas and the generally agreed tenets are of more use in revealing the general climate of opinion than are the accounts of medical discoveries that had real scientific importance.12 The two main although conflicting ideas about the purpose of menstruation were either that it purified the blood of females, or removed from their bodies an excess of blood. The idea of a purification came from Hippocrates, who had argued that women were of a colder and

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less active disposition than men, so that while men could sweat in order to remove the impurities from their blood, the colder dispositions of women did not allow them to be purified in that way. Females menstruated to rid their bodies of impurities: ‘Some call them purgations, because that by this fluxe all a womans body is purged of superfluous humours’.13 Menstruation was precipitated by a fermentation in the blood. Physicians likened the fermentation to that of wine or malt liquors, in the process of which the liquid ‘flings up to the Surface a sort of Scum abounding with Air, which is call’d the Flowers’.14 The menstrual blood which a woman shed was ‘the flower’ of her fermented blood. While ‘flower’ may refer to the best and choicest (as in political discussion of royal prerogative as ‘flowers of the Crown’), no writer refers to the menstrual blood shed by a woman as the choicest part of her blood. Rather it is impure, and thought to have a noisome smell.15 But although the term ‘the flowers’ may have its origin in the idea of the purification of a woman’s blood by fermentation, words also take on meanings of their own, so that some thought menstruation was named ‘the flowers’ because fruit followed.16 By the early eighteenth century the idea of purification by fermentation or purgation had come to be questioned among learned writers.17 The other view of menstruation contradicted that of purification of the blood. This idea was that menstruation was the shedding of a plethora. Women’s bodies were inferior to men’s. They could not use all the blood they ‘concocted’ from the food they digested. Women who ate rich, moist foods concocted even more blood than those ‘among the ranke of meane people, where euerie one must worke for a liuing, and are not pampered with full and daintie fare’.18 The excess of blood might be used to nourish a child in the womb, or be converted into milk, for ‘milke is none other thing than blood made white’.19 If a woman were neither pregnant nor breastfeeding, the excess of blood gradually built up in her body until it was discharged through one of the ‘Natural passages’.20 This idea of a plethora had been expounded by Galen in the second century, and was still accepted by the most important of the eighteenth-century writers on women’s diseases, Jean Astruc.21 Nevertheless it had its critics: Drake in 1707, for example, argued that menstruation could not be the discharge of a plethora, since if blood increased daily women would not be surprised by the onset of menstruation.22 Menstrual blood also had a part to play in the conception and nourishment of a child. Aristotle claimed that a woman excreted the impure menstruum leaving a pure substance from which the embryo was made. The child was made by the male’s seed from the menstrual blood. Harvey’s work discredited this theory but Aristotle’s views continued to be part of

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the popular discussion.23 During the seventeenth century Galen’s theory of conception was also popular: the child, formed from a mixture of male and female seed, was nourished in the womb by menstrual blood. Even in the eighteenth century many physicians subscribed to this theory of foetal nutrition.24 The ‘longings’ of pregnant women were attributed to corrupt menstrual blood, for the child was said to have consumed the better part.25 After the child was born, the menstrual blood was diverted to the breasts where it was made into milk. A thirteenth-century schoolman, Giles of Rome, explained that this made a woman sterile because there was no longer a menstruum in the womb from which the male seed might shape a child.26 It was thought that copulation would drive the menstruum back to the womb, and so deny sustenance to the child at the breast. Mothers were advised to take care that any wet nurse they employed was not menstruating. A breastfeeding woman was advised to abstain from sexual intercourse ‘lest she provoke her menstruous disease’.27 Preachers and physicians were aware of the difficulties imposed by sexual abstinence – which could have been for up to a year, or longer, depending upon the age at which the child was weaned – especially as Scripture did not positively enjoin it.28 The suppression of menstruation in pregnant women also explained a number of children’s disorders. Scales, scabs, pustules in the head, the itch, fevers and measles were all caused by the corrupt menstrual blood with which the child in the womb had been in contact.29 Although the two theories of purgation and plethora were incompatible explanations of menstruation, they could be and frequently were combined for the practical purposes of treating menstrual disorders. Both theories accepted that menstruation was necessary for a woman’s health, and consequently physicians viewed any irregularity as an alarming symptom. For example, Manning wrote of amenorrhoea that ‘it is one of the most established axioms in physic, that the greatest part of female diseases are the consequence of obstructed catamenia’.30 Because of their theories about the physiology of women, physicians defined ‘disorders’ that would not be recognized as such today. For example, a virgin who did not menstruate at all after an unspecified age was said to suffer from ‘greensickness’. Some thought ‘greensickness’ was caused simply by the suppression of the menses – this may, in fact, have been a late menarche – others attributed it to the suppression both of menstruation and the woman’s seed, which it was believed she released in copulation. Married women might also suffer from it.31 Another disorder, variously known as ‘mother-fits’, ‘strangulation’ or ‘suffocation of the mother’ – ‘mother’ was a common word for the womb – had similar causes. As the French physician Riverius

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explained, in a work translated in 1655, ‘When Seed and Menstrual Blood are retained in Women besides [beyond?] the intent of Nature, they putrefie and are corrupted, and attain a malignant and venomous quality’.32 Women who suffered from a choking, suffocated feeling might seek help for what they diagnosed as ‘mother-fits’. For example, the 17-year-old sister of the minister Philip Henry lay senseless for eight hours in January 1658 with what he described as ‘fitts of ye Mother’ and suffered several subsequent fits over the next three weeks. She was let blood, and her motherfits were subsequently diagnosed as having turned to ‘a violent Ague’, but at the end of the year she was still ‘not rid of her Mother-Fits’.33 The main menstrual disorders recognized were two – cessation of menstruation (amenorrhoea) and immoderate menstruation (menorrhagia). Both were described as ‘diseases’, and of the two the latter was usually viewed as more serious. Since menorrhagia was usually fatal, there was not so much scope for discussion of treatment, but amenorrhoea, on the other hand, was probably more common and offered the opportunity for endless discussion of cures. Treatment of amenorrhoea was necessary whether a physician believed menstruation was a purification of the blood or the shedding of a plethora. Only when the menses flowed were women’s bodies ‘preserved from the most terrible diseases’. When suppressed, the woman would sicken either because her body would become a putrefying sink of ill humours that would in turn attract more ills, or because the blood would beat back from her womb to trouble her brain, causing melancholy and troubling her spirits. The idle fancies produced in her head might even incline her to suicide.34 Sir William Monson’s wife who consulted Simon Forman in 1597 looks a classic case: ‘much subject to melancholy and full of fancies . . . She hath not her course and the menstrual blood runneth to her head . . . And she thinks the devil doth tempt her to do evil to herself’.35 The causes of amenorrhoea were either that the blood was too thick and needed thinning, or the muscles were too tough to allow the menses to break out. Galen had advised a variety of means to thin the blood – medicines, fumigations, baths, external applications – and his advice was followed by many of the seventeenth-century handbooks.36 Various remedies were prescribed to relax the muscles and fibres – again, baths, fumigations and pessaries. In some cases physicians were advised to let blood: in the foot (because bleeding in the arm did not draw blood to the womb and could cause barrenness) and only in the waxing of the moon.37 Amenorrhoea could also be caused by too much exercise consuming the blood, in which case an alteration of habits was required. Freind’s work – published first in Latin, later in English in the early eighteenth century – reveals a variety of cases: primary

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amenorrhoea in an eighteen-year-old who had never menstruated, and secondary amenorrhoea in the cases of a 30-year-old woman who had not menstruated for two years, and a married woman of 25 who had not menstruated for one year.38 To treat amenorrhoea, noxious fumes at the nose might drive the blood down. To stop immoderate menstruation, similar kinds of remedies were offered as for amenorrhoea – medicines, fumigations, injections into the womb, and pessaries. Letting blood and provoking vomiting were also recommended.39 Advice to women directed that pessaries both for the absence of menstruation and immoderate menstruation should be made either of shorn wool steeped in certain prescribed mixtures or of fine linen or silk bags containing herbs. There was no unwillingness to advise married women to insert objects into the vagina, although women were told to remember to attach a string for their removal.40 It is possible that women may have used pessaries as well as cloth pads to cope with the practical problems of menstruation.41 (And might not these have acted as a mechanical means of contraception?) Physicians recognized pre-menstrual symptoms, as had the ancients, but did not regard them as a disease or a disorder.42 One question of interest is attitudes to the cessation of menstruation, the menopause, since so much attention has been devoted to this in modern times. Recent writers discuss whether the menopause is a socially induced set of symptoms, or hormonal. Statements about the post-menopausal woman as ‘an incomplete human being’ suggest that modern physicians may have created a problem of personal identity.43 There was no actual term for the menopause in the seventeenth century, and it was referred to as ‘the cessation of the flowers’ or equated with the end of child-bearing.44 Little attention was paid to it compared with the endless discussion of how to stimulate menstruation.45 Mauriceau thought the menopause harmful to women because it deprived them of that regular, necessary discharge of their blood,46 and one regularly reprinted collection of superstitions, Albertus Magnus’s Book of Secrets, warned that the eyes of a child in the cradle would be damaged if a woman who had ceased to menstruate looked at it.47 Leake, in the eighteenth century, referred to the menopause as ‘that critical change’.48 Many seventeenth-century physicians followed Hippocrates’s dictum that the womb was the source of a thousand ills to women. Thus they attributed many of the general illnesses of women to menstrual disorders, which impeded the treatment of quite separate ailments. For example, they explained regular bleeding from other parts of the body as vicarious menstruation; bleeding at the nose or the breasts was regarded as a menstrual disorder.49 Sir David Hamilton, physician to Queen Anne, thought that the

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management of her gout required that she be unworried by affairs of state during menstruation.50 As the case of Queen Anne shows, physicians did not separate the body from the mind when they diagnosed. In another case, menstruation was held to be suppressed because of the ‘cares and passions’ of the woman’s mind.51 Physicians recommended sexual intercourse as a cure for menstrual disorders – matrimony for maids, vigorous sex for wives.52 They saw menstruation as part of a woman’s lifestyle and general health, and recommended changes in diet, air and exercise to cure disturbances. Unfortunately, in more specific treatments, their theories appear to have prompted ‘cures’ that can have been of little practical benefit to women, and in some cases must have been positively harmful. For example, Galen’s theories about the importance of phlebotomy remained unmodified, and despite Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood the amount of blood taken at each treatment remained as Galen had directed, although blood was obviously not being remade at the rate Galen calculated.53 Women who menstruated excessively would have been made even more anaemic by blood-letting. Physicians gave little effective help to women for menstrual disorders.54 During the seventeenth century the questioning of the old Galenic and Aristotelian theories made little impact upon popular understanding of female physiology. Writers continued to assume the inferiority of women and depicted menstruation in language that at best might be neutral but was generally negative.

III Many societies have regarded menstruating women as potentially dangerous and have developed rituals to isolate them, but these rituals and the associated taboos form a pattern that should be interpreted in the light of the particular society of which they are a part.55 In seventeenth-century England blood itself was associated with many complex ideas about life and death. Blood was ‘the very treasure of life’.56 Christ’s blood redeemed mankind, and the blood of a martyr might have power to heal. The blood of the innocent would pollute him who shed it.57 Consequently it is not surprising that the apparently mysterious monthly issue of blood in females was viewed in an emotional way. The most important single influence upon attitudes to menstruating women was the Bible. Throughout the Bible one of the boundaries between the sacred and the profane is defined with reference to menstruation. For example, the coverings of images that were defiled were to be cast away ‘as a menstruous cloth’ (Isaiah xxx. 22). People in seventeenth-century

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England were familiar with the use of the symbol of the menstruating woman to define profanity. Ezekiel xviii. 18, for example, stated that it was ‘made one of the properties of a good man, not to lie with a menstruous woman’.58 The sinful city of Jerusalem, which in the revised standard version of the Bible is described as ‘a filthy thing’, is qualified in the King James Version as ‘a menstruous woman’ (Lamentations i. 77). Isaiah, seeking to discount man’s righteousness, declared it to be ‘as filthy rags’, which the marginalia of the Genevan Bible explained was ‘(as some read) like the menstruous clothes of a woman’, or as one writer recollected, as ‘a menstruous rag’.59 Other writers used these biblical images. Searching for the foulest thing to which he could compare the soul of Pope Alexander VI, the Jacobean dramatist Barnabe Barnes found a menstrual simile. The Devil, denouncing Alexander, declared: Thy soule foule beast is like a menstrous cloath, Polluted with unpardonable sinnes.60 One recent taboo associated with menstruation is that of silence, but there was not the same taboo on public discussion of the subject in seventeenthcentury England. Preachers were prepared to expound the Levitical prohibition on sex during menstruation, although one at least, William Whatley, felt it necessary to justify his plain speaking in 1621. He believed that women were ‘much displeased with the laying open of these points’, but he argues that it could not be unfit to make plain what was plain in Scripture: An immodest modesty must that needs bee esteemed, which would cast the blame of immodestie upon the pen of the holy Ghost: and doubtlesse, either God for writing is immodest, or the Minister is not immodest for speaking these things plainly. Whatley’s labouring of the point – ‘obscene speech or matter here is none’ – suggests a reserve and a modesty to be overcome.61 In the privacy of their diaries, some men noted their wives’ menstruation, and nineteenth-century editing has doubtless obscured other observations.62 Pepys mentions his wife’s menstruation several times,63 Ralph Josselin perhaps once.64 Samuel Byrd, who noted in shorthand ‘my wife was disordered with her (m.d.)’, is probably referring to her ‘menstruous disease’.65 Hooke noted the menstruation of a couple of the women with whom he had sexual relations.66 From the silence of other diarists one cannot conclude a taboo: there may have been a complete lack of interest in the matter, as in other natural bodily functions.67 Male silence in diaries could be construed as disinterest or disgust, but the silence of female diarists is even more impenetrable.

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The mysterious and dangerous effects of menstruation that Pliny described in the second century AD were still under discussion in seventeenthcentury England. Among the dangers associated with menstruating women, Pliny asserted that wine sours if they pass, vines wither, grass dies and buds are blasted. Should a menstruating woman sit under a tree, the fruit will fall. A looking-glass will discolour at her glance, and a knife turn blunt. Bees will die, and dogs tasting her blood run mad. A sentence from the 1635 edition sums up Pliny’s attitude: ‘But to come againe to women, hardly can there be found a thing more monstrous than is that flux & course of theirs’.68 The venomous nature of the blood explained why women suffered pain during menstruation, for the menses ‘doe hurt the passage by which they goe’. The unclean and venomous fumes rose to trouble women’s heads, hence they suffered from more headaches than men. The same venomous spirits, rising to the head, darted out through the eye and discoloured any looking-glass.69 Menstruation seemed mysterious. The time of its onset was governed by the moon or by multiples of the number seven.70 The hair of a woman ‘in the time of her floures’ put into dung would turn into a venomous serpent.71 Menstrual blood had other magical effects. It had a role in love magic: harlots could bewitch their lovers with it, and ingredients for love potions were to contain those parts in which venereal appetite was vigorous, which included the menstrues.72 It might help or hinder conception. The menstrual clothes, washed in new milk and hung on a hedge for some time, might make a woman fruitful. Menstrual blood, applied to the ‘naturall place’, would hinder conception.73 It might be used to cure the bites of mad dogs and the falling sickness and might drive away agues. It might remove birthmarks or red spots. Its power might protect the threads of a garment from burning, and avert natural disasters such as tempests, hail and lightning. The menstrual blood of a young virgin had the greatest power, for if the girl did but touch the posts of the house ‘there can be no mischief take effect in it’.74 During the seventeenth century there was a general decline in magical beliefs, and some ideas about menstruation were moderated. Jane Sharp was sceptical about the superstitions mentioned by Pliny.75 Alexander Ross in 1651 denied that menstrual blood had the power to provoke love, arguing that this belief was an illusion of Satan’s, who delighted in blood.76 By the early eighteenth century many of the superstitions seemed demonstrable nonsense. Dogs did not run mad if they tasted menstrual blood.77 James Drake recited Pliny’s list only to reject his ideas as superstitious.78 But although magical beliefs may have declined during the seventeenth century, the extent

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to which popular belief was altered during the eighteenth century awaits investigation. Certain places were taboo to menstruating women. According to Leviticus xv. 20, a menstruating woman was unclean, to be separated from ‘the household, the tabernacle, and any holy thing’ for seven days.79 The church’s interpretation of this text had varied over the centuries. In the sixth century Pope Gregory had told Augustine that as ‘the workings of nature cannot be considered culpable’ a woman should be permitted to enter the church and not forbidden to receive Holy Communion.80 Nevertheless, according to a seventh-century penitential, a menstruating woman was not allowed to enter the church, much less receive Communion,81 and in the seventeenth century there is at least one complaint of a priest refusing to administer communion to a menstruating woman.82 Menstruating women were not forbidden contact with other people, nor were routine household tasks taboo for them, but some tasks, such as pickling pork or salting bacon, which might be postponed (without disturbing the normal household routine) were to be avoided by them.83 By the eighteenth century La Motte observed that although many women were able to go everywhere during menstruation and ‘perform all their usual functions . . . yet cause no mischief’, he still believed that some women were dangerous during menstruation and his own maid turned the wine sour.84 Observation and experiment may have demonstrated the falsity of some superstitions about menstruation but many remained embedded in popular culture. Late in the nineteenth century, correspondents to the British Medical Journal claimed that the belief that menstruating women could not pickle pork was ‘widespread’,85 and menstruating women were debarred from the sugar refineries of northern France at the same time lest they turn the sugar black.86 There was correspondence in the Lancet in 1974 on the subject of why flowers handled by a menstruating woman should wilt.87 Menstruation posed particular dangers to a woman’s sexual partner. One extreme work of 1506 claimed that intercourse during menstruation would be fatal to the husband, so poisonous was the woman’s monthly flow. Even early in the eighteenth century some believed that menstrual blood might ‘Excoriate the Parts of Men by the Meer Contact’.88 Men undertaking a cure, the Paracelsians warned, would fail if they lay with a menstruating woman.89 Indeed, the weight of scriptural and medical taboo during the seventeenth century fell upon copulation with a menstruating woman. According to Leviticus xv. 24, any man who lay with a menstruating woman was unclean; according to Leviticus xx. 18, the penalty was death. Various preachers and theological writers made the meaning of the texts plain lest people should

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sin through ignorance.90 Gouge stated that sexual intercourse was immodest and polluted during menstruation, pointing out that it was expressly forbidden in Leviticus under pain of capital punishment.91 Bishop Babington concluded his strictures upon this unnatural offence by endorsing the death penalty: ‘so God loveth puritie and would haue all his to love it’.92 Such copulation was not a matter of ceremonial law alone, but ‘founded on the perpetual natural absurdity of the action’.93 Since copulation during menstruation seemed contrary to ‘very nature’, ‘unclean and unnatural’, ‘repugnant to right Reason, and even to common Sense’, many believed that the New Testament did not abrogate the Old on this issue.94 A child conceived during menstruation would be either deformed or a monster, for did not the text in Esdras, ‘and menstruous women bring forth monsters’, declare as much?95 Opinion was divided as to whether the biblical texts were recognizing the medical facts, or whether the deformities were a penalty imposed for disobedience of a biblical rule. Some biblical commentators argued that the Israelites knew that children conceived during the menses would be ‘weak, or leprous, or otherwise disordered’, hence the prohibition in Leviticus was a measure for racial purity, to prevent the birth of children who would be ‘an Injury to the Commonwealth of Israel’.96 Others thought the deformed births were God’s punishment for copulation ‘at such times as they ought to forbeare’.97 During the seventeenth century there was a change in the attitude of some biblical commentators to the Levitical texts. At the end of the century Matthew Henry, a well-known Nonconformist commentator, set aside the ceremonial pollutions and declared that ‘nothing can defile us but sin’, although others continued to interpret the texts as referring to female uncleanness.98 The scientific and medical developments shifted attention away from the Bible so that by the end of the century the medical understandings of the physiology and pathology of menstruation were probably the more significant influence upon attitudes. By the end of the seventeenth century, the discovery of the ova and the spermatozoa provoked a large controversy on the process of conception.99 The child was said to be preformed in either the ovum or the spermatozoa. Yet nothing altered the view that copulation during the menses was dangerous and likely to produce a deformed child – some even argued that it would produce a girl100 – so abstinence during menstruation was still advised. Two verse translations of a sixteenth-century text on the art of begetting beautiful children published early in the eighteenth century conveyed a clear message: no copulation during the menses. The verses reveal a striking attitude of loathing and disgust for menstruating women:

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Press not your Wives, tho height’nd Lust incite The Soul to try the pleasurable Fight, While the Blood monthly rushing from the Veins, The Flowing Womb with foul Pollution stains . . . But if by Chance the Seeds concurring fix, And with th’impurer Dross of Nature mix, What a detested, miscreated Thing From such ill-suited Principles must spring? Foul Leprous Spots shall with his Birth begin, Spread o’er his Body, and encrust his Skin; For the same Poison which that Stream contains, Transfer’d affects the forming Infant’s Veins, Inbred it fixes deep, and radically reigns. For Nature’s common Bosom nothing breeds, That this malignant Female Filth exceeds: . . . Ye Husbands then such foul Embraces fly, And tho’ provok’d the nauseous Bliss deny;101 At a popular level, scientific controversy was little heeded, and works such as Aristotle’s Masterpiece, which were reprinted into the nineteenth century, kept alive some of the older theories about generation. Menstruation continued to be linked with the cold and moist constitutions of women and with the nutrition of the unborn child.102 It is impossible to know how widely the prohibitions upon copulation during menstruation were heeded. It was believed sailors took little notice. From the censures of medical writers there emerges a picture of mariners desperate for sexual relations and the habits of these lustful men were believed to explain the large number of false conceptions – known as ‘moles’ – born in the Low Countries.103 One comment upon a bride who was menstruating suggested that she was imprudent rather than wicked: because of the menses she might be taken for no virgin.104 Few seventeenth-century diarists record sexual activity in relation to menstruation. Simon Forman says he copulated with his wife ‘four days after her course’, but it is unclear whether this relates to the beginning or the end of her menstruation.105 Samuel Pepys records he was unable to do as he ‘used to do’ with Mrs Lane in 1664 and Mrs Daniel in 1669 because the women were menstruating. A prostitute in 1664 did not invite him to do anything, perhaps because she thought he would not give her enough money, but her excuse was that ‘she had them’. But in 1669 neither Pepys nor Mrs Marten were deterred from sexual activity, ‘though she had ellos upon her’.106 Robert Hooke slept

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with his servant Nell when she menstruated on 9 February 1673, and, perhaps significantly, recorded no orgasm.107 In 1763 Boswell was informed by Louisa that he must defer his enjoyment of her: he understood ‘that Natures periodical effects on the human, or more properly female, constitution forbade it’.108 These pieces of evidence suggest that men and women were aware of the taboo on sexual intercourse even if they did not always observe it. The pattern of taboo draws attention to the ambiguous position of women in society. Women were dangerous, but they were dangerous because they were powerful. They may have been inferior to men, but they posed a threat. It is significant that the most widely discussed prohibition on contact with a menstruating woman is on sexual contact. Since copulation was, ideally, confined to husband and wife, the taboo was meaningful in a domestic context. There, in the area where ideas of superiority and inferiority were hardest to maintain, where patriarchal theory needed all the support it could gain, the taboo on copulation may have functioned as a reminder of women’s inferiority. After the menopause, when menstruation had ceased, biblical commentators found that the Jews considered a woman came nearest in value to a man.109 Or, to put it explicitly, after her child-bearing was over a woman was no longer powerful and so less feared. There was no danger that her sexuality would introduce a bastard child into the family. In spite of these theories, during the early modern period several writers were sympathetic to women and their bodily weaknesses. Vives, translated into English in 1550, argued that men ought to be kind to their wives because of their infirmities, while two centuries later John Freind pitied women for the pains and disorders they suffered.110 But although some writers expressed compassion, they could not share women’s experiences, and perhaps this helped to foster the taboos relating to menstruation. Other men, as we have seen, expressed loathing and disgust, which perhaps reflects their fears of women and helped them to justify their patriarchal theories.

IV So far the discussion has been concerned with medical theories and primarily male attitudes. In this section I wish to explore the evidence for the ideas of women themselves, to discuss their experiences of menstruation, their degree of acceptance of the defined disorders, and to consider whether there is any evidence for a female subculture revealing different attitudes. Although most of the literary sources were written by men, and relate chiefly to the upper sections of the society, there were some sources written by

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women. And even in the works written by men there are comments that reveal women’s attitudes: physicians’ case-books, for example, record the words of the women who sought advice. The patterns of women’s experiences of menstruation differed from those of women in western European countries today. The onset of menstruation was probably later. It is difficult to be precise because although the menarche was recognized in general terms as a life phase, the dates at which girls first menstruated was not noted.111 The statements of physicians about the age of menarche seem unreliable, influenced more by theoretical notions than by any quantifiable observations.112 Nutritional deficiencies and chronic infections may have led to a late menarche – around 16 or 17 – for many girls.113 Nor are the estimates of contemporary physicians about the age of the menopause any more reliable,114 although it is possible that family reconstitution may give some data on the age of the woman at the birth of her last child, which would at least suggest the earliest date at which the menopause might occur.115 Although neither the menarche nor the menopause appear to be rites of passage in seventeenth-century England, nor are any special superstitions attached to them, the physiological changes were recognized by the individual and by the society as stages of life.116 The growth of ‘secret hair’ at 12 or 14, and ‘the onset of the flowers’ signalled adolescence, while ‘the cessation of the flowers’ signalled old age.117 During the years between the menarche and the menopause, seventeenth-century women may have experienced fewer menstrual cycles than Western women in the twentieth century because after marriage they were involved in pregnancy and lactation. Famine too may have led to amenorrhoea in poorer women.118 How often did menstruation occur? In theory, physicians claimed that women menstruated every lunar month.119 Women themselves seem to have left no obvious menstrual records, but I have analysed the spiritual diary of one woman, Sarah Savage, who records her hopes and disappointments about pregnancy. Her diary reveals that she expected to menstruate every four weeks, and that after the absence of menstruation for five weeks she hoped she was pregnant.120 Other diaries may reveal more physiological information about menstrual patterns. In practice physicians recognized that women had individual patterns of their own. John Locke, for example, observed a woman in 1678 who normally menstruated every three weeks, and in 1677 he noted that in the Countess of Northumberland the menses ‘generally recur only four or five days after a complete month of four weeks’.121 Theoretical notions about the effects of diet and exercise influenced physicians’ estimates of how long bleeding might last. Hot rustic women who

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had plenty of exercise menstruated only briefly. Moist women who ate rich foods and led idle lives menstruated for longer.122 Although the theories may not be acceptable, they may be an attempt to explain an observed difference between women who worked in the fields and others. From a number of sources it is clear that women viewed menstruation as a private matter. Although men spoke out publicly about menstruation, women were thought to resent this. Men believed that women wanted to be private about their bodies and bodily functions generally. One sixteenthcentury anatomist omitted any discussion of female anatomy for fear of indecency,123 a tradition which finds echoes in the nineteenth century, when gynaecological works for women printed the illustrations separately.124 Physicians believed that women were ‘so shamefac’d and modest’ that they would rather suffer the symptoms of menstrual disorders than reveal them.125 Works were written in simple English so that those who were too modest to consult a physician might attempt their own cure, and authors tried to assure women at the outset that their works would not outrage female modesty.126 Women may have had reason for their reticence. An attack on fraudulent physicians in 1670 spoke of ‘Groaping Doctors’ who pretended they could not discover the causes of disorders without feeling a woman.127 Women’s desire for privacy may not have protected them from the ministrations of husbands and fathers: one gentleman testified he had successfully brought his wife and daughter ‘into good Order’ with his cure.128 Later, in the eighteenth century, a Virginian planter treated his daughter for her menstrual sickness which she had tried to keep secret from him, but which he ‘at last’ found out, despite ‘her obstinacy and secrecy’.129 Dr Pierce in the late seventeenth century consulted the mother of a nineteen-year-old patient who refused to discuss her symptoms.130 Menstruation also posed a potential threat of social embarrassment: as Drake observed, its sudden onset might surprise a modest woman.131 Women had their own ideas about menstruation and did not necessarily share the views of their medical advisers. They objected to the physician letting blood for the stoppage of menstruation. Their neighbours said that phlebotomy would dry up their milk.132 Women also tried to use physicians for their own purposes. Suspecting they might be pregnant, they sought abortions under the guise of provoking menstruation. Physicians warned each other to take care lest they unwittingly serve as an abortionist. Furthermore, women demanded remedies in which physicians had little faith: ‘give fomentations’, Astruc advised, ‘to amuse and satisfy the over-officious good Women’.133 As the gap between women’s own understanding of menstruation and that of the physicians widened, so patronizing attitudes towards women increased among physicians.134 However, the majority of

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women consulted neither physicians nor apothecaries. Midwives advised other women, and women discussed their own cures and ills among themselves. ‘How many old Women preferred before their greatest Doctor’, asked Samuel Purchas rhetorically in 1619.135 Women had their own remedies: ‘Other women’, said one seventeenth-century physician, advised the use of cinnamon to stop excessive menstruation, which he thought was erroneous because cinnamon was a hot dry spice that would provoke rather than stop menstruation. One of Napier’s patients troubled with excessive menstruation took ‘Red wine with cinnamon often’.136 Women’s attitudes to menstruation were affected by their attitudes to pregnancy. Because in theory no conception could occur before menstruation (although in practice physicians noted that such cases had occurred) a woman may have welcomed menstruation as a sign of physical maturity.137 A woman who did not menstruate when she expected took this as a sign of pregnancy. ‘She supposeth herself with child . . . she hath not had her course’, noted Simon Forman of Frances Howard who consulted him in 1597.138 ‘My wife after the absence of her terms for seven weeks, gave me hopes of her being with child’, wrote Pepys.139 Attitudes would have varied as pregnancy was desired or feared. Women who did consult physicians about their menstrual disorders were anxious about child-bearing: one of Napier’s patients ‘feareth and grieveth that she have no child more because yt she hath been troubled with her terms so much’.140 In the eighteenth century Astruc observed that women wanted to menstruate, lest they be deprived of the fruits of generation.141 So far the evidence suggests that women viewed menstruation in relation to their child-bearing capacity, and that as they desired or feared pregnancy so they may have resented or rejoiced at menstruation. But is there any evidence indicating their attitudes to the medical view that menstruation was necessary for their health, either because it purified their bodies or rid them of a plethora? Women may have been concerned at the absence of menstruation, relating it to pregnancy, but they did not need to see it as an alarming symptom requiring treatment. One woman writer on medical matters, Jane Sharp, shows ideas and attitudes indistinguishable from those of male writers. She accepted that women’s bodies were faulty, which made them unable to digest all the blood they concocted, and linked the word ‘menstrua’ with ‘monstrous’.142 However, there is one source that provides evidence about some women’s attitudes: their medical commonplace books. Many of these have survived and, in addition to medical cures, contain cookery recipes and household hints. These suggest that women regarded the absence of menstruation as a symptom requiring treatment. Cures for greensickness, mother-fits, ‘the overflowing of the terms’ abound

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along with cures for bites of mad dogs, wounds and coughs. Most of the manuscript remedies are herbal, as are many of the printed remedies.143 An occasional annotation on a recipe shows that women had accepted medical definitions for their ailments. Beneath a cure ‘for the greensickness’ is recorded ‘it hath helped myself’.144 A remedy for excessive menstruation came with the following provenance: ‘An honest woman revealed this when she had proved it to be true; and she learned it of a poor woman yt required Alms at her door’. This remedy was a magical one: a woman should let her blood run into a hole made in the ground with a three-cornered stake driven into it.145 Other remedies rely upon magic: ‘A true secret’ for excessive menstruation stated that a branch of the mulberry tree cut when the moon was full and bound to the woman’s wrist would stop ‘the overflowing of her courses’ in short time.146 Many remedies have their provenance from another woman, such as ‘the old Countesse of Arundels prime powder for ye greensickness’.147 All this suggests that women were prepared to discuss their menstrual disorders among themselves across social barriers. The poor woman at the door as well as ‘the old Countesse of Arundel’ had help to offer to other women. There is no evidence that women were troubled at the menopause. It was not emphasized as a major problem by physicians, and women themselves may have welcomed it as marking the end of the years of danger from pregnancy and child-bearing, even if regretting the disappearance of their reproductive capacity. There is no evidence of a taboo on sexual intercourse with a post-menopausal woman, as there has been in more recent times, although some thought sexual pleasure was more fitting in youth than in age. Gouge pointed out that although procreation was an ‘end’ of marriage, it was not the only one, and sexual ‘duty’ was to be rendered to women who were barren ‘and after wives have left bearing’.148 We need to know more about the social position of old women. There are signs that old age was respected, and Thomas suggests that old age could sometimes mean a rise in female authority.149 Women’s views of menstruation differed from those of men. While men saw in menstruation evidence of women’s ambiguous position – a position of both weakness and power – women saw menstruation as a normal part of their lives.

V During the seventeenth century, the Bible continued as a basic source of attitudes towards menstruating women as polluted, but in the course of the

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century the Bible became less important than in the earlier period, and many of the texts were interpreted less literally. The advances in scientific and medical knowledge and the growing professionalization of the physicians led to greater importance being placed on medical understandings. Magical beliefs declined too, but the monthly flux of female blood defied rational explanation and allowed taboos to continue. Underlying the changes in medical knowledge, male abhorrence and repugnance for menstruation continued, and popular beliefs were little affected. Despite the widening gap between medical and popular understandings, both shared a hostile attitude to menstruating women. Furthermore, the changing views of the physiology of women did not affect their social roles. Woman might no longer be seen as a mistake of nature, but she was ‘a House builded for generation and gestation’.150 Women were created to breed future generations. They were designed for ‘an easie Life’, to stay at home ‘and to looke after Household employments’. Housewifely offices were ‘the end of her creation’. Consequently, ‘Provident Nature’ was to be admired because women were able to purify their blood by menstruation ‘without any vehement stirrings of the body’.151 Thus menstruation was seen as a planned consequence of women’s predetermined sedentary domestic lives. But whether menstruation was, as earlier, a sign of a less perfect being, or of a being designed for procreative and domestic activity, either assumption served as an explanation of why woman was ‘the Weaker Vessel’ and incapable of any activity other than domestic. The vapours from her ‘Natural disease’ rose to her head, suffocated her spirits with too much moisture, ‘offend the Chamber of Reason, and infect the Parlour of the Passions, the braine and Hart’.152 Menstruation disabled woman from doing anything but staying at home. There is no one single determinant of the position of women in a society, but men’s attitudes to menstruation played an important part in shaping their attitudes to women and their ideas about women’s proper social roles. It may be that the taboos that centred upon sexual contact with menstruating women reinforced male superiority in that area where they were most vulnerable to women, that complex and most intimate area of male–female relations involved in living together. Menstruation served as a reminder of the axiom that women had inferior bodies – an axiom that did not change during the century. It was immaterial whether menstruation was a sign and consequence of their inferiority, or a cause of it. Whether their physical inferiority confined them to home duties at the beginning of the century, or whether their being created for home duties had physical infirmity as its corollary by the end of the century, menstruation was

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still something that disabled women from any role in society other than a domestic one. Beliefs about the inferiority of women shaped ideas about menstruation, and beliefs about menstruation helped reinforce the idea that women were inferior.

Appendix: Attitudes to pregnancy, from a woman’s spiritual diary, 1687–8 Sarah Henry, the eldest daughter of a prominent Nonconformist minister, began a diary in August 1686 when she was 22 years old, in the hope that she might be ‘furthered [in] a godly life’. Seven months later she married a widower, John Savage, who had one child.153 The diary’s purpose remained spiritual, but Sarah’s prayers centred around her desire for a child. Although the connection between ovulation and menstruation was not understood in the later seventeenth century, one of the first signs of pregnancy that was observed was the suppression of menstruation.154 Printed medical advice books stated that women menstruated every 28 days, and although in practice physicians recognized that women’s menstrual cycles were irregular, they treated the absence of menstruation seriously, either as a sign of pregnancy or of some disorder, such as greensickness or motherfits. If a woman were cohabiting with a man, then the absence of menstruation was first viewed as a sign of possible pregnancy: ‘she supposes herself with child . . . she hath not had her course’ observed Simon Forman of Frances Howard in 1597.155 ‘My Wife, after the absence of the terms for seven weeks, gave me hopes of her being with child’ wrote Samuel Pepys.156 Sarah Savage does not mention menstruation explicitly, nor did she write directly of her desire for a child. But she wrote of her desire to be ‘a fruitful vine’, if the Lord saw good, and the diary shows a pattern of hopes and disappointments about this ‘particular matter’ on which she addressed herself to the Lord. On Saturday, 22 May 1687, two months after her marriage, Sarah prayed that she might be a fruitful vine, if the Lord saw good. By Saturday, 3 July, she had hopes that the Lord ‘would fulfil her desire aboute a partic[ular] thing’ and ten days later (13 July) she was still in hopes of satisfaction of ‘a lawful desire’. One might infer that she menstruated soon after 13 July, for it was not till 31 August that she again had ‘hopes yt God will hear my Prayers in a partic[ular] matter yt I dayly recommend to him however his will bee done’. Eleven days later she wrote that over the past week she had reconciled herself to having no children. On Tuesday, 25 October

ATTITUDES TO MENSTRUATION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

and Tuesday, 6 December, Sarah again recorded her disappointment and her resignation to the will of God. In January, 1688, Sarah was again struggling with her hopes that God had answered her desires ‘in a particular th[ing] which I am waiting on him for still expecting disappointment’. As time passed her hopes and with them her fears grew. By Sunday, 22 January, she was still in suspense, but on this occasion she had conceived, although she miscarried on 1 March, at which date she thought ‘herselfe about a quarter gone’ (that is about ten weeks pregnant). By 14 June Sarah was once more in hopes of pregnancy. On 16 July she thought she was near the time she had miscarried on the previous occasion, and on 31 July she recorded she was afraid of miscarrying. Her brother-in-law, Dr Tylston, visited her the next day: he ‘Prescribed some things to take, let mee blood.’ According to medical theory menstruation was necessary either to relieve a plethora or to purify a woman’s body. As a woman was deprived of this healthful evacuation during pregnancy, blood-letting around the time of expected menstruation may have been considered desirable. Unfortunately this volume of Sarah’s diary stops on 1 December 1688, but a printed extract from a manuscript now lost states that on 18 December 1688 her baby died: ‘Now I could not keep my passion in bounds. Strength of natural affection works, yet my judgement is quiet’.157 Presumably the child was born sometime between 1 and 18 December, about seven weeks premature. After these initial disappointments, Sarah finally bore nine children of whom four survived her. She died at over 78 years of age. How did Sarah calculate the time of her conception? As The English Midwife Enlarged pointed out, a woman ‘though well regulated, cannot exactly know by the suppression of menstruation ‘the certain time of her being with child.’ if she conceive immediately after she hath had them [‘her courses’] which happens oftnest, and that during the month she copulates with her Husband, at the end of which time her Courses not coming down, she may very well reckon herself with Child, yet for all this cannot know by this sign which Night she conceived on, and so for 3 weeks or a Month, more or less, she may be mistaken in the time.158 Sarah can have had little basis for a more precise calculation of the date of conception when she thought herself ‘about quarter gone.’ If the cessation of hopes of pregnancy are set out in tabular form (see Table 1.1), it appears that at intervals of six to eight weeks, Sarah was reconciling herself to having no children. If God should see good, she wrote

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TABLE 1.1 Cessation of hopes of pregnancy

Interval

1687

Other details March: marries

Saturday 22 May Thursday 14 July

7 weeks 5 days

Wednesday 7 September

7 weeks 6 days

Tuesday 25 October

6 weeks 6 days

Tuesday 6 December

6 weeks

1688

Miscarriage March 1

Monday 23 April 16 July – near time of last miscarriage 31 July – fears miscarriage 1 August let blood Child born between 1 December and 18 December Child died 18 December (7–8 weeks premature)

in October 1687, ‘to delay or totally deny ye mercy of children to me still by his grace I will wait on him, and love him not one jot the less, tho’ I sometimes can scarce quiet my spirit as I would.’ It is possible she may have had a miscarriage after seven weeks, but it is also possible that the intervals may represent the pattern of her menstrual cycle, which was irregular, at six to eight weeks. She may have commented on her failure to conceive every other cycle, but her hopes do not usually surface for four or five weeks, and then obsess her for two or three weeks, until hope ceases. This would suggest that she expected to menstruate every four or five weeks. Perhaps an earlier pattern of menstrual cycles had been disturbed by her marriage. Sarah Savage’s diary thus reveals a deep longing for a child, a fear of barrenness. It is possible that other women’s diaries may reveal something of their physiological as well as their spiritual states.

Notes and references 1 M. K. Whyte, The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies (Princeton, 1978); N. Z. Davis, ‘Women on top’, in her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (London, 1975); M. A. Screech, The Rabelaisian Marriage (London, 1958), pp. 84–103.

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2 For general discussion of these issues, see Shirley Ardener (ed.), Perceiving Women (London, 1975), Introduction; Shirley Ardener (ed.), Defining Females: The Nature of Women in Society (London, 1978), Introduction. 3 For the restricted, monopolistic position of the Royal College of Physicians, see Christopher Hill, ‘The medical profession and its radical critics’, in his Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), pp. 157–78; R. S. Roberts, ‘The personnel and practice of medicine in Tudor and Stuart England’, Medical Hist., v (1961), pp. 363–82. From his study of the medical case-books of Sir Richard Napier, Dr M. MacDonald has concluded that obstetric and gynaecological disorders were a large proportion of his practice. 4 Lester S. King, The Road to Medical Enlightenment, 1650–1695 (London, 1970), ch. 2. 5 Helkiah Crooke, Microcosmographia (London, 1631, S.T.C. 6063), p. [1011]. 6 C. Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London, 1975); H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1558 to 1603: Being a Study of the History of the Book Trade in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge, 1965); A Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England (London, 1658). 7 ‘Flowers’, ‘terms’ and ‘courses’ are the most commonly used words in seventeenth-century texts. 8 Nicholas Culpeper, A Directory for Midwives (12 April 1651), p. 200: BL, Thomason Tracts (hereafter E.), E. 1340 (1). All dates supplied for works in this collection are as given in the Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth and Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661 (2 vols., London, 1908). Philiatros, Natura exenterata (31 July 1655), p. 194: E. 1560; Richard Mead, A Discourse Concerning the Action of the Sun and Moon on Animal Bodies (London, 1708), p. 17. 9 Manuscript book of Lady Frances Catchmay [c. 1625]: WIL, MS. 184a, fo. 11; Manuscript book of Johanne St. John, 1680: WIL, MS. 4338 (leaf W. 15a); The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews (London, 1970, in progress), vol. v, pp. 40, 87; vol. viii, pp. 316, 372; vol. ix, pp. 210, 408, 470, 512, 545. 10 Aristotles Complete and Experienc’d Midwife (London, 1697), p. 96. 11 ‘A Narrative of Mary Glover, 1602’: BL, Sloane MS. 831, fo. 125v. James Hart, KVINIKH: or, The Diet of the Diseased (London, 1633, S.T.C. 12888), p. 330, wrote of ‘a periodicall course’. Jean Astruc, A Treatise on All the Diseases Incident to Women, trans. J. R. (London, 1743), p. 75, wrote of the menses appearing ‘at the expected Periods, or intermediate Spaces’. John Ball, The Female Physician: or, Every Woman Her Own Doctress (London, 1770), p. 18, observed that ‘this period most frequently recurs monthly’.

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12 J. V. Ricci, The Genealogy of Gynaecology (Philadelphia, 1943), pp. 342, 357 n. 5, found over two hundred treatises that discussed female anatomy generally, and listed several specific treatises on menstruation. 13 Walter Bruele, Praxis medicinae: or, The Physicians Practice (London, 1632, S.T.C. 3929), p. 363; Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671), pp. 83–4; The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, trans. T. Johnson (London, 1634, S.T.C. 19189), p. 945. 14 James Drake, Anthropologia nova: or, A New System of Anatomy (2 vols., London, 1707), vol. i, p. 137. La Motte in 1746 thought the explanation of menstruation as ‘a fermentation of the humours, seems very reasonable; this happens after the same manner it does in wine’: Guillaume Mauquest de la Motte, A General Treatise of Midwifery, trans. T. Tomkyns (London, 1746), p. 59. Also, ‘the menstrual evacuations, like the flowers and dregs of other fermenting liquors, was the impurities thrown off by such a depurating process’: Henry Manning, A Treatise on Female Diseases (London, 1771), pp. 20–1. 15 James McMath, The Expert Mid-Wife (Edinburgh, 1694), p. 4. Nevertheless, the blood shed at the breaking of the hymen was referred to as ‘the Flower of Virginity’: [Thomas Gibson], The Anatomy of Humane Bodies Epitomized (London, 1682), p. 154, quoting Deuteronomy xxii. 13–21. The King James Version refers to ‘tokens of the damsels virginity’. 16 Parey, Workes, p. 945; Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 288. Peter Laslett finds the word ‘flowers’ more elegant terminology: P. Laslett, ‘Age at menarche in Europe since the eighteenth century’, in T. K. Rabb and R. I. Rotberg (eds), The Family in History (New York, 1973), p. 28. 17 John Freind, Emmenologia, trans. T. Dale (London, 1729), pp. 10–12. 18 Bruele, Praxis medicinae, p. 363; Sharp, Midwives Book, pp. 83–4, 290. 19 Parey, Workes, p. 947; Thomas Raynalde, The Birth of Mankynde ([London, 1564?]), fo. 39v, 40v. 20 J. Pechey, A General Treatise on the Diseases of Maids, Big-Bellied Women, Child-Bed Women and Widows (London, 1696), p. 19. 21 Astruc, Treatise, pp. 16–17, 22. 22 Drake, Anthropologia nova, vol. i, p. 325. 23 Joseph Needham, A History of Embryology, 2nd edn (New York, 1959), p. 150 and n.; Janet Blackman, ‘Popular theories of generation: The evolution of Aristotle’s Works. The study of an anachronism’, in J. Woodward and D. Richards (eds.), Health Care and Popular Medicine in Nineteenth Century England: Essays in the Social History of Medicine (London, 1977), pp. 78–84. 24 Needham, History of Embryology, pp. 149–50, 179–80; M. Anthony Hewson, Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Conception (London, 1975), pp. 135–9.

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25 Nicholas Fontanus, The Womans Doctour (London, 1652), p. 157. 26 Hewson, Giles of Rome, p. 81. 27 John Jones, The Arte and Science of Preserving Bodie and Soule in Healthe (London, 1579, S.T.C. 14724), p. 14; Parey, Workes, p. 909; Hannah Wolley, The Accomplisht Ladys Delight, 10th edn (London, 1719), p. 46; J[ohn] S[tarsmere], ΠAK∆Ω N NOΣ HMATA: or, Childrens Diseases (London, 1664), p. 79. 28 The Problemes of Aristotle (London, 1607, S.T.C. 765); A. M., A Rich Closet Of Physical Secrets (10 July 1652), p. 19: E.670; The Works of William Gouge: The First, Domesticall Duties (London, 1627, S.T.C. 12109), p. 131; Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, pp. 138–9. 29 Starsmere, Childrens Diseases, pp. 24, 39; James Guillimeau, Child-Birth or the Happie Deliverie of Women (London, 1612, S.T.C. 12496), pp. 99–100; McMath, Expert Mid-Wife, p. 373. Smallpox and measles, some thought, may not have been caused by contact with the dregs of menstrual blood, for if this were so, everyone would suffer from them: Francis Mauriceau, The Accomplisht Midwife, trans. Hugh Chamberlen (London, 1673), pp. 414–5; Starsmere, Childrens Diseases, pp. 53–5. 30 Manning, Treatise on Female Diseases, p. 66. 31 John Tanner, The Hidden Treasures of the Art of Physick (London, 1659), p. 314: E.1847; Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 256; Pechey, A General Treatise, p. 13; Robert Pierce, Bath Memoirs (Bristol, 1697), pp. 188–90; A Rational Account of the Natural Weaknesses of Women (London, [1716]), pp. 9–10. 32 L. Riverius, The Practice of Physick, trans. N. Culpeper, A. Cole and W. Roland (London, 1655), p. 420; Edward Jorden, A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (London, 1603, S.T.C. 14979), fo. 5; Fontanus, Womans Doctour, pp. 51–4; Parey, Workes, p. 939, stressed that the more serious symptoms came from corrupt seed rather than menstrual blood. Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 318. 33 Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry of Broad Oak, Flintshire, A. D. 1631–1696, ed. M. H. Lee (London, 1882), pp. 9, 41–3, 65. 34 Peter de Loier, A Treatise of Specters (London, 1605), fo. 110r–v, says some women may try to destroy themselves. Fontanus, Womans Doctour, p. 4; Riverius, Practice of Physick, pp. 404–5. 35 A. L. Rowse, Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age (London, 1974), p. 167. 36 [ J. Praevotius], Medicaments for the Poor, trans. Nicholas Culpeper (Edinburgh, 1664), p. 98. 37 Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, pp. 86–7; Culpepers School of Physic (London, 1659), pp. 244–6: E. 1739; Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, p. 96.

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38 Freind, Emmenologia, pp. 128–45. 39 Culpepers School of Physic, pp. 246–8; R. T., De morbis foemineis: The Womans Counsellour (27 June 1657), p. 44: E. 1650 (3); Tanner, Hidden Treasures of the Art of Physick, p. 321. 40 Practical advice of the making and insertion of pessaries was common. See, for example, Daniel Sennert, The Institutions . . . of Physick, trans. N. D. and B. P. (3 April 1656), pp. 472–3: E. 1568; R. T., De morbis foemineis, pp. 35–6; John Sadler, Enchiridion medicum, trans. R. T. (London, 1657), pp. 138, 239; [P. Morellus], The Expert Doctors Dispensatory, trans. Nicholas Culpeper (4 August 1657), p. 260: E. 1565. 41 During the nineteenth century some women did not use any pessaries or pads, for they feared that any cloth might prevent the menses from flowing. As many people in the seventeenth century followed the ancients in believing that clean linen would draw forth moisture, they may have used linen pads. 42 Freind, Emmenologia, p. 3; Manning, Treatise on Female Diseases, pp. 5–6; John Leake, Medical Instructions towards the Prevention and Cure of Chronic Diseases Peculiar to Women, 5th edn (2 vols., London, 1781), vol. i, p. 51. 43 R. J. Harrison, Reproduction and Man (Edinburgh, 1967), pp. 17–18. Modern writers suggest that menopausal depression is created because society sees women as having only one justification in their lives: child-bearing and child-rearing. ‘The menopause dramatically indicates to the woman that one of her most important functions in the scheme of life has terminated and with it her sexual attractiveness’: C. Mazer and S. L. Israel, Diagnosis and Treatment of Menstrual Disorders and Sterility (London, [1941]), p. 299. See also Becker, quoted in V. Skultans, ‘The symbolic significance of menstruation and the menopause’, Man, v (1970), p. 650; R. G. Richardson, The Menopause: A Neglected Crisis (Queenborough, 1973). 44 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 132. 45 Astruc commented on this in the eighteenth century: Astruc, Treatise, p. 63. Some modern commentators have thought that life expectancy in the seventeenth century was so low that women did not live long enough to experience the menopause, but this is based on a misleading view of life-expectancy figures: T. H. Hollingsworth, Historical Demography (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 22–3. Even a study of life-expectancy figures can show that not all women died before the menopause. As life expectancy rises from birth, a female who survived to the age of 20 or so might expect to live another 30 years: Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, 2nd edn (London, 1971), pp. 96–8. In France, at Crulai, over the period from 1675 to 1775, females who reached an average age at marriage of 25 had an average age at death of 56: J. Fourastié, ‘From the traditional to the “tertiary” life cycle’, in W. Petersen (ed.), Readings in Population (New York, 1972), p. 31. The simple study of a population by age, as attempted by King in 1696, shows a large number of

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women still alive over 60: Gregory King, Natural and Political Observations, ed. Peter Laslett, in The Earliest Classics (Farnborough, 1973), p. 40. 46 F. Mauriceau, Aphorisms Relating to the Pregnancy, Delivery and Diseases of Women, trans. Thomas Jones (London, 1739), p. 17. Skultans’ study in South Wales demonstrates that some women still believe that regular menstruation with the loss of as much blood as possible is best for their health: Skultans, ‘Significance of Menstruation’, p. 642. 47 Albertus Magnus, De secretis mulierum: or, The Mysteries of Human Generation Fully Revealed, trans. J. Quincy (London, 1725), p. 90. 48 Leake, Medical Instructions of Chronic Diseases, vol. i, p. 95. 49 Pechey, A General Treatise on the Diseases of Maids, pp. 19–20; K. Dewhurst, John Locke, 1632–1704: Physician and Philosopher (London, 1963), p. 106. Locke noted that ‘Amatus Lusitanus writes that he saw two women whose courses were stopped, and who passed blood at intervals through their breasts. Brassavolus had seen another who passed it in the same manner’. There are other references to vicarious menstruation into the eighteenth century: Ricci, Genealogy of Gynaecology, p. 356 n.6. According to modern medicine, bleeding at the breasts might be diagnosed as cancer. 50 The Diary of Sir David Hamilton, 1709–1714, ed. P. Roberts (Oxford, 1975), pp. xxv, 6, 67. 51 For example, Thomas Cogan, The Haven of Health (London, 1584, S.T.C. 5478), pp. 12–13; Nicholas Culpeper, A New Method of Physick (London, 1654), p. 45. 52 Parey, Workes, p. 948; Astruc, Treatise, p. 61. 53 R. Seigel, ‘Galen’s concept of bloodletting in relation to his ideas on pulmonary and peripheral blood flow and blood formation’, in A. Debus (ed.), Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, (2 vols., London, 1972), vol. i, pp. 243–75. 54 See also Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), pp. 657–8, for the negligible progress in actual therapy for sickness. 55 H. R. Hays, The Dangerous Sex: The Myth of Feminine Evil (London, 1966); Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 145, 167–9; F. W. Young and A. A. Bacdayan, ‘Menstrual Taboos and Social Rigidity’, Ethnology, iv (1965), pp. 225–40. 56 Sir Thomas Elyot, The Castle of Health (London, 1610, S.T.C. 7657), p. 12. 57 Patricia Crawford, ‘Charles Stuart, that man of blood’, Journal of British Studies, xvi (1977), pp. 41–60. 58 William Perkins, Christian Oeconomie (London, 1609, S.T.C. 19677), p. 114. 59 Isaiah lxiv. 6 (Geneva Version). This text refers back to Isaiah xxx. 22, which in the Authorized Version refers to a ‘menstrual cloth’: L. Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature in Four Books (London, 1658), p. 29.

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60 Barnabe Barnes, The Devil’s Charter (London, 1607, S.T.C. 1466). See also, for example, Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, III. i. 33. 61 William Whately, A Bride Bush: or, A Direction for Married Persons (London, 1623, S.T.C. 25298), pp. 23–4. 62 Both the diaries of John Dee and Simon Forman were edited by J. O. Halliwell. He considered Dee’s notices relative to his wife to be difficult to decipher ‘and certainly of very little, if any importance’ and therefore omitted them: The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, ed. J. O. Halliwell (Camden Soc., old ser., xix, London, 1842), p. 33 n. 63 Pepys, Diary, vol. i, p. 1; vol. ii, pp. 24, 43; vol. iii, pp. 82, 111, 291; vol. iv, pp. 20, 48, 80, 165, 168. Other references to his wife being unwell occur at roughly monthly intervals, suggesting menstruation. 64 Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), p. 84; The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London, 1976), p. 352. 65 The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709–1712, ed. L. B. Wright and M. Tinling (Richmond, Va., 1941), p. 585, entry for 18 September 1712. 66 The Diary of Robert Hooke, 1672–1680, ed. H. W. Robinson and W. Adams (London, 1935), pp. 11 (23 October 1672), 27 (9 February 1673), 114 (26 July 1674). 67 For example, Pepys mentions his own bodily functions only when they interfere with other activities: Diary, vol. i, p. 287. 68 Pliny, The Historie of the World, trans. P. Holland (London, 1635, S.T.C. 20030a), p. 163. There is a lengthy discussion of superstitions associated with menstrual blood in Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. F. (London, 1651 [1650]), pp. 81–2. 69 Problemes of Aristotle; Hart, Diet of the Diseased, p. 354. 70 Nicholas Culpeper, The Complete Midwife’s Practice Enlarged (London, 1663), p. 282; Mead, A Discourse Concerning the Sun and Moon, pp. 17–18. 71 Problemes of Aristotle. 72 Crooke, Microcosmographia, pp. 288–9 (quoting views of ancient authors), cited in medical collections: BL, Sloane MS. 738, fo. 42v; Ioannis Wieri, De praestigiis daemonum (Basle, 1566), p. 360, denied that menstrual blood was an aphrodisiac and claimed it turned people mad; Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, p. 35. 73 William Sermon, The Ladies Companion: or, The English Midwife (London, 1671), p. 13; [Leonard Sowerby], The Ladies Dispensatory (2 December 1652), p. 161: E. 1258. 74 Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, pp. 81–2; [Michael Ettmueller], Etmullerus Abridg’d: or, A Complete System of the Theory and Practice of Physic (London, 1699), p. 634.

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75 Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 289. 76 Alexander Ross, Arcana microcosmi: or, The Hid Secrets of Mans Body Disclosed (London, 1651), p. 137. 77 Nicholas Andry, Orthopaedia (2 vols., London, 1743), vol. i, p. 29; Astruc, Treatise, pp. 20–1. 78 Drake, Anthropologia nova, pp. 321–2. 79 Leviticus xv. 20 (Geneva Version). 80 Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. L. Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth, 1955), pp. 77–9. 81 ‘Penitential of Theodore’, in Medieval Handbooks of Penance, ed. J. T. McNeill and H. M. Gamer (New York, 1938), p. 197. 82 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 38. Primitive Methodists excluded menstruating women from their chapels up to the end of the nineteenth century: E. Porter, Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (London, 1969), p. 22. 83 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 649. 84 La Motte, General Treatise of Midwifery, pp. 57–8. 85 Correspondence, British Medical Journal (1878), pt. 1, pp. 324, 590, 633, and pt. 2, pp. 654, 714. For a further discussion of folklore relating to menstruation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Porter, Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore, pp. 21–2. 86 Quoted in R. Crawford, ‘Of superstitions concerning menstruation’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, ix (1916), p. 54. 87 Lancet, 18 May 1974, p. 988; 8 June 1974, pp. 1172–3. Investigations during the twentieth century suggest that some of these mysterious phenomena may be based on demonstrable fact, but the language of the writers is not neutral. The phenomenon under investigation is labelled ‘menstrual toxin’, the woman who produces it is ‘unwell’, and the non-menstruating woman is referred to as ‘a normal healthy woman’: D. I. Macht and D. S. Lubin, ‘A phyto-pharmacological study of menstrual toxin’, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, xxii (1924), pp. 413–66. 88 Summula Raymundi (Cologne, 1506), quoted in T. N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977), p. 166; Drake, Anthropologia nova, p. 321. Drake rejected this view himself as superstitious. 89 Hart, Diet of the Diseased, p. 373. Hart condemned this view. 90 Whately, Bride Bush, pp. 21–4; Joseph Bentham, The Christian Conflict (London, 1635, S.T.C. 1887), pp. 295–8; Nicholas Byfield, A Commentary upon the First Epistle General of St. Peter (London, 1637, S.T.C. 4212), p. [596]. 91 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 131. See also Perkins, Christian Oeconomie, p. 114.

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92 Gervase Babington, Comfortable Notes upon the Bookes of Exodus and Leviticus (London, 1604, S.T.C. 1088), pp. 138–9. In 1641, in New England, one author advocated the death penalty for ‘pollution of a woman known to be in her flowers’: [William Aspinwall], ‘An abstract of the Laws of New England’, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1st ser., v (1798), p. 183. 93 Daniel Rogers, Matrimonial Honour (London, 1642), p. 177. 94 Matthew Poole, Annotations upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (London, 1683), Leviticus xviii. 19; John Maubray, The Female Physician (London, 1724), pp. 373–4. 95 II Esdras v. 8. There were several different theories of conception: Thomas Vicary, A Profitable Treatise of the Anatomie of Man’s Bodie (London, [1577], S.T.C. 24713); Fontanus, Womans Doctour, pp. 128, 134; Crooke, Microcosmographia, p. 262. 96 Thomas Gataker et al., Annotations upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (London, 1645), Leviticus xv. 24; Poole, Annotations; Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, pp. 140–1; Lemnius, Secret Miracles of Nature, pp. 23, 29, thought that Moses had good reason for his prohibition. Medieval theologians who considered such copulation a mortal sin founded their severity on the view that children were likely to be defective: J. T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 282. 97 Parey, Workes, p. 962; Aristotle’s Master-Piece (London, 1690 edn), p. 45. The birth of monsters was not always intended to show the incontinence of parents, for the birth of a blind man might reveal the wonderful work of God in healing him: E. Fenton, Certain Secret Wonders of Nature (London, 1569, S.T.C. 10787), fos. 12v–13. 98 Mathew Henry, Commentary on the Holy Bible (London, [1710]); Leviticus xv; The Holy Bible . . . with Annotations . . . by Samuel Clark (London, 1690). 99 Ricci, Genealogy of Gynaecology, pp. 407–9, 448; F. J. Cole, Early Theories of Sexual Generation (Oxford, 1930); F. B. Churchill, ‘The history of embryology as intellectual history’, Journal of the History of Biology, iii (1970), pp. 155–81; P. J. Bowler, ‘Preformation and pre-existence in the Seventeenth century: a brief analysis’, Journal of the History of Biology, iv (1971), pp. 221–44. 100 Sermon, Ladies Companion, p. 29. Hippocrates was cited as the authority for this view. 101 C. Quillet, Callipaedia: or, The Art of Getting Beautiful Children. A Poem . . . Made English by N. Rowe (London, 1720), pp. 53–4. The 1710 translation spelt out the same message (ibid., p. 56): For what’s more Pois’nous than this Female Flood? The dregs of Life, and skimmings of the Blood.

