ABSTRACT
The clothing worn by prospective sexual partners in part may have influenced the nature and sequence of love-making. The display and manipulation of the male sexual organ was the most common aspect of illicit sexual activity, whether as a substitute for or preliminary to, coition; or as part of general earthy merrymaking of some peasant company. The conditioning of men during that decade or more of sexual maturity before marriage to mutual masturbation or to the manipulation of the female genitals as the ultimate form of sexual release may have been so effective that it became an ingrained male response or desire. Countless sexual assaults focused on pre-marital sexual activity. Violence was very much part of the sexual scene, especially where reluctant widows and wives were concerned. Sexual attacks on the wife of an enemy, on a girl encountered on the highway, or, worse for drink, accosted in an inn were very much part of seventeenth-century life.
