By Fenella Jenkins
Edited by Charlotte Donnelly and Mark Potter
Early modern Europe was a place where ‘violence was less a problem to be solved than an
almost accepted aspect of interpersonal discourse’ between men and women in society.
[1]In an era rife with military, religious, and state violence, the home as the primary site of violence overall generally pales in comparison. Due to women’s inferior place in society however, and their primary duties being confined to the household, the home acted as the primary site of violence for women. Domestic abuse, rape, spiritual violence, and infanticide - the main female experiences of violence – all occurred inside the home.
Domestic violence suffered by married women happened primarily in the home, revealing the nature of male power in the family and how this manifestation of patriarchal power was used to enforce the subordination of women.[2] Early modern domestic violence typically consisted of abuse by the male head of the household directed towards his wife. This violence flourished behind a wall of silence maintained by all other household members, due to fears over damaged reputations if reported.[3] During this period, the notion that marital violence was acceptable was, according to Elizabeth Foyster, deeply embedded into thinking about relationships between men and women, and it was widely believed that husbands had the right to chastise their wives using physical means.[4] Such thinking was supported by domestic handbooks written for the male heads of the household, much like William Gouge’s 1622 ‘Domestical Duties’, that describes man to be a king in the ‘little commonwealth’ that was his household.[5] Female subordination was also urged by the Church, who used catechisms and sermons to emphasise the importance of female obedience.[6] The most common causes of domestic violence at home were male drunkenness, sexual frustration, and economic insecurity, with Sharpe asserting that husbands were twice as likely to kill their wives than wives were their husbands.[7]
The case of Cecelia Bressan in 1580 highlights domestic violence in early modern Venice. Not
only was she beaten and miscarried twice as a result, but verbal violence was also used to insult her reputation. Her husband, Orazio, spent Cecelia’s dowry and then beat and threatened to kill her. Her parents helped her file for a separation, claiming that Orazio’s violent behaviour was ‘public knowledge’, with five witnesses from the vicinity of Cecelia’s home attesting to hearing Orazio call her a ‘prostitute’ as he beat her.[8] This case interestingly uses neighbours to verify the couple’s violent relationship. Due to the lack of police presence during this period, neighbours often intervened to protect women during episodes of violence, as demonstrated here with a neighbour confirming that both of Cecelia’s miscarriages resulted from Orazio’s violence in the home.[9]
To an early modern society that defined female reputation and honour in terms of chastity and moral probity, rape was a heavy burden of shame for women to bear.[10] It was fear over loss of reputation and rape’s preclusion of marriage that led to what Ruff describes as a chronic underreporting of rape in this period.[11] Rape was defined in early modern English law as ‘the unlawful and carnal knowledge and abuse of any woman...against her will’, and rape affected women so often that they were specifically named in the law as victims of sexual violence.[12] Women in domestic service roles were frequent rape victims, as living in their masters’ homes placed them in crowded conditions and put them in close contact with male servants, young men of the family, or the master himself.[13] This is the case with the Old Bailey proceedings of the criminal trial of William Woodbridge, that took place in London on December 7th 1681, which details how he was indicted for the rape ‘committed on the Body of Sarah Paine.’[14] Sarah was a domestic servant to Woodbridge’s Mother and was attacked by Woodbridge whilst ‘lying in a Chamber’ – presumably her bedroom. Woodbridge then ‘crept through a Hole that had been formerly made in the Wall...surprising her in Bed, by Violence obtained his will on her.’[15] Here we see the sexual defilement and violent rape of a professional woman in her private bedchamber, who when asked by the court why she did not cry out, replied that Woodbridge had ‘threatened to knock her Brains out’. [16] This demonstrates how the privacy of her bedroom did not act as a barrier to Woodbridge and his violent sexual urges. Shockingly to modern readers, the account reveals that ‘the Jury acquitted the Prisoner’ because of a witness’ testimony that claimed the attack was merely to get money off Sarah.[17] This demonstrates not only how unjust the early modern justice system in England was, but how a woman’s word stood for very little in early modern courts, as the power of the patriarchal order is shown to easily undermine and diminish Sarah’s words.[18]
Much sexual violence against women in this period therefore took place inside the home or in
its vicinity, with as many as sixty seven percent of rape victims heard by London’s Old Bailey
court in the eighteenth century being employed as domestic servants.[19] Whilst accusations of rape were rarely brought to court in early modern England due to fears over reputation, those that were suffered low conviction rates often because of a failure to provide sufficient proof to the judge and jury that the rape had occurred.[20] This highlights how the home was a place used to conceal sexual violence towards women, with the full weight of religious tradition and civil law endowing men with almost total power in the early modern household.[21] Biblical authority affirmed the power men possessed over women, with teachings such as St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians calling for women’s obedience and subservience, urging that ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands’ and ‘women should learn in quietness and full submission.’