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102 O. T. Beall, ‘Aristotle’s Master-Piece in America: a landmark in the folklore of medicine’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., xx (1963), pp. 207–22; Blackman, ‘Popular theories of generation’, pp. 59–65. Frank Harris, My Life and Loves (London, 1966), p. 135, relates menstruation and conception as follows: ‘Your seed is brought down into your womb by the menstrual blood; it lives there a week or ten days and then dies’. 103 Lemnius, Secret Miracles of Nature, p. 23; Aristotles Master-Piece (1690 edn), pp. 44–5. A ‘mole’ is a false conception, or fleshy mass occurring in the womb. Its origins were debated. Some said it might be begotten by a woman herself, by the force of her own seed mixed with menstrual blood: James Wolvridge, Speculum matrices: or, The Expert Midwives Handmaid (London, 1671), p. 79. These moles were sometimes termed windy, or false moles. True moles were produced when a man’s seed was weak or choked with menstrual blood: Sermon, Ladies Companion, pp. 31–3. 104 [Gibson], Anatomy of Humane Bodies, p. 155. 105 Rowse, Simon Forman, p. 249. The diary entry does not make clear when her ‘course’ began: Bodl., Ashmolean MS 802, fo. 151v. 106 Pepys, Diary, vol. v, pp. 9, 225–6; vol. ix, pp. 265, 514. ‘Ellos’ refers to ‘them’, a word Pepys uses for menstruation. 107 Hooke, Diary, p. 27. 108 Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. F. A. Pottle (London, 1950), p. 126. Unfortunately Boswell does not explain whether biblical, medical or aesthetic reasons forbade copulation. 109 Keith Thomas, ‘Age and authority in early modern England’, Proceedings of the British Academy, lxii (1976), pp. 235–6. 110 J. L. Vives, The Office and Duetie of an Husband, trans. Thomas Paynell (London, [1555], S.T.C. 24855), p. [ix]; Freind, Emmenologia, Preface. 111 There may be some information in medical casebooks and in diaries. Simon Forman, for example, noted that his wife menstruated for the first time in her life three months after they married, when she was 19 years old: Rowse, Simon Forman, p. 95. Laslett has tried to use the demographic evidence from the seventeenth century to ascertain the age at menarche, but found it unhelpful: Laslett, ‘Age at menarche’, p. 321. 112 Physicians stated that women first menstruated at varied dates. Raynalde, in 1564, says 14 or 15, as does Aristotle’s Master-Piece at the end of the seventeenth century, and Manning in 1771: Raynalde, Birth of Mankynde, fo. 26; Aristotle’s Master-Piece (1690 edn), p. 2; Manning, Treatise, p. 5. Estimates in the early eighteenth century included 14 or earlier, 15 or 16, and even 21 or 22 for some women: Rational Account, p. 1; The Ladies Physical Directory [an edition of A Rational Account], (London, 1727), p. 1. Post used literary sources for discussing the age of menarche in the middle ages, arguing that the figure of 12 to 14 was congruent with the experience of the medical

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profession and their patients, although he is aware that the reliance of most medical writers upon the ancient literary texts makes this evidence of doubtful value: J. B. Post, ‘Ages at menarche and the menopause: Some mediaeval authorities’, Population Studies, xxv (1971), pp. 83–7; J. B. Post, ‘Another demographic use of inquisitions post mortem’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, v (1974), pp. 110–14. 113 P. E. Brown, ‘The age at menarche’, British Journal of Preventative and Social Medicine, (1966), pp. 9–14. The hypothesis has been advanced that the onset of menstruation is affected by the attainment of a critical body weight: Rose E. Frisch and Roger Revelle, ‘Height and weight at menarche and a hypothesis of menarche’, Archives of Disease in Childhood, xlv (1971), pp. 695–704; Rose E. Frisch, ‘Weight at menarche: similarity for well-nourished and undernourished girls at differing ages, and evidence for historical constancy’, Pediatrics, l (1972), pp. 445–50. For discussion of the controversy, see R. V. Short, ‘The evolution of human reproduction’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London [Biology], cxcv (1976), pp. 6–9. E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Famine amenorrhoea, seventeenth to twentieth centuries’, in R. Forster and O. Ranum (eds), Biology of Man in History (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 163–78. 114 Again, literary sources offer widely different ages for the menopause. Lemnius, in the late sixteenth century, thought it occurred at 42 or even 45 years, but stated that if menstruation continued until a woman’s 60th year, this was unnatural: Lemnius, Secret Miracles of Nature, p. 308. Cogan, in 1584, estimated around 50, while Crooke gave the age as seven times seven: Cogan, Haven of Health, p. 255; Crooke, Microcosmographia, p. 261. Freind, Emmenologia, p. 1, also dated the menopause to the square of seven. Astruc, in the mid-eighteenth century, thought the menopause occurred at 45 to 50: Astruc, Treatise, p. 17. In John Graunt’s demographic calculations of 1662 he stated that women breed either from 16 to 40 years, or 20 to 44: John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations (London, 1662), ed. P. Laslett, in The Earliest Classics, p. 60. Graunt implies that these ages for ‘teeming women’ are their actual fertile years, which suggests that the age of menarche may vary from 16 to 20. He also claims that if the age of menarche were later, the menopause was correspondingly delayed, which would not be in accordance with modern medical theory. C.f. Amundsen and Diers who consider that the observations on age at menopause in medieval sources ought not to be labelled as absurdities, arguing that as the variations in age were noted, the recorders were not simply relying upon some arbitrary age: D. W. Amundsen and C. J. Diers, ‘The age of menopause in medieval Europe’, Human Biology, xlv (1973), pp. 605–12. 115 Laslett, ‘Age at menarche’, p. 31 n.7. 116 Skultans’ study of women in South Wales revealed modern superstitions about the menopause. Menopausal women should not touch red meat, or salt, or attempt to make bread: Skultans, ‘Menstruation and the menopause’, p. 648.

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117 Francis Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death (London, 1638, S.T.C. 1157), p. 275. 118 Short, ‘Evolution of human reproduction’, pp. 3–24; Ladurie, ‘Famine amenorrhoea’, pp. 163–78. 119 Some physicians claimed that menstruation was governed by the moon: Raynalde, Birth of Mankynde, fo. 28; Mead, A Discourse Concerning the Sun and Moon, pp. 17–18; Bunworth, The Doctresse, pp. 2–3, 13. 120 See appendix to this chapter, p. 38. 121 Dewhurst, John Locke, pp. 127, 97. William Smellie was aware of the differences in women’s patterns: W. Smellie, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, (3 vols., London, 1752–4), vol. ii, p. 21. 122 R. T., De morbis foemineis, p. 19; Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 290; Raynalde, Birth of Mankynde, fo. 28v. 123 John Banister, The Historie of Man (London, 1578, S.T.C. 1359), fos. 85, 88v. 124 For example, J. H. Kellogg, Ladies’ Guide to Health and Disease: Childhood, Maidenhood, Wifehood, Motherhood (London, 1895). 125 R. T., De morbis foemineis, p. 4; Aristotles Master-Piece (London, 1710 edn), Preface. 126 Rational Account, Preface; R[ichard] B[unworth], The Doctresse (30 May 1656), Preface: E. 1714.2; Riverius, Practice of Physick, Preface; McMath, Expert Midwife, Preface; Edmund Chapman, An Essay on the Improvement of Midwifery (London, 1733), Preface. 127 The Accomplisht Physician, the Honest Apothecary, and the Skilful Chyrurgeon (London, 1670), p. 37. 128 Rational Account, pp. 13–15. 129 The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hill, 1752–1778, ed. J. P. Greene (Charlottesville, Va., 1965), pp. 320–3. ‘Catamenia’ also influenced his treatment of other women’s illnesses: ibid., pp. 649, 939. 130 Pierce, Bath Memoirs, pp. 190–1. 131 Drake, Anthropologia nova, p. 325. 132 Riverius, Practice of Physick, p. 405; John Cotta, A Short Discoverie of the Unobserved Dangers of Several Sorts of Ignorant and Unconsiderate Practitioners of Physicke in England (London, 1612, S.T.C. 5833), pp. 25–6; Hart, Diet of Diseased, Introduction, pp. [9–11]. 133 Riverius, Practice of Physick, p. 403; Astruc, Treatise, pp. 84–5, 117. 134 For comparable nineteenth-century attitudes, see V. Bullough and M. Voght, ‘Women, menstruation and nineteenth-century medicine’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, xlvii (1973), pp. 62–82, and E. and E. Showalter, ‘Victorian women and menstruation’, in M. Vicinus (ed.), Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), pp. 38–44.

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135 An example of a remedy given by a midwife is in the manuscript book of Anne Brumwich and others [c. 1625–1700]: WIL, MS. 160, fo. 149. Samuel Purchas, Microcosmus: or, The Historie of Man (London, 1619, S.T.C. 20503), p. 627. Physicians resented women advising each other: [Petrus Forestus], The Arraignment of Urines, trans. J. Hart (London, 1623, S.T.C. 11180), p. 72; Hart, Diet of the Diseased, Introduction, and p. 331. Sometimes women sought no help at all. In a case discussed by Freind, a woman who miscarried in the streets late at night did not even send for the midwife: Freind, Emmenologia, p. 162. 136 James Primrose, Popular Errours: or, The Errours of the People in Physick, trans. R. Wittie (3 May 1651), pp. 385–6: E. 1227. See also Parey, Workes, pp. 952–3; Napier casebook: Bodl., Ashmolean MS. 239, fo. 152. 137 Astruc, Treatise, pp. 73–4; Riverius, Practice of Physick, p. 504. An outward menstruum was not necessary, provided there was an inward: Fontanus, Womans Doctour, p. 134. 138 Rowse, Simon Forman, pp. 226–7. 139 Pepys, Diary, vol. i, p. 1. 140 Napier casebook: Bodl., Ashmolean MS. 239, fo. 152. 141 Astruc, Treatise, pp. 73–4. 142 Sharp, Midwives Book, pp. 84, 288. 143 There are manuscript collections of cures in the libraries of the Royal College of Physicians and the Wellcome Institute. The Sloane collection in the British Library is also rich in such works. Among the printed sources, Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physitian: or, An Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation (London, 1652), is a good example of herbal remedies. 144 Sarah Wigges, medical receipts, 1616: Royal College of Physicians, London, MS. 654, fo. 73. 145 Ibid., fo. 160. The same cure is found in a late seventeenth-century book: Royal College of Physicians, MS. 504, fo. 28. 146 Receipts, 1669–1671: Royal College of Physicians, MS. 513, fo. 37. 147 ‘Book of receipts phisicall and chiruergicall’ (late seventeenth century): WIL, MS. 1323, fo. 111. 148 Marie C. C. Stopes, Change of Life in Men and Women, 2nd edn (London, 1938), pp. 8–9; Perkins, Christian Oeconomie, p. 122. According to The Problemes of Aristotle, there was a danger in copulating with old women who might infect with their breath; Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 131; T. H[ilder], Conjugall Counsell (London, 1653), p. 27. 149 Thomas, ‘Age and authority in early modern england’, pp. 235–6. See also E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1975), p. 287, for a similar conclusion.

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150 Several seventeenth-century authors took the trouble to refute Aristotle’s view that Nature had intended all creation to be male: [ John Bulwer], Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d (London, 1653), p. 404; Crooke, Microcosmographia, p. 258; Ross, Arcana microcosmi, p. 86; Purchas, Microcosmus, p. 257. 151 Fontanus, The Womans Doctour, p. 1; Pechey, General Treatise, Preface; Thomas Gataker, A Marriage Praier (London, 1624, S.T.C. 11669), pp. 18–19. 152 Purchas, Microcosmus, pp. 481–3. 153 Sarah Savage’s diary, CCRO, DB8, unfoliated; see also J. B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs. Sarah Savage (London, 1818). 154 Brundenell Exton, A New and General System of Midwifery, 3rd edn (London, 1751), p. 17. 155 A. L. Rowse, Simon Forman (London, 1974), pp. 226–7. 156 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (London, 1970), vol. i, p. 1. 157 Williams, Memoirs of Mrs. Sarah Savage, pp. 70–1. 158 The English Midwife Enlarged (London, 1682), p. 24. Part of this work is based upon James Woveridge, Speculum Matrices: or Expert Midwives Handmaid (London, 1671).

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CHAPTER 2

Sexual knowledge in England, 1500–1750

T

his chapter discusses how sexual knowledge was constituted in early modern England. Medical discourse about sex informs many aspects of early modern social life, including theology and the law. Those ideas that physicians called knowledge can be analysed as an ideology which functioned as a means of reinforcing social distinctions and the differences between men and women. Together with theological discourse, that of medicine defined licit and illicit sexuality. Medical and theological writers claimed the power to define knowledge, but they were forced to recognize a competing female discourse. Women possessed sexual knowledge of a different and sometimes complementary kind. The first part of the chapter gives a brief account of the medical and theological discourses of early modern England about sexuality. Sex was construed unreflectingly ‘as an inborn drive with a single natural goal’.1 Medical writers claimed that their discourse constituted ‘knowledge’, and as an increasingly professional group they sought to distance themselves from other medical practitioners, particularly from women healers. Medical knowledge about sexuality and health changed over the early modern period, but it continued to inform contemporary discussion about marriage and reproduction. The second part of the chapter discusses popular understandings of sexuality. Men and women accepted many of these medical ideas as ‘knowledge’, but since their own sources of understanding were not exclusively medical and theological, the two sexes subverted the medical discourse. Many men ignored the moral framework in which sexuality was understood, and treated their sexual desires as imperatives. Women’s own experiences and observations induced a degree of scepticism about medical theories. Men might be learned, observed the midwife Jane Sharp, but in childbirth ‘It is not hard words that perform the work, as if none understood the Art that cannot understand Greek’.2

SEXUAL KNOWLEDGE IN ENGLAND, 1500–1750

Further, female gossip about sexuality could subvert the dominant discourse about male superiority by mocking men and their sexual prowess. Apart from studies of erotica, the history of sexuality has been ignored until comparatively recently. Sexuality seemed natural, eternally the same over time, and therefore required no history. The studies of the Annalistes in France and the pioneering study of Lawrence Stone in English demonstrated that sexuality was socially constructed and had a history.3 In much of the earlier work, the historians’ attitudes and assumptions were relentlessly male. Thus Stone, for example, asserts that ‘despite appearances, human sex takes place mostly in the head’, ignoring the fact that for women sex usually occurs in the social context of possible pregnancy.4 In recent social histories of the family in England, such as those of Houlbrooke and Macfarlane, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the subject of sexuality per se.5 Those working on the church court records could not ignore the subject, but their prejudices have been limiting. Some work, such as that of Quaife and Addy, and even that of Ingram, accepts the perspective of the courts without questioning.6 The ideas of Michel Foucault have reshaped the history of sexuality, although his influence has perhaps been less in the early modern period than in later periods. Foucault’s idea of power inhering in a dominant discourse is a particularly useful one.7 This helps us to see how there was a range of ideas about sexuality in early modern England; some were classified as knowledge, others as foolish beliefs. While the ideas of the universitytrained physicians were the main source of knowledge about sexuality, the observations and experiences of the populace at large provided an alternative knowledge. Debates about sexuality were arguments about rival sources of knowledge, and gender relations in early modern society.

Medical and theological knowledge in early modern England There were two main discourses about sexuality in early modern England, one religious, the other medical. The church viewed sexuality as a moral issue. Theologians, priests and ministers taught the populace the rights and wrongs of sexual matters through sermons, informal teachings and printed works. Basically, the church assumed that all sexuality should be heterosexual, genital and confined to marriage. Before the Reformation, the clergy endeavoured to discipline and enforce their sexual teachings through the confessional and the church courts. From 1559 until 1641, the Anglican clergy

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endeavoured to control the sexuality of the laity through the church courts. These courts were abolished in 1641, but although they were re-established at the Restoration with much the same powers, in practice they were weaker.8 The Protestant clergy taught that sex was natural and God-given. The Bible showed that God had instructed Adam and Eve to multiply. Divines debated whether Adam and Eve had had sexual relations before the Fall. For example, William Gouge, a leading seventeenth-century divine, argued that sexuality was a consequence of sin, so that Adam did not ‘know’ Eve till after the Fall.9 Nevertheless, most clergy agreed that one consequence of the Fall was that the sexual act was to be understood as involving shame. Nakedness was to be hidden. Pain was to attend woman’s bringing forth of children as a punishment for her transgression. According to the Protestant clergy, sexual relations played an important part in a happy, chaste marriage. Ideally, ‘due benevolence’, as sexual relations were termed, was a ‘debt’ that the couple owed to each other.10 Those who could marry, according to William Perkins, were those capable of reproducing: ‘The male is of a superior sexe, fit for procreation. The female is woman of an inferiore sexe, fit to conceive and bear children’.11 Sexuality within marriage was good. Thus, although Stone argues that all nonprocreative marital sex was attacked in the early modern period, the evidence does not support his contention.12 Marital sex was not just allowable, it was good in itself. This ‘duty’, as Gouge called marital sexual intercourse, was one that husbands owed to wives who were barren, and to those who had passed the menopause. The husband and wife who ‘mutually delight each in other’, ‘yielding that due benevolence one to another which is warranted and sanctified by Gods word’, would be protected from adultery.13 Yet beyond the language of duties or debts that the couple owed to each other, Gouge depicted marital sexuality as a pleasure; husbands who did not delight in their wives were ‘stock-like’. Gouge urged his readers to ‘Read the Song of Songs’ where they would find in the affection of Christ for his spouse their own model for marital love.14 Other divines cited the example of Isaac sporting with his wife Rebekah in private as showing God’s approval of marital sexual pleasure.15 As the physician Lemnius pointed out, good sex made for domestic harmony.16 Good sexual relations were thus a central part of married life. Theological discourse about sexuality was influenced by the medical discourse. Physicians’ knowledge was found in an international medical literature written in Latin. Initially circulated in manuscripts, medical knowledge was increasingly published in books from the sixteenth century onwards. Although the physicians jealously guarded their knowledge and

SEXUAL KNOWLEDGE IN ENGLAND, 1500–1750

attempted to control access to it, print offered an opportunity to popularize and to reach a wider audience. Some medical works were translated into English so that the literate could understand how to preserve their health. Sexuality and health were linked. Medical theorists believed that men and women needed sexual activity. Seed in both men and women was part of a distillation of food and blood, a most precious bodily fluid. Seed accumulated in bodies from the time of adolescence, and the healthy body required either a discharge or a reduction in the amount produced. Thus marriage, the only site of lawful sexual activity, was necessary for the health of both sexes. If marriage were not possible, or one of the partners was absent, ill, or otherwise unavailable, the physicians recommended a sober diet and vigorous exercise. Those who over-ate were thought to be full of the spirit of fornication.17 William Stout, a Lancaster shopkeeper, noted in his autobiography, that illicit sexuality was ‘mostly the effect or consequence of excessive eating and drinking of both men and woman [sic], and want of lawfull exercise.’18 Sex was thus constructed as something to be released or controlled, a model that Martha Vicinus has characterized as an ‘energycontrol (or hydraulic) model’.19 Medical writers regarded the male body as the norm, superior to the female. Men were thought to be hotter, therefore they concocted more seed. As one physician, Nathaniel Highmore explained in 1651, males have ‘more spirtualiz’d & subtile seeds’ than females.20 Since men produced more seed their sexual urges were more powerful. From this, one lawyer extrapolated the conclusion that men were by nature less able to be chaste.21 Nevertheless, medical writers recognized that women were sexual beings, and they recommended sexual activity as a remedy for certain female diseases, which they defined variously as ‘mother fits’, ‘utero strangulato’ and greensickness.22 Lust, said one writer, was inevitable in the young, therefore marry them off.23 Early modern physicians needed knowledge about reproduction – ‘generation’ as they termed it – in order to assist men and women to a healthy reproductive life. During much of the sixteenth century, medical writers treated the ancient medical texts as authoritative and concentrated on expounding the ideas of Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen as the basis of knowledge about conception. By 1500, the commonly accepted view of the theories of Aristotle and Galen was that the child was formed from the active principle in the male sperm shaping the female matter of menstrual blood. However, Hippocrates’ view, that the child was formed from a mixture of the male and female seed was more popular.24 In the early seventeenth century, the physician Helkiah Crooke explained the process as the male seed,

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leaping with greater violence, mingling with the female’s. The woman snatched the man’s seed into her womb, which then shut.25 In 1634 the translation of Paré advised a husband how to time the release of his seed ‘at the very instant or moment’ that his wife perceived ‘the efflux of her seed to approach’, so that a conception could be made from ‘the concourse or meeting of the seeds’.26 Crooke did not insist that a simultaneous orgasm was necessary, but he concluded that it would hasten conception: ‘there may be conception though it bee slower, if one come a little before or after another’.27 In the later seventeenth century, physicians developed new theories of generation, which shifted the paradigm of sexual knowledge. Most physicians were influenced by theories of the pre-formation of the child in seed of either the man or the woman.28 Some writers continued to follow the old theories. In 1696 McMath still insisted that a conception occurred from the mixture of the seeds of the man and the woman, though he admitted that others regarded the woman as ‘the Field only, into which the Mans Seed is committed’.29 Some of the divines were responding to the shift in medical ideas. Dean Comber praised procreative sex for women, citing the classical view ‘that the Woman should not marry for any other end than that she may be a Mother’.30 It was much easier to argue in the eighteenth century that good women did not enjoy sex. Knowledge about sexuality was power in early modern times, and medical writers sought to control information. In the sixteenth century, much of the discourse about reproduction was in Latin, and anatomical, with questions of generation and reproduction central. Even diagrams of female anatomy in medical books were limited to male eyes only. That is, widespread anatomical knowledge was restricted. Plans to instruct midwives in anatomy by Peter Chamberlen in the 1630s and by Elizabeth Cellier in the 1680s were thwarted, the first by the midwives themselves, the second by the Royal College of Physicians.31 Furthermore, in practice, physicians were reluctant to give their patients too much knowledge. They were unwilling to advise women about ways to precipitate menstruation, lest they provided women with a means of aborting themselves.32 Nevertheless, from the early to the mid-seventeenth century, especially during the Civil Wars and Interregnum, there was a movement to popularize medical knowledge.33 Many Latin works were translated and simplified for a popular audience. Medical writers were troubled at the translation into English of Latin terms for sexual organs and for describing the process of reproduction. Translators feared that the English words were so associated with a variety of contexts, many of which were bawdy, that they would be

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accused of pandering to obscenity. Authors and publishers tried to assure readers, especially female readers, that their modesty was not threatened: ‘There is nothing here that may be found harsh in the most Chastest Ear’.34 Physicians and theologians offered sexual advice about how to conceive healthy children.35 Until the end of the seventeenth century, most writers insisted that sexual pleasure was necessary for conception. Culpeper advised that a woman could fail to conceive because there was ‘very little or no pleasure in the act of copulation’.36 If a wife hated her husband, her womb would not open.37 But women’s reports raised some doubts about the theory. Crooke admitted that while undoubtedly the man had to enjoy the encounter, women apparently did not: ‘you shall heare many say that they haue no sense or inkling of pleasure at all’. However, on balance, he concluded that pleasure was a necessary part of the work of generation, otherwise men would be deterred by the ‘scorn and detestation of so brutish and base a work’ and women would be deterred by their fears of childbirth.38 Early modern advice for those who could not conceive was probably what would now be termed the ‘rhythm method’ of birth control. Physicians believed that a woman was most likely to conceive a son immediately after menstruation, and consequently they advised couples to concentrate their sexual activity on those days. If a wealthy wife were barren, her doctors might order her to take the waters at the baths, and have sex afterwards. Mary of Modena, for example, thought that she had conceived when the King came to her on Tuesday 6 September 1687 when she was at the baths.39 For women and men the implications of these theories differed. There were both positive and negative consequences for women in the theory that simultaneous orgasm was necessary for conception. They could veto a marriage partner whom they found sexually unattractive. As Queen Mary told a delegation beseeching her to marry, ‘if she were married against her will she would not live three months, and would have no children’. One of Cecil’s correspondents used similar arguments of Queen Elizabeth’s marriage: she should marry according to her affections, ‘whych shalbe the nerest wayes with the helpe of God to bryng us a blessed prynce’.40 The negative implications were seen in legal attitudes to rape. If a rape were followed by pregnancy, the law deemed it no rape because the woman had, by definition, enjoyed the encounter.41 By the eighteenth century, however, the change in medical theories of conception was reflected in the justices’ handbooks; a charge of rape was allowed even if a woman were pregnant.42 Another consequence of the theory that sex was necessary for health was that celibacy was virtually impossible, thus making sin inevitable. Although there was always a strong school of thought which argued that

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sexual impulses could be reduced, abated and controlled, others thought that the power of sexuality was irresistible. Seminal secretion could not be stopped: ‘Sleeping or Waking, the Spermaticks will do their Office’.43 Much of the anti-Catholic propaganda of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries focused on the inevitability of lust and illicit sexuality among monastic communities.44 Protestants argued that the single state was unnatural. Although ideally men should not visit brothels, in practice the use of prostitutes by unmarried men was condoned. Reforming efforts were fruitless.45 There was always an argument that had circulated since ancient times, that only the existence of prostitution allowed other women to walk the streets in safety.46 Physicians deemed excessive sex an evil, a danger to health.47 Men throughout the early modern period expressed their anxiety about the deleterious effects of excessive sexual activity. Shakespeare castigated ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’.48 Culpeper said that excessive sexual activity exhausted the spirits and dulled the mind, and Brooke said that it could lead to dulling and decay of sight.49 Wilfully shedding sperm would harm a man ‘more then if he should bleed fortie times so much’.50 Popular superstition suggested that each act of sex shortened a man’s life by a day. A woman who indulged excessively would become unable to conceive because her womb would be too moist and slippery, which, it was widely believed, was the reason why prostitutes bore few children.51 Physicians and theologians also encouraged sexual restraint for eugenic purposes. Too much sex was believed to weaken the seed and stunt the child’s growth. In 1633 Hart discussed the dangers of excess, citing with approval the doctrines of the Elizabethan theologian, Thomas Cartwright.52 The dangerous effects of men’s over-indulgence in sexual activity both for the individual and the offspring were summed up by Gerrard Winstanley in the 1650s. Winstanley was radical in his economic ideas, but conventional in sexual matters. He censured the Ranters for their ‘excesse of Feminine society’ which ‘hinders the pure and naturall Generation of man, and spills the seed in vaine, and instead of a healthfull growth of mankind it produces weaknesse and much infirmnesse, through immoderate heat’. The Ranters’ sexual indulgence meant that either the mother suffered excessively during pregnancy, or afterwards from the child’s diseases. No child could live long, because it was ‘a foole, or else a sickly weakly thing’.53 The belief that immoderate sexual activity jeopardized people’s progeny was constant during the early modern period. In the early eighteenth century, Defoe censured parents who weakened and diseased their progeny by excessive sexual activity.54 Writers continued to argue that too much sex made people languid,

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and some claimed that it could engender gout or even lead to venereal disease itself.55 Theologians also attempted to regulate marital sexuality. Perkins regarded excessive sex even within marriage as no better than adultery.56 Gouge taught that just as a man might surfeit at table, ‘so may he play the adulterer with his own wife’.57 Of course the perceptions of men and women about the amount of sex they deemed ‘excessive’ might differ. Divines and medical practitioners therefore endeavoured to suggest limits. The most usual advice was weekly sex, with one week’s abstinence during the woman’s menstruation. Daniel Rogers discussed what the ancients had allowed, and concluded that those with Christian liberty ought not to exceed the pagan prescription.58 Nollius agreed that three times a month was best, as Solon had said.59 Sexual activity was to be restricted at certain times. The Bible prohibited sex during menstruation, as divines explained to their congregations.60 Gouge advised husbands not to ‘require this duty in that time’ because ‘such polluted copulation’ would produce ‘a leprous and loathsome generation’. Besides, it was expressly forbidden in Leviticus, under threat of capital punishment.61 There was less agreement about sexual activity during pregnancy. Harris argued that beasts did not copulate with the pregnant females, and therefore men ought not to copulate with their pregnant wives.62 Defoe too censured sex during pregnancy as ‘a pollution in Nature’, and rejected the popular idea that further sexual activity was necessary to finish the work of conception.63 Divines and physicians also thought that husbands should abstain from sex with their breast-feeding wives, since sex spoilt a woman’s milk and led to further conceptions.64 Undoubtedly this medical theory had the effect of promoting the use of wet-nurses in families where their hire could be afforded. The widespread belief that the effects of sex on both pregnancy and lactation were harmful created a competition between a husband and his child for access to a woman’s body. Finally, in cases where one of the parties was ill, the clergy did believe that the body’s desires should be resisted: ‘the body must bee beaten downe,’ declared Gouge, ‘and earnest prayer made for the gift of continency’.65 Clerical and medical discourse informed the laws that defined several kinds of sexual activity as illicit in early modern England. Pre-marital fornication was punished by the church courts. Mothers who bore children outside marriage were punished by the secular courts. The common law punished adultery by a married woman by depriving her of her dower or jointure. The 1650 Act that brought in the death penalty for adultery defined the crime as one that married women only could commit. Married men committed the crime of fornication.66

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A range of sexual offences was punishable in early modern England. Prostitution was generally understood as an evil, and the women convicted were punished at Bridewell. Despite the sporadic onslaughts by the London civic authorities, pimps, brothel-keepers and clients were less harshly dealt with.67 Some sexual offences, including bestiality and sodomy, were felonies that stipulated the death penalty on conviction. Attitudes to sodomy in early modern society are unclear. Although some historians have interpreted the case of the Earl of Castlehaven as indicating an abhorrence of sodomy, Cynthia Herrup has argued that no such uniform attitude prevailed.68 Lesbian sexual activity was not legally an offence. Lyndal Roper suggests that men found it difficult to think seriously of any sexual act that did not involve penetration, and thus they found it difficult to imagine what sexual activity between women could be, unless the women had recourse to manual objects.69 Other sexual activities were deemed undesirable but not criminal. Masturbation was less discussed as a sin in the early modern period than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In certain circumstances, physicians even recommended masturbation. Medical treatises indicated that the accumulation of seed could cause illness, and advised methods for relief. Physicians or midwives could masturbate their female patients to release the troublesome seed.70 Medical knowledge conformed to religious teaching, which defined deformed births as a punishment for sins. A ‘monster’ was born when parents engaged in excessive or illicit sexual practices.71 Various defects were blamed on the mother’s imagination, or frights she had had.72 Abortive foetuses, known as ‘moles’, were said to be caused by a fault in the woman’s seed.73 The 1634 translation of Paré reported that some thought ‘moles’ were from a mixture of the woman’s seed and menstrual blood without male seed, but Paré pointed out that Galen and Avicenna denied this.74 At the end of the century, McMath explained that moles were fleshy tumours that could be caused by the congress of wanton lustful girls with old men. If an older man married a young wife, the greater quantity of seed produced by the lustier younger woman would overwhelm his seed in the womb and, instead of a healthy child, the woman would produce a ‘mole’.75 All this theological and medical discourse established a sexual knowledge which was part of the means by which women were defined, and relations between the sexes regulated. Axiomatic to medical theory was that women were weaker. Man was the measure of all things, so a woman’s body was explained by the male model. In the sixteenth century, her ovaries were termed the ‘female testes’ or testicles, and her reproductive organs were

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described as ‘no other than those of a man reversed, or turned inward’.76 Belief in the primacy of the male over the female informed explanations of reproduction. The male foetus was perfect earlier than the female, received a soul sooner, and was born sooner.77 As preachers explained, the Scriptures showed that the godly desired sons; medical discourse offered instructions on how a couple might produce a boy.78 Medical discussion of various distinctive female bodily processes – menstruation, parturition and lactation – made the woman’s body seem unstable and endlessly changing. Her menstrual cycle was linked with phases of the moon. Such ideas of physiological instability thus reinforced in turn the idea of the female person as unstable and changeable, at the mercy of the moon. Blood, seed and milk could all cause problems for a woman’s health. Thus medical discourse defined marriage as the ideal stage of female life. In theory, a woman who had sexual conjunction with her husband enjoyed better health than at any other stage of her life.79 The physiological state of the virgin and the widow were both problematical, in slightly different ways. Both suffered from disorders associated with the accumulation of seeds, which were variously interpreted as causing mother fits, suffocation of the womb, and greensickness. The widow was in greater danger because she had been exposed to sexual activity. Her imagination could stimulate unhealthy desire: ‘A widow must restrain her memory and her fancy’, ordered Jeremy Taylor in his rules for widows.80 Thus medical accounts of female physiology as unruly helped to justify female subordination.

Popular knowledge about sexuality While medical and theological writers attempted to define medical knowledge, women and men had their own understandings, derived from observation and experience as well as from their reading or hearing of professionals’ views. Popular knowledge about sexuality was based on a variety of sources, depending on sex, age and level of literacy. Here I will argue that there were indeed separate male and female varieties of sexual knowledge, with some overlap between them. The sources for a study of popular beliefs are limited and difficult. Although some speech about sexual matters was reported in the courts, several censoring processes were at work. Women were usually careful about their speech in mixed company. Fewer women were literate, so fewer of their own words survive. Furthermore, what people said and what they did may have differed. Historians are well aware that the relationship of advice to practice is problematic; so, too, is that of words to deeds.

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Although the educated male elite, a professional group, had established a discourse about sexuality, they did not have a monopoly on sexual knowledge. Even educated men relied at times upon female knowledge about sexual matters. The lawyers and judges in the civil and church courts made use of medical theories about sexuality for determining points relating to paternity, birth and inheritance rights, and as an educated male elite, they had access to the medical texts. But sometimes the information they sought was not provided by books. In cases of annulment of marriage on the grounds of non-consummation, for example, the courts needed to determine whether or not the woman concerned was still a virgin. In such a case, the court turned to an alternative source of knowledge, women, whose knowledge was based on observation and experience. Similarly, if a female offender sought to escape the death penalty on the grounds of pregnancy, then a jury of matrons was called to adjudicate.81 People needed and sought sexual knowledge for the conduct of their daily lives, but men’s and women’s purposes in seeking sexual knowledge may have differed. For women, knowledge about sexuality was generally associated with reproduction. According to the medical theories current, women had reason to believe that any pleasurable heterosexual genital contact could lead to pregnancy. Their attitudes varied as they feared or desired a child. Outside marriage, a pregnant woman faced social penalties. Consequently, for the unmarried woman, or for the wife whose husband was absent, or the mother who had too many children, knowledge about sexuality was necessary to prevent pregnancy. Married men sought healthy children. When men come to reason, claimed one popular medical treatise of 1736, ‘they consider that there is no way of becoming immortal in this World, or at least of perpetuating themselves to the End of Time, but by being renewed in their Children’.82 Depending upon their economic circumstances, however, the number of children may have been a burden. Some fathers may have sought to limit their family size while continuing their sexual activities. While both married women and men may have sought to use their knowledge of sexuality to restrict their family size, the interest of the unmarried man was often different. Ideally unmarried men were supposed to sublimate their sexuality by hard work and a spare diet. In practice, they may have been interested in sexual practices that would gratify their desires without causing them trouble. They feared venereal diseases. Nor did they wish to impregnate their lovers. They might be forced to marry them or face prosecution for maintenance payments in a bastardy case. The populace at large derived its knowledge from a wide and varied range of sources. Although female literacy rates were lower than those of males,

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Slack suggests that by the year 1600 books were probably accessible to those who wanted them.83 The increasing numbers of titles a century later shows that there was a lay audience for works providing information about sexuality and reproduction. Moreover, authors increasingly wrote specialized treatises. Authors of vernacular books may have had both a male and a female readership. Some medical practitioners and popularizers wrote specifically for a female audience. In the 1630s, one physician quoted Hippocrates’ view that women should be instructed in knowledge about conception: ‘Ignorance makes women become murderers to the fruit of their owne bodies’.84 The preface to the translation of The Expert Midwife stated that midwives needed knowledge in order to help other women.85 In the early eighteenth century, The Rational Account went through many editions. The preface to the 1736 edition promised that by reading, women might remedy their own disorders,86 but the 1739 edition declared that women had slender knowledge of their own infirmities.87 In the late eighteenth century, John Leake published instructions for those women who were too far away from medical assistance or who could not afford it. He undertook not to confuse women with theories.88 Some women writers directed their work to a female audience. Jane Sharp, in addressing her book to her ‘Sisters’, the midwives of England, tried to restrict her work to her own sex. She explained the process of generation so that women could understand how healthy babies could be conceived, nurtured in the womb, and reared through infancy and childhood.89 Male writers, when addressing women, were conscious of the need to protect female modesty. McMath stated in his preface that he had omitted any account of the parts for generation, ‘lest it might seem execrable to the more chaste and shamefast, through Bawdiness and Impurity of Words.’90 Both male and female authors, who expected women to be among their readers, deliberately chose sober titles for their books. They provided information about sexuality incidentally in the context of better health or of safer and healthier reproduction. Other books about sexuality were directed to a male audience. Authors of Latin works addressed an educated, male audience, who thus had access to specialized information and a technical vocabulary. Some works that offered to reveal ‘secrets’ were directed to a wider audience. These books sold well in the sixteenth century, continued to sell in the seventeenth century, and flooded off the press in the eighteenth century.91 Works purporting to be by Aristotle, such as Aristotle’s Masterpiece, which contained ‘secrets of generation’ continued to find an audience into the twentieth century.92 Literature for male eyes was signalled by titles such as Rare Verities: The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked.93 Some authors aimed their work at the young and

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inexperienced, and under the guise of offering instruction, provided titillation.94 Some of these publications could have reached a female audience. Social level as well as gender affected access to information. Educated men gained knowledge not just from Latin medical works but also from the erotic writings of classical literature.95 Poorer men might be literate, but were restricted to works in English. All men and women had access to ballads and an oral culture, but the cultures of men and women were somewhat different. Women shared knowledge across social levels more than men did. A queen and a non-aristocratic midwife might discuss information.96 While everyone could hear whatever knowledge the clergy had to offer about sexual matters, only the wealthy could consult physicians. Women relied more than men did on an oral culture about sexual knowledge. Attending each other’s lyings-in, midwives and women of different social status exchanged information about sexuality and reproduction. Needless to say, women rarely talked about sexual matters before a mixed audience, and consequently their views are under-represented in the written sources. The role of oral culture in transmitting knowledge is uncertain, but it is likely that as historians work further in the church court records, this subject will be illuminated. There was a change in the mode of transmission of sexual knowledge over the period 1500 to 1750. In 1500, sexual knowledge, like all knowledge, was more likely to be transmitted orally; by 1650, there was a range of books. By 1700, women authors were contributing to the growing body of literature about women’s bodies. In addition to Jane Sharp, women almanack writers such as Sarah Jinner and Mary Holden included useful information about sexual matters.97 Print also gave a wider circulation to other sources of information. Stories, collections of jests, ballads and advertisements provided informal sources of sexual information and reached a wider audience than advice books. For example, the ballad A Remedy for the Greensickness joked about sex as a cure for this common female ailment: A Handsom buxom Lass lay panting in her bed She lookt as green as grass and mournfully she said Except I have some lusty lad to ease me of my pain I cannot live I sigh and grieve My life I now disdain.98

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Popular sayings reflected the same idea: ‘Marry your daughters betimes lest they marry themselves’ was a popular saw. Thus, although print was increasingly significant in the transmission of sexual knowledge to the populace at large, oral culture remained an important source of knowledge. Despite all the agonizing of medical writers about the effects of translating discussion of reproduction from Latin into English, much sexual information was exchanged by word of mouth. Talk was important in communicating sexual knowledge, especially among women, but here the sources are most difficult and elusive. Personal experience and observation clearly provided many people with their sexual knowledge. Observation of animal behaviour may have been another, if slightly misleading, source of information. (The distinctive relationship in the human female between ovulation and menstruation was not understood until the twentieth century.) Talk about sexual matters also took place between men and women outside marriage. From the correspondence between Dr William Denton and his nephew Sir Ralph Verney it is clear that Denton had talked with one of his female servants about sending Sir Ralph a female servant who ‘will match your cock’.99 Yet I would argue that a woman was liable to risk her modesty by engaging in such talk. An important element of female socialization was the inculcation of a concept of modesty in women. The higher the social level, the more emphasis was placed upon proper bodily comportment and speech as the marks of a modest woman. In part, modesty meant not speaking about certain subjects before men, or, if speech were necessary, then she might employ circumlocutions. Modesty also involved women guarding most areas of their bodies from male eyes. Female authors of midwifery treatises justified publication in terms of assisting women in preserving their modesty. For example, in 1737 Sarah Stone claimed that the modesty of ‘our sex’ would be lost unless women midwives mastered the difficulties of their work.100 In early modern England, there was a women’s culture of shared knowledge about the distinctively female bodily functions. The main focus was the childbirth scene, a site at which a range of information about bodily matters was exchanged. While this female oral culture played an important part in providing sexual knowledge to women, it was not accessible to young unmarried women, who did not attend childbirths. Nor was it impervious to male influence. Midwives had an important role in educating other women. Their knowledge was derived from a variety of sources. Some were educated enough to make use of books. Clearly in writing for midwives, authors such as Nicholas Culpeper and Jane Sharp thought that they had an audience.

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Experience was another teacher. The testimonials for midwives’ licences usually refer to many years’ experience and good success in practice.101 In addition, midwives learned from men. Edward Poeton prepared a manuscript entitled The Midwiues Deputy for the use of his wife, a sworn midwife. He claimed that his material was collected from the works of Raynald, Guillemeau and Rueff, and explained in simple terms: ‘I have striven . . . to use the most ordinary words and the playnest phrases’.102 Furthermore, in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, several of the London women who served as medical practitioners for female disorders claimed that they had acquired their knowledge from their fathers or husbands. In some cases these men were physicians.103 Thus, although there was a separate female culture concerned with sexuality, it was not totally isolated from the male culture. We know that women did talk with men about conception. A group of women at a christening merrily advised Samuel Pepys about how to beget a child: they gave him ten points of advice, stressing that the foot of the bed should be higher than the head.104 The boundaries for talk about sexual matters were drawn so that no modest unmarried woman discussed sexual matters in mixed company, and even married women were guarded about what they said before men in public. Thus the evidence from the court records was subject to a double censoring process: officials wrote down what they elicited in response to their questions, and women were careful what they said before the male court officials. Some women pleaded modesty for their refusal to talk: Ann Barnes complained that she was thrown to the ground by Nicholas Ames, ‘and modesty does inforce me to forbeare the relacon of his unrulye behaviour’.105 Yet despite modesty and self-censorship, the court records do show that among themselves, some women did talk about sexual matters. However, so far the evidence from the church courts is insufficient to substantiate the fears of men that women gossiped about male sexual prowess. Female gossip about male sexuality could affect a man’s reputation in early modern England. The Norwich Consistory Court heard how Ethelreda Baxter told her friends that William Noble, a married man, a maltster and a churchwarden, had solicited her as she was coming to her house. Furthermore, he ‘did pull out his yard and put it into her hand’, promising her that should she comply, she should want neither money nor malt nor anything. He boasted that ‘his pintle was better than her husbands’.106 These and other stories of sexual harassment were common knowledge among the witnesses against Noble. Ultimately the gossip spread; a few men heard about Noble putting his penis on a plank of a stile, and spilling his seed

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on the ground. Noble and his supporters counter-attacked with general allegations about the sexual reputation of the women.107 Female gossip was equally explicit in 1707–9 among the women of a London Baptist congregation. There women alleged that their pastor, David Crosby, frequented brothels, tongue-kissed servant maids, and exposed himself. Such sexual talk was dangerous to women when it moved outside the all-female group. The congregation, when the minister was threatened, counter-attacked.108 Whereas women needed to be explicit in their allegations about male sexual misconduct, men could damage women’s social reputations by the generalized epithet of ‘whore’.109 Yet women’s gossip had subversive power: their talk undermined male ideas of superiority. Women’s silences should be considered, as well as their talk. What is most puzzling is women’s silence about sexuality in their diaries and letters. Although some female diarists did note that they thought they were pregnant, there are very few direct references to sexuality in women’s diaries. Sarah Cowper, who recorded her distaste for sexual activity, seems a rare exception.110 This contrasts with male diarists, who did mention sexual activity, albeit in shorthand and or in foreign languages.111 Did marital loyalty or female modesty constrain most women? The silence of women diarists is in marked contrast with a range of popular literature about the merry meetings of gossips where fictional female characters were quite explicit about all kinds of sexual matters.112 Books may have given men access to wider sources of information about sexuality than women had, but manuals about health and theologians’ observations about illicit sexuality may have made men anxious about their sexuality. Evidence from popular literature reveals a wide range of male fears of women. Men worried lest women’s powerful desires should prove irresistible, for they knew that the female seed had a ‘greedy desire’ for the male seed.113 They feared that women would milk them of their seed.114 Men knew of recipes for love philtres that would bewitch them, and were anxious about the food that women served them.115 They suspected that women jested about male sexual prowess.116 Some men, as well as most women, were modest and embarassed in discussing certain sexual matters both in public and in private. The almanack writer Sarah Jinner claimed that men and women suffered needlessly ‘by their Modesty’, because they were too shy to acquaint physicians with their symptoms.117 William Whatley, a clergyman, realized that women were displeased at his public condemnation of sexual activity during the wife’s menstruation. He protested that it could not be immodest for him to mention the matter, since the Holy Ghost had done so.118 James II invited his Privy

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Council to be present at his wife’s lying-in in 1688. He was able to explain to one councillor what was happening, saying ‘you are a married man, and so may know these Matters’.119 Samuel Jeake disguised his diary notations about sexual relations with his wife by writing in shorthand.120 Samuel Pepys wrote his entire diary in shorthand, but when he described his sexual activities, he adopted the further disguise of a mixture of European languages.121 To write of a homosexual act discomforted one gentleman, who referred to ‘a most horrid and prodigious misdemeanour committed in our Towne this last weeke: there was (it seemeth) such obscenity and filthinesse acted publikely in the face of the Sun, that I am ashamed to mention it.’ What he declared so abominable was ‘the Sodomiticall kind of conunjction in the two men’.122 Sometimes the language used for sexual activity suggests that men saw sex less as a pleasure than a need. Common to the law courts was the expression, he had ‘the use’ of her body.123 The language for the sexual act was of evacuation, expenditure, and the satisfaction of an itch. Some of the witnesses and recording clerks were explicit in discussing sexual matters, speaking of a man ‘handling his prick’, or of another coming to bed with ‘nothing standing but his ears’.124 ‘Being naughty’ was a common term for sexual intercourse in Chester diocese, and other church court records use the term ‘to be naught’ with someone.125 In discussion of sexual matters, a man might use an animal analogy, suggesting that animal breeding was another source of sexual knowledge. Alice Slaughter reported her lover’s alleged response to her claim that she was with child: ‘if I met with her I will give her a kick or two & make her Cast her Calfe’.126 A discussion of the means of family limitation illustrates the range of popular knowledge about an important aspect of sexual activity. Some historians have claimed that there was no family planning before the eighteenth century because people lacked both the desire and the means.127 Certainly, there were arguments against family planning. There was a framework of God’s providence: the Lord, not the individual, decided how many children would be born. Those who desired no children, wrote Hilder in 1653, ‘have a diabolical spirit, they would counter God . . . if possible’. God, he said, ‘never makes mouths but he provides meat’.128 In 1663 John Oliver professed that he was incapable of understanding how mothers of large families could ignore the mercy of God, and be grieved if they found themselves with child.129 But undoubtedly, people were attempting contraception.130 Evidence suggests that men and women in early modern England sought to control their fertility for a variety of reasons by a variety of means. They knew that sexual abstinence prevented conception. (Cynics said that

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fear of the pox or of childbirth kept many chaste.)131 Apart from abstinence, the most widely known method of contraception was probably coitus interruptus. Stone suggests that while coitus interruptus, assisted by oral, manual and anal sex, could have been a technique thought up by each generation, such practices were more likely to have been culturally transmitted.132 Coitus interruptus, known as onanism in the early modern period, may have been publicized by the clergy who preached against it: you who are married, warned Thomas Hilder, should mind the sin and punishment ‘of a bird of your own feather, (viz) Onan, Gen. 38. 9, 10.’133 Both abstinence and withdrawal offered the possibility of success, although contemporaries believed that they were morally dubious. Likewise, as a method of preventing birth, abortion was successful. It was not a crime before the quickening of the child, and was under female control. McLaren suggests that women were undeterred by theological censures. There may have been a separate female sexual culture that exchanged such knowledge.134 Infanticide, however, was illegal and was punishable by death. By the law of 1624, any unmarried woman who could not prove that her baby was born dead was presumed guilty of its murder.135 Popular seventeenthcentury medical works publicized a wide variety of contraceptives and abortifacients, and medicines were offered for sale in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century London. Stone discounts the efficacy of such remedies, but the advertisements indicate that there was a thriving business in contraceptives and abortifacients in London.136 In practice, women’s knowledge must have been less effective than people believed, otherwise there would not have been so many unwanted pregnancies outside marriage.137 But women may have rejected the option of abortion, fearing the danger to their bodies, or exercising moral scruples. During the early modern period, there was a debate about the respective merits of medical ‘knowledge’ and popular, particularly female, ‘knowledge’. Medical writers increasingly criticized and dismissed women’s knowledge during this period. Cotta warned his readers against heeding women’s advice seeing ‘their authority in learned knowledge cannot be authenticall’.138 Nevertheless, some men and women were sceptical about physicians’ knowledge. When Deborah Brackley, a servant in Exeter, told her lover that she was pregnant, ‘hee told her she could not be with Childe & though the docters tould her soe yet they were fooles’.139 At the popular level, women continued to seek and heed the advice of midwives and other women. Although female talk may not have been knowledge according to the physicians, who were increasingly scornful of custom and oral traditions, the information that women exchanged may have helped to meet their needs.

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That is, I would argue against a medical monopoly of knowledge. For the populace at large, medical theories were too complicated to be readily useful. People selected elements that appealed. They were not restricted to the ideas of the university trained, but could seek advice from a range of practitioners. Who was to say which of many remedies had helped?140 Besides, there was a disjunction between medical theories and observations that encouraged scepticism. Women did conceive who reported no sexual pleasure at all. Knowledge about sexuality gave its possessors some limited power in early modern England. Some Latin educated physicians withheld training about anatomy from women. Other physicians sought to inform the general public. Ideas about sexuality, conception and reproduction generally created a value system that enhanced male superiority. Men feared women’s sexuality, and constructed a world in which their own sexual needs were prioritized. Women, however, continued to share a female culture in which knowledge about sexuality and reproduction was based on experience and observation.

Notes and references 1 Mary Ann Warren, ‘The social construction of sexuality’ in Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns (eds), Australian Women. New Feminist Perspectives (Melbourne, 1986), p. 143. 2 Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671), pp. 3–4. 3 Jean-Lousis Flandrin, Families in Former Times. Kinship, Household and Sexuality (1976; trans. Richard Southern, Cambridge, 1979); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977). 4 Ibid., p. 483. 5 Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England. Modes of Reproduction 1300 –1840 (Oxford, 1986); Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London, 1984). 6 Geoffrey Robert Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives (New Brunswick, 1979); John Addy, Sin and Society in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1989); Martin Ingram, The Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987); Paul Hair, Before the Bawdy Court (New York, 1972). A valuable and informative study of reproduction is Angus McLaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1984). 7 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction (New York, 1978).

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8 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 372; Ralph Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520–1570 (Oxford, 1979); Ronald A. Marchant, The Church under the Law: Justice, Administration and Discipline in the Diocese of York, 1560–1641 (Cambridge, 1969). 9 William Gouge, The Workes of William Gouge . . . Domesticall Duties (London, 1627), p. 116. 10 William Whatley, A Bride Bush: or, A Direction for Married Persons (London, 1619), p. 14. 11 William Perkins, Christian Oeconomie (London, 1609), p. 24. 12 Stone, Family, pp. 415–7. 13 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, pp. 106, 130–1. 14 Ibid., pp. 203–9. Gouge censured both those who were unwilling to engage in marital sex as well as those who engaged in too much; ibid., pp. 130–1. 15 John Dodd, An Exposition of the Last Chapter of Proverbs (London, 1614), p. 23. 16 Levinus Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature (London, 1658), p. 18. 17 Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven (London, 1601), p. 72. 18 J. D. Marshall (ed.), The Autobiography of William Stout of Lancaster, 1665–1752 (Manchester, 1967), p. 104. 19 Martha Vicinus, ‘Sexuality and power’, Feminist Studies, 8 (1982), p. 136. 20 Nathaniel Highmore, The History of Generation (London, 1651). 21 George Mackenzie, The Laws and Customes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1678), p. 185. 22 Robert Bayfield, Enchiridion Medicum (London, [25 August] 1651), p. 184. 23 Richard Capel, Tentations: their Nature, Danger, Cure (London, 1633), p. 374. 24 Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 36–7; McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, pp. 16–17. 25 Helkiah Crooke, Microcosmographia (London, [1631]), p. 262. 26 Ambroise Paré, Works (London, 1634), p. 889. 27 Crooke, Microcosmographia, p. 295. 28 McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, pp. 22–5. 29 James McMath, Expert Mid-wife (Edinburgh, 1694), p. 5. 30 Thomas Comber, A Companion to the Temple, vol. iv. (London, 1684), p. 14 . 31 Jean Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men. A History of Inter-Professional Rivalries and Women’s Rights (New York, 1977), pp. 13–14, 18–19. 32 Jean Astruc, A Treatise on all the Diseases Incident to Women (London, 1743), p. 74. 33 Charles Webster, The Great Instauration. Science, Medicine and Reform 1626 –1660 (London, 1975), pp. 264–73.

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34 Levinus Lemnius, A Discourse Touching Generation (London, 1667), sig. A3v.–4. 35 Pierre Charron, Of Wisdome (London, 1606), p. 459. 36 Nicholas Culpeper, The Compleat Midwives Practice (London, 1658), p. 67. 37 Lazarus Riverius, The Practice of Physick (London, 1655), p. 503. 38 Crooke, Microcosmographia, 287. 39 The Declaration . . . Concerning the Birth of the Prince of Wales (London, [1688]), p. 34. The evidence is unclear about the relationship between these events and her menstruation. Mary was subsequently uncertain about which of two encounters had led to her conception. 40 Royall Tyler (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, (13 vols., London 1862–1945), vol. xi, p. 364, Renard to Emperor, 17 November 1553; PRO, SP 63/2, fos. 82–3, Earl of Sussex to Cecil, 1560. I owe this latter reference to the kindness of Susan Doran. 41 Michael Dalton, Country Justice (London, 1655), p. 351 (cap. 107); (1666), pp. 328–9. 42 William Hawkins, A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown (2 vols., London, 1716), vol. i, p. 108, questions Dalton; Matthew Hale, Historia Placitorum Coronae (2 vols., London, 1736), vol. ii, p. 630; Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace, vol. I (London, 1755), pp. 314–5. 43 [Bernard de Mandeville], A Modest Defence of the Publick Stews (London, 1725), p. 17. 44 Thomas Robinson, The Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisborn (London, 1622). 45 Lyndal Roper, ‘Discipline and respectability: prostitution and the reformation in Augsburg’, History Workshop Journal, 19 (1985), pp. 3–28. 46 Keith Thomas, ‘The double standard’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xx (1959), pp. 197–8. 47 Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie (London, 1589), p. 225. 48 William Shakespeare, Sonnet 129. 49 Nicholas Culpeper, Medicaments for the Poor (London, 1656), p. 41; H. Brooke, A Conservatory of Health (London, 1650), pp. 184–7. 50 William Vaughan, Natural and Artificial Directions for Health (London, 1600), p. 47. 51 Lemnius, Secret Miracles, p. 31; Levinus Lemnius, A Discourse Touching Generation (London, 1667), p. 128; Richard B[unworth], The Doctresse (London, 1656), p. 50. 52 James Hart, Klinikh: or, the Diet of the Diseased (London, 1633), p. 328; John Harris, The Divine Physician (London, 1676), p. 37. 53 Gerrard Winstanley, A Vindication, in George H. Sabine (ed.), The Works of Gerrard Winstanley (Ithaca N.Y., 1941), pp. 400–1.

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54 [Daniel Defoe], Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom (London, 1727), pp. 48, 62. 55 Levinus Lemnius, The Touchstone of Complexions (London, 1576), fo. 105; [John Armstrong], The Oeconomy of Love (London, 1744), p. 72; [Defoe], Conjugal Lewdness, p. 91. 56 Perkins, Christian Oeconomie, p. 113. 57 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, (London, 1626), p. 303. 58 D[aniel] R[ogers], Matrimoniall Honour (London, 1642), pp. 177–8. 59 Heinrich Nollius, Hermetical Physick (London, 1655), pp. 27–8. 60 See Chapter 1, pp. 26–7. 61 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 131. 62 Walker Harris, An Exact Enquiry into, and Cure of the Acute Diseases of Infants (London, 1693), pp. 13–14. 63 [Defoe], Conjugal Lewdness, pp. 302–3. 64 T. Raynalde, The Birth of Mankynde (London, 1565), fos. 102–102v; Harris, Diseases of Infants, p. 17. 65 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 131. 66 Keith Thomas, ‘The Act of 1650 reconsidered’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries. Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 261–3. 67 Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 249–54. 68 Cynthia Herrup, ‘The patriarch at home: the trial of the Earl of Castlehaven for rape and sodomy’, unpublished paper. I am grateful to Dr Herrup for allowing me to cite this paper, which is part of a larger study of law, sex and patriarchy. C.f. Caroline Bingham, ‘Seventeenth-century attitudes towards deviant sex’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1 (1971); Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982). 69 Lyndal Roper, ‘What is the history of sexuality?’, unpublished paper, ANU July 1986. I am grateful to Dr Roper for allowing me to cite this paper. 70 Paré, Works, p. 942. Most such advice was in Latin; W. Schleiner, ‘The moral dilemma about removing seed’, unpublished paper, Folger Library, 1991. I am grateful to Professor Schleiner for discussions about medical knowledge. 71 John Sadler, The Sicke Womans Private Looking Glasse (London, 1636), pp. 135–7; [ Jacob Rueff], The Expert Midwife (London, 1637), pp. 151–7. 72 Sadler, The Sicke Womans Private Looking Glasse, pp. 139–40. 73 William Drage, A Physicial Nosonomy (London, 1663), p. 336. 74 Paré, Works, p. 925.

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75 James McMath, The Expert Mid-wife (Edinburgh, 1694), pp. 44–5. 76 Thomas Vicary, A Profitable Treatise of the Anatomie of Mans Bodie (London, 1577); James Ferrand, Erotomania. Or, a Treatise . . . of Love (Oxford, 1640), p. 11. C.f. Thomas Laquer, Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), pp. 24–113, who argues that in the early modern period the differences in the male and female were of degree, not kind. 77 Lemnius, Secret Miracles, pp. 33, 302. 78 Christopher Hooke, The Child-birth or Womans Lecture (London, 1590); Thomas Chamberlaine, The Complete Midwifes Practice Enlarg’d (London, 1659), pp. 288–90. 79 See, for example, Nicholas Fontanus, The Womans Doctour (London, 1652), pp. 4–6. 80 Jeremy Taylor, ‘Rules’, in The Whole Works (12 vols., London, 1848), vol. iii, p. 62. I owe this reference to the kindness of Catherine Coleborne. 81 J. C. Oldham, ‘On pleading the belly: A history of the jury of matrons’, Criminal Justice History, vi (1985), pp. 1–64. 82 The Ladies Physical Directory (London, 1736), preface. This is probably another edition of Rational Account, but the preface differs. 83 Paul Slack, ‘Mirrors of health and treasures of poor men: the uses of vernacular medical literature’, in Charles Webster (ed.), Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), p. 240. 84 Sadler, The Sicke Womans Private Looking Glasse, p. 142. 85 [Rueff], Expert Midwife, preface. 86 The Ladies Physical Directory (1736), preface (see note 82 above). 87 The Ladies Physical Directory, 7th edn (London, 1739), preface. 88 John Leake, Medical Instructions, 5th edn (2 vols., London, 1781), vol. 1, introduction, pp. 39, 45. 89 Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671). 90 McMath, Expert Mid-wife, preface. 91 Slack, ‘Vernacular medical literature’, pp. 242, 246–7. 92 Aristotle’s Master-piece first published London, 1684. For the subsequent publishing history, see Janet Blackman, ‘Popular theories of generation: the evolution of Aristotle’s works. The study of an anachronism’, in J. Woodward and D. Richards (eds), Health Care and Popular Medicine in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1977); Roy Porter, ‘“The secrets of generation display’d”: Aristotle’s Master-piece in eighteenth-century England’, in R. P. Maccubbin (ed.), ’Tis Nature’s Fault. Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1–21.

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93 Rare Verities. The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked (London, [8 October] 1658). 94 Roger Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears (London, 1979), p. 173. 95 Ibid., p. 3. 96 For example, in 1688 Mary of Modena discussed plans and procedures for her delivery with her midwife; The Declaration . . . Concerning the Birth of the Prince of Wales, pp. 20–1. 97 Sharp, The Midwives Book; Sarah Jinner, An Almanack or Prognostication (London, 1658, 1659, 1660, 1664); Mary Holden, The Woman’s Almanack (London, 1688, 1689). 98 BL, C. 40. m. 10 (161). 99 Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Verneys of Claydon House (London, 1984), p. 72. 100 Sarah Stone, A Complete Practice of Midwifery (London, 1737), preface. 101 See, for example, London Guildhall MS 10,116/4, Licensing papers, 1665–6. 102 BL, MS Sloane 1954, Edward Poeton of Petworth, The Midwiues Deputy, dedication. 103 Patricia Crawford, ‘Printed advertisements for women medical practitioners in London, 1670–1710’, Society for the Social History of Medicine, Bulletin 35 (1984), pp. 66–70. 104 Robert Lathom and William Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (10 vols., London, 1970–83), vol. v, p. 222. 105 Norfolk RO, Ayl 347, 2 June 1661. 106 Norfolk RO, Consistory Court depositions, Dep/43, 1637–9, fos. 222v.–223. 107 Ibid., fo. 248; DEP/44, fos. 14–14v. 108 Regent’s Park College, Angus Library, MS F PCEI, Cripplegate church book, fos. 32–49. 109 Amussen found that in half the cases men brought against women to the Consistory Court in Norwich after 1660, there were specific allegations of sexual misconduct. She argues that a woman could dent a man’s sexual reputation only with details; Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988), p. 104. 110 See appendix, chapter 1, p. 38; Hertfordshire RO, Dame Sarah Cowper, Daily diary 1700–16, Panshanger MSS, D/EP/F29–35, p. 61. Special thanks to Sara Mendelson for this reference. 111 James Orchard Halliwell (ed.), The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, Camden Society, 19 (1842); Pepys, Diary; H. W. Robinson and W. Adams (ed.), The Diary of Robert Hooke, 1672–1680 (London, 1935), passim. 112 A Whole Crew of Kind Gossips (London, 1609); [Henry Neville], The Parliament of Ladies (London, 1647).

