‘[T]aken as a whole, by 1700 the spiritual jurisdiction [of the church courts] was only a shadow of what it had been a few generations earlier’.1 The general picture historians have drawn of the post-Restoration church courts is one of decline, despite short-term successes.2 There is some truth in this, but can the decrease in its disciplinary work after 1660 simply be taken as ‘another sign of the general decay of spiritual jurisdiction’, when party litigation in ecclesiastical courts was flourishing and steadily increasing until the eighteenth century?3 Even the disciplinary work of the church courts had relied heavily on local initiative in presenting cases.4 To conclude that the shift away from using the church courts for direct moral discipline represents a generalised decline in spiritual authority (and corresponding ‘secularisation’) after 1660 is surely to underestimate the active roles taken by local populations earlier in the century in their relations to the authority of the Church.
It would be more precise, however, to speak of certain sections of those populations making use of official institutions to uphold their interests in particular ways. Defamation causes primarily involved members of the ‘middling sorts’ or those closely associated with them, in the city of York as in the diocese more generally.5 Those men whose occupations can be identified in this sample were mainly craftsmen and shop-keepers, with some more substantial merchants and professionals (including clergymen) and a number of yeomen farmers reflecting the connections between city and countryside. Servants, apprentices and labourers, like gentlemen, made fewer appearances, and usually as witnesses rather than litigants. Women were generally identified only by their marital status, but those about whom more can be discovered can be similarly situated. This clearly represents a broad range in terms of income and social status; however, as the contexts of many of the recorded disputes show clearly, most York defamations causes centred on the ‘independent trading households’ that have been seen as a vital starting point for study of the early modern middling sorts.6
It was in this middling range that reputation founded on precarious ‘virtue’, rather than, say, lineage or wealth, would have been particularly significant. The citizens of York were also ‘middling’ in another sense, situated between the teeming, rapidly growing metropolis of London and the small-scale rural community of a village. In terms of population, York was not particularly large or dynamic considering the city’s importance as a regional centre. The city had expanded - probably largely due to in-migration - in the early seventeenth century, from about 10,000 in 1600 to 12,000 in 1630; growth then slowed down to reach perhaps 12,400 by 1700.7 (By way of contrast, nearby Leeds had a population of 7-8,000 in 1700 and was growing rapidly; Bristol stood at about 20,000; London was approaching the half-million mark).8 The city was a centre for regional trade, with important markets and fairs, but its economy was largely related to its functions as an administrative centre and locally directed.9 This could well have particular implications for the importance of reputation and scandal, with small-scale local producers - of goods, of food and drink, of professional services - competing for ‘personal’ custom. Many of the disputes recorded in these causes take place in (or just outside) shops and inns and involve their proprietors.
Defamation causes made up a sizeable proportion of business in the York courts during the half-century after the Restoration: about 20 per cent of causes in the Consistory and Chancery courts between 1660 and 1720. Moreover, the proportion was steadily increasing during the period.10 Table 1.1 shows the proportions of male and female plaintiffs in defamation causes in the city of York sample.11 As can be seen, the majority, almost two-thirds, were women. However, this leaves a substantial minority of men defending their (sexual, in the main) reputations through the church courts. In the city of York at the end of the seventeenth century, the ecclesiastical courts had not become a ‘women’s court’ on anything like the scale observed by Tim Meldrum for early eighteenth-century London. Indeed, the proportion of female plaintiffs is lower than that of the diocese as a whole in J. A. Sharpe’s analysis of the 1690s.12 This is partly due to an intriguing phenomenon in the city sample that seems to run counter to all the measured trends: an upsurge in men’s causes and a fall in women’s causes in the last decade of the century.13 With such a small sample in a limited study, too much cannot be made of this, but two observations can be made. Firstly, there is the possibility of different patterns of defamation litigation between the city of York and the wider diocese that would merit closer investigation. Secondly, men’s causes made up a significant proportion of the defamation suits brought by citizens of York in the later seventeenth century, and they should not be overlooked.
| plaintiff | 1661-70 | 1671-80 | 1681-90 | 1691-1700 | total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| female | 12 | 19 | 19 | 13 | 63 |
| male | 6 | 7 | 8 | 13 | 34 |
When we turn to the gender ratios of both plaintiffs and defendants (see table 1.2), it is also noticeable that men made up more than half of the defendants in these causes.14 Most striking of all, they represented almost two-thirds of the defendants in causes brought by male plaintiffs. The majority of men’s causes were fought out entirely between men and, moreover, with predominantly male witnesses. This generally masculine context suggests not just that women’s words against men were less likely to be credited and taken seriously,15 but moreover that male reputation mattered most crucially amongst men - while female reputation mattered to everyone.
