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RIDINGS, ROUGH MUSIC AND THE
"REFORM OF POPULAR CULTURE"

IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND*
PETER BURKE HAS ARGUED THAT, BETWEEN THE FIFTEENTH AND THE
eighteenth centuries, Europe experienced a set of politico-cultural
changes aptly summed up in the phrase "the reform of popular
culture". Many games, calendar rituals and other popular customs
and beliefs were increasingly discountenanced by the ecclesiastical
and secular authorities, and measures taken to reform or suppress
them. The same period saw a growing divergence between the culture
of elite groups (nobles, gentlemen, clergy, and some middle-class
elements in town and country) and that of the mass of the people.
The former withdrew from, and to an extent became hostile towards,
activities such as carnivals which they had formerly patronized. In
so far as they survived repression, many elements of popular culture
came to be regarded by members of the 61ites as merely the vulgar
pastimes of the rude, unlettered masses.1
This thesis undoubtedly offers a valuable approach to some aspects
of the social history of early modern Europe. Yet there is scope for
debating just how profound and far-reaching the postulated changes
were, and for considering in more detail withreferenceto particu-
lar areas of Europe and specific cultural forms their nature
and chronology. Moreover, as Burke himself recognizes, the basic
concepts of "popular" and "elite" culture and of a developing
split between them are themselves problematic and require careful
handling.2 Account must be taken of variations of attitude and
cultural outlook among both the elites and the masses. Even more
important, recognition of cultural divisions must not blind us to the
existence, at any given point in time, of areas of common culture
shared meanings which united all ranks of society.
Some recent writings on England, the main focus of attention in
this paper, have stressed cultural conflict to the relative neglect of
* Earlier versions of this article were read at various seminars and I should like to
thank the participants for their helpful comments and criticisms. I am also extremely
grateful to Mrs. Dorothy Owen, Dr. John Post, Dr. James Sharpe, Mr. Keith
Thomas, Mr. Timothy Wales, Mr. John Walter and Dr. Keith Wrightson for kindly
communicating references to charivaris and other relevant material. My thanks are
also due to the staffs of the various libraries and record repositories which I have had
occasion to use.
1
Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978), esp. chs.
8-9. See also Robert Muchembled, Culture populaire el culture des ilkts dans la France
modtme, XV-XVIII' nicies: essai (Paris, 1978).
2
Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem Europe, pp. 23-9.
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8O PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER IO5
cultural consensus. Keith Wrightson, for example, has emphasized

that many elements of popular culture, including calendar festivities,
games and sports, and the sociability of the alehouse, suffered severe
if sporadic attacks in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
the result of stricter standards of public order and the influence of
Puritan ideas among clergy, gentry, urban oligarchs and the "mid-
dling groups" of yeomen and substantial craftsmen who dominated
many rural communities.3 Yet it is uncertain how widespread such
attacks actually were, especially in country areas,4 and their precise
impact remains in doubt. The fact that some forms of popular culture
were apparently very vigorous in the eighteenth century might indi-
cate that the effects had been limited; but account must be taken of
Edward Thompson's argument that there may have been a positive
efflorescence of popular culture in the Augustan age, aided by a
decline in deference and other social and economic factors.s Despite
such uncertainties a number of authors are prepared to argue that
perhaps by the middle of the seventeenth century, and certainly by
1700, there was a sharp divergence between "elite" and "popular"
culture. Thus Wrightson asserts that:
in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, English villagers had largely shared a
common fund of traditional beliefs, values and standards of behaviour. By the last
years of Charles II's reign that common heritage had become the property of those
"rusticall", "rude", "silly ignorants" who remained wedded to their superstitions
and their disorders.
At least with regard to the Gloucestershire village of Westonbirt,
David Rollison has taken up an even more extreme position, portray-
ing the "Great Tradition" of the Elites and the "Little Tradition" of
plebeian culture in such direct conflict in that parish in the years
around 1700 as to justify discussion in terms of colonial acculturation,
the "white man's burden" and an "Indian mutiny".6
No one would deny that there was considerable cultural differentia-
tion in England even before 1500, and probably such differentiation
became more marked in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as
3
Keith Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1660 (London, 1982), chs. 6-7; Keith
Wrightson and David Levine, Povertyand Piety in an English Village: Terlmg, 75.25-
1700 (London, 1979), chs. 5-7; Keith Wrightson, "Alehouses, Order and Reformation
in Rural England, 1590-1660, in Eileen Yeo and Stephen Yeo (eds.), Popular Culture
and Class Conflict, 1590-1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure
(Brighton, 1981), pp. 1-27. See also William Hunt, The Puritan Moment: The Coming
of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), ch. 6.
4
Martin Ingram, "Religion, Communities and Moral Discipline in Late Sixteenth-
and Early Seventeenth-Century England: Case Studies", forthcoming in Kaspar von
Greyerz (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modem Europe, 1500-1800 (London,
1984).
5
E. P. Thompson, "Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context",
Midland Hist., i no. 3 (1971-2), pp. 53-5; E. P. Thompson, "Patrician Society,
Plebeian Culture", Jl. Social Hist., vii (1973-4), pp. 382-405.
6
Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680, p. 220; David Rollison, "Property,
Ideology and Popular Culture in a Gloucestershire Village, 1660-1740", Past and
Present, no. 93 (Nov. 1981), pp. 70-97.

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RIDINGS, ROUGH MUSIC AND "POPULAR CULTURE" 81
a result of socially differential developments in literacy and other

factors.7 But was there really such a marked split between "elite"
and "popular" culture by 1700 as these authors seem to imply? This
paper approaches that and related issues from only one angle, an
examination of the English forms of "charivari" a set of popular
customs, variants of which have existed in many parts of Europe over
many centuries, which characteristically involved a noisy, mocking
demonstration usually occasioned by some anomalous social situation
or infraction of community norms.8 The justification for concentrat-
ing on this phenomenon is that some social historians, notably
Edward Thompson, regard it as a characteristic element of plebeian
culture; while a charivaresque incident, in which an act of buggery
committed by a villager provoked in 1716 a demonstration called a
"groaning", is the pivot of Rollison's analysis of cultural conflict in
Westonbirt.9 The following essay first establishes the nature of
charivaris in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
then considers reactions to them with a view to understanding the
degree of cultural differentiation and change which occurred in that
period.
The evidence on which to base a study of charivaris in early modern

England is tantalizingly sparse and fragmentary. But enough refer-
ences exist in court records, chronicles, diaries, letters, newspapers,
and imaginative literature (the literary material according well with
the real-life evidence) to build up a reasonably satisfactory picture.
It emerges that charivaris were a well-known and widely distributed
phenomenon in England in this period; though they may have been,
for reasons which are at present unclear, somewhat more common
and possibly more elaborate in western counties like Somerset and
Wiltshire, while certain types of community may have been more
7
Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680, ch. 7. On literacy, see David Cressy,
Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England
(Cambridge, 1980).
8
For a wide-ranging treatment of charivaris, with an extensive bibliography, see
Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (eds.), Le charivari: actes de la table ronde
organiste a Paris (25-27 avril 1977) par VEcole des hautes itudes en sciences sociaUs el
le Centre national at la recherche scientifique (Paris, 1981). For nineteenth-century
England, see also E. P. Thompson, " 'Rough Music': le charivari anglais", Annales.
E.S.C., xxvii (1972), pp. 285-312; and for France, Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and
Culture in Early Modem France (London, 1975), chs. 4-5.
9
Thompson, " 'Rough Music': le charivari anglais", passim; Thompson, "Anthro-
pology and the Discipline of Historical Context", p. 55; Thompson, "Patrician
Society, Plebeian Culture", p. 393; E. P. Thompson, "Eighteenth-Century English
Society: Class Struggle without Class?", Social Hist., iii (1978), p. 153; Rolhson,
"Property, Ideology and Popular Culture", passim.

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82 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 105
10
apt to nourish the tradition than others. Wherever they might
occur, charivaris could vary considerably in scale, from demonstra-
tions conducted by just a few people to major spectacles, often
processional in form, involving large numbers. Basic to all of them
was mocking laughter, sometimes mild and good-hearted, but often
taking the form of hostile derision.
A vivid illustration is provided by events at Quemerford, a hamlet
of the small market town of Came (Wiltshire) in 1618. (Compare the
features of this account with the eighteenth-century print in Plate
1.) Thomas Mills, cutler, deposed with his wife Agnes that:
upon Wednesday being the 27th day of May last past, about eight or nine of the
clock in the morning, there came to Quemerford a young fellow of Calne named
Croppe, playing upon a drum, accompanied with three or four men and ten or
twelve boys; and Ralph Wellsteede of Quemerford, this examinate's landlord, and
himself came to them as far as the bridge in Quemerford, and asked them what
they meant, and they answered that there was a skimmington dwelling there, and
they came for him . . .
This group was induced to turn back, but:
about noon came again from Calne to Quemerford another drummer named William
Wiatt, and with him three or four hundred men, some like soldiers armed with
pieces and other weapons, and a man riding upon a horse, having a white night cap
upon his head, two shoeing horns hanging by his ears, a counterfeit beard upon his
chin made of a deer's tail, a smock upon the top of his garments, and he rode upon
a red horse with a pair of pots under him, and in them some quantity of brewing
grains, which he used to cast upon the press of people, rushing over thick upon
him in the way as he passed; and he and all his company made a stand when they
came just against this ezaminate's house, and then the gunners shot off their pieces,
pipes and homs were sounded, together with lowbells and other smaller bells
which the company had amongst them, and nuns' horns and bucks' horns, carried
upon forks, were then and there lifted up and shown . . .
Stones were thrown at the windows, an entry forced, and Agnes
Mills was dragged out of the house, thrown into a wet hole, trampled,
beaten, and covered with mud and filth. Her tormentors, however,
failed in their final object of riding her behind the horseman to Came
to "wash her in the cucking stool".11
Shorn of elaborations, the core event recounted here was what
contemporaries sometimes referred to as "riding skimmington" (an
expression particularly current in south-west England), "riding the
stang" (the term normally used in northern England and Scotland),
or more generally as a "riding".12 The term "skimmington" could
denote not only a charivari, but also a husband who had been beaten
10
For some preliminary suggestions, based on a small number of cases, see David
Underdown, "The Problem of Popular Allegiance in the English Civil War", Tram.
Roy. Hist. Soc., 5th ser., xxxi (1981), pp. 88-90. See also E. P. Thompson, " 'Rough
Music' et charivari: quelques reflexions complementaires", in Le Goff and Schmitt
(eds.),
11
Charivari, pp. 279-80.
Wiltshire Record Office, Trowbridge (hereafter Wiltshire R.O.), Quarter
Sessions Great Rolls, Trinity 1618, no. 168 (in this and all subsequent quotations
from contemporary sources, spelling and punctuation have been modernized). The
document has several times been printed in abridged versions: for example, Records
of 12
the County of Wilts, ed. B. H. Cunnington (Devizes, 1932), pp. 65-6.
O.E.D., s.v. "skimmington", "stang", "riding".

