| This dissertation investigates illicit sexuality among the English nobility during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period (1560--1630). It focuses on cases of heterosexual extramarital sex: fornication, adultery, and bastard bearing. Generally, men and women of the nobility were not brought in front of the ecclesiastical courts, which had jurisdiction over sexual offenses, since the punishments meted out by those courts were designed to publicly shame the offenders and the nobility enjoyed legal and social privileges that minimized public humiliation. Instead, the nobility were subject to direct punishment by the monarch and the gender, marital status, and personality of the monarch largely directed the punishments. In the reign of the unmarried Elizabeth I, the queen punished sexual offenders by imprisonment and banishment from court. In contrast, the married James I did not punish illicit sex among his courtiers unless it was accompanied by additional crimes. By examining social, political, and legal responses to extramarital affairs, as well as attitudes towards illicit sex, this project enlarges our understanding of sexual behavior and places noblewomen more fully within aristocratic culture. Although women often suffered more social stigmatization than men if they engaged in illicit sex, the degree of negative responses depended on a variety of factors, such as marital status, social status, support from family and other social networks, publicity of the affair, financial situations, and political circumstances. Likewise, the attitudes towards illicit sex varied greatly throughout the period of study: some argued that illicit sex was only a minor infraction, whereas others, directed by a religious moral code, argued that sexual offences were serious sins. This study also has implications for our understanding of gender. It argues that there were two different gender ideals in operation in the Elizabethan and Jacobean nobility: one largely religious ideal which exhorted women to be silent, obedient, and chaste, and another ideal, more secular in nature, which required noblewomen to be beautiful, witty, able to command, and receptive to the games of courtly love. |
