From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, circa 1500–1700

Abstract

T history of masculinity is still very much a nascent field for historians of early modern Britain, but there have been some important foundations laid by a few key publications. On the basis of such work, it would not be surprising if a student attempting an overview of the period were impressed by a profound change in the meanings of manhood between 1500 and 1700. Yet this is perhaps attributable more to methodological differences among historians than to a dramatic shift in male identities over the course of the early modern period. It will be argued here that despite the semblance of a transformation in concepts of manhood, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were marked as much by continuity as by change. Although there was an increasing plurality of and fluidity to male identities between 1500 and 1700, they remained focused—if variously reconfigured—around many of the same fixed points. Most of the terms used to identify both normative and deviant manhood remained current throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most profound change witnessed during the early modern period was, therefore, not in the available repertoire of male identities themselves but in different men’s