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"Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington" by William Hogarth: Samuel Butler, Hudibras (London, 1726 edn.), plate 12.
By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum
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2. A wife beats her husband: detail from an early seventeenth-century plasterwork panel in the Great Hall, Montacute House, Somerset.
Photo: B. S. Evans

3. A nding: detail trom an early seventeenth-century plasterwork panel in the Great Hall, Montacute House, Somerset.
Photo: B. S. Evans

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13
by his wife or the termagant herself. The link between these
meanings was intimate: all the available evidence indicates that the
great majority of ridings in early modern England took place because
a wife had physically assaulted her husband or otherwise dominated
him.14 (See Plate 2.)
The central motif of a riding was, as the name implies, a horse
and rider. The mount was variously represented partly according
to regional custom by a real horse or by a "cowlstaff" or "stang"
(a stout pole) carried on men's shoulders. (See Plate 3). Sometimes
the victims themselves were made to ride. En route they might be
pelted with filth and could end up by being ducked, with or without
the aid of a cucking stool. But often a substitute rider was found,
customarily the "next neighbour nearest the church". In other cases,
effigies were used. Various elaborations were common. The riders
might be transvestite or epicene figures; often a rider was made to
face backwards (see Plate 4), or two figures were set "bum to bum"
(see Plate 5); sometimes the riders were made to act out the domestic
conflict which had given rise to the demonstration.15
Supplementary symbols were often present. The most common
was cacophony "rough music"16 produced by the ringing of
bells, the raucous playing of musical instruments, the beating of
pots and pans and other household utensils, and the discharge of
guns and fireworks. Another common feature was a parade of armed
men, sometimes elaborately accoutred with armour and real
weapons, sometimes merely carrying staves or arms improvised from
household or workshop tools like ovenlugs, coalrakes and pitchforks.
Yet another common motif was the display of animals' horns or
horned heads and, sometimes, obscene pictures or other foul objects.
Mock proclamations and other legal motifs sometimes appeared, as
did parodies of religious rituals. Occasionally mocking rhymes, songs
or lampoons provided a commentary; while a variety of refinements
were possible for added effect.17
It was conventionally assumed that a man who had allowed himself
13
Ibid., s.v. "skimmington".
14
By the early nineteenth century the focus had shifted to wife-beating, but there
is little evidence that this was a normal occasion for charivaris in England before
1700; see Thompson, " 'Rough Music': je charivari anglais", pp. 293-304. In the
early modem context, whether the dominant wife, the beaten husband, or both
partners were the focus of hostility seems to have varied from case to case, perhaps
depending on particular circumstances.
15
The features detailed in this and the next paragraph may be verified by reference
to the accounts of charivaris cited in succeeding pages.
16
It would seem, however, that this term was not generally current before 1700.
The earliest usage cited in the O.E.D. dates from 1708.
17
Mocking rhymes and other libels often occurred alone, without any association
with concrete symbols. The use of such rhymes to humiliate various kinds of
delinquents was in some ways similar to charivaris, but in this article they are regarded
as a separate genre and as such are excluded from the analysis. I hope to discuss verse
libels on another occasion.
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18
to be beaten by his wife was inevitably also a cuckold. Simple
cuckoldry was in itself, sometimes, the occasion for charivaris. In
these cases the "riding" motif was usually absent, the symbols often
restricted to the exposure of animals' horns and other bestial imagery.
Nonetheless such demonstrations were occasionally quite elaborate.
At Beckington (Somerset) in 1611 the demonstrators "disgraced" a
mare by cutting the hair from its mane, tail and ears, attached a large
pair of horns to its head, bound a paper bearing a mocking rhyme
to the stump of the tail, and "with great laughter and derision and
with great clamours, shouts and outcries" paraded the horse through
4. A henpecked husband and his punishment: Halfe a Dozen Good Wives: All for
a Penny (London, ?i635), in The Roxburghe Ballads, ed. W. Chappcll and J. W.
Ebsworth, 9 vols. (London and Hertford, 1869-99), > P- 45 1 -
the most public parts of the village. But most demonstrations con-
cerned solely with cuckoldry were much simpler, shading off into
the common practice of hanging horns outside the victim's house.
Adultery (irrespective of cuckoldry) and other forms of sexual immor-
ality were also, occasionally, the pretext for charivaris. In such cases
the symbolism was usually restricted to "rough music". Thus at
Fernham (Berkshire) in 1637, where a certain Thomas Rickettes had
been discovered in bed with Dorothy Greene in her husband's house,
the demonstration simply comprised "some with a spice mortar, a
18
Cf. Samuel Butler, Hudibras, ed. John Wilders (Oxford, 1967), p. 146 (pan 11,
canto ii, lines 711-12).

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Rough music and a skimmington ride: A New Summons to Horn Fair (London, c. 1780;.
By permission of the Bodleian Library
5.

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platter and a candlestick ringing and making a noise", and an attempt

to put Rickettes in the stocks.19
These domestic situations, especially female domination, were the
most usual occasions for charivaris in early modern England, but
there were others. Some ridings, often of a very simple nature, were
linked with holiday festivities. According to Philip Stubbes, people
who would not give money or other gifts to the lords of misrule and
their followers who sometimes presided over holiday activities might
be "mocked and flouted at not a little; yea, and many times carried
upon a cowlstaff. . .". Thus at a church ale at Yeovil (Somerset) in
1607, a mock official called the "shrive", in company with an
"ancient" and others, paraded round the town "to gather the liber-
ality of the inhabitants" on pain of riding them on a cowlstaff.
People who offended the holiday spirit in other ways could also be
victimized. On New Year's Eve 1586 a man was in an inn at
Chichester (Sussex), playing "tables", when "William Brunne who
then played the pan of a lord of misrule came in . . . and said that
that game was no Christmas game and so perforce took [him] . . .
from thence and made him ride on a staff to the High Cross". Such
ridings could become less light-hearted when opposition to festivities
was based on religious principle. The "shrive" and his men at Yeovil
in 1607 complained that such as "would not [keep them company]
. . . were Puritans". At Wells (Somerset) in the same year, a very
elaborate series of ridings was grounded on the fact that a Puritan
constable, John Hole, had attempted to suppress the city's May
games which he described as "unseemly pastimes and dangerous
meetings" but which the participants regarded as the "city's quintess-
ence of wit".20
Since Puritans might well, like John Hole, occupy positions of
authority, demonstrations against opponents of games might in prac-
tice involve an element of social or political insubordination. In other
circumstances occurred demonstrations whose meaning was in some
sense political. Arguably, indeed, a political flavour was sometimes
present even in charivaris ostensibly concerned with domestic situ-
ations. Conceivably the parades of armed men and representations
of legal forms were deliberate parodies, implying that Jack was
as good as his master. It would certainly seem that ridings were
" P.R.O., London, STA.C. 8/92/10; Wiltshire R.O., Salisbury Diocesan Records,
Bishop, Deposition Book 55, fo. 193; see also Deucta Book 6 (1585), fo. 41';
Deposition Book 30 (1615-16), fo. ioT.
20
Philip Stubbes's Anatotny of the Abuses in England in Skakspere's Youth! A.D.
1583, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, 2 vols. in 3 (New Shakspere Soc., 6th ser., IV, vi,
xii, London, 1877-82), i, p. 148 n. 14; Somerset R.O., Taunton, Q/SR 2/61; West
Sussex R.O., Chichester, Chichester Diocesan Records, Ep. 1/17/6, fo. 79'; P.R.O.,
STA.C. 8/161/1 (extracts from this document have been printed, with a commentary,
in C. H. Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 162-85). J o n n
Hole and his associates were, however, castigated for a variety of other offences as
well as opposition to games.
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particularly zestful if the victim happened to occupy some position

of authority, and such demonstrations were open to the charge
of anti-authoritarian or anticlerical intentions. Thus a riding at
Waterbeach (Cambridgeshire) in 1602, where the vicar of the parish
had been beaten by his wife, was regarded by whoever reported the
matter to the bishop's court as a "defacing of the ministry". A case
at Malmesbury (Wiltshire) in 1615, though ostensibly concerned
with cuckoldry, seems to have been principally intended to vilify
the magistrates. A certain John Vizard, on the eve of his examination
before the justices for rape and defamation, showed his contempt for
the law and terrified the constable of the town by organizing a parade
of armed men with rough music and a mock marriage ceremony,
proclaiming that the morrow was his wedding day and bidding
company to see him married "which company . . . should be
none but cuckolds and cuckold makers".21
But these cases at least made some reference to the characteristic
domestic occasions for charivaris. The play Arden ofFeversham (1592)
refers to a simple form of riding apparently expressing crude anti-
authoritarian mischief, completely unrelated to any domestic situ-
ation: Black Will boasted how, among other misdoings, he and his
companions had "taken the constable from his watch and carried
him about thefieldson a coltstaff".22 But no corresponding incident
in real life has so far come to light. Certain enclosure riots, however,
do seem to have involved elements of charivari. The most notable
examples occurred during the revolts against disafforestation and
enclosure in the west of England in 1626-32. Some of the leaders went
by the name of "Lady Skimmington". When the rioters attempted to
pull down the fences erected by Sir Giles Mompesson in the Forest
of Dean, they acted "by sound of drum and ensigns in most rebellious
manner, carrying a picture or statue apparelled like Mompesson and
with great noise and clamour threw it into the coalpits which the
said Sir Giles had digged". Such cases are suggestive, but overall it
seems that until the late seventeenth century the situation after
1680 presents some special features and will be considered later
charivaris which were wholly political, making no reference to nor
partly stimulated by domestic situations, were rare.23
21
Cambridge Univ. Lib., Ely Diocesan Records, B/2/18, fos. i74*-5; Wiltshire
R.O., Quarter Sessions Great Rolls, Michaelmas 1615, no. 107. For another charivari
against a clergyman, see Hereford and Worcester R.O., Worcester, BA 1 Class n o :
21/68 (1614).
21
Three Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies, ed. Keith Sturgess (Harmondsworth,
1969)) P- I 2 9 (scene xiv).
"Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Parts i-uv The
Manuscripts of the Earl Camper, 3 vols. (London, 1888-9), '> PP- 429-30. See also
D. G. C. Allan, "The Rising in the West, 1628-31", Earn. Hut. Rev., 2nd ser., v
(1952-3), p. 81; Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and
Rwt in the West of England, 1586-1660 (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 104-5. For another
threatened "skimmington" in Braydon Forest in 1649, see Wiltshire R.O., Quarter
Sessions Great Rolls, Trinity 1649, Information of John Tomes and Examination of
Thomas Ayres and others (this document was unnumbered when I examined it).

