Revisiting Ecclesiastical Adultery Cases in Eighteenth-Century England

This article explores how wives contested ecclesiastical adultery cases in eighteenth-century Doctors’ Commons, an institution that comprised the Court of Arches and London Consistory Court. Doctors’ Commons played the central role in matrimonial jurisdiction in eighteenth-century England, hearing cases from both the landed gentry and the wealthy middling sort. By examining manuscripts written by advocates and the records produced by both courts in Doctors’ Commons, this article discusses the significance of a litigation system in which defendant wives were authorized to submit counter-allegations to defend their honor. It was a system in which obtaining a separation was difficult even for husbands. This analysis also reveals how female litigants used the accusation of cruelty on the part of their husbands as a means of demonstrating their husbands’ faults and thereby obtaining a separation. This article, therefore, looks at what lawyers’ tactical instructions to their clients reveal about the power relationship between wives and husbands in the patriarchal legal system.