ABSTRACT
In 1489, Thomas Wulley sued Margaret Isot in the Consistory Court of the diocese of London in order to enforce a contract of marriage he claimed had been made eighteen years before. Several witnesses appeared on Thomas's behalf to testify about the circumstances in which marriage vows were exchanged. In 1471, they reported Thomas and Margaret had become sexually involved, much to the consternation of Thomas's parents, who did what they could to break it up. One witness reported that Thomas's mother, finding him and Margaret in bed together one day in Margaret's house, hid Thomas's shoes so that he would have to embarrass himself by walking home in Margaret's footwear. 2 But according to the testimony of John Calton, at that time the local constable, neither his father's nor his mother's influence could deter Thomas from Margaret's company. At length, Thomas's father went to Calton in his capacity as constable and, telling him that Thomas was associating with Margaret “most suspiciously,” asked Calton to arrest the pair and take them to the Counter, the London sheriffs' prison. The illicit relations between Thomas and Margaret were not news to John Calton; he reported to the court that he had been hearing for about three months that the neighbors in St. John's Street suspected them of fornication because they spent so much time alone together. Thomas's father told Calton that Thomas and Margaret would be lying together that night in the house of one of Calton's neighbors, John Cracow, if he wanted to catch them in the act.