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No other situations were consistently associatedwith charivaris in

this period. Demonstrations were occasionally directed against
thieves or miscellaneous other offenders, but if so reference was
usually made also to one of the characteristic domestic pretexts.24
There are also hints of charivari-like practices confined to particular
social groups. A species of rough music was, at least by the late
seventeenth century, sometimes used against blacklegs in certain
trades; while in the Cambridge colleges, according to John Ray,
scholars were ridden on a cowlstaff at Christmas for missing chapel.
Both these specific usages may have derived from the more general
practice of riding people who refused to take part in holiday festivi-
ties.25
In charivaris two social contexts merged, the penal and the festive.
These customs are commonly regarded as wholly independent of the
formal legal system. But in fact in this period they had extremely
close affinities with the shame punishments meted out officially by
certain courts of law, notably urban tribunals and the Star Chamber.
At least as late as the seventeenth century, whores, bawds, slanderers
and other offenders might be "carted" with basins ringing before
them; while some delinquents, especially those guilty of perjury or
other deception, were paraded on a horse or ass with their face to
the tail, sometimes to the accompaniment of officially prescribed
rough music. The defilement and ducking which were sometimes
features of charivaris also had their legal counterparts.26
24
For example, Warwick County Records, ed. S. C. Ratcliff, H . C. Johnson and
N . J. Williams, 9 vols. (Warwick, 1935-64), a, pp. xiii-xiv.
25
S. and B. W e b b , The History of Trade Unionism, 2nd edn. (London, 1920), p.
28; John Ray, A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used (London, 1674), p.
44.
26
Songs, Carols and Other Miscellaneous Poems from . . . Richard HiWs Common-
place-Book, ed. R. Dyboski (Early Eng. Text Soc., extra ser., ci, London, 1907), p.
155; The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from A.D.
1550 to A.D. 1563, ed. John G-ough Nichols (Camden Soc., 1st ser., xlii, London,
1848), p p . 4 8 , 56-7, 156, 161, 168, 211, 283; John Stow, The Survey of London, ed.
H . B. wheatley (London, 1956 edn.), p. 171; John Stow, The Abridgement of the
English Chronicle (London, 1618 edn., S.T.C. 23332), pp. 357-8; John Stow, The
Annales of England (London, 1605 edn., S.T.C. 23337), pp. 1063, 1424; Richard
Crompton,5Mr-CfcniCT-Caj(London, 1630, S.T.C. 6056), p. 26; Middlesex County
Records, ed. John Cordy Jeaffreson, 4 vols. (Middlesex County Rec. Soc., i-iv,
London, 1886-92), i, pp. 234, 287, and ii, pp. 139, 224, 228; Some Annals of the
Borough of Devises . . . 1555-1791, ed. B. H. Cunnington, 2 pts. (Devizes, 1925), i,
p. 3 5 , and ii, p p . 3 , 12; West Riding Sessions Records, ed. John Lister, 2 vols.
(Yorkshire Archaeol. Soc., Records Ser., ill, liv, Worksop and Leeds, 1888-1915),
ii, pp. 18, 140; The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, 2 vols.
(Amer. Phil. Soc., Memoirs, xii, Philadelphia, 1 9 3 9 ) , ' , pp. 98, 2 1 1 , and ii, p. 377;
T h o m p s o n , " 'Rough Music' et charivari , p. 278.

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Charivaris concerned with behaviour which was forbidden by law,

such as sexual immorality, can be seen as merely unauthorized
applications of such sanctions. Cases involving female dominance or
cuckoldry were less straightforward, since these matters were not in
themselves specifically proscribed by law.27 Common scolds that
is, contentious women who disturbed their neighbours were
subject to the punishment of the cucking stool, and this clearly
influenced popular action.28 Beyond this the practice of charivaris
seems to have rested on a folkloric tradition that the populace had
the right to supplement the legal system. Certainly the participants
sometimes boldly asserted a quasi-legal purpose. Thus one of the
actors in a riding at Haughley and Wetherden (Suffolk) in 1604
claimed that their object was that "not only the woman which
had offended might be shamed for her misdemeanour towards her
husband [in beating him] but other women also by her shame might
be admonished [not] to offend in like sort".29 There was a legal basis
for this tradition in Continental, if not English jurisprudence. The
customs of Senlis and Saintonge around 1400 prescribed that hus-
bands who had been beaten by their wives should be paraded on an
ass, face to tail. In Gascony the "next neighbour" was ordered to
lead the animal, presumably to symbolize the duty of neighbourly
surveillance. This motif was, as noted earlier, widely current in
charivaris in early modern England, and possibly derived from
contact with French practices during the Hundred Years War.30
Charivaris involving some form of political protest were less easily
justified, but the participants may nonetheless have believed that
they were acting in quasi-legal fashion to draw attention to the
malfeasance of their governors. The demonstrators against the
"odious projector" Sir Giles Mompesson may have taken their cue
from parliament itself, which: in 1621 sentenced Sir Francis Michell,
one of Mompesson's associates and an alehouse patentee, "to ride on
a lean jade backward through London" to Finsbury gaol.31
But simply to regard charivaris in this quasi-legal light does not
do full justice to their vigour and complexity. It is equally important
to recognize their strong affinities with festive customs. At least in
27
Wives who beat their husbands were, however, occasionally prosecuted for
assault or bound over to keep thepeace: Court Rolls of the Wiltshire Manors of Adam
de Stratum, ed. Ralph B. Pugh (Wiltshire Rec. Soc., xxiv, Devizes, 1970), p. 72;
P.R.O., ASSI. 35/90/3/32; cf. T. E., The Lowes Resolutions of Women; Rights (London,
1632, S.T.C. 7437). PP- "8-9.
23
John Webster Spargo, Juridical Folklore in England Illustrated fry the Cucking-
Stool (Durham, N . C . , 1944), pp. 7-8, and passim.
" P.R.O., STA.C. 8/249/19, m. 18.
30
Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families: partnti, maison, sexualitf dans Pancienne tociiti
(Paris, 1976), p. 122.
31
P. Wtaiteway, "Notes from a Seventeenth-Century Diary", The Antiquary, xxxix
(1903), p. 69.

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their more elaborate versions, they had much in common with the
"watches" or "ridings" (in general, non-charivaresque usage this
term denoted a cavalcade) which, until the late sixteenth century,
were often staged in the larger towns at Midsummer and around
Christmas. These events consisted of parades of armed citizens and,
though they had mostly been more or less institutionalized and
officialized by the fifteenth century, could still include such noisy
activities as trumpeting, drumming and the discharge of guns.32 In
their ebullient informality, however, as well as in their forms,
charivaris were even more closely linked with the repertory of festive
customs associated with Maytime and Midsummer, the Christmas
and New Year seasons, and parochial ales, feasts and revels. The
horns and other animal images so prominent in skimmington rides
and the like were also sometimes in evidence at holiday times.
Moreover, holiday customs included noisy cavalcades, marches and
processions which often involved drumming and gunfire, the parad-
ing of pageant figures in live or effigy form, transvestism and,
sometimes, the rough music of pots and pans.33
It was common practice on holidays for groups of armed men,
sometimes with festive trappings, to invade a neighbouring parish to
seize a May garland or other trophy, occupy the local alehouse, beat
up anyone who opposed them, and in general assert their dominance
over the other community. An account of a series of clashes between
groups from the villages of Burbage and Wilton in Wiltshire in 1625
is particularly interesting because it provides explicit evidence of a
link with the custom of riding skimmington. In court, one of the
leaders of the Burbage men asserted that "the men of Wilton had
before that time come in the like manner to them, with a jest to bring
skimmington into the said parish of Burbage, which this examinate
32
Alan H . Nelson, The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Chrisd Pageants and Plays
(Chicago, 1974), pp. 11-14, and passim; Charles Phythian-Adams, Ceremony and
the Citizen: T h e Communal Year at Coventry, 1450-1550", in Peter Clark and Paul
Slack (eds.), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500-ijoo (London, 1972), p. 63.
33
C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, N . J . , 1959), PP- 18-30;
Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age, pp. 159-62; E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval
Stage, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1903), i, pp. 89-419 passim; Sir Richard Colt Hoare, The
History of Modem Wiltshire: Hundred of Mere (London, 1882), p. 20; Diary of
Henry Machyn, ed. Nichols, pp. 125, 137, 162, 201-3, 283; Historical Manuscripts
Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, 24
vols. (London, 1883-1976), viii, pp. 1 9 1 , 2 0 1 - 3 ; Tudor Parish Documents ofthe Diocese
of York, ed. J. S. Purvis (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 168-73; Robert Plot, The Natural
History of Stafford-shire (Oxford, 1686), p . 434; Wiltshire R . O . , Salisbury Diocesan
Records, D e a n , Churchwardens' Presentments, unnumbered file for 1635, Lyme
Regis, 2 0 Sept.; Somerset R . O . , Q/SR 86.2/17; Hereford and Worcester R . O . , BA 1
Class n o : 11/4A; Birmingham Reference L i b . , M S . 377993 (Court Book of Old
Swinford and Stourbridgc), fo. 26. Some university customs had strong affinities with
charivaris: see The Life and Times of Anthony Wood . . . 1632-1695, ed. A. Clark, 5
vols. (Oxford Hist. Soc., xix, xxi, xxvi, xxx, xl, Oxford, 1891-1900), iii, p. 513;
Reminiscences of Oxford by Oxford Men, 1559-1850, ed. L . M. Quiller Couch (Oxford
Hist. Soc., xxii, Oxford, 1892), pp. 243-6.

