The high likelihood that not all cases of non-fatal assault were reported is especially true of cases of marital violence.106 There are no examples of violence between a husband
and wife in the sample periods, though one suspect was indicted for attempting to poison her spouse.107 This is not necessarily surprising. Although studies of marital
breakdown confirm that some relationships could be ‘battlegrounds for power’ where both women and men could resort to physical violence to assert dominance, victims of domestic violence were unlikely to prosecute.108 Those few that sought assistance went
before Justices of the Peace to gain assurances in the Petty or Quarter Sessions. Contemporary debates surrounding the right of a husband to ‘moderately correct’ his rebellious wife had evolved significantly by the eighteenth century, but it remained difficult for a woman to successfully prove her husband’s violence in court.109
Similarly, male honour and respectability remained so essential that men would rarely acknowledge their wives’ aggressive behaviour.110 Female violence directly threatened
a social order dependent on patriarchal ideals and was potentially so destructive that it
105John Carter Wood, ‘Locating violence: the spatial production and construction of physical aggression’,
in Katherine D. Watson (ed.), Assaulting the Past: Violence in Historical Context (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 22.
106 There have been several important studies of marital breakdown and domestic violence from the early
modern, through to the modern, period. Examples include Joanne Bailey, Unquiet Lives: Marriage and
Marriage Breakdown in England,1660-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Foyster, Marital Violence; Margaret R. Hunt, ‘Wife beating, domesticity and women’s independence in
eighteenth-century London’, Gender and History, 4 (1992), 10-29; Leah Leneman, ‘“A tyrant and tormentor”: violence against wives in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Scotland’, Continuity and
Change, 12 (1997), 31-54; Maeve E. Doggett, Marriage, Wife-Beating and the Law in Victorian England: ‘Sub Virga Viri’ (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992); Susan Dwyer Amussen, ‘“Being
stirred to much unquietness:” violence and domestic disorder in early modern England’, Journal of
Women’s History, 6 (1994), 70-89.
107 NLW GS 4/612/3.16 (1739). 108 Foyster, Marital Violence, 102.
109 Hurl-Eamon, Gender and Petty Violence, 59; Helen Rogers, ‘Women and liberty’, in Peter Mandler
(ed.), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 131. For the right to ‘correct’ household inferiors, see Susan Dwyer Amussen, ‘Gender, family and social order, 1560– 1725’, in Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 196-217. For the changing nature of patriarchy following the Civil Wars, see Jacqueline Eales, Women in Early Modern England 1500-1700 (London: UCL Press, 1998), 23-34.
110For studies of manhood and male honour, see, for example Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘The taming of the
duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660-1800’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), 525- 45; Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘Male honour and the decline of public violence in eighteenth-century London’, Social History, 26 (2001), 190-208; Alexandra Shepard, ‘Manhood, credit and patriarchy in early modern England’, Past and Present, 167 (2000), 75-106; Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in Early
‘could turn the world upside down’.111 Women who abused their husbands were
mocked and ridiculed, as were the male victims, who were seen as losing control of their households and their masculinity.112 Indeed, the authority of the husband was so
important that few self-respecting men would admit that their wives had been violent towards them unless they could prove that they had regained control in the struggle that ensued.113
According to folklore, communities adopted informal sanctions to deal with cases of domestic violence. In Wales, the ‘Coolstrin’ was witnessed in Glamorganshire by the nineteenth-century English traveller, Charles Redwood. This ancient form of ‘rough music’ was allegedly introduced by the ‘Old Welsh Lawgivers’ as a corrective measure for unruly women, and pre-dated the English version of ‘Skymmetry’ and the ‘Riding of the Stang’. Charles recalled the incident of a tailor married to an abusive wife who would often ‘cuff the little man, to the great disgrace of manhood in general’. The neighbourhood intervened, summoning a ‘Coolstrin Court’ to determine a resolution. Local men were assigned to the roles of judge, defender and prosecutor and the case was presented to a ‘jury’. After deliberating, it was decided that a ‘riding’ should take place so that ‘these hectoring wenches may...learn what it is we think of them; and that all men may be put in mind to keep the reigns tight, and not part with the breeches’. On the designated day, a procession comprising the ‘judge’, various ‘musicians’ beating frying-pans, kettles and other domestic objects, and two standard-bearers, one with a petticoat on a pole, and the other with attached, reversed breeches, processed around the village in display of the communal disapproval of the act of female violence.114
This was not a unique occurrence and there is folkloric evidence of regional variations.115 ‘Rough justice’ in eighteenth-century Denbighshire was administered
through a court referred to as ‘Court Beans’ after its founder, Richard Beans.116 These
‘courts’ were presided over by two judges dressed in white wigs and gowns in imitation of the Courts of Great Sessions. The Welsh contemporary, William Thomas, also recalled two earlier examples of rough music. In his diary entry for 15 March 1765 he wrote there was ‘much Noise and Riots in Wrenston and Wenvoe’ as a result of a
111 Foyster, Marital Violence, 105.
112On rough music, see M. J. George, ‘Skimmington revisited’, The Journal of Men’s Studies, 10 (2002),
111-26. On cuckoldry, see David M. Turner, Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England,
1660-1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
113 Foyster, Marital Violence, 103.
114 Charles Redwood, The Vale of Glamorgan: Scenes and Tales Among the Welsh (London: Saunders
and Oatley, 1839), 271-95.
115 For informal courts in the nineteenth century, see Jones, Crime in Nineteenth Century Wales, 11-13. 116 Howell, The Rural Poor, 148.
‘Skymmetry’ due to Morgan Daniel’s wife having ‘abused him after a merry night of dancing at their house in Wrenston the 13th February last past’.117 He also wrote that
another Skymmetry had occurred in the area on 15 December 1790.118
That there are no recorded instances of non-fatal domestic assault in the Great Sessions records during the period under study is not to imply that marital violence did not occur. The existence, albeit scant, of cases amongst the lower courts, and folkloric evidence, confirms its occurence. Communities had their own way of dealing with domestic violence. References to communal intervention in cases of marital discord emphasise the wider significance of the ordered household, which was often considered too important to be left entirely to its members. Marital violence was deemed unacceptable and could not be tolerated. Community-sanctioned acts of humiliation existed to reinforce disapproval and deter such occurrences.