The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/English Domestic Relations, 1487–1632

by Willystine Goodsell

English Domestic Relations, 1487–1632: a Study of Matrimony and Family Life in Theory and Practice as Revealed by the Literature, Law, and History of the Period. By Chilton Latham Powell, Ph.D. [Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature.] (New York: Columbia University Press. 1917. Pp. xii, 274. $1.50.)

Less than two decades ago the family, as a social institution with a vitally significant history, was almost a terra incognita save to special students in the fields of anthropology and sociology. Within the last fifteen years, however, excellent historical and social studies of marriage and the family institution have appeared in English, of which the most scholarly is unquestionably Professor Howard's History of Matrimonial Institutions, published in 1904. Dr. Powell's book on English Domestic Relations marks a new era, in which intensive studies of family ideals and practices in certain fruitful periods will increasingly be made.

The author declares the subject of his investigation to be

 

that of domestic relations in England, including both the contract of marriage (its making and breaking) and the subsequent life of the family. The period involved extends from the first appearance of the subject in English writing up to its first great crisis, a height of clear thinking and vigorous expression on which Milton and Cromwell stand alone.

 

With painstaking care Dr. Powell has examined a long array of legal and controversial works, dealing with questions of spousals, marriage, and divorce. Some of these writings have been referred to, more or less? briefly, by previous gleaners in this field; others, as the author assures us, "have been examined for the first time in connection with the subject of marriage". In the opening chapters of Dr. Powell's book the development of the heated controversies waged by Anglicans and Dissenters over the marriage contract and ceremony and over matters of divorce jurisdiction and legislation is clearly traced, with liberal quotations from the works of leading writers. The early practice of the Anglican Church as set forth by Harrington in his quaint Comendacions of Matrymony (1528) is brought into sharp contrast with the views of such prominent Dissenters as Brown and Robert Barrow. Particularly interesting and valuable is the chapter on the Attempted Reform of Divorce. Here the enlightened views of Bishop Hooper, Cartwright, John Rainolds, and other reformers, who upheld the doctrine of divorce for adultery, desertion, and "poisonings", are set over against the conservative attitude of the Established Church, which steadfastly clung to ancient Catholic practice.

Perhaps the most valuable portions of Dr. Powell's book are the chapters describing and analyzing the Domestic Conduct Book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Contemporary Attitudes towards Woman and the Wider Ranges of Domestic Literature. As the author rightly points out, this field "has been almost entirely neglected in connection with the present subject". And the field is both rich and interesting. Finally, four appendixes are added to the book, in the first of which a complete account is given for the first time of the divorce suit of Henry VIII., and in the second, a new conception of the married life of Milton and the cause of his famous divorce tracts is advanced.

Such a careful and detailed study as Dr. Powell's should be sincerely welcomed by every student of the family. The fresh material it assembles and the painstaking way in which it traces the evolution of new ideas concerning marriage and divorce make it a genuine contribution to the growing body of literature on this subject.

Willystine Goodsell.