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and the others of Burbage . . . resolved to carry back to them of

Wilton". There is no hint in the extensive depositions relating to
this case that a wife had beaten her husband; in any event it is clear
that hostility and derision were chiefly directed, in this holiday
context, not against an individual victim but against a group represent-
ing an entire neighbouring village.34 Contrariwise, ridings which
were occasioned by termagant wives or another of the characteristic
pretexts sometimes involved the invasion of one parish by another.
This feature emerges clearly, for example, in the accounts of the
Quemerford skimmington ride: the demonstrators invaded the place
across the bridge from the neighbouring town of Calne. Thus chari-
varis merged with those holiday practices which involved conflicts
between neighbouring communities.35
There were other important points of linkage between charivaris
and calendar customs. The latter sometimes involved an element of
moral condemnation, as in the Shrove Tuesday celebrations when
the London apprentices interpreted Lenten renunciation in terms
of attacking brothels. Holidays also included a strong element of
mockery. They were thus the occasions for inversionary rituals, the
licensed flouting of authority, and similar manifestations.36 At Wells
in 1607, even before the intervention of John Hole provoked the
hostility of the populace, the May games were supposed to include
a mock oration by someone disguised as the bishop of Bath and
Wells, while the cathedral choristers sang parodies of hymns and
anthems. Such activities could become more pointed if the authorities
were for any reason unpopular. At South Kyme (Lincolnshire) in
1601 the activities of a lord of misrule and his company escalated
into a demonstration against the earl of Lincoln, elaborated by the
performance of a derisive play, the exhibition of a mocking rhyme
on the maypole, and the preaching of a mock sermon "out of the
book of Mab". The cause lay in the earl's manifold oppressions
against his family, neighbours and tenants.37 Save for the absence of
34
Wiltshire R . O . , Salisbury Diocesan Records, Dean, Act Book 28 (unfoliated),
26 Jan. 1625/6, Office v. Noyce et al. For similar incidents, but without the reference
to "skimmington , see Wiltshire R . O . , Quarter Sessions Great Rolls, Trinity 1617,
no. 147, Michaelmas 1620, no. 197, Michaelmas 1633, no. 178, Trinity 1641, nos.
183-5, Trinity 1652, Informations and Examinations, contemporary no. 5; Essex
R . O . , Chelmsford, Q/SR 425/44, 106; Hereford and Worcester R . O . , BA 1 Class
n o : 29/67; P . R . O . , S T A . C . 8/250/3.
35
Somerset R . O . , Q/SR 86.2/55, 56; Q/SR 91/40. This inter-community element
was still a feature of some charivaris in the nineteenth century: see I. R. Chanter,
"North Devon Customs and Superstitions", Trans. Devonshire Assoc. for the Advance-
ment of Science, Literature and Art, ii (1867-8), pp. 38-42.
36
Steven R. Smith, "The London Apprentices as Seventeenth-Century Ado-
lescents", Past and Present, no. 61 ( N o v . 1973), p. 161; Norreys Jephson O Conor,
Godes Peace and the Queenes (London, 1934), pp. 115, 117-18; Barber, Shakespeare's
Festive Comedy, pp. 24-30; Keith Thomas, T h e Place of Laughter in Tudor and
Stuart England", Times Literary Supplement, 21 Jan. 1977, p. 78.
37
P . R . O . , S T A . C . 8/161/1, m m . 2 2 , 2 3 ' , and passim; O'Conor, Godes Peace and
the Queenes, pp. 108-26.

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such characteristic motifs as the "riding", such a case is barely

distinguishable from a charivari.
Thus charivaris may be seen, from one point of view, as a special-
ized application of elements drawn from the wider repertory of
festive practices. It should be noted, moreover, that although demon-
strations against termagant wives and cuckolds could occur at any
time of the year, some of them did take place on or near important
holidays, and were probably part and parcel of the festivities.38
Furthermore, participants in charivaris, whether or not they claimed
a corrective purpose, commonly described them as "games" or
"sports", undertaken "in merriment".39 This is essential to an
understanding of charivaris in early modern England. It is inadequate
to view them simply as sanctions on behaviour. They plainly drew
some of their vitality from the fact that they were a form of festivity
in their own right; and in some cases part of the hostile derision
which they expressed stemmed not from outrage at the offence of
the immediate victim but from inter-community conflicts and other
complicating factors.
This peculiar mixture of the penal and the festive (paralleled on
the Continent in carnival celebrations as well as in charivaris)40 may
be better understood by considering the nature of the ideas which
underlay the customs, and the meaning of the symbols which they
employed though such an exercise in "decoding" inevitably
involves some speculation. I have explored these issues elsewhere;41
the following paragraphs provide merely a summary of the main
arguments, modified by more recent reflection.
Central to the symbolism of charivaris were notions of hierarchy,
inversion, reversal, rule and misrule, order and disorder the world
turned upside-down.42 The most straightforward explanation of
charivaris is that they stigmatized as ridiculous inversions of the
"natural" hierarchy. This was clearly true at one level. Yet it is
arguable that at a deeper level of psychology these customs reflected
a sense of the precariousness or artificiality of that hierarchy; and
For example, Somerset R . O . . Q / S R 25/23 (day of village revel); P . R . O . , STA.C.
8/249/19, p. 1 (Plough Monday); T o w n Hall, Colchester, Colchester Borough
Records, Sessions Book, 1630-63 (unfoliated), 11 May 1632 (Maytime).
39
P . R . O . , STA.C. 8/249/19; S . R . O . , Q/SR 25/23; Wiltshire R . O . , Quarter Sessions
Great Rolls, Michaelmas 1626, nos. 149-50.
40
Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem Europe, pp. 198-9; Davis, Society and
Culture in Early Modem France, pp. 97-100.
41
Martin Ingram, " L e charivari dans rAngleterre du X V P et du X V U ' siecle:
apercu historique", in L e G o f f a n d Schmitt (eds.), Charivari, pp. 251-64.
42
For some general discussions of this theme, in England, Europe and beyond,
see Barbara A. Babcock (ed.), The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and
Society (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978); Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem Europe, ch. 7;
Ian Donaldson, The World Upside-Dovm: Comedy from Jonson to Fielding (Oxford,
1970); Keith Thomas, Rule and Misrule in the Schools of Early Modem England (The
Stenton Lecture, University of Reading, 1976); Stuart Clark, "Inversion, Misrule
and the Meaning of Witchcraft", Past and Present, no. 87 (May 1980), pp. 98-127.

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RIDINGS, ROUGH MUSIC AND POPULAR CULTURE 97
that the laughter of charivaris bore witness to ambiguities and unres-

olvable conflicts in the ideal and actual social system.43
On examination all the characteristic occasions for charivaris turn
out to involve elements of ambiguity and insecurity. The punishment
of people who opted out of festivities rested on the precarious
authority of mock officers like lords of misrule. Like the holidays
themselves, they endured but for a day or so. Political charivaris,
again, involved a temporary and exceedingly fragile assertion of
authority by subjects. Yet therein lay a deeper truth. On the long
view the authority of the magistrate himself was temporary, doomed
to final dissolution in dust. Political charivaris and domestic
charivaris where the victim was an officer or a clergyman were a
reminder that rulers were, after all, only as other men.44 But socially
the most important ambiguities were involved in charivaris provoked
by the wife who beat her husband (and, with variations, by the
weaker analogues of cuckoldry and sexual immorality). These demon-
strations were grounded in the prevailing patriarchal ideal which
ascribed active, governing roles to husbands and held that the chief
duties of wives and other females who were, supposedly, by
nature weak in reason and apt to be disorderly lay in the negative
virtues of chastity, obedience and silence. The wife who beat her
husband turned this ideal world upside-down; and certainly at one
level charivaris were an expression of outrage at this unnatural
contrariness. Yet there was something deeper. Natalie Zemon Davis
has suggested that charivaris sometimes involved an element of
rejoicing at, even encouragement of, female insurrection.45 In view
of the experiences of, say, Agnes Mills at Quemerford, this seems to
be going too far; yet it is probably true that these demonstrations
reflected an awareness that women could never be dominated to the
degree implied in the patriarchal ideal. For this ideal was only too
plainly in conflict with the realities of everyday life, and indeed with
alternative ideals. A variety of sources testify that, in practice, the
balance of authority between husbands and wives in marriage varied
considerably. Equally it is plain that strong, active, able wives were
often prized, despite the fact that the behaviour of such wives was
unlikely to conform exactly to the stereotype of female virtue.46 Was
43
For the crucial ambiguity of inversionary motifs which enabled them both to
affirm the reality and importance of hierarchical relationships and to express the
levelling, even anarchic principle that all social distinctions are ultimately artificial,
see Donaldson, World Upside-Dovm, ch. i; Thomas, "Place of Laughter in Tudor
and Stuart England", pp. 77-9.
44
Cf. Donaldson, World Upside-Doum, p p . 4-8.
43
Davis, Society "^ Culture in Early Modem France, p. 140.
46
For a sensitive discussion of marital relationships in this period, see Wrightson,
English Society, 1580-1680, pp. 89-104. See also Richard L . Greaves, Society and
Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, 1981), pp. 251-67; Ingram, "Charivari
dans l'Angleterre du XVI* et du XVII' sifccle", pp. 259-60. But for a rather different
view, see Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800
(London, 1977), ch. 5.

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it "better to marry a sheep than a shrew", or "better to marry a

shrew than a sheep"? That both forms of the proverb were current
suggests that contemporaries could never quite make up their
minds.47 Skimmington rides derided extreme violations of the patriar-
chal ideal, and thus set firm boundaries on the range of permissible
behaviour. But their psychology was more complex than that of
simple correction. Rather, the explosive laughter of charivaris repre-
sented a cathartic release of tensions built up by Everyman's experi-
ence of the day-to-day conflicts between the dictates of the patriarchal
ideal and the infinite variety of husband/wife relationships. Precisely
the same tensions made representations of cuckoldry, termagant
wives and the like a prime source of comic entertainment endless
permutations on these themes were staple fare in the comic theatre,
broadside ballads, jest and story books, and other forms of litera-
ture.48
Cognitively, charivaris helped to organize a variety of experiences
(domestic, political and festive) within a single conceptual frame-
work, the connections being made through the principle of analogy
or correspondence. Integral to the total pattern were the characteristic
symbols which gave concrete expression to the underlying system of
ideas and provided reinforcing layers of correspondences. The very
existence of ridings or rough music demonstrations, which were in
effect highly stylized representations of anarchy, pointed the contrast
between order and disorder, whilerepresentationsof the institutions
of political power and the authoritarian motif of the horse and rider
demonstrated that order was to be conceived in terms of dominance
and subjection. Cacophony evoked a contrast between harmony and
disharmony, whether between wives and husbands in marriage or
between rulers and ruled. Transvestite motifs symbolized the dichot-
omy of roles between men and women and the inversions thereof
perpetrated by the cuckold and his partner and the termagant wife
and her abject "skimmington". Animal symbolism evoked the con-
trast between human and beast to classify aberrant conduct; while
the symbols of mud and excrement (cleansed by ducking) played on
47
William George Smith and Janet E. Heseltine, The Oxford Dictionary of English
Provtrbs, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1948), s.v. "shrew".
** Thomas, "Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England", p. 77; Donaldson,
World Upside-Dovm, passim. For some examples, see Two Tudor "Shrew" Plays, ed.
J. S. Farmer (The Museum Dramatists, iv, London, 1908); Samuel Rowlands, "The
Four Knaves: A Series of Satirical Tracts", ed. E. r. Rimbault, in Early English
Poetry, Ballads and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages (Percy Soc., a, London,
1844), PP- 101-2; The Cobbler of Canterbury, ed. Frederic Ouvry and H. Neville
Davits (Cambridge, 1976); "Westward for Smelts: An Early Collection of Stories",
ed. J. O. Halliwell, in Early English Poetry, Ballads and Popular Literature of the
Middle Ages (Percy Soc., xxii, London, 1848); Humour, Wit and Satire of the Seven-
teenth Century, ed. John Ashton (London, 1883), pp. 62, 336-9, 347; The Roxburghe
Ballads, ed. W. Chappell and J. W. Ebsworth, 9 vols. (London and Hertford, 1869-
99), passim.

