Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T11:22:38.657Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Holy Families: The Spiritualization of the Early Modern Household Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Alexandra Walsham*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham

Extract

The household has been a compelling metaphor for the Christian Church since biblical times. In his epistle to the Ephesians (3: 15), St Paul wrote of ‘the whole family’ of Christ’s followers ‘in heaven and earth’; in Galatians 6: 10, he equated the congregation of the elect with ‘the household of faith’. But these were merely variations on a more ancient theme. In the Old Testament too the language of kinship is deployed to describe the community of God’s chosen people, the Jews, while the idea of the family as the basic building block of human society and the state has its roots in the fourth century BCE, in Aristotle’s celebrated treatise on Politics. The interrelated tropes of the household as a microcosm and nursery of the Church and commonwealth continued to be invoked throughout the medieval period and they proliferated in the wake of the religious upheavals inaugurated by the Reformation. Expressions of these commonplaces abound in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. A long succession of Protestant ministers compared families with ‘seed-plots’ and ‘seminaries’ in which the tender plants of godly religion and good citizenship were nurtured, and with ‘[bee]hives, out of which swarm the materials for greater assemblies’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Ps. 107: 41. Aristotle, Politics, ed. Steven Everson (Cambridge, 1988), 2-3 (1.2).

2 For some examples, see C[awdrey], R[ichard], A godlic forme of honseholde government, ed. Dod, John and Cleaver, Robert (London, 1612 edn), 13 Google Scholar; Wats, Thomas, The entrie to Christianitie, or, an admonition to housholders (London, 1589)Google Scholar, sig. A4V; Perkins, William, Christian oeconomie: or, a short survey of the right manner of erecting and ordering a family, according to the Scriptures (London, 1618)Google Scholar, dedication, in Workes, 3 vols ([Cambridge], 1618), vol. 3; Downame, John, A guide to godlyncsse or a treatise of a Christian life (London, 1629), 330 Google Scholar; Cawdrey, Daniel, Family reformation promoted in a sermon on Joshua, chap. 24. ver. 15 (London, 1656)Google Scholar, sig. A5V; Tillotson, John, Six sermons … II. Family Religion (London, 1694), 83 Google Scholar; Slater, Samuel, An earnest call to family religion (London, 1694), 158 Google Scholar. See also Peel, Albert and Carlson, Leland H., eds, Cartwrightiana, Elizabethan Nonconformist Texts I (London, 1951), 159: ‘houses are the nurseryes of the church’.Google Scholar

3 Since the delivery of this lecture, a collection of essays addressing related issues has appeared: Martin, Jessica and Ryrie, Alec, eds, Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modem Britain (Aldershot, 2012)Google Scholar.

4 See OED, s.vv. ‘family’ and ‘household’; Tadmor, Naomi, ‘The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, P&P, no. 151 (1996), 11140 Google Scholar. See also her Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar. For a recent collection of essays reassessing the history of family since Lawrence Stone’s seminal The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London, 1977)Google Scholar, see Berry, Helen and Foyster, Elizabeth, eds, The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard, eds, Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), esp. 125203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Wrightson, Keith, ‘Household and Kinship in Sixteenth-Century England’, History Workshop Journal 12 (1981), 1518 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cressy, David, ‘Kinship and Kin Interaction in Early Modern England’, P&P, no. 113 (1986), 3869 Google Scholar; O’Day, Rosemary, The Family and Family Relationships, 1500-1900: England, France and the United States of America (London, 1994), 128, 1257 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coster, Will, Family and Kinship in England 1450-1800 (Harlow, 2001)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

7 See Longfellow, Erica, ‘Public, Private and the Household in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, JBS 45 (2006), 31334 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the ambivalence of early modern society about privacy, see Orlin, Lena Cowen, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar.

8 Todd, Margo, ‘Humanists, Puritans and the Spiritualized Household’, ChH 49 (1980), 1834 Google Scholar; Davies, Kathleen M., ‘Continuity and Change in Literary Advice on Marriage’, in Outhwaite, R. B., ed., Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981), 5880.Google Scholar

9 Hegendorff, Christopher, Domcstycal or householde sermons, for a godly householder, to his children and family, transl. Reginald, Henry (London, 1548)Google Scholar.

10 Perkins, , Christian oeconomie; Gouge, William, Of domesticall duties (London, 1622)Google Scholar; Griffith, Matthew, Bethel, or a forme for families (London, 1633)Google ScholarPubMed. Another is Carter, Thomas, Carters Christian commonwealth; or domesticall dutyes deciphered (London, 1627)Google Scholar. For previous discussions of the household as a religious unit, see Greaves, Richard L., Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, MN, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 7; Morgan, John, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning, and Education, 1560-1640 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

11 Quotations from Jones, William, A briefe exhortation to all men to set their houses in order (London, 1631), 10 Google Scholar; Perkins, , Christian oeconomie, 670 Google Scholar. On the place of reading in family piety, see Cambers, Andrew, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580-1720 (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 3.

