Marital Conversations: Using Privacy to Negotiate Marital Conflicts in Adam Eyre’s Diary, 1647–1649

Abstract

Embracing private conversations as tools for conflict resolution, this chapter dissects a particular case of marital dispute in “Using Privacy to Negotiate Marital Conflicts in Adam Eyre’s Diary, 1614–1661”. This chapter retraces the role of privacy in the marital conflict documented in Yorkshireman Adam Eyre’s diary, “A Dyurnall, or catalogue of all my accions and expenses”, which survives for the years 1647–1649. His diary allows us to investigate their conflict, but also their joint attempts to resolve it. In various conversations, they discussed current disputes. Simon argues that the privacy of their household provided a protective space for negotiation, which allowed neglecting, bending, or adapting contemporary gender roles or norms of marital conduct.

Adam Eyre (1614–1661), a yeoman living near the Yorkshire village of Penistone, was caught up in a longstanding marital conflict with his wife Susannah. Being two strong-minded and outspoken characters, the two fought nearly constantly over all sorts of everyday business. Religious matters, the family’s finances, Susannah’s illnesses, and Adam’s penchant for drinking, gambling, and living far beyond his means fuelled their ongoing dispute. They often yelled at each other, cursing and blaming the other for their misery. His diary, published in 1875 under the title A Dyurnall, or catalogue of all my accions and expenses which covered the years 1647–1649, accounts for their disputes as well as their attempts to resolve them.¹ While the older works merely cited Adam Eyre as a reference point, two studieshave analysed the diary in greater detail in an attempt to reconstruct his sociability and his striving for social advancement.² Other historianshave used his diary to examine the yeoman’s lifestyle or his reading habits.³ Keith Wrightsonand Bernard Capp have both drawn attention to the diary as a rich source of information about early modern marital life. Wrightson has called the diary’s account of the “conjugal negotiation” of the spouses a rarity.⁴ Capp has referred to their agreement as an “extraordinary peace treaty” since both parties were willing to compromise in order to maintain domestic peace and thereby improve everyday cohabitation.⁵ This study will offer a closer examination of this matter from the perspective of private conversations. It will be argued that Adam successfully tried to keep family, friends, and neighbours at bay in order to pacify their marital conflict in the privacy of their own home. Considering the fact that seventeenth-century family lives and disputes were closely entwined with their social surroundings and that friends and neighbours regularly intervened or mediated in interpersonal conflicts, Adam’s attempt at a private settlement seams striking. As a relatively wealthy yeoman and influential member of his local church community, he was often involved in mediating conflicts within the community and his circle of friends. While he accepted mediation for other disputes he was involved in, he opted for a private settlement in his marital conflict. Why did Adam Eyre choose a private negotiation in this matter? What were the possibilities and advantages linked to a private settlement and how did the Eyres make use of these possibilities? In the analysis of private negotiations spaces of privacy, the privilege of privacy and the negotiators’ relation to social norms is of particular importance.

Adam Eyre and his Diary

Adam Eyre was born in 1614 into a wealthy Catholic family. His father, Thomas Eyre moved from Derbyshire to Yorkshire and bought a large estate near Penistone,⁶ farmed the approximately 22,000 acres of moorland, and developed it into a prosperous estate.⁷ The Eyres were wealthy yeomen farmers who owned their land and could sublet land to their tenants. Their family seat, the elegant but remote country house Hazlehead Hall, illustrates their aspiration to the wealth and lifestyle of the landed gentry.⁸ Adam turned from the Catholic faith of his ancestors to Puritanism. In his diary, he noted numerous visits to church services and sermons as well as the contemporary concerns of his church in which he was actively involved. His religion also gave him access to the well-established Puritan families of the area. His marriage to Susannah Mathewman in 1640 strengthened his ties with an influential Puritan family in his neighbourhood.⁹ Although this marriage enhanced his status within the community, it resulted in a marital conflict that lasted for years.

In his diary, Adam documented his everyday business and activities. Despite the meticulous record of these descriptions, the explicit documentation of marital relations is a rare occurrence.¹⁰ Just like his marriage, his religious devotion was characterised by ups and downs. Whenever his faith was strong, his diary entries recorded long religious reflections and promises to himself and to God to lead a more pious life.¹¹ In these passages, his diary bears some resemblance to the Puritan self-fashioning found in other diaries that contain stories of religious awakenings, struggles, and endless records of sins.¹² In contrast to these Puritan diaries, however, Adam Eyre’s diary is only occasionally written in a sermonising style and is not restricted to religious matters.

