Did the family offer a solid and reassuring sense of continuity through change, or was it instead one of the principle arenas for turbulence and transformation?
That this question can offer two such divergent characterisations of the family suggests, at the very least, aspects of ambiguity and complexity in its nature. This essay will take an analytic approach, and will adopt the following structure. First, the very step of working out what we mean by “the family” will tell us a great deal about its potential to offer reassurance. Secondly, the relationship between the Reformation and the family will be discussed, this relationship being set in the context of broader economic and demographic concerns, and anxieties relating to order. In the light of the Reformation we will consider a number of discontinuities: the impact of the Reformation on different members of the family, on the composition of the family, on the supervision of the family, and on the regulation of how families were created. These discontinuities are, however, outweighed by major aspects of continuity: basic legal framework in which the family existed, people’s moral attitudes and ideals, and also the continued existence of religious routines within the household. Thirdly, the degree of reassurance that the family could offer will be assessed in the context of economic change, particular attention being paid to the flexible roles played by women in the family. Finally, some important continuities are noted relating to the nature of emotion in both the ordinary stuff of human relationships, and in the activity of bringing up children.
Our conceptualisation of “the family” has major implications for the extent of continuity we might think of it as offering. Stone argued that the idea of kinship was highly significant in medieval life, and that the nuclear family came into being at the time of the Reformation. However the evidence shows that the nuclear family was in fact dominant during the medieval and early modern periods . Even then, considering the nuclear family in isolation is itself inadequate; account must be taken of servants and apprentices who lived with the family on a temporary and contractual basis, forming the broader household . Conversely, those working as apprentices and servants were no longer able to draw reassurance from their own families, during the comparatively long period that was considered to be their “youth” . A further limitation is that not everyone went on to create their own families: fifteen percent of the female population remained unmarried, even when nunneries disappeared from Protestant societies . For those living in families, high mortality rates compromised the levels of continuity that a family could provide . Death and remarriage meant that many households were incomplete, or included the survivors from earlier marriages . The psychological impact of mortality is indicated by the point that after the Black Death preoccupation with mortality and the transitory nature of life intensified . However even in this context, reassurance could be found in the idea of being buried alongside and ultimately reunited with their close family members . The extent to which families offered continuity in terms of a network of support is also questionable, especially outside the gentry . It is notable that in the 14th and 15th centuries three quarters of maintenance contracts relating to provision for people’s old age were made with people who were not members of their family . This corresponded to a decline in kin density as the population increasingly moved towards new economic opportunities after the Black Death , an environment in which reciprocal relationships with neighbours played an important role in complementing the nuclear family’s provision of reassurance and continuity .
The Reformation unleashed deeply unsettling processes of change, whose impact on the family must be considered in the context of the society in which these processes would unfold. At the Reformation the spiritual lives of individuals - the family’s constituent parts - were transformed. Now it was possible for people to have a direct relationship with God, unmediated by the rituals and hierarchies of the now demoted priesthood. The Reformation also helped to bring about a period of heightened interest in the family itself. This represented an intensification of existing concerns rather than being a new phenomenon entirely , and we will see that it involved an attempt to increasingly regulate the life of the family. Significantly, the processes set in motion at the time of the Reformation developed and were applied in the context of broader economic and demographic factors that were putting society under increasing strain. During the late 16th and early 17th centuries rapidly increasing population combined with high inflation to produce a society that was polarised between the few rich and the many poor. As a result, this was a period in which a great deal of anxiety was experienced due to fears relating to order. In consequence, the family - as the fundamental building block of society and a possible unit of authority in its own right - became an object of heightened concern not just in England but also in countries across Europe (Catholic as well as Protestant). For ordinary people within families changes on all these levels – religious, economic, demographic – must have been deeply disturbing, and would have intensified their need for security and familiarity. Basic human psychology suggests that, during these turbulent times of change, both society at large and people within particular families may have felt an increased need for the continuities that the family could offer .