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a contrast between purity and filth a distinction still current as a

means of categorizing sexual behaviour. Charivaris also demonstrated
a contrast between the hidden and the manifest, the private and the
public: destroyers of privacy, they asserted the validity of a system of
collective values which were stronger than the vagaries of individuals.
The existence of these polar opposites implied a multitude of bound-
aries; and indeed boundaries of time, boundaries between parishes,
boundaries between male and female and so on were such prominent
features of charivaris as scarcely to require emphasis. In this world
of symbols and correspondences, moreover, it is clear why there was
such a marked overlap between festive practices and the forms of
charivari. The ambiguous relations between husbands and wives
were analogically linked with the relationship between neighbouring
communities; while just as special times justified licence and inver-
sion, so aberrant behaviour in everyday life justified practices more
usually associated with holidays. This framework of ideas allowed a
ballad writer of the 1640s to see Puritan attempts to abolish Christmas
and other festivals, and so subvert the traditional calendar, as "the
world turned upside-down".49
Some of these ideas had obvious parallels with the "official" philos-
ophy of the period, and hence raise the question, central to the
concerns of this article, of how far charivaris should be seen as an
expression of "popular" as distinct from "elite" culture. This point
will be picked up later. Meanwhile let us consider reactions to
charivaris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Did they come
under attack, and in particular are there signs that elite groups such
as gentry and clergy became increasingly hostile to these customs?
In view of their festive associations and the use of such "abomin-
able" motifs as transvestism, it might be expected that charivaris
would be condemned by Puritan and other moralists. There are some
signs of Puritan disquiet. In 1587 Dr. Richard Crick, lecturer at East
Bergholt in Essex, asked the Dedham conference for guidance in
dealing with a riding which had taken place during his absence. He
had already "vehemently inveighed against it . . . but he would
know what he should further do in it". As with so many knotty
pastoral problems, the conference deferred the matter.50 In the next
century the reactions of John Bond, the recently ejected minister of
Holt (Norfolk), were more forthright: in 1661 he denounced a riding
49
Cavalier and Puritan: Ballads and Broadsides Illustrating the Period of the Gnat
Rebellion, 1640-1660, ed. H . E. Rollins ( N e w York, 1923), pp. 160-2.
50
The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth as Illustratedfrythe
Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1582-1589, ed. Roland G. Usher (Camden Soc.,
3rd ser., viii, London, 1905), p. 63.

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which had taken place in the town as "a most horrid and prodigious
misdemeanour . . .; such obscenity and filthiness acted publicly in
the face of the sun, that I am ashamed to mention it". He was
particularly incensed by what he perceived as a "sodomitical kind
of conjunction" between two of the actors (though the occasion for
the riding seems to have been the normal one of husband-beating),
and demanded the "exemplary punishment" of the chief partici-
pants.51 Such cases are consistent with the idea of growing Puritan
hostility to charivaris on moral grounds, but they are relatively
isolated. It is striking that there is little evidence of wider concern
to be found in moralist literature. Thomas Lupton and Margaret
Cavendish criticized the practice whereby the "next neighbour",
rather than the actual offenders, was made to ride; but this hardly
amounted to a fundamental attack on charivaris. Indeed if one can
deduce their real opinions from their writings, both Lupton and
Margaret Cavendish seem to have approved the essence of ridings in
the sense that they favoured public demonstrations to humiliate
termagant wives, though Lupton seems to have envisaged an official-
ized version of charivari supplemented by a month's spell in the
house of correction for the unruly spouse.S2
While moralist criticism was infrequent or muted, it is true that
the status of charivaris declined over the period in the eyes of the
law; or rather, whereas around 1500 their status in secular law was
uncertain, by 1700 it had been established that they were illegal.
Under church law they had probably always been subject to censure,
either as defamations or breaches of Christian charity, and occasional
cases were prosecuted on these grounds.53 But overall, charivaris
were and continued to be of only marginal concern to the ecclesiasti-
cal authorities,54 as they were also to the courts of the University of
51
Norfolk and Norwich R.O., Norwich, Aylsham 1, John Bond to Sir John
Pal grave, 4 Mar. 1660/1. Mr. Timothy Wales informs me that additional material
relating to this case, indicating that the occasion of the charivari was the beating of
a husband, exists in the Quarter Sessions files for 1661; but the relevant documents
(C/S3/44) are at present unfit for inspection. For John Bond, see Francis Blomefield
and Charles Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of
Norfolk, 11 vols. (London, 1805-10), a, p. 399.
" Thomas Lupton, Swqila: Too Good to be True (London, 1580, S.T.C. 16951),
pp. 49-50; Margaret Cavendish, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle, Orations of
Divers Sorts (London, 1662), pp. 221-2. On Lupton, see Elliot Rose, "Too Good to
be True: Thomas Lupton's Golden Rule", in DeLloyd J. Guth and John W. McKenna
(eds.), Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton from his American Friends
(Cambridge, 1982), pp. 183-200.
53
For example, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, York Diocesan
Records, CP. H . 495, C H A N C . AB. 15, fo. 219' (and process entries continued to
fo. 276) (Bolton Percy, Yorks., 1609: defamation and profanation of the Sabbath);
Univ. of Durham, Dept. of Palaeography and Diplomatic, Durham Diocesan Records,
D R / v l l i / 2 , fo. 2 (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1619/20: breach of charity).
54
This situation contrasts with France, where ecclesiastical legislation against
charivaris was frequent. But in France charivaris were often occasioned by remarriages,
and hence directly offensive to the church which affirmed the lawfulness of such
unions. See A n d r i Burguiere, "Pratique du charivari et repression religieuse dans la
(COM. m p. lot)

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RIDINGS, ROUGH MUSIC A N D POPULAR CULTURE IOI
55
Cambridge and, possibly, other courts of special jurisdiction. The
secular courts had established by the end of the sixteenth century
that mocking verses, signs and pictures (including cuckold's horns)
were a threat to public order and could be prosecuted as criminal or
civil libels.56 It might be thought that, a fortiori, elaborate derisive
spectacles like skimmington rides would be equally subject to cen-
sure; but even by the early seventeenth century it seems to have been
generally accepted only that participants in such demonstrations
could be bound over to keep the peace or be of good behaviour. It
is true that the great series of ridings at Wells in 1607, and the
charivaresque case involving the earl of Lincoln in 1601, came to
judgement in the Star Chamber and the perpetrators were heavily
punished. But these were highly complex cases, the offenders being
charged with a variety of crimes, and did little to clarify the position
with regard to simpler incidents.57 The key judgements came after
the Restoration. In a case from Canterbury (Kent) in 1676, after
some hesitation over whether the practice was allowed by special
custom, the judges in King's Bench decided that riding skimmington
constituted a riot. By 1683 it had also been decided that an action
for libel could be brought on the grounds of skimmington riding,
and this was confirmed in a King's Bench judgment of 1693. These
legal developments should not, however, be interpreted as a frontal
attack on charivaris. The changes were slow, piecemeal and hesitant,
and occurred partly by means of judgments in cases which were not,
in themselves, directly concerned with charivaris. In any case it
would seem that throughout the period prosecutions for ridings and
the like were in actual practice rare.58
The hardening of the legal position towards charivaris seems to
have been rooted in considerations of public order rather than of
morality; and the reasons which probably moved the judges to
( S4 )
France d'ancien regime", in L e Goff and Schmitt (eds.), Charivari, p p . 179-95;
Francois Lebrun, " L e charivari a travers les condamnations des autorites
ecdesiastiques en France du X I V au XVIII' siecle", ibid., pp. 221-8. In England
remarriage was not, apparently, a normal occasion for charivaris.
55
Cambridge Univ. L i b . , University Archives, Commissary Court, 1/2, fos. 9 3 ' -
95'; Vice-Chancellor's Court, 1/4, fos. 393-4"; G. D . Squibb, The High Court of
Chwahy (Oxford, I ? 5 9 ) J p p . 58-9.
56
The Reports of Svr Edward Coke, 13 pts. (Dublin, 1793 edn.), v, fos. I25a-I26a.
" William Hudson, "A Treatise of the Court of Star Chamber", in Collectanea
Juridica [ed. F . Hargrove], 2 vols. (London, 1791-2), ii, pp. 100-1.
58
Joseph Keble, Reports in the Court of King's Bench . . . from the XII to the XXX
Ytar of. . . King Charles II, 3 pts. (London, 1685), iii, pp. 578-9; The Reports of Sir
Bartholomew Shower . . . of Cases Adrudg'd in the Court of King's-Btnch, 2 pts.
(London, 1708-20), ii, pp. 313-14; William Salkeld, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the
Court of Kings Bench, 6th e d n . , 3 vols. (London, 1795), iii, p. [226]; A View of the
Penal Laws Concerning Trade andTrafick (London, 1697), appendix, s.v. "riot". But
cf. Sir Thomas Raymond, The Reports of Divers Special Cases (London, 1696), p.
401; The Reports of Sir Peyton Ventris, 2 pts. (London, 1696), i, p. 348. T h e law as
it existed in the eighteenth century is tinnmgriTi-H m Matthew Bacon, A New
Abridgment of the Law, 4th e d n . , 5 vols. (London, 1778), iii, p. 491.

