¹ Prior to the advent of women's history as a special field, historians studied seventeenth-century women. Among early works are: Clark, Alice, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1919; reprinted 1982)Google Scholar; McArthur, Ellen, “Women Petitioners and the Long Parliament,” English Historical Review 24 (1909): 698–709CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, Myra, The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1750 (Boston, 1920)Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” Past and Present 13 (1958): 42–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, E.M., “Women Preachers in the Civil War,” Journal of Modern History 1 (1929): 561–569CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interest has grown in the last twenty years or so. Recent studies include: Brink, J.R., “Bathsua Makin: Educator and Linguist (English, 1608?-1675?),” in Female Scholars: A Tradition of Learned Women before 1800, ed. Brink, J.R. (Montreal, 1980)Google Scholar; Mary Elizabeth Green, “Elizabeth Elstob: The Saxon Nymph (English, 1683-1765),” in Ibid.; Kinnaird, Joan K., “Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism,” Journal of British Studies 19 (1979): 53–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mahl, Mary, Female Spectator: English Women Writers before 1800 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; and Smith, Hilda, Reason's Disciples: Seventeenth Century English Feminists (Urbana, 1982).Google Scholar

² A spokeswoman at Harper and Row gave the figure. Among examples of work in English family history are: Laslett, Peter, ed. Household and Family in Past Time (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., The World We Have Lost (London, 1970); MacFarlane, Alan, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin; a Seventeenth Century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; Slater, Miriam, “The Weightest Business: Marriage in an Upper-Gentry Family in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 72 (1976): 25–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Trumbach, Randolph, The Rise of the Equalitarian Family (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

³ E. William Monter remarked that Stone has a “tendency to underplay the role of women when generalizing about the Western family” (Journal of Modern History [Spring 1978]: 505Google ScholarPubMed). Mary F. Shanley complained that there was insufficient detail about women (Signs [Summer, 1979]: 745, 746Google ScholarPubMed). Trumbach, Randolph, “Europe and its Families: A Review Essay of Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800,“ Journal of Social History 13 (Fall 1979): 136–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar noted Stone's disinclination to study the early feminist movements (p. 140).

⁴ There are at least twenty-five reviews. Among them are: Ariès, Philippe, American Historical Review 83 (1978): 1221–1224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berkowitz, David, Renaissance Quarterly 32 (1979): 396–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Demos, John, New York Times Book Review (Dec. 25, 1977)Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, New Republic (July 8-15, 1978)Google Scholar; MacFarlane, Alan, History and Theory 28 (1979): 103–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plumb, J.H., New York Review of Books (November 24, 1977)Google Scholar; Slack, Paul, English Historical Review 94 (1979): 124–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Keith, Times Literary Supplement (October 21, 1977)Google Scholar; and Thompson, E.P., New Society (8 September 1977).Google Scholar

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⁶ Harris, Barbara, “Marriage, Sixteenth-Century Style: Elizabeth Stafford and the Third Duke of Norfolk,” Journal of Social History 15 (1981): 371–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Smith, , Reason's Disciples, espec. pp. 7–9Google Scholar, and passim.

⁸ Family Formation in Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977), chs. 2, 5, and 9.Google Scholar

⁹ The early study by Clark, Working Life of Women, now dated, but still useful, stressed that early capitalism resulted in a decline in women's positions in agriculture and skilled trades. A modern economic history of women is needed.

¹⁰ Sharp, Jane, Complete Midwife's Companion: or, The Art of Midwifery Improved (1671)Google Scholar. Cellier, Elizabeth, To Dr…An Answer to his Queries, concerning the Colledg of Midwives (London, January 16, 1687/1688)Google Scholar. See Smith, Hilda, “Ideology and Gynecology in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, ed. Carroll, Berenice A. (Urbana, Illinois, 1976), pp. 97–115.Google Scholar

¹¹ Anon. (By one of that sex), Advice To the Women and Maidens of London. Shewing, that instead of their usual Pastime; and education in Needlework, Lace, and Point-making, it were far more Necessary and Profitable to apply themselves to the right Understanding and Practice of the method of keeping books of account. (London, 1678)Google Scholar. Hilda Smith lent me her photocopy of this tract.

¹² Horwitz, Henry, Parliament, Policy, and Politics in the Reign of King William III (Manchester, 1977), p. 35.Google Scholar

¹³ See forthcoming article by Rosemary Begeman.

¹⁴ Mingay, G.E., The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (London, 1976), pp. 89–90.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Bedford Record Office, London, Russell Papers: 19 leases from 1671 to 1679 in which Lady Russell appears alone as leasor. (Hereafter cited as B.O.L.).

¹⁶ “Women in English Revolutionary Politics, 1680-1690,” Presented at the Sixth Berkshire Conference on Women's History, Smith College, June 1984.

¹⁷ For Astell, see Kinnaird, “Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism,” and Smith, Reasons' Disciples, passim. A biography by Ruth Perry is in press.

