ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges a number of recent assumptions in historical writing on reputation and on the role of gossip and rumour in local society. It looks beyond the printed narratives to examine the moment when the vicar's adultery first became the subject of suspicion and rumour in his parish. The chapter seeks to broaden our understanding of the politics of reputation in early modern society, and will suggest ways in which questions of sexuality and gender might infuse men's relationships of authority with other men. The principle that men and women bore equal culpability for extramarital sex was consistently reiterated in sermons and conduct literature throughout the early modern period. Its perception of male sexual licence has been further influenced by the emergence of a powerful stereotype of 'libertine' masculinity in England after the Restoration. In the later seventeenth century, sexual reputation could still play a visible role in political disputes.
