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Male Honour, Social Control and Wife Beating in Late Stuart England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Elizabeth Foyster
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Extract

In seventeenth-century England honour was a concept which had meaning for men in the private or domestic spheres as well as in the public spheres of their lives. Indeed, failure to prove an honourable man at home could exclude men from entering any honour community outside it. Above all else, men from whatever social status were only held worthy of honour if they could demonstrate control over their wives, children and servants. Hence honour was a concept which was vital to the upholding of male power. To achieve that power or control men were encouraged to adopt behaviour which laid emphasis on two key gender characteristics which were thought to distinguish them from women: physical strength and reason. As Sir Thomas Smith explained in 1583, God had intended to give the male ‘great wit, bigger strength, and more courage to compel the woman to obey by reason or force’. Men used their claim to reason to legitimise their authority over women; the first Marquis of Halifax explained to his daughter in a letter of 1688:

That there is Inequality in the Sexes, and that for the better Economy of the World, the Men, who were to be the Law-givers, had the larger share of Reason bestow'd upon them…Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection.

Type
Honour and Reputation in Early-Modern England
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 6 , December 1996 , pp. 215 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1996

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References

2 Smith, T., De Republica Anglorum, (London, 1583), p.13Google Scholar, as cited in Houlbrooke, R.A., The English Family 1450–1700 (1986), 103Google Scholar.

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12 CA, Case 1813 (1673), Ee4, fos. 118v–28; for a witness who supported John's claim that he was fed inadequately see Eee5, fo. 17r.

13 CA, Case 8770 (1684), Ee6, fo. 11.

14 CA, Case 4834 (1669), Eee3, fo. 299r.

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16 , T.E., The Lawes Resolution of a Woman's Rights (1631), 128–9Google Scholar, as cited in Amussen, S.D., ‘“Being Stirred to Much Unquietness”: Violence and Domestic Violence in Early Modern England’, Journal of Women's History, VI, no. 2 (1994), 71Google Scholar.

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18 Ibid., 171.

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26 CA, Case 1041 (1672), Eee4, fos. 874r,876r.

27 CA, Case 6659 (1666), Eee2, fo. 124r.

28 CA, Case 1888 (1676), Eee6, fo. 278v; CA, Case 4688 (1690), Eee7, fo. 120v; see for another example of a drunken husband beating his wife CA, Case 2177 (1676), Ee4, fo. 799r

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32 Stone, , Road to Divorce, 199Google Scholar.

33 CA, Case 9870 (1669), Eee3, fo. 555v.

34 CA, Case 10406 (1671), Eee4, fos. 512–13.

35 CA, Case 1127 (1663), Eee1, fo. 63v.

36 CA, Case 4747 (1673), Eee5, fos. 250v–1r.

37 CA, Case 6244 (1672), Ee4, fo. 51v; Eee4, fo. 767r.

38 GLRO DL/C/154 fo. 509, as cited in Hunt, M., ‘Wife Beating, Domesticity and Women's Independence in Eighteenth-Century London’, Gender and History, IV, no. 1 (1992), 22Google Scholar.

39 CA, Case 1432 (1667), Eee2, fos. 538–40.

40 Thompson, , Customs in Common, especially 505Google Scholar.

41 CA, Case 3789 (1662), Ee1, fo. 195v.

42 CA, Case 1813 (1673), Ee4, fos. 127v–8r.

43 CA, Case 8770 (1684), Ee6, fo. 11r; CA, Case 4834 (1669), Ee3, fo. 343; CA, Case 757 (1673), Ee3, fos. 59–60; for other examples of husbands arguing that they showed restraint when beating their wives see, CA, Case 1888 (1676), Ee4, fo. 494r, and CA, Case 6364 (1663), Ee1, fo. 258r.

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45 See, for example, CA, Case 1041 (1672), Eee4, fos. 856r, 868v; CA, Case 1128 (1675), Eee5, fo. 681r; CA, Case 1813 (1673), Eee5, fo. 20v; CA, Case 4747 (1673), Eee5, fo. 251v.