12 Griffith, , Bethel, 395 Google Scholar; Wats, Entrie to Christianitie, sig. B1r Bernard, Richard,Joshuas godly resolution in conference with Caleb, touching household government for well ordering with a familie (London, 1612)Google Scholar, sig. A3r. For the sins of negligent heads of household, see C[awdrey], Godlie form of householde government, sig. A4V; Gouge, Thomas, A word to housholders, in his A word to sinners, and a word to saints (London, 1670), 226.Google Scholar

13 Paget, Thomas, A demonstration oj family-duties (London, 1643), 57.Google Scholar

14 Hill, Christopher, ‘The Spiritualization of the Household’, in idem, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1964), 44381.Google Scholar

15 This thesis infuses the following works to a greater or lesser extent: Powell, C. L., English Domestic Relations, 1487-1653 (New York, 1917)Google Scholar; Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; Schücking, L. L., The Puritan Family: A Social Study from Literary Sources (1929; London, 1969)Google Scholar; Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage in England, esp. 1412 Google Scholar; Ozment, Steven, Wlien Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1983)Google Scholar, esp. chs 1-2.

16 Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Protestant Family’, in idem, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1988), 6093 Google Scholar; Nunn, Susan Karant, ‘Reformation Society, Women and the Family’, in Pettegree, Andrew, ed., The Reformation World (London and New York, 2000), 43359, esp. 4336 Google Scholar. On clerical marriage, see Parish, Helen L., Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice (Aldershot, 2000)Google Scholar; on godparenthood, Coster, Will, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England (2002)Google Scholar. For balanced overviews that focus on England, see Houlbrooke, Ralph A., The English Family 1450-1700 (Harlow, 1984)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, ‘The Protestant Idea of Marriage in Early Modern England’, in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Roberts, Peter (Cambridge, 1994), 16181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Roper, Lyndal, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar. See also Fletcher, Anthony, ‘Prescription and Practice: Protestantism and the Upbringing of Children, 1560-1700’, in Wood, Diana, ed., The Church and Childhood, SCH 31 (Oxford, 1994), 32546.Google Scholar

18 Some of these have been themes of earlier EHS conferences: Sheils, W. J. and Wood, Diana, eds, Women in the Church, SCH 27 (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Wood, , ed., Church and Childhood Google Scholar; Swanson, R. N., ed., Gender and Christian Religion, SCH 34 (Woodbridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

19 See, for example, Elizabethan Episcopal Administration, ed. Kennedy, W. P. M., 3 vols, Alcuin Club Collections 26 (London, 1924), 2:934, 119, 1278; 3: 3467 Google Scholar; Greaves, , Society and Religion, 2934.Google Scholar

20 For a handful of catechisms and family prayer books, see Dering, Edward, Godly private praiers, for housholdcrs to meditate upon, and to sayc in their families (London, [1578])Google Scholar; Jones, Richard, A briefe and necessarie catechisme … for the benefit of all householders, their children and families (London, 1583)Google Scholar; Parker, John, A true patterne of pietie, meete for all Christian householders to looke upon, for the better education of their families (London, 1592)Google Scholar; Leech, James, A plaine and profitable catechisme, with certaine prayers adjoined, meete for parents and householders to teach their children and servants (Cambridge, 1605)Google Scholar; A short catechisme for householders, with praiers to the same adioyning (London, 1611)Google Scholar; , T. P., A short catechisme for householders (London, 1624)Google Scholar; Ram, Richard, The countrymans catechisme: or, a helpe for householders to instruct their families in the grounds of Christian religion (London, 1655)Google Scholar.

21 See Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

22 A short interpretation of the lords praier: necessary for all housholders to learne, and to teach their children and servants (London, 1627)Google Scholar.

23 The Christians Jewell [fit] to adorne the hearte and decke the house of every Protestant (London, [1624])Google Scholar.

24 The good hows-holder (London, 1607)Google Scholar; The husband’s instructions to his family, or household observations (London, 1685)Google ScholarPubMed.

25 Hanmling, Tara, Decorating the ‘Godly’ Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain (New Haven, CT, and London, 2010)Google Scholar, especially her discussion of art designed to mimic the gaze and emphasize the presence of God (ch. 6); see also her ‘Old Robert’s Girdle: Visual and Material Props for Piety in Post-Reformation England’, in Martin and Ryrie, eds, Private and Domestic Devotion, 135-63; and, in this volume, ‘Living with the Bible in Post-Reformation England: The Materiality of Text, Image and Object in Domestic Life’, 210-39.

26 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, transl. Beveridge, Henry, 2 vols (Grand Rapids, MI, 1989 edn), 2: 180 Google Scholar (III.20.30).