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pronounce against ridings can be illustrated by accounts of particular

demonstrations, in which a variety of grounds for objecting to chari-
varis as a threat to the peace were either stated or implied. Yet it is
clear that such objections did not apply with equal force to all
charivaris: the customs had built-in safeguards which in many cases
helped to limit their dangerous potential. With regard to the concerns
of this essay, moreover, it is important to stress that such criticisms
of charivaris as occurred were not confined to 61ite groups. Many of
the complaints came from the victims themselves, who were drawn
from a wide social spectrum including very poor people. Other
objectors ranged from Puritan ministers to the presumably humble
female neighbours of Thomas and Agnes Mills at Quemerford
(though women as such were not necessarily hostile to ridings: they
sometimes took active part, or served such back-up functions as
providing ale for refreshment or lending female clothes for transvest-
ite performances).59
Apart from fears of sedition, which will be considered later, there
were five main grounds for regarding charivaris as a threat to public
order. The first was danger to property. This objection was voiced
by Thomas Mills and his landlord at Quemerford in 1618, and
certainly some property damage did occur on that occasion. But it
seems to have been exceptional. Thomas Mills and his wife also
complained of cruel physical assault, and there were other instances
of violent charivaris.60 But mostly, it would seem, physical abuse
was avoided, the practice of using substitutes or effigies in ridings
probably serving to reduce the dangers.61 A third objection was that
the shame experienced by the victims was disproportionate, and
moreover that this could lead to tensions and bitterness within
the community.62 Charivaris could, undoubtedly, seriously disrupt
social relationships and lead to further disorder. One of Richard
Napier's mentally disturbed patients, a man of Olney in Buckingham-
shire, complained in 1600 of his fears "lest a woman harmed him
with her tongue because he found her tugging with her husb[and]
and rumoured it ab[road] and caused the next neighbour to be
59
For example, P . R . O . , S T A . C . 8/249/19, m. 19; ASSI. 45/8/2/113-15; Borthwick
I . H . R . , York Diocesan Records, CP. H . 495.
60
For example, Somerset R . O . , Q/SR 86.2/55-6, Q/SR 152/1A.
61
There were even safeguards to ensure that the "next neighbour" was himself
protected; he could shout that he rode for his neighbour's fault and not his own, but
if unwilling to ride at all he might be allowed to hire a substitute: Borthwick I . H . R . ,
York Diocesan Records, CP. H . 495. At Cambridge in 1586 a rider complained that
he had only received 9d. instead of the 3s. which he should have had "for his labour
for riding* : Cambridge Univ. L i b . , University Archives, Commissary Court, 1/2, fo.
94*
62
Brit. L i b . , Add. MS. 28000 (Oxinden Correspondence, 1640-4), fo. 284. This
case is quoted in The Oxinden and Peyton Letters, 1643-1670, ed. Dorothy Gardiner
( L o n d o n , I937)i PP- 33"5> a n d m Bernard Capp, "English Youth Groups and The
Finder of WakefieM", Past and Present, no. 76 (Aug. 1977), pp. 132-3.

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cfarried] to the cuckingstool. She threatened to be even with him".63

The victim of a stang-riding at Leeds (Yorkshire) in 1667, taunted
beyond endurance, fired a gun into the crowd and killed two
people.64 Such an extreme outcome was, however, highly excep-
tional. Of course the infliction of official punishments (such as
stocking or whipping) could equally arouse bitterness within com-
munities. Contemporaries always had to weigh this possibility before
taking either formal or informal action against delinquent neigh-
bours.65
Yet another objection to charivaris was that they could be the
cloak for malicious motives.66 This charge sometimes had substance.
At Nottingham in 1617, for example, a libellous rhyme sung to the
rough music of candlesticks, tongs and basins originated in murky
faction struggles among the town oligarchy.67 Yet it was probably
not easy to stimulate a charivari on wholly fabricated grounds. Far
from being based on flimsy pretexts, many demonstrations seem to
have been provoked by circumstances which were either particularly
blatant or scandalous or involved some especiallyridiculouselement.
For example, a skimmington ride at Marden (Wiltshire) in 1626
was stimulated by the fact that a woman had not only beaten her
husband badly scratching his face so that the matter became
public knowledge but had also announced "that she would shortly
make an end of him . . . and of a daughter . . . which he had by a
former wife".68
Another objection sometimes voiced was that charivaris were an
excuse for disorder on the part of base and troublesome members of
the community, ill-qualified to mock the follies of their neighbours.69
The evidence concerning the moral standing of participants is, unfor-
tunately, inconclusive. It may be of significance that charivaris often
began or ended in alehouses, which were no doubt vibrant centres
of popular culture but which were also, perhaps, the haunt of
men who might welcome an opportunity for troublemaking. Some
charivaris were certainly performed by individuals of very dubious
reputation. The Quemerford skimmington ride, for example, was
led by individuals who had already been, or were shortly to find
63
Bodleian L i b . , Oxford, M S . Ashmole 2 0 2 , fo. 192" (cf. MS. Ashmole 415, fo.
201*), quoted in Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing
in Sevenuenth-Cenaay England (Cambridge, 1981), p. 109.
64
P . R . O . , ASSI. 45/8/2/113-15; the indictment is in ASSI. 44/13 (unrepaired and
unflattened indictments).
65
Martin Ingram, "Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early-Seven-
teenth-Century Wiltshire", in J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England, 1550-1800
(London, 1977), pp. 116-18.
** The Annals of Cullen . . . 961-1887, ed. William Cramond, 2nd edn. (Buckie,
1888), p. 95-
67
Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age, pp. 196-201.
68
Wiltshire R . O . , Quarter Sessions Great Rolls, Michaelmas 1626, nos. 149-50.
69
Brit. L i b . , Add. M S . 28000, fo. 284.

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PAST
104 A1* PRESENT NUMBER IO5
themselves, called in question for a variety of offences. William

Brooke, the most audacious of the demonstrators, was an excommuni-
cate, accused of adultery and charged with various unneighbourly
offences; his own wife, interestingly enough, was presented as a
common scold.70 Yet the participants in charivaris were not invaria-
bly so suspect; many were, as far as can be ascertained, completely
innocent and respectable.
The social status of demonstrators is of particular interest since it
bears on the question of how far the more substantial members of
society withdrew from participation in popular customs in this
period. The evidence for London, fragmentary though it is, perhaps
offers some support for the idea that the social centre of gravity of
charivaris gradually fell. There are indications that metropolitan
charivaris in the sixteenth century were organized on a neighbour-
hood basis, and some of them were so elaborate as to suggest the
participation of citizens of some substance. By the early eighteenth
century, London ridings seem to have been organized by particular
occupational groups of relatively low status, such as porters.71 Lon-
don was, of course, undergoing a process of exceptionally rapid
transformation in this period. Evidence for the rest of the country
suggests no great change in the social composition of participants in
charivaris. Throughout the period the chief actors tended to be of
middling to low status, while the supporting crowds could include
people of even more obscure position "rude boys" and the
like.72 In this sense the performance of charivaris was always a
predominantly plebeian affair. On the other hand, again throughout
the whole period, more substantial members of the community often
encouraged the demonstrators and sometimes took active part; or,
at the least, were prepared to remain neutral.
70
Wiltshire R . O . , Quarter Sessions Great Rolls, Recognizances Michaelmas 1618,
Presentments Easter 1621 and Easter 1625; Salisbury Diocesan Records, Dean,
Churchwardens' Presentments, unnumbered files for 1616-17, 1622, Calne.
71
Diary of Henry Machyn, e d . Nichols, p p . 278, 301; Three Fifteenth-Century
Chronicles, ed. James Gairdner (Camden S o c . , 2nd ser., xxviii, London, 1880), p.
132; Henri Misson, Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England, trans. John
Ozell (London, 1719), p . 129; James Peller Malcolm, Anecdotes of the Manners and
Customs of London from the Roman Invasion to the Year 1700, 2nd e d n . , 3 vols.
(London, 1811), i, p. 400; John Ash ton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, 2
vols. (London, 1882;, i, p. 324; The Country Journal: or, The Craftsman, no. 563, 16
Apr. 1737.
72
Brit. L i b . , Add. M S . 28000, fo. 284*; see also the account of the Quemerford
skimmington ride quoted above. Children and unmarried people, including servants
and apprentices, often tookpart in charivaris in this period and were sometimes the
main actors: for example, Wiltshire R . O . , Quarter Sessions Great Rolls, Michaelmas
1626, n o s . 149-50; The Municipal Records of the Borough of Dorchester, Dorset, ed.
Charles Herbert Mayo (Exeter, 1908), p . 655. But these customs were not pamculariy
associated, as in rural France, with adolescents, nor is there evidence of the participa-
tion of organized youth groups. T h e range of sources now available do not bear out
the prehminary suggestions made by Capp, "English Youth Groups and The Pmder
of Wakefitld", pp. 130-1.

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Such "maintainers" of charivaris sometimes included officers of

the law. At a skimmington ride at Ditcheat (Somerset) in 1653, the
constable and tithingman were present but did nothing to stop the
proceedings. It later emerged that the tithingman was one of the
chief instigators, and he professed to believe that "the justice had
approved of it". At Burton on Trent (Staffordshire) in 1618 a couple
who had been found in bed together were dragged out of the house,
paraded through the streets to the sound of rough music and cries
of "A whore and a knave! A whore, a whore!", and set in the
stocks. The constable of Burton freely admitted that he had led the
proceedings, at the urgent request of "some of his neighbours". He
claimed prescription of an "ancient usage and custom of long and
very ancient time within the town", and alleged that his actions had
been ex post facto approved by the justices in quarter sessions. In this
case unofficial rough music is barely distinguishable from officially
prescribed rough music for whoredom. But justices of the peace
could also be tolerant of ridings provoked by female dominance,
which was not in itself liable to legal penalty. When the victims of
the riding at Haughley and Wetherden (Suffolk) in 1604 complained
to the local justice, his response was to "discharge all the parties,
and willed the complainant and his wife to be quiet".73
In their private capacity, gentry and other substantial members of
society could be even less inhibited in their support for charivaris.
At Marden (Wiltshire) in 1626, a number of substantial parishioners
were said to have encouraged the demonstrators, while "the farmer
of their town . . . told them it was well done of them and bade
them go on". At Barham (Kent) in 1643 Henry Oxinden, the local
gentleman, apparently encouraged and possibly even took part in a
riding, declaring that it was "a harmless pastime, which according
to the opinion of honest divines is not only lawful but in some sort
necessary".74 The skimmington ride which made legal history at
Canterbury in 1676 was also led by a man described as a gentleman.
At Maidwell (Northamptonshire) in 1672, when a smallholder of
the parish named Anthony Cable came home drunk and was beaten
by his wife, it was Lady Haslewood, wife of the local squire and
justice Sir William Haslewood, who proposed that a riding should
be held. Admittedly this suggestion was vetoed by Sir William
himself, but simply on the grounds that Cable had done him faithful
service not, as far as we know, because he had any great objections
73
Somerset R . O . , Q / S R 86.2/55-6; P . R . O . . S T A . C . 8/104/20, quoted in Joan Kent,
"The English Village Constable, 1580-1642: T h e Nature and Dilemmas of the
O f f i c e " , / / . Brit. Studies, xx (1981), p p . 38-9; P . R . O . , S T A . C . 8/249/19, m. 18.
74
Wiltshire R . O . , Quarter Sessions Great Rolls, Michaelmas 1626, nos. 149-50;
Brit. L i b . , Add. M S . 28000, fo. 281. T h e divines Oxinden had in mind may have
included such writers as Gilbert Ironside, Seven Quotums of the Sabbath Briefly
Disputed (Oxford, 1637, S.T.C. 14268), pp. 270-5.