The Reformation changed the situations of different members of the family both at the time it was taking place, and in terms of its subsequent implications. The young were at the vanguard of the Reformation during its initial development at Cambridge, in challenging Catholicism through disorder, and as Marian martyrs. Youthful questioning of authority combined with dislocation and dissatisfaction in London, and must have produced conflict within families. Women were also associated with both leadership and religious disorder at the time of the Reformation. Their subsequent involvement in the new Protestant sects was a new source of female power within the patriarchal institution of marriage, going beyond the existing use of religion as an escape from male domination. Women were particularly involved in Presbyterianism, which encouraged lay participation of females, and the Quakers even allowed women to preach. Across the Irish Sea women were also able to find a role through religion in their vital contributions to the Counter-Reformation . These kinds of religious diversity created the possibility of conflict within families , and so undermined the continuity and reassurance that it could offer.
The Reformation also brought changes to the composition of the family, both conceptually and in practical terms. The doctrine of purgatory was abolished, meaning that families could no longer conceive of themselves as having an ongoing connection (through prayer) with the situation of their deceased relatives, and so in this sense the boundaries of family were redrawn . On a more practical level, ministers of religion were now allowed to marry. This created the new role of minister’s wife, and so a new role model for the community. Priestly celibacy was no longer the ideal, and the idea that lifelong chastity could help people get to heaven was abolished, meaning that the family and sex were no longer considered to be second-rate activities . A further change to the conception of the family was its being increasingly thought of as being a “little commonwealth”. This conception was not entirely novel , but was characteristic of the period both in terms of its analogous method of reasoning, and also in its application of political philosophy to the life of the family. This changing conception of the family would be used to legitimise increasing levels of intervention in ordinary people’s lives.
The family came under more intense scrutiny after the Reformation. We have many more records from this period, but while this does not necessarily indicate more rigorous supervision, it suggests that records were kept more carefully, implying that the issue was taken more seriously . The new Protestant sects, such as Presbyterianism and the Quakers, were particularly keen to regulate their member’s behaviour, taking particular interest in sexual misdemeanours. Other means of control included the official requirement of parish registers (dating from 1530) and the use of church seating plans to separate men from the women. This higher level of surveillance was to some extent facilitated by the expansion in the size of the state during the period, and it was also reflected informally through community controls; ducking stools, for example, became more common in English towns in the late 16th and early 17th centuries .
The combination of religious and economic factors - and the desire to promote both religious and social control – also encouraged the church to tighten its grip on marriage, particularly on the entry into marriage. in the late 16th and early 17th centuries a number of significant steps were taken in this direction Marriage resting purely on the consent of the individual was undermined by the church courts’ decreasing recognition of informal spousals and consequent emphasis on solemnisation in church , and by their prosecution of clandestine marriages. Sex when betrothed had been widely accepted by the laity but was increasingly regulated under new bastardy and infanticide acts, and by a church court and Protestant sects that were generally more active than before. These ecclesiastical concerns overlapped with the desire for social control, particularly in economically weaker areas whose populations feared that marriage of the poor might lead to increased numbers of dependents under the Poor Law .
While the Reformation brought about changes to the family, these discontinuities were outweighed factors that indicate continuity. Although scrutiny had been intensified and entry was increasingly regulated, in other legal respects little had changed. The fundamental basis of marriage remained the consent of the individuals. The ages at which men and women could legally marry remained the same (14 and 12). Marriage remained prohibited within certain relationships, although the scope of this prohibition was narrowed somewhat . The ceremony itself remained fundamentally similar, although it had now moved inside the church. Divorce was still interpreted very narrowly and there was very little litigation, despite some radical puritans taking more liberal views due to the fact that marriage was no longer a sacrament. From a cultural perspective, both courtship and marriage remained a deeply patterned and culturally acknowledged series of activities.
