A History of the Wife (18 page)

Nonetheless, eventually following the lead of continental Protes- tants, matrimony was dropped from the list of sacraments in 1536.
13
Paradoxically, once marriage had been desacralized, the Church of En- gland made every effort to emphasize its worth and dignity. Anglican sermons reminded the faithful that “marriage is a thing that pleaseth God” and waxed poetic on the joys of “nuptial love.” The new Prayer Book of 1552 included a marriage service similar to the one from York (described in the last chapter) that had been in use since the Middle Ages, with a few significant changes. It continued to hold that marriage

was ordained for procreation and the avoidance of fornication, but the emphasis on “mutual society, help, and comfort” was louder and clearer than before. In comparison with the medieval view that placed mar- riage behind chastity and widowhood in a hierarchy of holiness, the new pronouncements championed marriage above the other two estates. In time marriage would become the “ethical norm” as well as the numerical norm for Christians.
14
Moreover, with the disappearance of monastic life in Britain as well as northern Europe and Switzerland, there was no longer an institutional alternative for the nonmarried.

One aspect of the Prayer Book service that did not change was the authority of husband over wife. Wives took the exact same vows as their husbands “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,” but only the wife pledged “to obey.” The bride’s vow to obey, adapted into English from the medieval Latin service, inspired endless discussion, since it seemed to contradict the new emphasis on mutual love and spiritual equality.

Conduct books giving advice on marriage offered something of a double message. On the one hand, they supported male dominance as a God-given mandate whose pedigree went back to Genesis; on the other, they promoted the notion of mutuality in marriage whose source was Saint Paul (especially Colossians 3:18–20, and Ephesians 5:21–33).
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Numerous Puritan ministers tried to address this contradiction in their weekly sermons, which were often published subsequently in book form.

William Gouge, an influential Puritan divine, struggled mightily to reconcile the new emphasis on mutuality with time-honored patriar- chal practices, especially after a few of the wealthy wives in his congre- gation objected to some of his pronouncements—for example, that wives should not dispose of family goods without their husbands’ assent. They also objected to the forms of reverence they were expected to show their husbands when rising from the table or parting, and the admonition to be humble and cheerful at all times, even when the hus- band had made an unjust reproof.
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In his 1622 treatise,
Domestical Duties,
Gouge tried to accommodate these objections. Himself a married man, he wrote of the give and take that marriage requires, and went so far as to recommend that the hus- band make of his wife “a joint governor of the family with himself.”
17

Following a traditional metaphoric division of roles, he compared the man to the head and the woman to the heart, both necessary for survival. Yet while acknowledging “the small inequality which is betwixt the hus- band and the wife,” Gouge concluded that “even in those things wherein there is a common equity, there is not an equality, for the husband hath ever even in all things a superiority.”
18
Like all the other clergymen of his day, strict Puritan or moderate Anglican, Gouge believed that the order of patriarchy was no less immutable than the order of the stars.

Yet Gouge and most of his Puritan colleagues showed an advance over past patriarchal practices when they disallowed wife beating as a form of punishment. Wife beating was by the late sixteenth century regularly prosecuted in the church courts, but without much effect, according to surviving court and medical records. The astrologer/physician Robert Napier, practicing in Great Linford in the first decades of the seventeenth century, recorded cases of wife beating as a matter of course. For example, the distraught wife of Stephan Rawlins complained that she had to endure beatings and abuse every time her husband went on a drinking spree. Elizabeth Easton’s husband was abetted by his family when he slapped his wife “like a dog.”
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Unfortunate wives could do very little to escape this kind of abuse, since divorce in the form of “separation from bed and board” was very costly and difficult to obtain. The new spirit of the age promoted by progressive Anglicans and Puritans alike opposed the physical chastise- ment of wives and permitted corporal punishment only for children and servants. Husbands were admonished to treat even unruly wives with understanding, to rebuke them verbally when necessary, and, above all, to love them. As William Gouge put it, love was “a distinct duty in itself peculiarly appertaining to a husband” and must be “mixed with everything wherein he hath to do with his wife.”
20

We can date the nascent primacy of love in marriage arrangements to this era. Historian Eric Carlson, who has studied marital practices among country folk in Tudor towns and villages, states unambiguously, “The most important consideration was love.”
21
While it is true that monetary and social matters weighed in heavily among the nobility and gentry, this high-status group accounted for only about 10 percent of the population, and even here love marriages were on the rise. At the least, an upper-class woman usually had veto power over the prospec-

tive husbands paraded before her, and could single out the one she was most likely to love.

Young people of the popular classes living in rural areas enjoyed considerable freedom and opportunity to meet each other in both pub- lic and private venues—in fields, forests, parks, and barns, at streams, and along country roads. They met at markets, fairs, and church, and at the alehouse after church. Many worked side by side as servants or apprentices in the houses of their employers. Since most left home by their mid-teens to enter apprenticeships or employment, they were forced to become more mature and more independent than today’s youth, who often enjoy parental support into their twenties and beyond.

Four hundred years ago in England, most young people in their early twenties were preoccupied with the business of acquiring the nec- essary resources for setting up an independent household. Men mar- ried between twenty-four and thirty, women between twenty-two and twenty-seven—and around 10 percent of the population did not marry at all.
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The average age for brides was twenty-four, with bridegrooms about three years older. Upper-class women married earlier, between sixteen and twenty-four, with an average age of twenty. Members of the gentry and nobility were anxious to establish advantageous alliances for their daughters while they were still young.