| female plaintiff | male plaintiff | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| female defendant | 33 | female defendant | 9 |
| male defendant | 30 | male defendant | 25 |
Finally, echoing Sharpe’s findings, the majority of female plaintiffs were married (see table 1.3).16 This may well be partly for prosaic financial reasons; married women could draw on the shared resources of the marital household. This would also imply that they acted with at least the tacit support of their husbands. Moreover, it will be argued in the course of this thesis that many causes brought by married women were in effect joint affairs: sexual reputation mattered most to married women because a wife’s reputation also intimately affected her husband’s, and her whole household’s, reputation.17 Further, a substantial proportion of unmarried female plaintiffs (and those whose marital status is not given) were household servants, and it will be argued that these causes sometimes reflect similar concerns.
| status | no. | % |
|---|---|---|
| married | 41 | 65.1 |
| spinster | 10 | 15.9 |
| widow | 4 | 6.3 |
| not known | 8a | 12.7 |
| total | 63 | 100.0 |
a In 5 of these cases, the plaintiff was a servant and probably unmarried
To be sure, depositions make it clear that a substantial proportion of male plaintiffs, too, were married and it is likely that they were also concerned with the fortunes of their households, not just individual reputation. However, the workings of the ‘double standard’ meant that, just as there was no male equivalent of ‘whore’, there was no female equivalent of ‘cuckold’, and a husband’s adultery simply did not carry the same significance as that of a wife. Victoria Goddard has argued that women play crucial roles as bearers of group identity and social boundary markers, which is what makes their ‘purity’ so important.18 Reputation in later seventeenth century York was significantly gendered, but not in absolute terms; it was a quality of groups - married couples, households and neighbourhoods - as much as of individuals, but this did not mean that it had the same meanings for all those individuals within their groups.
Martin Ingram, Church courts, sex and marriage in England, 1570-1640 (Cambridge: Past & Present Publications, 1987), 374.↩
See, e.g., B. D. Till, ‘The administrative system of the ecclesiastical courts in the diocese and province of York. Part III: 1660-1883: a study in decline’ (Unpublished MS at Borthwick Institute, York, 1963).↩
Till, ‘A study in decline’, 73; see tables of business in Consistory and Chancery courts at 61-3.↩
J. A. Sharpe, Crime in early modern England 1550-1750 (London: Longman, 1984), 85-6.↩
Sharpe, Defamation, 17.↩
Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks (eds.), The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics in England, 1550-1800 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), 2.↩
G. C. F. Forster, ‘York in the seventeenth century’, in R. B. Pugh (ed.), Victoria County History: a history of Yorkshire: the city of York (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 162-3.↩
J. A. Sharpe, Early modern England: a social history 1550-1750 (London: Arnold, 2nd edn., 1997), 80, 84.↩
Forster, ‘York in the seventeenth century’, 166-70.↩
Fay Bound, ‘An oeconomie of violence? Marital conflict in early modern England’ (MA thesis, University of York, 1996), 67; see also Till, ‘A study in decline’, 62.↩
The sample was obtained from a search of the catalogues of Cause Papers for the Archbishop’s courts, series H, and the Dean and Chapter court in the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research. The latter are published in Katharine M. Longley, Ecclesiastical cause papers at York: Dean and chapter’s court 1350-1843 (York: Borthwick Texts and Calendars, 6, 1980). For background information, see Carson I. A. Ritchie, The ecclesiastical courts of York (Arbroath: Herald Press, 1956). The search of the manuscript catalogues of the Archbishop’s courts should not be regarded as exhaustive, covering only those causes that were definitely dated to this period and with one or both litigants stated residents of the city.↩
Meldrum, ‘Women’s court’, 6 (and see the useful comparative table at 17); Sharpe, Defamation and sexual slander, 27-8.↩
Throughout this thesis, the terms ‘women’s causes’ and ‘men’s causes’ will be used to refer simply to the sex of the plaintiff.↩
cf. Gowing, Domestic dangers, where women made up two-thirds of defendants, 61.↩
See Laura Gowing, Domestic dangers, 50-2, and ‘Language, power and the law: women’s slander litigation in early modern London’, in Kermode and Walker, Women, crime and the courts, 37-8.↩
Sharpe, Defamation, 27.↩
Garthine Walker, ‘Expanding the boundaries of female honour in early modern England’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996), 235-45; Dave Peacock, ‘Morals, rituals and gender: aspects of social relations in the diocese of Norwich, 1660-1703’ (DPhil thesis, University of York, 1996), 201-4.↩
Victoria Goddard, ‘Honour and shame: the control of women’s sexuality and group identity in Naples’, in Pat Caplan (ed.), The cultural construction of sexuality (London: Tavistock, 1987), 166-92.↩