Carnal Knowledge

Martin Ingram is an Emeritus Fellow in History at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. His publications include Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1988) as well as numerous articles on sex and marriage, crime and the law, slander and defamation, scolding women, 'rough music' and related topics.

• Prologue; 1. Contexts and perspectives; 2. Marriage, fame and shame; 3. 'Bawdy courts' in rural society before 1530; 4. Urban aspirations: pre-Reformation provincial towns; 5. Stews-side? Westminster, Southwark and the London suburbs; 6. London church courts before the Reformation; 7. Civic moralism in Yorkist and early Tudor London; 8. Sex and the celibate clergy; 9. Reform and Reformation, 1530–58; 10. Towards the new Jerusalem? Reformation of sexual manners in provincial society, 1558–80; 11. Brought into Bridewell: sex police in early Elizabethan London; 12. Regulating sex in late Elizabethan times: retrospect and prospect.

'Masterly and definitive. Ingram's study, meticulously researched and powerfully argued, transforms our understanding of the evolution of sexual regulation before, during and after the Reformation.' Bernard Capp, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Warwick