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113 Fontanus, Womans Doctour, pp. 134, 193. 114 Lemnius, Secret Miracles, p. 185. 115 Hart, Klinikh, pp. 352–3. 116 Bodl., Douce Ballads, The Scolding Wives Vindication; Edward Gosynhill, The Scholehouse of Women (London, 1541). 117 Jinner, An Almanack (1659), preface to the reader. 118 Whatley, A Bride Bush, pp. 23–4. 119 The Declaration . . . Concerning the Birth of the Prince of Wales, pp. 28–9. 120 Michael Hunter and Annabel Gregory (ed.), An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century: Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652–1699 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 25, 154, 187. 121 See, for example, Pepys, Diary, vol. ix, pp. 144, 145, 337. 122 Norfolk RO, AYL /1 /347, 4 March 1660[1]. 123 For example, OCRO, MS Oxfordshre Dioc papers c. 96, no. 13. 124 Addy, Sin and Society, p. 133. 125 Ibid., 130; Hereford & Worcester RO, Consistory Court depositons, vol. 18, fo. 374v. 126 Norfolk RO AYL 347, 24 October 1664. 127 Stone, Family, pp. 415–424. 128 Thomas H[ilder], Conjugall Counsell (London, 1653), pp. 18, 20. 129 John Oliver, A Present for Teeming Women (London, 1663), p. 17. 130 Angus McLaren, A History of Contraception From Antiquity to the Present Day (Oxford, 1990), pp. 141–177. 131 The Comforts of Whoring (London, [1694]), p. 42. 132 Stone, Family, p. 422. 133 H[ilder], Conjugall Counsell, p. 18; Onania; or, The Heinous sin of Self-Pollution (London, [1725?]). 134 McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, pp. 5–6. 135 An Act to prevent the murthering of Bastard Children, 21 Jac. I c.27. 136 Stone, Family, p. 423. 137 Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1977), p. 125. 138 John Cotta, A Short Discoverie of the . . . Dangers of Several Sorts of Ignorant . . . Practitioners of Physicke in England (London, 1612), p. 25. 139 Devon RO, QSB Box 58, no. 21. 140 C.f. Keith Hopkins, ‘Contraception in the Roman empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 8 (1965), pp. 124ff.

CHAPTER 3

The construction and experience of maternity in seventeenth-century England I

T

he continuance of human society has always depended upon woman’s ability to give birth: an obvious point, but one frequently overlooked. Without woman’s reproductive labour, society would cease to exist. Since reproduction is essential, all societies have an interest in controlling it. In no society known to us are women allowed to give birth however and whenever they choose. Because of women’s potential maternal function, society has an interest in attempting to regulate female lives: that is, a woman’s social existence is influenced by her maternal potential, irrespective of whether or not she actually gives birth. Motherhood is more than a social construct, however: it is part of woman’s unique biological functioning.1 Despite the importance of motherhood for women and for human society, it attracted comparatively little interest from historians until recently. There could be many reasons for this, not least of which may be a separation between the ‘private’ world of women and children and the ‘public’ world of men. Historians saw the lives of women and children as of little historical importance or interest, and assumed that they changed relatively little over time. Of course there was always some interest in domestic life of the past, but more from amateur historians and the reading public. However, the development of social history in the twentieth century has

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brought the mass of the population more into view. Social historians writing of the family and childhood have focused attention upon women’s roles as wives and mothers in the past. This scrutiny was not initially particularly favourable to mothers. Ariès developed a thesis about the discovery of childhood in the early modern period which has exercised a powerful influence on much subsequent writing. Childhood, he argued, was recognized as a separate life stage only in the early modern period.2 Lawrence Stone has condemned mothers along with fathers as unloving parents. ‘Children were brutally treated, even killed’, he wrote, and documented a horrendous picture of parental neglect in the early modern period.3 Only in the eighteenth century, argues Randolph Trumbach, were aristocratic women more interested in being mothers than wives.4 The most recent studies of the early modern family are more positive. Ralph Houlbrooke and Keith Wrightson present a happier picture of families in early modern times, but they do not distinguish between mothers and fathers as parents.5 Another issue recently debated is the maternal instinct: was it inherent in all women or the product of a particular historical period? ‘Good mothering’, according to Edward Shorter, ‘is an invention of modernization.’ He argued that in traditional societies mothers viewed the development and happiness of infants younger than two with indifference.6 Elisabeth Badinter also concluded that the ‘maternal instinct’ was not a natural one, but rather a later development.7 However, other scholars, such as Betty Travitsky and Brigitte Niestroj, date the focus on good mothering earlier, to the Renaissance period.8 Of more consequence than the development of social history for the history of motherhood has been the international women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which has raised questions about women’s roles in society, the boundaries between the private and the public sphere, and about the low valuation placed on many aspects of women’s lives. Feminists have drawn attention to the central importance of motherhood in their own societies, and have subjected it to various kinds of sociological and personal analysis.9 The ideology of motherhood has been discussed in terms of capitalist oppression, which makes women seem the natural rearers as well as bearers of children. The women’s movement has affected the writing of history. Writers of women’s history initially concentrated on recovering information about the lives of women in the past and making them visible. This celebratory phase of women’s history was widely criticized. Lawrence Stone, in a 1985 review, pronounced Ten Commandments for women’s history, the first of which was ‘Thou shalt not write about women except in relation to men and

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children.’10 This, he implied, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. In his terms, writing about motherhood instead of parenthood appears to be the narrowest kind of women’s history, leaving women in a vacuum. Furthermore, tracing the history of maternity could seem to be like maternity itself, something that only women do. Of fascinating interest to women, it would be of only limited interest to men. However, Stone’s position caricatures the objectives and practices of women’s history, and denies the essential claim of feminist history that women have had a separate historical experience. Just as men have a history as fathers, distinct from the history of parents, so maternity has a history separate from the history of the family.11 Over the last 20 years, women’s history has developed, both in method and in scope. To focus upon women is a political redirection: woman ceases to be the object of male study, and becomes a subject.12 This questions the primacy of men’s experiences. The history of maternity, which comprises both childbirth and female-specific child rearing, rightly focuses primarily on women, and secondarily on men’s observations and directives.13 Whether a woman mothers within or outside a family, her experiences are affected by her society. A history of maternity directs attention to the significant aspects of society that influence the circumstances in which women conceive, give birth and rear their children. Such an analysis raises questions about the relationship between gender and power: to what extent was an ideology of motherhood part of the means by which men attempted to keep women subordinate? ‘Women’s history’, the process of making women the subjects of their own story, thus challenges existing accounts of motherhood written from the perspective of men. It invites us to re-examine the past and the histories that are made of it, as part of the longer-term goal of rewriting our histories and putting the ‘private’ experience of motherhood into the ‘public’ arena. However, the history of motherhood is not just about men’s attempts to control women, for motherhood is also a unique female experience. It is the purpose of this chapter to show, first, how maternity was socially constructed in seventeenth-century English society and, second, how women themselves experienced maternity.

II The biological experiences of maternity – parturition and lactation – were socially constructed in early modern England, and child rearing was defined as likewise natural to women. The ways in which men developed an ideology of the good woman in seventeenth-century England are reasonably

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familiar, but some brief discussion is necessary here. Men had a great deal to say about motherhood, and their medical treatises, sermons, domestic advice books, and handbooks for justices are the major sources to be used for an account of the ideology of maternity.14 While the focus of their attention was on motherhood, the underlying issue was female sexuality. Divines and medical practitioners all shared the same assumptions: women were the disorderly sex, and their sexuality was to be controlled so that they bore children only within marriage, and then only to their lawful husbands.15 Medical theories were increasingly published in English during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so that people could understand the biological processes related to reproduction, or ‘generation’, as it was termed.16 Treatises originally published in Latin thus became more generally accessible. Popular medical texts were reprinted, even into the twentieth century in the case of one work, Aristotle’s Masterpiece.17 Most people derived their understanding of reproduction from a mixture of medical theories, and, during the seventeenth century, the gap between the theories of the educated élite and those of the general populace widened. An outline of the main theories shows how medical ‘knowledge’ gave a social meaning to the biological process, and distinguishes social implications of certain of these theories. The onset of menstruation showed a women to be fertile and was thought to be necessary for conception. After the menarche, she developed seed in her blood and longed for sex because she wanted to be a mother. Frustrated of her desire, she might sicken and turn green. Men were convinced that women were biologically driven to sexual intercourse: women ‘snatch the seed from them’, said Lemnius in the sixteenth century, ‘as hungry dogs do at a bone’.18 They wanted to be mothers: ‘Sterility or Barrenness hath in all Ages and Countries been esteemed a Reproach’.19 There were several theories about the process of conception. Earlier in the century one popular theory posited that a child was conceived from a mixture of both male and female seed emitted during intercourse. Accordingly, since female sexual pleasure was generally accounted necessary for conception, in the first half of the seventeenth century it followed that a husband wanting children would consider his wife’s sexual pleasure. On the other hand the woman who pleaded rape would not succeed in her plea if she conceived, because she was deemed to have consented.20 Lemnius’s sixteenth-century treatise, translated into English in 1658, referred to another theory about conception which, he argued, had adverse consequences for maternal affection. ‘Some Bawds’, he said, try to persuade women that

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Mothers afford very little to the generation of the child, but onely are at the trouble to carry it, . . . as if the womb were hired by men, as Merchants Ships are to be straited by them; and to discharge their burden, . . . women grow luke-warm, and lose all humane affections towards their children.21 Some thought that the male seed organized matter in the female’s womb, shaping a child. Later in the seventeenth century there was a major controversy over theories of preformation: either the child was already in the male sperm – and illustrations of what was seen under the microscope revealed tiny homunculi – or the foetus was contained within the female ovum, which was like a box within a box from the time of Eve. The woman nourished the child in her womb with her blood, and gave to it her character. Her imagination was believed to shape the child’s features, although deformities could be a punishment for parental sin. Printed bills advertising the exhibition of monstrous children frequently blamed the mother: for example, a child was born with ‘ruffs’ because its mother had followed the fashions in dress: And ye O England whose womankinde in ruffes do walke so oft Parsuade them stil to bere in minde, This childe with ruffes so soft.22 A mother had not finished her work when she delivered, but was urged to continue to transmit her qualities of character by suckling her baby herself. Preachers taught their congregations that the ideal good woman was the good mother. The Bible was the basic authority in this, as in other areas of life. Concepts of motherhood were deeply embedded in the metaphorical discussion of Church and State. Thus, for example, the true Church was a mother, the false a whore.23 More directly, Scripture said that the woman was saved by childbearing (1 Timothy, 2. 5). A curse upon a woman made her barren. To prevent conception or procure an abortion was murder.24 The pain of childbirth was both a consequence and a punishment for Eve’s transgressions.25 Scripture said that the godly desired sons rather than daughters.26 Divines advanced arguments from the Bible to prove that a mother ought to nurse her own child, and reinforced their case with practical observations. ‘Commonly such children as are nursed by their mothers prosper best’, observed Gouge. ‘Mothers are most tender ouer them, and cannot indure to let them lie cry out, without taking them up and stilling them’.27 Protestantism has been said to enhance the status of women as wives and mothers. This was certainly an argument advanced by the reformers

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in an attempt to win and to hold converts. They recognized that for women there were losses in the new faith. Whereas the Catholic Church had allowed certain kinds of supernatural aid to women in childbirth, such as the loan of the girdle of a saint, the Protestant Church offered only prayer.28 Protestants went further than some Catholic critics of the cult of the Virgin Mary: Peter Heylin, an Anglican divine, objected to the way in which Catholics pictured Mary in their churches: ‘If they must needs have her in the estate of glory . . . or of honour . . . let them disburden her of her Child’.29 Protestant theologians taught that a woman was created for maternity, and that in caring for her children she was serving the Lord.30 Nevertheless, Protestant ministers continued to affirm, as had Catholic priests earlier, that in motherhood, as in all else, women should be subject to male authority. Indeed, as Lyndal Roper has shown in her analysis of Luther’s teachings, the authority of a husband in the household was strengthened after the Reformation. Any woman whose sexual desires were not directed towards marriage and motherhood was labelled unnatural, and there was no longer a role for the confessor to define what was acceptable behaviour in the household.31 In a case study of one Protestant family, the Henrys in later seventeenth-century England, I have argued that maternity was valued less highly than certain religious activities, such as preaching and teaching the messages of salvation. A wife’s care for her children, family and worldly matters might even impede her own salvation.32 Protestantism changed certain emphases in the Christian faith, but did not challenge the basic premiss that women were inferior, and therefore should be subject to men. In the long run male authority in the household was enhanced. Although society was strongly pro-natalist, motherhood was approved only within marriage. Powerful disincentives discouraged maternity outside wedlock. The law defined such children as bastards and as incapable of inheritance. Justices of the Peace were directed to punish the parents with a whipping and confinement to the house of correction for a year.33 Families also played a large part in the control of female sexuality, and those with most wealth controlled their daughters more strictly than those of lower social status. Daughters of the peers and gentry were more likely to be virgins at marriage. Those of wealthy yeomen, who could provide dowries, had good chances of marriage. As for the daughters of small husbandmen and labourers, historians have pointed out that a dowryless state and greater sexual licence were connected.34 A girl who was pregnant was unlikely to be able to force her child’s father to marry her without the backing of family and friends. Not all pregnant women who failed in their quest for marriage

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were treated alike. The level of prosecution of pre-nuptial pregnancy varied according to economic circumstances. Martin Ingram, in his study of Wiltshire in the years 1600–40, has shown that in the populous partly industrialized area the rate of presentment was 60–75 per cent. However, in the more sparsely populated uplands country, only about 7 per cent of the cases were presented, and this was more likely if the offenders were poor. Margaret Spufford has argued that this selective prosecution was not a new pattern, for from the thirteenth century, humble people were more likely to be fined for adultery and fornication.35 The justices of the secular courts who administered the laws relating to bastardy were more concerned about the cost of maintenance of the illegitimate child than the sinfulness of the sexual activity, for if the child died, or the parents were able to maintain it, then the punishment was abated. A couple who married before a bastardy order was made or who produced a child within seven and a half months of marriage were to be punished for no more than incontinency.36 It was not sufficient for a woman to restrict her sexual activity to her years of matrimony: her only sexual partner was to be her husband. The law deemed all children born in wedlock to be legitimate, unless a husband could prove otherwise.37 If a wife was sexually unfaithful, a husband had grounds for a separation, or even, so one divine early in the seventeenth century asserted, a divorce.38 Scripture justified a harsh attitude to adultery, so in 1650 the Parliament attempted to bring the law of the land into harmony with the law of God by introducing the death penalty for adultery. By definition, adultery was a crime committed only by married women. (A married man who engaged in sexual activity with a woman other than his wife was guilty of fornication, which carried a lesser penalty.)39 Although the death penalty was apparently rarely inflicted, wives who transgressed were strongly criticized. Class differences affected the double standard. Property and inheritance coloured men’s attitudes, as an example from a parliamentary debate in 1656 illustrates. Members had no trouble in empathizing with Edward Scot, who petitioned for a divorce on the grounds of his wife’s adultery. Even though they thought that Scot was mentally unstable, ‘his wife ought not to abuse him’. ‘It is fit the gentleman should be relieved, that bastards may not inherit his estate’, said Sir Thomas Wroth. ‘It is a sad case to have such a wife’, continued Mr Robinson, ‘and to have a posterity put upon him that is none of his own’.40 Keith Thomas has explored the reasons for the double standard of sexual morality in England.41 Although he concluded that it was not entirely due to men’s preoccupation with legitimate children, this was undoubtedly a factor. Furthermore the double standard was part of the means by which

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men controlled women’s sexuality. For a man of higher social status, extramarital sex was condoned. There was rarely proof of his guilt. While the ratio of sexual activity to pregnancy was probably low, it was harder for the woman to evade the consequences of her sexual intercourse.42 Puritan divines attempted to argue that men were as guilty as the women, but with little success. A man who got a maid with child remained a nineday wonder, as an anonymous pamphleteer bitterly remarked, while the woman was harshly censured.43 The Anglican Church inherited rituals associated with childbirth from the Catholic Church. Protestants continued the Catholic ritual of the churching of women, but stressed that it was a thanksgiving service rather than a purification rite.44 Baptism was far more significant. If the baby seemed likely to die at birth, the Catholic Church had allowed the midwife, who was licensed by the clergy, to administer baptism.45 However, Protestant theologians were not agreed that baptism was absolutely necessary for the infant. Calvin argued that God had extended his promise to the seed of the faithful, so the unbaptized children would not be damned. Since ‘Christ did not command women, or men of every sort, to baptise’, baptism by women disrupted proper order in the Church, which was more critical than any fears about the fate of the newly born child.46 However, the Anglican bishops were prepared to tolerate private baptism by women in cases of emergency, and the influential Bishop Richard Hooker wrote against the Anabaptist view that baptism by women was no more ‘then any other ordinarie washinge or bathinge’. Although the matter remained controversial, midwives in England continued to baptize infants in emergencies.47 The clergy also administered another rite, that of burial, which gave them the opportunity to enunciate society’s ideals about good women. Many of their printed funeral sermons paid public tribute to ideals of motherhood: ‘As A Mother! Care, Tenderness, and Providence’. High praise was given to the woman who was ‘a tender hearted Mother to her children’.48 Published lives of godly women usually attested to their careful education of their older children.49 The biological bond between a mother and her child was understood to be a natural bond. A mother should breastfeed her child herself because ‘this is so naturall a thing that euen the beasts will not omit it’, observed John Dod and Robert Cleaver in 1606.50 Contemporaries also assumed that child rearing, a social process, was likewise biologically determined and natural to women: ‘The Care and Education of Children, both with respect to their Bodies and Minds, is by Nature given all along to the Mother, in a much greater Proportion than to the Father’.51 Men recounted anecdotes to reassure themselves about the infallible nature of the maternal instinct.

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Sir Hugh Cholmley, for example, told how babies who were not their own were offered both to his mother and later, when he was married, to his wife: each time biology triumphed, and ‘it was pretty and admirable to see how, by the instinct of nature, she had found out her own child’.52 A mother who claimed that she could not love her children was diagnosed as insane.53 Contemporaries usually judged that a mother was responsible for the care of children under the age of seven. Even bastards were usually kept with their mothers until that age. The justices preferred not to send children to the house of correction with their mothers unless they were sucking, but in practice there was usually no choice.54 However, the law authorized anyone to take vagrant children of about four or five years of age from their mothers, ‘whether they be willing or not’. Once the child had been bound before the justices or certain witnesses, neither mother, father, nor nurse was allowed to steal the child back.55 Sometimes a parish paid a mother to be a nurse to her own child rather than take the child into care.56 Poorer children were to be kept with their parents until they were seven, but after that age they were to be put to learn some kind of service in a household.57 If mothers had feelings about this, they were not recorded. In the upper levels of society, maternal education for boys was confined to their earlier years. After about the age of seven, boys from the gentry were usually entrusted to the care of a schoolmaster or tutor. ‘Leave the boys to the father’s more peculiar care’, the Marquis of Halifax advised his daughter, ‘that you may with the greater justice pretend to a more immediate jurisdiction over those of your own sex’.58 Although mothers were responsible for the education of daughters, they were subject to paternal authority. Even a radical social reformer during the Civil Wars, Gerrard Winstanley, accepted the need for patriarchal authority: if ‘the father of a family be weak . . . wanting the power of wisdom and government’, then children were not to be left to the authority of a mother but rather were to be put into others families to be instructed under fatherly authority.59 In practice, a widow was usually appointed guardian to her children, or obtained their wardship, although certain kinds of behaviour could deprive her of control of her children. When the widow of his friend, the Duke of Buckingham, reverted to Roman Catholicism, Charles I took the children from her.60 While most images of motherhood in early modern England were positive, others were ambiguous or negative. Some popular wisdom was contemptuous: ‘None but fools were fit to beare children.’61 Satirists mocked what they considered were exaggerated claims to respect for maternity:

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And as for her Pain and Peril of Child-bearing, I do no more wonder at it, than at the laying of a great Eg, by a Hen, or a Goose, the ordinary effect of Nature, no more, notwithstanding all their Tittle-Tatle.62 Such satire reveals, indirectly, that the community did respect childbearing women. A newer source of hostile comment on mothers came increasingly from medical practitioners. In their attempts to distance themselves from the unqualified, and to establish medicine as a profession, they tried to discredit women’s traditional knowledge as midwives as foolish. The debate between the confident professional doctors and the midwives contributed to a devaluing of women’s traditional skills.63 Doctors also sought to replace women’s authority in matters maternal with their own methods grounded in ‘scientific’ knowledge. Hostility was also projected on to surrogate mothers, especially stepmothers. Maternal mortality rates were high, and many men, especially wealthier ones, married more than once.64 The stepmother was much feared in early modern society as it was believed that she would alienate a father’s affections and prefer her own children. Fairy stories, such as Cinderella, depicted her in a threatening guise as a danger to the child’s life and happiness. Other fairy tales conjured with maternal figures: some revealed fear of their power.65 To sum up, a powerful ideology of the good mother as caring for children under patriarchal direction existed in early modern England. The gender division of labour was rigid on the issue of the rearing of children under seven: it was women’s work, and it was their natural function. Men in turn were expected to exercise authority over their families, to support them financially, and to play a role in the education of older children.

III Ideology shaped the context within which women became mothers in early modern England, but women responded creatively to being mothers. This section focuses on some of the evidence about women’s experiences of maternity, concentrating on the time from sexual intercourse to the earliest months of the child’s life. Sources for a study from the female perspective are more than usually difficult, but although they are less numerous than those for male ideas about maternity, female records do survive. There are printed writings by women, and unpublished diaries and autobiographies.66 Among the papers of wealthier families, there are women’s letters and also some

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commonplace books. Only recently have social historians begun to explore these family archives for the rich material they contain about many aspects of personal life. Although the evidence about motherhood is biased towards the wealthy and the literate, information about women of lower social status is contained in the records of the secular and ecclesiastical courts. Women’s maternal experiences were varied. Wanted, unwanted, biological and social, their motherhood was mediated by their social level and influenced by their family situation, economic circumstances and religious beliefs. We have no way of separating their attitudes to the biological from the social experience. Yet as the contemporary midwife Jane Sharp observed, women’s desire for children was recognized as nearly universal: ‘To conceive with child is the earnest desire if not of all yet of most women.’67 Although most married women would spend their time childbearing and rearing, the number of children they bore was affected by their social status and also by their attitude to wet nursing. At the upper levels of society, girls married at around 20 in the late sixteenth century, and about two years later at the end of the seventeenth century. These women were less likely to be engaged in economic production, and consequently more emphasis was placed on their reproductive labour. Those who could afford to hire wet nurses bore more children than the rest of the population, although fewer infants may have survived. A woman in the middling or lower ranks of society, on the other hand, was more likely to marry in her mid-twenties. The mean age at marriage rose from 26 to 26.5 years later in the seventeenth century.68 Vivien Brodsky Elliot found that in London, the daughters of wealthy tradesmen married at a mean age of 20 while migrant women married at around age 24.69 Once married, a woman would on average bear a child every couple of years, or, if she sent her child out to nurse, perhaps once a year. Ceasing to give birth around her early forties, she would remain responsible for children until she was in her later fifties. Should she live to be a grandmother, she would probably help her own daughters with their maternal responsibilities. From all this experience, many women gained knowledge about child rearing, but how this experience was evaluated by themselves and their society remains to be assessed. About one-third of the population was poor. Contemporaries recognized that to be ‘overcharged with many young children’ was a cause of poverty, and that ‘the poore do most of all multiply’.70 A poor woman who married in her mid to late twenties may have enjoyed a relatively satisfactory time after the birth of her first child, but the arrival of a second and subsequent children could drag the whole family below the poverty line. In some cases, a wife’s wage-earning capacity would be decreased by her pregnancies and

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child-care responsibilities, so that the family would depend increasingly on the wages of the husband; and if he disappeared or died, the mother and children would find themselves in a desperate situation.71 Some women were able to turn their maternity to financial advantage, as they used their skills in nursing and child rearing to earn a wage.72 Families in poverty were eligible for relief, but this varied from parish to parish, and as the numbers of those in poverty multiplied during the seventeenth century, the Poor Law was increasingly inadequate. Contemporary publications described the destitution of widows, and illustrated the temptations to which their poverty exposed them. Such was the unhappy story of Mary Goodenough, sentenced to death in 1692 for infanticide. She allowed a neighbour sexual favours in return for ‘necessary maintenance’ for herself and her two children. When her illegitimate baby was born, she did not struggle to preserve its life, and was found guilty of murder. ‘It was for want of Bread she said’, recorded a contemporary author, who castigated her neighbours for their lack of charity. ‘If her Modesty made her asham’d to beg, did not her meagre Look, her starved Children, her meanly furnish’d House and Table beg from you?’73 Compassion for maternity in this instance had failed to materialize. Increasing poverty at the end of the century was causing growing concern. Women’s experiences of motherhood take us into a female world. From the diaries and letters of literate women – most of whom had a servant to assist them – we can see how much time and energy women at the upper social levels devoted to their mothering. Autobiographies frequently reveal that their authors’ adult lives were structured around the rhythms of their pregnancies, childbearing and child rearing.74 While it is difficult to separate the tasks involved in child rearing from those of housekeeping, it is clear that women’s days and nights were filled with attending to their children and their households. The letters and diaries of literate women reveal networks of support and advice. Surviving commonplace books contain, in addition to recipes for cookery and aids for beauty, remedies for specifically female conditions such as complications in pregnancy and lactation. Several women published advice on maternal matters for the benefit of their own sex. The Countess of Lincoln wrote a whole pamphlet urging women to breastfeed their own babies in 1622.75 The first female almanack writer, Sarah Jinner, published advice on reproduction in 1659. She recommended two other works to her readers as ‘modestly treating of generation’, so that ‘our Sex may be furnished with knowledge’.76 Other female almanack writers followed her lead. The first midwife to publish advice for her own sex was Jane Sharp in 1671,77 and in the following year another female author, Mary Trye, also promised help for female-specific disorders.78 A

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number of printed bills survive in which female medical practitioners in London advertised their services, chiefly for the treatment of female disorders and childhood complaints.79 These sources reveal women’s desire to understand and consequently to control their reproductive experiences. Their attitudes were always affected by the social context, their own previous reproductive history, and their desire or fear of pregnancy. It was very difficult for women to break the nexus between sexuality and reproduction.80 Sarah Jinner put it bluntly in her almanack for 1659: more women would embark on sexual activity at the time of a predicted eclipse ‘were it not for fear of the rising of the Apron’.81 ‘Beware of the sollicitations of the flesh, for they will undo you’, Hannah Wolley warned under cook-maids.82 Pregnancy in early modern times was notoriously difficult to detect. Surviving evidence in medical casebooks and treatises indicates that women viewed the cessation of menstruation as the most usual sign. (A girl or woman who never menstruated would be deemed incapable of childbearing.) Frances Howard, for example, who consulted Simon Forman in 1597, ‘supposes herself with child . . . she hath not had her course’.83 ‘My wife after the absence of her terms for seven weeks’, wrote Samuel Pepys, ‘gave me hopes of her being with child’.84 Anne Steele, an unmarried woman, based her knowledge of her pregnancy on the evidence of other women. She told the justices in 1690 that ‘she knowes her self to be now with child, & so she is told by divers women who have examined her condition.’85 Not all women welcomed the signs of pregnancy. Although Alan Macfarlane claims that ‘Children born in wedlock were welcome’, married women who had too many children already, or who feared for their lives in childbirth, may have viewed their pregnancies with a range of negative emotions.86 Spinsters had special cause to fear pregnancy. They faced the risk of dismissal from employment, social disgrace, and even physical punishment. Many consequently sought a solution to their situation in marriage. From the number of pregnant brides – about one-third – historians have argued either that women needed to prove their fertility before men would marry them, or that their pregnancy precipitated an intended marriage.87 Some examples of the latter survive in the quarter-sessions records: in 1651 Anne Barker was questioned by the justices in Exeter for her premarital pregnancy. She was a servant to John Reeve, who put her trundle bed at his bed’s foot, where he used her ‘constantly and familiarly every week’. When she, ‘weepinge & cryinge’, told him that she was quick with child by him, he ‘puffinge & stamping, bid her be quiett, & content, & say nothinge, nor cry’. When her state could be concealed no longer, he agreed to marry her ‘if her mother and brother would do something for her’, but

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he concluded, ‘it would bee the undoinge of him, but a makinge of her’.88 Women with family and kin to support them had a better chance of forcing men to marry them. Similarly, in the religious sects, where, despite contemporary tales of sexual licence to the contrary, a strict personal morality was upheld, there are examples of the congregation exerting considerable persuasive force upon unwilling putative fathers, as the following account of a Baptist congregation at Bristol in 1679 illustrates. The congregation sent two women members of the church to a servant girl, Mary Smith, who was reported to be with child by her master, one Ship, a widower. Subsequently, when two brethren confronted the man, he did not deny his paternity but refused to marry her. Mary answered the summons to attend ‘with great shame and weeping, and covering her face’, and was excommunicated. After disciplining her, the congregation returned their attention to Ship. One of the elders went again with a pastor, confronted him while he was at his plough, accompanied him into his house, and argued with him over Scriptural texts. He was finally brought to consent to marriage.89 There are contemporary records of women who failed in their quest for legal matrimony.90 ‘Oh Susan, what shall I doe?’ was the response of a blacksmith to his lover’s declaration of her pregnancy, ‘Tradinge is soe bad I cannot live heere.’ Susan Draper came before the justices in Exeter as a bastard bearer in 1652.91 From similar records it is clear that single women and widows sometimes considered abortion, and presumably some successfully avoided maternity by this means.92 If a woman did give birth to an illegitimate or unwanted child, she might abandon it as a foundling. By the seventeenth century, this carried less danger of detection in towns than in the country. Infanticide was the unhappy solution adopted by some women, for which the penalty, if they were convicted, was death. Malcolmson’s fascinating study of eighteenth-century infanticide shows how women concealed their pregnancies, gave birth secretly and silently, and finally disposed of their babies.93 Sexual misconduct could weaken a woman’s chances of legitimate marriage. In the 1650s, one man’s defence against a charge of paternity was to attack the woman’s sexual morality: she was a women of ill fame with three bastards living.94 Yet a few unmarried mothers were so undeterred by all the negative social pressure against illegitimacy that they continued to bear children without matrimony, as we can see from one woman’s account to the justices in 1599. Joan Grobbyn said that she was lately delivered of her third bastard child, begotten upon her as she affirms and confesses by one Thomas Wyatt, late servant to John Vaucher of Salisbury. She says that one Battyn, a joiner,

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deceased, is the father of the first child, a son yet living, and that she does not remember the father of the first child, a daughter, because he was a stranger to her.95 When a couple was childless, this was usually considered to be the wife’s ‘fault’. A childless woman was labelled a barren woman and many echoed the cry of Rachel in the Old Testament: give me children, or else I die (Genesis 30. 1). Barren wives lacked social status and respect, and the higher their social position, the unhappier was their lot. Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II, failed to bear an heir: a contemporary observed that ‘as the whole happiness of her life was centred on this single blessing, . . . she had recourse to all the fashionable specifics against barrenness’.96 Katherine Villiers, who was already a mother, wrote to her husband in the 1620s of her disappointment at failing to become pregnant: ‘I woold I had bine so hapy’.97 Elizabeth Walker recounted that her parents were in despair when they had no child after five years of marriage.98 The diary of one young woman, Sarah Savage, is a poignant record of her prayers to the Lord about ‘a Particular matter’. Married in 1687 to a widower with a child, for two years she recorded in her diary her longing to be ‘a fruitfull vine’ if the Lord saw good. She experienced an upsurge of hopes every four or five weeks, followed by a bitter struggle to reconcile herself to disappointment.99 There was a female lore on matters related to pregnancy and birth, starting with advice about conception. Commonplace books contain suggested cures for childlessness. In Johanne St John’s book of 1680 one remedy for barrenness came with a strong recommendation: ‘Mrs Patrick conceived twice with it & she advised it to one that had been 9 years marryd on whom it had the same effect’.100 Pepys talked with a group of women after a dinner in July 1664 about ‘my not getting of children’ and they merrily gave him ten points of advice, some of which they stressed seriously, especially the instruction that the couple should lie in bed with the head lower than the feet.101 Gentlewomen knew that they were expected to bear sons to inherit name, title and estates. A daughter, however, was at least a sign that the couple was fertile: ‘this child, though a daughter, was very welcome both to her and her husband, because it gave them hope of further issue’.102 ‘Although it be a girle that God hath sent’, wrote Thomas Chichely to his daughter on the birth of her child in 1671, ‘yet it is a very great blessing. I remember a saying of yor Grandfather Russell who said in time it would [turn?] to a boy’.103 Wives were expected to continue childbearing until they produced sons. Mary Henry would have been glad to bear a son, after three

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daughters, her husband told his father.104 Nor, in the families of the gentry, was one son enough. The Earl of Rutland congratulated Bulstrode Whitelocke on the birth of his first son and jocularly suggested that his wife should not be afraid to have more.105 A few women’s letters of apology and excuse announcing the birth of daughters survive. Lady Hatton, mother to a daughter in 1678, told her husband that she would gladly have laid down her life to procure him a son.106 Among themselves, women discussed the means of determining the sex of their children. Sarah Jinner’s almanack recommended Lemnius’s work, The Secret Miracles of Nature, to her readers as ‘modestly treating of generation . . . and by Art, to get a Boy or Girl, which they desire most’.107 To bear no child at all was unfortunate, but to bear too many children could also be so, and some women wanted to limit their family size. In 1672, after 12 years of pregnancies, miscarriages and childbirth, Elizabeth Turner recorded in her diary her fear that she was ‘breeding’ again, ‘which was matter of great trouble & disquiet to me’.108 Methods of family limitation were restricted, and little contraception was under exclusive female control. Abstinence from sexual activity was condemned by the clergy, who taught that couples owed each other ‘due benevolence’, and by medical advisers, who argued that it was bad for health.109 Women exchanged suggestions about reducing male sexual drive. Mary Holden prescribed a diet in her almanack book that will ‘make a man no better than an eunuch’.110 They attempted to control their own fertility by the use of pessaries and to procure abortions by various means, such as decoctions of herbs. Abortion and infanticide, despite all their attendant risks to reputation, health and life, were at least methods under women’s control.111 Further, it has been argued by McLaren and Fildes that women were aware of the contraceptive effect of prolonged lactation, and certainly there is evidence to support this hypothesis towards the end of the seventeenth century.112 Earlier in the century, since advice books urged men to refrain from intercourse with their breastfeeding wives, it may not have been so obvious that lactation rather than abstinence limited conceptions.113 Under male control was the technique of withdrawal, a sin in Onan and, so the clergy taught, a sin in all other men.114 Gossiping together at a poor woman’s lying-in, two ladies were not sure whether the husband who gave his wife too many children or none at all was the better, but did not consider the company convenient for sharing their joking.115 There was a female lore about antenatal care. Women discussed the effects of their own longings and imagination upon their unborn babies. Alice Thornton attributed her son’s birthmark to a fright that she had had

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during pregnancy.116 The role of Providence as a direct agent in human affairs caused profound anxiety to some women. When Elizabeth Turner miscarried in October 1662, she wrote ‘I know not what ocationed But am jealous least it may be a punishment of some particular sin’.117 Childbirth was the female rite of passage par excellence. The midwife played an important role. On her knowledge and skill other women depended.118 The midwife’s loyalty was divided, however, for she was sworn to threaten the refusal of her services if the name of the father of an illegitimate child was not divulged. Midwives could also be witnesses against a mother if they were called on to testify in cases of infanticide as to whether a child was born alive or dead.119 There are many examples of a woman choosing her midwife and of anxiety when she gave birth without her. Sometimes a woman let her midwife go to attend another woman in labour. Elizabeth Cholmley was so charitable that she allowed the midwife who had been with her for ten years to go to another woman with whom she should have been, despite the opposition of her husband.120 Women appreciated a midwife’s services: in 1584 Jane Magham of Hull, a widow, bequeathed four sheep to her midwife in her will.121 In addition, female relatives helped each other. Diaries show that many mothers, such as Elizabeth Joceline and Sarah Savage, travelled to be with their daughters at their lyings-in,122 and sometimes women of higher social status than the woman giving birth would also attend.123 Up to the mid-seventeenth century, the presence of any man at a childbirth was unusual. Women’s modesty required all female attendants. More than one midwife would be summoned if the case were difficult.124 Male physicians would attend only in the last resort, which, as Adrian Wilson argues, militated against their giving effective help. Caesarian sections were usually fatal to the mother. After the Chamberlens discovered the use of the obstetric forceps, although this was kept as a family secret, women found that babies could be delivered in difficult cases and that their own lives could be saved. Consequently, they were more willing to summon medical aid. Wilson argues that this advance led women to change their attitudes to male participation in the management of childbirth during the seventeenth century.125 However, it is important to remember that there was a strong body of female opinion in favour of female attendants. Notions of modesty were inculcated from an early age, so that dislike of ‘groaping doctors’ remained.126 Besides, physicians were either too expensive or too far away for the majority of women. Many women approached childbirth with fear. The words of the preachers, that women should expect and prepare for death, were not encouraging. A few women were not optimistic. Katherine Stubbes told her

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husband, neighbours, and friends that her forthcoming child ‘woulde bee her death’, and another gentlewoman, Elizabeth Joceline, secretly bought a new winding sheet.127 Although Schofield has argued that, in fact, maternal mortality rates were not very high, a 6 to 7 per cent risk of dying in childbed, no pregnant woman could be sure that she would be among the fortunate survivors. Besides, attendance at the childbeds of other women where horror stories were exchanged was, as Sara Mendelson has shown, a means of equitably distributing one woman’s terror to her female acquaintance.128 The sources of help were charms, talismans, prayer and the aid of medical practitioners. Anne, Viscountess Conway reckoned that she conceived on 12 May 1658. She secured the services of a midwife and a nurse, and borrowed an eagle stone, ‘esteemed of great virtue in hard labour’, which she wore on her arm for a while. Labours lasted for varying lengths of time and had different outcomes. Women secured the services of trusted midwives and prayed for a safe delivery, but it could all be to no avail. Anne Hulton, pregnant herself, saw her friend die in childbirth: ‘it did much affect me with cares and thoughts about another world, which had been too little minded by me’.129 Elizabeth Walker’s eighth child was a stillborn son, after which she suffered depression for three months.130 Nor were women’s worries for themselves alone. Elizabeth Turner was relieved when her child was born ‘not onely free from deformity but a goodly lovely Babe’.131 She, like some other gentlewomen, noted all her children’s births in her diary.132 After the pains of childbirth, mothers suffered grief if their babes died. The infant mortality rate was high in the first year of life, and the first 36 hours were the most dangerous.133 Although historians have repeatedly quoted Montaigne to demonstrate that parents were indifferent to the loss of their children in infancy, there is much evidence to contradict this impression of parental callousness.134 In particular, there are many examples of women suffering deep grief at the death of their babies. Anne Hulton gave birth to her first child on 29 July 1695, ‘A day never to be forgotten; wherein I felt the bitter fruits of the sin of my grandmother Eve’. Near to death herself, she survived but her child did not. ‘O Adam, Adam! what hast thou done! My comforts are taken away before I had well received them: was it all lost labour?’ She consoled herself with the hope ‘that Heaven is something fuller for my babe.’135 The widespread recognition of a mother’s grief for the death of her child was poignantly attested to by Mary Cary’s description of her view of an ideal society in 1651, the first item in which was that ‘No infant of days shall die while they are young. . . . They shall not be afflicted for the loss of their children.’136 As Mendelson has pointed out in her study of Mary Rich, contemporaries had no trouble in believing that

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parents suffered such deep grief at the deaths of their children that they could die themselves.137 A mother knew that her baby’s survival depended upon success in feeding. Infant feeding has recently received detailed historical attention in the work of Dorothy McLaren and Valerie Fildes, but here some brief comments on women’s experiences are needed.138 We know that many mothers were anxious about their ability to nurse their own infants. A gentlewoman, Elizabeth Turner, who had ‘apprehended much difficulty by reason of the weakness of my head & little milke’, thanked God that her child was content.139 Wealthier women’s correspondence contains details about the feeding of their children. In 1678 Alice Hatton wrote to her brother three days after her sister-in-law had given birth to a daughter: her breasts very well a gret deall of Milke & like to be a very good Nurs . . . she is mightely pleased att being a nurse but ye Child dos not like sucking so well as feeding wth a spoone . . . my poore sister is conserned ye child will not suck she has sent for a pupy dog to draw her breast.140 The crucial point was that the child was healthy, as Abigail Harley told her husband in 1669: the nurse was not well but ‘my bedfellow thrives amaine as he may well do, for he grows a terrible sucker by night’. In some wealthier families, a wet nurse was employed, as also for those who were unable to feed their own babies. ‘I understand thy breasts still payne thee’, wrote Sir Thomas Baskerville to his wife in the 1590s. ‘I pray therefor lett som french nurse feed thy son.’141 Fildes argues that the practice of wet nursing was increasing during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The wet nurses were from the lower levels of society, but not the very poorest.142 Unlike the elaborate instructions that medical writers offered about the selection of wet nurses, women gave each other practical advice about the choice of a nurse, and valued women who were kind to their charges.143 A wet nurse reassured Sir Symonds D’Ewes and his wife that ‘I thank God, haue my helth and am wel and haue good store of milke’.144 Some wealthier women also had compassion for the wet nurse and her child. The Countess of Lincoln urged mothers to breastfeed: ‘bee not accessory to that disorder of causing a poorer woman to banish her owne infant, for the entertaining of a richer womans child’.145 However, in practice wet nurses probably did not banish their own babies, for some became wet nurses after their own infants were weaned. In one case, correspondence revealed that the wet nurse had her child at home with her until it broke out in a rash. The nurse sent it to quarantine with her own mother, so it would not infect her nursling.146

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Practical advice about weaning was exchanged among women. Mothers were counselled to take account of factors such as the health and age of the child, the weather, and the cycle of the moon. Such advice could be conveyed with scepticism: ‘when you wean him let it bee in ye old of ye Moon’, wrote Sarah Savage to her daughter Hannah in the early eighteenth century, ‘when ye memory is more weak – which old Mrs Starky adviz’d – & I thot there was someth[ing] in it – tho’ others are otherwise minded.’147 Although religion was important in providing a framework of meaning for many women’s sorrows in maternity, there were mixed reactions to the involvement of the Anglican clergy in the rituals associated with childbirth. Katherine Chidley claimed that even if a baby was born dead, priests wanted money for reading a dirge over it. She also objected to the practice of churching ‘before the mother dare goe abroade . . . that the Sun shall not smite her by day, nor the Moone by night’. Church court records indicate that she was not alone in her dislike of the ceremony: in Essex in 1598 one woman said that churching was ‘like unto of a sow with pigs following her or like to a bitch that went to salt’.148 Probably the majority of women submitted without protest.149 Women also had views about baptism, and some participated in the controversies on the subject. The Baptists maintained that only believers, which meant those of years and understanding, could be baptized. In a few sectarian congregations, however, a child consecration ceremony was developed in response, it seems, to maternal demand. A hostile pamphleteer described how, in a congregation of Independents and Baptists in the 1650s, a woman was troubled that her unbaptized children were no better than heathen. Consequently, around 1651, Thomas Ewins, the teacher of the congregation, devised a special service for the mother who ‘desired that her Children might also be presented to the Lord by Prayer’. Ewins thought that ‘any godly Woman, a Member of a Congregation’ should attend church both to give thanks on her own behalf and to present her child to the Lord. The name could be entered into the congregation’s book of names.150 In more secular contexts, the naming of the child might be a family matter, in which mothers would be involved to various degrees. Surrogate motherhood of various kinds was common in early modern England. Those who found themselves stepmothers did not have an easy time. Since they had no biological link with their stepchildren, it was assumed that they would have no love for them. Families gloomily predicted that if children were motherless, they would have a stepmother ‘who in all probability wil less befriend them’.151 In practice, despite the general belief that stepmothers were ill-disposed to their stepchildren, women’s experiences

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varied. A few women have left records of their conscientious attempts to mother their stepchildren, but not all were happy. Elizabeth Turner’s relationship with her stepdaughter Betty deteriorated over the years. The girl, who was in 1668 ‘a goad in my side and pricks in mine eyes’, became increasingly spiteful and envious in her stepmother’s view. In 1674 the Turners became step-parents to two orphaned nieces and a nephew, which ‘great charge’ she said was a burden in their declining years. Two years later Betty married, and Elizabeth recorded her prayers for the girl’s happiness ‘notwithstanding her continued hatred & mallignant endeavour towards mee & mine’.152 Other stepmothers were happier: Lady Gorges’s stepchildren ‘pay’d her the same duty as iff she had been there own mother’, said Lady Elizabeth Delaval.153 In 1659 Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, promised to care for her husband’s three nieces ‘as if thy had been my own’, and she urged her husband, ‘even during the life of her son’, to make noble provision for the girls.154 A poem by Bathsua Makin of 1664 mourned the death of Lady Elizabeth Langham and praised her surrogate motherhood: A mother; though not hers, nor partial She loved, as if they had been natural.155 Wet nurses were also surrogate mothers with varying relationships with their charges. Although there were economic rewards – the pay was better than for some other female occupations, and it was work which was possible for mothers who were not especially poor – there were also pleasures in caring for the children. Some nurses were deeply attached to the babies and retained a lifelong interest in their welfare.156 The role of mother-inlaw (confusingly, contemporaries often referred to a step-mother by this term) was not one in which women seemed as comfortable as that of mother. There were conflicts of theory: a child’s marriage partner was to be loved as one’s own child, yet women had been taught that only for those children they had borne would they experience natural love.157 Grandmother was a happier role, and one for which some women longed. The daughter of Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland, was for some time without a child after marriage, but finally Lady Margaret ‘had the happiness which she had so often and generally prayed for, which was to see herself first of all a grandmother’.158 Lady Anne Clifford, in her turn, rejoiced in her numerous grandchildren.159 Women enjoyed sharing in the care of their grandchildren, and wrote with pleasure of their grandchildren’s activities.160 Indeed, it was in old age, especially as grandmothers, that wealthier women enjoyed most social respect. Thus, for example, correspondence around 1630 addressed to Lady Joan Barrington, widow of the godly and widely respected

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Member of Parliament, Sir Thomas Barrington, attests to her powerful position in her family and wider society.161 The sorrows, problems and joys of maternity were all subjects about which women wrote, as can be seen from the correspondence in one godly Nonconformist household. The ‘tediousness of nursing we owe to sin’, reflected one. Maternity was a selfless occupation: it offered more to others than to the woman herself, but religion provided comfort: we are raising children for God. They listed among the mercies that their families had received, the preservation of their children ‘from the perils of infancie’.162 And as their children grew older, mothers were concerned with the education of their children as well as their physical survival. Successful child rearing here depended upon adaptation to the child’s temperament as well as to its age and sex. Although this theme is beyond the scope of this chapter, the relationships of mothers with their eldest sons were often different from those with other sons, and their bonds with their daughters differed again.

IV The daily tasks of maternity were recognized as women’s business: among themselves, they exchanged information and advice. None of their experience was particularly relevant to men’s daily activities. Not surprisingly, men knew little about maternal knowledge, and they were inclined to dismiss women’s talk as ‘gossip’. Nor did children necessarily esteem their mothers. Paternal authority overshadowed them. The general tenor of public comment was that because mothers were gentle and loving, so fathers were the more respected as the children grew up. Of the two parents, Gouge observed, ‘the mother is lesse regarded’. His explanation was in terms of greater maternal tenderness for her children: ‘familiarity breedeth contempt’.163 Doubtless, children were sensitive to their fathers’ greater authority in both the family and the outside world. Yet if patriarchal authority was the more highly esteemed, this does not mean that contemporaries devalued motherhood in daily life. Men recognized that there was a female culture about pregnancy, birth and the successful rearing of infants. It was not a culture from which men were excluded: husbands and fathers often shared the news of women’s maternal experiences, and supported women in their parenting. Furthermore, as we have seen, men acknowledged maternal influence and appealed to it in matters of favour and patronage: ‘Pray dear Niece use all yr power & interest as a Mother to perswade him to grant my request’, wrote one seeker of her son’s parliamentary interest.164 As for mothers themselves, they placed

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a high valuation on their role. For them, the family was the world, they measured their life stages in terms of its rhythms, and it was a space that they made their own. Their letters reveal that their children gave them great joy and pleasure as well as grief. They wrote of the amusing sayings of their offspring: ‘the little ones say their father is gone to buy some babies for them’.165 Women’s publications and private writings show that they valued their maternal experiences highly. In 1610, the gentlewoman Elizabeth Grymeston prefaced her publication of her prayers and meditations for her son with a powerful statement: My dearest sonne, there is nothing so strong as the force of loue; there is no loue so forcible as the loue of an affectionate mother to her naturall childe: there is no mother can eyther more affectionely shew her nature, or more naturally manifest her affection, than in aduising her children out of her own experience.166 Despite the social code of silence and self-effacement, the strength of her maternal feeling allowed Elizabeth Grymeston to retain the status of a good woman while acting in a radical way by publishing her work. As another author of maternal advice, Dorothy Leigh, declared, ‘motherly affection’ overrode all fears of censure. A mother’s love was beyond the bounds of reason. To save her children’s souls, ‘will not a Mother venture to offend the world’.167 Women wrote autobiographies, diaries and family histories for the sake of their children, or so they claimed. Rachel, Countess of Westmorland, bequeathed her instructions for a good life to her children in a manuscript book: ‘tho I know myself so unfitt to apeare among so maney wise & Larned parsons yett I am unwilling my Children should think I negleckted eather prayers or advise to make them both happey here or here after’.168 Although this evidence comes from literate women from the upper social levels, other women, less socially exalted, later in the century showed that they too valued their maternity. Women thanked God for their children, said one of the middling sort, Hannah Wolley.169 Elizabeth Walker, a minister’s wife, ‘considered children as the nursery of Families, the Church and Nation’.170 Maternity was a unique experience from which women claimed authority. As the Quaker Rebecca Travers testified, ‘none but a tender Mother can tell what it is to have Hopeful Children so soon taken from them’.171 Perhaps she was right, for subsequently historians have found it hard to recognize women’s grief at the deaths of their children. Because they were charged with the daily care of their children, and the running of the household,

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women developed practical knowledge of children’s behaviour. Personal experience was the basis for female authority on the matters maternal. ‘If it were mine’, was the refrain in one woman’s letters to her sister-in-law, she would not wean the child, but she would change the nurse, having found a brown ruddy complexioned nurse the best.172 Maternity gave women knowledge. As Quaker women declaimed, ‘we which have been Mothers of Children and Antient Women in Our Families, do know in the Wisdom of God, what will do in Families’.173 Maternal authority could be used beyond the household to justify intervention in the wider world. Thus, although patriarchal ideology shaped the changing social context in which women gave birth and cared for their children, biological and social motherhood offered women an important personal and social role. Creating life, women valued themselves and many found in their maternity their most rewarding human experiences.

Notes and references 1 Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born. Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London, 1977); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1967). 2 Phillippe Ariés, Centuries of Childhood (Harmondsworth, 1962). 3 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977). 4 Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-century England (New York, 1978), pp. 3–4. 5 Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London, 1984); Keith Wrightson, English Society, 1580–1680 (London, 1982), pp. 89–118; Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England. Modes of Reproduction 1300–1840 (Oxford, 1986), does not usually distinguish between mothers and fathers as parents either. 6 Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (London, 1976), p. 168. 7 Elisabeth Badinter, The Myth of Motherhood: An Historical View of the Maternal Instinct (London, 1981). 8 Betty S. Travitsky, ‘The new mother of the English Renaissance: her writings on motherhood’, in Cathy N. Davidson and E. M. Broner (eds), The Lost Tradition. Mothers and Daughters in Literature (New York, 1980), pp. 33–43; Brigitte H. E. Niestroj, ‘Modern individuality and the social isolation of mother and child’, Comparative Civilization Review, 15 (1987), 21–40. 9 For example, Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963); Nancy Friday, My Mother/My Self. The Daughter’s Search for Identity (New York, 1977).

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10 Lawrence Stone, ‘Only Women’, New York Review of Books, 11 April 1985, p. 21. 11 Gerda Lerner, ‘Review essay: motherhood in historical perspective’, Journal of Family History, 3 (1978), pp. 297–301. 12 See, for example, Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’, American History Review, 91 (1986), pp. 1053–75. 13 Rich, Of Woman Born. 14 See also Mireille Laget, ‘Childbirth in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France: obstetrical practices and collective attitudes’, in Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds) Medicine and Society in France. Selections from the Annales, Economies, Societies, Civilisations (Baltimore, 1980), pp. 137–9. 15 Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Women on top’, in her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975). 16 This paragraph is based upon Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge, 1980); A. McLaren, Reproductive Rituals. The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1984); Audrey Eccles, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1982); see also Chapter 1, this book. 17 Janet Blackman, ‘Popular theories of generation: the evolution of Aristotle’s Works. The study of an anachronism’, in John Woodward and David Richards (eds) Health Care and Popular Medicine In Nineteenth Century England: Essays in the Social History of Medicine (London, 1977), pp. 56–88. 18 Levinus Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature (London, 1658), p. 23. See also Nicholas Fontanus, The Womans Doctour (London, 1652), pp. 134, 193, for women’s desire for men’s seed. 19 J. P., The Fruitful Wonder: or, A Strange Relation from Kingston upon Thames (1674), p. 1. 20 Michael Dalton, The Country Justice (London, 1655), p. 351. In the next century, Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer (2 vols., London 1755), pp. 315–16, questioned Dalton’s argument about conception. 21 Lemnius, Secret Miracles of Nature, pp. 9–10. 22 BL, Huth Collection 50, esp. 34, The True Description of a Childe with Ruffes, 1566. 23 For example, Stephen Marshall, The Strong Helper . . . A Sermon Before the Honorable House of Commons (London, 1645), p. 30: ‘it is their Mother, in whose womb they have laine, whose breasts they have sucked’. William Charke, An Answer to . . . a Iesuite (London, 1579), sig. B8. 24 William Whately, Prototypes, or, the Primarie Precedent Presidents out of Genesis (London, 1640), p. 2; William Whately, A Care-cloth: or a Treatise of the Numbers and Troubles of Marriage (London, 1624), p. 52; George Mackenzie, The Laws and Customs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1678), p. 156.

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25 Thomas Bentley, The Monument of Matrones (London, 1582), vol. 3, p. 95. 26 Christopher Hooke, The Child-birth or Womans Lecture (London, 1590), n.p. 27 William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622), pp. 512–13; see also Chapter 5, this book. 28 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, vol. 10, Visitation of monasteries. Among the items lent to pregnant women were listed the girdles of St Bernard, of St Mary and St Alred (p. 139), a finger of St Stephen (p. 140) and a ring of St Ethelred (p. 143). 29 Erasmus criticized the excessive respect paid to the Virgin; P. N. Brooks, ‘A lily ungilded? Martin Luther, the Virgin Mary and the Saints’, Journal of Religious History, 13 (1986), p. 137; [P. Heylin], A Voyage of France (London, 1673), p. 29. 30 See especially, Gouge, Domestical Duties, pp. 282–94. Other examples include W. Perkins, Christian Oeconomie (London, 1609), pp. 134–5; H. Newcome, The Compleat Mother (London, 1695). 31 Lyndal Roper, ‘Luther: sex, marriage and motherhood’, History Today, 33 (1983), pp. 33–8. For a fascinating discussion of the impact of the Reformation on Catholic theology of motherhood, see C. W. Atkinson, ‘ “Your Servant, My Mother”: the figure of Saint Monica in the ideology of Christian motherhood’, in Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance M. Buchanan and Margaret R. Miles (eds), Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (Boston, Mass., 1985), pp. 152–8. 32 See Chapter 6, this book. 33 Dalton, The Country Justice, pp. 40–2; Richard Kilburne, Choice Presidents . . . Relating to the Office and Duty of a Justice of the Peace (London, 1685), pp. 45–6. 34 Margaret Spufford, ‘Puritanism and social control?’, in A. F. and J. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), p. 48. 35 Martin Ingram, ‘Ecclesiastical justice in Wiltshire, 1600–1640, with special reference to cases concerning sex and marriage’, unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1976, ch. 6; Spufford ‘Puritanism and social control?’, p. 42. 36 William Shepherd, The Whole Office of the Country Justice of Peace (London, 1650), p. 65; Bodl., MS Eng Misc e 479. Manuscript notes in Henry Townshend, The Compleat Justice (London, 1661), p. 48, indicate that a bastard child of parents able to keep it and not be a charge to the parish was outside the statute 18 Eliz. 2. 37 William Shepherd, An Epitome of all the Common and Statute Laws of this Nation Now in Force (London, 1656), p. 180. 38 William Whately, A Bride-bush (London, 1619). He recanted his views publicly in 1624.

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39 Keith Thomas, ‘The Puritans and adultery: the Act of 1650 reconsidered’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries. Essays in Seventeenth-century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 257–82, esp. 261. 40 John Towill Rutt (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton, Member in the Parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell (4 vols., London, 1828), vol. 1, pp. 204–6. 41 Keith Thomas, ‘The double standard’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1961), pp. 195–216. 42 Ingram, ‘Ecclesiastical justice in Wiltshire’, pp. 229–38. 43 Mary Tattlewell and Joan Hit-him-Home, The Womens Sharpe Revenge (London, 1640), pp. 88, 120, 133–4. 44 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London, 1971), pp. 38–9, 59–61. 45 Jean Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men. A History of Inter-professional Rivalries and Women’s Rights (New York, 1977), pp. 5–8. 46 John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 4, ch. 15, sections 20–22, (Philadelphia, 1980), vol. 21, ed. J. T. McNeill, pp. 1320–3. 47 W. Speed Hill (ed.) The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 2, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), Book 5, ch. 62. 1, vol. 2, pp. 268–89; Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 55–6. 48 Owen Stockton, Consolation in Life and Death . . . A Funeral Sermon . . . of Mrs Ellen Asty (London, 1681), p. 3; Edmund Barker, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Lady Elizabeth Capel (London, 1661), p. 32; also Two Sermons Preached at the Funerals of Mrs Elizabeth Montfort and of Dr Thomas Montfort Respectively (London?, 1632). 49 Samuel Clark, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons (London, 1683); see Katherine Clark, Elizabeth Wilkinson. 50 John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London, 1606), p. 196. 51 Considerations upon the Institution of Marriage (London, 1739), p. 6. 52 The Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley (London, 1787), iii. 53. 53 Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam. Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 83–4. 54 Shepherd, Whole Office, p. 96; William Shepherd, A Sure Guide for His Majesties Justices of the Peace (London, 1663), p. 253; John Keble, An Assistance to Justices of the Peace, (London, 1683). 55 Keble, Assistance to Justices, pp. 480–1. 56 Edwin Freshfield (ed.), The Account Book of the Parish of St Christopher le Stocks in the City of London 1662–1685 (London, 1895), pp. 12, 27, 31;

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Christ’s Hospital admitted children from the parish and sometimes sent them back to mothers to nurse; Admissions Register of Christs Hospital 1552–1599 (London, 1937), pp. 131, 145, 154, 171, 175, 190, original MS in Guildhall Library MS 12/818/1–3. 57 Shepherd, Sure Guide, p. 253. 58 George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, ‘Advice to a daughter’, J. P. Kenyon (ed.), Complete Works (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 291. 59 Gerrard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, ed. C. Hill (Cambridge, 1982), p. 329. 60 Calendar of State Papers Venetian, vol. 23, p. 377; vol. 24, p. 150. 61 Hertfordshire RO, Panshanger MS, Commonplace book of Sara Cowper, D/EP F37, ‘Woman’. I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr Sara Mendelson. 62 The XV Comforts of Rash and Inconsiderate Marriage . . . Done Out of French (London, 1682), p. 54. 63 Peter Chamberlen, A Voice In Rhama (London, 1647), sig. A2; Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men, chs 1 and 2. 64 About one quarter of all seventeenth-century marriages were remarriages for the bride or groom; Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 56. 65 Bruno Bettleheim, The Uses of Enchantment. The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York, 1977), pp. 66–73 and passim. 66 Patricia Crawford, ‘Checklist: women’s published writings, 1600–1700’, and Sara Mendelson, ‘Stuart women’s diaries and occasional memoirs’, in Mary Prior (ed.) Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (London, 1985). 67 Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671), p. 93. 68 E. A. Wrigley and R. Schofield, The Population History of England (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 255; Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, 2nd edn (London, 1971), pp. 85–6; Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, pp. 46–54. 69 Vivian Brodsky Elliott, ‘Single women in the London marriage market: age, status and mobility, 1598–1619’, in R. B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981), pp. 80–100. 70 An Ease for Overseers of the Poore (Cambridge, 1601), pp. 25–6. 71 Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1919), pp. 64–92; Michael F. Roberts, ‘Wages and wage-earners in England: the evidence of the wage assessments, 1563–1725’, unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1981, ch. 7, ‘The sexual division of wage labour’. 72 Valerie Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 159–62. 73 Fair Warning to the Murderers of Infants Being an Account of the Trial . . . of Mary Goodenough (London, 1692), p. 4.

