According to Dives and Pauper, no less than nine ‘specys of lecherie’ could iconstitute an infraction of the Seventh Commandment. A single one of these, ‘synful medlyng togedere atwoxsyn housebounde & wif ‘, could be committed in eight distinct ways. In spite of this abundance of opportunities for prosecution, the disciplinary activities of the church courts were principally confined to the types of sexual misconduct that could have deleterious social consequences, and that were sometimes also prosecuted in secular courts: adultery, fornication, bigamy and prostitution. This chapter deals with the prosecution of men and women for these and related offences. The subject of rape has been discussed in chapter three, and some other forms of sexual delinquency have been excluded. I found very few cases of what would today be called incest, that is, sex between people closely related by blood. A mere two cases of bestiality appeared, and there were no accusations of homosexual activity. Prosecutions for bigamy were not uncommon in the church courts, but followed a standard procedure: bigamous couples were ordered to separate unless, or until, they could prove that the previous spouse was dead. Extramarital heterosexual sex between apparently consenting couples, then, is the subject of this chapter. It will be argued that, although women involved in fornication and adultery often suffered worse consequences than their lovers, this was not necessarily because the courts treated them more harshly; indeed the church courts were if anything more lenient towards women accused of these offences. However, where prostitution, brothel-keeping and procuring are concerned, a sexual double standard seems to have operated, with prostitutes’ clients rarely prosecuted, and brothel-keeping and procuring being seen as predominantly female offences.

Sexual misconduct: opportunities and attitudes

In late medieval and early modern England, young people of the middling and lower sorts had fewer constraints on their courtship than was the case in many countries. It was common for both boys and girls to leave the parental home in their early teens to become servants in other households, probably giving them considerable freedom of choice of marriage partner. A regime of relatively late age at marriage was probably established by the later middle ages. Thus sexually mature young men and women, not likely to marry for some years, were often away from parental supervision, in a society where no effort seems to have been made to keep them apart until marriage.