Church courts, sex and marriage in England 1570-1640 (review)

Reviews 153 of family history this collection therefore needs to be supplemented by reading other sources such as contemporary letters, particularly to understand women's history. But Houlbrooke provides a most useful starting point to the sources. Alison Wall Department of History University of Sydney. Ingram, M., Church courts, sex and marriage in England 1570-1640 (Past and Present publications), Cambridge, C.U.P., 1987; pp. xiii, 412; 17 tables; 2 maps; R.R.P. A U S $126.00 It is good to see Martin Ingram's much consulted Ph.D. thesis become a substantial book. His main purpose is to examine the workings of the ecclesiastical courts before the civil wars. Inheriting a framework from the prereformation church, the courts focused on the churchwardens' presentments for moral offences. Whereas the abolition of the courts has led many to conclude that they were corrupt inefficient and unpopular, Ingram shows that they worked comparatively well in enforcing social codes, particularly in the sexual area. Their abolition in 1640 he expldns partly as a response to their very success, for they contributed to the decline in the bastardy rate, something the community was dways deeply concerned about. The records of these courts have been relatively under utilised by social historians, yet they are an extraordinarily rich source. They give access to the lives of ordinary people in their most intimate relationships. Ingram uses the records for Wiltshire, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire and West Sussex, discussing cases of breakdown in marriage and attitudes to illicit sexud activity and illegitimacy. H e illustrates his discussion with enough examples, in sufficient detail, to provide a fascinating glimpse of early m o d e m domestic relations and quantifies his conclusions wherever possible. Ingram writes clearly and comments on a range of issues of general interest. For example, in view of the debate about the significance of the extended family in the early m o d e m period, his discussion of the arrangements for unmarried mothers reveded in the records demonstrates the significant role played by wider kinship ties. These, he argues, undoubtedly successfully concealed an even, larger group of pregnant women from the authorities. The evidence about sexual activity, however, seems to require some new questions about how men and women perceived sexudity in early modem times. For example, if a betrothed couple spoke of sexual intercourse in terms of the man 'having his pleasure' and the woman refusing him 'the use* of her body, then some comment upon the gender relations conjured up by such words would seem in order. In many cases of illicit sexual activity, he concludes that women were 'hopelessly naive' (p. 273), offering 'little or no resistance' (p. 274) to the 154 Reviews men who promised them marriage. Yet the case in which a poor woman acquiesced in the demands of a married man in return for 'the making of a petticoat' seems to require a comment on desperate poverty rather than foolishness. M e n he describes as 'youthful sowers of wild oats' (p. 269) but no such exonerating category is offered for women. Ingram shows that penalties in the courts worked in a context of socid reputation. A m o n g the middling sort, convictions led to humiliating penances and costs of proceedings. H e makes a convincing case for the role of the courts in creating the moral framework of Stuart society. This is a good, scholarly book and, for others who want to use the records of the ecclesiasticd courts for a different kind of interrogation, it provides an excellent introduction. Patricia Crawford Department of History University of Western Australia James, E., The Franks (The peoples of Europe), Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988; pp. xii, 265; 25figures;47 plates; R.R.P. A U S $45.00. Blackwell's series of books on the peoples of Europe began well with volumes on the Mongols and Basques. Expectations roused by these, and the earlier writings of Edward James on the Franks, are not disappointed. This book, which effectively covers the Merovingian period, admirably synthesizes literary, archaeological, toponomistic and other types of evidence, and freely draws comparisons with other barbarian peoples, especially the Anglo-Saxons, in line with...