ABSTRACT
The analysis of illicit sex in Somerset 1601–1660, because of its essentially selective and impressionistic nature, cannot disprove the interpretations of the sexual behaviour and mores of the rural lower orders advanced by Edward Shorter and Lawrence Stone. When illicit sex became largely the result of love the status of the parties converged. There are many cases of girls, other than those ‘engaged’, who willingly take part in illicit sex. Stone sees peasant attitudes towards illicit sex developing from a medieval amoralism, through a sixteenth – and early-seventeenth-century resurgence of Christian morality to a late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century indifference to all but its economic consequences. Stone recognises that the level of illicit sexual activity in the early seventeenth century may have been higher than the reliance on illegitimacy and pre-nuptial pregnancy figures indicate. Illicit sex does seem to be related to holidays, most of which occur in the warmer months and are associated with heavy drinking.