27 Greenham, Richard, A godly exhortation, and fruitfull admonition to virtuous parents and modest matrons (London, 1584)Google Scholar, sigs A7v–A8r; Griffith, Bethel, 2. See also C[awdrey], Codlic forme of householde government, sigs A2V–A3r. Baskerville, Stephen, ‘The Family in Puritan Political Theology’, JFH 18 (1993), 15777 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that the widespread deployment of familial metaphors was indicative of a contemporary sense of crisis within the family.

28 Bernard, , Joshuas resolution, 22 Google Scholar.

29 Nicholls, Josias, An order of household instruction (London, 1596)Google Scholar, ‘to the Reader’, esp. sigs B2r, B3v–B4r.

30 A scenario discussed in , R. R., The house-holders helpe, for domesticall discipline (London, 1615), 201.Google Scholar

31 Hinde, William, A faithfull remonstrance of the holy life and happy death, of John Bruen of Bruen-Stapleford in the County of Chester (London, 1641), 49, 51, 53, 65.Google Scholar

32 Clarke, Samuel, The lives of thirty-two English divines, famous in their generation for learning and piety, and most of them sufferers in the cause of Christ (London, 1677 edn), 135, 1901 Google Scholar. Gouge, William was also exemplary in this respect: ‘A Narrative of the Life and Death of Doctor Gouge’, in Gouge, William, A learned and very useful commentary on the whole epistle to the Hebrewes (London, 1655)Google Scholar, sig. a2v.

33 Cawton, Thomas, The life and death of that holy and reverend man of God Mr Thomas Cawton (London, 1662), 601.Google Scholar

34 Clarke, , Lives, 414 Google Scholar, alluding to 2 Tim. 1: 5. On godly women in conduct books and biographies, see Eales, Jacqueline, ‘Samuel Clarke and the “Lives” of Godly Women in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Sheils and Wood, eds, Women in the Church, 36576 Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Gender Construction in Early Modern England and the Conduct Books of William Whateley, 1583-1639’, in Swanson, ed., Gender and Christian Religion, 163-74.

35 Lake, Peter, ‘Reading Clarke’s Lives in Political and Polemical Context’, in Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steen N., eds, Writing Lives: Biography and Textualily, Identity and Representation in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2008), 293318.Google Scholar

36 Henry, Matthew, An account of the life and death of Philip Henry, minister of the gospel (London, 1698)Google Scholar, ch. 4 and preface, sig. A4r. On these editorial strategies, see Crawford, Patricia, ‘Katharine and Philip Henry and their Children: A Case Study in Family Ideology’, in eadem, Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (Harlow, 2004), 175208.Google Scholar

37 See the digression on this subject in Hindle, Faithful) remonstrance, 52-3. On mixed marriage in the Netherlands, see Kaplan, Benjamin J., ‘“For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons”: The Practice and Perils of Mixed Marriage in the Dutch Golden Age’, in Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe; Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment, ed. Forster, Marc R. and Kaplan, Benjamin J. (Aldershot, 2005), 11533.Google Scholar

38 Foxe, John, Actes and Monuments (London, 1583 edn), 1956.Google Scholar

39 Lake, Peter, ‘Feminine Piety and Personal Potency: The “Emancipation” of Mrs Jane Ratcliffe’, The Seventeenth Century 2 (1987), 14365 Google Scholar; cf. Collinson’s, Patrick scepticism about the capacity of such texts to yield insight into individual lives: ‘“A Magazine of Religious Patterns”: An Erasmian Topic Transposed in English Protestantism’, in his Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983), 499525 Google Scholar. On spirituality as ‘an emotional release from patriarchy’, see Willen, Diane, ‘Godly Women in Early Modern England: Puritanism and Gender’, JEH 43 (1992), 56180 Google Scholar, at 577.

40 Johnston, Warren, ‘Prophecy, Patriarchy, and Violence in the Early Modern Household:The Revelations of Anne Wentworth’, JFH 34 (2009), 34468, esp. 3535 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; see also Hughes, Ann, ‘Puritanism and Gender’, in Coffey, John and Lim, Paul C. H., eds, The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge, 2008), 294308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Gouge, , Domesticall duties, 3259, 4679, 6368.Google Scholar

42 The allusion is to Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I’, repr. in his Elizabethan Essays (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1994), 3157 Google Scholar. On the subordination of the claims of the natural family to the divine authority of God the Father, and the figurative fatherhood of the earthly ruler, see Sircy, Jonathan, ‘Becoming Spiritual: Authority and Legitimacy in the Early Modern English Family’, in Cobb, Christopher, ed., Renaissance Papers 2009 (Woodbridge, 2010), 5565 Google Scholar.

43 See Penny, D. Andrew, ‘Family Matters and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments ’, HistJ 39 (1996), 599618, esp. 6047.Google Scholar

44 Collinson, , Birthpangs, 757 Google Scholar; idem, ‘“Not Sexual in the Ordinary Sense”: Women, Men and Religious Transactions’, in idem, Elizabethan Essays, 119-50.