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74 Mendelson, ‘Stuart women’s diaries’, p. 195. 75 Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Lincoln, The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie (Oxford, 1622). 76 Sarah Jinner, An Almanack and Prognostication for the Year of Our Lord, 1659 (London, 1659), preface to the reader. 77 Sharp, The Midwives Book. 78 Mary Trye, Medicatrix, or the Woman-physician (London, 1675). 79 Patricia Crawford, ‘Printed advertisements for women medical practitioners in London, 1670–1710’, Bulletin of the Society of the Social History of Medicine, 35 (1984), pp. 66–70. 80 C.f. Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 483, who claims that ‘human sex takes place mostly in the head’. 81 Jinner, Almanack, 1659, preface to reader. 82 Hannah Wolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, 3rd edn (London, 1682), p. 301. 83 A. L. Rowse, Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age (London, 1974), pp. 226–7. 84 Robert Latham and William Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (11 vols., London, 1970–1983), vol. 1, p. 1. See also Chapter 1, this book, p. 35. 85 OCRO, QS 1690, Ea/16; see also McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, p. 46. 86 Macfarlane, Marriage and Love, p. 51. 87 P. E. H. Hair, ‘Bridal pregnancy in rural England in earlier centuries’, Population Studies, 20 (1966), pp. 233–43; P. E. H. Hair, ‘Bridal pregnancy in earlier rural England further examined’ Population Studies, 24 (1970), pp. 59–70. 88 DRO Q/SB Box 58, 22. 89 Roger Hayden (ed.), The Record of a Church of Christ in Bristol, 1640–1687 (Bristol, 1974), pp. 213–16. 90 Quarter Sessions records in particular contain information about illegitimate maternity. 91 DRO, Q /SB Box 59, 33. 92 See also ibid., Box 58, 21, Deborah Brackley, 1651; McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, pp. 89–112. 93 R. W. Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, in J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England 1550–1800 (London, 1977), pp. 187–209. 94 Paul Slack (ed.), Poverty in Early-Stuart Salisbury (Devizes, 1975), p. 23. 95 DRO, Q /SB, Box 59, 1653.17.

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96 Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of the Comte de Gramont, trans. P. Quennell, (London, 1932), pp. 302–3. In the previous century, Mary Tudor’s need for an heir was said to be ‘the foundation of everything’; H. F. M. Prescott, Mary Tudor (London, 1953), p. 307. 97 BL, Harleian MS 6987, fo. 120v. 98 A. Walker, The Holy Life of Mrs Elizabeth Walker (London, 1690), p. 12. 99 CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, 22 May 1687 and passim; see also Appendix to Chapter 1, this book, ‘Attitudes to pregnancy, from a woman’s spiritual diary, 1687–8’. 100 WIL, MS 4338, W.IIa; see also MS 501, p. 553, to help conception, and BL, Sloane MS 3859, ‘barrenness’. 101 Latham and Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 1, p. 222 (26 July 1664). 102 James Orchard Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (2 vols., London, 1845), vol. 1, p. 416. 103 JRL, MUL, Legh of Lyme correspondence, Thomas Chicheley to Elizabeth Legh, 28 October 1671. 104 DWL, Henry MS 90.7.18, Matthew Henry to Philip Henry, 4 April 1693. 105 BL, Add. MS 37343, fo. 32. 106 NRO, Finch Hatton MS 1468. See also Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House (London, 1984), pp. 82–3. Algernon, Earl of Northumberland, wrote to the Countess of Leicester in 1636, ‘The haueing of an other Girle, I thought so little considerable, that I made no Haste in acquainting you with it’; Arthur Collins, Letters and Memorials of State (London, 1746), p. 450. I owe this reference to the kindness of Judith Richards. 107 Jinner, Almanack, 1659, preface to reader. 108 KAO, F 27, Journal of Elizabeth Turner, 5 May 1672. 109 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 130. 110 Mary Holden, The Womans Almanack for the Year . . . 1688 (London, 1688), p. 9. 111 McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, ch. 4. 112 Dorothy McLaren, ‘Nature’s contraceptive. Wet nursing and prolonged lactation: the case of Chesham, Buckinghamshire 1578–1601’, Medical History, 23 (1979), pp. 426–41; Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies, pp. 107–8. 113 See Chapter 5, this book, p. 147. 114 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 130; Thomas Hilder, Conjugall Counsell (London, 1653), pp. 17–18. 115 JRL, MUL, Legh family of Lyme, Sara Fountaine to Richard Legh, 20 March [1681?].

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116 Charles Jackson (ed.), The Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton (Durham, 1875), p. 140. 117 KAO, Journal of Elizabeth Turner, October 1662. 118 Mery E. Wiesner, ‘Early modern midwifery: a case study’, in Barbara A. Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986), p. 110. 119 J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 120–1. 120 Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley, p. 41. Lady Anne Waller was very distressed at the death of her midwife, ‘one that had bin long carefull and very loving to me’, two days before her baby was due; E. W. Harcourt (ed.), The Harcourt Papers (7 vols., Oxford, 1880–1905), vol. 1, p. 177. 121 Borthwick Institute, Borthwick Prob. Reg. 22 pt 11, fo. 538v, Will of Jane Magham, prob. date 22 May 1584. I owe this reference to the kindness of Claire Cross. 122 Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, pp. 96–7, 11 April 1716. DWL, Henry MS 4.29 (1707); Alan Macfarlane (ed.) The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683 (London, 1976), p. 615; Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenthcentury Clergyman. An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 85, 115, 116, 117, 155. See also Mendelson, ‘Stuart women’s diaries’, pp. 196–7. 123 Walker, Holy Life of Mrs Elizabeth Walker, pp. 179–82; Charles Severn (ed.), Diary of the Rev. John Ward (London, 1839), p. 102. 124 See, for example, account for moneys disbursed for Elizabeth Smith at the time of her delivery, for two midwives as well as a doctor and nurse; OCRO, QS 1687, Ea/21. 125 Adrian Wilson, ‘Participant or patient? Seventeenth century childbirth from the mother’s point of view’, in R. Porter (ed.), Patients and Practitioners. Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-industrial Society (Cambridge, 1985), p. 137; see also his ‘Childbirth in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1982. 126 The Accomplisht Physician, the Honest Apothecary, and the Skilful Chyrurgeon (London, 1670), p. 37. 127 Philip Stubbes, A Christal Glasse for Christian Women (London, 1591), pp. 4–5; Elizabeth Joceline, The Mothers Legacie to her Unborne Child (London, 1624), sig. a5. 128 Roger Schofield, ‘Did the mothers really die? Three centuries of maternal mortality in “the world we have lost” ’ in Lloyd Bonfield, Richard M. Smith, and Keith Wrightson (eds), The World We Have Gained. Histories Of Population and Social Structure (Oxford 1986), p. 259; Mendelson, ‘Stuart women’s diaries’, pp. 196–7.

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129 Marjorie Hope Nicholson (ed.) Conway Letters. The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, 1642–1682 (London, 1930), pp. 152–3, 154. J. B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs Savage (London, 1821), p. 286. 130 Walker, Holy Life of Mrs Elizabeth Walker, pp. 63, 93. See also MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, pp. 77–8, 81–5, 159–60. 131 KAO, Journal of Elizabeth Turner, September 1676; NRO, MS West Misc. 35, ‘Book of advice to the children . . . written by several Lady Westmorlands and their ancestors in the early 17th century’; Anne, wife of Sir William Waller, thanked God for her child ‘which was born with all itts parts and limbs’; Harcourt Papers, vol. 1, p. 173. 132 For example, F. W. Bennitt (ed.), ‘The diary of Isabella, wife of Sir Roger Twysden, Baronet, of Royden Hall, East Peckham, 1645–1651’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 51 (1939), p. 117; Northampton RO, MS West. Misc 35, Book of Lady Westmorelands. 133 R. Schofield and E. A. Wrigley, ‘Infant and child mortality in the late Tudor and early Stuart period’, in C. Webster (ed.), Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 61–96; R. Schofield, ‘Comment on infant mortality’, Local Population Studies, 9 (1972), p. 49. 134 Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 105. 135 Williams, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs Savage, p. 287. 136 Mary Cary, The Little Horns Doom (London, 1651), pp. 289–90. 137 Sara Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies (Brighton, 1987), p. 88. 138 Dorothy McLaren’s doctorate was awarded in 1975 and subsequently she published ‘Fertility, infant mortality and breastfeeding in the seventeenth century’, Medical History, 22 (1978), pp. 378–96; ‘Marital fertility and lactation 1570–1720’, in Mary Prior (ed.) Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (London, 1985), pp. 22–53; Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies, esp. part II. On feeding, see also Chapter 5, this book, pp. 147–54. 139 KAO, Journal of Elizabeth Turner. For further examples of mothers’ comments on their breastfeeding, see Chapter 5 this book, pp. 149–50. 140 NRO, Finch Hatton MS 1480, Alice Hatton to brother, 15 May [1678]. 141 BL, Portland loan 29/76, Abigail Harley to her husband Sir Edward, 30 November 1669; BL, Harleian MS 4762, fo. 16. 142 Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies, pp. 153–5, and chs 5–7, passim. 143 See Chapter 5, this book, pp. 147–54. 144 BL, Harleian MS 386, fo. 182, 10 May 1639. 145 Clinton, The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, p. 19 (original emphasis).

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146 BL, Harley papers, Portland loan 29/76, 3, Abigail Harley to her husband Sir Edward Harley, 8 November [16]80; for further evidence about nurses’ attitudes, see Chapter 5, this book, p. 151. 147 DWL, MS Henry 4.25, Sarah Savage to Hannah Whitton, 2 April 1734. 148 Katherine Chidley, The Justification of the Independent Churches of Christ (London, 1641), p. 57; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Court Mainly from Essex Archdiaconal Records (Chelmsford, 1973), p. 160. 149 Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society. A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), p. 197. 150 T. L. Underwood, ‘Child dedication services among British Baptists in the seventeenth century’, Baptist Quarterly, 23 (1969), pp. 166–9. 151 NUL, letter book of the Earl of Clare, Ne C 15 404, p. 272 (21 November 1631). 152 KAO, Journal of Elizabeth Turner, 14 July 1672. 153 Douglas G. Greene (ed.), The Meditations of Lady Elizabeth Delaval Written Between 1662 and 1671 (Durham, 1978), pp. 74–5. 154 Thomas Croker (ed.), Autobiography of Mary, Countess of Warwick, (Percy Society, 1848), pp. 28–31. One of the attractions of a suitor to Anne Rich was ‘the nearness of the neighbourhood’ in which she would live. Anthony Walker, The Virtuous Woman Found (London, 1678), p. 93. 155 Bathswa Makin, in Mary R. Mahl and Helene Koon (eds), The Female Spectator: English Women Writers Before 1800 (Bloomington, Ind., 1977), p. 125. 156 For examples, see Chapter 5, this book, p. 154. 157 William Gouge, for example, had strictures upon those parents who visited a daughter when their son-in-law was out: Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 326. 158 Julius P. Gilson (ed.), Lives of Lady Anne Clifford Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (1590–1676) and of Her Parents Summarized by Her Self (London, 1916), pp. 28–9. 159 Ibid., p. 61. Margaret rejoiced when a grandson was born to bear her ‘noble father’s name’, and when a granddaughter was named after her: ibid., p. 57. 160 BL, Additional MS 42, 849, fo. 50. 161 Arthur Searle (ed.) Barrington Family Letters, 1628–1632 (London, 1983). 162 Williams, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs Savage, pp. 310, 285, 314, 329; see also Chapter 6, this book, pp. 185–92. 163 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 275. 164 JRL, MUL, Legh of Lyme correspondence, W. Russell to E. Legh, 8 October 1695. 165 BL, Portland loan 28/83, 3, Brilliana Stanley to her brother, Edward Harley, 10 January [1660].

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166 Elizabeth Grymeston, Miscelanea. Meditations. Memoratives (London, 1610), sig. A3; Crawford, ‘Women’s printed writings’, pp. 221–2, 268–9. 167 Dorothy Leigh, The Mothers Blessing (London, 1616), p. 10. 168 NRO, West. Misc. MS 35, fo. 45v. 169 Hannah Wolley, A Supplement to the Queen-like Closet (London, 1674), p. 140. 170 Walker, Holy Life of Mrs Elizabeth Walker, p. 66. 171 Rebecca Travers, in Joan Witrowe, The Work of God in a Dying Maid (London, 1677), p. 5. 172 BL, Harleian MS 383, fos 39, 45, 55. 173 A Living Testimony from the Power and Spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Our Faithful Womens Meeting (London, 1686), p. 3.

CHAPTER 4

Blood and paternity

S

imonds D’Ewes, reflecting upon his motives in marrying, had an eye to the future: his chief aim, next to religion, ‘was to enrich my posterity with good blood’.1 ‘Good blood’ here was both a substance and a symbol, tying together consanguinity, property, honour, social status and parenthood. Blood connections between fathers and children are still of major public and private concern. Media stories of ‘Dads’ who want money back after DNA tests ‘proved’ that the children they had supported were not their ‘own flesh and blood’ demonstrate a continuing obsession with biological paternity rather than social fatherhood.2 In early modern times, becoming the father of a legitimate child enhanced a man’s status with his kin and his neighbours: it demonstrated that he was a complete man, blessed by God. A childless marriage, on the other hand, reflected ill upon a man so that he lived ‘in great discontent, esteeming himself to be in hatred with God and nature’; lacking the comfort of children, ‘for which chiefly he married’, he was shamed before other men, ‘seeming himselfe to be lesse then a man’ (emphasis mine).3 But without a DNA test, it was impossible for an early modern man to know that the child he was to father was indeed of his begetting, a child of his own blood. Nor could he easily defend himself against allegations of illicit paternity. Maternity, by contrast, was certain, for until the birth of the first IVF baby in 1978, she who gave birth was both the generative and gestational mother (and usually the social mother as well).4 If paternity was so uncertain, why did men insist that it mattered?

Cultural discourses: blood, medicine and law Cultural discourses influenced people’s ideas about becoming and being a father. Medicine, the law and religion all defined aspects of paternity and

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shaped men’s understandings.5 The rule of the father, patriarchalism, was immensely important in political thought. Yet historians have written relatively little about what it meant to a man to be the father of a child. There have been studies of masculinities and sexualities,6 but only recently have historians begun to study men in relation to fatherhood.7 Blood and paternity were topics of widespread general interest. ‘Blood’ was the key concept by which early modern people understood the relationship between a man, his children and his kin. ‘Blood’ was a real physical bodily essence from which sperm were produced: ‘the seed is nothing else but Blood, made White by the Naturall Heat, and an Excrement of the third Digestion’.8 Medical theorists advised men to regulate their marital sexuality for the sake of their posterity. Some gentlemen certainly took note. In 1680 John Evelyn wrote a lengthy letter advising his son John about his marital sexual behaviour: he should avoid intercourse during his wife’s monthly purgations, ‘not only for the indecency & pollution; but for that the conception (which yet frequently then happens) dispose to Leaprosie, & markes the Children with evident signes of the parents incontinency.’9 Popular medical treatises elaborated advice about begetting children, especially sons. A man should let his wife lie on her right side so that the seed would fall there, ‘and a boy will be made’;10 greater heat was required for the production of a male;11 sexual activity in the morning would produce males.12 ‘Blood’ was also a metaphor for a social relationship, invoked to represent a ‘natural’ kinship link, different from the social bonds of affinity created through marriage. ‘Blood’ could also stand symbolically for a line of descent, setting the nobility apart from other inferior groups. Degrees of honour could be calculated between the blood of different families. In the Scroop family, the mother’s blood ‘was not so much to their honour as what flowed in their veins from the loins of that noble Lord their father’.13 Older blood was more honourable. A joke about ‘the ancienter blood’ reversed the normal preeminence of the eldest son, alleging that the younger son was ‘the ancienter Gentleman’, since born of the older man.14 Through his blood, a father transmitted qualities of character to his child. Fathers wanted to bequeath their property to the heirs of their bodies and blood: ‘Men have alwaies laboured to live to all succeeding Ages, in their Posterity’.15 The greater their wealth and status, the more men wanted sons to inherit their names, titles and property. Throughout society, men congratulated each other on the births of sons, ‘an Increase of your Blood’.16 A son and heir gave a man focus and purpose in life. In the

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dedicatory preface to Charles II of his treatise on forestry, John Evelyn retold the story of Ulysses returning home disguised and finding his father planting trees. Laertes, though clearly too old to enjoy their fruit, justified his planting as ‘against my Son Ulysses comes home’. Evelyn urged all landowners ‘as soon as they get children, they would seriously think of this Work of Propagation also.’17 Numerous contemporary examples attest both to this drive to ‘get children’, and the dangers of ignoring such responsibility. Contemporaries would have explained Charles II’s dilettantism in the 1670s in terms of his lack of a son and heir.18 A spectacular case of a change in lifestyle was that of Horatio Townshend of Norfolk, whose pattern of increasing debt during his youth and first childless marriage was reversed after he remarried in 1673 and his wife bore a son: ‘God’s owning his famelly now at last has taken a great impresion on him’.19 Increasingly, Townshend began a programme of economies. He applied the money from his wife’s portion to redeem his debts and thereby reduced the burden of interest, which was at around 6 per cent. He was able to consolidate lands for the inheritance of his eldest son, Charles, and set aside growing sums of money for his two younger sons.20 Lower down the social scale, a clergyman ceased trying to increase his estate after some of his children died.21 A man valued his children as a form of immortality. He hoped that his ‘name’ and his ‘blood’ would live on in his descendants.22 ‘Let my son be thy beloved’, wrote Sir Walter Ralegh in farewell to his wife, ‘for he is parte of me, and I live in him’.23 Reactions to the death of a son and heir articulate some of the meanings of the child’s life. In 1664 the Earl of Warwick’s chaplain, Anthony Walker, lamented the death of the Earl’s only son as a blow to his immortality: ‘But now the Family is dead, and fallen with Him, and the Line, and Name, will fayle, by his dying childless’.24 Simonds D’Ewes, whose own parents celebrated his birth in 1602 as ‘the birth of a masculine heir’, was devastated at the death of his young son Clopton. D’Ewes ‘had also some more sad presaging thoughts that God would not vouchsafe me any male offspring to leave behind me, to inherit my name and perpetuate my family’.25 Terrifyingly for the man who had vested his hopes of immortality in his children, in certain cases of felonies and treason, the law could deem his blood corrupt and render his descendants incapable of inheriting: ‘his Children become base and ignoble, and his blood so stained and corrupted that they cannot inherit to him or any other’.26 While the king’s pardon could ‘cleanse the corruption of the Blood’ of children born after the judgment, only parliament could restore the inheritance rights of those born before.27

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Primogeniture may have mattered less below the gentry, where inheritance customs were more equal. By the customs of many boroughs and cities, courts of orphans divided a freeman’s estate (apart from real property) into three: one third for a widow, one third to be divided among all legitimate children, and a third to be bestowed at the will of the testator.28 Nevertheless, even below the gentry, some yeomen favoured their eldest sons. In his will of 1645, Henry Best directed how a bequest of £500 should be divided if his second son died: £200 was to be shared among four daughters, but his eldest son John was to receive over half, £300.29 Some fathers endeavoured to provide for all their children equally. In February 1644, in the Gloucester church courts, witnesses told how one Cliffe bought his son and heir a copyhold worth £40, and wanted to convey his freehold land to his three daughters by his will. Cliffe did not want his son to put his daughters from the land: ‘it would goe very much against his conscience if his sonne shoulde enjoy the same & put by his Sisters. And his reason (as this deponent verilie believes) was for that he had no other way to make provision for his three Daughters.’30 Although most men wanted sons and male kin to inherit, sometimes the honour of a father’s blood might triumph over gender. A daughter’s rights could override those of more distant male kin, as they did in the Tudor period in determining the descent of the crown: ‘the right and honour of the blood’ was more to be considered than ‘the sexe not accustomed (otherwise) to intermeddle with publicke affaires’.31 Distinctions were made between whole and half blood: a daughter of ‘the whole Blood’ was preferred before a younger son of the half blood.32 Here Francis Bacon contrasted English inheritance customs, which differentiated between sons and nephews as heirs, with those of the Italians: ‘so they be of the lump, they [the Italians] care not though they pass not through their own body.’33 However, by the eighteenth century, daughters’ inheritance rights declined, as Eileen Spring has persuasively argued. Over the early modern period, she found that men came to prefer inheritance through the patriline, rather than through daughters of their own blood.34 Yet how could a man be confident of his patriline, and know for certain that his children were indeed of his own blood and begetting? Medical theories about conception provided little reassurance. Some argued that paternity could be determined on the basis of an observable likeness of father and child: a neighbour claimed that Anne Trevis’s son was the bastard of William Carricke for ‘he was as like him as yf he had beene spatt out of his mouth’.35 But other theories could explain the similarity. Maternal imagination was a powerful force which could shape the features of the

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child in the womb. Likeness could occur because a pregnant woman dwellt upon the image of her husband. (Similarly, any disturbances or frights could produce monstrous and deformed children.)36 Another belief was that the woman’s womb was like a mould: after the first child, all subsequent children would be alike.37 Lemnius summed up the widespread view that neither ‘by the Law of Nature nor by publick consent of Mankind’ could paternity be determined on the basis of likeness.38 Other popular medical theories destabilized paternity: there was a widespread suspicion that twins may have had different fathers. Thus, in 1720, a midwife who delivered Hannah Lyly of two female children did not rest satisfied with the name of one man, threatening Hannah that ‘she was on the brinke of Eternity and if she did not confesse the whole truth she would goe away and leave her’. Hannah finally disclosed the name of the second man.39 Although courts took evidence from midwives present at the birth about the child’s paternity, they were uneasy at determining so important a matter merely on the words of women. At common law, the children of illicit sexual activity were the children of no man. Only if men fully controlled their wives’ sexuality could they be confident that the children born within marriage were indeed their own.40 Men’s honour was involved in the legitimacy of their heirs. Furthermore, if a wife had a reputation for sexual infidelity, then a husband might find himself mocked as a cuckold, and the father of a bastard.41 A child’s paternity was always subject to gossip. Words and talk, the exchange of information about people and events, had a respected function in the community as a means of establishing certain canons of morality and neighbourly behaviour.42 Since women had a significant role in gossip, and exclusively controlled the actual delivery of babies (until the advent of male midwives for the élite around the end of the seventeenth century), women’s words could be crucial in establishing paternity. Gossip could destabilize paternity. The common law took a pragmatic approach to determining paternity, deeming all children born in a marriage to be the husband’s. This legal doctrine was a convenient fiction: a known convention, it could save investigation into matters that were ultimately uncertain. But because people recognized the fictionality of the law, it created as many problems as it appeared to resolve. Firstly, fathers might be forced to exclude children of their own blood born before their marriage, depending on whether the case came before canon or civil law. (The church courts deemed the child whose parents subsequently married to be legitimate, but according to secular law he could never be so.)43 Nevertheless there was a widespread perception that marriage after the birth of a son legitimated him as heir. Thus, although

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the law considered that George Monk, Duke of Albermarle, died without issue, because his son Christopher was born before his parents’ marriage, Christopher was able to inherit because his parents lived as man and wife, and Monk styled him in his will as his son and heir.44 In the Lucas family, lands had to be settled by will on Thomas and Elizabeth’s eldest son, because he was born before their marriage.45 Secondly, both canon and civil law would force a husband to accept all children born to his wife as his own, unless he could prove otherwise. Such a proof might be that the alleged father was only eight years old, and therefore incapable of begetting a child, or was beyond the four seas for the period.46 Even if a child was born one day after the spousals for a woman’s remarriage, both civil and canon law deemed it to be legitimate.47 Complex legal doctrines were translated into simple popular sayings: ‘the child follows the mother’; ‘my cow, my calfe: the bull is not regarded’.48 Thus any sons born of a wife’s adultery, ‘not of his blood’, might inherit a man’s name, land and title. Propertied men regarded the intrusion of a spurious child as a form of theft, and to add to their troubles, before 1670 no court could grant any separation that allowed them to remarry and beget heirs. The problem of adulterine bastardy became more acute during the seventeenth century, because wealthy men sought to aggrandize their families by providing lavishly for their heirs: but they wanted to ensure that the patrimony was not stolen by the product of a wife’s adultery.49 Parliament seemed to offer a remedy, for Coke confidently asserted in his Institutes that the absolute power of Parliament could bastardize a child who was legally legitimate as well as confer legitimacy on ‘one that is illegitimate’.50 Thus some wealthy propertied men looked to Parliament for remedies for their wives’ adulteries, seeking either permission to remarry, or to bastardize her children. In 1650 Parliament passed a law making adultery – defined as the adultery of the married woman – punishable with death, but only a handful of prosecutions were launched.51 In 1656, one gentleman, Edward Scot, appealed to the Protectorate Parliament. MPs appreciated the problems caused by his wife’s alleged elopement and her bearing ‘children by other men’. MPs were sympathetic to Scot’s ‘sad case’, since bastards’ might inherit his estate. Since Scot was a gentleman ‘of ancient family’, it was especially galling ‘to have a posterity put upon him that is none of his own.’52 Divorce by Act of Parliament as a remedy for adulterine bastardy was initiated in 1670 in Lord Roos’ case. Earlier, in 1664 Parliament had bastardized all Roos’ wife’s children on the basis of her adultery. The act of 1670 permitted Roos to remarry.53 In 1690 George Petyt, in his treatise on the power of parliament, reaffirmed the principle that parliament might bastardize a child that was legitimate

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by law, although begotten by adultery, citing Coke as his authority.54 In the eighteenth century, a father applied to Parliament to dissolve the marriage of his under-age son and heir, ‘to preserve the said Family from being extinct.’ His son had obtained a separation a mensa et thoro, but his daughter-in-law’s adulteries threatened the descent of the family’s blood unless his son was permitted to remarry.55 At all social levels, a wife’s adultery reflected ill upon her husband: he had failed to sustain order in his family, and was defeated in the male competition to perpetuate his ‘blood’ line. He laid himself open to public shame, as Laura Gowing has shown. A lover’s sexual boasting humiliated a husband: ‘it was a prettie boy and that her . . . husband was never able to gett such a childe’.56 Particularly goading to male honour were tales of wives who took advantage of the law. In the notorious case of Lord Roos, it was said that his pregnant wife had taunted him, saying that ‘A better man than you got it. I will make you father it in this world, and let me answer it in the world to come.’57 Ballads ridiculed a cuckolded husband who ‘rockes the Cradle, when the Child’s none of his own’.58 Popular literature told of cheating wives who threatened husbands with the consequences: ‘I would Father no Brats that were not of my own getting’, the eponymous hero of Defoe’s novel Colonel Jack plainly told his wife.59 Cases of adulterine bastardy before the courts were rare. Most husbands preferred to bear the costs of their wives’ illegitimate children rather than sue the lovers for maintenance. However, in one London case in 1675, a husband insisted on his wife’s lover giving him a bond to maintain and provide for his wife Katharine’s lying-in, the christening and maintenance for the child of 3s. weekly for a year, 2s. thereafter.60 In a very few cases, the blood of the father was deemed so noble that a mother took pride in her illegitimate child’s paternity. The Duchess of Castlemaine was ‘not willing her children should be esteemed her husband’s own’ because Charles II was her lover.61 Charles acknowledged fathering an illegitimate son by Lucy Walters, gave him a dukedom, and enjoyed Monmouth’s company. Even so, the king was at pains to publish that his son was illegitimate and had no claims to the crown.62 A few powerful noblemen had their illegitimate children brought up in their own households. In the eighteenth century the Duke of Devonshire kept both his mistress and her child in his household with his wife, and he gave his illegitimate daughter a more generous marriage portion than his legitimate daughter.63 Many remarrying widows were concerned to protect their property from their new husbands, fearing lest stepfathers should prove unkind to the children and deprive them of their inheritances.64 Since stepfathers lacked

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a blood connection, contemporaries did not believe that they could love the children as ‘their own’. In a typical poor law case of 1656, the Essex justices asserted that John Goodwin, who had married a widow with three children, could not be expected to keep them after she died: ‘the said Goodwin being father in Law [stepfather] only to the said Children cannot by Law bee charged with their maintenance’. The children were thus further deprived, for their stepfather was unable to help them when the overseers moved the orphans to another parish, the place where ‘both their naturall Parents’ had had a settlement.65 Although less was expected of men as fathers if there was no blood connection, in practice, some stepfathers showed themselves to be affectionate towards their step-children, just as others were hostile. Lucy Hutchinson recounted that after her father’s first wife died, he had ‘a fatherly kindnesse’ for her children by a previous marriage, and even brought up some of her grandchildren in his own house.66 Household census records suggest that some men were prepared to provide for children who were not ‘of their blood’. The 1724 vicar’s account of Puddletown included the case of Thomas Wellspring, a shepherd, who lived with his wife and one son born in 1707: ‘She hath one Son by a former Husband in the House . . . and 3 more at Service.’ The record suggests that the shepherd had cared for his step-sons for around 20 years.67 However, McIntosh’s studies of the wills of 163 testators of Havering, in Essex, concluded that bequests to stepchildren were usually smaller.68 God-parentage created spiritual kinship, a relationship that was of less importance after the Reformation. The liturgy generally reduced the responsibilities to spiritual and educational ones, with less expectation of physical care if the child were orphaned. Some Protestants objected to god-parentage altogether, and during the Civil Wars, the Directory of Public Worship removed them from the liturgy. However, many resisted these changes in the baptismal ceremony, suggesting that godparentage was generally respected.69 In the post-Reformation period, parents frequently chose people of higher social status as god-parents, in the hope that he or she would serve as the child’s patron. A godfather’s obligations were not onerous – a gift, employment, or a memento in his will – but, as Cressy observed, his aid could be evoked in times of need.70 However, the responsibilities were largely educational, and I have found no instances of godfathers being expected to take in their godchildren if they were orphans, unless the godfather had another kinship connection, such as being an uncle. In some instances, the church courts would name guardians to be responsible for the physical care of orphans.71

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The adoption of children was a form of fatherhood that most legal authorities dismissed as insignificant in early modern England.72 The absence of a blood connection between a man and an adoptee may have been one reason why English society did not provide a legal structure for adoptive fathers. Apparent cases of adoptions in England actually seem more like fostering out. In 1571 Christ’s Hospital gave the child Nicholas Baker to a couple at Westminster ‘which they have taken as their own child for ever and discharged this House thereof.’ However, the hospital gave them 34s. 8d. for boarding the child at 8d. per week.73 In another instance, Christ’s was prepared to place a fatherless ten-year-old boy, Erasmus Harding, out for adoption to Richard Aston with whom he had been living for two years. Aston ‘hath taken him for his own child’, they noted, but some months later were forced to readmit Erasmus ‘for that he was very ill used by them that took him’. It seems that the child had a mother all the time: ‘His mother took him for good and all.’74 The poor law made it difficult for those who had fostered orphaned children to adopt them, for the parish refused to allow the child a settlement. The only way in which a de facto adoption with settlement privileges could occur was if the husband of the wet-nurse took the child as his apprentice, since after 1662 apprenticeship could confer a settlement. An eighteenth-century Berkshire tradesman who did ‘not have any child of his own’ requested that a foundling, Paul Holton, be apprenticed to him. The tradesman had ‘taken a likeing to the child and have put him to school’.75 Subsequently, Paul purchased the business, became an Alderman, and was commemorated by a plaque in Wokingham church.76 Nothing is known of the boy’s original parents.

The fictions of the law Two cases explore contrasting aspects of the legal fiction of paternity. The first, a chilling story from a gentry family in the reign of James I, demonstrates one husband’s response to children whom he believed were spurious. In the second case, in 1688, widespread knowledge of the fictionality of the law of paternity assisted in the denial of inheritance to the legal heir to the throne. The story of the More family, which Donald Harris has unravelled, tells of the incredible measures taken by Samuel More, a Shropshire gentleman, to cast off children who were legally his but whom he believed were spurious.77 In 1611 Katharine More, a 25-year-old heiress, married Samuel More, her young cousin aged 16.78 Four children were born: Ellen, in May

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1612, Jasper, in August 1613, Richard, November 1614, and Mary in April 1616.79 In 1616, Samuel applied to separate from his wife Katharine, alleging ‘the common fame’ of her adulterous life. Katharine then applied to have her marriage with Samuel declared invalid, claiming that she viewed herself as the wife of a tenant of her father’s, Jacob Blakeway, a lesser yeoman. So far as Katharine was concerned, her children were those of Blakeway, her ‘real’ husband. A complex series of suits ensued, the gist of which is roughly as follows: Samuel separated himself from Katharine, and successfully contested the annulment of their marriage (if his marriage to Katharine had been annulled on the grounds of her pre-contract to Blakeway, Samuel would have lost her property). By having the church courts find her to be an adulterous wife, Samuel More gained a legal separation, control of the children, and kept all the property. Why did he wait for five years after the marriage? It may be that he needed to be 21 years of age to pursue the legal suits in his own name.80 In 1616, at the outset of his law suits, Samuel declined to take any responsibility for the children. His parents refused to take them in, to avoid Katherine’s slanders, if any of the children had died, ‘of beinge murtherers of them’, and to rid themselves of the sight of ‘such a spurious brood’. Samuel sent the four children to be cared for by some of his father’s tenants.81 In 1619, Samuel took action against Blakeway, who fled after £400 damages for his sexual relationship with Samuel’s wife, Katharine, were awarded against him. Samuel then sought a separation a mensa et thoro from Katharine, taking his suit to the Court of Audience at St Pauls’ in London. In 1619, the court granted Samuel’s petition. On 8 July 1620 Katharine’s appeal failed.82 No sooner had Samuel triumphed at law than in mid-July 1620 he shipped the four children, aged from four to eight years, on the Mayflower, assisted by Lord Zouche, a member of the Virginia company. Three of the children soon died; one, Richard, survived in the colony.83 What happened to Katharine, and when she died, is unknown, but Samuel remarried in 1625, and his ‘own’ children inherited. Rumours that his second marriage was bigamous (because Katharine was still alive at the time) were still circulating in 1708 in a dispute over an entailed property. No one mentioned the legal heir, the descendants of the surviving son of the first marriage. Samuel More used the argument of paternal likeness in 1622 to deny his fatherhood, claiming that ‘the apparent likeness & resemblance of most of the said children in their visages and lineaments of their bodies to the said Blakeway’ exonerated him from any fatherly responsibility.84 More’s was not an isolated instance. Lower down the social scale, in February 1657 the Middlesex justices heard of a father sending his child

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to the American colonies. John Hornold, referring ambiguously to a child as his ‘own’, confessed ‘that he, intendinge to sende a Child, whome he ownes to be his owne’, to Virginia, sent a woman servant to seize the child, ‘an infant about foure yeares of age’, from his nurse without the knowledge of his mother. The watermen witnesses, who enquired why the father was shipping his infant son away to Virginia, ‘to the endangering of his life’, were told that the child was heir to £800 a year, and that his mother had been unfaithful in his father’s absence. Subsequently, the child’s maternal grandfather undertook to make provision for him.85 Again, a father protested against the law that made a boy legally ‘his own’, and was prepared to hazard the child’s life because the boy was not of his blood. The inheritance of bastard or spurious children was most feared in the case of the monarchy. The law tried to shore up the legitimacy of the heir, in the face of contemporary inability to determine whether the child was indeed of the king’s blood, by making it treason for any to have sexual relations with the king’s wife, daughters or daughters-in-law. Anxieties about spurious heirs were publicly discussed from the late 1670s, when it became clear that the Catholic James was likely to inherit his brother’s throne. The Whigs feared that James’s wife, Mary of Modena, might perfectly well, as she did in 1688, bear James a son. Any son would be Catholic, displacing the King’s two Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, in the succession. Consequently, the Whigs, believing that religion and government would be endangered in such a case, began to circulate histories of spurious children. In 1687 William Howell republished a sixteenth-century story that he had revived in 1679, asserting that the Catholic Mary Tudor, seeking to put aside the claims of the Protestant Elizabeth, sought to foist a spurious child on the nation: she ‘would have mothered another bodies Child; but King Philip scorn’d to Father it’.86 Pamphlets recounted tales of parents so desperate for male heirs that they would bring in other children. The effect of the tales was to make child substitution imaginatively plausible. Additionally, after the Prince of Wales was born in 1688, two other powerful myths were invoked: the wicked stepmother and Catholic atrocities. Mary of Modena, a stepmother, was dispossessing the children of the King’s first wife (Mary and Anne) in favour of her own child ( James Edward). Over more than a century, Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda had created a climate of violent and hysertical Anti-Catholicism. In 1680 Catholics could be demonized and James discredited as a father. Subsequently, a large section of the population acquiesced in the Whig-promoted belief that the Prince of Wales was indeed a spurious child.

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The power of gossip in London was immeasurable. We know that tales could sweep London like wildfire: in this case, the more gossip about laundresses, warming pans, and so on, the greater the doubts. For a range of political reasons James was never able to establish his son’s legitimacy to the nation at large, although the allegation that his son was spurious reflected grave dishonour on both James and his wife.87 Thus different stories justified the invitation to William of Orange to invade, of which the most popular was that the Prince was a warming-pan baby. Either he had been smuggled into the palace and substituted for the daughter whom Queen Mary had borne, or Mary had feigned her entire pregnancy, and brought in another woman’s son. James indignantly but to little effect protested that ‘he hopes none would presume to think him so Barbarous as to impose a Child upon the Nation, or to injure his daughters’.88 Other stories attacked the chastity of Mary, suggesting that the Prince of Wales was begotten by various fathers, including Catholic priests. Again, these stories reflected dishonourably upon the king as a man incapable of fathering a son, and of failing in his duties as a patriarch to assert his authority over his wife. The King’s critics preferred to believe that James had no blood connection with the prince rather than rethink their ideas about the source of monarchical power.

Fathers and children of ‘base’ blood So far I have argued that blood was believed to give a man a natural bond with his children. How did blood connections affect a man’s fathering of children whom he begot outside marriage? Again, the law was involved in men’s attitudes to illegitimate children, for the very concept of legitimacy required that there should be a definition of illegitimacy.89 The common law defined as a bastard any child born outside marriage: the child was of no man, a fatherless child. Yet more than common law was involved, for canon law, the moral law, acknowledged the father–child relationship; the prohibitions against sexual relations between consanguine kin were considered binding, and marriage between legitimate and illegitimate siblings was incest. From 1601, the poor law brought a third form of law into play: ‘bastards’ were to be provided for in the parish in which they were born and so became a burden on the poor rates.90 Men as justices, parish officers and payers of poor rates all expended considerable efforts in finding fathers for illegitimate children (despite the common law’s view that the children were fatherless). If men would not

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marry the mothers, then justices would try to ensure that these fathers should at least pay maintenance for their ‘bastards’.91 Illicit paternity was thus an uneasy point where private or secret sexual relations intersected with public social relations. Religion and the law encouraged fathers in only the most minimal responsibility for their illegitimate offspring. When men negotiated over their ‘bastards’, they used the cultural scripts available to them which were about their honour, credit and reputation. Men’s stories and narratives about their illegitimate children thus reveal more about men and their families than they do about relationships with their children.92 Confronted with allegations of paternity, wealthy men, as always, had more options. Men of honourable blood might choose to deny their relationship to the child, since the sin of illicit sexuality corrupted the nobility of blood. As a 1573 translation of Fortescue explained, if a bastard ‘bee evill, that commethe to hym by nature. For it is thought that the base childe draweth a certaine corruption and staine from the sinne of his parentes’.93 Just as many popular sayings celebrated ‘good blood’ that conveyed honour and virtue – ‘good blood cannot lie’94 – so popular wisdom denigrated the base blood of bastards – ‘Bastards by chance are good, by nature bad’.95 (Early modern society appears not to attribute the ‘bad’ blood to either mother or father exclusively.)96 Although the nobleman’s blood that flowed in the veins of his bastard was dishonoured, it was still superior blood; a king’s bastard was more honourable than the legitimate child of a labourer. Fathers of higher social status could afford to provide for their illegitimate children, and from late medieval times men of the élite usually sought to make some financial provision for their illegitimate children.97 This may have been less common in early modern times. There is some evidence that testators below the élite made bequests to their illegitimate children.98 Every illicit pregnancy involved relationships of power in which social rank mattered. Some of the contests over illicit fatherhood can be understood in terms of men of higher social status asserting their sexual superiority over the fathers and husbands of their social inferiors; children were born to women whom their lovers had no intention of marrying. In many cases, the men were married already. In other instances, unscrupulous men deliberately embarked on clandestine or bigamous marriages, making all the children of any second ‘marriage’ legally illegitimate.99 A man’s parents might go to extraordinary lengths to cast off their son’s lower-class wife and child as whore and bastard.100 Another widely known strategy was for the father to bribe a man of lower social status to marry the pregnant woman.101 In a fairly typical Essex case of 1600, William Freborne was paid £15 to marry

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a widow on whom William Scarfe, a husbandman, had fathered a child.102 Although the practice was common, when in 1565 a curate in Kent preached a sermon against the practice, saying ‘riche men would get their maids with child and then with money marry them to another’, several of his male parishioners were affronted, and got up and left the church.103 There may have been regional variations in the attributions of paternity. Adair argues that before the Civil Wars, in the north-west more prosecutions were launched against fathers as well as mothers than in eastern England.104 Lower down the social scale, a man might agree to father his own child by marrying the mother; between 16 and 25 per cent of all first births from 1550–1749 were within eight months of marriage.105 In some cases, a father made marriage conditional on the sex of the child. Agnes Sim asked her lover ‘who should father the child. He said he would, if it was a boy, but if it was a maid she should lack a father for it.’106 A man could even find himself deemed to be married in the eyes of the church courts, if the courts believed the woman’s allegation that he had promised marriage and had had sexual intercourse with her, although he himself had never envisaged the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.107 Broken promises of marriage featured in many women’s stories. In Somerset during the Interregnum, six out of ten women examined for bastardy claimed marriage vows that men tried to deny.108 Men resented their own loss of initiative and independence as the mother’s friends and the parish authorities tried to force them to marry and provide for their children. Thus many men stoutly denied fathering bastards when questioned by the justices. There were a number of reasons why their denials succeeded. Firstly, because by law a ‘bastard’ was the child of no man, men’s emotional and financial detachment from their illegitimate children was facilitated. Secondly, no medical or other evidence was ultimately convincing. The body of the child’s begetter carried no discernible traces of paternity. Unlike that of the pregnant woman, whose forthcoming maternity was usually incontestable, a father’s body bore no witness against him. Thirdly, the civic authorities usually gave alleged fathers the benefit of the doubt, consistent with their desire to save the ratepayers’ money. Justices at the quarter session courts heard informations and could take sworn evidence from pregnant women. They instructed midwives to withhold their services from the woman in extremis;109 they could even rule that the mother should choose a midwife of the alleged father’s nomination.110 But male denial was still powerful, for women’s words usually carried less weight than those of men. Even so, men disliked being the objects of public allegations of paternity.111 Accusations could have adverse effects on plans that a man or his

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parents had made for his future. Even if the father escaped marriage, the public case could upset other marriage negotiations, as it might seem he was already married, or expose him to a breach of promise suit.112 One single father offered to pay support for his child, although he refused to marry the mother for fear of his own father’s anger.113 Some men’s families attempted to shield them from the consequences of their sexual misdemeanours. In 1632 Somerset justices were foiled when a man fled the jurisdiction, aided by his father.114 In 1643 a Sussex father who conveyed his son away was ordered to pay the child’s weekly maintenance.115 Some mothers urged and even assisted their sons to flee.116 Paternal families might try to bribe the mother to name someone else as the father.117 Whereas the parents of the woman who bore an illegitimate child were sometimes responsible for the illegitimate children of their daughters – one maternal grandfather petitioned for financial assistance – I have found no instances of the father’s parents taking in their illegitimate grandchildren.118 Some fathers acknowledged their responsibility, and were willing to pay money for maintenance, but their honour was involved in keeping their paternity secret. Others promised to marry the mother later, provided she kept silent about the true father’s name. Some offered money and other support conditionally upon the mother agreeing to name some other man as the father. Mary Bannister, dying, swore that she had earlier perjured herself by naming Dr Davenant as ‘father to her bastard child’. She had been tempted to it by Francis Pistle (presumably the father of the child) ‘who had made her damne her body & soule’.119 A wealthy gentleman such as John Verney paid £12 in 1684 to be discharged of a four-year-old boy, ‘being tender of his reputation and unwilling such a thing should come against him in public upon the stage’.120 Tender male honour operated at all social levels: a Yorkshireman complained of words ‘tending to ye damage & prejudice of his trade’.121 In 1615 one Londoner, John Hurleston, ‘did secretly compound’ with a couple for nursing his child born to Agnes Westwood.122 Women told stories of men who offered money to suppress the name of the father, even threatening murder: ‘if she told anyone he was the father he would kill her’.123 When a father provided privately for a child, the authorities usually allowed the matter to be hushed up. In 1643 William Piggott paid £10 for maintenance to the Sussex justices, ‘his reputation to be salved and preserved’. In another instance, the justices discharged a gentleman and returned his £5 after the woman named another father.124 Men who could not afford to discharge the parish with a lump sum for the maintenance of their children might be ordered to pay weekly maintenance after morning

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prayer, a humiliating reminder of their sin.125 Most men did not want the financial burden of maintaining their illegitimate children, but there was more than money involved. Poorer men risked physical punishment for fathering a bastard. However, while the mothers of ‘bastard’ children were frequently ordered a whipping, fathers were more likely to escape bodily punishment because they had money to pay for maintenance.126 The thread running through all men’s negotiations over illicit paternity was their public reputation, their honour. If the alleged father were already married, his honour involved maintaining a boundary between his household and the world. His reputation as head of a family was threatened by sexual disorder, whether within his household or outside. He, more than a single man, may have resented other men as parish officials exercising authority over him, making him responsible for his bastard children, and undermining his social position. However, social status alone may have made proud men resent submission to the civic authorities. In 1592 in Essex Thomas Carter told his lover that if she betrayed him he would defy her and the justices, he ‘beinge a man bothe of wealthe and stomacke’.127 By the later seventeenth century, contemporary wisdom held that any man who had a parish maintenance order against him was a fool: ‘He’s a Sot / Who needs will Father what the Parish got’, mocked John Dryden.128 In the post-Restoration era, when sexual libertinism flourished at court, fathering a bastard may have been more the subject of jokes and boasting than at earlier times. A man triumphed over both a woman and her male relatives if he sexually ‘conquered’ her, then abandoned her to dishonourable maternity after the ‘amorous bout’. The subtext of a cautionary tale from 1678 about a maid of honour at court, Mary Trevor, whose lover, Thomas Thynne, refused to marry her was the popular narrative of the old bawd and the young bawd. Mary Trevor left the court, wringing her hands and saying her mother had undone her by urging her to go to bed with Thynne ‘because he said he wou’d not Marry any body, till he knew wither he could have a Child’.129 Thynne’s peers would have understood that a propertied nobleman was rightly determined to have a chaste wife. Ballads and tales told of plebeian men testing women’s chastity before marriage.130 Slurs on the deceitful nature of women allowed men to deny paternity. They might allege that the woman was a whore whose words were not to be trusted. Bernard Capp has argued that evidence from the London Bridewell courts suggested that revengeful women alleged paternity as a means of extracting money.131 However, we have no means of judging the truth of women’s allegations. Certainly, men were vulnerable to blackmail, but they

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may have traded on their reputation and social status to avoid responsibility for the children of their illicit sexuality. Some fathers projected their denial and anger onto their unborn children. Women told stories of men who admitted paternity but who did not want a child to be born or to live. George Jewell, a servant in Exeter, urged his lover to have an abortion: ‘if she were with child she knew what to take to bring it going, and advised her to take physic’.132 A minister, Robert Foulkes, executed for the infanticide of his bastard, confessed that he had assisted in trying to procure an abortion ‘which certainly in the sight of God, was Murder in intention’. (Interestingly, Foulkes saw his death as expiating the blood guilt incurred by the whole nation for his sin in shedding innocent blood that defiled the land.)133 In his study of infanticide, Wrightson found that the majority of cases involved illegitimate children.134 Although fathers were rarely directly involved in the murder of illegitimate babies, their refusal to take any responsibility for the child was part of the reason for the mother’s actions. Wrightson cited three seventeenth-century instances of putative fathers giving their children to vagrant nurses as an indirect form of infanticide. One baby was nearly four months old, suggesting that someone had kept the child alive until the father had it removed.135 Other instances of paternal intervention can be cited. After one Somerset father and his family undertook to maintain his illegitimate child, they sent it elsewhere and refused to tell the mother where, although she had been visiting it.136 In a case in Berkshire in the mid-eighteenth century, the mother’s maternal kin were helping to care for the baby, when the alleged father arrived with a gang of men, seized the child from his cradle, and passed him out the window. The mother feared that her son had been murdered or put in the Foundling Hospital, and was reportedly inconsolable for the loss.137 Another father, against whom the parish of Hungerford had a maintenance order, sent ‘his bastard child’ to the Foundling Hospital. Mother and maternal grandfather subsequently succeeded in reclaiming the child.138 Civic fathers, as well as individual fathers, were involved in casting off mothers and their illegitimate children. They moved pregnant women from parish to parish, contesting the woman’s rights to settlement, and thus to maintenance. Once the babies were born, officials sought to ensure that they were a burden on the rates for as short a time as possible.139 They put the children out to work as soon as the latter were able. Although at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the mean age of pauper apprentices was 8.7 years and later in the century rose to 11.6 years, in Colyton, Pamela Sharpe found that children were apprenticed out as young as four years. In other counties children were generally around 14 years.140

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In a few cases, a father took responsibility for his illegitimate child rather than pay maintenance to the parish or the mother. When the Essex justices ordered George Strange to pay 2s. 6d., he elected to take the child and give security.141 It is not clear what kind of relationship developed between father and son. A few men were kindly disposed to their children born out of wedlock. Laura Gowing found several instances of men who enjoyed their ‘bastard’ children, showering gifts and physical affection. George Clark was not named in court until ten years later, but had feasted the midwives, and bought a cow for the child’s milk. A later seventeenth-century Hereford father visited after the birth, promised to have the child well brought up, and paid for the funeral when it died at eleven weeks.142 In 1715 in a divorce case, a wife who bore a child to Thomas Jones, a servant of her husband, said that when the child died, Thomas was very particular about the funeral, for ‘he loved mine and his own child very well’.143 But overall there is comparatively little evidence of illicit fathers caring for their children. The striking feature of most of these social negotiations was men’s refusal to admit that they had begotten a child who would need care. Illegitimate children were a visible sign of men’s ability to separate heterosexuality and reproduction.

‘Children of his own’ The age-old uncertainty about men’s bodily connectedness to their offspring featured strongly in early modern culture. While a man himself might never know whether he had really begotten the child whom he called ‘his own’, he traded on the uncertainty of paternity in disclaiming responsibility for his illegitimate children. Being the father of a family was a significant social achievement, a mark of adult status, but manly honour usually required that a man acknowledge only children of his own begetting within marriage. A consequence of the emphasis upon men having children of ‘their own’ was that, by a perverted logic, some men came to see children as a form of property. Such claims could be so exaggerated as to appear deeply shocking. In 1621, a pamphlet about John Rowse, a fishmonger who turned to wicked living and murdered his two little girls, was titled The Unnaturall Father. The murderous father claimed in his defence that the children ‘were his owne, and being so that hee might doe what hee would with them, and that they had their liues from him’.144

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Ideas about blood add another strand to the complexities in men’s relationships to their children. Although shared blood made for ‘natural’ affection between father and child, the metaphor disguised complex paternal attitudes. Unless a man was married to the mother, he usually found it easier to deny any responsibility. Even though the father had a blood connection to an illegitimate child, neither he nor his contemporaries would expect the same natural affection as for his legitimate child. The legal and cultural heritage of ‘blood’ connection between parent and child remains, with serious implications for children. Men in Britain, Australia and many other countries are still concerned that their children should be ‘their own’, distinguishing between those of their ‘blood’ and those to whom they have only a social relationship. Stepfatherhood is still viewed as different from biological fatherhood, as is fatherhood by adoption. Legal paternity is still determined on the basis of a man’s relationship to the mother and on simple biology. The determination of biological paternity seems to have been resolved with DNA testing. However, scientific tests of a child’s paternity threaten to diminish the rights of some children who gained social fathers through the presumption of paternity doctrine. Furthermore, at the same time as technological changes have made the determination of paternity certain, the status of the mother has become more complex. In early modern times, the genetic mother was the gestational and legal mother. In 1978 in vitro fertilization technology (IVF) allowed a woman to bear a child to whom she was not genetically related.145 These new technologies have raised complex problems for legal jurisdictions in the Western world, and emphasis on genetic parentage, albeit now usually expressed in terms of DNA rather than blood, has intensified rather than lessened. In early modern England, from the point of view of the child, how important were ‘blood’ links with a father? Since they determined much of the child’s fate, beliefs about blood clearly mattered. But an emphasis upon biological links is a distraction from the more significant issue, the quality of the social relationship between children and the adults who care for them. In the twenty-first century, more and more children in Britain and Australia live in families that are ‘blended’ by divorce and remarriage. An insistence upon biological links between fathers and children, and beliefs that encourage them to distinguish between ‘their own’ children and those of others may not create the best environment in which men can express love and nurture for children. A radically different perspective would be for society to cease its obsession with children’s origins, and concentrate on their care.146

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Notes and references 1 The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. J. O. Halliwell (2 vols., London, 1845), i, p. 308. 2 West Australian, 2 and 23 November 2002; Australian Magazine, 12 September 2000; Australian, 23 November 2002. 3 A Discourse of the Married and Single Life (London, 1621), pp. 25–6. 4 Stuart Bridge, ‘Assisted reproduction and the legal definition of parentage’, in Andrew Bainham, Shelley Day Sclater and Martin Richards (eds), What is a Parent? A Socio-Legal Analysis (Oxford, 1999), p. 75. 5 Susan Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988). 6 Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, 1995); Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex, and Marriage (New York, 1999); Tim Hitchcock. English Sexualities, 1700–1800 (London, 1997); Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen (eds), English Masculinities, 1660 –1800 (London, 1999); Alexandra Sheppard, ‘Manhood, credit and patriarchy in early modern England c. 1580–1640’, Past & Present, 167 (2000), pp. 75–106; Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003). 7 C.f. Louis Haas, The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence, 1300–1600 (New York, 1988); Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink, and Katherine Holden, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1630–1960 (London, 1999), p. 135. 8 James Ferrand, Erotomania: Or a Treatise discoursing of . . . love, or erotique melancholy (Oxford, 1640), p. 261. 9 BL, Additional MS 78442, John Evelyn to his son John, [1680]. 10 Levinus Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature in Four Books (London, 1658), p. 27. 11 [Jacob Rueff], The Expert Midwife (trans.) (London, 1637), pp. 65–6. 12 [C. Quillet], Callipaedia: Or, the Art of Getting Beautiful Children, trans. N. Rowe (London, 1720), p. 61. 13 The Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley (London, 1787), p. vii. 14 M. P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Abor, 1950), pp. 68–9, B. 688. 15 I. A., An Apology for Younger Brother (London, 1641), TT E 170.3, p. 3. 16 W. Knowler (ed.), The Earl of Strafford’s Letters and Dispatches (2 vols., London, 1739), vol. i. 47. 17 John Evelyn, Silva, Or, a Discourse of Forest-Trees, 4th edn (London, 1706), sig [*v]. In the Odyssey, book 24, there are no details about Laertes’ motives in tending his vines and trees, though these may be inferred.

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18 Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1672, p. 599; J. R. Jones, Charles II: Royal Politician (London, 1987), pp. 188–9. 19 James M. Rosenheim, The Townshends of Raynham: Nobility in Transition in Restoration and Early Hanoverian London (Middletown, Conn., 1989), p. 85. 20 Ibid., pp. 64–107. 21 Edmund Trench, Some Remarkable Passages in the Holy Life and Death of the Late Reverend Mr Edmund Trench (London, 1693), p. 75; see also Michael Mascuch, ‘Social mobility and middling self-identity: the ethos of British autobiographers, 1600–1750’, Social History, 20 (1995), p. 59. 22 For descendants as a form of immortality, see Ann Chance, ‘Black widow: death and the woman in early modern English texts’, in Hilary Fraser and R. S. White, Constructing Gender: Feminism in Literary Studies (Nedlands, UWA Press, 1994), pp. 55–9. 23 G. E. Haddlow (ed.), Sir Walter Raleigh: Selections (Oxford, 1917), p. 181. 24 Anthony Walker, Planctus Unigeniti (London, 1664), p. 54. 25 D’Ewes, Autobiography, vol. i, p. 4; vol. ii, pp. 143–5. 26 [Thomas Forster], The Lay-Mans Lawyer: or, The Second Part of the Practice of Law, 1654, p. 2; Darren Jackson, ‘Sins of the fathers: forfeiture and corruption of blood in early modern England’, honours dissertation University of Western Australia, 1999. 27 [John Rastell], Les Termes de la Ley (London, 1671), pp. 84–5. 28 Charles Carlton, The Court of Orphans (Leicester, 1974), pp. 47–50. 29 Donald Woodward (ed.), The Farming and Memorandum Books of Henry Best of Elmswell, 1642 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 247–9. 30 Gloucester RO, GDR 205, 17 February 1644[5]. 31 Sir Thomas Smith, quoted in Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550–1720 (Oxford, 1998), p. 351. 32 Giles Jacob, Every Man His Own Lawyer (London, 1737), p. 169. 33 Francis Bacon, ‘Of parents and children’, Francis Bacon’s Essays, Everyman edn (London, 1906), p. 21. 34 Eileen Spring, Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1993), pp. 19–22. 35 Adam Fox, Oral and Literature Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), p. 137. 36 See Chapter 2, this book, p. 62; Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, p. 28. Blondell wrote against popular beliefs about maternal imagination in 1729. 37 Alan Macfarlane, ‘Illegitimates and illegitimacy in English history’, in Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen and Richard M. Smith (eds), Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980), p. 75 and n. 21.

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38 L. Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature in Four Books (London, 1658), p. 12. 39 Gloucester RO, Kingswood, P 193, OV5/1/6, Information of Mary Tyndale. 40 C.f. Keith Thomas, ‘The double standard’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), pp. 195–216. 41 David M. Turner, Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660 –1740 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 83–115. 42 Laura Gowing, ‘Gender and the language of insult in early modern London’, History Workshop Journal, 35 (1993), pp. 1–21; Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996); Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, p. 215. 43 William Sheppard, An Epitome of all the Common and Statute Laws (London, 1656), p. 179. 44 Giles Jacob, A New Law Dictionary, 9th edn (London, 1772), entry ‘Bastard’. 45 Douglas Grant, Margaret the First (Toronto, 1957), p. 32; Sara Heller Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies (Brighton, 1987), p. 12; Katie Whitaker, Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by her Pen (New York, 2002), pp. 8–10. 46 Giles Jacob, The Modern Justice, 3rd edn (London, 1720), p. 49. 47 [Rastal], Les Termes de la Ley, p. 78. If the pregnancy were known before the first husband’s death, the child was legitimately his; if unknown, legitimate to the second husband. 48 William Clerke, The Triall of Bastardie (London, 1594), p. 41; Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, p. 48. 49 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977), pp. 37–9. I am grateful to Professor Barbara Todd for allowing me to read her unpublished paper, ‘Adulterine bastardy’. 50 Edward Coke, The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (London, 1681), p. 36. The case Coke cited was that of John of Gaunt. 51 Keith Thomas, ‘The puritans and adultery: the act of 1650 reconsidered’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 258 and note, 261–2, and passim. 52 John Towill Rutt (ed.), Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq . . . from 1656 to 1659, (1828). (4 vols., Jonson Reprint, New York, 1974), vol. i., pp. 204–5. 53 Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 309–13. 54 G[eorge] [P]etyt, Lex Parliamentaria (London, 1690), pp. 25–6. 55 The Case of Stephen Jermyn, of the City of London, Merchant, and of Stephen, his only son, [c. 1704], Goldsmith’s Kress, Reel 289, #4789.

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56 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, pp. 94–6, 193–4. 57 Stone, Road to Divorce, p. 310. 58 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 193 (pp. 192–5). 59 Daniel Defoe, The History and Remarkable Life of . . . Col. Jack (1722) (Oxford, 1970), p. 197. 60 Lambeth Palace, VH 81/6/1–6, Cause papers of peculiars of Croydon, Shoreham and the Arches. 61 C. Severn (ed.), The Diary of the Rev. John Ward . . . 1648 to 1679 (London, 1839), p. 97. 62 Jones, Charles II, pp. 140, 182–3. 63 Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London, 1999), p. 397 and passim. 64 Amy Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1993), pp. 132–7. 65 D. H. Allen (ed.), Essex Quarter Sessions Order Book 1652–1661, Essex Record Office publication 65 (Chelmsford, 1974), p. 76. 66 Lucy Hutchinson, ‘Autobiographical fragment’, in James Sutherland (ed.), Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson with the Fragment of an Autobiography of Mrs. Hutchinson (London, 1973), p. 283. 67 C. L. Sinclair Williams (ed.), Puddletown: House, Street and Family . . . 1724, Dorset Rec. Soc. 11 (1988), p. 58. 68 McIntosh, A Community Transformed, p. 50. 69 Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986), pp. 245–56; Will Coster, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 90, 203–6 and passim. 70 David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 156–61. 71 Will Coster, ‘ “To bring them up in the fear of God”: guardianship in the diocese of York, 1500–1666’, Continuity and Change, 10 (1995), pp. 9–32. 72 William Clerke, The Triall of Bastardie (London, 1594), p. 39. In France charitable institutions used formal adoptions; Kristin Elizabeth Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France (Princeton, N.J., 1996). Adoption became legal in England in 1926. 73 Allan, Admissions Register, p. 102. 74 Ibid., p. 64. 75 Gillian Clark (ed.), Correspondence of the Foundling Hospital Inspectors in Berkshire, 1757– 68, Berkshire Rec. Soc., vol. 1 (1994), p. 204. 76 Personal communication, Gillian Clark.

