Marriage and European Views Fertility

The emergence of the discrete, single-family household was a landmark, which coincided with the Church's insistence on consensual unions. It separated the couple from its wider networks of clan and lineage thereby making the reproduction of families into an affair of two individuals although for most propertied peasants this was more a matter of ideology than everyday life. But because the vast majority of the peasantry was neither sufficiently well endowed with land nor likely to be subject to the same manorial controls, a treatment of the solid core of the customary tenants must be balanced with an even-handed consideration of those who were marginal, downwardly mobile, and often free.

There is little evidence to suggest that seignorial authorities arranged the peasantry's marriages or intervened in their family formations. If anything, in fact, the opposite appears closer to the mark. The peasantry may have been valued because of their ability to breed but the choice of partner seems to have usually been their own concern. The lord's concern was to make sure that extramanorial marriages did not deplete his landed estate by draining it of present and future labor power and revenue sources. In this way, the marital horizons for the customary tenantry were limited by the political framework of feudalism, which bore down with unequal pressure on sons and daughters, and much more heavily on the first-born than on younger siblings. It was not enough to discover an attractive match; it was also necessary to find a suitable match. Marriage negotiations involved a four-sided decision-making process—two individuals and two sets of parents—in which no one player had veto-power: It was probably as difficult for a young woman to resist the imprecations of her parents as it was for a young man to sway his. If all these conditions were met, then courtship would lead to marriage; and marriage would lead to the creation of a new family unit.

Oddly the personal, sexual, and marital freedom of noninheriting younger siblings must have acted as a solvent on the restrictive powers of the older generation. Their sociability, seemingly characterized by flirtatious behavior and a casual attitude toward premarital sex and illegitimacy, was the concern of moralists and the fear of parents. The generational battle in the homes of the peasant patriarchs could not have been uninfluenced by this social milieu—sons and daughters had in their disposition over themselves a card of their own to play. Moreover this youthful card was enhanced by the Church's rules of consensual marriage, which sanctioned clandestine unions. Because a troth (promise) made a binding marriage in the eyes of the Church, the best-laid plans of a peasant patriarch could come unstuck if he was blind to the urges of his son or his daughter. This suggests that the culture of maypoles, youth guilds, dancing, festivals, games, and even the solemnities of the Church's ritual calendar all gave a measure of bargaining power to those who had reached puberty. It further suggests that parental power was not absolute, even if it was backed by the threat of disinheritance.

Having entered the marriage market and picked an appropriate partner, the courtship process slid into a familiar sequence of customary conventions.

After the hand fasting & makyng of the contracte, the church goyng & weddyng shulde not be deffered to long, lest the wicked sowe hys vngracious sede in the mene season.… For in some places ther is such a maner, wel worthy to be rebuked, that at the hand fastynge there is made a great feast & superfluous bancket, & even the same night are the two hand fasted persones brought & layd together, yea certayne wekes afore they go to the church. (Howard, p. 349)

In cases where property was a paramount concern, marriage contracts were drawn up and earnest money was exchanged. These details were often recorded in the full publicity of the manor court. Occasionally eager peasant patriarchs enlisted the court's services while their children were still infants. But such instances are exceptional—the Church forbade child marriage since it was considered impossible for a minor to give his/her informed consent.