This welcome contribution to the religious and social history of early modern England provides a number of correctives to current understandings of the formation and functions of clerical marriage during the English Reformation. Previous scholarship has suggested either that the experiences of the first parish clergy wives are impossible to recover in the historical record or that the women who married parish clergymen had few choices and dubious morals, being servants or former concubines. Thompson offers a more complete, nuanced picture, using an array of archival sources from twelve of the Canterbury dioceses as well as from the archbishopric of York. Drawing on parish registers, church court records, wills, marriage licenses, and letters testimonial, the mandatory certificates of good character for prospective clerical brides, Thompson is able to identify many individual wives and evaluate their lived experiences.
Thompson argues persuasively that the sanctioning of clerical marriage in 1559, with its capacity to redraw the personal and professional identities of clergymen and to reimagine the institution of marriage, was one of the most significant social and religious changes experienced by Elizabethan parishioners. The first chapter demonstrates that while some of the Elizabethan clergy, particularly those who were older and religiously conservative, were reticent to embrace marriage, many others did marry. Contemporary debates about the propriety of clerical marriage then pivoted to questions of how to ensure that marriage, and the women who would take up the new role of clergy wife, could advance the dignity of the ministry. Chapter 2 examines the unique regulatory features and considerations of clerical marriage as well as the many similarities between clerical and lay matrimonial processes, especially the personal factors (affection, compatibility, and economic considerations among them) that shaped matrimonial decision-making.
The remaining chapters demonstrate that Elizabethan parish clergy wives were not, as has been often asserted, the subject of relentless suspicion and hostility. Instead, like their husbands, these women came from a variety of circumstances and backgrounds, and from relatively early in Elizabeth's reign, they were already exhibiting the characteristics of modesty, piety, generosity, and neighborliness more readily associated with English ministers’ wives in subsequent centuries. While clergy wives were sometimes targets of abusive language and charges of impropriety, closer examination of sources almost invariably reveals an indictment of individuals, not of the institution of clerical marriage itself. Chapter 5 tackles the popular perception that marriage negatively impacted the charitable impulses of the Elizabethan clergy. Drawing on evidence provided by an extensive survey of wills, Thompson argues that while married ministers did prioritize their families, changing patterns of charitable giving cannot be exclusively assigned to the advent of clerical marriage and must be viewed within broader contexts.
Thompson's book will prove of immense value to scholars of the Reformation and of early modern marriage, but its treatment of sixteenth-century gender expectations, interpersonal relationships within and outside of marriage, and charitable giving in a time of profound religious and economic change is deserving of a wider, non-specialist audience. The lucidity of the prose and the inclusion of relevant historiography should make this text accessible to students, although the absence of maps renders the scope of the project somewhat difficult to grasp, and the inconsistent identification of sources for and components of the text's figures and tables obscures some of the statistical findings.
At the close of the introduction, Thompson states, “This book aims to demonstrate that the Elizabeth parish clergy wives have not entirely vanished from the historical record and that their voices can and should be heard” (22). Through a creative reconsideration of previously examined sources and the use of recovered evidence, including richly detailed letters testimonial newly located at Worcester and Gloucester, Thompson ably achieves the first of those aims. She falls short, however, of keeping the focus on the clergy wives, as their husbands, neighbors, kin, and clerical and secular authorities frequently occupy the narrative center stage instead. Only rarely do we hear the voices of parish clergy wives themselves. Still, the voices of contemporaries allow Thompson to put forward a much-needed reassessment of the ideals and realities of Elizabethan clerical marriage for both women and men. Through Thompson's careful analysis, these archival sources cast the first generations of clergy wives into greater relief for us than ever before.
