IN its zeal to purify the path of true love, Calvinist Scotland was well ahead of England. By 1576 the Kirk Session of St Andrews was prescribing imprisonment in the church steeple as a punishment for fornicators, with the pillory and head-shaving for those who offended a second time. Eighteen years later Glasgow Kirk Session ordered a day on the stool of repentance plus a day in the pillory for the same offence. Evidently the punishment was too lightly regarded, for by 1605 offenders in the same city were fined heavily, clapped in irons and had a description of their offence inscribed on their foreheads. Perth had a man on the payroll whose duty it was 'to shave the heads of fornicators and fornicatrixes'; other Scots towns shaved, ducked, pilloried or expelled incautious citizens according to taste. Couples intending to marry had to produce a 'cautioner' as surety that they would not cohabit during the obligatory forty days of waiting after the calling of banns. It is difficult to believe that volunteers for this unhappy role were easily found. The Kirk elders, nothing if not thorough, organized their own intelligence network among midwives and accoucheurs, who were bound, under pain of high displeasure, to report all unlawful pregnancies.
Mere suspicion of irregularity excited the elders. If couples were 'seen to converse so familiarly that it is to be feared they are guilty of fornication', that was enough. They were accused, held in custody, and exposed to a form of 'third degree'. If they did not confess, they could be discharged, subject to a promise not to meet except at church or market. If they defied this ban, it would automatically be assumed that they were guilty as suspected. Alternatively, or in addition, the parties might be called on to swear publicly in church that they were innocent. The result of all this was probably to make people more cautious rather than more moral.
In England, the Church courts had lost much of their authority under the Tudors, but none of their unpopularity.
In an Act Book of 1584 (The Archdeacon's Court, E. R. Brinkworth) is recorded the case of Elena Stanton, charged with incontinence and scolding in church. Elena had some reason to scold. She told how William Dawson had come to her several times and asked her to marry him, and eventually they had promised each other, in faith and troth, to be husband and wife. As a result she had allowed him privileges, and now suspected herself to be with child. It was a commonplace happening in Merrie England; Elena's mistake was to make a scene about it in church. Henry White was charged with 'running after maidens in the churchyard', which hardly seems a very heinous crime in Shakespeare's day. A woman servant, Milsom Parker, admitted familiarity with a fellow-servant, Michael Garner. Asked who else had enjoyed her favour, she said that she spent two hours alone in the night with a shepherd, Robert Widdows, but denied allowing any impropriety. It would appear that the lady had been bundling-a practice which will be more fully examined later.
It was left to Archbishop Laud to oil the creaking machinery of the Church courts, to increase the turnover of offenders. He did not spare the rich. County gentlemen, even noblemen, found themselves standing, clad in a white sheet, in their parish churches in full sight of the tenantry whose virgins they had wronged, and in company perhaps with fornicators of low degree. This sort of thing, in the view of the rich, was bad for discipline, and their resentment against Laud was intense. There were dark suspicions, too, that the eagerness of the Church to suppress immorality was inspired by the urgent need to rebuild and repair St Paul's, to which purpose many of the fines were devoted. Piety may have directed the building operations, but profligacy footed the bill.
The aim of the Puritans was to make immorality an offence against the laws of the State. They did not succeed in doing so until 1650, when the Parliament of Praise-God Barebones took office. For fornication, the punishment was three months' imprisonment, and before being released each party had to promise to be of good behaviour for one year. The penalty for adultery was death.
The bemused man in the street, who had heard so much about immorality that he was growing tired of the subject, quickly recognized the 1650 Act as a major error. In all but a very small number of cases, jurors refused to convict adulterers. Nor was there any enthusiasm for punishing the incontinence of courting couples, though here and there 'swetehartes' were hauled into court and reprimanded for their sins. At Dorchester, in 1656, Alice Hill was found to have been keeping company 'in unseasonable time' with Phillip Bartlett. Unafraid of the bench, she said she would not forsake him unless he forsook her; nevertheless, she was ordered not to see him again without leave. Numerous couples were convicted of walking out on Sundays, and at Dorchester Joseph Foye and his girl were discovered lapping cream in a room by themselves.
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