ABSTRACT
Because of the concerns of both secular and ecclesiastical courts with illicit sex, sources on sexual activity are fuller than those for many other areas of women’s lives. They are also very selective. They register, as much as anything else, the concerns of local authorities – constables, churchwardens, anxious neighbours, sometimes more organised campaigns for the reformation of manners. In the late sixteenth century the church courts did much disciplinary business, presenting and punishing offenders with penance; such presentments tend to decrease in the years leading up to 1642, when the courts ceased to function, and the responsibility for sexual regulation was assumed, to some extent, by the quarter sessions, to be resumed by the church courts in 1660.