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IO6 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 105
to ridings as such. Finally an account of a charivari written in 1678

by Edmund Verney, squire of East Claydon (Buckinghamshire),
though perhaps a trifle supercilious, does testify to the complaisance
both of himself and other substantial inhabitants despite the fact
that the victims of this riding were the respected local vicar and his
wife:
Candlemas day last, the men servants of Bottle Claydon made a riding about Mrs.
Hart's beating her old husband, who was so unadvised as to take notice of it
yesterday in his pulpit. They passed by my house yesterday and 'twas as foolish a
thing as ever I saw. I suppose their masters privately egged on the business, but
appeared not themselves, nor their sons, only Will Holland my miller's son led
the horse."
These examples indicate that by no means all gentlemen con-
demned charivaris. On the contrary, some were as prepared as any
in local society to uphold them. The attitude of Henry Oxinden is
especially interesting, for he was a man of considerable learning, a
scholar, poet, and author of a number of Latin works.76 His case
serves as a reminder that although gentry and aristocratic society
was undoubtedly becoming better educated and "cultured" in this
period, and in that sense widening the cultural gap between the
upper and the lower ranks, such immersion in high culture did not
necessarily entail a repudiation of folk practices. Indeed, the motif
of the charivari was actually included, at least to a limited extent, in
literary and other cultural products designed for 6b'te audiences. It
is of some interest that the mansion at Montacute (Somerset), built
around 1600 by Sir Edward Phelips, master of the rolls and speaker
of the House of Commons, included amid the welter of fashionable
Renaissance motifs a huge plaster frieze of a skimmington ride as
one of the main decorations of the hall though it is, of course,
possible that the tableau was intended primarily for the delectation
of Sir Edward's retainers.77 (See Plates 2 and 3.) Literary references
to charivaris occurred not only in ephemera such as broadside ballads
and jest books,78 but also in authors of higher literary standing. The
list, up to the middle of the seventeenth century, includes John
75
P.R.O., K.B. 27/1973, Fines and Amercements, etc., Hilary Term 27 and 28
Charles II, rot. 3'; The Diary of Thomas Isham of Lamport (1658-81) Kept fry Him in
Latin from 1671 to 1673, ed. Sir Gyles Isham and trans. Norman Marlow (Farn-
borough, 1971), pp. 78, 155, 277; Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century from the
MSS. at Claydon Home, ed. Margaret Maria, Lady Verney, 2 vols. (London, 1930),
i, pp. 367-8.
For a summary of his career, see D.N.B.
77
Dudley D o d d and Mark Girouard, Montacute House, Somerset (The National
Trust, London, 1979), pp. 1 0 - n .
78
For example, T . F. Thiselton Dyer, Folk Lore of Shakespeare (London, 1883),
p. 4 1 5 ; The Pinder of Wakefield, ed. E. A . Horsman (Eng. Reprints Ser., xii,
Liverpool, 1956), p p . 16-17; The Pefiys Ballads, ed. H . E. Rollins, 8 vols. (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1929-32), i, p. 193; Poor Robin (London, 1699), tig. A7 1 , cited in
Bernard Capp, Astrology ana the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500-1800 (Lon-
don, 1979), p. 125.

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Fletcher (1579-1625), Thomas Heywood (?i574-1641), Sir John

Suckling (1609-42), Richard Brome (died ?i652), and James Howell
(?i594-i666). Though it would be wrong to make too much of these
references, they do indicate that the forms of charivari were common
coin among some members of the literary elite, neither particularly
foreign nor especially repugnant to them, and capable of being
integrated into works of some sophistication.79 Moreover it is not
the case that charivaris disappeared from literature in the period
from the Restoration to the early eighteenth century, as one might
expect if such customs were coming to be regarded as impossibly
vulgar. Jonathan Swift, for example, wrote an entire poem on the
troubles of the patient husband, including the ordeal of being the
victim of a riding.80 But probably the best known literary reference
in this period is Samuel Butler's detailed account of a riding in
Hudibras, part 11 (1664). (See Plate 1.) The fact that the motif
was introduced for mock heroic effect obviously testifies to the
considerable degree of cultural differentiation which existed in seven-
teenth-century England. Yet this certainly does not imply a simple
elite/popular dichotomy, and it is important to recognize that Butler's
attitude to popular practices was by no means dismissive. On the
one hand his invocation of folk customs was an appeal to earthy good
sense to debunk intellectual pretension. On the other they served a
political purpose: his satire of the Presbyterian killjoys of the Puritan
revolution firmly associated the restored monarchy with approval of
ridings and other popular festivities, using them as symbols of the
restoration of good sense and social stability. Andrew Marvell,
erstwhile servant of the Protectorate, took up the theme and showed
that the skimmington ride could equally well serve the turn of anti-
court propaganda. He used the motif apparently referring to a
real-life charivari mentioned by Pepys in a scathing attack on the
conduct of the Second Dutch War in his "Last Instructions to a
Painter" (written 1667, published 1689). In line with his stance and
purpose, Marvell represented the riding as a wholesome means of
79
John Fletcher, The Woman's Prise: or, The Tamer Tamed, ed. George B. Ferguson
(The Hague, 1966), esp. pp. 79-81; The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, ed.
R. H. Shepherd, 6 voli. (London, 1874), iv, pp. 2 3 1 , 234; The Dramatic Works of
Richard Brome, 3 vols. (London, 1873), ii, pp. 14-16; The Works of Sir John Suckling,
ed. T . Clayton and L . A. Beaurline, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971), ii, pp. 147, 150; James
Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae: The Familiar Letters, ed. Joseph Jacobs (London,
1890-2), pp. 568-9. There are brief references in other authors, while numerous
charivaresque references occur in the works of Ben Jonson. For discussion of some
of these references, see Donaldson, World Upside-Down, chs. 1-4; Clark, "Inversion,
Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft", pp. 120, 123-5.
80
"A Quiet Life, and a Good N a m e " , in The Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. H.
Williams, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1937), i, p p . 219-21. For some other references about this
time, see Poetical Works of John Oldham, ed. R. Bell (London, 1854), p. 125; William
King, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (London, ?I7O9), pp. 530-2; The Poetical Works
of. . . William Mesum, 6th edn. (Edinburgh, 1767), p. 147.

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administering correction, in contrast to Butler who had stressed the

festive associations. But the point to emphasize here is that both
authors evidently considered that the idea of the charivari would
have sufficient resonance for the e"lite audiences they were largely
addressing to serve as an effective element in social and political
satire.81
To an extent this elite patronage of the charivari tradition for
political purposes was translated from the literary sphere into the
world of action from the 1670s to the early eighteenth century.
During the Exclusion Crisis and afterwards, the Whigs' attempts
to muster popular support included patronage of processions and
demonstrations, most notably the great pope-burning ceremonies,
which included charivaresque elements such as the backward-facing
ride and rough music. Tory and, later, Jacobite and anti-Walpolean
agitation involved similar activities. This helps to explain the promi-
nence, noted by Nicholas Rogers, of elements of charivari in popular
disturbances in early eighteenth-century London.82 In the case of
anti-Hanoverian demonstrations, the symbols of charivari would
no doubt seem particularly appropriate; for, as one Hertfordshire
individual expressed it in 1716, George I could be seen as "a damned
cuckoldy rogue and a dog . . . [who] had banished his wife for
making him a cuckold". In this light, such an incident as occurred
near Hertford on Oak Apple Day, 1717 (29th May, the anniversary
of Charles II's restoration), when "a great multitude . . . [came] to
Watton in a riotous manner with green boughs on their hats and
horns on their heads and with flags", might be interpreted as a
charivari against the king.83
At this juncture we return full circle to one of the starting-
points of our discussion. For this background of anti-Hanoverian
demonstrations must surely be taken into account when considering
the reaction of the absentee Whig landlord Sir Richard Holford to
the charivaresque "groaning" which his tenants enacted on the manor
of Westonbirt in 1716.M Although this demonstration was occasioned
by a moral offence (buggery) and had no explicit anti-Hanoverian or
81
Butler, Hudibras, ed. Wilders, pp. 143-6 (part 11, canto ii, lines 585-712); Andrew
Marvell, The Complete Poems, ed. Elizabeth Story Donno (Harmondsworth, 1972),
p. 167 (lines 375-96); The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. B . Latham and W. Matthews,
11 vols. (London, 1970-83), viii, p. 257.
2 Nicholas Rogers, "Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian London", Past and
Present, n o . 79 (May 1978), pp. 70-100. See also Peter Burke, "Popular Culture in
Seventeenth-Century London , London JL, iii (1977), p p . 153-4, 157; John Steven-
son, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700-1870 (London, 1979), pp. 26-7; Thomas
Wright, England under the House of Hanover . . . Illustrated from the Caricatures and
Satires of the Day, 2 vols. (London, 1848), i, p p . 40-1, 4 5 , 196.
83
Hertford County Records, ed. W . J. Hardy, W . Le Hardy and G. L . Reckitt, 10
vols. (Hertford, 1905-57), ii, pp. 4 8 , 50; and see Rogers, "Popular Protest in Early
Hanoverian London , pp. 95-6.
84
Rollison, "Property, Ideology and Popular Culture", passim.

