<i>Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England: Illicit Sex and the Nobility</i> (review)

Johanna Rickman remarks that her book resulted from an apparently simple question: 'What happened to noblemen and noblewomen who engaged in extramarital sexual relationships?' (p. 1). She rightly insists that the answers shed light on the interactions of social status and gender, the role of the monarch, and relationships within and between elite kinship networks. Her focus is somewhat narrower than the title implies; she addresses only the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and much of the book deals with the first two decades of the 17th century. Rickman is also careful to explain that her study is limited to 'heterosexual extramarital sex: fornication, adultery, and bastardy', and that she is not discussing issues of sexual identity (p. 7). Nevertheless, her work has broad implications for our understanding of early modern society and politics.