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77 Donald F. Harris, ‘The More children of the Mayflower: their Shropshire origins and the reasons why they were sent away with the Mayflower community’, The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 43, no. 2 ( July 1993), pp. 123–32; vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 11–20; vol. 44, no. 2 ( July 1994), pp. 109–18. The following paragraphs are based on his research, although our interpretations differ, since Harris sees her as a shameless, adulterous wife (p. 14). I give more weight to her claims of a pre-contract to Blakeway. 78 The exact date of his birth is not known; Harris, ‘More children’, p. 19, n. 7. 79 Harris, ‘More children’, p. 4. 80 Ibid., p. 19, n. 7. Harris also suggests that Samuel may have been naive as a 16-year-old, and taken time to realize what was going on. 81 Ibid., p. 19. 82 Ibid., pp. 16–17. 83 Ibid., pp. 18, 21–5. 84 Ibid., p. 11. 85 London Metropolitan Archives, Middlesex Sessions, 17 February 1657, MJ/SBB, 165, microfilm X07/063/165/29; Peter Wilson Coldham, ‘The “spiriting” of London children to Virginia’, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Richmond, Virginia Historical Society, vol. 83 ( July 1975), pp. 280–7, esp. p. 282. 86 [William Howell], Medulla Historiae Anglicanae (London, 1679), pp. 395–6; 3rd edn (London, 1687), p. 284. 87 Rachel Weil, ‘The politics of legitimacy: women and the warming-pan scandal’, in L. G. Schwoerer (ed.), The Revolution of 1688–1689: Changing Perspectives (Cambridge, 1992); Rachel Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester, 1999). 88 BL, Additional MS 78442, John Evelyn to John Evelyn, October 1688. 89 Richard Adair, Courtship, Illegitmacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1996). 90 Richard Burn, Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer (2 vols., London, 1755), vol. ii. p. 196. 91 Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 2003), pp. 177–203. 92 Amussen, Ordered Society, pp. 111–13. 93 Sir John Fortescue, A Learned Commendation of the Politique Laws of England, trans. Mulcaster (London, 1673), fo. 95V, quoted in Findlay, Illegitimate Power, p. 47. 94 Tilley, Proverbs, B. 459, p. 55. 95 Ibid., B. 456, p. 54.

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96 By the twentieth century, the ‘bad’ blood of the illegitimate child was usually attributed to the mother, even up to the 1970s; Audrey Marshall and Margaret McDonald, The Adoption Triangle: Adoption in Australia (Melbourne, 2001), p. 207. 97 Emma Hawkes, ‘Younger sons, illegitimate sons and the law: a study of three Yorkshire gentry families, 1480–1540’, Parergon, new series 17, no. 2 (2000), pp. 128–9. 98 F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Home, Work and Land (Chelmsford, 1976), p. 113. 99 R. B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–1850 (London, 1995). 100 Lawrence Stone, Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England 1660–1753 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 158–60. 101 R. K. Gilkes (ed.), The Bawdy Court of Banbury . . . 1625 –1638, Banbury Historical Society, 26 (1997), pp. 170–1; Quaife, Wayward Wives, pp. 113–5. One in ten of Quaife’s sample during the Interregnum arranged for the woman to marry someone else. 102 F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts (Chelmsford, 1973), pp. 153–4. 103 Diana O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000), p. 48. 104 Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage, p. 78. 105 E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 254. 106 Quaife, Wayward Wives, p. 94. 107 Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage, p. i. 108 Quaife, Wayward Wives, p. 59. 109 Linda Pollock, ‘Childbearing and female bonding in early modern England’, Social History, 22 (1997), pp. 303–4; Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 54, 148. 110 Shropshire RO, QS/2/8, Salop sessions, August 1700. 111 David Turner, ‘“Nothing is so secret but it shall be revealed”: the scandalous life of Robert Foulkes’, in Hitchcock and Cohen (eds), English Masculinities, pp. 169–92; David Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 2000), pp. 73–5. 112 Emmison, Morals and the Church Courts, pp. 152–3. 113 Quaife, Wayward Wives, p. 95; P. C. Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England, 1558–1903 (New York, 1981), p. 103. 114 E. H. Bates Harbin (ed.), Somerset Quarter Sessions Records . . . 1625 –1639, vol. 2, Somerset Rec. Soc., vol. 24 (1908), p. 191.

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115 B. C. Redwood (ed.), Quarter Session Order Books, 1642 –1649, 1, Sussex Rec. Soc. (1954), vol. 54, p. 42; another example, p. 31. 116 Quaife, Wayward Wives, pp. 95, 121; Pollock, ‘Childbearing in early modern England’, p. 303. 117 Tim Meldrum, ‘London domestic servants from depositional evidence, 1660–1750: servant–employer sexuality in the patriarchal household’, in Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe (eds), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (London, 1997), pp. 47, 54–5. 118 D. E. Howell James (ed.), Norfolk Quarter Sessions Order Book 1650–1657, Norfolk Rec Soc, 26 (1955), p. 38; Gillian Clark (ed.), Correspondence of the Foundling Hospital, pp. 32–4. 119 Donald A. Spaeth, The Church in an Age of Danger: Parsons and Parishioners, 1660 –1740 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 223. 120 Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1999), p. 64. 121 North Yorkshire County RO, North Allerton, Quarter Sessions, microfilm 124, no. 224. 122 William Le Hardy (ed.), Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series vol. 3 (1937), p. 8. 123 Quaife, Wayward Wives, p. 110. 124 Redwood (ed.), Quarter Session Order Book, vol. 54, pp. 34, 41; pp. 67, 74, 79, 85. 125 E. H. Bates (ed.), Quarter Sessions Records . . . Somerset, vol. 1, Somerset Rec. Soc. vol. 23 (1907), p. 303. 126 Michael Dalton, The Country Justice (London, 1655), pp. 40–2; E. H. Bates (ed.), Quarter Session Records . . . Somerset, vol I, p. 303. 127 Essex RO, QSR 153/29, 30, 20, 23 and 26 February 1601. 128 John Dryden, ‘Prologue to Thomas Shadwell’, A True Widow (London, 1679), sig. [A3v.]. 129 Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford, 1991), pp. 24–5. 130 Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, pp. 120–1. 131 Bernard Capp, ‘The double standard revisited: plebeian women and male sexual reputation in early modern England’, Past & Present, 162 (1999), pp. 70–100. 132 Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing (eds), Women’s Worlds in SeventeenthCentury England: A Sourcebook (London, 2000), pp. 18–19. 133 [Robert Foulkes], An Alarme for Sinners (London, 1679), pp. 37, 39. 134 Keith Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in earlier seventeenth-century England’, Local Population Studies, 15 (1975), p. 12.

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135 Wrightson, ‘Infanticide’, p. 17. 136 Quaife, Wayward Wives, p. 122. 137 Clark (ed.), Correspondence of the Foundling Hospital Inspectors in Berkshire, 1757– 68, Berkshire Rec. Soc., vol. 1 (1994), pp. 32–4. 138 Ibid., pp. 64–5, 79–80. 139 Pollock, ‘Childbearing in early modern England’, p. 302; Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Morals, pp. 153–4; Gowing, Common Bodies, pp. 157–8. 140 Pamela Sharpe, Population and Society in an East Devon Parish: Reproducing Colyton, 1540–1840 (Exeter, 2002), p. 263. 141 Allen (ed.), Essex Quarter Sessions Order Book, p. 59. 142 Gowing, Common Bodies, pp. 183–4. 143 Cases of Divorce for Several Causes (London, 1715), pp. 57–8. 144 [ John Taylor] The Unnaturall Father (London, 1621), sig. B[V] 145 Stuart Bridge, ‘Assisted reproduction and the legal definition of parentage’, in Bainham, Sclater and Richards (eds), What is a Parent?, pp. 79, 75. 146 Martha Albertson Fineman, The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies (New York, 1995).

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CHAPTER 5

‘The sucking child’: adult attitudes to child care in the first year of life in seventeenthcentury England As the Mydwife frameth the body when it is young and tender, so the parents must frame the minde when it is greene & flexible for youth is the seede time of vertue.1 The Fountaine of parents duties is Loue . . . Herein appeareth the wise providence of God, who by nature hath so fast fixed love in the hearts of parents, as if there be any in whom it aboundeth not, he is counted unnaturall.2

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T

he history of childhood, long a neglected area, is now receiving serious historical attention. Unfortunately, certain conclusions are in danger of hardening into an orthodoxy. The view expressed in Ariès’s pioneering study that in the pre-industrial family, when child mortality rates were high, parents could not allow themselves too deep an attachment to their children, has influenced much subsequent discussion. Lloyd de Mause and his collaborators have discussed the history of childhood in past societies as ‘a nightmare from which we have only just begun to awaken’.3

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J. H. Plumb has contrasted the world of childhood in the seventeenth century with that in the eighteenth, concluding that the dominant attitude towards children in seventeenth-century England was ‘autocratic, indeed ferocious’, while Edward Shorter argues that ‘in traditional society, mothers viewed the development and happiness of infants younger than two with indifference’.4 In the most ambitious and important study of the family in England from 1500 to 1800, Lawrence Stone suggests that the seventeenth century was a period of transition from a family in which there were no strong emotional ties, in which children were neglected, brutally treated and even killed, to one based on affection and strong bonds between parents and children.5 Recently, there has been criticism of both the methodologies and conclusions.6 The inconographic evidence used by Ariès is more ambivalent than he allowed, and different interpretations of the paintings have been offered.7 The advice books and medical treatises on the care of the young contain more diverse attitudes than Stone and others have selected, and Ralph Houlbrooke in his study of the family from 1450 to 1700 has concluded, on the basis of very similar evidence to that cited by Stone, that families in the seventeenth century were happy and that parents loved their children. He argues that there is no reason to believe that the same had not been so two hundred years earlier.8 Continuity is stressed even more strongly in an important recent contribution to the history of childhood by Linda Pollock. Finding the ‘area so full of errors, distortion and misrepresentation’, she has sought to substitute for the uncertain evidence of advice books a more systematic analysis of the literary sources ‘to supply a clear view of the information on childhood’.9 Pollock has rightly pointed to many of the problems in the surviving evidence that some have too easily ignored. Theories about childrearing are not the same as practices, nor is there any necessary connection. She attempts to place the study on a firmer basis by an exhaustive discussion of three kinds of literary source, diaries, autobiographies and newspaper reports, which give information about actual practices. On the basis of this evidence, she argues that there were no significant changes in childrearing practices between 1500 and 1900. Nor should there be any reason to assume that parental care must vary according to changes in society as a whole. ‘Instead of trying to explain the supposed changes in the parent-child relationship’, she concludes, ‘historians would do well to ponder just why parental care is so curiously resistant to change’.10 While it is important to be aware of continuities, and not to seek evidence for dramatic transformations, the question of the relationship between families and social change is still of interest. Rather than proceed

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as Pollock suggests and explore why parental care was resistant to change, it may be useful to look more closely at the history of adult/child relations taking up her suggestion in the preface, that ‘there may indeed be subtle changes through the centuries’.11 By a detailed examination of a shorter period of time – the seventeenth century – and a briefer period of the child’s life – the first year – using a wider range of sources, I will try to locate the attitudes of adults to children in a specific historical context which will offer a better basis for comparison with other periods and other life phases than a larger overview based on more limited sources. Pollock based her study on three kinds of sources, of which only diaries and autobiographies are relevant here. Rightly, she pointed to the problematic nature of a range of literary evidence. Letters, for example, she discounted as evidence of practice because they were written with another person in mind.12 Nevertheless the problem of the other reader is no less present in the diary or autobiography because it is less visible. All literary sources need to be treated with caution,13 not least diaries and autobiographies in which details of life are selected for comment. Such random and haphazard recording of experience is limited. In tracing ideas as well as practices we must recognize that the evidence does not allow firm conclusions. Rather, our purposes of understanding childhood and the family in the past may be better served by accepting the vagaries of the surviving records and considering the widest range of evidence possible. The sources upon which this chapter is based are of two kinds, and relate largely to the literate sections of society. There were advice books that told parents what ought to be done to care for babies. A large number of these were published during the century, of which the chief among those of the religious writers was William Gouge’s Domesticall duties. Among the medical writers there were works in translation, such as those of Paré, Guillemeau, Mauriceau and Rueff, some of which were originally published in the sixteenth century, such as that of Roesslin. Other treatises were written in England by physicians such as Harris, McMath, Pechey and Starsmere, and others by medical practitioners such as Jane Sharp and Thomas Tryon. The number of publications suggests that there was a growing market for such advice during the century.14 While we cannot measure how far their advice was heeded,15 their books were among those which women possessed. For example, in 1647 Lady Elizabeth Sleigh owned copies of Gouge’s Domesticall duties, Guillemeau’s Childbirth and works by Gataker and Dod.16 Furthermore, preachers and pediatricians comment on what they, as intelligent observers, considered to be the general childcare practices of their time. The gulf between ideals and practices remains wide, but is not

‘THE SUCKING CHILD’

completely unbridgeable. From the medical commonplace books of women, we can see that the ideas and cures of physicians were cited and exchanged by women. The second kind of evidence about ideas and practices in child rearing is scattered through diaries, letters, autobiographies and contemporary lives and funeral sermons. Much of this material awaits the attention of historians.17 These sources do not lend themselves to exhaustive study in the same way as do one or two types of source only, but they do indicate a range of attitudes and practices. The principles on which examples have been selected are both to make parental behaviour intelligible in a social context, and to illustrate the diversity of ideas and practices. This chapter is not limited to parents and children, but considers adult attitudes generally. It will be argued that parental behaviour should be understood in the context of general discussion about childhood in seventeenthcentury England. From detailed studies such as this one, we may be better placed to study changes over longer periods of time. While continuities may be significant, we cannot yet exclude the possibility of shifts in family values. We need to know more about how families transmitted their culture from one generation to the next, and how differences of gender influenced adult attitudes to children. The changes in childrearing patterns may be small, but they may have had large effects. Alterations in patterns of infant feeding, for example, may have led to greater survival rates and contributed to the population growth.

II It was generally believed in the seventeenth century that the way in which adults cared for children influenced their development. Parents were responsible for the child’s spiritual state. Some pessimistically viewed the infant as heir to sin and misery, others celebrated infancy as a state of innocence.18 Children were dyed and stained ‘from their mothers wombe’ wrote the preacher Daniel Featley at one extreme,19 while at the other, the French physician Peter Charron described them as tender plants, the hope of the commonweale.20 To those who saw the child as sinful, there was hope in God’s promises of salvation, but since the baby was utterly dependent on adults in his first year, they were to act on his behalf.21 Anglicans and the majority of Puritans – with the important exception of some of the sects – believed that baptism was necessary to wash away the child’s sins, which were not his own but came from his parents.22 Baptism was God’s sign of the child’s right to grace. While the preachers taught that both parents were responsible for the child’s spiritual state, the father’s role was primary. This

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was not just because the mother was weak immediately after the birth of her baby, Gouge said, but because ‘the Father is the chiefe and principall Governour’.23 The child’s rights might be his inherently, but his parents had to claim them for him. At the other extreme, if the child were innocent, man before the fall, then parents had a duty to preserve that purity. ‘His Soule is yet a white paper unscribled with obseruations of the world’ wrote John Earle in 1628.24 The child from the womb, said Dorothea Gotherson, is ‘an heir of Heaven’, made ‘in the image of God’.25 One parent, Bulstrode Whitelocke, regarded all children up to their fifth year as being in a kind of State of innocence, know not the ill, nor are so prone to it, as the inclinations, and temptations of riper age incite them to.26 Parents were also responsible for the physical growth and development of their children, even before the moment of conception. Medical writers pointed out that if a husband and wife copulated too frequently their seed would be weak and their children stunted.27 If they copulated at times that Scripture declared unseasonable, such as during menstruation, their sin would be visited upon the child who would be born deformed.28 In March 1679 Oliver Heywood noted in his diary that a woman who had previously ‘betaken herself to sensual courses, and is reported to be of a bad carriage’ had borne a monstrous child. The childe . . . had no legs, armes but had 5 things like fingers at the elbows, 5 things like toes at its knees, a soft thing in the place of the head, it was alive when born, oh the prodigious hand of god . . .29 The diaries of pregnant women show how anxious they were about the possible deformity of their babies. Lady Bridgewater begged that her child might be ‘borne without any deformity, so that I and its father may not be punisht for our sinnes, in the deformity of our Babe’.30 ‘Notwithstanding all my fears’, wrote Elizabeth Turner in 1670, ‘it was free from Blemish’, and on another occasion she rejoiced that ‘my Childe was not only free from deformity, but a goodly lovely Babe’.31 A pregnant woman had a ‘bounden duty’ to care for her health, because her diet, exercise and state of mind all affected the child in her womb.32 Her imagination shaped her child’s features, as many cases illustrated: a man walked with a staggering gait because his mother had seen a drunken man when she was pregnant, and James I was afraid of swords because Rizzio was murdered before his mother’s eyes.33 The sudden sight of a hare, ‘troubling and moving the conceived seed’, was said to cause hare lips.34 Family records show how these medical ideas were accepted. One child’s timidity

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was explained by her mother’s distress during her pregnancy at the deaths of her father and eldest son.35 Popular beliefs multiplied about the prevention of disasters: a slit smock would prevent the birth of a child with a hare lip.36 When adults thought about the child in the womb and its experience of birth, their attitudes varied, just as they did on the question of original sin. Some thought that babies would find birth an unpleasant change, for in the womb they lie in the greatest Lukewarmness and Tranquility, but as soon [as] they feel the cold Air outwardly and breath it in, they are hurt, which appears by their crying.37 Cuffe too thought the womb ‘a quietly inioied bedde’, but others found it a ‘dark and noysome place’.38 Such statements reveal an attempt at empathy with the infant even before its birth. Birth was a hazardous experience for the child as well as the mother. Medical writers urged the midwife to handle the mother and child gently, since officious striving endangered the lives of both. She was to cut and anoint the navel string and gently clean the child with warm wine or oil of almonds and butter, examining the limbs for any deformity. ‘Many say’ that the child should be laid to the mother’s left side, so she might draw any disease from him. Adults believed that they could shape the child’s body, so if the midwife found the head misshapen, she should gently mould it.39 Some of this shaping was dictated by notions of beauty and fashion. ‘We of this Nation, and some of our neighbours affect a small Eare, standing close to the Head’, observed Bulwer, and he criticised mothers and nurses who disliked ‘Prick-eares’ and tried to flatten them by binding them close to the head. Other attempts that were made to improve the appearance were stroking the child’s forehead so it would not be too low, shaping the calves, and pulling the nose ‘gently and frequently’.40 Boys were probably spared the mutilation of circumcision in seventeenth-century England, since baptism had taken its place under the gospel and it seemed unnatural.41 To some extent adult attitudes were affected by the baby’s sex and lineage. Among the gentry families, many parents wanted a son.42 The first son and heir was the most important. Parents wished to provide for all their children, but the tendency towards primogeniture produced considerable strain. Varying degrees of interest were expressed by parents and relatives in the baby’s arrival. The christening or baptism might be attended by kin and neighbours, and for a child of royal blood, the ceremony was elaborate.43 The choice of a name was important. Usually the child was given one Christian name only – Anthony Ashley Cooper was remarkable in

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having two – and Gouge thought that it should be a Scriptural name or one to preserve the memory of ‘the familie’.44 Parents detected family likenesses in their children, and found them taking after their namesakes: ‘littell Paule [is] making good his name being as lusty a boy as any of them all’.45 Adults speculated about the baby’s future character. Astrologers sought not only the time of the birth, but sometimes even the time of the child’s conception, as a means of foretelling the future.46 Various other prognostics were employed. Short nails, a sign that the mother had eaten too much salt meat, were a sign of short life.47 Sir James Whitelocke brought musical instruments to test his baby grandson’s inclinations. He offered the child a shining piece of gold, and when the baby dropped it, he prophesied that the child ‘will throw away too much of his money’.48 Avicenna’s comment that if a new-born child hold gold in his mouth ‘he need never feare the Devill’ was still known.49 A child wrapped in its mother’s smock would be well beloved.50 Even the definition of infancy as a life stage, albeit a variable one, indicates adult concern for the child in a number of different ways in the early modern period.51 The underlying purpose of the various legal definitions of infancy was the protection of the child. Thus in matrimonial matters, infancy for a male was under 14, and for a female, under 12; to make a will relating to lands, both were infants until 21, but for a will of goods, a male was of discretion at 14, a female at 12.52 According to civil and ecclesiastical law, both were infants under seven.53 Physicians were prepared to define infancy as extending to four years.54 More commonly, people defined ‘infancy’ as a developmental rather than a chronological age. To some it began before birth, from the 45th day after conception,55 so that Alice Thornton wrote in her autobiography of her ‘sweete infant in my wombe’.56 To others, infancy was the time of ‘hanging on the Mothers Breasts’, when it ‘remaineth a sucking child’.57 The term ‘sucking child’ is often employed, as is also the term ‘the suckling’.58 General comments about babies indicate again a range of adult responses to the child as an individual. Some were negative: the baby’s soul was drowned in so much moisture it seemed that ‘the soules of infants differ little from beasts’.59 In a treatise about children, Sylvius, a physician, briskly declared that ‘As for Grief and other Passions, children are not liable to them’.60 Sir John Reresby, travelling in a coach, was disgusted at a butcher’s ‘bratt’ vomiting and stinking.61 The more usual attitudes in treatises on child care and in correspondence are more positive. For example, the physician Wuertz wrote compassionately of babies’ crying to make their needs known, enjoying music, songs and spectacles.62 Infants might be frightened in their

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sleep, and should be comforted with the breast, and carried round for a time.63 Henry Newcome wrote of the warm moist kisses of ‘babby’, and Katherine, Duchess of Buckingham, delighted in her baby clapping her hands to music and her pretty ways.64

III In considering the infants’ chances of survival, nutrition was of crucial importance. Infant mortality rates in seventeenth-century England were high, and it is partly for this reason that Stone has argued that parents could not allow themselves too great an attachment to their children.65 Most seventeenth-century physicians considered that breast-milk was the only food that would keep the child alive, although a few physicians thought that a ‘finger fed’ baby might live.66 Ideas about breast-feeding indicate the context in which wealthier families made decisions about infant care. The medical understanding of infant nutrition was that the mother’s blood nourished the baby in the womb. After birth, she produced milk, which some said was made from her blood in the womb and carried to the breasts, others, that it was made in the breasts from her blood.67 The Milk by which the Infant is nourisht, is but the blood of which it was framed in the womb, further concocted in thye breast, and turn’d white there.68 Copulation with a breast feeding woman was thought unadvisable because it would provoke menstruation and subsequently lead to pregnancy. If ‘her monthly Visits’ were renewed the ‘Milke Corrupteth and groweth soure’ and the milk itself would diminish because the matter of it was diverted elsewhere.69 A further pregnancy would likewise deprive the child at the breast, since the foetus would take the better part of the woman’s blood, or, as Luther put it in the sixteenth century, the child at the breast would have only skim milk since the one in the womb had taken the cream.70 Sir Hugh Cholmley ascribed his stunted frame as a child to the fact that his nurse was pregnant.71 Late in the seventeenth century, after the discovery of the lacteals and lymphatic systems, it was believed that milk was made from the chyle and carried by the lymphatic ducts to the breasts.72 Medical advisers considered that the baby should not suck any milk at all on the first day of his life.73 On the second day, ideally, he should be put to the breast of another woman until the eighth day or so, because immediately after a woman had given birth, her milk was observed to be wheyish, ‘Foul, Turbid and Curdy’ and therefore very inferior. In cases where no alternative to the mother’s milk was available – such as in poor

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women, or for those who insisted that the child should suck no breast but their own – the mother was advised to have her breasts drawn ‘by some old person, or some lusty sucking child’. Women might do it themselves with a glass.74 Thus the baby was to be deprived of colostrum which is now recognised as valuable in conveying natural immunity to the child. There were few detailed instructions to women about techniques of breastfeeding. It was one of the things that women were assumed to know, and even ‘ordinary country women’ were experienced in how it was to be done. The general advice was that when the baby was first put to the breast, the woman should moisten his mouth with a little milk, then squeeze more in, until he had the idea of sucking. To help his digestion, she might stroke him while he fed.75 There is no direction about ‘burping’ or ‘winding’ babies, although it was thought inadvisable to put a child to sleep on a full stomach. One physician recommended swinging the child gently after feeding.76 As for the feeding schedule, few writers advised a strict routine. The child should be fed when he was hungry. Most advisers showed a compassionate attitude to the baby, urging adults to heed the child’s cry.77 Some sterner voices pointed out that babies who were given the breast whenever they cried were ‘almost continually sucking, and never satisfied’,78 but the mainstream of advice to mothers was to satisfy their babies. The use of wet-nurses has been adduced as an argument for maternal indifference to children. However, the issue was for the wealthy only. Contemporary opinion was strongly in favour of a mother feeding her own child. Preachers and physicians campaigned strenuously against wet-nursing during the seventeenth century. Godly Anglicans were as convinced as those of a ‘puritan’ stamp, that it was a mother’s bounden duty to breast feed her own child.79 Scripture provided the strongest arguments. As a concession to the high social rank of some mothers, they were permitted to employ nurses to care for the child, provided they fed him themselves. Arguments against breast-feeding, such as that it ruined the breasts, was ageing, or noisome to the clothes, were discounted. Since only rich women seemed to be unable to feed, they should seek the cause of the Lord’s withholding of the blessing of being a nursing mother from them, and have recourse to prayer.80 In addition to arguments from Scripture, propagandists also appealed to secular authorities, such as Plato, and to nature, which had both provided milk in a mother’s breasts, and offered the example of beasts, who all suckled their own young.81 Practical arguments for the mother to breastfeed her own baby were also advanced. The child had a better chance of survival, for a nurse was not so careful of another’s child. The nurse’s character was aspersed – what kind of a woman would set aside her own child

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for that of another woman? In addition to the nutritional hazards, the child with a wet-nurse was pitied by some as he might be left to cry, left unchanged, or even overlaid in bed.82 Medical theory reinforced the Scriptural and other arguments. Milk was a product of the mother’s body, a distillation of her blood that carried her characteristics of mind and body.83 By her milk ‘she restamps her own good qualities upon her offspring’ wrote Baines of the breast-feeding Lady Essex.84 (Her character and food had already shaped the child in her womb. Now these qualities were to be confirmed.) The belief that children sucked in their mother’s principles from her milk was widespread. As Charles I wanted his children to become Protestants, it was said that ‘he would not let them suck of a Roman Catholic nurse’, but an argument that pamphleteers employed in 1649 against Prince Charles as a monarch was that he had ‘suckt in his fathers principles with his mothers milk’.85 The nurse’s health also affected the child. Some nurses infected their charges with venereal disease. In a different case, a child’s deafness was blamed on her nurse. She could hear perfectly well at one year, but because she sucked her deaf nurse’s milk more strongly after that time, she was deaf by the age of two.86 Contemporaries also saw that breast-feeding fostered love between the mother and her child. The baby at birth was a vile object, argued Muffett in 1655, but his mother loved him. Her affection fostered his development: Hee playes a number of apish trickes about her, he kisseth her, strokes her haire, nose and eares; . . . and as he groweth bigger, hee finds other sports with her, which causeth that they beare one another such an affection, as cannot be expressed; & makes that they can never be parted.87 A mother had no choice about bearing her baby so her attitude was tested by whether she chose to look after him herself. There were stories to support the belief that the child would love his mother for her pains. A Roman youth who was put out to nurse for two years gave his nurse a gold chain, but only a silver ring to his mother. A mother about to be slain by her son pleaded for pity, on the grounds that she had cared for him, ‘fed thee with my own blood’ and ‘with lullabies and sweet kisses I rocked thee asleep’.88 Despite the strictures of preachers and physicians, some families who could afford to employ wet-nurses continued to do so. There was a copious discussion in the literary sources of the qualities desired in a wet-nurse. Parents should consider her age, complexion, breasts, milk and temperament. Some thought that the sex of the baby she had borne was relevant: boys should be put to suck on mothers of boys.89

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In practice, lactation by the mother or wet-nurse was influenced only partly by theories. Dorothy McLaren’s study provides information about the different patterns at the wealthier and poorer ends of the scale.90 Gouge’s view that only one woman in twenty breast-fed her own baby earlier in the century seems questionable, because the majority of the population had little choice, as they could not afford to hire a nurse.91 His figure may be more accurate for the wealthier sections of the society, but even there in many godly families mothers strove to feed their own babies. Many women, both Anglican and Puritan (or Nonconformist), breast-fed all their children.92 Women who had determined to breast-feed their babies were often happy to find their fears about it unjustified. Jane Turner, who had ‘apprehended much difficulty by reason of the weakness of my head & little milke’ was thankful that God made her child ‘eminently quiet by night and easily satisfied by day’.93 Alice Thornton ‘was overjoyed to give my sweete Betty suck’, and thanked God after the birth of her eighth child for ‘the blessing of the breasts to give sucke, with much comfort in my infant’.94 Dorothy Leigh wrote of how a mother will bless her child ‘euery time it sucks on her brests, when she feeleth the bloud come from her heart to nourish it’.95 Ann D’Ewes was less fortunate, for having resolved to feed her baby herself: it was fatally advised by such as were about her, that the child should not suck any other till her breasts were fully drawn and made fit for it, during which time it was so weakened, as it afterwards proved the cause of its ruin.96 However, employing a wet-nurse did not necessarily imply a lack of concern for the child. Sometimes it was unavoidable if the mother died, or if she fell ill and her physician believed that she would infect her child. For example, ten days after the wife of the Bishop Symon Patrick was delivered, her baby whom she was feeding: fell from her breast upon the floor; she being full of vapours, and light headed. This puts us in a great fright, and her physicians agreed she must suckle the child no longer, which put us to great distress. For we had three nurses before we could fix upon one that was to our comfort.97 In 1632 Nehemiah Wallington and his wife were advised to send their son Samuel to a nurse in the country because he did not thrive.98 When the six-month old daughter of a Nonconformist minister, Matthew Henry, fell ill in 1697, the physician ‘imputed it to the badness of her Mother’s Milk’ and forbade Mary to feed her. There was no time to wean the baby, so they employed as a wet-nurse a chandler’s wife who had previously been employed by Henry’s brother-in-law. The nurse was apparently brought into

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the house, as Alice Thornton and Sir Simonds D’Ewes brought in the nurses of their babies.99 Parents were particular over their choice of a wet-nurse for their children.100 One wet-nurse’s letter survives from 1639. Given that sending a child to nurse has been seen as cruel, it may be worth discussing Mary Page’s letter in some detail. In response to Sir Simonds D’Ewes’ request that she should be a wet-nurse for his yet unborn child, she said that her husband was willing she should do it. She wanted to know when the baby was due so that she could arrange with another woman ‘that do use to be with me at the first month to be with me agayne’. Most significantly, she assured Lady D’Ewes at the outset, that ‘I thank God, haue my health and am well and haue good store of milke’.101 Even mothers with children at nurse did not necessarily neglect them. When William Stout was an apprentice, he found that his master’s wife took no interest in anything but her own ease and indulging her children ‘who were nursed out to suck’.102 Bulstrode Whitelocke’s mother arrived at the nurse’s house to find him not thriving on the diet of ‘shaffling broth’, a pottage made of young eels and fatted with rusty bacon, so she took him home. (Subsequently when Whitelocke himself became a father for the first time he sent his son to be nursed ‘with the daughter of the same woman who had nursed me.’)103 Other people might watch over the child if the mother were not nearby. Abigail Harley at Brampton Bryan who was keeping an eye on an unnamed ‘little maid’ at nurse, sent her daughter to investigate when they heard that the nurse’s child had a ‘breaking out upon its body’. As the nurse had sent away her infected child, Abigail decided not to move theirs, for: she is so good & careful a nurs yt I thinck such an other wd hardly be found [,] her milk agreeing with it so it thrives mightily & is very well not ye least [s]peck all ouer it.104 There are other accounts of nurses being fond of their charges. In 1638 Anna Temple brought her granddaughter home because the nurse had a burning fever. On her recovery, the nurse ‘desired earnestly yt shee might haue hir againe . . . [and] doth much desire to see the childe’, but the grandparents ‘cannot tell how to spare her, she is so prettie and louing a child’.105 In some cases nurses were brought in, as one woman advised her sister-in-law should do, so ‘you may see the ordering of it your selfe and feede the nurs at your one trencher’.106 As for the advice that breast-feeding women should avoid sexual intercourse, there seems less emphasis on this later in the century. Scripture did

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not prohibit it absolutely, and the physician Starsmere noted in 1664 that experience showed it would not hurt the child.107 There are examples of breast-feeding women who were pregnant,108 and practical experience must have demonstrated that milk was still produced. Even so, the nurse appointed to the Blundell family made a promise to declare if she were pregnant ‘whilst she was a Nurs’.109 Although advice about avoiding copulation probably did not reach the poorer sections of the population, the significance of possible sexual abstinence should not be overlooked when the contraceptive effect of lactation is considered.110 Most writers said that the child should be introduced to other food gradually around two or three months, but there was no rigidity about this. The most usual food proposed was pap, for which there was a variety of recipes.111 Weaning was a major change in the child’s life, ending the period when he obtained nourishment and pleasure from sucking. Some advisers looked to Scripture for guidance, where a passage in Genesis showed that as the Bible did not direct a chronological age for weaning, it should be adjusted according to the child’s health and strength.112 Most of the physicians advised that some reference be taken to the child’s development. Culpeper, in the mid-century, said that if the child were strong he could be weaned at one year, and around the same date John Ward argued that Nature intended a child should be weaned at the age of one. Cadogan repeated the same advice in the mid-eighteenth century.113 Sharp and others said he should not be weaned until he had his main teeth: the stronger the child is, the sooner he is ready to be weaned; some at twelve months, and some not till fifteen or eighteen months old; you may stay two years if you please . . . the best time to wean the child is either the Spring or the Fall of the Leaf, the Moon increasing.114 If the weaning was difficult, Pechey advised that the nurse should make her breast repugnant to the child by coating her nipples with some bitter substance, such as wormwood, mustard or aloes, and Guillemeau adds, ‘make him ashamed of it’, which suggests the child must be of an age susceptible to shame. The mother or nurse should disappear so that the child would not cry for the breast.115 In practice, weaning was not embarked upon lightly and was planned ahead. In many cases it was deferred because the time was not thought propitious for the child. The weather might be too cold. On the other hand, there are cases of the parents’ concerns taking precedence. If a mother went on a journey, leaving her child with servants, she would be forced to wean him. Some babies weaned themselves:

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my littel boy hath weaned himself which is a very great troubel to me. . . . He took a distast at the Breast about a week ago.116 Sometimes the child might be weaned because of the sickness of his mother or his nurse. Brilliana Harley told her husband that their son Ned was ‘in danger of being weaned, for this last night his Nurs was very much out of temper, being inclined to an ague’.117 Women were pleased to wean their babies successfully. Jane Josselin weaned her son ‘with much ease to her selfe, and the child also quiett and content’. She began on 30 January and around a week later the weaning was complete.118 Sometimes weaning was unsuccessful, as can be seen from a correspondence in the D’Ewes family about Clopton, Sir Simonds’s only son and heir. Initially, there was trouble over finding a suitable nurse. Two had failed, D’Ewes said, within two weeks of his wife’s delivery, so that: we were fain to pitch upon a poor woman who had been much misused and almost starved by a wicked husband, being herself also naturally of a proud, fretting, and wayward disposition. Clopton was subject to fits. D’Ewes’s sister Jone said she had found it best with fits to change the nurse: ‘it may be if the nurs be a pale compleconed woman her milke is to[o] weake’. Although the attempted weaning failed, Jone thought it a mistake for the baby ‘to suck againe after so long being kept from it’. She was also worried about the physicians’ treatment of the baby’s fits, for they were making incisions in the child’s neck: pray tamper not with dochters to put the child to any pane or trobell . . . pray as littel as you can tamper with the tender body of so young a child. Clopton died on 9 May 1636 aged one year and nine months ‘leaving myself and my dear wife the saddest and most disconsolate parents that ever lost so tender and sweet an infant’. D’Ewes says that he and his wife both found that their sorrow for Clopton’s death, a child on whom they: had bestowed so much care and attention, and whose delicate favour and bright grey eye was so deeply imprinted in our hearts, far to surpass our grief for the decease of his three elder brothers, who, dying almost as soon as they were born, were not so endeared to us as this was.119 In the cases of children who were at wet-nurse, it is often unclear whether the child was weaned before he was taken home to his parents, or whether the journey home was the occasion for weaning. The Dee babies were brought home from their wet-nurses at around one year of age. In 1704 Mary Blundell went out to be wet-nursed for ten months, and was dry-nursed by another

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woman for three months before she was brought home.120 In other cases, nurses stayed with the family and kept contact with their nurselings. Caleb Vernon had a ‘Maid’ who kept him from the cradle and instructed him until he came to Latin. One of the families discussed by Janeway was visited by the nurse who kept in contact with the child. Sibbald, in his autobiography, says that his nurse had ‘all her days a tender affection for me’ and remained with him.121 Trosse in his autobiography presents a different picture. His nurse stayed in the family, had two bastards, and was willing to engage in ‘lewd practices’ (unspecified).122 Contemporaries were aware of the close bonding that occurred between mother or nurse and child, yet they seem little aware of the shock that weaning involved if a child were brought home from a nurse, or even if the breast that had been a source of pleasure was then made repugnant to him. Only the Children’s Petition stated that coating the breast with aloes was cruel.123 One comment suggests that thumb sucking was not allowed as an alternative source of gratification: a woman remembered that her mother had cured her of thumb sucking when she was ‘a little foolish chyld’ by coating it with wormwood.124 The consensus of advice, around the end of the century, about the ideal age for weaning seems nearer a year than 18 months. In practice, as we have seen, babies were weaned at a variety of times, but the baby weaned too early may have had less chance of survival.125 Richard Wall’s work on mortality rates among young children in Swindon suggests that there may have been a sex difference in the age at weaning, and another study of the parish of Willingham invites a similar conclusion.126 As Jone Elyot wrote of her nephew’s weaning, ‘I know not what cause you had but methinkes it was somewhat soone to weane a boy’.127 The ideas of pediatric advisers about infant nutrition may also have affected the mortality rates. From this point of view, the children of the poor and the illiterate may have had a better chance of survival, for as one contemporary physician observed, among ‘women of the meane rank’, children were well fed and healthy.128 Such testimony is of restricted value, but it does point to the need for caution in assessing any of the literary sources as a guide to practices among the majority of mothers.

IV Care of infants involved more than nutrition. Parents provided general nurturance and tried to prevent sickness and cure disease. Some of the seventeenth-century practices have been adjudged cruel by modern standards, but these customs should be considered in their social context.

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Adults believed that the child’s limbs should be carefully swaddled so that they would grow straight. Swaddling was an elaborate process; some recommended wrapping each limb separately, others making a firm wrapping around the child.129 Pechey gave the standard reason for swaddling: the Infant must be swathed up, lest it should move its hands and feet too freely, and thereby distort the bones, which are yet very flexible.130 Nurses believed that the children’s heads should be firmly tied down ‘that they might not throw off their heads from their shoulders’.131 Advice about the length of time that the child was to be swaddled varied. The arms should be freed first. Some said a baby should be swaddled for 40 days, others for four months. McMath said it depended on the strength of the child, and that a weak child should be swaddled for longer.132 Surviving pictures suggest that babies were fed swaddled, but these may be very young babies. From personal documents some details of when the child was put into ‘coats’ emerge: in 1661 John Henry was coated at exactly two months, and earlier Mary Verney said that her child’s nurse wanted him put into coats before he was three months old.133 There were critics of swaddling. John Bulwer said that children could clearly grow without it. He may have been thinking of poorer children whose parents could not have afforded the elaborate swaddling depicted in pictures and tomb monuments, but he may, like Locke later, have been aware of the practices of societies outside Europe. Locke observed that in Africa infants of seven to eight months were left on the ground ‘so that you see them dragging themselves along like kittens on four paws; this is also the reason why they walk earlier than European infants’.134 Nurses were advised to dance the babies on their knees to strengthen their legs, and the child might be massaged gently after his bath. The child was discouraged from crawling lest he should walk like an animal on all fours, and he was not encouraged to stand until over six months. Wuertz criticized the use of ‘standing stools’ for children as this was too tiring for them.135 Swaddling restricted the child’s movement and prevented close physical contact between adults and babies. The baby needed regular changing, as Jane Sharp advised, lest ‘the piss and dung’ take off the child’s skin. Mauriceau advised changing three times daily, adding ‘but keep him always clean’, and McMath said ‘Night and Day whenever he is fouled and waking’. One of the most common suggestions for quieting a crying baby was for his mother or nurse to check that he was clean and dry.136 There is virtually no discussion of toilet training, which suggests that it was not very important. Culpeper said he would not bother to tell women how often to

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hold out the child to piss. Another physician, in the course of discussing ideas about sympathy in the body, told a story of a child climbing down from his mother’s knee to excrete upon the floor. As she shovelled the excrement into the fire, she observed apologetically that she’d teach the child better manners when he was older.137 The environment in which the baby lived, the things he saw, the sounds he heard, where he slept, all affected his physical growth and development. Physicians and others advised that the baby should be kept happy and content.138 Nurses should also talk to the child, ‘distinctly and plainly’ so that he might learn to speak. Baby talk was censured, and one woman, Bathsua Makin, argued that nurses should teach children languages ‘whilst carried in Arms’.139 Family letters show that babies could not always be kept happy. Eleanor Radford’s baby of two months was ‘very cross and shee is not able to satisfy its desires’. Other babies were variously described as ‘very peevish’, ‘cross’ and ‘more tedious than usual’.140 For sleeping, it was generally recommended that the baby should have a place of his own, lest he be overlaid, but in practice many babies seem to have slept with adults and some were smothered.141 There was general discussion of whether the child should be rocked to sleep, and many sources mention singing the child to rest with lullabies. A nurse should remain near the baby lest he be frightened on waking to find no-one near.142 Opiates probably played a part in keeping babies quiet. Culpeper gave a recipe for one, but some physicians were cautious about their use. One mother gave laudanum to her baby, and medical commonplace books often contain recipes for poppy water to provoke sleep.143 Parents were concerned about the health of their children, but because babies were subject to sickness, physicians advised about treatment. Some disorders such as teething, protruding navels, moist ears and gummed-up eyes, were considered peculiar to children, but other diseases were hazards for all. In addition to the published remedies of physicians, medical commonplace books contain recipes for a wide range of infant ailments. Teething was a ‘disease’ to which babies were subject.144 The observed symptoms were that the child fretted, salivated, and was feverish, had his hands in his mouth, and so on. The remedies offered included massaging the gums gently, perhaps with something to soften the gums so that the teeth would come through more easily. The opinion of the physician Thomas Gibson, that to anoint the gums of the young child with the brains of a hare or a rabbit would assist teething, was transcribed into one medical commonplace book.145 A hard, smooth object, such as a coral for teething was the most popular, or a jasper stone. The wolf’s tooth was highly commended

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by many, according to Sylvius, as were the teeth of other wild beasts, because the volatile salt in them was ‘very piercing’ to the gums. One commonplace book advised rubbing the gums with the comb cut from a red cock, but towards the end of the seventeenth century, some people thought that corals and stones were superstitious. Physicians were unwilling to trust in nature. If the child’s teeth failed to come through, then they advised cutting the gums. Nurses ‘scratch and tear the gumme with their nailes, which turneth to the childs great profit’, observed Guillemeau. Too sharp an instrument would only make the gums bleed, so a thick-backed tool, such as a penknife, was recommended. There are cases of babies who died after their gums had been cut.146 Seventeenth-century physicians’ advice on treating babies was governed by the same humoural theories as advice for the treatment of adults. Because it was believed that sickness came from imbalance of the humours, remedies sought to restore the balance by purging, giving vomits or letting blood, gently in the case of infants. McMath advised against letting blood from young children, although for smallpox, Mauriceau said that mothers ‘not understanding the case’ were against it. Perhaps the advice of the midwife Jane Sharp was more congenial, for she disapproved of letting blood from feverish children. Nevertheless, the physician Harris argued that as God had ordered blood-letting in the circumcision decree, it must be suitable for infants.147 Many of the baby’s disorders were blamed on his mother or nurse. Gripes in the child’s belly came from her bad diet.148 Less reasonably, diseases such as jaundice, scabs and measles were attributed to the child’s nine months in the womb in contact with corruption from the impurities in the mother’s blood. Pustules in the child’s head and the itch came ‘out of the Menstruous blood’.149 What physicians and surgeons actually did for sick babies belongs more to a history of pediatrics. G. F. Still discusses the advancements in knowledge in the seventeenth century, the most significant of which was probably the discovery of treatments for rickets.150 Operations were performed on children. Roonhuyse’s surgical observations, translated into English in 1676, contained directions for operating on hare lips and a closed fundament in the child, and Willughby cut the thread beneath the tongue of a weak child, although he feared for the outcome.151 Commonplace books are filled with popular beliefs and magical cures for infants’ disorders. There are treatments for rickets, convulsions, constipation, consumption, scabs, scales, thrush, ringworm, snuffles, warts and worms. In some instances, the time at which the prescription was administered

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related to the cure: for scaled heads, before the full moon; for rickets, blood was to be let three days before the change of the moon, and the child to be tossed in one’s arms ‘the heeles highest’. In other cases the ingredients of a cure had magical properties. For fits, the prescription was ox gall and powder from the skull of a dead man who met an untimely end or, alternatively, the hair from the hind legs of a she-bear boiled in brandy. Warts could be removed by cutting off the head of an eel, rubbing the warts with the blood, and burying the head. When the head was rotten, the warts would fall off. Sometimes merely doing something, like putting the froth of new milk on any marks of a child, or placing a necklace of henbane around a child’s neck was the magic.152 If a child failed to thrive, it might be a victim of witchcraft, in which case prayer was the best remedy. Starsmere said that a carbuncle around the child’s neck, or putting hartshorn in the house, was ‘conceived good’.153 In women’s diaries and letters there are references to their treatments of their babies’ ailments. In 1697 Ann Radford delayed cleansing a ‘scabby child and nurse’ because of the weather. Abigail Harley wrote to her brother-in-law, Colonel Edward Harley, about the dosing of his ‘sweete babe’ in 1660 with a drink of maidenhair, violet leaves and hyssop, sweetened with syrup of violets and sugar candy: I sate up with her yt night & finding yt she slept very unquiet & had no stoole I made a glister & gave her next morning. . . . I used to anoint her stumack with orang flower Butter: yesterday morning we sent for the Dr finding her still grew wors . . . I haue comfort in yt I hope nothing has been neglected yt I know to be good for her.154 In the published manuals for child care we can see adults concerned for infant health and well-being, and in the family papers that survive we can see parents concerned over their babies’ health. Mothers especially suffered anxiety, as Thomas Tryon observed: ‘How many miseries and akin hearts do women indure with their Sickly Children?’155

V On the evidence presented here, it seems reasonable to conclude that many parents in seventeenth-century England were deeply concerned about the welfare of their children. Although I have not discussed reactions to infants’ deaths, there are many examples of both parents suffering. As for infanticide, on which much of the case for cruelty to infants has rested, Wrightson’s conclusion seems a sensible one: infanticide ‘was an

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offence committed under exceptional circumstances, related largely to the concealment or disposal of illegitimate children’.156 Mothers’ care for their babies was admired and valued on many public occasions. At the funerals of godly women, preachers usually paid tribute to their maternal qualities: ‘as a Mother! Care, tenderness and Providence’.157 Maternal love was recognized as a strong bond. The physician Percival Willughby observed that even if a child cried all night, a mother ‘useth it kindly . . . and in the morning they will be as good friends as euer before’.158 As Michael MacDonald has shown, contemporary judgments of insanity were based on an acknowledgement of mother love. A woman accused of murdering her child had only to show that she had no motive for her action to be judged guilty of insanity in a court of law. A mother’s stated inability to love her children was treated by physicians as ‘a sign of mental disorder’.159 Contemporary authors used the metaphor of the mother–child bond for the closest human love. To praise women as ‘nursing mothers’ to the church was to esteem them indeed. Since so much of the surviving evidence demonstrates that adults were concerned about children and that maternal love was highly valued, why have historians been so preoccupied with ideas of parental neglect and cruelty? In exploring some reasons for a judgment that seems so much at variance with the evidence, we may further understand some of the problems in interpreting the surviving records. One reason for the historians’ judgement of mismanaged child care is their uncritical attitude to the misogynist character of much of the surviving literature. In a society in which gender was one of the most important social distinctions, men’s attitudes to women, and especially to mothers, should not go unremarked. Men saw women as responsible for children, and blamed them when things went wrong. Although some have argued that childcare before industrialization was undifferentiated between men and women, contemporary evidence does not support them.160 Advisers agreed that the daily care of babies was the responsibility of women: this was part of the division of labour. From the mid-sixteenth century, men echoed the sentiments of Thomas Becon who declared that the mother ‘ought principally to attend upon the young ones in their infancy; forasmuch as the father is occupied abroad, about the provision for his family’. Even Gouge, so prolific with advice for all matters domestic, confessed that he would leave it to women to work out what was necessary for the new baby.161 Only women attended the birth, and it was assumed that every woman knew how to feed and swaddle her child. Men took little part in handling babies. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, said that it was odd and effeminate for men to

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play with them, and when Sir William Springett appeared before the congregation with his infant ‘in his arms’, his wife Mary said that it was a ‘cause of great amazement’.162 The Marquis of Halifax’s observation at the end of the century, that ‘the first part of our life is a good deal subjected to you in the nursery, where you reign without competition’, would have been generally accepted.163 Because women were recognized as responsible for childcare and the infant and child mortality rates were high, it is not surprising that men criticized them for the ways in which they handled their children. Some writers should be simply described as misogynists: they attacked women for all children’s ills. We all suffer, said Thomas Tryon, from ‘the mistaken Methods they too generally observe in the time of their Pregnancy’. In the mid-seventeenth century Culpeper alleged that ‘The fondness of Mothers to children doth them more mischief than the Devil himself can do them.’ Culpeper wanted women to be less permissive: they let their babies suck too long and they spoiled their children. Tryon attacked women for offering their babies the breast when they cried, for giving children strong drink, and over-feeding them generally.164 Much of the criticism relates to women’s handling of children older than a year, but the view that women ruined their children by indulgence has implications for men’s attitudes to mothers generally. A growing body of opposition to maternal methods of childcare came from the increasingly confident medical practitioners. In defining their own professional identity, they sought to distance themselves from the unqualified. A refrain in the printed medical sources was that women overloved their children and spoiled them by too much tenderness. Harris, writing in 1693, criticized ‘the mad and imprudent fondness of mothers’ and of ‘the foolish Nurse’. Women’s fancy and imagination produced monsters, their longings in pregnancy injured the foetus, and lazy idle women gave their children a disposition to disease. Mothers gave their babies flesh before they had teeth, and they copulated and spoiled their milk. They were liable to injure themselves and their children because they lacked understanding.165 Here the physicians cited women’s objections to blood-letting for babies. Mothers failed to appreciate that smallpox in the early stages could be cured, and if their children did die after being bled, they ‘will not fail to impute it to Bleeding’.166 By the mid-eighteenth century, medical writers imputed infant deaths to women’s reliance upon oral traditions of childcare instead of heeding professional advice. As William Cadogan, one of the most influential physicians, declared, in 1748, childcare had too long and too fatally been left to the management of women.167

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Some misogynism may relate to unresolved infant anxieties. For example, the attitudes of two Tudor physicians, Thomas Phaire and John Jones, have been analysed in terms of regression, relating their social thought to the child’s ambivalent attitudes to his mother and to weaning.168 For whatever reasons, however, many domestic and medical advisers were critical of women. They believed that mothers should care for children, but under male, and preferably professional, direction. Thus childcare advisers, while acknowledging the role of mothers, reinforced beliefs in female inferiority and incompetence. In so far as mistakes were made in infant care, medical writers blamed women rather than questioned the value of their methods. Current views about cruelty to children in the early modern period rest upon some of their statements. Thus both general anxiety about infant mortality and professional opposition to the ideas of the unqualified may explain some of the criticisms of women in the surviving literature. Subsequently, historians may have been influenced by this hostility, and concluded that childcare was mismanaged. However, they have failed to observe that although women were doing the work of childcare, they did so under patriarchal authority. Despite contemporary tributes to mothers, women did not ‘reign without competition’ in the nursery as Halifax alleged. Even for Halifax, there was to be compliance with the natural legal authority of fathers. On a vital issue that affected the infants’ chances of survival, whether they were breast-fed by their mothers or put out to nurse, paternal authority was paramount. Gouge, for example, was quite convinced for Scriptural and practical reasons that mothers should breast-feed their children, but if their husbands insisted upon a wet-nurse, women ‘must be meere patients in suffering the childe to be taken away’. Such was the unhappy experience of the Countess of Lincoln, several of whose babies died at wet-nurse when she was overruled by ‘another’s authority’.169 And there are other cases of men’s needs overriding those of the child. Simonds D’Ewes, for example, was left with a wet-nurse under the supervision of his grandparents because his father insisted that his mother accompany him to London.170 Not only is much of the surviving evidence written by men, and coloured by their attitude to women, but much of the historical discussion has failed to distinguish at all between the attitudes of the two sexes. Views have been attributed to ‘parents’ on the basis of evidence from fathers alone. Yet we know that maternity was the primary normative experience of Stuart women, and that mothers were much more directly involved in the daily care of children than fathers. Sara Mendelson’s study of Stuart women’s diaries reveals their common preoccupation with the trauma and anxiety

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over childbirth and infants’ health, and my work on their published writings confirms the centrality of maternity in their lives.171 Women’s feelings about their babies were likely to be different from those of their husbands. This is not, of course, to imply that fathers were unconcerned, but simply to point to the need for caution in discussing the surviving evidence, and the importance of giving due weight to the less common but equally significant statements of women. Theories and practices of infant care in the seventeenth century reveal adults concerned about the emotional and physical well-being of babies. In many instances, the love and devotion of mothers to their children was recognized as an important and natural bond.172 While some of the practices of infant care may be regarded as cruel from our differently oriented child-rearing theories, the evidence cited shows many adults perceived their babies as individuals whose needs they sought to satisfy and to whose care they devoted love and attention.

Notes and references 1 Henry Smith, A Preparatiue to Mariage (London, 1591), p. 85. 2 William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622), pp. 498–9. 3 Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (Harmondsworth, 1962); Lloyd de Mause (ed.), The History of Childhood (New York, 1974); J. L. Despert, The Emotionally Disturbed Child: An Inquiry into Family Patterns (New York, 1970). 4 J. H. Plumb, ‘The new world of children in eighteenth-century England’, Past & Present, 67 (1975), pp. 64–95; Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (London, 1976). 5 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977), p. 99 and passim. Randolph Trumbach has concluded from a study of English aristocratic families in the eighteenth century that the development of maternal affection was so significant that it helps explain the fall in the child mortality rate: Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1978). Elisabeth Badintur has also argued that the child mortality rate dropped in the late eighteenth century because mothers learned to love their children: Elisabeth Badintur, The Myth of Motherhood: An Historical View of the Maternal Instinct (London, 1981). 6 Adrian Wilson, ‘The infancy of the history of childhood: an appraisal of Philippe Ariès’, History and Theory, 9 (1980), pp. 132–153; Lorraine C. Attreed, ‘From Pearl maiden to tower princes: towards a new history of medieval childhood’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983), pp. 43–58;

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Ferdinand Mount, The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage (London, 1982). 7 Peter Fuller, ‘Uncovering childhood’ in Martin Hoyles (ed.), Changing Childhood (London, 1979), pp. 71–108. 8 Ralph A. Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London, 1984), p. 254. 9 Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge, 1984), p. viii. 10 Ibid., p. 271. 11 Ibid., p. viii. 12 Ibid., p. 69. 13 Peter Laslett, ‘The wrong way through the telescope: a note on literary evidence in sociology and historical sociology’, British Journal of Sociology, 27 (1976), pp. 319–42. 14 Paul Slack, ‘Mirrors of health and treasures of poor men: the uses of the vernacular medical literature of Tudor England’, in Charles Webster (ed.), Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 237–74. 15 J. E. Mechling, ‘Advice to historians on advice to mothers’, Journal of Social History 9 (1975), pp. 44–63. 16 WIL, MS 751. 17 The collections of manuscripts by the Parliamentary diarist, Sir Simonds D’Ewes, for example, are well known for their political content, but dismissed in the Dictionary of National Biography as ‘embracing even such trifles as his school exercises, a large number of letters to his sisters and family, and a great deal else that is really worthless’. From these apparently ‘worthless’ letters of his sisters much useful information about babies can be derived. Doubtless the same applies to many other of the well known (and less known), manuscript collections. See collections of D’Ewes family letters, BL, Harleian MS 382–388. 18 Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New York, 1977). 19 Daniel Featley, The Dippers Dipt (London, 1645), p. 42. For the pessimistic view, see also Alan Macfarlane (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683 (London, 1976), p. 12. A child’s poem sums up this pessimistic view: By Naure in my first estate A wretched Babe was I, In open field, deserving hate, In blood and filth did lie. J[ohn] V[ernon], The Compleat Scholler . . . Caleb Vernon, 2nd edn (London, 1666), p. 81.

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20 Peter Charron, Of Wisdome, trans. Samuel Lennard (London, 1606), p. 458. 21 Featley, Dippers Dipt, pp. 40–1, 53. Note that I have followed contemporary usage throughout in using ‘he’ as the pronoun for the baby. 22 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 523; [Henry Lawrence], Of Baptisme (Rotterdam, 1646), p. 133. Anabaptists and Baptists did not believe in infant baptism. 23 R[obert] C[leaver], A Godly Forme of Household Government (London, 1630), np.; Gouge, Domesticall duties, p. 519. 24 [ John Earle], Micro-cosmographie, or, A Peece of the World Discovered (London, 1628), p. 2; see also Thomas Tryon, A New Method of Educating Children (London, 1695), p. 3. 25 Dorothea Gotherson, To All that are Unregenerated: A Call (London, 1661), p. 112. Little children were ‘so humble, and voide of evill, that they may be taken for examples of the children of God’; Smith, Preparatiue to Mariage, 88 (Luke xviii. 17). For further examples of ideas of childhood as innocence see Richard Coppin, Truth’s Testimony (London, [3 March] 1655), p. 10; Henry Vaughan, The Retreat, in H. J. C. Grierson (ed.), Metaphysical Poems of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1921), p. 145: Happy those early dayes! when I Shin’d in my Angell-infancy! All childhood to the age of seven was free from sin, argued the French author, Primaudaye, because the child lacked judgement; Peter de La Primaudaye, The French Academie, 4th edn (London, 1602), pp. 531–2. Anne, Countess of Pembroke, had read The French Academy at 13, and in later life favoured Charron, On Wisdome; Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England 1650–1760 (Gloucester, Mass., 1920), pp. 32, 33. 26 Bulstrode Whitelocke, Annals, BL, Add. MS 53726, fo. 4V. 27 Jacob Rueff, The Expert Midwife (London, 1637), p. 153. 28 See Chapter 1, this book. 29 J. H. Turner (ed.), The Autobiography of Oliver Heywood, 1630–1702; His Autobiography, Diaries, Anecdote and Events Books, (4 vols, Brighouse, 1882–5), vol. ii, p. 259. 30 Quoted in Sara Mendelson, ‘Stuart women’s diaries and occasional memoirs’, in Mary Prior (ed.), Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (London, 1985), p. 196. 31 KAO, Journal of Elizabeth Turner, F 27, 1671, and September 1676. 32 Gouge, Domesticall duties, pp. 505–6. 33 Alice Thornton’s son had ‘a marke of blood upon his heart’ because of a fright; C. Jackson (ed.), ‘The autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton’, Surtees Society (1875), p. 140; Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford,

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1621), pp. 80–5; Levinus Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature (London, 1658), pp. 11–16. 34 Rueff, Expert midwife, p. 155. 35 Matthew Henry, A Short Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Eleanor Radford . . . Who Dyed at Chester Aug: 13. 1697, BL, (Dept. of Printed Books), Ref. 1418 a 44, n.d. fo. 1. 36 Nicholas Culpeper, A Directory for Midwives (London, 1651), p. 159. Even if the deformity was not the particular fault of the parents, it was a general judgement of God for the sins of the nation; S[amuel] H[artlib], Londons Charity Inlarged, Stilling the Poor Orphans Cry (London, 1650), p. 14; Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 151. 37 J[ohn] S[tarsmere], Childrens Diseases (London 1664), p. 4. 38 Henry Cuffe, The Differences of the Ages of Mans Life (London, 1607), p. 122. C.f. de Mause, History of Childhood, p. 16, who claims that he has found no description showing the same degree of empathy with the child as does Richard Steele before the eighteenth century. 39 Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 97; James McMath, The Expert Mid-wife (Edinburgh, 1694), pp. 319, 322–3. 40 Samuel Purchas, Microcosmus, or the Historie of Man (London, 1619), p. 157; J. M. Shuttleworth (ed.), The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London, 1976), p. 13; Smith, Preparatiue to Mariage, p. 85; BL, Sloane MS 1940, fo. 6v.; Henry Brachea, Orthopaedia, trans. M. Andry (2 vols, London, 1743), vol. ii, p. 99; J[ohn] B[ulwer], Anthropometamorphosis (London, 1653), pp. 158–9, 502. 41 Ibid., p. 366; Gouge, Domesticall duties, p. 519 (Colossians ii. 11–12). 42 The Church, which required women to give thanks after child-birth, urged them to think upon ‘the Blessing the Family hath received, and especially when an Heir is born’; [Thomas Comber], A Companion to the Temple and Closet (London, 1684), p. 214. Lady Hatton, who gave birth to a daughter in 1678, told her husband that she would gladly have laid down her life to procure him a son; NRO, Finch Hatton MS 1468. For further evidence on the preference for boys among the gentry, see Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House (London, 1984), pp. 82–3. 43 See, for example, BL, Additional MS 6340, fo. 2, for the christening of Charles I. 44 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, pp. 522–3. 45 BL, Harley papers, Portland loan 29/72, 2, Brilliana Harley to Sir Robert Harley, 12 May 1626; Harleian MS 382, Jone Elyot to her father, Paul D’Ewes, 1 January 1630. 46 A. L. Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age (London, 1974), p. 104; The Private Diary of John Dee (Camden Society, 1842), vol. xix, p. 26.