Courtship was proverbially the most carefree time in a woman’s life. She was generally free to entertain several suitors simultaneously. This is not to say that her parents automatically gave their goodwill. They had many ways of expressing disapproval for an unwelcome suitor, ranging from silence and coldness to direct prohibition and, in extreme cases, beating or locking up a daughter. Sometimes a father stated in his will that a daughter’s marriage portion would be determined by her willingness to marry the man of his choice.
23
Since most parents cared about the well-being of their children, and little was more important than the choice of a spouse, it was necessary for them to intervene before a commitment between a nubile woman and her suitor had been made. In England, unlike most continental countries, parental consent was not a legal requirement for marriage, though in practice clergymen usually required it for children under twenty-one.

Engagement had long centered around the ancient ritual of joining hands and vowing to wed known as “handfasting.” It was a popular

practice that did not disappear with the religious innovations of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Indeed, it lasted in England into the mid-eighteenth century, and in Scotland into the twentieth. Handfasting was essentially a solemn, binding contract, and for many people the equivalent of marriage. Whether it occurred in the presence of two or three witnesses, as the church courts insisted it should for the sake of verification, and by a clergyman, as the church strongly recom- mended, or whether it took place with no human witnesses, the hand- fasting betrothal could not escape the eye of God. Englishmen and

-women did not take their vows lightly, because they believed that God was witness to their words. It is hard for us to imagine today—in a time when promises are made and broken with the ease of throwing away disposable items—that people took them so seriously.

There was no set formula for the betrothal vows. It was enough to promise, in words of the present, to take the other person as one’s “handfast” or “wedded” wife or husband. The Prayer Book offered a version of betrothal that some couples began to use, though many con- tinued to invent their own ceremonies, sometimes impulsively and without witnesses, which could cause trouble later, if one of the parties tried to back out of the commitment.

More prudent women asked their fathers, kinsmen, friends, employ- ers, or clergymen to act as intermediaries in public handfasting cere- monies that were often held in homes and inns, where numerous witnesses could attest to the act. And there was often a ring or coin given as a sign of betrothal. Sometimes a couple consummated their union immediately after the betrothal ceremony, as in the case of Eliza- beth Cawnt and Robert Hubbard in 1598, who claimed that such was the custom of their county.
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It was relatively common for country folk to consider themselves as married from the moment of betrothal, and to begin living together.

Communities tended to be tolerant of post-betrothal sexual activi- ties, as long as the couple wed before the baby’s birth. Perhaps for this reason a couple was expected to solemnize their nuptials not more than six months after betrothal. But some didn’t bother with a church wed- ding until a baby was on the way; handfasting may have been sufficient to bind the couple but only a religious service could make the baby legitimate. It has been estimated that between 20 and 30 percent of brides arrived at the altar pregnant.
25

For families of higher status and stricter scruples, betrothal had to be followed by a church wedding before the couple could engage in sex and set up joint residence. The engaged couple simply entered a special category “betwixt single persons and married persons,” enjoying more liberties than the celibate and less responsibilities than husband and wife.
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Different ministers had different ideas about the proper length of an engagement. Some suggested a short period—between three and four months—so the partners would not be tempted “into sin” before the church wedding.

Weddings were expected to take place in the parish church of one of the two parties. Since the mid-sixteenth century, “at church” no longer meant at the church door, but inside the church, where the bride and groom first received communion and then publicly recited their vows. The ceremony orchestrated by the Anglican priest had many of the words and symbols that are still in use today, most notably the wedding ring, which reflected the unending bond of matrimony. One symbol that has been lost was the priest’s traditional “kiss of peace” to the bride—a practice that Protestant ministers in the United States continued well into the nineteenth century. In the sixteenth century, the Anglican priest’s kiss was the signal for the wedding party to claim their kisses from the bride and to seize her garters, as well as those of the groom.
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After the ceremony, the marriage was duly recorded in the parish book registry. If the couple later moved away from their parish, a copy of the registry entry provided proof that they had been properly mar- ried and that any children born of the union were legitimate. The church wedding was surrounded by all sorts of festivities—parading the couple to and from church, eating and drinking, music and dancing—at home, in the tavern, or on the village green.

Puritans, on the other hand, eschewed church weddings and all rev- elry that seemed to be either pagan or popish. They distinguished themselves from Anglicans by doing away with all ritual that was not specifically mentioned in Scripture, such as the minister’s blessing the ring and the groom’s placing coins on the service book, not to mention the more outlandish holdovers of popular culture, like outdoor parades and hazing the bride and groom. Puritans married at home in intimate, unostentatious ceremonies that stressed the couple’s reciprocal obliga- tions to each other under the watchful eye of God. The most scrupu- lous even did away with wedding rings.

Puritans were the most consistent supporters of traditional biblical authority—that of parents over children and husbands over wives. Their ministers exhorted children to honor their parents in all matters, includ- ing the choice of a spouse. Parental authority was by no means a new subject of discourse, but it reached something of a crescendo in the late sixteenth century. While many moralists came down on the side of the parents, deploring the tendency of young people to “follow their own will and let out the reins unto their own . . . unsettled lusts,” the general tide was beginning to turn in favor of the young.
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Parents who forced their children into marriage for the sake of monetary considerations were increasingly condemned. The clergyman Thomas Becon’s observation in 1560 that some parents abused their authority by marrying off their chil- dren “for worldly gain and lucre” was echoed over and over again for the next hundred years.
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Puritans in particular, despite their universal agree- ment that children should submit to the will of their parents, disliked marriages contracted solely for material gain; instead, they emphasized spiritual compatability and affection as the basis for a lasting union.