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This chapter examines the social and cultural context of hunting in late-medieval England. An analysis of the deer-hunting reveals much about the aristocracy and gentry of Tudor and early Stuart England. The chapter explains that in the absence of war, the rituals of hunting symbolically helped to define these social classes as a military elite, and that hunting also served as a kind of preparation for war. It argues that unlawful deer hunting represented an attack upon the royal or aristocratic hunting preserve as a symbol of power, prerogative, and privilege.

This chapter examines the material accoutrements of funerals and the ordinary business of burials in Tudor and Stuart England using data from diaries, sermons, devotional writings, and church court records. During these periods, the parish bells tolled when a person was dying, then to signal that someone was dead, and often rang again at the time of the burial. The preparation of the body for burial was rarely sanitary. Even those who died a good death could leave behind a cadaver filled with urine, excrement, and blood. Most bodies rested on biers or similar equipment from their departure for the church until they were finally set in the ground.

This chapter examines the tradition of purification, thanksgiving, and the churching of women after childbirth in Tudor and Stuart England. These rituals connected the semi-secret domestic world of women and childbirth with the public ecclesiastical and communal business of religion. Churching ceremonies occupied a special place in the womanly world of fecundity and motherhood. But like baptism, churching became embroiled in the liturgical and disciplinary contests of English Protestantism and the struggles of religious politics.

This chapter examines the witness and assistants who were normally present during childbirth in Tudor and Stuart England. Childbirth was an exclusively women's affair and during this time the marital bedchamber became a gossips' parlour. Married women usually attended other women's childbirth and took part in the gossiping. Some skilled and experienced matrons even supplemented the work of midwives. This chapter clarifies the common misrepresentations of midwives in history and highlights their important roles in childbirth and in the community.

This chapter examines the controversies and conflicts surrounding the use of the sign of the cross in baptism in Stuart England. It explains the conduct of baptism with particular focus on the gestures, substances, and equipment associated with the sacrament. Though the priest's making of the sign of the cross on the child's forehead was congruent with beliefs and traditions, some parents and ministers objected to it as a superstitious and contaminated remnant of Roman Catholicism. This often resulted in disagreements and contentious disorder during baptisms.

This chapter examines the history of courtship in Elizabethan and Stuart England using evidence from diaries and autobiographies, correspondences and court records, and sermons and conduct books. Though there was no formal ceremonial process that guided the path to courtship, no ecclesiastical rule to adhere to, and no standard social script to obey, prospective partners all over England observed the unwritten rules of a deeply patterned activity. The ritual dance of courtship usually included mutual familiarization and clarification of intentions, and normally involved the exchange of gifts or tokens and negotiation of privileges and opportunities.

This chapter examines the ritual components of matrimony and explores some of the concomitants of marriage in Tudor and Stuart England. It focuses on the social and religious meaning of the wedding ceremony and its ritual and festive accompaniments. It analyses marriage as a social process with both public and private dimensions. This chapter aims to provide a better understanding about entry into marriage within the routines and frictions of domestic and community life, and to consider its conduct within a contested religious culture.

This chapter examines irregular and clandestine marriages in Elizabethan and early Stuart England. The period between 1560 and 1640 stands out as a period of exceptional cultural discipline when it comes to marriage. Moral, social, legal, and religious pressures brought all but the most marginal or the most reckless into line and into church. The Elizabethan and early Stuart regimes were highly successful in enforcing their opposition against concubinage and unlawful cohabitation. The most extreme sectarians who preferred civil over ecclesiastical marriage had their way only briefly in the 1650s.

This chapter examines burial rituals in Tudor and Stuart England and the impact of the Reformation on this tradition. In the old Catholic burial service the priest wished the soul Godspeed on its journey while sprinkling and censing the body, but after the Reformation the priest instead asked that the soul escape the gates of hell and talks of eternal darkness. One of the most profound effects the Reformation was the Protestants' elimination of purgatory which shrinked the community of souls and severed the relationship between the dead and the living.

This book narrates some of the strangest and most troubling incidents from the sideroads of Tudor and Stuart England. Through a series of linked stories and close readings of local texts and narratives, it examines the ways in which early modern society coped with cultural difficulties and dealt with bewildering phenomena. It includes a variety of topics such as bestiality and monstrous births, seduction and abortion, ridicule and paranoia, mockery and invective, symbolic violence and iconoclasm, atheism, excommunication and irregular burial, nakedness and cross-dressing. These were issues that challenged the orderly, Protestant, hierarchical society of post-Reformation England. The stories examined highlight the tendencies of discord and dissension in early modern society.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about courtship, marriage, birth, and death rituals and traditions in Tudor and Stuart England. This book traces the history of these traditions from the reign of Henry VIII to the reign of Queen Anne, highlighting the controversies surrounding the Act of Uniformity of 1559 to the Toleration Act of 1869. It analyses how these traditions and rituals were influenced by Protestant Reformation, the Revolution, and the Restoration. This book also examines the emergence of individualism and defiance of these rituals.

This chapter examines childbirth rituals and traditions in Tudor and Stuart England. During these periods, childbirth ceremony began with the recognition of pregnancy, gained pace with the sensation of quickening, progressed to preparations for labour, and climaxed with the deliverance of the woman and the birth of child. These events were followed by ‘gossips’ feasts, christening of the child, celebration of the women's first ‘month’ post childbirth, and the ecclesiastical ceremony of thanksgiving. These stages involved a wide variety of ceremonies that differed between regions and social groups.

This chapter examines the management of childbirth in Tudor and Stuart England. Rituals and traditions after childbirth differ between social groups and regions. A general common feature is that the women were withdrawn from the outside world, absent from church, relieved of most household tasks, and excused from sexual relations in the weeks immediately preceding and following childbirth. During these periods, the women were often accompanied by their female neighbours and relatives who provided constant companionship and advice concerning procedures, protocols, and precautions.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of Paul Slack's Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England. The account of poverty in this book is then compared to Slack's contribution. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.

This chapter examines prohibitions and impediments to marriage in Tudor and Stuart England. Though marriage required readiness to marry at any convenient time, the early modern church maintained a religious calendar prohibiting marriage during many holy seasons of the year. These include Lent, Rogationtide and Trinity in the late spring, and Advent before Christmas. Strict adherence to this matrimonial timetable required not only awareness of the seasonal prohibitions but also a knowledge of the correct information about which days in any given year they applied to.

This chapter examines the people involved in the baptism ceremony in Stuart England. The godparents were the principal participants in baptism. The father was responsible for arranging the baptism but he was not allowed to participate in the ceremony. The mother had no part to play in the baptism and she just stayed at home waiting for the customary month before going back to church. This chapter considers the social and communal aspects of baptism, and the festive activity of christening feasts.

This chapter examines the order for nuptial vows or the solemnization of matrimony in Elizabethan and early Stuart England. Most early modern weddings followed the set form of service laid out in the Book of Common Prayer. During these periods, wedding customarily began at the church porch. This entry was followed the the priest's recitation of the banns, the ritual giving of the bride by her father or an adult male friend, and the exchange of ‘I do's’ and the wedding rings. The wedding ring was customarily placed on the fourth finger of the bride's left hand.

This chapter examines the tradition of wedding celebrations in Tudor and Stuart England. It explores the so-called ‘Hymen's revels’ and the rituals of nuptial cheer that brought the concomitants of marriage to a conclusion. During these periods, most of the English population appears to have invested more cultural energy in the social rather than the religious aspects of weddings. While the ecclesiastical solemnization took place in a matter of minutes, the nuptial cheer could go on for hours or days.