Accusations of witchcraft and demonic possessions in this period exposed women to spiritual
violence within their homes, with estimations deducing that around eighty percent of those
accused of occult activity were female.[22] Thurston argues that this period of witch trials was part of the general misogyny of the period that had increased as a ‘persecuting culture’ from the medieval era.[23] Historian Sally Merry conceptualised ‘gender violence’ as ‘violence whose meaning depends on the gendered identities of the parties’, including psychological dimensions such as insults, humiliation, and witchcraft accusations as ‘actions that evoke fear even when there is no physical harm.’[24] Merry’s ideas show how even the mere accusation of being a witch and the damning effects this would have on a woman’s reputation, can be deemed violence. The locality of accusations highlights how the home acted as the primary site of spiritual violence, with those accused having the privacy of their homes invaded by officials and community members seeking to harm, forcibly remove, or exorcise these women, despite the majority of those persecuted being innocent of their accused crimes.[25]
This was the case in the primary account of a murdered, unnamed woman accused of witchcraft on December 2, 1625, which portrays an extreme example of violence inside the home. After being cast out of his church, a man named Pemberton conducted a hidden conference with a priest who told him: ‘There was no means for his reconcilement but to procure the heart of a heretic.’[26] This source highlights a link between religion and witch accusations, with the priest offering murder as the price for religious reconciliation. The Christian church’s view on witchcraft is found in the Old Testament book of Exodus 22:18, that states: ‘Thou shalt not permit a sorceress to live’, thus showing how Christianity believed those accused of being witches were not human and deserved death. Pemberton arrived at the woman’s house and broke the door down with a ‘mighty stone’ before violently pulling her out from under her bed and ‘cut her throat so wide it lay upon her bosom’.[27] He then proceeded to rip her body apart ‘with his knife in one hand and [her] liver in the other.’[28] Pemberton’s actions highlight an extreme example of spiritual violence perpetrated in the home, about which he then bragged ‘openly he had killed the witch’ and ‘cared not what became of him’ with regards to the law, thus reinforcing his view that he was now religiously absolved after murdering a more than likely innocent woman.[29] This religious justification for murder shows how the Christian church was able to indirectly inflict violence on women in this period, as their teachings reinforced the idea of women being weaker and susceptible to sin, which Barstow claims loaded the scales against women, even when the charges were identical to those against men.[30]
Additionally, the report of the exorcism of Lady Peckham not only highlights spiritual violence that resulted in the accused’s death, but also portrays the intrusion into her home of the three priests who ultimately killed her. The exorcism took place on December 13, 1586, with the transcript detailing how Lady Peckham died ‘being in great extremities.’[31] Whilst the exact nature of her death is not recorded, with the report merely stating that ‘during their exorcisms she yielded up her breath’, the account does not paint the peaceful image of a death you would usually expect given the presence of priests.[32] In early modern Europe, it was widely believed that because women were the weaker sex, they were more susceptible to sin and temptation from the devil.[33] Therefore, the fact that Lady Peckham was thought to have been ‘possessed with a devil’ not only makes her a victim of demonic possession in the eyes of the priests, her family, and the community, but a victim of being born a woman.[34] This idea is further commented upon by the contemporary witch-fearing French magistrate, Nicholas Rémy, who states that ‘the Devil uses them so, because he knows that women love carnal pleasures’ and that ‘[It is] not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, [witches], should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex’. [35] Thus, he proposes that women’s sexual desires and merely being born a woman makes them susceptible to demonic possession and witchcraft, whilst also presenting a contextual opinion on how women’s status was viewed by men in early modern society.
Alternatively, the early modern home was also the primary site of violence for women
committing infanticide. Gowing notes how the credit and status of women were seen to be
fragile, easily damaged commodities of shifting value, with family honour relying
predominantly on the maintenance of female chastity.[36] Unwanted pregnancies, unwed
mothers, and unemployment are examples of desperate situations that might cause women to commit infanticide. In early modern Europe, the unexplained death of new-borns was not
suspicious due to the high infant mortality rates.[37] Ruff therefore highlights how infanticide could be easily concealed, with claims the child was still-born, died of sickness, or accidently suffocated in their cot, especially as forensic medicine at the time could not provide reliable judgments on the causes of death.[38] The ambiguity and secrecy surrounding acts of infanticide, as well as its taboo status in English society, make primary accounts rare.[39]
Despite this, the Ordinary Account and Biography of Mary Ellenor, who was executed at
Newgate Prison on October 27, 1708, details how she committed infanticide in the home where she worked as a domestic servant. Here we see how Mary is misled by a man, who leaves her with an unwanted pregnancy that she cannot financially support, thus motivating her actions. Mary told the court that she ‘never knew any man besides him in that foul carnal way’, with her words and harsh, descriptive language portraying how sex before marriage would have severely harmed her reputation in the eyes of early modern society. She attempted to justify her actions by claiming there was a promise of future marriage.[40] It is particularly interesting how Mary is judged and condemned for her sexual behaviour when the man is not prosecuted or challenged over his. Mary describes how she threw the male bastard into a vault and subsequently ‘with a broom-stick kept him down, until he was quite dead’, thus highlighting the home as a place where violence could be concealed.[41] The claim that the ‘Devil had too much power over her’, references sins of whoredom and uncleanliness and highlights how crime and punishment in this era were intertwined with religion.[42] Despite Mary repenting and confessing, she was denied the last rights of the Eucharist before execution, thus showing an absence of mercy in the justice system. This makes historians question the extent to which there was a separation of secular courts and the influence of the church of England in this period, with Mary’s case exposing how these two bodies of authority could conflict.
The early modern home acted as a place of concealment and confinement to women, who
mostly suffered and occasionally inflicted violence, as a result of patriarchal expectations, that were dominated by religious teachings of subservience and chastity. Women who did not
conform to these expectations were abused and raped by their husbands, accused of witchcraft, and forced to murder their own children. This in turn exposes early modern society as a culture in which patriarchal power drew strength from the daily application of brutal misogyny physically directed towards women, whose inferior status confined them primarily to the home to experience this violence.[43]
Notes
[1] Julius Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 8.
[2] Susan Amussen, Violence and Domestic Violence in Early Modern England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 70.
[3] Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800, pp. 131-132.
[4] Elizabeth Foyster, Marital Violence: An English Family History, 1600-1857 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. xi.
[5] William Gouge, “Treaties 1-3”, Domestical Duties (1622)
<https://chapellibrary.org:8443/pdf/books/otddu1.pdf> [Accessed 11 December, 2020].
[6] Amussen, Violence and Domestic Violence, p. 73.
[7] J. A. Sharpe, “Domestic Homicide in Early Modern England”, The Historical Journal, 24/1 (1981), pp. 29-48.
[8] “The Case of Cecelia Bartholomei Bressan Garzoti, 1580”, in Joanne Ferraro’s, ‘The Power to Decide: Battered Wives in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, 48/3 (1995), p. 505.
[9] Amussen, Violence and Domestic Violence, p. 79.
[10] Amussen, p. 143.
[11] Amussen, p. 140.
[12] Sarah Toulalan, “Constructing the Child Rapist in Early Modern England”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, p. 31.
[13] Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, p. 142.
[14] “Trial of William Woodbridge”, Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials 1681 (London Lives, 2012), <https://www.londonlives.org/browse.jsp?div=t16811207-1>
[accessed 10 December 2020].
[15] “Trial of William Woodbridge”.
[16] “Trial of William Woodbridge”.
[17] “Trial of William Woodbridge”.
[18] Laura Gowing, Women, Status, and the Popular Culture of Dishonour (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 234.
[19] Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, p. 132.
[20] Mark Hailwood and Charmian Mansell, “Court Depositions of Southwest England, 1500-1700: Crimes and Offences Information”, University of Exeter (2018) <http://humanities-research.exeter.ac.uk/womenswork/courtdepositions/> [accessed 8 December 2020].
[21] Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, p. 132.
[22] Geoffrey Scarre, Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (Palgrave, 2001), p. 29.
[23] Robert Thurston, Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose: The Rise and Fall of the Witch Hunts in Europe and North America (Longman, 2001), pp. 42-45.
[24] Sally Merry, Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective (United States: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), pp.19-20.
[25] Gareth Medway, Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism (New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 70.
[26] “Violence against Witches: Early Modern Witch Trials”, The National Archives (2020)
<https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/early-modern-witch-trials/violence-against-witches/> [Accessed 6 December, 2020].
[27] “Unnamed Witches”.
[28] “Unnamed Witches”.
[29] “Unnamed Witches”.
[30] Anne Barstow, Witch craze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (Pandora, 1994), p. 25.
[31] “Results of an Exorcism: Early Modern Witch Trials”, The National Archives (2020)
<https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/early-modern-witch-trials/results-of-an-exorcism/> [Accessed 5 December, 2020].
[32] “The Lady Peckham Report”.
[33] Scarre, Witchcraft and Magic, p. 59.
[34] “The Lady Peckham Report, 1586”.
[35] Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Indiana: Indiana University Press,1987), p. 68.
[36] Gowing, Women, Status, and the Popular Culture of Dishonour, p. 231.
[37] Garthine Walker, Child-Killing and Emotion in Early Modern England and Wales (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 151.
[38] Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe, p. 149.
[39] Sarah Copeland, Constructions of Infanticide in Early Modern England (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2008), p. 29.
[40] “Ordinary of Newgate Prison: Biographies of Executed Convicts” (London Lives, 2012),
<https://www.londonlives.org/browse.jspdiv=OA170810270810270001&terms=ellenor#highlight>[accessed 12 December, 2020].
[41] “Ordinary of Newgate Prison”.
[42] “Ordinary of Newgate Prison”.
[43] Gowing, Women, Status, and the Popular Culture of Dishonour, p. 234.
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