45 Sharpe, J. A., ‘Disruption in the Well-Ordered Household: Age, Authority, and Possessed Young People’, in Griffiths, Paul, Fox, Adam and Hindle, Steve, eds, The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1996), 187212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The phenomenon of child prophecy reflects similar tensions: see my ‘“Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings’: Prophecy, Puritanism and Childhood in Elizabethan Suffolk’, and Susan Hardman Moore, ‘“Such Perfecting of Praise out of the Mouth of a Babe”: Sarah Wight as Child Prophet’, in Wood, ed., Church and Childhood, 285-99 and 313-24. Quotation from Swan, John, A true and breife report of Mary Glovers vexation, and of her deliverance by fastings and prayer ([London, 1603]), 8.Google Scholar

46 Perkins, , A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft, in Workes, 3: 6467.Google Scholar

47 Tamling, , Decorating the ‘Godly’ Household, 26973.Google Scholar

48 See Heal, Felicity and Holmes, Clive, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500-1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), 3689 Google Scholar. It is, however, clear that private baptisms continued into the 1630s, although they had become much less common by about 1590: Cleugh, Hannah, ‘Baptism and Burial in the Reformation Church of England: Theological Tensions and Controversies’ (D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 2007), 14575.Google Scholar

49 The Works of John Wliitgift, D.D., ed. John Ayre, 3 vols, PS (Cambridge, 1851-3), 1: 207-12.

50 For Vaughan, , see Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, ed. Fincham, Kenneth, 2 vols, CERS 1, 5 (Woodbridge, 1994–8), 1: 38 Google Scholar. The phrase ‘under color, or pretext of religion’ is used, for instance, in Richard Montagu’s articles for Chichester (1628): ibid. 2: 24; see also 1: 6-7, 59, 75, 103, 106, 144, 157, 176-7, 181, 194, 205; 2: 14, 52, 58, 89, 129, 138, 197. For similar articles from the Tudor period, see Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England: being a collection of injunctions, declarations, orders, articles of enquiry, &c., from the year 1546 to the year 1716, ed. Edward Cardwell, 2 vols (Oxford, 1844), 1: 91, 206-7, 245. 293-4, 360, 386, 468; 2: 23-4, 35, 302-4; Elizabethan Episcopal Administration, ed. Kennedy, 2: 105, 113, 123, 127-8; 3: 142, 154, 180, 189, 202, 205, 350.

51 Canon 72 in The Anglican Canons, 1529-1947, ed. Gerald Bray, CERS 6 (Woodbridge, 1998), 362-3. Canon 71 renewed the Elizabethan prohibition on preaching or administering communion in private houses.

52 The comparison had been made by Augustine. It is echoed by Perkins, , Christian oeconomie, 699 Google Scholar; Bayly, , Practice of pietie, 343.Google Scholar

53 , R. R., House-holders helpe, 26.Google Scholar

54 Hinde, , Faithfull remonstrance, 767 Google Scholar. See Heal, and Holmes, , Gentry, 35974 Google Scholar, on gentry household piety.

55 Bancroft, Richard, A survay of the pretended holy discipline (London, 1593), 98 Google Scholar. See Earle, John, ‘A She Precise Hypocrite’, in his Microcosmography, or A Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters (London, n.d.), 724 Google Scholar; Antibrownistus Puritanomastix, Three Speeches (1642), extracts in Sasek, Lawrence A., ed., Images of English Puritanism: A Collection of Contemporary Sources 1580-1646 (Baton Rouge, LA, and London, 1989), 30915.Google Scholar

56 Emmison, F. G., Elizabethan Life: Morals & the Church Courts; Mainly from Essex Archidiaconal Records (Chelmsford, 1973), 99.Google Scholar

57 The phrase is Collinson’s, Patrick: ‘The English Conventicle’, in Shells, W.J. and Wood, Diana, eds, Voluntary Religion, SCH 23 (Oxford, 1986), 22359 Google Scholar, at 277. Collinson emphasizes that the shift into separation of many conventicles was ‘without deliberate intent, indeed directly contrary to intention, and principle’.

58 Sandys, Edwin, Sermons, PS (Cambridge, 1842), 270 Google Scholar; Cawdrey, , Family reformation promoted, 57 Google Scholar; Slater, , Earnest call, 31011.Google Scholar

59 Griffith, , Bethel, 411 Google Scholar; see also 392.

60 Directions of The General Assembly concerning secret and private worship, and mutual edification (Edinburgh, 1647), 8 Google Scholar; see also Paget, Thomas, A demonstration of family-duties (London, 1643)Google Scholar.