In terms of what it was thought the family should be, while the form changed, the contents remained broadly similar. From the point of view of religious role models, Mary was no longer revered after the Reformation and the Holy Family was no longer idealised as before. Images and statues were removed from church interiors, the new emphasis being on sermons (in the vernacular) and on the written word. This development came at a time when publishing was increasing exponentially, but the level of literary advice had already started to escalate by the 15th century . The Protestants would go on create their own role models, an unsurprising development given the level of illiteracy. Protestant role models for the family included Luther and his wife and the new families of ministers themselves. However there was a major new emphasis on prescriptive literature, particularly instructional “conduct books”, now written for the consumption of the laity rather than predominantly for the assistance of priests. These books were often written by ministers of religion, such as William Gouge, and were very popular . Relationships within the family were a major concern of these Protestant writers, however their contents offered little that was new. Their focus on patriarchy was rooted in the Bible itself, and was certainly familiar to pre-Reformation authors . The balancing concept of mutuality fitted nicely with the 17th century political idea of rights corresponding to duties, but had been pre-empted by Harrington with his ideas of “mutual solace”, and also by secular advice such as “How the Wise Man Taught his Son” . In fact, given their lack of serious engagement with issues such as potential conflicts between patriarchy and mutuality, it is arguable that the conduct books were not actually trying to come up with new ideas at all .
The importance of religious routines within the family is another area where the idea of continuity broadly applies. It is sometimes argued that the Reformation saw the “spiritualization” of the household, as fathers assumed the role of priests , thereby adding a further dimension to their patriarchal status. However fathers had a religious role in the household before the Reformation: in the late 15th century Robert Reynes, for example, kept a spiritual crib list in a practical book that he presumably drew on when he wanted to give his family religious instruction . Post-Reformation the role of the father, if it had changed much at all, needs to be set in the contexts of increased external regulation (through courts and community) and also the increased power that women were able to access through religion. More broadly, the notion that religion should punctuate and pervade the day and the year remained strong, even if its zeal and emphasis on intellectual self-scrutiny now had a more characteristically Protestant tone . In this sense religion continued to provide reassurance for individuals within the family, but the Reformation does not seem to have impacted hugely on the nature of the family’s religious practices as such.
Changes associated with economics also impacted on life within individual families. Families were, after all, the most basic unit of economic production, organisation and consumption , and were susceptible to the ups and downs and to developments within the national and local economies. The economic role played by women fluctuated depending on the broader climate, impacting significantly on the degree of continuity that a family might provide. In the period after the Black Death the reduced population led to a labour shortage, which allowed women to get involved in tasks normally done by men, and to earn more money than they had previously . However by the middle of the 15th century the economy was beginning to decline, and women were the first to lose out . Women were also significantly affected when industries in the cities started to contract out their spinning and carding work into their rural hinterlands, and making families increasingly dependent on the market . During the Civil War women from wealthier families had to take over the running of their husbands’ estates. So in these senses the real continuity was the need for adaptability. This can be set alongside the basic struggle for survival that continued to characterise the lives of the small-scale farming communities which constituted the bulk of the population.
Important elements of continuity were provided by the ordinary nature of human relationships, and by the activity of bringing up children. Stone argued that relationships within the family did not involve love or affection until the later 17th century . However the overwhelming bulk of evidence indicates a high degree of continuity in human emotions, even if the language used in their expression is culturally conditioned by the milieu in which these emotions were experienced . The activities of childbirth and bringing up children were, similarly, common experiences that offered a reassuring sense of continuity through the generations, especially to women . The evidence indicates a distinctive material culture for children, different to but intersecting with the adult world. There is no reason to suppose that the related activities and emotions changed that much from one end of our period to the other .
Religious, economic and demographic change created in people the need for a sense of continuity , and people looked to the family to provide this. However the fact that the family offered continuity should not be taken as implying that it was somehow abstracted from the currents of change from which it provided shelter. This was a period of heightened preoccupation with the family, involving the intensification of existing concerns, as demonstrated by the increase in ecclesiastical scrutiny. The question’s use of the word “arena” nicely gestures towards the contested nature of the family, indicating both the desire to promote order by controlling the family from without, and also the ongoing negotiation of relationships within the family unit. Finally: while not all continuities were reassuring, some may be found in the activities of bringing up children, and in people’s emotional lives. The aspects of continuity that these areas of life offered may be thought of as being like the part of the iceberg that lies below the waterline; largely hidden but surely offering at least some much-needed reassurance in these turbulent times of religious, economic and demographic change.
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