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THE UNIVERSITY of HULL Cuckoldry and Cornution In THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Cuckoldry and Cornution in Seventeenth Century English Political Discourse being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Hull by Nicola Jane Pearce, BA, MA September 2019 200502705 Dr Amanda Capern Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Methodology and Chapter Outlines 11 Literature Review: Contexts for 25 Early Modern Cuckoldry Chapter 1: Cuckolds in the Law Courts 44 Chapter 2: The Horns of Rebellion: 62 Non-Conformist Cuckolds Chapter 3: Civil War Cuckoldry 90 Chapter 4: Cuckoldry & Cornution in 121 Restoration Political Discourse, 1660- 1685 Chapter 5: Indulgence & Insurrection 148 – Cuckolds and Nonconformity Chapter 6: Sedition and Spaces - Trade 172 and the Geography of Cuckoldry in London Conclusion 202 Bibliography 209 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to sincerely thank my supervisors, the inspirational Dr Amanda Capern and Dr Thomas Biskup for their intellectual insights, kindness and continuous support throughout my PhD process. None of this would have been possible without their guidance and invaluable input (though any mistakes remain, of course, my own). My respect and admiration for you both is immense, and my gratitude immeasurable. To Professor Sir John Baker, thank you for kindly providing insight into aspects of the legal systems in early modern England. I would also like to give special thanks to my family and friends (especially my mum Elaine and Claudine Anderson), who are a constant source of humour, strength and wisdom in all aspects of my life. Grandma May, you’re no longer here to share in this chapter of my life, but you’ve been in all I’ve done. Last, but by no means least, I dedicate this thesis to my son, Ben, with thanks for his humour, kindness and understanding. You are my greatest gift, and this is for us. 1 Introduction In early modern plays, bawdy ballads and broadsides, the cuckold was a familiar figure who epitomised emasculation. In literature, he was most often portrayed as a feeble figure whose emasculation sometimes slipped into effeminacy through characteristics which reflected his lack of manly authority such as docility, physical weakness and soft speech, all of which were signifiers of feminine traits. When a man was cuckolded by his wife’s adultery, her infidelity indicated both her own dangerously insatiable sexuality and her inept husband’s failure to control her chastity, behaviour and speech. Satisfying his wife sexually was perceived as a crucial means by which a husband could ensure her chastity and assert authority over her conduct. However, the cuckolded man was perceived as unable to perform this most vital means of asserting his manhood, and his wife’s adultery was therefore inevitable. The cuckold featured in popular print genres such as ballads and broadsides which contained songs and humorous woodcut images of the cuckold with horns protruding from his head (most often understood as symbols of both his emasculation and animalistic acquiescence to his fate). However, whilst these texts performed an important social function (the horn humour provoked by laughing at cuckolds released deeper societal tensions), literary cuckoldry was no laughing matter. This dissertation demonstrates how the complex strands of religion, politics and gender converged within the cuckold’s horns in literary portrayals of cuckoldry which were used as a royalist/loyalist Anglican form of rhetoric in popular political discourse during the Civil War and Restoration periods (1642-1685). Within these depictions, cuckoldry was used to attack the supposedly corrupt nature of sectarians and non-conformists, whose factious and rebellious conduct was perceived as fracturing the protestant Church of England and destabilising the Stuart crown. It will be shown that cuckoldry which performed this specific function was part of a deep current of royalist/loyalist Anglican moralising critique flowing beneath the turbulent political, social and economic waters of Civil War and Restoration England. 2 By examining the use of cuckoldry as a politicised, literary form of attack, this study moves away from previous examinations of cuckoldry by historians and literary scholars, which have primarily focused on what the cuckolded man and his lusty wife reveal about early modern gender dynamics. Instead, it explores the ways in which these relationships were adopted for political purpose and what that purpose was. It will be shown that in addition to inversion, some form of rebellion was an important aspect of cuckoldry. Most often, this was an adulterous wife’s usurpation of her husband’s authority by cuckolding him. However, in cuckoldry which formed part of a royalist/loyalist line of rhetoric there was an equally troublesome transgression on the part of the husband which either alluded to, or directly indicated, his rebellion against the state and Church. The key questions addressed by this study’s exploration of cuckoldry which featured in ballads and broadsides during the Civil War and Restoration periods are: what forms of misconduct were commonly associated with cuckolds and their disordered households? Did the errant characteristics of husbands and wives typically portrayed as part of cuckoldry align with politico-religious concerns? If so, how? Why did these men need to be literarily unmanned as cuckolds? What threat did they pose to the stability of the state? Cuckoldry was always disruptive. The gendered inversion consequent on a man losing control of his wife was literarily portrayed as bringing dishonour and disorder to a household. Most significantly, this disruption threatened to destabilise the state itself: households, in which men held overall authority, were understood to be mini commonwealths. Their importance was reflected in political ideologies, which often compared the authority of a monarch ruling their subjects to that of a husband/father governing a household. Structured and orderly households were therefore vital for maintaining the political and economic stability of the early- modern state.1 Because domestic roles and relationships were a fundamental means of articulating political concepts, depictions of cuckoldry which appeared in popular 1 See S. D., Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 3 print genres throughout the early modern period were, therefore, inherently political, whether obliquely or directly. Just as early modern English politics was inextricably linked to religion, there were also links between cuckoldry and Christianity. These predated the Civil War and Restoration periods (1642-1685), which are the chronological focus of this study. Ballads and broadsides from the late sixteenth century featuring cuckolds have been used to explore an enduring connection between cuckoldry and corrupt Christianity, which feasibly formed part of ‘the long reformation’ of English Protestantism. The starting point of this study, and the central contention which is explored throughout the research chapters, is that during the Civil War and Restoration, cuckoldry was used to condemn non-conformity through an interpretation of the cuckold’s horns as signifying biblical horns of rebellion. It will be shown that during these periods of religious contention, cuckoldry was used as a literary weapon against dissenters, whose cornution dually symbolised the scriptural horns of rebellion which they had raised against God, and the emasculation of opponents of the Stuart crown and Anglican Church. The spiritual treachery of nonconformists was believed to have led to their rebellion against the Anglican Church and divinely appointed Stuart monarch. The cuckold’s horns were used to symbolise the horned, many-headed monster which features in the apocalyptic vision of the Book of Revelation. Astride the beast is the Whore of Babylon who, in English Protestant society, was most often interpreted as representing the papacy and Catholic Church.2 Just as cuckoldry represented a powerful and dangerous gendered inversion – the woman on top – so too does the Whore of Babylon atop the beast. Both the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel (which also features a horned, rebellious beast) were commonly used by radical sectarian religious groups to inform and justify their millenarian beliefs. Indeed, the emergence of numerous sectarian and dissenting groups during the Civil War was believed to have been a Catholic conspiracy to fracture, and even destroy, the foundations of the Anglican establishment. Therefore, the many headed monster upon which the Whore is straddled feasibly symbolised protestant sectarian groups. 2 F. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 52. 4 The Civil War was a watershed moment in which cuckoldry became overtly political and aligned primarily with Stuart royalism/loyalism. Ann Hughes discovered that royalist propaganda often derided parliamentarians as cuckolds as a means of unmanning them.3 However, it is suggested that whilst the emasculation associated with cuckoldry made it a useful political weapon, the most powerful literary component of cuckoldry was inversion. The inversion intrinsic to cuckoldry was particularly powerful and, when combined with emasculation, the cuckold’s horns provided a politicised two-pronged attack on those whose subversive conduct either threatened or ruptured hierarchical order through religious nonconformity. According
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