61 Goodwin, Philip, Religio domestica rediviva: or, family-religion revived (London, 1655), 11516.Google Scholar

62 On the demonization of heretics as sexual deviants, see Richards, Jeffrey, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Croups in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), 5763 Google Scholar. On the link between Cathar activity and the household and family, see Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324, transl. Bray, Barbara (Harmondsworth, 1978), 2430 Google Scholar; Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford, 1992 edn), 11213.Google Scholar

63 On Hawisia Moore, see Tanner, Norman, ed., Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31, Camden 4th ser. 20 (London, 1977), 140 Google Scholar. For other examples, see McSheffrey, Shannon and Tanner, Norman, eds, Lollards of Coventry 1486-1522, Camden 5th ser. 23 (Cambridge, 2003), 356, 1024, 107, 119, 123, 126, 129, 1489, 2089, 21213 Google Scholar. For discussions, see Hudson, Ann, The Premature Reformation :Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 1347, 1756, 183, 450 Google Scholar; McSheffrey, Shannon, Gender and Heresy: Men and Women in Lollard Communities 1420-1530 (Philadelphia, PA, 1995)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

64 Martin, J. W., ‘Tudor Popular Religion: The Rise of the Conventicle’, in idem, Religious Radicals in Tudor England (London and Ronceverte, 1989), 1339 Google Scholar; Collinson, Patrick, ‘Night Schools, Conventicles and Churches: Continuities and Discontinuities in Early Protestant Ecclesiology’, in Marshall, Peter and Alec, Ryrie, eds, The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002), 20935.Google Scholar

65 Foxe, Actes and Monuments, 1801, 1655.

66 , H. N., A benedicitie or blessinge to be saide over the table ([Cologne], 1575)Google Scholar; see Marsh, Christopher, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550-1630 (Cambridge, 1994), 8993.Google Scholar

67 Wilkinson, William, A confutation of certaine articles, delivered unto the familye of love (London, 1579)Google Scholar, sig. *3r and the Epistle to the Reader; Knewstub, John, A confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies, taught by H. N. and embraced of a number, who call themselves the familie of love (London, 1579)Google Scholar, sig. xx5r. For accounts of household meetings, see the confession of two Familists in 1561, in Rogers, John, The displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked heretiques, naming themselves the familie of love (London, 1578)Google Scholar, sigs I4 v–I5 v.

68 Penn, William, To the churches of Jesus throughout the world. Gathered and settled in his eternal light, power and spirit, to be one holy flock, family and household to the lord, who hath redeemed them from among all the kindreds of the earth (London, 1677), 23.Google Scholar

69 Wright, Sheila, ‘“Truly Dear Hearts”: Family and Spirituality in Quaker Women’s Writings 1680-1750’, in Brown, Sylvia, ed., Women, Gender and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2007), 97113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 16 Car. II, c. 4; 22 Car. II. c. I. See also OED, s.v. ‘conventicle’.

71 See Cragg, Gerald R., Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution (Cambridge, 1957), 13643 Google Scholar; Cambers, Andrew and Wolfe, Michelle, ‘Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity in Late Stuart England’, HistJ 47 (2004), 87596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 The Life of Adam Martindale, Written by Himself and Now First Printed from the Original Manuscript in the British Museum, ed. Parkinson, Richard, Chetham Society 1st ser. 4 (Manchester, 1855), 173, 176, 194 Google Scholar; The Notebook of the Rev. Thomas Jolly AD 1671-1693. Extracts from the Church Book of Altham and Wymondhouscs, AD 1649-1725. And an Account of the folly Family of Standish, Gorton, and Altham, Chetham Society n.s. 33 (Manchester, 1895), xvii, xxi, 63, 133.Google Scholar

73 Oliver Heywood’s Life of John Angier of Denton, Together with Angier’s Diary, and Extracts from his ‘An Helpe to Better Hearts’: Also Samuel Angier’s Diary, ed. Axon, Ernest, Chetham Society n.s. 97 (Manchester, 1937), 845, 95 Google Scholar.

74 Baxter, Richard, The poor man’s family book (London, 1674)Google Scholar; idem, The catechizing of families: a teacher of housholders how to teach their households (London, 1683)Google Scholar.

75 See Payne, William, Family religion: or, the duty of taking care of religion in families, and the means of doing it (London, 1691)Google Scholar; Slater, , An earnest call to family-religion Google Scholar; Shower, John, Family religion in three letters to a friend (London, 1694)Google Scholar; Bray, Thomas, An appendix to the discourse upon the doctrine of our baptismal covenant being a method of family religion (London, 1699)Google Scholar; Tillotson, , Six sermons, 50, 7882 Google Scholar. , T. W., The godly mans delight or a family guide to pietie (London, 1679)Google Scholar, is a treatise in the vein of Bayly’s Practice of pietie.

76 Cambers and Wolfe, ‘Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity’.

77 Cited ibid. 876, from San Marino, CA, Henry E. Huntington Library, MS HM 6131, fol. 55v, printed in The Life of John Rastrick, 1650-1727, ed. Andrew Cambers, Camden 5th ser. 36 (Cambridge, 2010), 128.