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47 BL, Sloane MS 1940, fo. 3v; Lemnius, Secret miracles, p. 105. 48 Whitelocke, Annals, additional MS 53726, fo. 63V. Whitelocke’s biographer, Ruth Spalding, The Improbable Puritan: A Life of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605–1675 (London, 1975), pp. 43, 240–1, writes of this incident as ‘a joke which turned out too true’, but prophecies known to a child can be self-fulfilling, as Lucy Hutchinson was aware. 49 James Primrose, Popular Errours: or, The Errours of the People in Physick, trans. Robert Wittie (London, 1651), p. 160. 50 Quoted in P. Cunnington and A. Buck, Children’s Costume in England, From the Fourteenth to the End of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1965), p. 67. See also T. F. Thiselton Dyer, Domestic Folk-lore (London, 1881), pp. 1–13. 51 Astrologers divided life into seven phases, of which ‘The First Age is called Infancy’; W[illiam] B[asse] and E. P., A Helpe to Discourse (London, 1621), p. 255. 52 Henry Swinburne, A Briefe Treatise of Testaments and Last Willes (London, 1590), p. 35; Sir Matthew Hale, Historia Placitorum Coronae (2 vols, London, 1736), vol. i, pp. 16–25. For a general definition of infancy as under 21, male and female, see William Shepherd, An Epitome of all the Common and Statute Laws of the Nation Now in Force (London, 1656), p. 473. 53 Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals, or Matrimonial Contracts (London, 1686), p. 19. By 1712, according to an anonymous author, 14 was the age of discretion, 21 the end of infancy according to common law, and 25 by civil law; The Infants Lawyer: or, The Law (Ancient and Modern) Relating to Infants, 2nd edn (London, 1712), p. 45. 54 Walter Harris, An Exact Enquiry Into, and Cure of the Acute Diseases of Infants (London, 1693), pp. 6–7. 55 Charron, Of Wisdome, pp. 456, 461; Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 58; John Pechey, The Complete Midwife’s Practice Enlarged, 5th edn (London, 1698), p. 102. 56 Thornton, Autobiography, pp. 151, 86. 57 Henry Newcome, The Compleat Mother (London, 1695), p. 31; Gouge, Domesticall Duties, pp. 505, 506–7. 58 Hannah Wolley, The Compleat Servant-maid, 3rd edn (London, 1683), p. 49; Thornton, Autobiography, p. 151; family letters, Harleian MS 382, fo. 182, Elizabeth Poley to Lady Anne D’Ewes, n.d.; Cuffe, Ages of Mans Life, p. 123; E. H. Pearce, Annals of Christ’s Hospital (London, 1901), p. 37; Featley, Dippers Dipt, pp. 40, 43, 48. 59 John Starsmere, Children’s Diseases (London, 1664), p. 41. 60 Franciscus de la Boë Sylvius, Of Childrens Diseases: Given in the Familiar Style of Weaker Capacities (London, 1682), p. 138. 61 Bodleian Library, Copy-book of Sir John Reresby . . . 1661–1679, Rawl. MS D204, fo. 78.

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62 Felix Wuertz, The Surgeons Guid: . . . with a Guid for Women in the Nursing of their Newborn Children (London, 1658), p. 341; John Jones, The Arte and Science of Preseruing Bodie and Soule in Healthe (London, 1579), p. 13. 63 Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671), p. 411. 64 Newcome, Compleat Mother, pp. 6, 109–10; BL, Harleian MS 6987, fo. 119. 65 Fifty–sixty per cent of infant deaths occurred in the first few months of life; Roger Schofield and E. A. Wrigley, ‘Infant and child mortality in the late Tudor and early Stuart period’, in Webster (ed.), Health, Medicine and Mortality, pp. 61–96; Roger Schofield, ‘Comment on infant mortality’, Local Population Studies, 9 (1972), p. 49; Stone, Family, p. 70. 66 Valerie Fildes has drawn to my attention the views of two physicians who had favourable views of hand-feeding. Nevertheless, even around the end of the nineteenth century, surveys showed that the chances of surviving to one year of age ‘were substantially higher for breast-fed than for artificially fed infants’: J. Knodel, ‘Breast-feeding and population growth: evolution of primate chromosomes’, Science, 198 (1977), p. 1112. For a study of the effects of breast-feeding upon fertility, see Dorothy McLaren, ‘Marital fertility and lactation 1570–1720’, in Prior (ed.), Women in English Society, pp. 22–53. 67 Jacques Guillemeau, Child-birth, or the Happie Deliverie of Women (London, 1612), p. 1; The Workes of that Famous Chirurgeon A. Parey, trans. T. Johnson (London, 1634), pp. 607, 609. 68 O[liver] H[eywood], Advice to an Only Child: or, Excellent Councils to all Young Persons (London, 1693), p. 125. 69 Harris, Diseases of Infants, p. 17. 70 Martin Luther, Works’ vol. 54; Table Talk (Philadelphia, 1967), p. 321; Paré, Works, p. 608. 71 Cholmley, quoted in Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 592; The Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley (London, 1787), p. 34. 72 A. T. Cowie, ‘The hormonal control of milk secretion’, in S. T. Kon and A. T. Cowie (eds), Milk: The Mammary Gland and its Secretion (New York, 1961), p. 164. 73 A. M., A Rich Closet of Physical Secrets (London, 1652), p. 27; Thomas Lupton, A Thousand Notable Things (London, 1660), p. 46; G. Hartman, The True Preserver and Restorer of Health (London, 1682), p. 403; WIL, MS 1320; The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight, in Preserving, Physick, Beautifying, Cookery, and Gardening, 10th edn (London, 1719), p. 49; Kenneth Dewhurst, John Locke (1632–1704): Physician and Philosopher: A Medical Biography, with an Edition of the Medical Notes in his Journals (London, 1963), pp. 25–9. Among the prescribed first nutrients were fresh oil of almonds and sugar, treacle and honey. Honey prevented convulsive fits, sugar prevented wind and phlegm.

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Some said that if the new-born baby took half a scruple of pure coral before anything else, he would have no falling sickness. 74 The following paragraph is based on Eucharius Roesslin, The Byrth of Mankynde, Otherwise Named the Womans Book (London, 1545), fo. 115; Paré, Works, pp. 606–7; François Mauriceau, The Accomplisht Midwife (London, 1673), pp. 115, 365–6; McMath, Expert Midwife, p. 324; Pechey, Diseases of Infants, p. 4. 75 Guillemeau, Child-birth; Nursing of Children, p. 19; Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, p. 366; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, pp. 324–7. 76 Pechey, Diseases of Infants, p. 155. 77 Wuertz, Surgeons Guid, p. 341; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 329. 78 O[liver] H[eywood], Advice to an Only Child (London, 1693), p. 122; Thomas Tryon, A New Method of Educating Children (London, 1695), pp. 65–6. 79 Smith, Preparatiue to Mariage, pp. 83–5; The Mothers Looking-glass: or, The Concurrent Judgment of the Learned . . . Whether the Mother be Obliged to Give the Child its First Nourishment, by Giving Suck Herself (London, 1702). C.f. R. V. Schnucker, ‘The English puritans and pregnancy, delivery and breast feeding’, History of Childhood Quarterly, 1 (1974), pp. 637–58. 80 Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie, pp. 2, 11; Smith, Preparatiue to Mariage, pp. 83–5; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 388; Newcome, Compleat Mother, pp. 16, 86–97. 81 La Primaudaye, French Academie, p. 521; Gouge, Domesticall Duties, pp. 508–13; Charron, Of Wisdome, p. 460; Newcome, Compleat Mother, pp. 99, 101. 82 The Complete Works of Isaac Ambrose (London, 1674), p. 231; Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie, p. 18; Nicholas Culpeper, The Compleat Midwifes Practice (London, 1656), pp. 116–17; Newcome, Compleat Mother, pp. 64–7; Mary Verney paid a higher weekly wage because her nurse had no Christening fee: F. P. Verney and M. M. Verney (ed.), Memoirs of the Verney Family During the Civil War (2 vols., London, 1892), vol. ii, p. 294. The structure of payments to the wet-nurse did not encourage her to care for each baby till he was weaned, for in addition to her weekly or monthly payments, she received a bonus at the christening of a child when friends bestowed gifts upon her. 83 Paré, Works, p. 947; Guillemeau, Child-birth, p. 1; Newcome, Compleat Mother, pp. 69 –71. 84 A. Malloch, Finch and Baines: A Seventeenth Century Friendship (Cambridge, 1917), p. 66. 85 G. Davies (ed.), Autobiography of Thomas Raymond and Memoirs of the Family of Guise of Elmore, Gloucestershire, Camden Society, 3rd ser., xxviii (1917), p. 28; Henry Parker, ‘The true portraiture of the kings of England’, in W. Scott (ed.), A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, 2nd edn (London, 1811), vi, p. 101.

‘THE SUCKING CHILD’

86 Newcome, Compleat Mother, pp. 72–5, Gilbert Burnet, Some Letters Containing an Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, &c. (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 248. 87 Thomas Muffett, Healths Improvement (London, 1655), p. 119; Guillemeau, Child-birth, preface I, i, 3. 88 Ibid., preface I, i, 3V; Pechey, Of Womens Diseases, pp. 182–3; R. I., The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincoln (London, 1655), sig. K.v. 89 BL, Sloane MS 1954, fo. 97; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 392; Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, p. 433. 90 Dorothy McLaren, ‘Marital fertility and lactation 1570–1720’ in Prior (ed.), Women in English Society, pp. 22–53. 91 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 518. 92 Samuel Clark, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons (London, 1683), pp. 155–8; Anne Newdigate, draft petitions, 1609, in Lady Newdigate-Newdegate (ed.), Gossip from a Muniment Room (London, 1897), pp. 85, 88. 93 KAO, Journal of Elizabeth Turner. 94 Thornton, Autobiography, pp. 92, 148. 95 Dorothy Leigh, The Mothers Blessing (London, 1618), p. 10. 96 S. O. Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (2 vols, London, 1845), ii, p. 45. 97 The Autobiography of Symon Patrick, Bishop of Ely (Oxford, 1839), p. 88. 98 Guildhall (London), ‘Nehemiah Wallington his Booke, 30 December 1630–1648’, p. 432. 99 BL, Henry papers, Add. MS 42849, fo. 19, Matthew Henry to his mother Katharine, 1697; Thornton, Autobiography, p. 91; D’Ewes, Autobiography, ii, p. 16. 100 The physician Percival Willughby records that one father was so determined his child would not suck ‘any pocky nurse in, or about London’ that he would not allow his child to suck at all for six days, by which time it had forgotten how. H. Blenkinsop (ed.), Percival Willughby, Observations in Midwifery (Warwick, 1863), pp. 136–7. The nurse’s conditions of living affected the child. Some parents sent food but one woman was told she nearly died as a baby. When her parents visited, they found that the food they had sent was stinking. Anthony Walker, The Holy Life of Mrs Elizabeth Walker (London, 1690), p. 12. John Dee’s children in the 1590s were all put out to nurse, and Dee paid for candles and soap; Dee, Diary, pp. 11–12, 19–20, 39, 41. Mary Verney provided a cradle, as the nurse had none, and then her baby moved to the country with the nurse because the nurse wanted to go home; Verney, Memoirs, ii, pp. 269, 293. 101 BL, Harleian MS 382, fo. 182, 10 May 1639.

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102 J. D. Marshall (ed.), The Autobiography of William Stout of Lancaster 1664–1752 (Manchester, 1967), p. 80. 103 BL, Add. MS 53726, fos. 3, 62v. 104 BL, Harley papers, Portland loan 29/76. 105 East Sussex Record Office, Dunn 51/53, Anna Temple to her daughter 30 June 1638. I owe this reference to the kindness of Ann Hughes. 106 BL, Harleian MS 382, fo. 39, Jone Elyott to Lady Ann D’Ewes. 107 Starsmere, Children’s Diseases, p. 79. 108 For example, Jane Josselin; Alan MacFarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: A Seventeenth-century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 202–3. The case of Mrs Thornton is of interest. An ambiguous passage reads that she was in health ‘affter I had given suck to Robin, all along while I was with childe, and till about a fortnight before my delivery’: Autobiography, pp. 144–5. 109 J. J. Bagley (ed.), The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby, Lancashire, vol. 1, 1702–1711 (Record Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, 1968), p. 62. 110 For a discussion of lactation see Dorothy McLaren, ‘Fertility, infant mortality, and breast feeding in the seventeenth century’ and ‘Nature’s contraceptive: wet-nursing and prolonged lactation: the case of Chesham, Buckinghamshire, 1578–1601’, Medical History, 22 and 23 (1978, 1979), pp. 378–96, 426–42. 111 Sharp, Midwives Book, pp. 374–5; Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, p. 367; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 326; A. M., Rich Closet, p. 21; Thomas Tryon, The Good House-wife Made a Doctor (London, 1692), p. 26. 112 Annotations Upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament (London, 1645), Genesis xxi. 8. 113 Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, pp. 213–15; C. Severn (ed.), Diary of the Rev. John Ward (London, 1839), p. 254; William Cadogan, An Essay Upon Nursing and the Management of Children (London, 1748), p. 20. 114 Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 375; Pechey, Diseases of Infants, pp. 9–10. Pechey advised 11/2 or 2 years as ideal; ibid., p. 10. 115 Guillemeau, Child-birth, p. 27; Pechey, Diseases of Infants, pp. 10–11. 116 BL, Portland loan 29/67, 4, Elizabeth Harley to Abigail Harley, 23 July 1689. 117 BL, Portland loan 29/72, 14 March 1625/6; M. H. Nicholson (ed.), Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and their Friends, 1642–84 (New Haven, 1930), p. 160. 118 Macfarlane (ed.), Diary of Ralph Josselin, p. 33. Another weaning was described in 1694 as ‘a good work well past’: BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 15. 119 D’Ewes, Autobiography, ii., pp. 107–8, BL, Harleian MS 382, fos. 39, 45, 55.

‘THE SUCKING CHILD’

120 Blundell, Great Diurnal, p. 88; Dee, Diary, pp. 41, 43, 53, 55. 121 Vernon, Life, p. 62; H. P., A Looking-glass for Children (London, 1672), p. 11; F. P. Hett (ed.), The Memoirs of Sir Robert Sibbald (1641–1722) (London, 1932), p. 51. 122 The Life of the Reverend Mr Geo. Trosse, Late Minister of the Gospel . . . by Himself (London, 1714), p. 19. 123 The Childrens Petition, 10 November 1669. 124 Tixall Letters: or, The Correspondence of the Aston family (2 vols, London, 1815), vol. i, p. 77. 125 Whatever the age at weaning, there is a slight increase in the risk of death, especially for children in the age group 12 to 18 months; P. Cantrelle, ‘Mortality: levels, patterns and trends’, in J. C. Caldwell (ed.), Population, Growth and Socioeconomic Change in West Africa (New York, 1975), p. 108. 126 Richard Wall, ‘Inferring differential neglect of females from mortality data’, Annales de Demographie Historique (1981), pp. 119–40. Glynis Reynolds, ‘Infant mortality and sex ratios at baptism as shown by reconstruction of Willingham, a parish at the edge of the Fens in Cambridgeshire’, Local Population Studies, 22 (1979), pp. 31–6. 127 BL, Harleian MS 382, fo. 45. 128 Primrose, Popular Errours, pp. 181–2; Cadogan, Essay Upon Nursing, p. 7. A recent study by Valerie Fildes suggests that the age of weaning recommended by medical writers was apparently representative of actual practice; Valerie Fildes, ‘The age of weaning in Britain 1500–1800’, Journal Biosocial Sciences, 14 (1982), pp. 223–240. 129 Wuertz, Surgeons Guid, p. 354. 130 Pechey, Diseases of Infants, p. 6. 131 John Jones, Medical, Philosophical, and Vulgar Errors of Various Kinds, Considered and Refuted (London, 1797), p. 73. 132 Ibid., p. 6; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 322. 133 Portrait of Diane de Poitiers, c. 1571; M. H. Lee (ed.), Diary and Letters of Philip Henry, A.D. 1631–1696 (London, 1882), pp. 85, 90; Verney, Memoirs, ii, p. 294. 134 Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis, pp. 328–36; Dewhurst, Locke, p. 161; Cadogan, Essay Upon Nursing, pp. 9–11; George Louis Le Clerc, Count Buffon, Natural History, trans. Barr (10 vols., London, 1792), iii, pp. 346–7. 135 Wuertz, Surgeons Guid, pp. 364–5. 136 Sharp, Midwives Book, 374; Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, pp. 370–1; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, pp. 328, 352. 137 Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, p. 209; Sir Kenelm Digby, A Late Discourse Made in Solemne Assembly, 3rd edn (London, 1660), p. 126.

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138 Wuertz, Surgeons Guid, p. 341; Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, p. 371; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 329; Paré, Works, p. 611; Pechey, Diseases of Infants, p. 5; Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight, p. 47. 139 Bernard de Mandeville, A Treatise of Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passion (London, 1711), p. 180; [Bathsua Makin], An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (London, 1673), p. 26; Paré, Works, p. 607, Tryon, New Method of Education, p. 37. 140 BL, Henry Papers, Additional MS 42849, 21, 12. 141 McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 327; Henry, Diary, p. 199; Thornton, Autobiography, p. 84; Heywood, Autobiography, i, pp. 34–5; BL, Harleian MS 382, fo. 7, 28 August 1630. 142 McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 328; Sharp, Midwives Book, pp. 373–4. 143 Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, p. 308; Harris, Diseases of Infants, p. 78; Pechey, Diseases of Infants, p. 73; Guillemeau, Child-birth, p. 67; Sylvius, Childrens Diseases, p. 35; WIL, MS 1320. 144 The following paragraph is based on Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 404; Sylvius, Childrens Diseases, pp. 129, 97–8; Harris, Diseases of Infants, pp. 91–3; Starsmere, Childrens Diseases, pp. 129–35; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 359; Guillemeau, Child-birth, p. 59. 145 Royal College of Physicians, MS 504. 146 BL, Sloane MS 3859; Pechey, Childrens Diseases, p. 155; Heneage Finch, at about a year, had his gums lanced for three or four ‘great teeth’ in 1682, and died; P. Finch (ed.), Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland (2 vols, London, 1901), p. 182. 147 Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 408; Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, p. 420; Harris, Diseases of Infants, p. 138; BL, Additional MS 28956; WIL, MS 4338. 148 Sylvius, Childrens Diseases, p. 77; Starsmere, Childrens Diseases, pp. 152–4, 80. 149 Ibid., p. 24; Sylvius, Childrens Diseases, p. 82; Guillemeau, Child-birth, pp. 97, 99–100; McMath, Expert Mid-wife, p. 373. 150 G. F. Still, The History of Pediatrics: The Progress of the Study of Diseases of Children up to the End of the XVIIIth Century (London, 1931); see also S. Radbill, ‘Pediatrics’, in A. G. Debus (ed.), Medicine in Seventeenth-century England (Berkeley, 1974). 151 Henry van Roonhuyse, ‘Medico-chirurgical observations’, in Herman Busschof, Two Treatises (London, 1676), pp. 115–19; Willughby, Observations, p. 145. 152 WIL, MS 184 a, 579, 635, 1026, 1320, 4049, 4338, 4496; Royal College of Physicians, MS 504. 153 Sharp, Midwives Book, p. 414; Starsmere, Childrens Diseases, p. 83. 154 BL, Additional MS 42849, fo. 17, Anne Hulton to her mother, 1 February 1697; BL, Portland loan 29/76, 9 October [16]60. The age of the child is not specified.

‘THE SUCKING CHILD’

155 Thomas Tryon, Healths Grand Preservative (London, 1682), p. 12. 156 Keith Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in earlier seventeenth-century England’, Local Population Studies, 15 (1975), pp. 10–22. Nevertheless, it should be noted that it was only those women who bore illegitimate babies who had an immediate need to kill them. An unwanted baby of married parents could be disposed of at leisure, and this kind of infanticide would not necessarily lead to prosecution and legal records. Catherine Damme, ‘Infanticide: the worth of an infant under law’, Medical History, 22 (1978), pp. 1–24, rightly draws attention to the lower status of infant compared with adult life. 157 Two Sermons Preached at the Funerals of Mrs Elizabeth Montfort and of Dr Thomas Montfort Respectively ([London?], 1632). 158 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 512; Willughby, Observations, p. 138; William Yonger, The Nurses Bosome: A Sermon (London, 1617), p. 21. 159 Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 83–4. 160 F. Weinstein and G. M. Platt, The Wish to be Free: Society, Psyche, and Value Change (Berkeley, 1969), p. 12 and passim. 161 Thomas Becon, ‘The Catechisme’, Works (Parker Soc., Cambridge, 1844), ii, p. 384; Thomas Granger, The Tree of Good and Evil (London, 1616), p. 19; Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 150. 162 Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, p. 209. J. K. Gardiner, ‘Elizabethan psychology and Burton’s Anatomy of melancholy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 38 (1977), p. 388; Some Account of the Circumstances in the Life of Mary Pennington from her Manuscript Life for her Family (London, 1821), p. 71. 163 George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, ‘Advice to a daughter’, J. P. Kenyon (ed.), Halifax: Complete Works (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 278; Ambrose, Complete Works, p. 231. 164 Tryon, New Method of Educating, pp. 14, 60–6; R. K. Marshall, Childhood in Seventeenth-century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1976), pp. 20–21; Culpeper, Directory for Midwives, p. 156. 165 Harris, Diseases of Infants, pp. 11–14, 20, 49. 166 Mauriceau, Accomplisht Midwife, p. 420. 167 Cadogan, Essay Upon Nursing, p. 3. 168 B. M. Berry, ‘The first English pediatricians and Tudor attitudes towards childhood’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1974), pp. 561–77, argues that the sixteenth-century physician Jones shows as an adult the attitude of the infant who feared his mother’s rejection. For a further discussion of the psychological effects of mothering, see Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley, 1978). 169 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, pp. 517–18; Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, p. 16.

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170 D’Ewes, Autobiography. 171 Mendelson, ‘Stuart women’s diaries’, pp. 195–8; Patricia Crawford, ‘Women’s published writings 1600–1700’, in Prior (ed.), Women in English Society, pp. 222, 227. 172 None of the evidence seems a sufficient basis for general conclusions about the impact of patterns of childcare upon subsequent adult behaviour. C.f. J. E. Illick, ‘Child-rearing in seventeenth-century England and America’, in de Mause (ed.), History of Childhood, pp. 303–50. There are other studies that endeavour to predict the impact of child-rearing patterns upon adult behaviour: G. Gorer and J. Rickman, The People of Great Russia: A Psychological Study (London, 1949); J. M. W. Whiting and I. L. Child, Child Training and Personality: A Cross-cultural Study (New Haven, 1953); B. Whiting (ed.), Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing (New York, 1963).

CHAPTER 6

Katharine and Philip Henry and their children: a case study in family ideology

H

istorians are currently debating the nature of English families in the early modern period. In his ambitious study of the family from 1500–1800, Lawrence Stone has argued that there was a transition from families in which there was little love between spouses, little affection between parents and children, to ones in which love was important.1 His critics have argued that the picture is not so black as he has painted, and in the most recent study of the English family over a similar period of time, Ralph Houlbrooke has rejected Stone’s depiction of change and argued rather for continuity of patterns of affection.2 There is a danger in the general discussion at present that by focusing on questions about the degree of happiness within families, to which ultimately there can be no answers, historians will be diverted from the more important questions about the ways in which ideas influenced the lives of men and women in the past, and how the family transmitted values from one generation to another. In particular, the family taught children their place in the world: their social position and their gender. Yet, what we know of individual families and their dynamics in the early modern period is still fairly limited. Alan Macfarlane’s pioneering study of the Essex clergyman, Ralph Josselin, is deservedly widely cited, but we still need further studies to allow us to assess whether Josselin was a typical or unusual individual.3 Miriam Slater has assessed Stone’s general conclusions through the records of one upper gentry family, the Verneys, and Vivienne Larminie has

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concluded, from her study of another gentry family, the Newdigates, that the personalities of individuals influenced the effects of patriarchal ideas in families.4 It is only on such detailed studies that the broad generalizations can rest. Furthermore, too little attention so far has been devoted to questions of the differing experiences of men and women. It has been argued that Protestantism enhanced the position of women,5 although the distinctive contribution of Protestant and Puritan belief to family life is debatable. Margo Todd, for example, has suggested that before the work of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, Catholic ideals of family life were not so very different from those of later Protestants, and Kathleen Davies has questioned whether the Protestants had ideas substantially different from those of Catholics about the status of women within marriage.6 But the women’s perspective upon the family has been neglected so far, partly, no doubt, because it is more difficult to explore women’s lives than those of men of the same social level. However, there is source material that can be used. The family upon which this chapter is based is that of a Nonconformist minister Philip Henry, and his wife Katharine in the later seventeenth century. Their son Matthew was a well known Nonconformist minister in Chester. Through a discussion of the surviving material, three main questions will be explored. Firstly, there is the question of the ideals and practices of the godly family. In neither attitudes nor behaviour do the Henrys seem atypical of seventeenth-century English Puritans, but there was, I shall argue, an intensification of some aspects of Puritan belief after the Restoration which affected their attitudes to the family. Secondly, because the women left records as well as the men, we can explore more closely the question of how Protestantism influenced their daily lives. The material reveals how Protestant Nonconformity could, in fact, make life very difficult for women in the family compared with men. Finally, since families and the ideology held by them do, it will be argued, change over time, the ways in which the Henrys’ papers were collected and selectively published over the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century enable us to trace a changing ideology of the family that was offered not just to Nonconformists but to persons of the middle rank in English society.

I ‘It is not so much what we are at Church as what we are in our Families’ was the message preached by Philip Henry.7 The public defeat of Puritan policies in 1660 privatized many ideals. Among the Henrys, the family became

KATHARINE AND PHILIP HENRY AND THEIR CHILDREN

more important as the men’s role in public life declined. Early in the seventeenth century, one of the most influential writers on the family, William Gouge, had taught that the family ‘was a little Church, and a little common-wealth’.8 He saw the family rearing good Christians and good citizens, thereby contributing to the wider world, but at the end of the century, Philip Henry’s emphasis was different. Individuals were to be judged less on their public roles than on their conduct at home. The Henrys were of the lesser gentry.9 Born in 1631, Philip’s early education was fairly typical of a gentleman – Westminster school, and Christ Church Oxford. He moved to Flintshire in 1653 as a tutor to the family of John Puleston, a judge in the court of common pleas, where he was ordained by the Presbyterian classis of Bradford north, Shropshire, in 1657. Under the Pulestons’ patronage he became a chaplain at Worthenbury,10 from which position he married a wealthy gentlewoman, Katharine Matthews, who was three years older than he. Ministers marrying above themselves were a not unfamiliar prospect,11 and not surprisingly Katharine’s father disliked the match. He probably liked it even less when Philip Henry refused to conform to the restored Anglican church and was ejected from his living in October 1662.12 For the next 25 years Philip was virtually unemployed. The family was safe from penury, thanks to Katharine’s dowry, and moved to a farm at Broad Oak, just outside Whitchurch, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Six children were born (see select genealogy). The first, John, born in 1661, died aged nearly six, but the other five children all lived to marry between 1686 and 1688. Matthew, the eldest and only surviving son, was a minister in Chester until he moved to London in 1712. He published extensively, but is best known as a Biblical commentator. Sarah, the third child, married a widower, John Savage, and lived nearby on a farm at Wrenbury Wood.13 Katharine married a physician, John Tylston, who had studied medicine with the famous Thomas Sydenham, and who subsequently published a book entitled Country Practice.14 Eleanor and Ann both married tradesmen in Chester.15 All these marriages produced children, but my concern is largely with the first and second generations. Source material about the Henrys is voluminous. There are diaries and fragments of diaries and transcripts of diaries across three generations, an autobiography, letters, commonplace books, accounts and genealogies.16 Philip left many sermons in manuscript; Matthew many in print. The creation and keeping of these records was important for the family’s sense of identity. The outside world could not be changed, but through their letters and diaries the Henry family attempted to define and order a world for themselves.17 Written records were to bear witness to the truth of Nonconforming

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Select genealogy: Katharine and Philip Henry and their children

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KATHARINE AND PHILIP HENRY AND THEIR CHILDREN

Christianity, as can be seen in the surviving diaries of three members of the family. Philip Henry ‘began to keep an Account of my Time in this method’ in 1657.18 Of maybe 37 volumes that he kept until his death in 1696, only 22 survived into the late nineteenth century, of which I have been able to trace only ten.19 His entries were brief, usually of outward events such as the weather, family details and general news. He was especially interested in recording those happenings that he could interpret as providential. For example on 15 December 1662, John Wickstead, a drinker, was found dead: ‘he had been receiving rents . . . on the sabbath day’. On 13 February 1662, John Bickley’s sister was distempered with melancholy, which came ‘at first breaking of her arm at which she was discontented and fretted agt [against] God and say’d as much as if she thought God had done his worst & shortly after her husband dyed left her 6 children and more in debt than his personal Estate will amount to pay besides other encumbrances – the Lord is righteous’.20 His son Matthew began to keep a diary, of which only one original volume survives as an account every night ‘of how the day has been spent’.21 Likewise, only the first volume of Sarah Savage’s original diary survives. She began in August 1686: ‘I have had lon[g] upon my thoughts to do something in ye Nature of a Diary – being encouraged by the great advantage others have got thereby & by ye hopes yt I may thereby bee furthered [in] a godly life.’22 Two eighteenth-century transcripts provide evidence of her continuing struggles to keep an account of her time and her spiritual state.23 Her diary reveals her as more introspective than her father or brother although surviving fragments of her sister Ann’s diaries suggest a similar pattern of reflection. Another sister, Katharine, left only brief general comments.24 In addition, as members of the family were seeking salvation, their letters to each other contained pious thoughts for the recipients to treasure. All of this indicates a deliberateness and a selfconsciousness in the making and keeping of evidence that we must bear in mind. Nonconformity was a central, essential part of the Henrys’ family life. Since Philip Henry could not accept reordination nor swear that there was nothing contrary to the word of God in a prayer book he had not seen, he was suspended and afterwards ejected.25 He and his family were removed from their former parish and often at odds with neighbours who viewed them with suspicion.26 Philip was fined for preaching, and after he refused to pay, his goods were distrained. He was twice imprisoned, once in 1663 and again in 1685 at the time of Monmouth’s uprising.27 From being an esteemed minister in a parish, he became an outcast. As the years passed, he grew more and more bitter, ‘of little or no use in my generation’.28 His

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diary reveals his attempts to justify himself and to live such a life of piety as would confound his Christian enemies. It was an unhappy time, for while there were other ejected ministers nearby and in adjacent counties, the Nonconformists were divided over their tactics. Revisionists today may wish to qualify the sense in which the years 1662 to 1685 can properly be described as ‘the great persecution’, but for Philip Henry and his family they were, even though restriction fluctuated and there were periods of de facto toleration.29 After 1689 the Dissenters were tolerated and Philip resumed his ministry and his son was appointed to a congregation in Chester. But the previous years had left their mark, for the Henrys were never sure how long their liberty would last.30 Nor, despite toleration, did their sense of being a minority for religion’s sake, evaporate. They still lived in a community in which their separation was criticized and their scruples of conscience mocked.31 Yet from the first, Philip Henry had one refuge from the world: his family. In 1662 he noted in his diary ‘comfort in wife and child’.32 With the wider community hostile to him, Philip Henry developed an ideology about the family that was partly a response to the national crisis of Puritan belief and his own personal crisis of ejection. His ideas were not, of course, new in themselves, but were rather an intensification of many general Protestant views about domestic conduct. What was new was the emphasis upon the performance of family duties. ‘Relative duties’ as they were called became the measure of the individual’s Christianity.33 ‘We are’, Philip Henry taught, ‘really which we are relatively.’34 As he preached, so he struggled in his own household to practise Christian precepts for family life: loving husband and obedient wife; children reared in godliness who respected and obeyed their parents; servants who were religious. Even after circumstances changed, and there was the opportunity for public witness through preaching after 1689, ‘relative duties’ remained important. Matthew Henry in his public ministry, influenced by his family of origin, taught the same precepts as his father. Family behaviour was the measure of the individual’s Christianity: ‘The truth and example of Religion is seen in a becoming temper and conduct towards our Relatives.’35 In his nuclear family, Philip Henry developed a present identity. His family became his congregation, and as he preached and prayed with them daily ‘he had a Church in his House’.36 The family became ‘a Pattern of that Primitive Christianity’.37 He had a calendar of significant days, a mixture of public and private events. He remembered the day of Charles I’s execution as well as the silencing of the ministers; his ordination and his ejection, wedding anniversaries and his own and his children’s birthdays.38 Reflecting upon the private occasions strengthened family bonds, for the

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dates had meaning only in the domestic circle. Philip also looked beyond his own nuclear family, to his ancestors and his extended family. He began seeking records of his descent in 1662, finding out about his grandfather.39 His mother died in 1645, and after his father’s death in 1652, he had taken in his two younger sisters. Throughout his life he retained contact with them, and in her will his widow remembered them too.40 Not only did the family provide the minister with an identity and individuals with valuable roles: it also offered family members a future. In 1662 the outlook for Nonconformists was uncertain, and even around 1700, the future was bleak. They saw many of their leading adherents fall away or die, and by that date it has been estimated that they were only 5 per cent of the population.41 Even after the Toleration Act it was difficult to enjoy public office, for although many Dissenters, including the Henrys, attended Anglican worship to show their common Protestant sympathies, this practice was suspected, and Parliament sought to forbid it.42 In this context the family could provide for the time to come, becoming that ‘arrow through time’ of which Natalie Davis has written.43 The births of children multiplied the number of Christians who would continue to witness to the tradition of their forbears.44 Families were ‘the Nurseries and seminaries of piety’.45 Philip rejoiced at the building up of his house by the marriages of his children: ‘so many Swarms (as he us’d to call them) out of his Hive’.46 Matthew congratulated his father on the birth of his first grandchild.47 In this provision for the family’s future, Philip Henry thought that sons were more important than daughters. He believed that he himself ‘might bee sayd to bee the chief of their [his parents’] strength, being their first born son’.48 In an undated sermon he preached the same message: The more children there are – the more of them are males, the more likely the family is to bee built up by them . . . whence tis so, they are God’s gift.49 Thus through the family’s continuance the Henrys saw that there was a future. There was no greater misfortune than the barrenness of the wife, and the premature deaths of children could occasion much unhappy heart-searching. They knew, of course, that godliness could not be bequeathed,50 but despite this the ministers taught parents, as other preachers did, to bring up their children in godliness.51 ‘Children are very apt to do as their fathers did, and as they themselves were taught to do when they were young’.52 The parents were responsible for the behaviour of their offspring, as Philip Henry preached: ‘the Miscarriages of children do often times reflect reproach upon their honest parents’,53 and in later years his daughter showed that she accepted the rightness of his view noting that children were ‘Arrows in ye hand & need to be rightly guided’.54

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Because Philip Henry hoped to bear witness to the truth of Nonconforming Christianity through his family, he sought the right ordering of his household. There he constantly prayed that individuals ‘might have grace to carry it as a minister, and a minister’s wife, and a minister’s children . . . that the ministry might in nothing be blamed’.55 Not being blamed was important: individuals sought personal rectitude and public approbation. The ‘family’ who had to behave properly extended beyond immediate kin and included servants. Philip Henry was troubled at a drunken servant because he demonstrated that all was not well under the minister’s rule.56 Later, in 1708, Matthew Henry was in deep distress when a manservant got their cookmaid pregnant and disappeared: ‘O how it discompos’d me! Lord that such wickedness should be committed in my house’. Two days later he recorded gloomily in his diary that his family was the talk of Chester: ‘Friends pity mee. Enemies triumph’.57 But far more than to servants, the family was vulnerable to the behaviour of children, so that training and disciplining the young were constant preoccupations. Even a visit to a grandmother allowed no relaxation of discipline: ‘Kate must have a rod sometimes’, wrote Ann Hulton to her mother of her six-year-old, ‘shee requires it’.58 At adolescence, parental anxiety magnified. As Philip noted in his diary, they ‘begin more now than ever yet to bee the bearers of our own cares, and fears’.59 One special advantage of looking at the families of ministers is that there are clear, formal statements of precepts for domestic conduct as well as evidence of practices. In some cases, this can provide a pleasant contrast: Philip Doddridge, for example, stern in precept, revealed himself in his correspondence in the 1730s and 40s as a warm, loving father and affectionate, even playful husband.60 In the case of the Henrys, precept and practice were more of a piece. As the ministers preached, so the families struggled to practise. The circumstances were of course different: the years after the ejection of the ministers were not a time for jesting. They were years for bearing witness, for holding firm while the Lord tested, a time to remember that the Lord chastened those whom he loved. The records of the family show individuals striving to meet the standards of piety that the ministers imposed. Disobedience to a father, always a serious matter in early modern England, was presented in the Henry family as disobedience to the Lord. Philip, as minister, was the expositor of the Word. This enhanced his authority. Indeed, Philip commanded family worship to other men, saying that ‘a Master of a Family never looks more great than when he is going before his house in ye worship of God’.61 Later, his son Matthew was to publish

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a sermon exhorting family worship in 1704 with a similar message: ‘would you keep up your authority in your Family? You cannot do it better than by keeping up Religion in your Family.’62 Yet even in principle, the ministers’ attitudes to paternal authority were ambivalent if not contradictory, as can be seen in the matter of marriages. Woman was made as ‘an help-meet’ for man, and marriage was instituted by God before the Fall.63 The parental role in the marriages can be explored to some extent, although the financial arrangements remain obscure. Only the settlement at Matthew’s marriage survives.64 Each of the children had £100 from their grandfather Matthews and in addition Matthew inherited land when he came of age.65 Philip seems in his precepts to fit the pattern that Professor Stone has described: companionate marriage with an increasing role for the children in their choice of marriage partners.66 He told his children, and they said that he repeated it often, ‘Please God and please your selves, and you shall never displease me.’67 Yet even here there were ambivalences for the parent, especially if he were the minister, retained a role: he decided what was pleasing to God. Paternal initiative was considerable in the case of Sarah, the first of Philip Henry’s children to be married. Initially, she was unhappy when a match with a relative, John Savage, a widower with a young daughter, was proposed in November 1686. Sarah’s objections were answered by her father, but in December she was still ‘much perplexed’ at the prospect of changing her condition. Her purchase of some new clothes in February disturbed her, perhaps because it occasioned trouble, or more likely because she feared the approach of marriage. She was ‘comforted’ by a letter from her brother. However, when her father contracted her to John on 23 March 1687 and appointed the marriage for two days later, it was ‘a surprise to mee to have it so soon’. Married on the 25 March, she left Broad Oak reluctantly on 19 April: ‘ye saddest day that ever came over my head, my heart ready to burst.’68 Her marriage was a long and happy one, even if her role in her choice of a marriage partner was more limited than her father’s comment might have encouraged her to anticipate. In practice, men differed in their views of patriarchal authority and children’s freedoms depending on whether they themselves were in the position of parent or child. Thus they claimed power as fathers while denying it when they were suitors. In Philip’s own marriage, we have, it seems, an assertion of the importance of love. I have already mentioned that Katharine’s father disapproved of the match. A family mythology developed later among the Henrys that although she could not answer the question of where her suitor came from she answered that she knew where he was

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going and intended to accompany him.69 Subsequently Philip’s relationship with his father-in-law was a difficult one. There were vexations over Philip’s payment of £800 for Broad Oak (more of a purchase than a dowry, he protested).70 Daniel Matthews was so offended that Philip refused to allow his first-born son to take Matthews’s surname, a custom less unusual in Wales than in England, that he never entered their house again.71 Matthews told a friend that he believed that Katharine and Philip hindered his plans for remarriage.72 Understandably, Philip never won his father-in-law’s affection.73 Similarly, when Matthew Henry sought to marry Mary Hardware, whom he met through the local gentry family of the Hunts at Boreatton in 1687, there were objections from the girl’s mother. She knew that her daughter could marry a wealthier man. Mrs Hardware’s demurs were not heeded, and after the couple were married, she perceived the error of her ways.74 When her daughter died of smallpox in childbirth eighteen months later, she helped Matthew to remarry, this time to a daughter of the Warburton family of Hefferston Grange from whom Matthew Henry’s son Philip would in time inherit a large estate.75 In both the cases of Philip and Matthew Henry, it seems as if love had triumphed. Yet when Philip and Matthew were fathers themselves, they behaved much as other parents. In the case of Philip and Katharine’s youngest daughter Ann, the parents had no part in the initial choice, and were surprised when Ann wrote from Chester to tell them of the proposal of marriage she had received from John Hulton in 1688.76 Hulton was a tradesman, and probably already sympathetic to the Presbyterian faith.77 Philip told his daughter that it was her duty to get to know the man, to see if their tempers would agree, while he would decide if the marriage were suitable. Meanwhile she was to be careful to make no promises nor to compromise herself by any impropriety. Her brother Matthew noted a month later that his sister was anxious about the proposal, since she had encouraged Hulton to continue his addresses.78 Fortunately, her father was satisfied and the couple were married on the Henry parents’ own wedding anniversary, 26 April 1688.79 Again, as a father Matthew Henry’s position was different from that he had adopted when he was marrying well. In 1708 he was very disappointed when he found that he consented to the marriage of his eldest daughter, Katharine, before he discovered that the man’s fortune was smaller than he believed. He could not retract, but noted his disquiet in his diary: ‘Katy is in such a fret about it that it cannot go off, so must make the best of it.’80 His relationship with the son-in-law was later strained.81 The doctrine of ‘please God and please yourselves and you will never displease me’ was a less straightforward one for children than it appeared.

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Obviously the Henrys were concerned about the piety of potential spouses, but even when that was secured, and the children were choosing with prospects of future happiness, parents continued to worry about the financial aspects. A minister, Thomas Holland, applied to John and Sarah Savage for their daughter Mary in February 1717. The parents were very surprised, suggesting that they had no part in the proposal.82 Sarah hoped that it would pass, but Holland renewed his address in June. Although the Savages were concerned at the girl’s youth (she was 22), they were more worried at their friends’ comment that Holland had scarce a competency in the world.83 Parental difficulties were compounded by their daughter’s tractability: ‘she would be guided by us’. Eventually, after ‘careful tho’ts’, weighing Holland’s character – ‘I have reason to think him pious, humble, & serious’ – and the worldly concerns, the Savages consented and the couple were married in November.84 The delay was not an unreasonably long one, but parental approbation was not lightly given. The risks of defying parents and marrying without consent were terrifying. Another of the Savages’ daughters, Hannah, married into the Witton family, where her mother-in-law’s diary commented on a daughter leaving her father’s house without his approval to marry: ‘If G[od] be pleased to pardon her breaking his commandment I shall be glad’.85 It does not seem surprising that there were no conflicts of this kind over the marriages of the Henry children. Sons and daughters sought marriage partners of whom their parents would approve. If the material gains for the Henry husbands were greater, they accepted this as the work of the Lord, as Matthew Henry, in writing of his father’s unequal marriage, declared: ‘Providence . . . provided a Help-meet for him’. ‘She was reserv’d to be a Blessing to this good Man, in things pertaining both to Life and Godliness’.86 As parents, they were less happy when the Lord bestowed their daughters on poorer men.

II In discussing the godly family from the perspective of the women, we face the problem that the sources are, as usual, less adequate than for the lives of men.87 Since letters from either of the two ministers were more important than those of anyone else, people treasured their writings. Nevertheless, women’s letters and diaries survive in sufficient quantity to allow us to consider whether Protestantism did, as the Henrys themselves certainly believed, enhance the status of wives and mothers. Matthew Henry, preaching his mother’s funeral sermon in 1707, contrasted her virtues with those that the Roman Catholic church had allowed:

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This virtuous woman was not a recluse, one shut up and cut off from the business of this life, and the affairs of a family, under pretence of devotion and separation to God. The church of Rome makes such only their religious. . . . But the Scripture canon gives other measures. Yet although he praised his mother for her care of her family and household, the crown of all the virtue, without which all the rest were ‘of small acount’, was her constant devotion to ‘the work of heaven’, to secret prayer and meditations.88 Protestantism may have improved the status of married women compared with those of a fugitive and cloistered virtue but it will be argued that women’s roles were still defined in such a way that they remained the inferiors of their husbands in the work they performed. Ministers declared that childbearing and childrearing and care of the household were women’s tasks and the Henry women accepted these. We can see Sarah, for example, after family prayers at which her father presided, resolved to follow his four rules: obedience to her husband, chastity in conversation, sobriety in adornment, and a ‘meek and quiet spirit’. Within the family, there was a division of labour between the sexes. Women’s responsibility was the bearing and rearing of children and running the household. Their highest achievement was to be ‘a fruitful vine and a nursing mother’. Sarah Savage’s first diary reveals her anguish as month followed month after her marriage in 1687 and she failed to conceive. She could not reconcile herself to being barren, and had ‘serious thoughts’ about why the Lord allowed her sister married later than she to be pregnant.89 Women accepted that families should be ‘Nurseries and Seminaries of piety’ as the ministers said, and that their family’s existence through time depended upon their success in bringing up godly children. Yet the roles that the ministers taught and the Scriptures justified created conflicts for wives and mothers. Firstly, there were women’s duties to members of their immediate family, their ‘Relative Duties’. Women were to be loving wives and mothers. The danger was that their love might be too great, that ‘too much Creature love’ would imperil their salvation.90 Twelve months after her marriage, in 1689 Sarah returned from a visit, meeting her husband with great joy: ‘I begin to fear over loving’ she wrote in her diary.91 But more than love for a husband, love for her children placed a woman in jeopardy. By 1702, Sarah confessed that her greatest sin was ‘too much love of, and too many cares for, my children’.92 Furthermore, the Lord might take that child because of too much creature love, the child that was the best a woman could offer both to her family and towards her salvation. When Sarah’s only

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son died of smallpox in 1721 at 21 years of age, she was deeply shaken but comforted herself with the reflection that she could not be blamed. Neither she nor her husband had been over-fond, ‘nothwithstanding we had five daughters before’.93 Ann Hulton went through at least seven pregnancies in her marriage before dying of smallpox in childbirth at the age of 29.94 Awaiting the birth of her first child, she saw her sister-in-law and her closest friend die in childbirth. Although she was safely delivered herself, her baby died. This she felt as ‘the bitter fruits of the sin of my grandmother Eve’. ‘Was it all lost labour?’ she questioned, and comforted herself with the hope that Heaven was the fuller for her babe.95 And if the children did live, the mothers found that all was not joy. ‘I heartily sympathise with you in the tediousness of your nursery’, Ann wrote to her sister, but reminded her that these ‘nursing inconveniences’ were part of a woman’s good works.96 They had servants to assist, of course, and the women sent their own servants to each other in emergencies, such as after the birth of a baby, but there were some tasks that only a mother could perform. Mothers interpreted their difficulties in a Biblical context. ‘The tediousness of nursing we owe to sin’, Ann believed.97 Babies were cross, slept unquietly, teething, ‘more tedious usual’,98 yet ‘a Tender Nursing Mother’, wrote Sarah Savage, ‘goes on in Nursing tho her sleep broken Hands fowl’d’.99 Mothers consoled themselves with the hope that ‘we are nursing em for God to bear up his Name in ye world.’100 But they were also under pressure to produce males who would bear the Henry name. After her third daughter was born, Mary Henry, her husband reported to his father, ‘would have been very glad to have brought a namesake for you’.101 Women accepted that they were to bear children for the Lord. Sarah Savage said that she had ‘oft, prayd yet with submission if be ye will of God I might not bear or nurse any yt shall dishonour him.’102 As children grew older, maternal anxieties intensified. What suitable calling would the children find? Daughters were destined to be wives and mothers but sons needed a calling. Around 14 was ‘this critical time of life’.103 Sarah Savage worried because she found her son Philip at that age was careless and slothful.104 Plans for his education were disrupted by the proposed act restricting Nonconformist schools, and he spent time with a godly family in the hope they would help him.105 In 1719 Sarah fretted because he would not do as she wished.106 His parents disliked the idea of his becoming an attorney, and at the time of his death at 21 he was living in Chester.107 The hopes of the older generations were focused on Matthew’s only son, Philip, named for his grandfather. Sarah Savage, his aunt, hoped that he would be a minister like his father and grandfather.108 But in 1719 Philip

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Henry (II) was apprenticed, and a fragment of his diary reveals that the young man’s preoccupations were less with godliness than whether he could persuade his mother to settle the Grange upon him, and her possible remarriage.109 Subsequently, he inherited Hefferston Grange from the Warburtons, changed his name to theirs, became an Anglican and subsequently a member of parliament in 1742. He never married.110 Although no family reaction to this appears to survive, in 1742 there was a comment upon another young man who disappointed his Tylston relatives in their expectation he would become a minister. The verdict on Randle Vawdry, who said he would be unhappy for life as a minister and preferred to be a surgeon, was harsh: ‘I am afraid he has not virtue sufficient for it.’111 Despite all the best efforts of mothers, the family might be disappointed. Children were indeed ‘Arrows in the hand’, but they might wound as well as go forth for the future. Women from the Henry family helped each other through the difficulties of childbirth and with the care of young children. Mothers usually attended their daughters’ lyings-in and stayed to be of assistance with the family.112 Their letters to their daughters show interest and solicitude. Sarah Savage advised Hannah about how to wean her baby Philip, albeit with some scepticism: ‘when you wean him let it bee in ye old of ye Moon – when ye memory is more weak – which old Mrs Starkey adviz’d – & I thought there was someth[ing] in it – tho’ others are otherwise minded’.113 Katharine Tylston found a servant for her daughter-in-law who was said to be ‘very fond of children’.114 Sisters also helped each other with babies – as happened after Katharine Tylston’s first son was born, when Ann stayed until another sister, Eleanor, came to relieve her115 – or as companions. When Sarah was first married, one or other of her sisters stayed at her new home with her for the first three weeks.116 Sisters-in-law shared in the circle. Matthew Henry in 1688 pleaded for permission for Ann to stay longer with his wife: ‘for as things are my wife will bee very lonely without her’.117 Women applied to each other for practical help. Ann Hulton wrote to her mother about problems with servants and children, Sarah Savage wanted slips for her new garden – clove, thyme and lemon thyme.118 Requests for children’s aprons, cowslips for wine, and other commissions passed to and fro in the correspondence.119 After they had successfully reared children who became parents in turn, women found the role of grandmother a good one, just as they had heard it was. Katharine Tylston told her son ‘there’s nothing so minute relating to your Family, but it is pleasant to me to hear off.’120 And Sarah begged her daughter to buy her baby Philip a new cap, ‘& let him wear it for my sake’.121 In old age they could be more lighthearted and

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relaxed, just as when they had been as girls at Broad Oak, before the responsibilities of maternity. But for 30 years or so after marriage, the women were preoccupied with their children. If their affective role in the family was women’s main duty, in the Henry family it was always of secondary importance compared with working towards salvation. The ministers preached, and tried to practise, the belief that love and affection belonged to the world. They could not escape into their studies fast enough to ‘redeem the time’ by writing their sermons or Biblical commentaries.122 Philip Henry’s diary records many a happy day at home in his study, as for example, on 5 September 1662: ‘spent at home in study, time is precious. Lord make me wise to redeem it’.123 Matthew Henry’s diary was increasingly an account of study in the chapters of the Old and New Testaments. His wife’s sickness and child-bearing were disturbing intrusions. In October 1705, when Mary miscarried, he observed that her illness, which continued into November, was ‘a great distraction to me’, and he was ‘much Hindered by my poor wife’s weakness’.124 She miscarried again in 1706 and 1707,125 but on 14 February 1708 Matthew recorded in his diary that after a lying-in of three to four days she gave birth to a daughter. At 3 p.m. he wrote ‘while my wife was ill, I returned to my study to seek God for her and then being willing to redeem the time [emphasis mine] did a little of my exposition.’126 Earlier in his commentary on Genesis III. 16 he had written of the text on women’s sorrow in childbirth: ‘every Pang and every Groan of the Travelling Woman speaks aloud of the fatal Consequence of Sin’. Her sorrows were multiplied as she suffered ‘not only the travelling throws, but the breeding Sickness before . . . and the Nursing Toils and Vexations after’.127 The suffering of Mary Henry in fulfilling her appointed role makes a sad contrast with the pleasure with which Matthew performed his work in his study, knowing that ‘whatever Help is offered to good Christians in searching the Scriptures, is a real Service done to the Glory of God . . . Every Man that Studies hath some beloved Study which is his Delight above any other, and this is mine’.128 The ministers Philip and Matthew preached that the right spending of time was vital for women as well as for men. Their views created a double-bind situation for the women. Household cares were women’s responsibility, just as childcare was, but they were worldly and interrupted more important work for salvation. ‘She that is married careth for things of the world’ was both a description of the wedded state and a criticism.129 Women’s plans for prayer and meditation were constantly interrupted by their housewife or shopwife responsibilities. Sarah Savage’s arrangements for the Sabbath would be disturbed by the duties of the dairy, the visits of

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relatives, a cow falling in the water.130 She intended to fast in 1722 on the anniversary of her son’s death but was ‘forced to be employ’d in house concerns by things unforeseen’.131 Marriage, Ann Hulton saw, involved selflessness for women: it provided the opportunity to do good to others, but less to help their own salvation: Because through the necessity of my outward affairs, my secret duties are commonly limited and contracted more than formerly, I have been ready to fear that I have declined in grace.132 Women occasionally meditated upon that blessed state where they would be neither marrying nor giving in marriage.133 They looked back longingly to the days of their youth before the cares of marriage. As helpmeets to man, the harder they tried to fulfil the role of godly wife and mother, the more likely they were to be sinfully preoccupied with worldly concerns. No doubt they had heard many times Philip’s story of his visit to a ‘Religious Woman’ whom he found in her closet at prayer, late in the day, ‘the House sadly neglected, Children not tended’. What, said he, ‘is there no fear of God in this House?’134 A final chastening thought for women was that as helpmeets they were expendable: returning from journeys, Ann Hulton found that she was not so much missed ‘as through my pride, and minding my things, I thought I was’.135 For those in the country, neighbourliness was important, and women depended upon each other for help in crises. Neighbours often provided the same kind of aid as female relatives. Sarah Savage was regularly called out to attend other women at their lyings-in.136 Women read prayers together, and kept each other company.137 They developed specific skills. Mary Savage learnt a remedy for agues that, her mother said, made her recognized as ‘a sort of doctoress to many’.138 Sarah’s diary records years of visiting the sick and dying, attending funerals and taking in motherless children for months at a time.139 When she herself was sick, she found relief ‘by something that my neighbour Mrs. Voyse sent me’.140 Yet even here, in the reciprocity of neighbourliness, there was guilt. Matthew had printed a sermon on the right managing of friendly visits so that people might understand that too much time could be wasted in idle talk.141 Sarah confessed that she was robbed of preparation time for the sacrament by the visit of a neighbour.142 And at the end of a busy week of caring for others, alone at her private prayers while the healthier members of the family rode off to church, Sarah would be overwhelmed with sleep. Sloth she mourned as her gross life-long sin, contrasting her state with the zeal of her youth.143 Good-neighbourliness, like child-rearing and housewifery, were occasions

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of sin. There was little scope, in this context, for what has been described as ‘the ideal of domesticity’ for women, which gave value to friendships and to women’s relationships with their own sex.144 Nor did women value themselves highly in their relationships with the opposite sex. In the 1680s when Matthew went to London, the girls knew that their father missed his son. We ‘wish we were better company for him’ wrote Sarah, and that ‘the History of Q.Bess’ which their father read ‘were in a known tongue or we were capable of understanding it’.145 The sisters likewise found a young male relative staying with them impossible to handle in the absence of their father and brother.146 Women lacked authority in dealing with the world, or its representatives in the form of tradesmen. Two workmen were daubing around, Katharine Henry reported to her absent husband in 1671: ‘they want your oversight for you know that I understand little in thos things’, she wrote apologetically.147 Later as a widow, Katharine was respected by her son Matthew, but Matthew was the effective head of the family. The Henry women constantly showed that they accepted that the ministers were the centre of family life. When her father died, Sarah wrote that ‘the glory is departed’ from Broad Oak even though God and her mother were still there. She knew that her mother loved her brother Matthew best but she ‘was so far from envying’ that she loved him too.148 Mothers taught daughters to shape their lives around those of their husbands even though in some ways daughters were lost to ‘the family’ as only sons carried on the name. Women’s ‘relative duties’ pulled them in two directions between their families of origin and their new kin groups. We have seen Sarah Henry troubled at her approaching marriage and her prospective roles as wife, daughter-in-law and stepmother. Her mother Katharine, however, helped her to make the break, encouraging her with the assurance that she could do more good elsewhere than at home.149 Yet all her life Sarah Savage identified with her family of origin, mourning in 1714 that she and her sister Katharine Tylston were ‘all ye Branches left of dear Br[oad] Oke.’150 If Sarah’s mother suffered at losing her daughter, the records do not tell of it, and doubtless she, like her daughters in turn, repressed her own feelings. In 1717 when her own daughter married, Sarah ‘was grieved to part, yet we put on a cheerfulness’.151 Mothers’ feelings for daughters were not recognized in the marriages. The formation of the new nuclear unit took priority. None of this is to say that women were not loved and esteemed by their husbands, fathers and sons. There are no signs of any quarrels between spouses, and many signs of closeness. For example, when his wife was feared to be seriously ill, Philip Henry found himself ‘loath to say my life is bound

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up in her life, but the comfort of my life is’.152 Twenty years later Philip acknowledged to his son that he respected his wife’s reasons against Matthew’s moving to Chester, for she had ‘in other th[ings] many times sway’d with me, against my own [reason], & it hath done Well’.153 Philip Henry also recognized the role of his godly mother in his spiritual development,154 and Matthew mourned the loss of his mother’s advice after her death in 1707: ‘she was my skilful counsellor’.155 Nor is it to say that the women were incompetent or weak-minded. Far from it. They were capable and energetic. Katharine was head of the household at Broad Oak after her husband’s death until her death 11 years later. Yet even when women asserted themselves, it was in a restricted framework. For example, when Sarah Savage attended the Anglican church on 13 January 1717, she disliked the minister’s text and his severe reflections ‘on them yt differ from ye established Church as guilty of great pride’. Examining her conscience, she felt herself not guilty of arrogance, but still she could not sleep, so the next day ‘I wrote my mind to Mr N. the minister & sent it privately. I expect not that it can much avail, but give vent to my troubl’d tho[ugh]ts’. Apparently he answered ‘largely & mildly’.156 In the Henry family, religion increased the distance between the prestige of the men’s and women’s domains. Women performed their relative duties, but they knew that compared with the ways in which the men spent their days, their time was spent on unimportant domesticity. Sarah Savage, for example, wrote a letter to her daughter full of family news and children’s behaviour but apologized for writing of ‘such trivial things’.157 A few years later she gave a charming account of her grandson Matt who, hearing the story of Samson, said that he believed that God could make him ‘strong enuff’ to fight the Spaniards. ‘But alas,’ she continued, ‘you must excuse this & ye like impertin[ences] – what is something to Mothers & Grandm[others] is nothing to others’.158 As compensation for the lack of significance the women perceived in their own lives, they concentrated on collecting information about the lives of the two ministers, Philip and Matthew, which explains why it is now easier to focus upon the men’s position in the family than it is to attempt to piece together something about the women. Yet ironically, it was through the women and their adherence to the Henry family of origin that the memories of Philip and Matthew were kept alive.

III The history of publications about the Henrys forms an epilogue to this account which is of interest in showing how the values of late seventeenth-century

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family life were publicized and adapted over time to suit changing social circumstances. Over the next two centuries the Henrys’ records were weeded and culled in order to portray ideal family life. And, just as the lives of the seventeenth-century family were shaped by their experience of Nonconformity, so the subsequent recasting of the story was influenced by the position of the old Dissenters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English society.159 Philip and Matthew had both tried to avoid religious controversy and to appeal to a common Protestantism. Matthew Henry’s extensive publications sought to develop individual piety through the proper understanding of the Scriptures.160 He particularly came to stand for educated and informed Dissent to which the enthusiasm of Wesleyanism would have little appeal. The other influence upon the shaping of the family’s history was the changing structure of English society. People of what the Henrys called the ‘middling sort’ were increasing in numbers. As it was to this social group that the old Dissenters chiefly belonged, the values that the Henrys had preached and tried to exemplify had application to a wider range of people than the Nonconformists. The Henrys were uneasily conscious of their social position between the great and the poor. The metaphors in which both Philip and Matthew preached were those of the town and the shop.161 Both were suspicous of wealth and rank believing that they exposed their possessors to temptations. Matthew rejoiced that he was not of noble family, and directed his published work to those whom he termed ‘plain people like myself’.162 Sarah Savage too was thankful that she was of ‘a middle state in ye world’ as was her sister Katharine Tylston who numbered among God’s mercies that her position in the world was ‘neither poverty nor riches’.163 Perhaps they protest too much. Like many others in English society, the Henrys were sometimes uncertain in their middling position and it was to this wider audience outside the narrower confines of Dissent to whom publications about them were addressed. The history of the publication of details about the family, the myth making, began in 1698 with Matthew Henry’s anonymous publication of his father’s life. He wanted, he said, ‘to exhibit to the World a Pattern of Primitive Christianity’, and so to do good to plain people.164 This writing of a godly life for practical ethical purposes was part of the post-Reformation tradition of which Patrick Collinson has written. Instead of a life of a saint the reader was offered an account of the virtues of a religious life that was the achievement of human character, not of conversion of grace.165 In this tradition daily accounting for time was to be more significant than the drama of conversion depicted in a spiritual autobiography, but the pattern was still sufficiently new for individuals to wonder about the origins of their faith.

