On 28 July 1639, Katherine Atkins of Sutton in the Isle of Ely was absent from her parish church both morning and afternoon. To make matters worse, she spent the time she should have been at prayers in ‘railing and scolding with her neighbours’. Her son-in-law warned her ‘to hold her tongue and to be silent else she would be put into the bawd court, for there was none but rogues and whores went thither’, while his wife added ‘that there was never none of them there yet and says let us now keep out of the bawdy court’. It was a vain hope. In the event all three were reported to the court of the bishop of Ely: Katherine for absence from church and for scolding, the others for abusing the name of the ecclesiastical courts.

Today the church courts eke out a shadowy existence, their jurisdiction limited to a few ecclesiastical matters and their activities all but unknown to the mass of the laity. In early modern England the situation was very different. The ecclesiastical courts formed an elaborate, omnipresent complex of institutions organised at the levels of province, diocese and archdeaconry. Their jurisdiction naturally included much of a purely ecclesiastical nature, but it also extended to some of the most intimate aspects of the personal life of the population as a whole. The apparitors or messengers of the courts were a familiar sight as they strode or rode about the country-side serving citations and transmitting orders, and the courts which they served existed in every cathedral in the land.