78 As noted by Morgan, Godly Learning, 143.

79 Edwards, Thomas, Gangracna: or A catalogue and discovery of many of the crrours, heresies, blasphemies and pernicious practices of the sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in these four last years (London, 1646), 156 Google Scholar; Cawdrey, , Family reformation promoted, 26 Google Scholar; see also Thomas, Keith, ‘Women and die Civil War Sects’, P&P, no. 13 (1958), 4262 Google Scholar, at 52.

80 See Caffyn, John, Sussex Believers: Baptist Marriage in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Worthing, 1988)Google Scholar.

81 Henry, Matthew, A church in the house. A sermon concerning family-religion (London, 1704), 6, 17, 40, 39 Google Scholar. For his own exemplary family religion, see An account of the life and death of the late Reverend Mr Matthew Henry, Minister of the Gospel at Hackney, who died June 22nd, 1714, in the 52d year of his age, ed. Tong, W. (London, 1716), ch. 3, esp. 124 Google Scholar. See also Jones, David, A sermon of the absolute necessity of family-duties, preached to the united parishes of St Mary Woolnoth, & St Mary Woolchurch Haw in Lombard Street (London, 1692)Google Scholar; Heywood, Oliver, A family altar erected …A solemne essay to promote the worship of God in private houses (London, 1693)Google Scholar.

82 On the cult of the Holy Family, see Rubin, Miri, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (London, 2009), 32331.Google Scholar

83 Alberti, Leon Battista, The Family in Renaissance Florence. A translation … of I Libri della Famiglia, transl. Watkins, Renée Neu (Columbia, SC, 1969)Google Scholar.

84 See Underwood, Malcolm J., ‘Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort’, JEH 38 (1987), 3952.Google Scholar

85 See Bornstein, Daniel, ‘Spiritual Kinship and Domestic Devotions’, in Brown, Judith C. and Davis, Robert C., eds, Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy (London and New York, 1998), 17392 Google Scholar; Zarri, Gabriella, ‘Christian Good Manners: Spiritual and Monastic Rules in the Quattro and Cinquecento’, in Panizza, Letizia, ed., Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society (Oxford, 2000), 7691 Google Scholar; Batt, Catherine, Renevey, Denis and Whitehead, Christiania, ‘Domesticity and Medieval Devotional Literature’, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 36 (2005), 195250, esp. 209, 213, 228, 237 Google Scholar; Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B., ‘The Household as a Site of Civic and Religious Instruction: Two Household Books from Late Medieval Brabant’, and Jones, Sarah Rees and Riddy, Felicity, ‘The Bolton Hours of York: Female Domestic Piety and the Public Sphere’, in Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B. and Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, eds, Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2005), 191214 and 21560 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erler, Mary C..’Home Visits: Mary, Elizabeth, Margery Kempe and the Feast of the Visitation’, in Kowaleski, Maryanne and Goldberg, P. J. P., eds, Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2008), 25976.Google Scholar

86 On Whitford, see, in this volume, Wooding, Lucy, ‘Richard Whitford’s Wcrkefor Housholders: Humanism, Monasticism and Tudor Household Piety’, 16173 Google Scholar; see also Pantin, W. A., ‘Instructions for a Devout and Literate Layman’, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. Alexander, J. J. and Gibson, M. T. (Oxford, 1976), 398422 Google Scholar.

87 For some recent contributions of note, see Webb, Diana M., ‘Women and Home: The Domestic Setting of Late Medieval Spirituality’, in Sheils and Wood, eds, Women and the Church, 15973 Google Scholar; eadem, Domestic Space and Devotion in the Middle Ages’, in Spicer, Andrew and Hamilton, Sarah, eds, Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2005), 2747 Google Scholar; Kasl, Ronda, ‘Holy Households: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Venice’, in eadem, ed., Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion (Indianapolis, IN, 2004), 5989 Google Scholar; Cooper, Donal, ‘Devotion’, in Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta and Dennis, Flora, eds, At Home in Renaissance Italy (London, 2006), 190203 Google Scholar; Morse, Margaret A., ‘Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Culture of the Renaissance Venetian Casa ’, Renaissance Studies 21 (2007), 15184 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to my colleague Mary Laven for discussions about the relative neglect of this topic in the Catholic context.

88 Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars : Traditional Religion in England c.1400 – c.1580 (New Haven,CT.and London, 1991; 2nd edn 2005), 4, 1213 Google Scholar; idem, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240-1570 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2006), 545, 97 Google Scholar

89 Bossy, John, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe’, P&P, no. 47 (1970), 5170 Google Scholar, quotation at 68. For the decree against celebration of the eucharist in private houses, see Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, ed. Schroeder, H.J. (Rockford, IL, 1978 edn), 151.Google Scholar

90 Mattox, Philip, ‘Domestic Sacral Space in the Florentine Renaissance Palace’, Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 65873 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morse, , ‘Creating Sacred Space’, 1745.Google Scholar

91 On the reassertion of patriarchy in the context of Bavarian Catholic state-building, see Strasser, Ulrike, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004)Google Scholar.

