“As David’s dealing with Uriah”

Abstract

Early seventeenth-century English thinkers drew upon the imagery of marital chastity in household government and political government to represent both the peculiar condition of English subjects and the special religious and political role of their kingdom. Ideally, by maintaining chastity in marriage, each householder ensured his own honorable position at its head – his right to claim liberties as a member of the polity – and confirmed the political, religious, and social order of his community and nation. Chaste marriage was a means to prevent fornication and the expansion of “stews” and other centers of social disruption; more importantly, it exemplified the marriage of Christ to his true Protestant church, in contrast to the irreligious polygamy alleged against sectarians and to the unnatural celibacy of papists. Marital chastity was, thus, a reflection of and foundation for the Church of England and the royal government that preserved it. Although the association of chastity with marriage rather than celibacy was typical of a European-wide Protestant perspective beginning with the reforms of Martin Luther, English writers used the imagery not only to distinguish their church from the evils of Catholicism, but their kingdom from the cruel and despotic governments they associated with Catholic monarchs and the pope. These same English writers defined tyranny itself in terms of infringement of and an assault on the chastity of marriage. For England and its church, such tyranny threatened to overturn or subvert the marriages between king and kingdom, between the true church and its members.