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In 1687 Sarah Savage confessed she was sometimes discouraged because she was ‘not able to make out ye Partic. time of my Convers[ion]’ and decided that the date at which she was first admitted to the Lord’s table was significant.166 Increasingly, a religious life was the product of education and effort, and Matthew Henry’s life of his father was in this genre. Written soon after his death, like a funeral sermon it was intended to edify and the audience for whom it was especially designed was ‘those that were acquainted with him’. Although a work of filial piety, Matthew sought verisimilitude, using diaries, papers and such letters as he had to hand for ‘by them his picture may be drawn nearest to the Life’.167 The book proved popular, and was subsequently reprinted in 1699 and under Matthew’s name in 1712. Matthew also wrote, but declined to publish, a memoir of Ann Hulton.168 In 1765 Job Orton, who also wrote a life of Philip Doddridge, brought out a new edition, offering Philip Henry’s example across classes ‘to Persons, especially Householders, of every Rank’ for emulation. Orton removed the material about the sufferings of the ministers after ejection, referring his readers to Calamy’s work, and also modified some of the wording.169 William Tong’s biography of Matthew Henry, published in 1715, followed the biographical tradition but this work never achieved the same success as Matthew’s life of his father.170 The great revival of interest in the Henry family in the nineteenth century owes most to the work of one individual, John Bickerton Williams.171 As a descendant, he continued the tradition of biography from within the family. He began by publishing Philip Henry’s sermon notes. In 1818 he published a life of Sarah Savage in which he emphasized the importance of a godly family for early piety. In her life a reader could find ‘female virtue repeated exhibited for the imitation and guidance of succeeding generations’. Four further editions of Sarah’s life appeared, and the life of another sister, Ann, was added.172 In 1825 and 1828 respectively Williams republished both Philip’s and Matthew’s lives with additional manuscript material. Christian memoirs, he believed, ‘conduce, in a very high degree, to the best interests of man’.173 Although Williams’s accounts of the Henrys were primarily intended to show the moral value of nonconforming Christianity, his work had significance for domestic life because the virtues were displayed in a family context. In nineteenth-century middle-class households, the division of labour between men and women was necessary for the family’s economic survival. For men to be free to engage in paid employment, women had to perform the essential tasks of reproduction and household management. Just as the daughters of the Henry family learnt to accept their roles, so

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girls of the nineteenth century could be socialized by their example to accept responsibility for children and households. Publications about the Henry family encouraged the definition of an ideology of service. There were also genealogical publications about the Henrys in the nineteenth century. In 1844 Sarah Lawrence, another descendant, published The Descendants of Philip Henry to incite each member of this kin group ‘to a more faithful imitation of his bright example’. She firmly rejected the notion of ancestor worship based merely on rank or situation, celebrating qualities of mind and character.174 Individuals in the nineteenth century could do nothing about the accidents of birth that left them in the middle classes. What they could do was to suggest that rank counted for nothing compared to godly virtue. Here we can see again how publication about the Henry family promulgated a convenient ideology for the middle classes. Sarah Lawrence’s genealogy also shows that she accepted the idea of the family as a line of descent. Names changed, but the godly arrow continued through time. In taking this perspective, she obscured much about the lives of her seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century female forebears. The children listed were those who survived, but the letters and diaries show that years of those earlier women’s lives were taken up with pregnancies, miscarriages, and deaths of babies at birth or soon after. For example, the genealogists’ entry about Katharine Henry, Matthew’s eldest daughter, who married three times, is terse: ‘No issue’.175 Yet from her father’s diary, which covers only a few years of her first marriage, we know that she bore one child who lived for two weeks, miscarried of a dead daughter at six months, and gave birth to another daughter who did not live long.176 The genealogists’ principle, that only the links in the chain mattered, dismissed a great part of a woman’s life as irrelevant. Sarah Lawrence both demonstrated that she had accepted the ideals of the patriarchal family and contributed to their promulgation in the nineteenth century. Others who wrote about the Henrys in the nineteenth century sentimentalized and harmonized the godly family. A collection of Philip Henry’s sayings, published in 1848, was said to reveal ‘one of the loveliest examples of virtuous contentment ever exhibited among the happy homes of England.’177 More scholarly was the publication in 1882 of the manuscript diaries of Philip Henry by a descendant, Matthew Henry Lee. Surviving original manuscripts show that family loyalty still required a certain kind of editing.178 Quarrels, some financial transactions and farming details were often omitted, as were some personal matters such as Philip’s purchase of clothes, and his medicines for ailments, with their effects. Several instances of what might have been deemed superstitious to nineteenth-century

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readers – such as tales of dreams, of witches and of bleeding corpses – also disappeared. The omissions are not a substantial proportion of the diaries, but they alter the record. Since Williams was more interested in piety than money, the Henry’s financial transactions appeared less in his work than in the original documents. This allowed the reader to ponder, under his guidance, whence came ‘this comparative indifference to all things earthly.’179 Values that were attractive for the nineteenth-century middle classes were those which editors emphasized. We need the memory of our pious forebears, said one descendant, ‘in these days of material improvements and material prosperity’.180 However, the image of the godly family was also a product of the very deliberate efforts of the seventeenth-century Henrys themselves; the records that survived had been self-consciously created and preserved. What individuals revealed in their diaries was what they were prepared to allow other family members to see or transcribe.181 The diaries were a limited exposure only, as were the godly letters, which were written in the knowledge that they would be read to others and circulated.

IV The Henrys were not an atypical family in the later seventeenth century, but their Nonconformity made them unusual. Unlike the Puritan families before the civil wars, who had looked to a wider transformation of society, the horizon of this embattled Nonconformist family was much narrower, for in order to come to terms with the public defeat of Puritanism in 1662, they made the family the world. They hoped that the family would bear witness that the truth of religion was to be seen in a becoming temper and good conduct towards relatives. Their ideal was based on respect for the minister’s authority, and it justified the obedience of women. Unlike religious ideologies that might, in extreme cases, drive women from their families to deliver a Quaker message far afield, the Presbyterian faith ensured that women stayed at home. The wives and daughters of ministers had a special view of the superior value of men’s labours and a sense that the household, while necessary, was less important. The ideology of service that men defined for women was publicly held up during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as an improving example to all women. The typicality or otherwise of the Henrys may not be the most useful notion to pursue, for what needs to be understood is their values and how they were transmitted to the next generation. Through this case study, we can see how the godly Protestant family contributed to the maintenance of a patriarchal society.

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Notes and references 1 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977). 2 See review of Stone by Alan Macfarlane, History and Theory, VIII (1979), pp. 103–26; Ralph A. Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London, 1984). 3 Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin. A Seventeenth Century Clergyman (Cambridge, 1970). 4 Miriam Slater, ‘The weightiest business: marriage in an upper gentry family in seventeenth-century England’, Past & Present, 72 (1976), pp. 25–54; Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House (London, 1984). See also, Sara Heller Mendelson, ‘Debate. The weightiest business: marriage in an upper-gentry family in seventeenth-century England’, and Miriam Slater, ‘Debate. A rejoinder’, Past & Present, 85 (1979), pp. 136–40. Vivienne Larminie, ‘Marriage and the family: the example of the seventeenth-century Newdigates’, Midland History, IX (1984), pp. 1–22. 5 C. L. Powell, English Domestic Relations, 1487–1653 (New York, 1917); L. L. Shucking, The Puritan Family: A Social Study from the Literary Sources (1929; London, 1969); Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in PreRevolutionary England (London, 1964), pp. 443–81. 6 Margo Todd, ‘Humanists, puritans and the spiritualised household’, Church History, 49 (1980), pp. 18–34; K. M. Davies, ‘Continuity and change in literary advice on marriage’, in R. B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981). A comparative study of Catholic and Protestant control of marriage in south-west Germany in the later sixteenth century suggests that there was no great difference in the emotional texture of marriage between the two; Thomas Safley, Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest. A Comparative Study 1550 –1600 (Kirkville, Missouri, 1984), p. 181. For an important discussion of the differing effects of two kinds of Protestant theology upon the social roles of women in early colonial America, see Mary Maples Dunn, ‘Saints and sisters: Congregational and Quaker women in the early colonial period’, American Quarterly, XXX (1978), pp. 582–601. 7 [Matthew Henry], An Account of the Life and Death of Philip Henry, Minister of the Gospel (London, 1698), p. 75. Further editions London, 1699, 1712, 1765; Edinburgh, 1797; London, 1804, 1818; enlarged by J. B. Williams, 1825; [1832]. 8 William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622; S.T.C. 12119), pp. 18–19, preface sig. 2v. 9 Details about the family are most easily available in J. B. Williams, The Life of the Rev. Philip Henry [London, 1825]; J. B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life,

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Character and Writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry [London, 1828]. Both were reprinted in one volume in 1974 by the Banner of Truth Trust. See also Dictionary of National Biography; and A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised. Being an Account of the Ministers and others Ejected and Silenced: 1660–2 (Oxford, 1934). 10 Worthenbury was a chaplaincy of the rectory of Bangor. In 1658, when it was made a parish, the Pulestons gave Philip Henry £100 as minister and built him a house; Williams, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 22–30. 11 Other examples of upwardly mobile ministers: Stephen Marshall, George Fox and Richard Baxter. 12 Philip Henry took the oath of allegiance in November 1660. His annuity was suspended soon after, and he was dismissed by Dr Bridgeman on 27 October 1661; [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, pp. 94–102. 13 Sarah Henry referred to John Savage as ‘cousin’ before their marriage; CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, D. Basten 15, fo. 11. 14 DWL, ‘A brief account of the Life and Death of Dr. John Tylston, who departed this life at Chester, Apr. 8 1699’, by Matthew Henry, (copy), Henry MS 91.25. Tylston studied physic at Trinity College Oxford, then with Dr Blackmore and with Sydenham. In 1687 he and Sydenham’s son both went to Aberdeen to take their degrees, and in May 1687 Tylston began to practise at Whitchurch. He moved to Chester. He married Katharine on 27 June 1687; CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, fo. 16. Their first child was born in March 1688. 15 Samuel Radford was listed as a linen draper in 1692; CCRO, apprenticeship record, M/AP/B. 16 One of the difficulties in studying the Henry family is the extensive and scattered nature of the surviving documents. The following is a list of the main locations of the collections: British Library (BL); Bodleian Library, Oxford (Bodl.); City of Chester RO (CCRO) and Dr Williams’s Library, London (DWL) which now includes collections formerly at New College and the Congregational Library; Clwyd [County] RO. There are also manuscripts at the National Library of Wales; The John Rylands University Library, Manchester ( JRL, MUL) and Boston Public Library. In addition, there are manuscripts in private hands. 17 P. L. Berger and T. Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 33–48. 18 Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry . . . 1631–1696, ed. M. H. Lee (London, 1882), p. 32. For motives of diarists, see Owen Watkins, The Puritan Experience (London, 1972); G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, 1965). J[ohn] B[eadle], The Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian (London, 1656), recommended diary keeping as a good means of accounting for time. 19 The following are the diaries that survive in manuscript and their locations: 1661, 1662 (Stedman transcript), 1663, 1667, 1671, 1672

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(Mr P. J. Warburton-Lee); 1673 (Shrewsbury School, MS James xxviii); 1674, 1678 (Mr, P. J. Warburton-Lee); 1680–1684 (DWL, formerly Congregational Library). All except the latter were kept in Goldsmith’s almanack books. Searches through the National Register of Archives, the Times Literary Supplement and descendants have failed to reveal others. 20 MS Diary, 15 December 13 February 1662 (Stedman transcript). 21 William Tong, An Account of the Life and Death of the Late Reverend Mr Matthew Henry (London, 1716), p. 110; Bodl., Diary of Matthew Henry, 1 January 1705–31 December 1713, MS Eng. misc. e 330, part of his diary, transcribed by his niece, Hannah Savage (afterwards Witton), is in Dr Williams’s Library; DWL, Henry MS 90.7.48. This portion covers 30 January 1704 to 13 January 1706. 22 CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, 8 August 1686, fo. 1. 23 Bodl., Diary of Mrs Sarah Savage from 31 May 1714 to 25 December 1723 (eighteenth-century transcript). The amount of space for each year ranges from 77 pages for 1715 to 15 pages for 1723. The diarist herself may have made briefer entries as she grew older, but the character of the entries suggests that the transcriber may have selected the more general entries, omitting daily events. DWL, Mrs Savage’s Journal, vol. 13, 13 April 1743 to April 1748, Henry MS 2. Sarah Savage’s commonplace book is also at DWL, Henry MS 3. 24 BL, Devotional journal of Katharine Tylston, 1723–1728, Add. MS, 42,849, fos. 145–168v. 25 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, pp. 68–9. 26 Philip Henry embarked on a law suit with the Pulestons over the payment of his annuity; Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 86. ‘some busie people’ among his neighbours presented him in September 1660 for not reading the Book of Common Prayer; [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 96. He claimed that Broad Oak was just under six miles from Worthenbury and therefore he did not have to move even further away after the Six Mile Act, but ‘there were those near him’ who insisted that six miles meant six reputed miles: ibid., p. 115. Philip Henry was also named as a tax collector, which implied that he lacked ministerial status; ibid., pp. 97–8. 27 Diaries of Philip Henry, pp. 148–9 (November 1663); Williams, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 158–60. 28 Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 186. 29 For the family’s view of these years, see especially [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, ch. 5. In 1670 Philip Henry took out a license under the King’s Declaration to preach at Broad Oak; Williams, Life of Philip Henry, p. 129. William Urwick, Historical Sketches of Nonconformity in the County Palatine of Chester (London, 1864); G. R. Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution, 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1957); M. R. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford,

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1978). For a reassessment, see Anthony Fletcher, ‘The enforcement of the Conventicle Acts 1664–1679’, in Persecution and Toleration: Studies in Church History, XXI (1984). 30 DWL, Henry MS 4.4. 31 In October 1687 Sarah Savage’s diary recorded ‘wee dayly hear of ye scoffs & scorns of our Neighbors’; CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, fo. [22v ]. In June 1716 she recorded ‘I incur ye hatred of many by going from our parish church’; ‘sometimes a little concern’d to see our neighbours look shy, & cold on us (as we are Dissenters)’; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage. MS Eng, misc. e 331, pp. 105, 97. 32 MS Diary of Philip Henry, 1662 (transcript), 2 September 1662. 33 The term ‘relative duties’ was used by others. See, for example, Richard Steel, The Husbandman’s Calling (London, 1668), p. 265, where he advises husbandmen to purchase Gouge’s Domesticall Duties ‘to teach your whole Family their Relative Duties’. 34 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 75. 35 Tong, Life of Matthew Henry, p. 25. See also Matthew Henry, The Communicant’s Companion (London, 1706), pp. 86–7. 36 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 75. 37 Ibid., preface sig. [A 5]. Matthew Henry believed that family worship was introduced by ‘the first Reformers’ in the time of Henry VIII; Clwyd RO, D/DM/86,9. 38 Birthday, 24 August; ordination, 16 September; wedding anniversary, 26 September; see Diaries of Philip Henry, pp. 85, 192. Both his daughter Sarah and his son Matthew followed his habit of remembering significant days. By the 1740s Sarah observed also many ‘dying days’ of family members. 39 Diaries of Philip Henry, pp. 1–2. 40 Bodl., Papers of the Henry family, MS Eng. misc. c 293, fo. 185v, Matthew Henry’s copy of Katharine Henry’s will. 41 Alan D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England. Church, Chapel, and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London, 1976), p. 16. 42 Bills were proposed 1702–4; Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London, 1973), pp. 39–40. 43 Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Ghosts, kin and progeny: some features of family life in early modern France’, Daedalus, 106 (1977), pp. 87–114. 44 Matthew Henry, Christ’s Favour to Little Children (London, 1713), esp. p. 19. 45 M. H[enry], Family-Hymns, 2nd edn (London, 1702), preface. 46 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, pp. 123–4 (1699 edn). 47 BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 8, 27 March 1688.

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48 Bodl., Eng. misc. MS 293, fo. 57. His own elder son he described as ‘the beginning of our strength’; Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 198. 49 JRL, MUL, Manchester MS 346/185b, sermon notes by Philip Henry. 50 Matthew Henry, A Church in the House (London, 1704), p. 21. In a funeral sermon for Francis Tallents, whose son was no comfort, he preached that ‘Grace doth not always run in the Blood’; Matthew Henry, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Reverend Mr. Francis Tallents (London, 1709), p. 47. Esther Bulkely, Matthew Henry’s grand-daughter, repeated the same view later; Williams, Memoirs of Matthew Henry, p. 300. 51 Matthew Henry, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 59–62 (1699 edn). 52 Clwyd RO, D/DM/86. 53 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 7339, Genesis 34. 54 Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, pp. 285–6. Sarah saw her diary as a means of helping her children after her death, ‘to hold out in ye narrow way’; ibid., p. 172. 55 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 87. 56 Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 217 (9 December 1669). On 25 December 1669 he parted with the servant ‘not unwillingly’. His daughter confessed that she was more troubled at the public disgrace rather than a servant’s sin: ‘I was not rightly affected, afraid of reproach to ye Family, but did not as I shd grieve for ye dishonour done to God’; CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, fo. 10v. 57 Bodl., diary of Matthew Henry, fo. 53v. (20, 22 July 1708). 58 BL, Add. MS 42649, fo. 20, Ann Hulton to Katharine Henry, 8 June 1697. 59 Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 281. 60 The Correspondence and Diary of Philip Doddridge, ed. John Doddridge (5 vols., London, 1829); Geoffry F. Nuttall, Calendar of the Correspondence of Philip Doddridge DD (1702–1751), Northampton Rec. Soc., 29 (1979). 61 Flintshire RO, MS sermons of Philip Henry, D/DM/86.9. 62 Matthew Henry, A Church in the House, p. 47. See also p. 13, masters of families ‘must be as Prophets, Priests, and Kings in their own Families’. 63 Philip Henry, Exposition of Genesis (London, 1839), Genesis 11. 18, p. 54. 64 Bodl., MS Eng. misc. c 293, fos. 163v–162, ‘a copy of my father Warburton’s deed of settlement in 1690’. 65 Eleanor was only to receive her bequest if her parents named her Eleanor: ibid., fo. 185v, copy of Daniel Matthews’s will. 66 Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, ch. 8. 67 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 124 (1699 edn). Parents, Philip Henry said, ‘should study to oblige their Children’; ibid., p. 124.

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68 CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, entries 29 November 1686 to 19 April 1687, passim. Years later she recollected that her sister had tried to encourage her by saying that there was a great difference between those who rose in the morning to be married and to be executed, an unhappy comparison; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, 24 March 1717. 69 Williams, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 64–5. In January 1658 when he proposed to marry Katharine his prospects may have seemed better than in 1660, for the Pulestons were supporting him with their patronage and the Earl of Pembroke was his godfather. 70 MS Diary of Philip Henry, 2 September 1662. See also Williams, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 65–6; Bodl., MS Eng. misc. c 293, fos. 6–9. 71 Diaries of Philip Henry, pp. 55–6; MS Diary of Philip Henry, 8 August 1662. 72 Ibid., 2 September 1662. 73 Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 94 (28 August 1661); p. 146 (8 September 1663). MS Diary of Philip Henry, 19, 21 April, 19 October 1662. Philip said that he ‘had common respect and countenance from him & that was all’. On 10 March Matthews asked Katharine to return two rings that were her mother’s; Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 81. 74 Tong, Life of Matthew Henry, p. 23. See also Williams, Memoirs of Matthew Henry, pp. 55–6. 75 Ibid., pp. 57–8. 76 DWL, MS Henry 90.7, 3, Philip Henry to Ann, 17 February 1688; printed Williams, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 200–1. 77 H. D. Roberts, Matthew Henry and His Chapel, 1662–1900 (Liverpool, 1901), p. 88. 78 BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 7, Matthew Henry to Philip Henry, 1 March [1688]. 79 The text that Philip Henry chose for his daughter’s wedding sermon was from Ephesians V. 24, 15: ‘as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be subject to their own husbands’; Williams, Life of Philip Henry, pp. 409–10. 80 Bodl., MS Eng. misc. c 330, Diary of Matthew Henry, fos. 56–58v (15, 30 November, 2 December 1708). The couple were married on 22 December 1708; fo. 58v. 81 Matthew Henry complained in his diary of Witton’s ‘ill carriage to me’ in October 1713; ibid., fo. 131. 82 Bodl., MS Eng. misc. e 331, Diary of Sarah Savage, 20 February 1717, p. 139. 83 Ibid., pp. 150, 152, 157, 166 (8 May, 21 July, 13 October 1717). 84 Ibid., pp. 157, 168. 85 DWL, Henry MS 91/18, ‘Extracts from Grandmother Witton’s diary’ by Hannah Savage, fo. 4v.

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86 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, pp. 72–3. 87 See Patricia Crawford, ‘From the woman’s view: pre-industrial England, 1500–1750’, in Patricia Crawford (ed.), Exploring Women’s Past: Essays in Social History (Sydney, 1984), esp. pp. 70–78. 88 ‘A sermon preached at Broad Oak, June 4, 1707, on . . . the death of Mrs Katharine Henry . . . by her son’, printed in Williams, Life of the Rev. Philip Henry, pp. 315, 325. 89 CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, see esp. entry for 24 November 1687. For an analysis, see appendix to Chapter 1, this book. 90 BL, Add. MS 42849, extracts from Sarah Savage’s diary, 1699, fo. 88v; 1701, fo. 91. 91 CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, 13 March 1688, fo. 32v. Similar fear on her wedding anniversary, 28 March 1688, fo. 33v. 92 J. B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs Savage (London, 1818), p. 187. Further editions 1819; 1821 (life of Ann Hulton added); 1829; 1848. 93 Ibid., p. 78. This passage that Williams quotes is not in the only extant transcript of her diary for this date (Bodl., MS Eng. misc. c 331). 94 The following details are derived from various sources. Ann Hulton, b. 25 November 1668; m. 26 April 1688; first child, 29 July 1689, died, 28 April 1690; smallpox and maybe miscarriage, 29 July 1691; son who died young, 3 April 1693; daughter baptized Katharine, 1694?; daughter Mary, 19 November 1695; a son who died at 9 days (BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 13); a son, Edward, before June 1697, died, 6 September 1697. 95 Williams, Memoirs of Mrs Savage, p. 287 (1821 edn). 96 Ibid., p. 314 (1821 edn). Philip Henry preached that a mother was bound to breast-feed her baby; Cambridge U.L., Add. MS 7339, sermon 17, (Oct. 1658). 97 Williams, Memoirs of Mrs Savage, p. 310 (1821 edn). Matthew Henry thought that the sorrow of nursing was included in the general punishment of ‘sorrow in childbirth’. 98 DWL, Henry MS 4.2, Sarah Savage to her father, 19 March [1692?]; Ibid., MS 4.3, same to same, 9 April [1692?]; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, p. 21, October 1714; BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 21, [Ann Hulton] to Sarah Savage, 9 August 1697. 99 DWL, Henry MS 2, Mrs. Savage’s journal, 25 February 1746. 100 DWL, Henry MS 4.14, [Sarah Savage] to her daughter [Hannah Witton], n.d. 101 DWL, Henry MS 90.7.18, Matthew Henry to Philip Henry, 4 April 1693. Mary Henry experienced at least 13 pregnancies after her marriage in July 1690. Six daughters survived beyond infancy, but only one son. Her last child was born in 1711. Her husband’s comment on her desire for a son was ‘we will thankfully receive what God graciously sends’.

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102 BL, Add. MS 42849, extracts from diary, fo. 87v. 103 Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, 10 February 1715, p. 32. 104 Ibid., April 1717. See also earlier, 12 April 1715, p. 39. 105 Ibid., June 1714, p. 3, May 1715. 106 Ibid., February 1716, p. 217. 107 He died of small-pox, 27 February 1721; ibid., p. 270. 108 Ibid., February 1716, p. 85. 109 Fragment of MS diary, name on cover Philip Henry Warburton, 3 November 1718–19 October 1719; see esp. 17, 25 June 1719. 110 In 1721 he went to Lincoln’s Inn and was called to the bar in 1727. In 1742 he was returned to the House of Commons unopposed as a Tory and voted against the government in every recorded division; The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1715–1745 (London, 1970); J. S. Morrill, ‘Parliamentary representation’, in B. E. Harris (ed.), The Victoria History of the Council of Cheshire (Oxford, 1979), vol. 2, p. 135. 111 CCRO, Vawdry MS DMD/15 and 16. There may be a veiled reference to Philip Henry Warburton in the comment made by a grand-daughter of Matthew Henry: ‘We have cause to lament, among many of us, much departure into the world; grace (added she) is not entailed as an inheritance: there are some of us, however, that still retain our religion’; John Griffin, Memoirs of the Rev. Thomas English (Portsmouth, 1812), pp. 88–9. John Bickerton Williams, Memoirs of Matthew Henry, p. 299, says that the younger Philip Henry ‘forsook, it is to be feared, the God of his fathers’. 112 For example, 11 April 1716, Sarah Savage was sent for to her daughter Lawrence and stayed for a few weeks; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, pp. 96–7. In an undated letter to her sister, Sarah regretted the absence of her own mother ‘to help to nurse & rock’; DWL, Henry MS 4.29, [1707]. Women helped more distant relatives also such as, for example, cousin Ashworth, 15 November 1716. Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, p. 124. 113 DWL, Henry 4.15, Sarah Savage to Hannah Witton, 2 April 1734. The child, Philip Henry Witton, was born 17 November 1732. He was therefore 161/2 months old at the time weaning was discussed. 114 BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 43, Katharine Tylston to John Tylston, 16 November 1726. 115 Bodl., MS Eng. lit. e 29, fo. 67, Philip Henry to Matthew Henry, 26 March 1688. 116 DWL, MS Henry 4.6, Sarah Savage to Matthew Henry, 10 April 1687. 117 Bodl., MS Eng. Let. c 29, fo. 58, Matthew Henry to Philip Henry, 17 January 1688. 118 BL, Add. MS 42849, fos. 17, 20; Dr Williams’s Library, MS Henry 4.1.

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119 BL, Add. MS 42849, fo. 33. 120 Ibid., fo. 50. 121 DWL, MS Henry 4.22, Sarah Savage to [Hannah Witton], 12 February [1733]. 122 Accountability for time was a major preoccupation that the Henrys shared with other godly families. For example, Philip Henry preached that to walk in the fields on the Lord’s day ‘will not pass well in our account of Sabbathtime’ if merely for refreshment and not for prayer and meditation; Clwyd RO, sermons of Philip Henry, 2, no. 34. 123 MS Diary of Philip Henry, 5/6 September 1661. 124 Bodl., MS Eng. misc. c 330, Diary of Matthew Henry, fo. 12. On 15 October 1705, Mary was unwell and feared a miscarriage. She deteriorated until she miscarried on 25 October. Although she was still unwell in December, Matthew does not mention her in his annual review, the first item of which was ‘I have pleasure in my Study’; ibid., fo. 14. 125 Mary Henry miscarried on 20 June 1706 and 23 January 1707; ibid., fo. 22, fo. 32v. 126 Ibid., fo. 48v. 127 Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Five Books of Moses, 2nd edn (London, 1710), Genesis 11. 16. 128 Ibid., sig. [A3v.]; see also, Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Historical Books of the Old Testament, 2nd edn (London, 1712), sig. [A4]: ‘The Pleasantness of the Study has drawn me on’. This division of labour between the minister in his study and his wife in the household is not unusual. Peter Heylin’s wife looked after husbandry without doors as well, thereby freeing him ‘from that care and trouble, which otherwise would have hindered his laborious Pen from going through so great a work in that short time’; The Life of . . . Dr Peter Heylin in The Historical and Miscellaneous Tracts (London, 1681), p. xix. 129 Williams, Memoirs of Sarah Savage, pp. 296–7. 130 See for example, CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, 3 June 1688, fo. 38; Bodl., diary of Sarah Savage, pp. 39, 148, 195, 213. 131 Ibid., p. 309; Williams, Memoirs of Sarah Savage, pp. 296–7 (1821 edn). 132 Ibid., p. 285. 133 Ibid., p. 301. 134 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 85 (1699 edn). 135 Williams, Memoirs of Sarah Savage, pp. 321–2 (1821 edn). See also, BL, Add. MS 42849y fo. 13, Ann Hulton to Katharine Henry, 28 April 1694, ‘no uneasiness for want of me’. 136 Sarah was called out soon after her marriage; CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, June 1687. Prior to this, in October 1686, she had stayed at home at Broad

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Oak housekeeping while her mother attended a neighbour’s lying-in ‘all day’; ibid., 30 October 1686. 137 Bodl., Sarah Savage’s diary, 2 August 1716, p. 127; 11 August 1717, p. 159. 138 DWL, MS Henry 4.16. 139 For example, in 1719 Sarah agreed to board Betty Motterhead, daughter of their former minister whose wife had just died, for the summer. She looked after Abby Robinson for a year, and a Tylston ‘little one’ for six months; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, pp. 216, 224. She took her daughter to visit ‘our old neighbours’ in June 1716, p. 106. 140 Ibid., p. 159. 141 [Matthew Henry], A Sermon Concerning the Right Management of Friendly Visits (London, 1705). If Matthew spent a day with friends he usually wrote in his diary ‘much time lost in ye Enjoyment of Friends’ or ‘it would trouble me to spend many such days’; Bodl., Diary of Matthew Henry, 20 August 1708, 16 October 1711. 142 Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, p. 100. 143 Ibid., p. 107 (1716). 144 I. Q. Brown, ‘Domesticity, feminism and friendship: female aristocratic culture and marriage in England 1660–1760’, Journal of Family History, 7 (1982), pp. 406–24. 145 Bodl., MS Eng. let. c 29, Sarah Henry to Matthew Henry, n.d., fos. 36–36v. 146 Ibid., fo. 33, Eleanor Henry to Matthew Henry, 18 February 1687; also, fo. 26v. 147 Roberts, Matthew Henry and his Chapel, p. 24. 148 Williams, Memoirs of Sarah Savage, p. 163; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, p. 5. 149 Williams, Memoirs of Sarah Savage, p. 195 (1818 edn). 150 DWL, MS Henry 4.13, Sarah Savage to [Hannah] Witton, 12 July 1714. 151 Bodl., Sarah Savage’s diary, p. 169 (1717). 152 MS Diary of Philip Henry (transcript), 23 October 1662. Matthew Henry was not often apart from his wife, but in a letter from London in 1712 he addressed her affectionately as ‘My owne deare love’; Bodl., MS Eng. let. c 29, fo. 131. 153 Diaries of Philip Henry, p. 357. 154 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 155 Bodl., Diary of Matthew Henry, fo. 44. 156 Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, 13 January 1717, pp. 134–5. 157 DWL, MS Henry 91.24 (9), [1734]. 158 Bodl., MS Eng. let. c 29, fo. 9, Sarah Savage to her grand-daughter, Elizabeth Swanwick, 1 July [c. 1740] Matthew Witton was born 16 August 1735.

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159 For accounts of eighteenth-century Nonconformity, see Gilbert, Religion and Society; John Walsh, ‘Origins of the evangelical revival’, in G. V. Bennett and John Walsh (eds), Essays in Modern English Church History (London, 1966); John Walsh, ‘Elie Halevy and the birth of Methodism’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 25 (1975), pp. 1–20. 160 See, for example, Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Five Poetical Books of the Old Testament (London, 1710), p. iv. 161 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, p. 126 (1699 edn); postscript (1712 edn); Matthew Henry, Self Consideration (London, 1713). He wrote of a child’s first seven years as ‘an Apprenticeship to life’; Bodl., Diary of Matthew Henry, fo. 36 (3 May 1707). Ann Hulton spoke of ‘the trade of religion’; Williams, Memoirs of Mrs Savage, p. 285 (1821 edn). 162 Matthew Henry, Life of Philip Henry (1712 edn), preface. 163 DWL, MS Henry 4. 13; BL, Add. MS 42849 fo. 126. See also Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, pp. 156, 133 for her comments on visits to the houses of her social superiors: ‘I envy not ye great man’s estate’. 164 Matthew Henry, Life of Philip Henry (1712 edn), postscript. 165 Patrick Collinson, ‘“A magazine of religious patterns”: an Erasmian topic transposed in an English protestantism’, in Derek Baker (ed.), Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History: Studies in Church History, 14 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 240–1. 166 CCRO, Diary of Sarah Savage, 15 November 1687. 167 [Matthew Henry], Life of Philip Henry, sig. [A5]. 168 Williams, Memoirs of Matthew Henry, p. 258. A manuscript of the life and death of Ann Hulton survives among the British Library’s printed books (number 1418 a 1). The preface by J. O. (probably James Owen), says that ‘It was drawn for the use only of some near Relations’; fo. iv. 169 Matthew Henry, Life of Philip Henry, 4th edn (Salop, 1765), preface, pp. iv–v. [Job Orton], Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of the Late Reverend Philip Doddridge. DD of Northampton (Salop, 1766). The Life was also republished in Edinburgh in 1797. 170 William Tong, An Account of the Life and Death of Mr Matthew Henry (London, 1715); further editions 1715, 1833. The ‘family’ were said to have been disappointed with the work; Williams, Memoirs of Matthew Henry, p. vi. 171 D.N.B. See also R. P. Williams (ed.), Extracts from the Diary of the late Sir John Bickerton Williams (London, [1896]). The knighthood that the Duke of Somerset procured for him was chiefly for his book on Sir Matthew Hale but Williams presented the Duke with some of Matthew Henry’s commentaries, the Life and some sermons. Williams’ son was called ‘Philip Henry’. 172 Memoirs of Mrs Sarah Savage, preface, p. vi. For dates of publication see note 92. Unselfconsciousness was valued in the nineteenth century, so that

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Jay claimed that nothing was further from Sarah’s mind ‘than the public exhibition of what she wrote’. Nevertheless, Sarah’s diary shows that she wrote to benefit others, especially her children. ‘I think my ability thus to think, remember & write is a tallent I am entrusted with’; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, p. 172. 173 Williams, Life of Philip Henry, preface p. xxi. 174 Sarah Lawrence, The Descendants of Philip Henry (London, 1844), preface, p. v. Limited edition reprinted for the Research Publishing Company in 1972. Other family genealogies were published in the nineteenth century. 175 Ibid., p. 2. 176 Bodl., Diary of Matthew Henry: Elizabeth, b. 13 October 1707, d. 27 October (fos. 72, 72v.); Mary b. 6 October 1711 (fo. 105), d. January 1713 (fo. 122). Another Katharine, one of Sarah Savage’s daughters, gave birth to twin boys seven or eight weeks early, of whom one was dead, the other lived only a short while, but neither of which appear in the genealogical record; Bodl., Diary of Sarah Savage, p. 269, 2 February 1721. Katharine Savage married a cousin Savage on 3 January 1718; ibid., p. 172. 177 The Life and Times of Philip Henry (London, 1848), p. 113. 178 For locations see note 19. 179 Williams, Life of Philip Henry, preface p. xxii. 180 Lawrence, Descendants of Philip Henry, preface, p. v. 181 Matthew Henry used his father’s diary after his death for the Life. Sarah read her son’s diary after his death. Hannah Witton transcribed her husband’s grandmother’s diary as well as portions of her uncle Matthew’s and her mother Sarah’s.

CHAPTER 7

Sibling relationships

H

ow does a study of siblings contribute to our understandings of the emotional dynamics of family life in early modern England? Contemporaries certainly thought that all ‘blood’ relationships were important, for blood was thicker than water, and that a natural affection flowed between siblings.1 Although many brothers and sisters struggled to attain the ideal, and to present their family to the world as harmonious, relations between brothers and sisters were not always simple and loving. Pithy popular sayings alluded to the ambivalence and intensity of sibling bonds. Brothers were like two buckets in a well: ‘if one go up, the other must go down’. Brothers might quarrel among themselves, but would band together against outsiders: ‘Between brothers put not thy hand, for who severs them has ever the worst’.2 If relationships between those who were siblings by blood were ambivalent, even more complex were those who became siblings by the remarriages of their parents. In twentieth-century Western culture, Freud’s identification of the concept of sibling rivalry has dominated discussion of the sibling relationship, but Freud was reinterpreting a hostility that had been long present in culture and literature. The first murder in the Judaeo-Christian tradition was Cain killing his brother Abel. A well-known classical instance was in the fifth-century confessions of Augustine: he saw a baby ‘pale with envy’ watching his foster-brother sucking at his nurse’s breast.3 Nevertheless, Freud’s focus on rivalry and competition has obscured other aspects of the sibling tie. Siblings were part of ‘the family’ for each other, and might be present for more years than a parent. Over the lifetime of the individual, sibling relationships extended into wider kinship networks of uncles, aunts and cousins, blurring the boundaries between kin and strangers. In the history of the early modern English family, siblings have been little studied. From the 1970s, the general consensus was that only the nuclear

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family mattered, and even there historians focused more on relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, rather than on those between sisters and brothers.4 Such historical studies as there were of siblings concentrated on two main themes: first, the emotional content of sibling relationships, and secondly, whether siblings were significant for the characterization of the primary family form as nuclear or extended. Historians have debated how property and inheritance affected the emotional bonds between siblings. In 1969, Joan Thirsk discussed the adverse effects of primogeniture on the lives of younger brothers,5 and her insight was amplified by other scholars, although subsequently Linda Pollock has pointed to more positive aspects of fraternal relationships.6 Other studies of individuals and of particular families, mainly of the upper social levels, offered more detailed accounts of how sibling relationships were affected by property.7 Literary scholar Catherine Belsey has examined the emotional significance of the sibling relationship in the drama of the early modern period,8 and historian Richard Grassby concluded from an analysis of the records of 28,000 urban business families in the period 1580–1740 that most brothers and sisters enjoyed ‘warm, intimate relationships’.9 In an important essay about nineteenth-century Britain, Leonore Davidoff questioned why historians had paid so little attention to siblings, despite their ubiquity in society. She argued that siblings were crucial for the individual’s sense of self, and for relationships with an extended family.10 Siblings fit uneasily in the debate over whether the dominant family form in early modern England was extended or nuclear. Initially, brothers and sisters could be viewed as part of the nuclear family of parents and children, but as they grew up, and some married, they and their children became part of the wider network of aunts, uncles and cousins for another generation. Historians’ concentration on demographic data and wills initially led them to argue that one of the key transformations of the early modern period was from family forms in which extended kinship was significant to the nuclear family that they believed more typical of modern society. The methodology of the Cambridge Group ignored the dynamic changes in an individual’s relationship to kin over his or her lifetime. Besides, as Miranda Chaytor and David Cressy demonstrated in the 1980s, the demographers’ conclusion that the extended family was less important in the early modern period rested on mistaken assumptions about the kinship status of individuals in households.11 The importance of siblings was increased by the high mortality rates in early modern times: children were likely to lose one or both of their

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parents before reaching adulthood. The marriage ages for the majority of women and men were comparatively late, around the mid to late 20s. In the village of Terling, for example, Wrightson and Levine calculated that the annual rate of maternal mortality was 16 per thousand, while the annual rate for males of the same age group – 25 to 49 years – was 18 per thousand. They estimate that if 1000 couples were aged 24 at marriage, five years later mortality rates would mean that only 861 marriages would be intact.12 Thus the children of over ten per cent of families would already have lost a parent before becoming adults, and consequently would depend more upon each other. Older siblings could become surrogate parents, responsible for their younger sisters and brothers. Among the gentry, women married younger than in the majority of the female population, but repeated childbearing, greater if wet-nurses were employed, increased the risk of maternal mortality and a father’s remarriage. If the father died, an eldest son would assume the responsibilities of head of a family. Further down the social scale, at the poorest levels of society, any brothers or sisters may have been essential to the survival of younger children. In Colyton, Pamela Sharpe found that only 21 per cent of pauper apprentices had both parents alive when indentures were signed between 1598 and 1740; 10 per cent of the apprentices were complete orphans.13 Demographic evidence provides a framework for understanding the different family forms in early modern times in which sibling relationships were formed, suggesting further questions. Did the death of parents diminish rivalry, as siblings no longer competed for parental approval? What were the effects of remarriages upon sibling relationships? Qualitative evidence such as first-person writing and correspondence allows us to gain some measure of the ‘actuality’ of some sibling interactions at the upper and middling levels of society, even though we need to be aware of the contemporary bias towards presenting the family in as favourable a light as possible.14 The quality of sibling relationships between poorer individuals is more difficult to trace, but institutional records provide some evidence about how material life structured the possibilities of establishing and sustaining bonds between brothers and sisters.

Who were siblings? Consanguinity and affinity The religious and legal doctrines which defined those who were deemed brothers and sisters were complex and not always easy for contemporaries – or later historians – to understand. Firstly, there were siblings with common blood either from two parents, or only one. Secondly, there were

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siblings by affinity; at marriage a man and a woman became one flesh, thus a wife’s sisters and brothers became her husbands’ sisters and brothers, and so on. The key point here is that everyone knew that the definition of siblings was confusing. Contemporaries usually needed to clarify who really were brothers and sisters since those who were siblings in one context might not be so in another. Here I will use the term ‘siblings’ for those who were born of the same two parents, and follow Davidoff in referring to those with one common parent as ‘half-siblings’, reserving the terms ‘stepbrother’ or ‘stepsister’ for those whose sibling relationship was created by the remarriages of their parents, and ‘brother-in-law’ and ‘sister-in-law’ for those who were related through their own marriages.15 The church’s tables of kinship and affinity complicated the question of who were siblings. Despite the amazing patterns of marriage in the Old Testament, Biblical rules about who was allowed to marry whom shaped the injunctions of the Catholic church which the Anglican church inherited. In sixteenth-century England, marriage rules assumed a new urgency when Henry VIII sought an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Previously, canon law had forbidden marriage between those related by both consanguinity and affinity according to the fourth degree.16 Subsequently, legislation altered the prohibitions. In 1563, in Elizabeth’s reign, Archbishop Matthew Parker’s tables of affinity were accepted and later published in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Siblings were, of course, still prohibited from marriage, but their descendants only to the third generation. In other words, first cousins ‘by blood’ could marry.17 However, there was a further complication: did illicit sexual activity create a sibling bond or not? Here civil and canon law differed. The common law found it simpler to declare that only marriage created affinity for purposes of inheritance and permissions to marry, but both the 1536 statute and Parker’s table added affinity by extramarital intercourse.18 Sexual relations between siblings were incest. The provisions of the 1650 Adultery Act made incest a felony punishable with death, but the Act was rescinded at the Restoration.19 Subsequently, although incest was generally viewed with abhorrence, it was not a criminal act in England until 1908.20 Davidoff argues that confusion over who were siblings made for much of the ambiguity about sexual taboos, which explains why in the nineteenth century the question of marriage between a man and his deceased wife’s sister caused one of the most protracted debates in British parliamentary history.21 In the early modern period, contemporaries were troubled at the legality of close kin marriages, especially the incestuous implications of

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marriages between a man and his deceased brother’s widow: it was argued that John the Baptist lost his head because he told King Herod that it was unlawful to marry his brother Philip’s wife.22 In Shakespeare’s Hamlet particular horror attaches to Gertrude’s remarriage with her brother-in-law Claudius. Both Hamlet and his father’s ghost denounced the couple’s adultery as well as incest, the ghost terming Claudius ‘that incestuous, that adulterate beast’.23 In the early eighteenth century, the eponymous heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders was haunted by sibling incest. Even before she inadvertently married her own step-brother, Moll was horrified at a proposal that she marry her lover’s younger brother.24 Most early modern incest cases before the church courts turned on the complexity of kinship connections created at marriage. Martin Ingram found that incest prosecutions in general were comparatively rare in Wiltshire, probably no more than five per annum in the early seventeenth century, and of 24 known prosecutions in the period 1615–1629, only one was for brother/sister incest. He traced a similar pattern in other counties.25 Most of the prosecutions for sibling incest were for marriage with a deceased wife’s sister.26 Because contemporaries recognized that the question of who were brothers and sisters was complex, they often spelt out the nature of the sibling bond. Thus Thomas Wentworth wrote in 1636 of his brother’s wife, ‘shee is of a stranger becum a sister unto me and by a neare coniunction one of my familye’.27 In 1607, an ecclesiastical court in York, weighing a woman’s marriage intentions, heard that at the couple’s hand-fasting, she ‘called the said Robt Humbles brother her brother and his sister her sister . . . in this examinants hearing’.28 A church court case of 1626 referred to ‘naturall and lawfull bretheren’, that is, kin created by blood and afinity.29 The common appellation for siblings by affinity as well as by degrees of consanguinity was usually simply ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, although halfsiblings and step-siblings were sometimes confusingly referred to as brother or sister ‘in-law’. Even though early modern terminology papered over the relational differences between siblings, circumstances continually arose in which distinctions were made. If parents remarried with completed families, brothers and sisters related to different grandparents, uncles and aunts.30 Stepfathers were advised to treat all the children the same ‘as if they were your own’,31 but bequests to stepchildren were usually smaller than to the testator’s ‘own’ offspring.32 Since the stereotype of the cruel stepmother was widely dreaded, women who feared that they might die in childbirth turned to their sisters – the children’s aunts – for assistance. In 1678 Margaret

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Godolphin begged her husband to allow her sisters to bring up their child, if she should die: ‘tho’ you will love it, my Successor may not be so fond of it, as They I am sure, will be’.33 Legitimate children rarely viewed their illegitimate brothers and sisters as siblings, even though they shared common blood, usually the father’s. In some royal and noble households, fathers countenanced their illegitimate children, although Heal and Holmes found that the practice declined over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.34 Tensions between legitimate and illegitimate siblings were powerfully dramatized in Shakespeare’s King Lear.35 In families lower down the social scale, a daughter’s illegitimate child may have passed as the parents’ child; a nephew or niece became a sibling. Although illegitimate children had no rights of inheritance by common, canon or manorial law, testators sometimes included them in wills and in the distribution of their personal estate.36 Confusingly, an illegitimate child could be referred to as a ‘natural’ child, placing it within a fictive pre-legal family. Instances include a Frenchman’s will of 1672 with a bequest to ‘my naturall or reputed sonne’ and a 1724 reference to a ‘Natural Daughter’.37 A singlewoman, Margaret Hall, deposited £30 with two churchwardens of St Leonard’s, London, to provide education and maintenance for her ‘naturall’ daughter Mary Babbage, her son being provided for at Christ’s Hospital.38 Before the religious changes of the 1530s, the terms ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ were used by monks, nuns and members of religious guilds. Women who served in hospitals, such as Christ’s and St Bartholemew’s, continued to be referred to as ‘sisters’, and men could still be brethren in guilds, livery companies and other all male institutions. Later in the seventeenth century, some members of separatist churches, who regarded themselves as the children of God, used the familial appellation of ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ to signal the spiritual family bond between them. Such language that invited notions of spiritual equality between the children of God – that ‘Sisters being equaly with the Brethren members of the misticall Body of Christ, his Church’ – led to conflicts over women’s participation in separatist congregations.39 The terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ thus disguised the complicated relationships created by blood and marriage.

Siblings and inheritance Blood and marriage created sibling bonds, but birth order and gender shaped inheritances. The Judaeo-Chrisitian tradition endorsed a tradition of the rights of the first born. Unstated but assumed was that ‘first born’

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were sons, not daughters. Although, as the political theorist Robert Filmer declared, a maid was born as free and equal as a man, nevertheless her rights of inheritance were always inferior to those of her brothers; and of those brothers, the first-born was privileged. Furthermore, in matters of inheritance, the law did not (and still does not) treat those who were brothers and sisters by remarriage (affinity) the same as those who were siblings by blood.40 The law’s privileging of one sibling over another created tensions in many families. At the élite level of society, where primogeniture obtained, family interests were increasingly identified with those of the heir. During the early modern period, as Eileen Spring and Susan Staves have shown, the inheritances of younger sons, daughters and widows in noble estates were decreased so that the heir might be aggrandized.41 Well-known at the time was the disadvantaged situation of younger brothers, for however many younger brothers worked for overall family goals, no-one denied that their birth position was central to their life experience.42 Popular sayings alluded to their relative deprivation: ‘He has made a younger Brother of him’.43 Many younger sons bitterly resented their elder brothers, reproaching them with their common ancestry: ‘You Knowe that I was descended of the same blood wth the rest of my fathers Children’, wrote Sir Francis Slingsby to Sir Henry in 1650, complaining that his father had left him ‘but a smale Annuitie out of such a faire Estate as he lefte’.44 In wicked families, contemporaries believed that a younger brother might seek to delegitimate the heir: Richard III ‘scupl’d not to make his Mother a Whore, that he might prove his brother illegitimate’, observed one father in 1671.45 The displacement or death of an heir altered relationships among his surviving siblings. An heir’s power over his brothers and sisters was enhanced during the early modern period as many fathers made marriage portions and settlements depend upon an elder brother’s goodwill.46 Although a father might entrust his heir with care of his siblings, the heir was under pressure to keep his inheritance for himself. A popular saying wryly recognized the heir’s conflict of interest: ‘The Brother had rather see his sister rich than make her so’.47 Although an heir might resent his father’s efforts to provide for all his children, the heir’s siblings, for a son to question his father’s actions smacked of disrespect and promoted ill-feeling, a disgrace to the model of the well-ordered family. Sir John Reresby (1634–1689), who inherited in 1646, observed that his father had no right to leave such generous bequests to his younger sons and his daughter, but as a dutiful son he performed his father’s will.48 Among the gentry, contemporaries were strongly aware of the inequalities of estate distribution, and many hinted at its injustice. Lucy Hutchinson observed that her grandfather by her father’s side had seven

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sons, and ‘to the eldest he gave his whole estate, and to the rest, according to the custome of those times, slight annuities’.49 But there was only so far money would stretch. Henry Patrick was the son of a gentleman who had 15 children, and although his father enjoyed an estate of £400–500 per annum, with so many children ‘he could make but small provision for the youngest of them.’50 There is evidence from lower social levels that heirs did not always pay bequests to siblings willingly.51 As one clergyman observed, ‘The things of the world are bones of contention, which breed many quarrels between brother and brother’.52 Material lives as well as emotional relationships were affected by primogeniture, as Susan Whyman’s analysis of the archives relating to the Verney family demonstrates. In the later seventeenth century, John Verney (1640–1717), the younger son, gained invaluable commercial experience as a merchant because he did not expect to inherit his father’s position and estates in Buckinghamshire. He was on poor terms with his elder brother Edmund (1636–1688). As their father wrote, ‘Their age and humours are so different’. John rejected a life of waiting for handouts like so many younger brothers, and persuaded his father to apprentice him to a Levant merchant. Stationed in Aleppo, he endured his elder brother’s patronizing advice: ‘remember you are a gentleman . . . otherwise I shall never own you, for I hate a poltroon.’ Not surprisingly, John was emotionally closer to his uncle and his cousins, who likewise suffered from their elder brothers: ‘There is some sympathy between us as younger brothers.’ John was lucky, for Edmund and his heirs predeceased their father, so in 1696 he himself inherited his father’s estate. Unlike his father, however, John Verney was unwilling to assist their dependent female kin: ‘I am not in a condition to maintain poor relations’.53 Reformers during the interregnum questioned the inheritance rights of the first-born son, but not always the social and gender hierarchies upon which social status depended. An anonymous tract of 1659, A Modest Plea for an Equal Common-Wealth, argued for equal sharing between siblings; primogeniture, ‘keeping up the name and family’, was an idle fancy, a madness that led to poverty and misery for the heir’s siblings. Estates should descend to ‘the whole off-spring that are of the same bloud and family’. Yet the author was implicitly concerned with male offspring, not female: a younger brother was ‘sprung from as Noble a Stock, from the loyns of as good a Gentleman as his elder Brother’.54 Hugh Peters was one of the few who challenged conventional assumptions about gender and the preeminence of sons over daughters. In 1651 he argued that the mischiefs which came upon families ‘by greatning the eldest, and abasing the rest’ could be

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remedied: if daughters would work they should have equal shares with sons.55 Later in the century, Thomas Tryon advised parents to make all their children equal in inheritances, ‘thy Daughter equal with they Sons’.56 Inheritances were affected by parental remarriages, and were one of the greatest sources of tension between step and half-siblings. In the Newdigate family, half-brothers and sisters were well aware of whose mother had brought economic advantage to the family, and who was ‘sone to her that brought nothing’.57 Lower down the social scale, an unhappy story told how in 1626 a neighbour had persuaded 16-year-old Jane Tully that on her father’s remarriage to widow Dimock, the widow would take all his wealth ‘and convert it to her own children’s use’. Jane’s theft of £4 to preempt the loss of her inheritance landed her in court.58 Other court cases record step-siblings vying for inheritances; at the manor of Havering, Marjorie McIntosh found several instances of legal disputes, including one in 1589 when an eldest son contested his father’s will bequeathing all his lands to his youngest son by second marriage.59 Despite divisions between blood relatives, their shared noble ‘blood’ set the peers and gentry apart from the rest of society. While only one son was the heir among the gentry, all siblings enjoyed in a common inheritance of nobility, as sixteenth-century social commentators Thomas Smith and William Harrison pointed out in their discussion of those ennobled by ‘blood and race’.60 Over the early modern period, the role of blood in concepts of lineage diminished, as virtue and service became increasingly important in establishing honour.61

The obligations of siblings Sociological studies that suggest a range of diverse functions which siblings may perform for each other invite us to consider the mutual obligations of siblings in early modern times. As today, obligations were affected by material circumstances, family position and gender. Material circumstances shaped siblings’ obligations. Here I will discuss some instances of siblings’ expectations, focusing on general aid, housekeeping, accommodation and the care of orphans. Evidence will be related to the fairly simple tripartite division of society that was outlined in the introduction – the élite, comprising the peers and gentry and wealthy citizens; the middling sort, including many professional men, especially clergy, who had a great deal to say about family relationships in the seventeenth century; and the labouring poor.

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There was no formal code of sibling obligations in early modern times. Their mutual duties are rarely defined in domestic advice manuals, although such works offered prolific guidance to husbands and wives, parents and children, and servants and masters. There was a general Christian expectation that siblings would love and support each other in life crises, such as births, sickness and death. Older children were more likely to be in a position to assist their younger brothers and sisters. Since women’s childbearing, particularly in élite families, usually extended over all the years of the marriage, there could be several years between children, and a father’s remarriage to a younger woman could increase the age gap. Elder siblings, in a quasi-parental role, helped their younger siblings, especially when they were orphaned.62 Roger North (1651–1734), the youngest of 14 children, recalled that his elder brother was ‘as a common father to us’.63 At all social levels, there are instances of sisters helping each other at their lying-in: in 1651, the gentlewoman Mary Whitelocke, nearing her time, moved to her brother-in-law’s house in London to be close to her sister and her midwife.64 Lower down the social scale, Leonard Wheatcroft’s daughter Anna sent for her sister Betty to be with her while she gave birth.65 Since women’s own mothers may have died, sisters may have had a correspondingly larger role in each other’s lying-in. Similarly, siblings helped with marriage negotiations. Since around half the population had lost their fathers by the time they married, brothers frequently assisted in marriage negotiations and witnessed the proceedings, even when their widowed sisters were remarrying.66 Contemporaries thought that siblings should keep in contact. Among the élite, letters of compliment were written, and visits exchanged. Indeed, the maintenance of connections with brothers and sisters was an important part in gentry social life. Elite networks were geographically extensive.67 Labouring people were comparatively disadvantaged in attempting to sustain their family ties at a distance, for they lacked the horses and coaches that made travelling easier, and even the resources of literacy, including pen and papers. From the later sixteenth century, labouring people were more likely to leave home to go into service and some undertook the long distance migration to London. Even those whose migration was within a 30mile radius might not be able to walk the distance to provide effective assistance to their siblings. Although at all social levels the death of a parent might remove a link between brothers and sisters, for many siblings the bond endured for their lifetimes. Expectations were gendered: brothers were more likely to be able to provide material aid, sisters services. Families delegated some sisters to serve the interests of brothers. At the middling social level, the Lancashire

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tradesman William Stout (1665–1752) recorded that his mother was so busy with housewifery and helping her husband and their servants with their farming that her daughter Ellin was ‘early confined to wait on her brother’. Stout appreciated his sister’s devoted housekeeping: she did ‘as much or more than if I had been her own sone’. Ellin also helped at her brother Leonard’s, ‘where she was of good service and company to his young wife in her house keeping’.68 Abigail Harley, an unmarried gentlewoman, cared for her nephews and nieces in Herefordshire at the family home of her father while her brother and his wife lived in London.69 Many siblings assisted each other with accommodation. The co-residence of adult siblings seems to obtain at the élite and middling social levels where widowed and unmarried brothers and sisters frequently lived with their siblings. In the mid-seventeenth century, Mary Penington’s widowed motherin-law Springet boarded at her only brother’s, where she administered physic daily to poor patients.70 A married or widowed sister might give a home to a single or widowed brother. Robert Boyle, who never married, lived with his sister Lady Ranelagh in her London house where a special laboratory was built for him.71 Many demographic studies disguise sibling co-residence lower down the social scale. The Cambridge Population Group’s assumption that those with different names in a household were not kin was incorrect; sibling links could be disguised by remarriages.72 It was more difficult for poorer siblings to house each other, but they sometimes provided temporary accommodation. The high migration rate of young people for work separated them from their parents, but siblings may have found work in similar locations and assisted each other in migration. A son of Derbyshire artisans Leonard and Elizabeth Wheatcroft who lived in London invited his younger brother to the city to be apprenticed.73Alice Hayes went to her brother’s household between her first and second service.74 The vicar of Puddletown, Dorset, found a number of coresident siblings among his flock in 1724: the widowed Joan Genge lived at the sign of the Naggs Head and with her lived two daughters, a granddaughter, and her tradesman brother George. Other co-resident siblings at Puddleton included a household of two sisters who shared with a widow and a singlewoman – ‘All poor and maintained by parish’ – and another consisting of two brothers, both husbandmen and unmarried. A few other households had accommodated nephews and nieces.75 Married siblings rarely shared accommodation, although necessity could sometimes force domestic dependence. In 1670, Bulstrode Whitelocke and his wife boarded with her sister Wilson and her husband, but Whitelocke found their relatives discourteous.76 Remarriages added a further layer of

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complexity to relationships. From some time before 1675, William Lawrence (c.1635–1697) and his second wife lived in Berkshire with John Bigge, whose wife was the sister of Lawrence’s first wife: as Gerald Aylmer, editor of William’s writings observed, the two former brothers-in-law ‘obviously hated each other’. William explained to his beloved brother abroad who had ‘often wonder’d at how I could wast my time under the roofe of such a sordid mind, and associate my self with a temper so sullen and morose’ that he forced himself to do it ‘for the sake of the sisters’.77 Siblings generally regarded the offer of accommodation as a favour rather than a right, yet offence was taken if their siblings refused to oblige. Roger Lowe was angry when his wife was turned off from her sister’s and did not know where to lodge.78 Siblings who received hospitality were usually expected to reciprocate. Whitelocke was disgusted that his wife was forced to take lodgings, for ‘neither her own Sister’, nor others who ‘had had layn so often at her house’ invited her to stay, ‘though they had room enough for her’.79 Conflicting expectations created difficulties; when Samuel Pepys took his sister, Paulina, into his household in January 1661, he resolved ‘to have her come not as a Sister in any respect but as a servant’. Paulina expected to eat with her brother and his wife, but Samuel denied her. Not surprisingly, after a few months Samuel resolved to dismiss his sister, finding her ‘proud and Idle’.80 In the poorest households, siblings may have found it very difficult to accommodate their kin. Most parishes restricted the reception of ‘inmates’ or ‘strangers’, fearing the burden on the rates. From the 1570s and through the seventeenth century, the Manchester leet court reiterated regulations that no inhabitants were to house ‘inmates’ unless they could show that the newcomers could get their livings without begging.81 However, occasional glimpses of poorer siblings sharing accommodation can be found: in Southampton, Richard Jennings wife was presented for keeping his sister as a ‘churrmayd’; she claimed that her sister was not a casual worker but her servant.82 In Essex in 1622, Edward Samforth was presented because he ‘hath taken in Hammond his wives brother’. Other Essex orders against inmates include references to various kin, including ‘her sister’s child’, ‘his brother’ and ‘his wife’s sister’.83 John Wade in Southampton stood by his sister who was lately delivered of an illegitimate child in his house, ‘yet is abiding the child being dead.’84 Some brothers supported their siblings or their siblings’ children in education and training. Among the middling sort, Joseph Hall was especially grateful for the help of an uncle when he was at Cambridge: the man acted ‘out of no other relation to me, save that he married my aunt’.85 John Fryer

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acknowledged the loving assistance of his mother’s brother, Edmund Boulter, whose ‘Brotherly love & Charitable disposition’ helped maintain Fryer and his widowed mother. When Fryer was apprenticed to a London pewterer, his uncle discharged £10 and a suit of clothes for him. In 1695 Boulter offered a home to his widowed sister, and on his death in 1709 left a will asking to be buried beside her and bequeathing an estate to her son Fryer and annuities to his two nieces.86 A fascinating example of a brother and sister helping out with young nieces and nephews comes again from William Stout and his sister Ellin. Neither William nor Ellin married, but they always had two of their brother Leonard’s children living with them, taking them at two years of age and keeping them until they were able to go to school at six. Elllin ‘was as carefull to nurs and correct them as if they had been her own children.’87 Even the poorest might invoke the aid of the extended family to assist with employment. In 1635 a labourer questioned as to the reason for his presence in Dorchester claimed that he went there ‘to meet with his Aunt Hooper, and to entreate her to gett him a place to go to New England’.88 Cressy, in his study of migration to the New World, cites many instances of individuals soliciting the aid of kin whom they had never met.89 One of the most important sibling obligations was to care for each other’s orphaned children. There are numerous examples of uncles and aunts taking in orphaned nephews and nieces. Mary Rich took in her husband’s three young nieces after promising her dying brother-in-law ‘to have while I lived as great a care of as if they had been my own’. Since at that date Mary’s own children had died, there were no tensions over inheritances, and a close relationship continued after the young women married.90 The minister Robert Meeke (b. 1656) was guardian for his brother’s orphaned child from 1684. In 1689 he helped take Billy Meeke to a surgeon for a bruise on his leg. Five years later, Robert was still buying clothes for his nephew. Billy had inherited an estate ‘but a bad knavish tenant enjoys it’.91 Among urban business families, Richard Grassby found examples of women and men caring for their siblings’ orphans.92 Local records occasionally offer additional evidence. In Southampton in 1609, the orphaned children of Johnson, a basket maker, were cared for by kin with some financial support from the town. Margerye Johnson went from one aunt to another. Similarly, in 1609, John Barber a husbandman came to the Assembly with ‘a prettie young Girle of the Age of Nyne yeares or thereabouts’ who had been orphaned in the plague. Although he had kept the girl at his own charge, ‘his wife beinge Awnt unto the childe’, he sought assistance and was given 10s.93 Wrightson and Levine found instances of brothers and

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brothers-in-law assisting young children after their father’s deaths.94 An autobiographer who had lost one or both of their parents might record with gratitude the kindness of their aunts and uncles. A Norfolk gentlewoman, Elizabeth Freke, recorded that she was befriended by her mother’s sister after her mother died.95 The ‘blended families’ created by siblings taking in orphans were not always happy. Much depended on how individual children related to their uncles and aunts, and also the extent to which extra children stretched scarce financial and emotional resources. Elizabeth Brodnax, who married Thomas Turner in 1660, was responsible for several children to whom she had different relationships: her charges included a stepdaughter, sons and daughters she bore, and orphaned nephews and nieces. Each year, on her wedding anniversary, she reviewed the children’s spiritual state. In 1676 she noted that she had as yet little opportunity to influence the orphans, ‘those children of my dear brother’s committed to my charge’. The eldest one was too distant, but Elizabeth had hopes of the others: ‘As for the little ones, I hope I may say my endeavours in their education are as for my own.’96 When parents were old or sick and required assistance, it is not clear how siblings shared the tasks of what has been termed ‘kin-work’.97 Richard Grassby found that among urban business families, from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century unmarried daughters were most likely to care for aged parents.98 From his study of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Richard Wall concluded that there was a similar pattern among labourers’ daughters, but he found that this was less the case among tradesmen’s and craftsmen’s families.99 Poor law policies generally militated against siblings caring for their elderly relatives, as dependants were unwelcome in parishes. Brothers, who were more likely than sisters to have access to money and resources, were often expected to offer their siblings financial and legal aid. Some gave money and made bequests.100 Brothers, and even sometimes sisters, assisted each other with loans, although Wrightson and Levine found that neighbours were a more common source of credit. Likewise, at Terling although neighbours were more often signatories of recognizances in the period 1578–1693, brothers and brothers-in-law were common among the 24 per cent of cases involving kin.101 Testators may have been more likely to forgive debts in their wills if they were due to relatives.102 Material transactions are always difficult to separate from emotional ones especially when kin were involved. Siblings who provided practical assistance, took in orphans, and lent money were to some degree meeting expectations, but there was always an emotional dynamic to the exchange.