92 Canisius, Peter, An introduction to the Catholick faith: containing a brief explication of the Christian doctrine: togeather with an easic method to examine the conscience for a general confession: whereunto is added a dailie exercise of deuout prayers ([Rouen], 1633)Google Scholar. Other examples include the discussion of the 4th [5th] commandment in Benedicti’s manual for confessors La somme des pechez (1584): see Flandrin, Jean-Luis, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality (Cambridge, 1979), 11845, esp. 121 Google Scholar. For Italian works, including Giovanni Leonardi’s Institution of a Christian Family (1591), see Logan, Oliver, ‘Counter-Reformation Theories of Upbringing in Italy’, in Wood, , ed., Church and Childhood, 27584.Google Scholar

93 Forster, Marc R., ‘Domestic Devotions and Family Piety in German Catholicism’, in Piety and Family, ed. Forster and Kaplan, 97114.Google Scholar

94 Perry, Mary Elizabeth, ‘Space of Resistance, Site of Betrayal: Morisco Homes in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, in Howe, Nicholas, ed., Home and Homclessness in the Medieval and Renaissance World (Notre Dame, IN, 2004), 5790 Google Scholar, at 64, 70; Nenk, Beverly, ‘Public Worship, Private Devotion: The Crypto-Jews of Reformation England’, in Gaimster, David and Gilchrist, Roberta, eds, The Archaeology of the Reformation 1480-1580 (Leeds, 2003), 20420 Google Scholar. See also Dolan, Frances E., ‘Gender and the “Lost” Spaces of Catholicism’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32 (2002), 64165, esp. 6528 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClain, Lisa, ‘Without Church, Cathedral, or Shrine: The Search for Religious Space among Catholics in England, 1559-1625’, SCJ 33 (2002), 38199, esp. 3836 Google Scholar.

95 Anstruther, Godfrey, Vaux of Harrowden: A Recusant Family (Newport, 1953), 113.Google Scholar

96 Bossy, John, ‘The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, P&P, no. 21 (1962), 3959 Google Scholar; idem, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), ch. 6.

97 See my ‘Translating Trent? English Catholicism and the Counter Reformation’, HR 78 (2005), 288-310, esp. 297-9.

98 Palmes, William, Life of Mrs Dorothy Lawson, of St Anthony’s, near Newcastle-up-on-Tyne, in Northumberland, ed. Richardson, G. Bourchier (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1851)Google Scholar; An Elizabethan Recusant House: Comprising the Life of Lady Magdalen Viscountess Montague (1538-1608), ed. Southern, A. C. (London, 1954)Google Scholar. On Battle, see Questier, Michael, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 7.

99 Father Pollard’s Recollections of the Yorkshire Mission’, in Morris, John, ed., The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers Related by Themselves: Third Series (London, 1877), 468.Google Scholar

100 See Monta, Susannah, ‘Uncommon Prayer? Robert Southwell’s Short Rule for a Good Life and Catholic Domestic Devotion in post-Reformation England’, in Gallagher, Lowell, ed., Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism (Toronto, ON, and Los Angeles, CA, 2012), 24471, esp. 24756.Google Scholar

101 Persons, Robert, A Christian directory guiding me to eternall salvation (Rouen, 1607; first publ, as The first booke of the Christian exercise, 1582)Google Scholar; Southwell, Robert, A short rule of good life. To direct the devout Christian in a regular and orderly course ([English secret press, 1596–7])Google Scholar, chs 8-9.

102 Palmes, Life, 42; see my ‘“Domme Preachers”? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture of Print’, P&P, no. 168 (2000), 72-123, at 108-13.

103 London, BL, MS Lansdowne 50, no. 76, fol. 164r.

104 Kew, TNA, SP 12/16/47.

105 TNA, SP 14/19/72, cited in Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, 386.

106 Foley, Henry, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society offesus, 7 vols in 8 (London, 1877–84), 2: 231.Google Scholar

107 Cf. Kasl, . ‘Holy Households’, esp. 68, 75.Google Scholar

108 Gerard, John, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, transl. and ed. Caraman, Philip (London, 1951), 149 Google Scholar; Palmes, Life, 8; see also Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowdcn, part II, ch. 6, at 240.

109 Gerard, Autobiography, transl. and ed. Caraman, 195; Elizabethan Recusant House, ed. Southern, 43. Dorothy Lawson’s chapel was vested ‘according to the fashion in Catholick countrys’: Palmes, Life, 38. See also Williams, Richard L., ‘Forbidden Sacred Spaces in Reformation England’, in Spicer and Hamilton, eds, Defining the Holy, 95114.Google Scholar

110 Southwell, , Short rule, 12833.Google Scholar

111 See Williams, Richard L., ‘Cultures of Dissent: English Catholicism and the Visual Arts’, in Kaplan, Benjamin et al., eds, Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570-1720 (Manchester and New York, 2009), 23048, at 2402.Google Scholar

112 Hodgetts, Michael, ‘ Loca Secretoria in 1581’, RH 19 (1989), 38695; idem, Secret Hiding Places (Dublin, 1989)Google Scholar; see also Yates, Julian, ‘Parasitic Geographies: Manifesting Catholic Identity in Early Modern England’, in Marotti, Arthur, ed., Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts (New York, 1999), 6384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

113 Clitheroe, Lancashire, Stonyhurst MSS, Anglia A. I. 73; ET in Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, 189.