¹⁸ Trumbach, , “Europe and its Families,” p. 140.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Stone mentions Max Weber and Joseph [sic] Burckhardt. His terminology and chronology and his attitude towards the lower classes are similar to those of Shorter, Edward, The Making of the Modern Family (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁰ Stone, Lawrence, The Past & The Present (London, 1981), pp. 88, 229.Google ScholarPubMed

²¹ See the pioneering essay by Hajnal, J., “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective: The Uniqueness of the European Pattern,” Population in History, ed. Glass, D.V. and Eversley, D.E.C. (Chicago, 1965), pp. 101–46Google Scholar. Laslett, Peter, “Mean Household Size in England Since the Sixteenth Century,” in Household and Family Size in Past Time, eds. Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 126, 137, 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar presents data from 100 communities showing that mean household size was “fairly constant” throughout the period, but was lower than average between c. 1650-1749. Gaskin, Katherine, “Age at First Marriage in Europe before 1850: A Summary of Family Reconstitution Data,” Journal of Family History 2 (1978): 26, 31Google Scholar, argues that the age at first marriage for women was “clearly in an upward direction” by about a year, a point developed by Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977), p. 104Google Scholar. In The World We Have Lost (London, 1965)Google ScholarPubMed, Peter Laslett maintained that there was “nothing in the documents” to suggest sexual license during the Restoration (pp. 130, 131, 132, 133, 140). In his recent book, Bastardy and Its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), edited with Oosterveen, Karla and Smith, R.M.Google Scholar, Laslett presents data that confirm these early conclusions and show that the ratio between legitimate and illegitimate births reached a nadir in 1655-9 and increased only moderately during the second half of the seventeenth century (p. 11).

²² Stone, , The Past & The Present, pp. 80, 222, 229, 230.Google ScholarPubMed

²³ One edition is The Letters of Rachel Lady Russell, 2 vols. (London, 1853)Google Scholar. Many of these letters were first published in 1773. See also [Berry, Mary], Some Account of the Life of Rachel Wriothesley Lady Russell. Followed by A Series of Letters From Lady Russell to Her Husband William Lord Russell (London, 1819)Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as Some Account.)

²⁴ Newcastle, Lady Margaret, Poems and Fancies, Written by the Right Honorable the Lady Newcastle (London, 1653)Google Scholar. Facsimile reproduction: Yorkshire, The Scolar Press, 1972. See Grant, Douglas, Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673 (London, 1957).Google Scholar

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²⁶ Smith, Hilda and Cardinale, Susan, Women and the Literature of the Seventeenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography based on Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (Greenwood Press)Google Scholar. Forthcoming. See also Hull, Suzanne W., Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475-1640 (San Marino, Calif., 1982).Google Scholar

²⁷ Multiple entries of Boswell's works are not included in the total number. Twenty-six items are from the 19th century.

²⁸ MacDonald, , Mystical Bedlam, pp. 88–92.Google Scholar

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³¹ Grant, ed., The Phanseys of William Cravendish, passim.

³² B.O.L., Russell Papers, #39, pp. 34-35.

³³ The Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through England, During the Reign of King Charles the Second, 1669. (London, 1821), p. 400.Google Scholar

³⁴ Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 102–103.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Quoted in Ibid., pp. 158-159.

³⁷ Some Account, pp. 48, 55, 57, 62, 63. The notes are in the Bedford papers at Chatsworth.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 56.

³⁹ Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 107–118.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See Chambers, J.D., “The Course of Population Change: From the Vale of Trent 1670-1800: A Regional Study of Economic Change,” in Population in History, ed. Glass, and Eversley, , p. 328Google ScholarPubMed; and Sigismund Peller, “Births and Deaths among Europe's Ruling Families since 1500,” in ibid., pp. 91, 94.

⁴¹ Quoted in Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 101–102.Google Scholar

⁴² Sorbière, Samuel, A Journey to England. With Some Account of the Manners and Customs of that Nation. Written at the Command of a Nobleman in France. Made English (London, 1700), p. 23Google Scholar. At least five editions of this tract, two in French and with variants in the title, appeared between 1666 and 1709.

⁴³ Some Account, p. 24, 36, 52, 53, 60.

⁴⁴ In the index childbirth has one reference, midwives four, abortion eight, and pregnancy twenty-one, seventeen of which deal with prenuptial pregnancy, which is not the point I am making.

⁴⁵ Quoted in Smith, , Reason's Disciples, p. 84.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Letters of Lady Rachel Russell (1773 ed.), pp. 3, 4.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Illick, Joseph, “Child-Rearing in Seventeenth-Century England and America,” in The History of Childhood, ed. deMause, Lloyd (New York, 1974), pp. 303–350Google Scholar; and Hilda Smith, “Gynecology and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England.”

⁴⁸ Love Letters by Mrs.Behn, A. in The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (London, 1696), pp. 403–404.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Summers, Montague, ed., The Works of Aphra Behn (London, 1915), 6: 141–144.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., pp. 179-180.

⁵¹ Quoted in Smith, , Reason's Disciples, p. 88.Google Scholar

⁵² Grant, , ed., The Phanseys of William Cavendish, pp. 106, 109, 110.Google Scholar

⁵³ Some Account, p. 58; Also pp. 3, 6, 9, 14, 43, and espec. 65.

⁵⁴ Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed.; Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar