ABSTRACT
The social order of late-Stuart England depended on the formation of new households, a process which was founded upon the institutional regulation of heterosexuality through marriage. This pattern has been true of most parts of western Europe, and most periods in history except our own.1 For men and women of all social ranks, marriage was the key rite of passage into adulthood. Early modem marriage has been described as ‘the most comprehensive and binding of all social acts in bringing two individuals and their families into a common social and economic nexus.’2 Unlike western European societies today, to get married in the early modem period was to enter into a legally-binding commitment for life in the vast majority of circumstances. Those who strayed from this model, and engaged premarital or extramarital sexual activity (especially when it led to bastardy or non-procreative forms of sexual behaviour) were not only considered undesirable (not to mention sinful), but actually anti-social. Regulatory pressure to conform to the normative model thus had two main constitutive elements; first, marriage was given full endorsement and recognition as the only legitimate context for sex and household formation; secondly, there were powerful prohibitions against certain types of sexual desire and conduct. We shall be considering each of these elements in turn in this, and the following chapter, with a primary focus on heterosexual relations.3