114 Camm, Bede, Forgotten Shrines: An Account of Some Old Catholic Halls and Families in England and of Relics and Memorials of the English Martyrs (London, 1936), 188, 291.Google Scholar

115 Sheils, Bill, ‘Household, Age and Gender among Jacobean Yorkshire Recusants’, in Rowlands, Marie B., ed., Catholics of Parish and Town 1558-1778, CRS Monograph Series 5 (London, 1999), 13152, at 1378 Google Scholar; Underwood, Lucy, ‘Youth, Religious Identity, and Autobiography at the English Colleges in Rome and Valladolid, 1592-1685’, HistJ 55 (2012), 34974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

116 Memorials of Father Augustine Baker and Other Documents Relating to the English Benedictines, ed. McCann, J. and Connolly, H., CRS 33 (Leeds, 1933), 16.Google Scholar

117 Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, ‘Margaret Clitherow, Catholic Nonconformity, Martyrology and the Politics of Religious Change in Elizabethan England’, P&P, no. 185 (2004), 4390 Google Scholar; eidem, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 3.

118 Palmes, , Life, 17.Google Scholar

119 Garnet, Henry, A treatise of Christian renunciation … wherin is shewed how fane it is lawfull or necessary for the love of Christ to forsake Father, Mother, wife and children, and all other worldly creatures ([London, 1593]), 1448.Google Scholar

120 Holmes, P. J., ed., Elizabethan Casuistry, CRS 67 (London, 1981), 119.Google Scholar

121 Bossy, , English Catholic Community, 153, and see 15060.Google Scholar

122 Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 1993), 801 Google Scholar; see also Rowlands, Marie B., ‘Recusant Women 1560-1640’, in Prior, Mary, ed., Women in English Society 1500-1800 (London and New York, 1985), 14980 Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Harbourers and Housekeepers: Catholic Women in England 1570-1720’, in Kaplan et al., eds, Catholic Communities in Protestant States, 200-15. F°r one family with a church-papist head, see Knell, P. R. P., ‘A Seventeenth Century Schismatic and his Catholic Family’, London Recusant 1 (1971), 5770.Google Scholar

123 Lux-Sterritt, Laurence, ‘“Virgo becomes Virago”: Women in the Accounts of Seventeenth-Century English Catholic Missionaries’, RH 30 (2011), 53753 Google Scholar, at 538.

124 Seguin, Colleen M., ‘Ambiguous Liaisons: Catholic Women’s Relationships with their Confessors in Early Modern England’, ARC 95 (2004), 15685 Google Scholar. These themes have been further developed by Emma McAlister-Hall in her 2011 Cambridge M.Phil. dissertation, ‘Female Harbourers and Helpers in Post-Reformation English Catholicism 1570-1630’.

125 Gerard, , Autobiography, 166.Google Scholar

126 McCoog, T. M., ‘“Sparrows on a Rooftop”: “How we Live where we Live” in Elizabethan England’, in Spirit, Style, Story: Essays honoring John W. Padburg, ed. Lucas, T. M. (Chicago, IL, 2002), 23764 Google Scholar, at 255.

127 Elizabethan Recusant House, ed. Southern, 37-8.

128 McLain cites an example from Golborne, Lancashire, where this rite was performed in a private home in 1604: ‘Without Church, Cathedral or Shrine’, 381.

129 Dillon, Anne, ‘Praying by Number: The Confraternity of the Rosary and the English Catholic Community, c. 1580-1700’, History 88 (2003), 45171, esp. 468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

130 See, for example, Huntington Library, Stowe Temple Religious Papers, folder 5, warrant dated 13 June 1616.

131 See Nugent, Janay, ‘“None Must Meddle Betueene Man and Wife”: Assessing Family and Fluidity of Public and Private in Early Modern Scotland’, JFH 35 (2010), 21931.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

132 Underwood, Lucy, ‘Childhood, Youth and Catholicism in England, c. 1558-1660’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar, part II.

133 Neale, John, Queen Elizabeth and her Parliaments, 2 vols (London, 1957), 2: 281, 2934, 297 Google Scholar; Bossy, , English Catholic Community, 1557 Google Scholar; Rowlands, , ‘Recusant Women’, 1545 Google Scholar. The act is 35 Eliz. c. 2.

134 Kaplan, Benjamin J., ‘Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe’, AHR 107 (2002), 103164 Google Scholar, at 1062; see also his ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Devotion: Embassy Chapels and the Toleration of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe’, JEMH 6 (2002), 241-61.