The Long Eighteenth Century remains, in spite of the efforts of such as W.M. Jacob, rather the Cinderella of church history, and Gibson and Begiato are to be congratulated on assembling such an extensive and fascinating array of evidence for the interaction of the Church of England with questions of sexuality across their chosen date range of 1688 to 1828. Their significant contention is that, contrary to the latent surviving Whiggism of many histories of sexuality, religion did not calmly melt away before the tide of Enlightenment liberalization in the eighteenth century. A particularly valuable insight is to remind us of the lingering importance of the church courts, able to sentence fornicators and adulterers to public penance, into the century as a marker of the connection between the Church and sexual discipline. They also note the particular severity of the penances imposed on the Isle of Man, although are mistaken to consider the whore’s punishment of dragging behind a boat as fatal, since it is known to have been repeated on some unfortunate offenders.

The main, perhaps inevitable, difficulty of the study is that it is largely a collection of stories, grouped thematically to explain what the Church’s teaching on sex was, how it was enforced (by the church courts and by regulation of marriage), preached and campaigned for, and written and commented upon. What these do show is abundant examples of religious concern about matters of sexual controversy and the continuing expectation throughout the period that the Church and its ministers could be looked to as a source for guidance. A particularly pleasing tale is that, concerned by their reputation as a venue for illicit encounters, the proprietors of the Vauxhall pleasure gardens employed ‘two clergymen to patrol the grounds whose “holy looks” it was hoped would keep decorum and deter social misbehaviour. As a result Vauxhall was able to attract a more respectable class of attendees.’ Nice work if you could get it!

The difficulty is to know to what extent the cultural observations on the interaction of Christianity and sex are typical or exceptional; particularly in the chapters on sodomy and scandal I was not convinced that the authors had shown whether the eighteenth century was much different from any other. There was more secure ground in the evidence about marriage and its secure place as a social norm, guarded by the Church and expected of all, even as its nature subtly shifted towards free choice and emotional fulfilment. Part of what comes across from the many stories, and this is itself a refutation of Whiggism, is the sheer variety of attitude and practice between disregard for the Church’s teaching and the recovery of Christian aspirations for chastity among some. The patchy record on homosexuality is also a counter to a narrative of progress, dons in Oxford in the early part of the century being allowed to flee discreetly abroad whereas more relentless persecution could be found later.

A distinct tendency which emerges within the study is of the shifting place of evangelical Christianity as a cultural exception, and as a theological exception to a prevailing tendency to indulgent Pelagianism. Ongoing Anglican guilt at the expulsion of the Methodists had probably contributed to a sense that they were an oppressed community of the righteous. Here we can read sources from the time who thought them driven by peculiar and repressed sexuality (including striking stories of John Wesley himself). Resentment at itinerant Methodist preachers was heightened by their reputation for leaving a bastard in every parish. This suspicion, like the widespread unease at celibacy in the period, feels strangely contemporary, and contrasts with the superstitious quasi-medical tracts on masturbation. Under the influence of Wilberforce and Hannah More, however, from the 1780s onwards evangelicalism became both respectable and associated with the well-ordered family.

Gibson and Begiato strive in each section to offer examples from across their 140 years, but do not wholly manage to stave off a sense that there was a real shift in values around the 1770s, and which leads me to doubt the convenience of treating the ‘long century’ as a natural unity. This was the point at which the influence of the church courts really diminished, aided by the 1787 Act limiting many sorts of prosecution, and also at which religious energy for righteousness seems to have shifted from enforcement to education, for which they show from several sources. In some ways the late Georgian Anglican evangelicals feel more like their Victorian successors than the post-Puritans of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in the 1720s.

Readers who care to immerse themselves in this study will find ample and interesting evidence, not necessarily to knock down the Whig Enlightenment in sexuality, but rather to be reminded both that in the Age of Revolutions, England did not have one, and also that simplicity is almost always the enemy of good history. Whether or not the Church could truly claim to be as central to English life and sex as is claimed is uncertain; more secure is that the Church was then, as ever, very interested in sex, and that there are valuable continuities with our present times that should be more widely known.