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anti-Whig content, it did involve a mock baptism. As noted earlier,

religious parodies were among the traditional features of charivaris
and there was, in any case, a long independent tradition of such
practices.85 Pace Rollison's interpretation, there is no particular
reason to suppose that in enacting the baptism the inhabitants of
Westonbirt were making any profound political point. Yet Sir Rich-
ard seems to have regarded it as seditious. In the dangerous days of
1716 this was perhaps understandable. In the even more dangerous
days of 1643 John Swan, the Puritan minister of Demon in Kent,
had likewise expressed fears that a simple charivari might escalate
into sedition. Similarly in 1607 the court of Star Chamber had taken
a particularly serious view of the demonstrations against John Hole
at Wells because of the coincidence with unrest in the midland
counties.86 But the political crisis of the 1710s passed away, as had
the earlier troubles. It would be a mistake to assume that because
some political demonstrations of the early Hanoverian period in-
volved charivaresque elements, while on the other hand jumpy
carpetbaggers like Holford might over-react to incidents like the
"groaning" which may not in fact have had a political meaning, all
charivaris and similar customs had by this time been tarred with the
brush of sedition and were hence anathema to the ruling classes.
Most contemporaries seem to have realized that the common run of
ridings and such like, stigmatizing beaten husbands and cuckolds,
posed no great threat to church and state. Such ridings seem to have
occurred quite frequently in London in the early eighteenth century
and were tolerantly regarded. They also occurred in the provinces
and, as earlier, sometimes involved substantial members of the
community and even gentlemen. Thus a skimmington ride at Aveton
Gifford (Devon) in 1738 included among the 150 or so participants
a substantial leavening of respectable tradesmen, several yeomen,
two people described as gentlemen, and the wife of an esquire.87
What does the preceding discussion contribute to our understanding

85
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centwy England (London, 1971), p. 162; Thomas, "Place
of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England", p. 78. For a threatened mock baptism
during an Elizabethan enclosure riot, see P.R.O., STA.C. 5/KJ/23. Another custom
reminiscent of charivaris was to toll the passing bell when a wife and husband were
at odds and would not speak to one another: for example, W. H. Hale, A Series of
Precedents and Proceedings in Criminal Causes (London, 1847), p. 252; Wiltshire R.O.,
Salisbury Diocesan Records, Archdeacon of Salisbury, Act Book (Office) 15, 30 May
1639, Office v. Boulter and Smith.
** Brit. Lib., Add. MS. 28000, fo.. 284; Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age, p.
177-
87
M. G. Dickinson, "A 'Skimmington Ride' at Aveton Gifford", Devon and
Cornwall Notes and Queries, zxziv (1981), pp. 290-2. For London charivaris, see n.
71 above.

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of the "reform of popular culture" down to about 1715? Some
features of charivaris, such as their predominantly lower-class compo-
sition, plainly reflect socially related cultural differences. But such
differences probably already existed at the start of the period. It
would be possible to argue (though the evidence is not compelling)
that by 1700 charivaris were regarded as more distinctively "vulgar"
than was the case two centuries earlier; but not to the extent that
references to these customs came to be seen as unsuitable for inclusion
in literature designed for elite audiences. The criticisms of charivaris
voiced by individual Puritan ministers, and the slow hardening of
the legal position, are consistent with the idea of an active attack on
popular practices. Yet, for the reasons already noted, neither of these
factors should be overstressed; and they are counterbalanced by
evidence of the patronage of, or at least tolerance towards, charivaris
on the part of some members of the Elites. Overall, hostility towards
charivaris appears to have been infrequent or muted; and it does
seem plain that they were at least one form of popular custom, and
an impressive one, which escaped any really serious attempt at
repression. If charivaris flourished with increased vigour in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Edward Thompson suggests,
it was clearly on the basis of very solid survival from the earlier
period.88 For a variety of reasons (some of which are implied in the
following paragraphs) it would be unwise, without further investiga-
tion, to generalize on these points from charivaris to other customs.
But this case study does suggest that such additional research would
be of value. Recent work has amply documented the attacks on
popular customs mounted by particular interest groups, above all
Puritan clergy and laymen. More serious attention needs to be paid
to clergy, gentry and other substantial members of society who were
more complaisant towards folk practices; and the actual pattern
of the survival or disappearance of popular customs needs to be
investigated in more detail.89
Irrespective of the fate of other customs, why were charivaris in
particular regarded, by and large, with complaisance? Part of the
answer may simply be that they occurred too infrequently to arouse
much hostility. Unfortunately we shall probably never know just
how common charivaris actually were in this period. This analysis
is based on a dossier of about sixty cases (excluding purely literary
references, doubtful instances, and a multitude of minor charivar-
esque incidents such as the hanging of horns on cuckolds' houses).
These examples were located by serendipity, and systematic search
of the local and central archives would no doubt yield more instances.
**
89
Thompson, " 'Rough Music' et charivari", p. 279.
For some preliminary investigations, see Ingram, "Religion, Communities and
Moral Discipline", passim.

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RIDINGS, ROUGH MUSIC AND "POPULAR CULTURE" III
But our information will always be very incomplete because, in the

absence of any sustained attempt at repression, there was no particu-
lar reason why charivaris should find a place in the records. Yet
assuming that the characteristic pretext, the beating of a husband by
his wife, was a relatively unusual occurrence, it may be confidently
inferred that charivaris were by no means an everyday affair in
any particular community. But this is not a wholly satisfactory
explanation of their relative immunity to repression. It does seem
clear that charivaris were widely known, in which case their pre-
sumed infrequency is arguably irrelevant to the issue of how much
hostility they aroused: forms of behaviour may be rare but none-
theless excite condemnation. In any event it is necessary to find
further reasons to explain not simply the lack of repression, but also
the fact that charivaris were sometimes regarded with approval and
even, on occasion, actively encouraged by gentlemen and other
members of 61ite groups.
Such reasons are not far to seek, and are of special interest because
they demonstrate powerful linkages between charivaris and some
elements of elite culture. In the first place these demonstrations
could to a considerable extent be seen as merely the unauthorized
application of shame sanctions very similar to those prescribed by
official agencies. To that degree there was a close link between these
customs and the official punitive system. In so far as the official
analogues of charivaris gradually went out of use a process which
awaits detailed research the link was of diminishing strength; but
it was still powerful through most or even all of this period. Of
course the fact that charivaris involved the assumption of quasi-
judicial powers by the populace could arouse some disquiet. Yet in
practice, in a legal system which relied heavily on local co-operation
and which delegated considerable policing powers to non-profes-
sional parish officers, such arrogation of authority could be regarded
with tolerance.
The symbols employed in charivaris and the framework of ideas
which underlay them provided another overlap with elite culture.
Specific references to charivaris in the literature of the period have
already been noted. Beyond this it is important to emphasize that the
principles of inversion and correspondence characteristic of charivaris
were (as Stuart Clark has recently stressed) equally central to the
learned philosophies of the period. Moreover many of the specific
symbols associated with charivaris, such as discordant noise express-
ive of disorder or disharmony, were in one form or another and in a
variety of contexts current in drama and literature designed for elite
audiences. The educated versions of these ideas and motifs were often
worked out at a much more sophisticated level. Yet the conceptual
framework of, say, the homily against rebellion or the court masques

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112 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER IO5
of Ben Jonson was recognizably similar to that of charivaris.90 In the

light of a host of anthropological studies which testify both to the
ubiquity of the kinds of ideas under discussion and the complexity
of "primitive" thought,91 it would be unwise to assume that charivaris
represented merely a debased version of 61ite ideas which had some-
how trickled down to or even been imposed upon the masses. Rather
charivaris bear witness to a powerful body of shared concepts and
symbols elaborated with varying degrees of subtlety at different
social and cultural levels.
There was yet another area of shared meanings beyond this concep-
tual framework. The social concerns which underlay charivaris,
especially the issue of the relations between husbands and wives
within marriage, had resonance not only for the lower orders but for
all ranks of society. The patriarchal ideal was shared by all. So
also though there were no doubt variations at different social
levels were the tensions arising from the incongruity between the
ideal and the actuality of husband and wife relationships. There were
unruly wives and cuckolded husbands in castles as well as cottages;92
and, as the cases of Socrates and Xanthippe, Aristotle and Phyllis
were supposed to demonstrate, even wisdom might have to give way
to a wilful woman. As William Heale put the matter in 1609, voicing
a sentiment which would have been equally familiar to Swift:
For diverse women being of a diverse stature, strength, complexion and disposition,
there must needs fall out a diverse event . . . [of battles between husbands and
wives] . . . If I should chance to marry with a stout and valiant woman . . . and
after a while from Cupid's wars fall unto martial arms, I doubt my learning would
not save me from some unlearned blows. 9 3
In fine, although charivaris might at times appear indecorous and
disorderly, fundamentally they made conceptual, moral and social
sense to the majority of contemporaries of whatever social rank, and
hence were unlikely to come under severe attack.
To reaffirm a point made at the outset, it is not the intention of
this essay to deny the existence of cultural differentiation in early
modern England, or the possibility that such differentiation increased
over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But it is important not
to exaggerate the idea of cultural split. When Rollison, for example,
resorts to the language of colonial acculturation, implying a massive
dichotomy between the mental worlds of the Elites and of the mass
of the population, he surely goes too far.94 The study of charivaris
supplies a corrective. Their special interest lies in the fact that these
customs, so often regarded by modern historians as characteristically
90
Clark, "Inversion, Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft", passim.
91
Babcock (ed.), Reversible World, pt. 2 passim.
92
Greaves, Society and Religion in Elizabethan England, pp. 257, 264-6.
93
William Heale, An Apologie for Women (Oxford, 1609, S.T.C. 13014), p. 15.
What appears to be a comment on charivaris appears on pp. 45-6.
94
Rollison, "Property, Ideology and Popular Culture , pp. 89, 93.

by guest
plebeian, actually bear witness less to cultural conflict than to areas

of shared culture. They were relatively immune to attack because in
important respects they articulated meanings common to all ranks
of society. They thus serve as valuable reminders that throughout
the period under review there remained important points of cultural
contact between rich and poor, rulers and ruled. It is surely necessary
to take account of such cultural homogeneities before insisting on
too pronounced a split between "popular" and "elite" culture by
about 1700.
The Queen's University of Belfast Martin Ingram

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RIDINGS, ROUGH MUSIC AND THE

"REFORM OF POPULAR CULTURE"

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cultural consensus. Keith Wrightson, for example, has emphasized

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a result of socially differential developments in literacy and other

The evidence on which to base a study of charivaris in early modern

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platter and a candlestick ringing and making a noise", and an attempt

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particularly zestful if the victim happened to occupy some position

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No other situations were consistently associatedwith charivaris in

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Charivaris concerned with behaviour which was forbidden by law,

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and the others of Burbage . . . resolved to carry back to them of

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such characteristic motifs as the "riding", such a case is barely

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that the laughter of charivaris bore witness to ambiguities and unres-

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it "better to marry a sheep than a shrew", or "better to marry a

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a contrast between purity and filth a distinction still current as a

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pronounce against ridings can be illustrated by accounts of particular

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cfarried] to the cuckingstool. She threatened to be even with him".63

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themselves, called in question for a variety of offences. William

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Such "maintainers" of charivaris sometimes included officers of

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to ridings as such. Finally an account of a charivari written in 1678

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Fletcher (1579-1625), Thomas Heywood (?i574-1641), Sir John

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administering correction, in contrast to Butler who had stressed the

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anti-Whig content, it did involve a mock baptism. As noted earlier,

What does the preceding discussion contribute to our understanding

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But our information will always be very incomplete because, in the

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of Ben Jonson was recognizably similar to that of charivaris.90 In the

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plebeian, actually bear witness less to cultural conflict than to areas

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