Non-marital cohabitation in late seventeenth-century England

In contrast to those historians who have argued that non-marital cohabitation was a significant feature of English society around 1700, Rebecca Probert insists that the phenomenon was ‘vanishingly rare’. Yet if it was indeed so unusual, the nonconformity of those who did live together unmarried demands explanation. After reviewing the existing historiography, this article approaches the issues primarily through the extensive surviving records of the Wiltshire ecclesiastical courts in the late seventeenth century. It establishes, in line with Probert’s findings, that cases of non-marital cohabitation were very few. In this period most such cases were very briefly recorded, but the Wiltshire material includes one exceptionally well-documented ‘promoted office’ prosecution in the Salisbury consistory court in 1699–1701. This provides powerful insights into heterodox opinions on marriage and divorce circulating at that time, the declining but still real powers of the ecclesiastical courts, the resources available to lay people in resisting them, the reactions of servants, neighbours and clergy (ranging from the condemnatory to the complicit), and associated gender issues. In sum, the case highlights why and how a couple might illicitly cohabit in late seventeenth-century England. Finally, the implications for John Ash’s subsequent career in Carolina are briefly considered

Cohabitation · Feature (linguistics) · Nonconformity · Period (music) · Phenomenon · Biographical and Historical Analysis · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes