Within the 18th and Nineteenth centuries, Presbyterians from Ulster in Northern Eire had a fairly unexpected popularity for being particularly – if no longer excessively – taken with intercourse.
Because the Ordnance Survey Memoirs Observer for the parish of Rashee in County Antrim candidly put it in 1835, whilst the Presbyterians of the north of Eire “unhesitatingly” claimed for themselves a common persona of “extreme morality”, they had been “not the pious race so generally imagined”.
The data of the Presbyterian church on this length no doubt give the affect of a group with a colourful sexual tradition – even though person who used to be additionally strictly policed. It’s this pressure between piety and promiscuity that I discover in my new e book, Pious and Promiscuous: Existence, Love and Circle of relatives in Presbyterian Ulster – revealing for the primary time non-public tales that formed the rhythms and rituals of Presbyterian circle of relatives lifestyles in 18th- and Nineteenth-century Ulster.
The Presbyterian church carefully regulated the intimate lives of its individuals via a machine of church court docket self-discipline. Misbehaving individuals may just in finding themselves earlier than the Kirk Consultation (the church’s native court docket) for quite a lot of offences together with bigamy, drunkenness, slander, fist fights and skipping Sabbath services and products. Nevertheless it used to be sexual misbehaviour that despatched maximum to those courts.
Of the 375 circumstances regarded as by way of First Dromara Kirk Consultation in County Down between 1780 and 1805, 230 involved sexual misbehaviour. In a similar fashion, greater than part of all circumstances heard by way of Carnmoney Kirk Consultation in County Antrim between 1786 and 1821 had been of a sexual nature.
Sexual offences used to be a wide class that integrated intercourse between single and about-to-be-married individuals (referred to as fornication or pre-marital fornication), intercourse with anyone who used to be no longer your partner (adultery), and “scandalous carriage” – intimate acts that stopped in need of complete sexual sex, equivalent to kissing or heavy petting.
Behavior which raised suspicions that intercourse had taken position additionally fell beneath this heading. {Couples} who frolicked in combination by myself and unchaperoned might be cited, in addition to those that had been stuck in compromising scenarios.
Presbyterian Catechising by way of John Phillip (1847).
Nationwide Galleries of Scotland, CC BY-NC
That is what came about to John Woodend, a married guy and member of the Aghadowey Presbyterian congregation in County Londonderry. His bedsharing practices roused suspicions that he were accountable of adultery. In October 1704, Woodend used to be informed off by way of the Kirk Consultation after he used to be observed mendacity “in naked bed” along with his servant maid, Margaret.
A person named John Boil reported seeing the pair in mattress in combination, then staring at as Woodend were given up and started “pulling on his cloths”. Since Woodend’s spouse used to be additionally within the room on the time – she used to be sitting on a chair subsequent to the mattress – the consultation dominated it used to be not going the bedsharing pair had dedicated adultery. However Woodend’s habits used to be nonetheless regarded as “unseemly and offensive”, leading to his censure for “unseemly carriage”.
Intercourse first, marriage 2d?
The sheer quantity of sexual misbehaviour circumstances heard by way of the church courts seems to signify that Presbyterians had been somewhat permissive of their attitudes to intercourse outdoor marriage.
Fornication and pre-marital fornication had been, in any case, essentially the most a lot of sexual offences. Certainly, historians used to consider that Presbyterians had been other from different spiritual communities in Eire as a result of their perceived tolerance of extra-marital intercourse. However that affect is deceptive.
Data of the church courts display that Ulster Presbyterians had been some distance from “promiscuous” of their angle to sexual morality. Kirk Consultation minute books expose how Presbyterian men and women engaged in sexual sex as a part of the rituals of courtship and marriage.
In Ulster, many Presbyterian {couples} entered a type of marriage referred to as verba de futuro – a promise to marry at some point that used to be then sealed with sexual sex.
That is how the wedding of Benjamin Inexperienced and Elizabeth Bell, individuals of Cahans Presbyterian church in County Monaghan, took place. In March 1753, the couple informed Cahans Kirk Consultation that they had sworn secretly to one another that they’d marry “some [time] before actual marriage” – after which showed their guarantees to marry at some point by way of having intercourse.
Greater than two decades later, Margaret Cunningham shared a an identical tale about her marriage to Robert Jackson. In keeping with Cunningham, she and Jackson exchanged marriage vows at the “last Friday of March”, then “bedded” in combination “the following Monday”. Like many different Presbyterians, those {couples} won’t have regarded as their sexual behaviour as sinful as a result of that they had each and every purpose of progressing to marriage.
The tales contained within the Presbyterian archive – a time period I take advantage of to explain data produced by way of and about individuals of Ulster’s Presbyterian group – supply a tantalising glimpse into the intimate worlds of men and women in Ulster, centuries in the past.
Their tales remind us how particular person reports may just each comply with, and deviate from, societal expectancies. Presbyterians did certainly have vibrant intercourse lives – simply as in addition they valued marriage.
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