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Illicit Sexual Activity

To imply that dancing was always chaste and harmonious, however, would be a definite untruth. Although lewd dancing is a rarity in the REED volumes, it is nevertheless present. Strangely, almost all of the dozen or so records of wanton or sexually inappropriate dancing come from Somerset. It is unclear whether this is due to a genuinely high concentration of lewd dancing in the country, or of people who were sensitive to or offended by it.

Antidance treatise writers spent a good deal of ink describing the salaciousness and wantonness of dancing. Stubbes’ description is certainly one of the most vivid as well as the most famous:

For what clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching & slobbering one of another, what filthie groping and vncleane handling is not practised euery wher in these dauncings? yea the very deed and action it selfe, which I will not name for offending chast eares, shall be purtrayed and shewed foorth in their bawdye gestures of one to another. [60]

A rather wet and messy description, it is not about dance steps as much as it illustrates behaviour that might accompany dancing.

Still, several of the Somerset records are not dissimilar. The Bishop's Court Deposition Book for Glastonbury in 1584 reports that William Appowell 'put his hande vnder the Coates of one woman beinge then and ther presente' at a puppet show and later that day he was 'dancinge with diuers women whose names this iurate knoweth not and at the ende of the dances he kissed them,' and then sneaked out the back door of the parlour with another man's wife. [61] With all of the kissing and groping that accompanied Appowell’s dancing, he might have been Stubbes’ model. Dancing was also one of the amusements that John George and Elizabeth Davies of Frome engaged in during their adulterous affair in 1606; “hee vseth to call her in the nighte tyme out of her howse from her husband & ^to carry her to dauncing & other sportes and mearymentes, to the greate dislike of theire neighbors.” [62]

Whereas George and Davies were prosecuted because of the relationship between them, lewd dancing was a solo affair, as in the case of Henry Pillchorne of Bridgwater. Pillchorne was one of a number of men in Somerset who “daunced with his britches downe about his heeles” and “did shew his privie members vnto the companie most vncivillie there being then many women present, and said he did daunce Piddecocke bolt vpright, and readie to fight.”' [63] However, most cases involving lewd dancing accusations were more ambibious.

William Cox and Christiana Palmer, for example, admitted to dancing together during Whitson Week in Sutton Mallet in 1624 but denied any impropriety. [64] But guilt was not requisite for a ruined reputation. Clearly some people accepted the reported connection between dancing and wantonness without much evidence. In 1628/9 a witness said of Margerie Safe of Wincanton, now age 68, 'when shee was a younge wooman shee behaued her self wantonlie, in dauncsing & in keeping Idle companie.' [65] While it had presumably been many years since Margerie had danced, the moral taint was permanent in the eyes of others.

Yet, it is noteworthy that there is only one record in all of the REED collections that draws a clear connection between dancing and bastardy. In Glastonbury in 1617, Nicholas Ruddock and Katheren Chauker, whose illegitimate child was the result of a post-dance liaison, were sentenced to be whipped through the streets 'vntill their boddies shalbe both bloody and that there shalbe during the time of their whipping two fiddles playeing before them in regard to make knowne their lewdnes in begetting the said base childe vppon the sabboth day coming from danceing.' [66] This was an uncharacteristically violent and graphic punishment for a dance-related offense, and would have been administered by civic rather than church authorities. However, the punishment’s severity may reflect the double sin Nicholas and Katherine committed. Not only did they bear a bastard, but they did so after dancing on the Sabbath.

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