This heavily researched and legalistic work, although compact, is well worth the money for any scholar or collection of the origins of modern British, American and Commonwealth family law, legal history in general, English family life in the late Reformation to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, gender studies, theology, and the history of children's rights. It is excellent because it covers, in a most comprehensive fashion, almost all aspects of married life which attracted the involvement of persons outside the marriage - getting married, martial difficulties, and finally marital breakdown - and documents the private feelings of married people, compiling historical information from many reliable sources (particularly court records). My assumptions before reading this book was that married women in England never had effective rights to protect themselves from domestic violence or desertion by their husbands, and that magistrates and judges treated them contemptously. Bailey shows that this was not true; and in exposing how marriage was viewed and dealt with by a deeply religious yet earthy people, the reader can gain empathy and significant knowledge of the philosophy, social structure, laws, expectations, ambitions and private feelings of 17th and 18th century English folk from many walks of life, that thoroughly explain the differences of their world to ours. The writing style is engaging and extremely informative, while also being rigorously factual. I highly recommend this rare book.

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