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Desecration of the Sacraments

In Godly Exercises or the Devil's Dance?: Puritanism and Popular Culture in pre-Civil War England, Jeremy Goring explains which commandments dancing and similar recreations violated according to puritan sermons. While the ever resourceful William Prynne said that dancing violated all ten commandments, the breaches caused by dancing more commonly named in sermons were with the 2nd commandment – dancing around maypoles; 3rd – oaths uttered by dancers; 4th – ancing instead of attending divine service; 5th – youth marrying without parental input; and of course the 7th commandment – dancing led to adulterous liaisons.” [42]

Similarly, the traditional practice of holding dances in the churchyard or the chapel simply mortified moralists, but condemnation of dancing in the vicinity of the church was nothing new. Visitation articles had long featured attempts to discourage dancing on and near holy real estate. Typical is a 1592 entry in the Articles of Enquiry of Bishop Herbert Westfaling, which asks:

Whether the minster and churchwardens haue suffered any lordes of misrule, dancers, plaiers, or any other disguised persons to daunce, or play any vnseemlly partes in the church, church-yard, chappell or chappell-yarde if they haue what be the names of such lordes of misrule, dauncers, plaiers &c...? [43]

As this entry indicates, not only did parishioners dance on church property, but ministers and churchwardens often encouraged, or at least failed to prosecute, them. However, the most prominent object of Protestant reformers’ attentions was dancing as a mockery of the sacrament of marriage.

In the section of his treatise devoted to, or rather against dance, Northbrooke’s character Youth asserts that "It is well knowne that by Daunces and leapings very many honest mariages are brought to passe, and therefore it is good and tollerable.” This prompts Age’s response, “I am not of that opinion to haue mariages contracted by these artes and actes, wherein a regarde is had onely to the agilitie and beautie of the bodie, and not vnto godlynesse and true religion.” Morever, Adds Age, “although honest matrimonies are sometime brought to passe by Dauncing, yet muche more often are Adulteries and Fornications wonte to followe of these Daunces.” [44] A dancing partner might appear to make a good marital partner, but more often than not a suitor who was light on his feet, was also light in his affections.

The anonymous work A Treatise of daunses, wherin it is shewed, that they are as it were accessories and depedants (or thinges annexed) to whoredome relates a similar story; “the daughter and sister of the County or Earle of A. was so enamoured or ravished with the love of a very simple and base gentleman whom she had seene daunse in the courte, and it printed so wel, that is, toke such deepe impression and roote in her hart, and understanding, that against the will of Father and Mother, parentes and friendes shee married him.” [45] According to this writer, dancing was dangerous not only to the soul of the dancer, but also to viewers; watching a young man cut figures was enough to convince an otherwise prudent young woman that despite a lack of other credentials he would make a good husband. To her credit a “simple and base gentleman” would have to be a very fine, if not professional, dancer in order to be dancing at court at all, but that still did not make him a suitable match, at least in the eyes of her parents and the community at large.

Having established the views of treatise writers on dancing as a facilitator of marriage, we again ask what archival records exist to corroborate them. Hypothetically, dancing might have influenced spousal selection, but evidence is needed to justify this contention. An excerpt from the Autobiography of Adam Martindale in the REED collection for Lancashire, appears to be just such a record. Written in the last year of his life, 1686, Martindale, a Presbyterian divine, recalls the upsetting courtship and marriage of his elder brother in 1632 when the author was only ten years old.

His father had found for his brother a woman with “sevenscore pounds to her portion... of very sutable yeares and otherwise likely to make an excellent wife.” [46] The families approved the match, and the woman also felt favourably towards Martindale’s brother. But then there was an abrupt change in these plans, as the brother, “when things were neare accomplishing, he on a sudden sleights her; and sets his affections upon a young wild airy girle between 15 and 16 yeares of age, an huge lover and frequenter of wakes, greenes and merrie nights where musick and dancing abounded.” [47] As if that were not enough, the girl’s portion was only 40 pounds. [48]

The whole family was shocked that Martindale’s brother would act so illogically and without regard to his future. The difference between 140 pounds and 40 pounds was substantial, and as Diana O’Hara demonstrates in Courtship and constraint: Rethinking the making of marriage in Tudor England, regardless of wealth and status, “few individuals married without close regard for questions of property and their financial well-being post-marriage.” [49] Likewise, while we do not know from this record how old the groom was, it is implied that he was significantly older than his intended. O’Hara also describes the “antagonism toward the marriage plans of unknowing, inexperienced adolescents, and at the same time, a collective dislike of excessive age-differences between partners.” [50] As the average marriage age for a man in the early seventeenth-century was twenty-eight, and for a woman twenty-five, Martindale’s brother’s marriage would have encountered familial and societal disapproval both for the youth of his bride, and for the difference in their ages. [51]

However, the ending of this tale varies considerably from that of an antidance tract. Rather than summarizing the usual dire warnings about the dangers of dancing, the autobiographer acknowledges that, “Tis true indeed she proved above all expectation, not onely civill but religious and a ^{exceeding good} wife; whereas the other he should have had proved (as I have heard) as much below it.” [52] While Martindale does not advocate dancing as the recommended means of finding a spouse, he does acknowledge that couples brought together by their shared enjoyment of dancing and recreations could be quite happy together. Contrary to antidance treatise writers’ contentions, love of dancing and moral behaviour were not mutually exclusive.

Interestingly, the Martindale autobiography excerpt is the only record of a couple brought together through dance; the masses of love-struck dancers, and dance-struck lovers, who defy propriety, reason, and their parents in the antidance treatises simply do not appear in the REED collections. Instead, the records call attention to the dancing practices of a rather different category of lovers: married couples.

Footnotes