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Sibling obligations may have been more onerous for older children in families, especially for older brothers. Relative obligations and dependences between brothers and sisters over the early modern period obviously varied. Sometimes age or marital circumstances mattered more than gender: an older sister could have dependent younger brothers, and even though she was married, a sister might help her brothers with housing. Generally, over a lifetime, siblings at all social levels were required to provide each other with practical and emotional support. Their roles in the material and emotional life of the family were generally greater than has been recognized.

Siblings and the sense of self In the context of the family, the individual’s sense of self was established, and in the late twentieth century, psychologists have argued, pace Freud, that siblings mattered as well as parents.103 Historians suggest that the process of establishing an identity depends largely on social and cultural factors and is not done once and for all in childhood. The process is historically contingent because individuals shape their identities from the materials around them. As Shapin has brilliantly demonstrated in his study of Robert Boyle, Boyle shaped and reshaped his identity as the disinterested scientist over his lifetime.104 It was his sister, Lady Ranelagh, who provided the family environment that allowed him to live as a bachelor without responsibilities for running a household. Brothers and sisters were a significant part of the social context around which individuals developed their identities and could, as we have seen, be present for a greater part of the individual’s lifetime. Yet not all siblings shared childhood experiences. Apart from generational gaps consequent upon remarriages, élite brothers were often separated from their sisters at an early age as they were sent away to school, university and inns of court. There they may have bonded with their brothers and also male cousins with whom they were often educated.105 Their sisters were usually reared at home until separated by marriage. Each sibling relationship was unique, and impacted differently on each individual’s development. Children defined themselves, and were defined by others, in relation to their siblings. Roger North, ‘bredd together’ with his elder brother Francis who overshadowed him, was over 30 years of age when his brother died; Roger admitted that till then he had ‘scarce a caracter in the world of my own.’106 A widespread belief that emulation was important in the education of children intensified sibling bonds. Among the literate, the assumption that

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children should be encouraged to admire and to copy selected models, meant, as Belsey has pointed out, that children were reared in conditions closely akin to jealousy and competition.107 Whatever the effects – siblings could emulate or reject the models – siblings, especially those of the same sex, were involved with each other’s development.108 Some parents could see happy outcomes. In 1639 Thomas Wentworth, Lord Deputy in Ireland, sent two of his daughters to their grandmother, the dowager countess of Clare. Wentworth explained that he was reluctant to separate the two girls, because he wanted them to ‘be a Stay one to another’ after his own death, and ‘besides the younger gladly imitates the elder, in Disposition so like her blessed Mother, that it pleases me very much to see her Steps followed and observed by the other.’109 Roger North recognized that an elder brother’s achievements could be hard to emulate, ‘but one much above the other helps him’.110 Locke’s advocacy of a simple model of education for children – all, irrespective of sex, should copy the pattern established for the heir – ignored the variable abilities of individual children.111 Mary Clarke, on whose children Locke modelled his scheme, confessed that their eldest son Edward was a dull scholar, while his younger sister Betty was apt and keen to learn.112 In one family, a mother considered that the unkindness of her elder son to his younger brother was the effect of the rivalry engendered when the master praised the younger boy as the ‘better schollar’.113 Sometimes siblings supported each other in opposition to their parents and interceded on each other’s behalf. George Boddington (1646–1719), a prosperous London Levant merchant, judged harshly between his sons as ‘good’ and bad by their aptitude to trade,114 yet his commonplace book shows no sense of tension between his children; rather, they allied against him, interceding for those out of favour. Brothers and sisters begged their father to allow their sister to marry Collier, to which George finally acceded, despite his own reservations. Siblings pleaded for their eldest brother, George, who was not only an unsatisfactory merchant in Aleppo but had compounded his faults by returning home with a pregnant Roman Catholic wife. Finally, on his son’s declared repentance, and his ‘haveing prevayled with his Brothers & Sisters to Intersed for my receiving them into my house’, George relented and admitted them.115 A younger brother might appeal to his eldest brother as a mediator with their father, thinking that their father would listen to his heir.116 Sisters tried to protect Thomas Ellwood from their father’s wrath when he converted to the Quaker religion. Thomas’s father, an Oxfordshire gentleman, considered that his son’s covering of his head at meal times was disrespectful. After he confiscated all of Thomas’s hats, one by one, Thomas was forced to go out bareheaded in winter, from which

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he developed boils in his gums, could not eat, and was ‘without much Pity, except from my poor sister, who did what she could to give me Ease’. His father rained blows with his cane on Thomas’s head; one sister dressed his wounded arm. Although his elder sister disliked his new faith, ‘her affectionate Regard for me made her rather pity than despise me’.117 Similarly, lower down the social scale, Agnes Beaumont’s brother attempted to ameliorate their father’s wrath after Agnes joined John Bunyan’s congregation.118 The practical aid which siblings gave each other could be understood as moral support. In 1670, when his sister was widowed, Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham (1621–1682), attempted to rally her spirits, urging her not to be swallowed up by too much grief and to ‘ begin to consider what you owe to his Children’. He begged her to care for herself, and offered practical advice about her husband’s will, executors, and debts: ‘write to me as often as you can’. Heneage wanted his sister’s help for Sir Edward Dering in the coming elections, but asked her to let him know quickly if it was hopeless.119 Many brothers and sisters enjoyed close and altruistic relationships: there are instances of close bonds between some brothers, some sisters, and across the gender division. Joseph Hall, later a bishop, gratefully recorded his elder brother’s sacrifice when their father decided not to send Joseph to Cambridge. His brother fell on his knees to beg their father to sell some land ‘which himself should in the course of nature inherit, [rather] than to abridge me of the happy means to perfect my education’.120 Symon Patrick (1626–1707) was glad to take a preferment after the Restoration and so assist his brother ‘who was but meanly provided for’. In 1665, during the plague, the two Patrick brothers met weekly, which Symon found ‘a great refreshment to me’. When Symon married, his brother performed the service; later, his brother bequeathed Symon ‘all that he was worth’.121 Similarly, the correspondence of two sisters, Anne Dormer and Lady Elizabeth Trumbull, reveals deep intimacy between them. In letters written from 1685 to 1691, addressed to ‘My Dearest Deare Sister’, or ‘My Dearest Soul’, Anne confided details of her unhappy marriage, and offered vows of ‘passionate love and friendship’ to Elizabeth: ‘I know you love me as I do you, that is better then my life’.122 Contemporaries valued the love between a brother and sister, but viewed it as asexual. Thus Symon Patrick’s wife initially refused to marry him, saying that she ‘loved me as a brother, but could not as a husband’.123 Not surprisingly, one sibling was often more significant for an individual’s happiness than another. Roger Lowe, an apprentice shopkeeper in Lancashire in the 1660s, concerned himself with the spiritual state of his two sisters. While his sister Katherine was distant, and ‘highly offended’ at her brother’s admonition to serve the Lord, Ellin was close to her brother.

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Roger recorded his meetings with Ellin in his diary; in January 1665 the brother and sister visited their parents’ graves ‘and stayed awhile and both wept’. The following year Roger ‘was sent for’ to Ellin after she had given birth. He found her speechless, ‘which grieved me sore’; she died that night. Roger attended her funeral the next day, and the christening of her baby who was given his own name, Roger.124 In another instance, a minister, Edmund Trench, recalled that he ‘always lov’d’ his younger brother born in 1648 ‘and can hardly remember any quarrel between us’. When his brother went to Aleppo, he ‘parted sadly one so dear in the strictest bonds of Love and Nature.’ However, he quarrelled with his brother Samuel, ‘whom I shoul’d have borne with, considering his woeful Affliction by the King’s Evil.’125 Some siblings simply did not get on, and their contemporaries believed that property, inheritance, and parental favouritism all played a part. In 1616 the anonymous author of a treatise on parental duties criticized ‘The folly of some [parents], who are so carried away after their elder sonne, that all the rest are little or nothing regarded’, which adversely affected the children’s relationships. This ‘worketh pride, emulation, and hatred among his children, which sometimes prooveth dangerous to the whole family’.126 There were property disputes among siblings in urban business families.127 Sometimes siblings divided into rival groups: three of Elizabeth Wiseman’s brothers, Sir Dudley, Montague and Roger North, all helped her in her marriage negotiations against the machinations of their eldest brother, Charles.128 But parental favouritism was not simple. Fathers may have seen their heirs as rivals, those who would be most glad of their death. Fathers gave the eldest son the largest fortunes, reflected Robert Boyle, ‘but the youngest the greatest shares of their Affections.’129 A mother may have favoured her eldest son, further complicating the family tensions. There might simply be a favourite child. A dying mother in the Trumbull family was most deeply concerned about one daughter, Fanny, ‘who is her beloved of all her children’.130 In the North family, one brother alleged that Dudley (who was not the eldest brother) was ‘entitled to be, as he really was, his mother’s favourite’.131 Rivalry between siblings features in many family stories. In an autobiographical fragment, Lucy Hutchinson recounted a story her mother, Lady Lucy (1589?–1659) had told her. Lady Lucy said that she was more beautiful than her elder sisters, ‘who, something envious att it, us’d her unkindly’, so that when Lady Lucy was absent, one of her sisters married Lucy’s wealth suitor. Lady Lucy’s own daughter, another Lucy, experienced her own younger sister as a rival. When she was five years old, her mother bore another daughter whom she suckled herself ‘and was infinitely fond of above all the rest’.132 The passage in Lucy’s autobiography ends abruptly,

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and we can only conjecture whether Lucy herself censored her expression of jealousy as unseemly. Contemporaries were critical of those who were on poor terms with their siblings. Thus in 1637 when Denzil Holles, a second son, went to law against his elder brother and their mother, over what he considered his inadequate inheritance, people regarded a suit between persons ‘so near in blood’ as wrong. Their erstwhile brother-in-law, Thomas Wentworth, tried to patch up the quarrel, reflecting to his friend, Archbishop Laud, upon the unseemliness of such ‘unnatural suits’. Wentworth was not optimistic: the two brothers were ‘unruly, loving themselves on both Sides something further than Moderation, without that equal Respect which we ought all to observe towards others’.133 One of the particular horrors of the Civil Wars in the mid-seventeenth century was the unnatural divisions in families; brother was found fighting against brother as well as son against father.134 Examples are diverse, ranging from stories of the reportedly political calculation of one father, who enlisted a son on both sides, to stories of brothers whose divisions caused great family anguish. Sometimes the brothers’ choice of opposing sides was symptomatic of earlier conflicts. The two Holles brothers were briefly on opposite sides, but as we have seen they had fallen out earlier.135 Although contemporaries told fewer tales about sisters’ divisions over the wars, they too were troubled if their brothers chose the opposite side. In July 1642 Elizabeth Feilding threatened her brother Basil that if he refused to leave his support of the Parliament, ‘I shall leave to be what I am now, your most affectionate sister.’136 Close affectionate bonds exposed siblings to the pain of quarrels. When their father died in 1717, Katherine Fryer (1677–1718) was so distressed at the ‘unkind carriage’ of her elder sister Coggs and her nephew John Coggs in failing to send her a mourning ring or even a pair of gloves that she did not conceal her grief from her sister. Katherine’s husband narrated what happened next: ‘Mrs Coggs treated her very rudely, & went out of doors scolding & making a great noise, her last words being she cared not whether ever she SAW her more; this was a matter of great disquiet to my Wife who loved her & her children so dearly’. Katherine died soon after and the breach between the Fryer and Coggs families was never healed.137 Information lower down the social scale was qualitatively different, but a careful reading of evidence hints at emotional ties. In 1691 the inhabitants of Bedale parish petitioned for an order against George Harrison to be rescinded because he was working, ‘and now at this very time is with a sister of his at Lavington who has maintained him without any allowance

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of his pension’.138 Reports of court proceedings offer brief glimpses of sibling affection: a brother stood in front of his sister when two officers sought to arrest her for debt, and was killed. Another brother allegedly supported his sister financially; he allowed her £20 p.a. and she worked in the Exchange making mounteer (Spanish hunting) caps.139 The Middlesex quarter sessions indicted a gentleman for carrying away his sister, Isabel Floud, ‘who stands indicted for felony’.140 In 1626, a Nottingham brother and his wife ineffectually attempted to protect his orphaned sister from ill-usage in her apprenticeship. The master and his wife both said that the girl ‘should be the viler and worste used for theire speeches’.141 Brothers helped each other escape the consequences of their sexual misdemeanors: the reputed father of an illegitimate child was carried away by three of his brothers.142 Another brother offered the maternal grandmother £6 for the maintenance of an illegitimate child his brother had fathered, ‘and for the discharge of his brother which she would not accept’.143 In 1678 in a criminal case, a judge at the Old Bailey told two brothers who stole lead from the church roof that they were ‘Brethren in iniquity, Simeon and Levi’.144 However, it is more difficult to read the emotions in these cases: is the prosecution of a brother accused of pandering for his sister a story of fraternal support or exploitation?145 Elizabeth Pearce, accused in Somerset of stealing ‘dressen’ from a hedge, confessed that she had it from her sister ‘who had found it’. Were the two sisters allies in petty theft, was one sister simply making a gift to the other, or was Elizabeth set up? 146 Increasingly, family relationships among the poor were affected by the development of the Tudor poor laws. By the 1601 Poor Law legitimate children gained a settlement from their fathers that entitled them to relief. However, if a widow remarried, and changed her parish, then her children could be sent to her former husband’s parish, thereby separating step and half-siblings. In 1656 justices in Essex determined that a stepfather could not by law be charged with the maintenance of his wife’s children, so they were sent to the parish of their father’s settlement.147 Hampson’s study of poor law settlements in Cambridgeshire revealed many instances of children in the one family having different settlements.148 In the case of orphans, the parish would provide through fostering the children out, and subsequently through apprenticeships, which might again separate siblings. In Southampton in 1612 and 1616, for example, Alice Teague and her sister were bound out in separate parishes, Alice for 12 years.149 In the first half of the seventeenth century, the justices sometimes incorrectly ordered that legitimate children be settled separately in parishes where they were born.150 Illegitimate children would be separated from their mothers and

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any other siblings when they were over seven years of age: ‘bastards’ were then to be settled in the parish where they were born.151 Subsequent parliamentary acts clarified and rigidified the poor relief system established in 1601. The Settlement Act of 1662 stated that children were be relieved in the parish of their father’s settlement, until they obtained a settlement elsewhere, as they might do by a year’s apprenticeship or service.152 By the end of the seventeenth century, poor law authorities in a parish found it advantageous to place children of the poor and orphans in other parishes.153 Different settlements which separated poorer siblings impaired their capacity to assist each other when they were sick or old. Yet in other instances, the poor law authorities drew on the ‘blood’ connections, and approached siblings for assistance with illegitimate children. At one meeting of the Wells sessions in the seventeenth century, John Smale’s sister was reported to have been delivered of a base child. Since the reputed father was in Bridewell, the child was carried to Bagborough and left with its uncle Smale.154 When it came to deciding who should be responsible for the relief of children, the parish overseers viewed the sibling bond instrumentally; if siblings could maintain their kin, the poor law authorities would require them to do so, but keeping families together was not a priority. Among the voluntary charitable organizations relieving the poor, Christ’s hospital in London was pre-eminent. Christ’s governors admitted one child only from a family. The need to ration the charity prevailed over the ‘natural bonds’ between siblings, so only in exceptional circumstances would more than one be taken into care. In 1564 a five-year-old boy was admitted for only one year ‘for that he hath a brother in the House already’.155 In 1564 two sisters of an executed ‘Egyptian’ were taken in at the Lord Mayor’s command and later apprenticed out.156 By the nineteenth century, there was widespread criticism of the callousness of the Poor Law authorities in separating brothers and sisters.157 However, in the early modern period, the governors of charities and civic authorities argued that they were offering a benefit to poor families in providing employment and training for one child who would learn little but idleness if they were left at home. Poor law authorities and philanthropists believed that charity schooling and poor law apprenticeships were training poor children for economic independence in one of the many new enterprises that required small capital and many labourers.158 Stories from all social levels tell of terrible physical grief at the misfortunes and deaths of brothers and sisters. William Lawrence loved his younger brother Isaac, a merchant abroad, very dearly. Some of William’s

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letters expressed his affection in ‘jocular’ terms, with laboured conceits: ‘yet though the night weares away apace and my dying candle drawes neare its end, my affection can never diminish or find a period, it can neither dye nor consume, but will always burne with a steddy and eternal flame in the Heart of Your truly affectionate Brother And faithfull Friend’. Yet when William heard ‘the very sad newes’ of his brother being ill-treated, his words were direct and immediate: he felt Isaac’s injuries in his own body, ‘as if my self had undergone the same fate and my owne limbs had been reall sharers in your Sufferings’. He concluded with a reflection on the inadequacy of words: ‘for Nature and a particular Affection hath confirm’d me beyond the reach of expression’. Further, William interpreted his dream of Isaac’s death at the same time as he later learnt that his brother was seriously ill as a sign of the bond between them: ‘such a perfect Union, that one cannot suffer but the other must have some share in it!’159 Other siblings expressed similar physical ties to each other. A Shropshire clergyman felt ‘flatt and lowe’ after his sister informed him of their brother’s death: ‘never I think was any heart more flatt & lowe than myne hath been ever synce ye receite of Mrs Clerkes fatall entelligence’. He was comforted with a reviving account of his brother’s life and the integrity of his reputation.160 In 1674 Edward Barlow returned to London from a voyage and found to his great grief that his sister Anna had died, leaving him 35s: ‘she loved me very well when she was alive, as I did her’.161 Male grief was comparatively restrained, but more extravagant physical symptoms of sorrow were appropriate to women. John Coad remembered that his sister fainted when she heard that he was condemned to death for taking part in Monmouth’s uprising: hearing ‘that my flesh was to be hung up before my dore, . . . she swooned away twice that morning’.162 Anne Dormer reflected on the passionate friendship between Betty Vernon and her sister Mol: ‘the Death of Betty had very neere killed Mol shee Lay three months none knew whether she would live or die and all that time her greiefe was so extream, shee never shed one teare, but as soone as shee came to her Mother shee wept a whole day’. Six months later, no one dared mention Betty’s death lest her sister should weep for three hours.163 Contemporaries were slightly shocked at such excessive grief, seeing it, as Michael Macdonald has explained, as the harvest of excessive (and unchristian) affection.164 For better or worse, children in the one family were socialized and educated in relation to each other even if only in their earliest years. Sibling relationships were psychologically complex, as brothers and sisters both needed each other and sought to be independent. This may have been more significant for boys, since no one except girls themselves seem to have

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wanted girls to become independent women. Boys were exposed to more contradictory messages, as they were expected to establish a separate identity yet also to obey their fathers. Girls were expected to obey first fathers, later husbands. Given the importance of the sibling bond that has been sketched here, historians’ comparative silence about siblings in studies of the family is surprising. Although they have known that many contemporaries were closely involved with their brothers and sisters over their lifetimes in special bonds of love and sometimes hate, they have been more concerned with matters in the public domain, such as inheritance and patronage, rather than the history of the emotional life of the individual. Siblings mattered both for the individual and for wider kinship relationships within families.

Notes and references 1 Henry G. Bohun (ed.), A Hand-Book of Proverbs Comprising an Entire Republication of Ray’s Collection (London, 1855), p. 231. 2 M. P. Tilley, A Dictionary of Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1950), p. 69, B 695, B 689. 3 Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (London, 1961), p. 28. 4 Ralph A. Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450–1700 (London, 1984); Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent Child Relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge, 1983); Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England, 1300–1840 (Oxford, 1986). 5 Joan Thirsk, ‘Younger sons in the seventeenth century’, reprinted in her The Rural Economy of England: Collected Essays (London, 1984), pp. 335–57. 6 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977), pp. 115–6; Linda Pollock, ‘Younger sons in Tudor and Stuart England’, History Today, 39 (1989), pp. 23–9. 7 See, for example, James M. Rosenheim, The Townshends of Raynham (Middletown, Conn., 1989); Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990); V. Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture: The Seventeenth-Century Newdigates of Arbury and their World (London, 1995); Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Verneys 1660 –1720 (Oxford, 1999). 8 Catherine Belsey, Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture (London, 1999). 9 Richard Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism: Marriage, Family, and Business in the English-Speaking World, 1580–1740 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 210–15.

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10 Leonore Davidoff, ‘Where the stranger begins: the question of siblings in historical analysis’, in her Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (New York, 1995). 11 Miranda Chaytor, ‘Household and kinship: Ryton in the late 16th and early 17th centuries’, History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980), pp. 25–60; David Cressy, ‘Kinship and kin interaction in early modern England’, Past & Present, 113 (1986), pp. 38–69; see also Keith Wrightson, ‘The family in early modern England: continuity and change’, in Stephen Taylor, Richard Connors and Clyve Jones (eds), Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson (Woodbridge, 1998). 12 Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525–1700 (London, 1979), pp. 43–72. 13 Pamela Sharpe, Population and Society in an East Devon Parish: Reproducing Colyton 1540–1840 (Exeter, 2002), pp. 263–4. 14 For a discussion of actuality, see Introduction, p. 11. 15 Davidoff, ‘Siblings’, p. 208. 16 J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London, 1968), p. 172. 17 Sybil Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (London, 1987), pp. 21–30. 18 Ibid., p, 28; David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), p. 313. 19 Keith Thomas, ‘The Puritans and adultery: the Act of 1650 reconsidered’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978), pp. 257–8. 20 Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws, p. 42; Davidoff, ‘Siblings’, p. 215. 21 Davidoff, ‘Siblings’; Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws, p. 30. 22 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, p. 550 n. 50; The Unnatural Father: or, The Cruel Murther Committed by John Rowse (London, 1621), sig. B. 4. 23 Discussed by Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws, on p. 46 notes; Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene v. 24 Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, first published 1722. 25 Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 245–7. 26 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, pp. 313–5. 27 Private Letters from the Earl of Strafford to his Third Wife, Philobiblon Soc. Misc., vol. 1 (London, 1854), p. 9. 28 Borthwick Institute, York, D/C CP 1607/5, Dean’s & Chapter Cause Papers. 29 Ibid., 1624/4.

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30 Bob Simpson, Changing Families: An Ethnographic Approach to Divorce and Separation (Oxford, 1998), p. xi. 31 Caleb Trenchfield, A Cap of Gray Hairs . . . The Fathers Counsel to his Son an Apprentice in London (London, 1671), p. 141. 32 Marjorie McIntosh, A Community Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering 1500–1620 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 50. 33 Frances Harris, Transformations of Love: The Friendship of John Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin (Oxford, 2003), p. 277. 34 Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), p. 53. 35 For further examples, see Alison Findlay, Illegitimate Power: Bastards in Renaissance Drama (Manchester, 1994). 36 McIntosh, Community Transformed, p. 52 (1517, 1557); John T. Swain, Industry Before the Industrial Revolution: North-East Lancashire c. 1500–1640, Chetham Soc., 3rd ser., 32 (1986), pp. 78–9. 37 PCC will, Claudo de Sourceau of St Paul Covent Garden, 4 March 1672 (I am grateful to Jeremy Boulton for this reference); C. L. Sinclair Williams (ed.), Puddletown: House, Street and Family, Dorset Rec. Soc., 11 (1988), p. 58. 38 Guildhall, MS 4720. 39 Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, MS 2/4/1, Maze Pond Church Book, (1691–1745), pp. 108–9. 40 Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws. 41 Eileen Spring, Law, Land, & Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Chapel Hill, 1993); Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). 42 Heal and Holmes, Gentry, p. 51. 43 Tilley, Proverbs, p. 68, B. 686. 44 The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven, Bart., ed. D. Parsons (London, 1836), p. 341; Thirsk. ‘Younger Sons’, pp. 335–57. 45 Trenchfield, Cap of Gray Hairs, pp. 57–8. 46 Stone, Family, p. 156. 47 Tilley, Proverbs, p. 68, B. 685. 48 Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. Andrew Browning, 2nd edn ed. Mary Geiter and W. A. Speck (London, 1991), p. xliii. 49 Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, with a Fragment of an Autobiography of Mrs. Hutchinson, ed. James Sutherland (London, 1973), p. 283. 50 Autobiography of Symon Patrick, pp. 1–2. 51 McIntosh, Community Transformed, pp. 50–1.

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52 Extracts from the Diary of the Rev. Robert Meeke, ed. H. J. Morehouse (London, 1874), pp. 87–8. 53 Whyman, Sociability and Power, pp. 40 –5, 52–3, 78. 54 A Modest Plea for An Equal Common-Wealth (London, 1659), pp. 66, 64, 62. 55 H[ugh] P[eters], Good Work for a Good Magistrate (London, 1651), p. 31. 56 Some Memoirs of the Life of Mr Tho. Tryon, Late of London . . . Written by Himself (London, 1705), p. 90. 57 Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture, p. 65. 58 Cynthia B. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), p. 129. 59 McIntosh, Community Transformed, pp. 50–1. 60 William Harrison, The Description of England, ed. Georges Edelen (Washington, DC, 1968), p. 113. 61 Heal and Holmes, Gentry, pp. 30–3. 62 Susan Ervin-Tripp, ‘Sisters and brothers’, in Patricia Goldring Zukow (ed.), Sibling Interaction Across Cultures: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (New York, 1989), pp. 184–195. 63 Peter Millard (ed.), Notes of Me: The Autobiography of Roger North (Toronto, 2000), p. 200. 64 Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675 (ed.), Ruth Spalding (Oxford, 1990), p. 267. 65 C. Kerry, ‘The Autobiography of Leonard Wheatcroft’, Journal of Derbyshire Archaelogical and Natural History Society, 21 (1899), p. 50. 66 Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love, pp. 162–3; Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1993), p. 93; Diana O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000), pp. 39, 113, 221. 67 Charles Phythian-Adams, ‘Introduction’, p. 22, and Anne Mitson, ‘The significance of kinship networks in the seventeenth century: south-west Nottinghamshire’, in Charles Phythian-Adams (ed.), Societies, Culture and Kinship, 1580–1680 (Leicester, 1993), pp. 24–76. 68 J. D. Marshall (ed.), The Autobiography of William Stout of Lancaster 1665–1752 (Manchester, 1967), pp. 68, 127, 142, 122. 69 BL, Additional MS 70, 117; extracts in Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing, Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (London, 2000), pp. 204–5. 70 Some Account of the Circumstances in the Life of Mary Pennington (London, 1821), pp. 64–5. 71 Stephen Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in SeventeenthCentury England (Chicago, 1994), pp. 143–4.

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72 Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (eds), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 88–89; G. O. Lawton (ed.), Northwich Hundred: Poll Tax 1660 and Hearth Tax 1664, Rec. Soc. Lancs & Chesh, vol. 119 (1979), p. 18; Chaytor, ‘Household and kinship’, pp. 25–60. 73 ‘Autobiography of Leonard Wheatcroft’, p. 45. 74 Alice Hayes, A Legacy or the Widow’s Mite (London, 1723), p. 18. 75 Williams (ed.), Puddletown, pp. 43, 33, 38, 47, 52. 76 Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, p. 751. 77 G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Diary of William Lawrence: Covering periods between 1662 and 1681 (Beaminster, Dorset, 1961), pp. xvi, 5, and passim. 78 Lowe, Diary, p. 119. 79 Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, p. 783. 80 The Diary of Samuel Pepys (ed.), R. Latham and W. Matthews (11 vols., London, 1970–1983), vol. i, pp. 288; vol. ii, pp. 4, 139, 153, 161–2, 167. 81 J. P. Earwaker (ed.), The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester (12 vols., London, 1884–90), passim. 82 J. W. Horrocks (ed.), The Assembly Books of Southampton, Southampton Rec. Soc. (4 vols., 1917–25), vol. 2, p. 2. 83 F. G. Emmison, Early Essex Town Meetings: Braintree, 1619–1636; Finchingfieldd, 1626 – 34 (London, 1970), pp. viii, 15. 84 F. J. C. Hearnshaw (ed.), Southampton Court Leet Records, Southampton Rec. Soc., vol. 1 pt 3 (1907), p. 512. 85 The Works of the Right Reverend Joseph Hall (ed.), Philip Wynter (10 vols, Oxford, 1863), vol. I, p. xxiv. 86 Guildhall, MS 12017, fos. 10–11, 15, 24–5, 31. 87 Stout, Autobiography, pp. 127, 142. 88 C. H. Mayo, Municipal Records of the Borough of Dorchester, Dorset (Exeter, 1908), p. 666. 89 Cressy, ‘Kinship and kin interaction’, pp. 45–6; see also David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth-Century (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 270–6. 90 Autobiography of Mary, Countess of Warwick, ed. T. Crofton Croker (London, 1848), p. 27; Mendelson, Mental World, p. 84. 91 Extracts from the Diary of the Rev. Robert Meeke, pp. 3, 76. 92 Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism, p. 213. 93 Horrocks (ed.), Assembly Books of Southampton, vol. 2, pp. 63, 57, and passim. 94 Keith Wrightson, ‘Household and kinship in sixteenth-century England’, History Workshop Journal, 12 (1981), p. 156.

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95 The Remembrances of Elizabeth Freke 1671–1714, ed. Raymond A. Anselment, Camden Soc., 5th ser., vol. 18 (2001), p. 40. 96 Crawford and Gowing (eds), Women’s Worlds, pp. 210–3. 97 Micaela Di Leonardo, ‘The female world of cards and holidays: women, families and the work of kinship’, Signs, 12 (1987), pp. 440–53. 98 Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism, p. 206. 99 Richard Wall, ‘Marriage, residence, and occupational choices of senior and junior siblings in the English past’, The History of the Family, 1 (1996), pp. 259–71. 100 Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism, pp. 212–4. 101 Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525–1700 (London, 1979), pp. 100–01; Wrightson, ‘Household and kinship’, p. 156. 102 Cressy, ‘Kinship and kin interaction’, p. 52. 103 Stephen P. Bank and Michael D. Kahn, The Sibling Bond (New York, 1982). 104 Shapin, Social History of Truth, pp. 126–92. 105 Rosemary O’Day, Family and Family Relationships, 1500–1900: England, France and the United States of America (London, 1994), pp. 87–8. 106 North, Notes of Me, p. 50. 107 Belsey, Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden, p. 138. 108 Davidoff, ‘Siblings’, p. 211. 109 William Knowler (ed.), The Earl of Strafford’s Letters and Dispatches (2 vols, London 1739), vol. ii, p. 379. 110 North, Notes of Me, p. 11. 111 Twenty-one editions of the work were published before 1800; Graham Richards, Mental Machinery: The Origins and Consequences of Psychological Ideas, Part I, 1600–1850 (London, 1992), p. 213. 112 Sara Mendelson, ‘Seventeenth-century childrearing in theory and practice: the letters of John Locke and Mary Clarke’. I am most grateful to Dr Mendelson for allowing me to consult her chapter in the forthcoming festschrift for Mary Prior. 113 Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism, p. 208. 114 Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 46–7. 115 Guildhall, MS 10823/1, fo. 25. 116 Pollock, ‘Younger sons’, p. 26. 117 The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, ed. S. Gaveson (London, 1906), pp. 51, 57, 70.

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118 The Narration of the Persecution of Agnes Beaumont in 1674, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, [1929]), p. 28. 119 University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Cl C 180, Clifton collections. 120 Hall, Works, i, p. xxiii. 121 Autobiography of Symon Patrick, pp. 47, 56, 75, 173–4. 122 BL, Add. MS 72516, 9 August [1668]. I am grateful to Sara Mendelson and Mary O’Connor who have allowed me to consult the manuscript of their proposed edition. 123 The Autobiography of Symon Patrick, Bishop of Ely (Oxford, 1839), pp. 73–4. 124 William L. Sachse (ed.), The Diary of Roger Lowe of Aston-in-Makerfield, Lancaster, 1663–74 (London, 1938), pp. 52, 55, 77, 97. 125 Some Remarkable Passages in the Holy Life and Death of the late Reverend Mr Edmund Trench (London, 1693), pp. 20, 30, 19. 126 The Office of Christian Parents (Cambridge, 1616), p. 93. 127 Grassby, Kinship and Capitalism, p. 210. 128 Mary Chan, Life into Story: The Courtship of Elizabeth Wiseman (Aldershot, 1998). 129 [Robert Boyle], ‘An account of Philaretus during his minority’, in R. E. W. Maddison (ed.), The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1969), p. 16. 130 BL, Additional MS 72516, 8 November 1689 and 22 January [1690]. 131 A. Jessop (ed.), The Lives of [the Norths], 3 vols, 1890, vol. 2, p. 1. 132 Hutchinson, Life of Colonel Hutchinson, pp. 284, 285, 289. 133 Sheffield City Libraries, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Petition of Lady Ashley, 24–25, (69); Patricia Crawford, Denzil Holles 1598–1680: A Study of His Political Career (London, 1979), pp. 28–9. 134 ‘Autobiography of Leonard Wheatcroft’, p. 27. For an extensive discussion, see Christopher Durston, The Family in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1989), pp. 33–56. 135 Crawford, Holles, pp. 69, 85. 136 Quoted in Durston, Family in the English Revolution, p. 40; see also Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), pp. 394–418. 137 Guildhall, MS 12017, fos. 32, 33. 138 North Yorkshire County RO, Quarter session records, microfilm 2437, no. 328, Petition Inhabitants of Bedale, 21 July 1691. 139 An Exact Account of the Trials of the Several Persons Arraigned at the Old Bailey (London, 1678), pp. 19, 13. 140 William Le Hardy (ed.), Middlesex: Calendar to the Sessions Records, new series, vol. 3 (London, 1937), p. 208.

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141 W. T. Baker (ed.), Records of the Borough of Nottingham, vol. v (London, 1900), pp. 109–110. 142 E. H. Bates Harbin (ed.), Quarter Sessions Records for the County of Somerset, Somerset Rec. Soc., vol. 24 (1908), p. 129. 143 Bates Harbin (ed.), Somerset Quarter Sessions, vol. 23 (1907), pp. 341–2. 144 An Exact Account of the Trials of the Several Persons Arraigned at the Old Bailey (London, 1678), p. 37. (Genesis 49.5). 145 R. M. Helmholz, ‘Harbouring sexual offenders: ecclesiastical courts and controlling misbehaviour’, Journal of British Studies, 37 ( July 1998), p. 262. 146 Somerset RO, Q /SR 115, fo. 79 [c. 1671]. 147 D. M. Allen (ed.), Essex Quarter Sessions Order Book 1652–1661 (Chelmsford, 1997), p. 76. 148 E. M. Hampson, The Treatment of Poverty in Cambridgeshire (Cambridge, 1934), p. 141. 149 Horrocks (ed.), Assembly Books of Southampton, vol. ii, pp. 32, 33; vol. iv, pp. 49–50. 150 Bates Harbin (ed.), Somerset Quarter Sessions, vol. 24, p. 25 (1627). 151 Ibid., vol. 24, p. 25 (1627). 152 Burn, Justice of the Peace, ii, p. 199. 153 Hampson, Poverty in Cambridgeshire, p. 153. 154 Somerset RO, Q /S petitions, 9, ND. 155 G. A. T. Allan, Christ’s Hospital Admissions Register 1554–1559 (London, 1937), p. 63. 156 Ibid., p. 64. 157 Davidoff, ‘Siblings’, p. 215. 158 Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects (Oxford, 1978); Joan Thirsk ‘Projects for gentlemen, jobs for the poor: mutual aid in the Vale of Tewkesbury, 1600–1630’, in her Rural Economy, pp. 287–307. 159 Lawrence, Diary, pp. 24, 47, 50–1, 56. 160 Shropshire CRO, MSS of Robert Goodwin, Cleobury Mortimer, 1657–91, fo. 133. 161 Barlow’s Journal of his Life at Sea . . . 1659 –1703 (ed.), Basil Lubbock (2 vols, London, 1934), vol. i, p. 251. 162 John Coad, A Memorandum of the Wonderful Providences of God to a Poor Unworthy Creature (London, 1849), p. 16. 163 BL, Additional MS 72516, 28 September [1688]. 164 Michael Macdonald, Mystical Bedlam; Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981), p. 77.

Further reading

Gender Cadden, Joan, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge, 1993). Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, 1995). (Stimulating on masculinities.) Laurence, Anne, Women in England 1500–1760: A Social History (London, 1994). Mendelson, Sara and Crawford, Patricia, Women in Early Modern England, 1550 –1720 (Oxford, 1998). (General study focused on women.) Scott, Joan Wallach (ed.), Feminism and History (Oxford, 1996). Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988). Shoemaker, Robert B., Gender in English Society 1650–1850 (London, 1998). Sommerville, Margaret R., Sex and Subordination: Attitudes to Women in Early-Modern Society (London, 1995). Walby, Sylvia, Theorizing Patriarchy (London, 1990), introduction.

Families and households Lawrence Stone’s classic work has been subjected to major criticisms. Keith Wrightson has a strong sense of the material world. Susan Amussen was one of the first to bring gender into the discussion of families. The collectively authored work, The Family Story, while focused on the nineteenth century, raises questions worth exploring in the early modern period. Amussen, Susan, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988).

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Casey, James, The History of the Family (Oxford, 1989). Chaytor, Miranda, ‘Household and kinship: Ryton in the late 16th and early 17th centuries’, History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980), pp. 25–60. Cressy, David, ‘Kinship and Kin Interaction in Early Modern England’, Past & Present, 113 (1986), pp. 38–69. Davidoff, Leonore, Doolittle, Megan, Fink, Janet and Holden, Katherine, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1630–1960 (London, 1999). Gelles, Richard J., Family Violence 2nd edn (Sage, Newbury Park, Ca., 1987). Hindle, Steve, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550 –1640 (London, 2000). Houlbrooke, Ralph, English Family Life, 1576–1716 (London, 1984). Hunt, Margaret, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England 1680–1780 (Berkeley, 1996). Sharpe, Pamela, Population and Society in an East Devon Parish: Reproducing Colyton 1540–1840 (Exeter, 2002). Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977). Whyman, Susan E., Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1999). Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525–1700 (London, 1979). Wrightson, Keith, ‘The family in early modern England: continuity and change’, in Stephen Taylor, Richard Connors and Clyve Jones (eds), Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson (Woodbridge, 1998). —— Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (London, 2000). —— English Society 1580–1680 (London, 1982). For a comparative European perspective: Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood (New York, 1965). Boswell, John, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York, 1988).

FURTHER READING

Burguiere, André, Klapish-Zuber, Christiane, Segalen, Martine, and Zonabend, Francoise, A History of the Family, vol. 2, The Impact of Modernity, trans. from the French (1986), by Sarah Hanbury Tenison (Cambridge, 1996). (A general work with essays on countries beyond Europe.) Davis, Natalie Zemon, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Cambridge, 1987). Haas, Louis, The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Renaissance Florence, 1300–1600 (NY, 1998). Hufton, Olwen, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, vol. 1, 1500–1800 (London, 1995). O’Day, Rosemary, Family and Family Relationships, 1500–1900: England, France and the United States of America (London, 1994). Roper, Lyndal, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989). Weisner, Merry, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993).

Bodies and sexualities For theoretical debate on the subject of bodies and identities, see especially the introduction to Roper’s essays and the recent book by Gowing. Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in SeventeenthCentury England (London, 2003). Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987). Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). Quaife, G. R., Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1979). Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994). Thomas, Keith, ‘The Puritans and adultery: the Act of 1650 reconsidered’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth–Century History presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978).

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—— ‘The double standard’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), pp. 195–216.

Marriage Adair, Richard, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1996). O’Hara, Diana, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Meaning of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000). Outhwaite, R. B., Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–1850 (London, 1995). Stone, Lawrence, Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England 1660–1753 (Oxford, 1992).

Maternity and childbirth Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997). Fildes, Valerie (ed.), Women as Mothers in Preindustrial England (London, 1990). (Includes useful bibliographies for further reading.) Hoffer, Peter C. and Hull, N. E. H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England (New York, 1981). Jackson, Mark, New-Born Child Murder: Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1996). Marland, Hilary (ed.), The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe (London, 1993). Nussbaum, Felicity A., Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (Baltimore, 1995). Pollock, Linda, ‘Childbearing and female bonding in early modern England’, Social History, 22 (1997), pp. 286–306. Purkiss, Diane, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth Century Representations (London, 1996).

Fatherhood and masculinities Connell, R. W., The Men and the Boys (Sydney, 2000). Connell, R., Masculinities (Cambridge, 1995). (Valuable theoretical insights).

FURTHER READING

Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, 1995). Foyster, Elizabeth, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex, and Marriage (New York, 1999). Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996). Hitchcock, Tim, English Sexualities, 1700–1800 (London, 1997). Hitchcock, Tim and Cohen, Michèle (eds), English Masculinities, 1660 –1800 (London, 1999). Shepard, Alexandra, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003). —— ‘Manhood, credit and patriarchy in early modern England, c. 1580–1640’, Past & Present, 167 (2000), pp. 75–106.

Childhood Cunningham, Hugh, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (London, 1995). Fletcher, Anthony and Hussey, Stephen (eds), Childhood in Question: Children, Parents and the State (Manchester, 1999). Pinchbeck, Ivy and Hewitt, Margaret, Children in English Society (2 vols., London, 1969). Pollock, Linda A., Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge, 1983).

Poverty Cunningham, Hugh, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1991). Hitchcock, Tim, King, Peter and Sharpe, Pamela (eds), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (London, 1997). Oxley, Geoffrey W., Poor Relief in England and Wales, 1601–1834 (London, 1974). Pelling, Margaret, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London, 1998). Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988).

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Primary sources Printed collections of primary sources provide an excellent starting point for students who may then proceed to fuller versions of printed sources, including those published by local record societies, and the archives. Aughterson, Kate (ed.), Renaissance Women: Constructions of Femininity in England (London, 1998). Crawford, Patricia and Gowing, Laura (eds), Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (London, 2000). Frith, Valerie (ed.), Women and History: Voices of Early Modern History (Toronto, 1995). Graham, Elspeth, Hinds, Hilary, Hobby, Elaine and Wilcox, Helen (eds), Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen (London, 1989). Houlbrooke, R. A. (ed.), English Family Life: An Anthology from Diaries (Oxford, 1988).

Index

abortion 34, 58, 71, 90, 92, 129 Acts of Parliament: Adultery 1650 61, 85, 118, 212; Infanticide 1624 71; Poor 1601 228; Settlement 1662 229 adolescence 4, 33, 182, 187; see also menarche adoption 121 adultery 85, 117, 118 animal analogies 67, 70, 148 Anne, Queen 25–6 anniversaries 180, 184, 190, 222 anti-Catholicism 60, 123, 185–6 apprenticeship 121, 129, 188, 216, 225, 228, 229 Ariès, Philippe 80, 140, 141 Aristotle 22, 57 Aristotle’s Masterpiece 31, 65, 82 astrology 146 Astruc, Jean 35 aunts 187, 213, 219, 221; see also siblings autobiographies 90, 226 Avicenna 146 Bacon, Francis 116 Badintur, Elisabeth 80 ballads 66, 119, 128 baptism 86, 98, 120, 142, 145 Baptist church 69, 92 Barlow, Edward 230 Barrington, Lady Joan 99–100 Baskerville, Sir Thomas 97 bastards see children, illegitimate bastardy, adulterine 118–19 Beaumont, Agnes 225 beliefs, magical 28, 145

Belsey, Catherine 210, 224 Bennett, Judith 8 Best, Henry 116 Bible 26, 27, 29–30, 36–7, 61, 83, 85, 148, 152, 209, 211 blood 1–2, 9, 19–38 passim, 125, 209, 211, 217, 229; blood-letting 24, 39, 157, 160; corruption of 2, 115, 125; guilt 129; innocent 2, 26; menstrual 19–38, 157; polluting 26; and sperm 57; and foetal nutrition 147, 149; and infant nutrition 150; and paternity 10, 113 –31 Boddington, George 224 bodies 2–3, 6, 62–3,126; children’s 143–62; maternal 149 books: 64–5; Latin 20, 56–7, 65; women’s ownership of 142; and popularization of knowledge 20 Boswell, James 32 Boyle, Robert 219, 223, 226 Brackely, Deborah 71 breastfeeding 22, 83–4, 86; advice 147–154; colostrum 148; weaning, 97, 98, 150, 152–4, 188; and sexual activity 23, 61, 151–2; see also wet nurses Bridewell, London 128–9 Bridgewater, Lady 144 brothers 209, 216, 220, 222; younger 210, 215, 216; see also siblings Bulwer, John 145, 155 Burn, Richard 4, 5 Butler, Judith 7 Byrd, Samuel 27

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Cadogan, William 152, 160 Calvin, Jean 86 Cambridge Population Group 210, 219 Capp, Bernard 128–9 Cary, Mary 96 Castlemaine, Barbara Villiers Countess of 119 Catherine, Queen of Charles II 93 celibacy 60; see also sexuality Cellier, Elizabeth 58 Chamberlen, Peter 58 Charles I, King 87 Charles II, King 115, 119 Chaytor, Miranda 3, 6, 210 Chidley, Katherine 98 childbirth 11, 67, 84, 94, 95, 145, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 218; see also pregnancy childhood 80; legal 146 childlessness 82, 93, 115 children, illegitimate 5, 85, 87, 90, 92–3, 119, 124–30, 214, 220, 228–9; and maternal kin 129, 228 children: deaths of 96–7, 101, 187, 195; deformed 30, 62, 83, 144; diseases of 23, 154–8; orphans 211, 218, 221, 222, 228; poor 5; spurious 121–2; substitutes 123; vagrant 87; and inheritance 114, 116; and sin 143–4; and obligations to parents 222; and work 129; see also apprenticeship, education, sons Cholmley, Elizabeth 95; Sir Hugh 87, 147 Christ’s Hospital 121, 214, 229 Christian teachings 55–6, 212; tables of affinity 212 Christian churches in England: courts 56, 68, 120, 122; rituals 86; see also baptism, churching of women, Baptist, Quakers churching of women 86, 98 Civil Wars 20, 120, 227 Clarke, Mary 224 clergy 27, 55–6, 61, 69–70, 71, 126, 129, 143–4, 148, 176, 177, 185, 216, 221, 225, 226; ejected 1662 177, 179 Clifford, Lady Anne 99

Coad, John 230 Coke, Sir Edward 118, 119 Collinson, Patrick 193 colonies 9, 123, 221 Comber, Thomas 58 conception 22–3, 30, 94, 144; theories of 22–3, 30–2, 57–9, 60–1, 82–3, 116–17; see also contraception contraception 70–1, 94 Conway, Viscountess Anne 96 Cowper, Sarah 69 Cressy, David 120, 210, 221 Crooke, Helkiah 57, 58, 59 Crosby, David 69 Culpeper, Nicholas 59, 60, 67, 155, 160 D’Ewes, Sir Simonds 97, 113, 151, 153, 161; Clopton 115, 153 Davidoff, Leonore 6, 12, 210 Davies, Kathleen 176 Davis, Natalie Zemon 181 de Mause, Lloyd 140 Defoe, Daniel 60, 61, 119, 213 Delaval, Lady Elizabeth 99 Dening, Greg 11 Denton, Dr William 67 Devonshire, William Cavendish, Duke of 119 diaries 27, 38–40, 69, 70, 90, 144, 161, 177–9, 182, 185, 186, 188, 189, 195 –6 diet and health 22, 33–4, 69 diseases, venereal 149; see also children, diseases of divorce 118; see also marriage Doddridge, Philip 182, 194 Dormer, Anne 225, 230 Draper, Susan 92 dreams 230 Dryden, John 128 eagle stone 96 education and training 181, 220, 223–4; boys’ 87, 177, 187, 223; see also apprenticeship Elizabeth I, Queen 59 Elliot, Vivien Brodsky 89 Ellwood, Thomas 224–5

INDEX

Elyot, Jone 153, 154 Evelyn, John 114, 115 Fairy stories 88 Fall, The 56, 83, 183 families 125, 128, 143–62, 175–96; blended 131, 222; histories of 3–7, 209–10; ideals 180, 193–6; poor 89–90; stories 12, 86–7; and patriarchy 176 family limitation 70–1, 94; see also contraception fatherhood 6, 10, 71, 113; see also fathers, paternity fathers 100, 143–4, 147, 182; fathersin-law 184; step 119–20, 213, 228; and authority 87, 100, 161, 182–3 Feilding, Elizabeth 227 Fildes, Valerie 90, 97 Filmer, Robert 215 foetus 143, 145, 147; nutrition of 22–3 Forman, Simon 24, 35, 91 fostering 121 Foucault, Michel 55 Foulkes, Robert 129 Foundling Hospital 129 foundlings 92 Freud, Sigmund 209 Friend, John 32 Fryer, John 220–1; Katherine 227 Galen 23, 57, 62 gardens 188 gender 6–8, 9–10, 81, 116, 145, 149, 154, 159, 176, 215, 218–19, 216, 230–1 Gibson, Thomas 156–7 Godolphin, Margaret 214 gossip 68–9, 94, 100, 117, 124 Gouge, William 30, 36, 56, 61, 83, 100, 142, 146, 159, 161, 177 Gowing, Laura 3, 8, 12, 130 grandparents 151, 181; grandfathers 120, 123, 127, 129; grandmothers 89, 99, 182, 188, 192, 213 Grassby, Richard 210, 221 greensickness 36, 66 Guillemeau, Jacques 152

Halifax, George Savile Marquis of 87, 160 Hall, Joseph 220, 225 Hamilton, Sir David 25–6 Harley, Abigail 97, 151, 158, 219 Harley, Brilliana 153 Harris, Donald 121 Harris, William 61 Hart, James 88 Harvey, William 22 Hayes, Alice 219 health 57, 59, 190; mental 24, 159; see also diet heirs 215–16, 224; see also wills Henry family 175–96; Philip 175–96; Katharine Matthews 185–6; biography 177, 194; Mary 93; Matthew 30, 150; and wife Mary Warburton 189; Katherine, daughter of Matthew 184, 195; Sarah see Savage Herrup, Cynthia 62 Heywood, Oliver 144 Highmore, Nathaniel 57 Hilder, Thomas 70, 71 Hippocrates 21, 25, 57, 65 historians 3–7, 9–10, 13, 19, 79–81, 114, 140–1, 157, 161, 209–10, 223 Holden, Mary 90 Holles, Denzil 227 honour male 127, 128, 217 Hooke, Robert 27, 28–9 Hooker, Richard 86 Houlbrooke, R. A. 55, 80, 140 households 6, 210, 219; records 120 Hulton, Anne Henry 96, 187 humoural theories 1, 22, 157 Hutchinson, Lucy 120, 215–16, 226 incest 124, 212–13 infanticide 71, 90, 92, 129, 130, 159 infants 143–62; deafness 149; mortality 96; talking 156; teething 156–7; see also breast feeding, children, wet nurses infertility see childlessness Ingram, Martin 12, 55, 213 inheritance 123, 214–17, 181, 226; see also wills

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James Edward, Prince of Wales 123 James II, King 69–70, 123, 124 Jeake, Samuel 70 Jinner, Sarah 69, 90–1 Joceline, Elizabeth 96 Josselin, Jane 153; Ralph 175 kinship 2, 6, 210, 212; obligations 217–23; spiritual 120, 214; see also children illegitimate, parents, siblings lactation see breastfeeding, wet nurses Larminie, Vivienne 175–6 law, canon 117–18, 124, 212; common 117–8, 124, 212; statute see Acts of Parliament; and gender 146; and paternity 121–4, 131; see also blood, paternity Lawrence, William 220, 229–230 Leake, John 65 Leigh, Dorothy 101, 150 Lemnius, Levinus 56, 82, 84, 117 lesbian see sexualities letters 97, 158, 196 Levine, David 221, 222 Lincoln, Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of 90, 97, 161 literacy 64–5, 66, 218 Locke, John 155, 224 Lowe, Roger 220; and sisters 225–6 Luther, Martin 84, 147 MacDonald, Michael 159, 230 Macfarlane, Alan 55, 91, 175 Mack, Phyllis 2 magic 36, 69, 128, 158 Makin, Bathsua 156 Malcolmson, R. W. 92 ‘man’, model of all 62–3 marriage: age at 5, 89, 185, 211; ideals 183; annulment 122; separation 119; see also divorce marriages 183–4, 185 Mary I, Queen 59, 123 Mary of Modena, wife of James II 59, 123 Mary, Virgin 84 masculinity 113, 159–6

masturbation 62 maternal imagination 62, 83, 91, 94–5, 116–17, 144–5, 160 maternity 10–11, 80–1; constructed 81–8; experiences 88–102; and technology 131; see also motherhood, mothers matrons, jury of 64 Matthews, Daniel 184 Matthews, Jill 7 Mauriceau, Francis 25, 155, 157 Mayflower 122 McIntosh, Marjorie 120, 217 McLaren, Angus 71 McLaren, Dorothy 90, 97, 150 McMath, James 58, 62, 65, 155, 157 medical practitioners 34–5, 39, 88; female 91, and see also midwives medical theories 20, 21–6, 54–5, 62, 82, 145–62 passim Meeke, Robert 221 men see fathers, fatherhood, masculinity, paternity menarche 33, 82 Mendelson, Sara 96, 161 menopause 25, 32, 33, 36, 56 menstruation 19–38, 147; disorders of 24–5; terminology 21; taboos 28, 29–30, 61, 114; and diet 33–4; see also menarche, menopause merchants 216 midwives 65, 67–8, 86, 88, 95, 117, 126, 145 migration 219, 221; child 122–3 miscarriage 95, 189, 195 modesty 95; men’s 69; women’s 34, 59, 65, 67, 68, 69 Monk, George, Duke of Albermarle 118 Monmouth, James Duke of 119 monsters 62, 144 More, family 121–2; Samuel 121–2; Katharine 121–2 mortality rates 210–11; infant 96; maternal 96; and gender 154 mother fits 24, 57 motherhood 6, 11, 80, 83–4; illicit 84–5; see also mothers, maternity

INDEX

mothers 87, 100–102, 186–7, 188; in-law 99, 185, 219; single 91, 125–30; step 88, 98–9, 123, 213; criticisms of 160–1; educate children 86–7; and daughters 188; and sons 191, 192; see also grandparents, maternity, motherhood, wet nurses music 146, 147, 156 Napier, Richard 35 ‘nature’ 148, 162, 230 neighbours 179, 190 Newcome, Henry 147 Newdigate family 217 Nonconformity 92, 177, 176–81, 192–6; and middle class 195; see also Baptists, Quakers North, Francis 223; Roger 218, 223, 226 nurses 123, 127, 148, 154, 155, 156; see also wet nurses Oliver, John 70 oral culture 49, 66–71, 149, 160; popular sayings 87, 209, 215; see also women orphans, see children Page, Mary 151 Paré, Ambrose 58, 62 parents: and children’s deaths 153, 154, 158; and infants 140–62; god-parents 120; see also fathers, mothers Parker, Matthew 211 parliament 115, 118–19; see also Acts paternity 64, 70, 71, 91–3, 113–31; biological 113; and law 117–18, 122–3; and technology 131 Patrick, Symon 225 Pechey, John 152 Pepys, Samuel 27, 31, 68, 70, 91, 220; Paulina 220 Perkins, William 56, 61 Peters, Hugh 216–17 Petyt, George 118 piety 101, 179, 186, 189–90, 193–6

Poeton, Edward 68 Pollock, Linda 141, 210 pollution 26, 30, 61 poor laws 4–5, 121, 124, 129, 222 pregnancy 35, 38–40, 61, 91, 94, 144, 145, 147, 186, 187; bridal 91, 126; see also childbirth primogeniture 116, 210, 215, 216 property 114, 118–19 prostitution 60, 62 providentialism 179 public/private 12–13, 34, 79–80, 125, 176, 180 Puddletown 120, 219 punishment 84, 128 Purkiss, Diane 12 Quaife, G. R. 55 Quakers 101–2, 224 Radford, Ann 158; see also Henry family Ranelagh, Lady 219, 223 Ranters 60 rape 59, 82 Rational Account, The 65 Reformation 7, 176 remarriage 38, 88, 119, 120, 183, 184, 188, 209, 211, 215, 217, 218, 219–20, 228 Reresby, Sir John 146, 215 Restoration, post 128, 176, 179–80 Richard III, King 215 Rogers, Daniel 61 Roos, Lord, his case 118 Roper, Lyndal 11, 12, 62, 84 Rose, Sonya 8 Rowse, John 130 Royal College of Physicians 58 sacraments 29, 190, 194; see also baptism Savage, John 183; Sarah Henry 33, 38–40, 98, 183, 186, 190, 194 Scot, Edward 85, 118 sermons funeral 86, 159, 185 servants 71, 91, 129, 182, 188; see also kin

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sexual activity: medical theories about 56–63; popular beliefs 63–72; terms for 69–70; and conception 60–1; and health 26, 29–31, 57, 59–61; during pregnancy 61 sexual morality: double standard 85–6; in Baptist church 92 sexualities: and identities 7–8; heterosexual 56, 57–8, 61, 69, 113–31; same sex 62, 70; offences 67, 212, and see incest, rape Shakespeare, William 2, 60, 213, 214 Sharp, Jane 28, 35, 54, 65, 67, 89, 90, 152, 155, 157 Sharpe, Pamela 129, 211 Shorter, Edward 80, 141 siblings 4, 116, 153, 181, 185, 191, 209–31; co-residence 219, 220–1; deaths of 229–30; defined 211–14; illegitimate 214; and identity 223–31; see also sisters, brothers singlewomen 3, 91, 219; see also mothers single sisters 186, 188, 214, 226, 230; sistersin-law 188; see also siblings Slack, Paul 93 Slater, Miriam 175 Slingsby, Sir Francis 215 social reformers 216–17 social structure 8–9 sons 115, 192; in-law 184; preference for 83, 93, 94, 114, 116, 126, 145, 154, 159, 181, 187, 191, 226 sources 11–12, 20, 35–6, 88–9, 90, 141, 142, 176, 177, 179, 192–6, 211, editing of 192–6 Southampton 220, 221 Spring, Eileen 116, 215 Springett, Mary Penington 160, 219 Spufford, Margaret 85 Starsmere, John 152, 158 Staves, Susan 215 stepfathers see fathers, remarriage stepmothers see mothers, remarriage Stone, Lawrence 55, 56, 71, 80, 141, 147, 175 Stone, Sarah 67 Stout, Ellin 219, 221; William 57, 151, 219, 221

Stubbes, Katherine 95–6 swaddling 155 taboos 26–32, 212 Taylor, Jeremy 63 teething 156–7, 187 Terling 211, 222 Thirsk, Joan 210 Thomas, Keith 85–6 Thornton, Alice 94–5, 150 Townshend, Horatio 115 Travers, Rebecca 101 Trench, Edmund 226 Trumbach, Randolph 80 Trye, Mary 90 Tryon, Thomas 160, 217 Turner, Elizabeth 94, 95, 97, 99, 144, 222 Turner, Jane 150 uncles 220–1, 222; see also siblings vagrants 129 Verney family 175, 216; John 127, 216; Sir Ralph 67 Vicinus, Martha 57 Villiers, Katherine Duchess of Buckingham 93, 147 Virginia colony 123; company 122 Vives, J. 32 Walker, Anthony 115; Elizabeth 96, 101 Wall, Richard 154, 222 Walters, Lucy 119 Warburton family 184 Warwick, Mary Rich, Countess of 96–7, 221; Robert, Earl of 115 weaning see breastfeeding Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford 213, 227 Westmoreland, Rachel, Countess of 101 wet-nurses 61 97, 99, 101, 121, 147, 148–9, 150–1, 154; see also breastfeeding Whatley, William 27, 69 Wheatcroft family 218, 219

INDEX

Whitelocke, Bulstrode 94, 144, 219, 220; Sir James 146 Whyman, Susan 216 widows 63, 87, 90, 120, 126, 191, 217 Williams, John Bickerton 194, 196 wills 116, 120, 125, 181, 214, 217, 222 Wilson, Adrian 95 Winstanley, Gerrard 60, 87 witchcraft 1–2, 158 Wolley, Hannah 91, 101

woman, ideas about 37–50, 57, 83–4, 185 – 6; see also sermons funeral women: culture of 32–36, 66, 67, 93, 100, 190; writings 35–6, 66, 90–1, 93, 101, 143, 150, 161–2, 185 work, women’s paid 90, 123; see also midwives, nurses, servants, wetnurses Wrightson, Keith 80, 129, 158–9, 221, 222 Wuertz, Felix 146, 155

251