Edwardian Reformation, 1550s, Privy Council, reformers, marriage, dialogues, commonplace
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the time of the Edwardian Reformation. They fall into two basic types: Verses arguing for and against marrying, and dialogues providing commonplace instruction upon cultivating a successful partnership. They played only a peripheral part in the reforming drive to rehabilitate the status of marriage. Nonetheless, many of them reached a wide audience and, as a group, they are of interest since they crystallise and reflect in miniature many central concerns about, and approaches towards, the subject of marriage as they were presented in marriage literature and in church.
By the early 1550s a crusade was well under way to impress upon the populace the sacred and social importance of marriage. The nuclear family was venerated as a reflection in microcosm of the relationship between the Church and Christ and depicted as the cornerstone of social order and stability.
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When, for instance, wives rebelled against their husbands all tended towards chaos and disorder in society at large, so the argument went.
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Such beliefs were current long before the Edwardian Reformation. What was new was the vigour with which they were peddled. When Henry VIII died he left behind him a strong contingency of zealous reformers in the Privy Council whose influence far outweighed those who were more conservatively inclined. During Edward’s minority this provided reformers with the opportunity to promote marriage and to compensate for the perceived undermining of its importance that had taken place during Henry’s reign when wedlock had
274 The Book of Common Prayer stipulated that during the marriage service the congregation should be informed that God “hast consecrated the state of matrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and represented the spiritual marriage and unity betwixt Christ and his Church”, The Book of Common Prayer, 1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. John E. Booty (London and Toronto: Associated UPs; Washington D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1982), p.296. The passage remained unrevised from the 1552 version.
275 See, for instance, David E. Underdown, ‘The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England’, in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge: CUP, 1985), pp.116-36 (pp.117-18).
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