On the surviving pages of his diary, Adam did not explain why he kept his journal. Nevertheless, some motives are self-evident. His diary helped him to keep accounts of his everyday business, his financial transactions, and his income and expenditure, a common practice for many early modern diarists.¹³ Given that he lent and borrowed goods, animals, and money frequently, this documentation might be explained as an attempt to keep track of all his transactions. He also used his writing to reflect on his marriage and his religious experiences. Bearing in mind that he chose not to share the state of his marriage with his family and friends, he confided many honest descriptions of his marital disputes in his diary, perhaps to share his sorrows or to find solace and clarity of mind in putting them to paper. Irrespective of the motivations behind its composition, Adam Eyre’s journal offers us a glance into a space where people had reasons to keep their conversation private: the relationship between spouses. Adam did not confide in his diary incautiously; instead, his self-accounting was guided by social norms and expectations whereby socially undesired actions were blacked out and ‘censored’. When the dispute between the couple was especially acute, he noted in his diary that he had been tempted by a local woman.¹⁴ The passages retelling the incident contain crossed-out, blackened words, and phrases that can no longer be read. Therefore, his actions and thoughts are lost to the readers, and one can only deduce that this encounter tempted him to contemplate adultery. It is probable that he censored his writings himself. Although it is unclear whether Adam Eyre intended his diary to be read or published, he seemed to have been aware of the fact that there was always a possibility of someone reading it. His wife reading the pages and knowing about his contemplated adultery would have added further fuel to fire. While some early modern diaries were hidden carefully or even written in a secret code in order to prevent outsiders from invading their space of privacy,¹⁵ other diarists chose not to commit all their thoughts and actions to the pages of their diaries.¹⁶ Diaries were not entirely private documents—their levels of privacy varied and shifted from diarist to diarist and, at times, even within the diary itself.

Marital Life and Conflicts

The pages of Adam’s diary provide glimpses of everyday married life, at least for the years 1647–1649. During these years, the marriage threatened to dissolve several times. In the summer and autumn of 1647, long-lasting conflicts escalated particularly strongly. Arguments, quarrels, curses, threats, and longer periods of spatial separation run through the entries and testify to a marriage that began to crumble. Adam Eyre’s annoyed, grumpy, and indifferent voice reveals frustration. At the beginning of the records, Adam and Susannah had already been married for seven years. The marriage remained childless. If this circumstance should have led to quarrels or grudges between the couple, such feelings were not voiced in the diary. Their arguments arose from daily life and close proximity. Being two stubborn, strong-minded characters, their interests clashed constantly.

Financial Matters

A frequent cause of conflict was the family’s economic troubles. In 1647, the financial difficulties plaguing the Eyres were particularly severe since Adam Eyre, together with his brother Joseph, had run up heavy debts in order to provide troops and horses for the Parliamentarian army in the English Civil War.¹⁷ Although he petitioned for the “Northerner’s List”—a group of former army captains who demanded compensation for their financial expenses during the war¹⁸—the money was never fully repaid.¹⁹ To a large extent, however, the family’s financial difficulties were due to Adam’s poor housekeeping and economic management since he consistently lived beyond his means, spent money he did not have, and incurred debts through his lifestyle, including his habits of betting, drinking, and gambling.²⁰ Susannah did not ask her father for help, nor was she prepared to give her husband money from her private estates.²¹ The constant monetary worries and the resulting lack of security in their household put a permanent strain on the relationship.²² According to the ideal of marriage as a partnership in work and life, both spouses were responsible for financial prosperity and security. Adam Eyre did a poor job of fulfilling his duty to provide for the family and gave his wife plenty of reasons to criticise him.²³ With her own security as much at stake as her husband’s, Susannah did not give in to her husband in money matters and stood up to him as she did in the case of his drinking and alcoholic excesses.

Adam Eyre’s Lifestyle

Despite his Puritan convictions, Adam Eyre’s way of life by no means corresponded to the Puritan ideal of a pious man who rejected worldly temptations in order to lead a godly life. In addition to his numerous outings, evening parties, and dinner invitations, Adam could regularly be found at the local pub enjoying the company of his fellow soldiers, drinking and gambling.²⁴ He noted, for example, that he “[s]pent the whole day drinking with the soldiers and others”.²⁵ That these pleasures also collided with his role as a husband is evident, for Susannah was a thorn in the side of his alcoholic excesses and his late-night drinking bouts. When Adam came home heavily intoxicated, she locked him out, sending him to the yard or stables to sober up and not letting him back into the house until the next morning.²⁶ “[She] kept ye Yates [gates] shut, and sayd shee would be master of the house for that night”.²⁷ Here, too, Susannah’s temperament and strength of will become apparent. While the right to grant or deny access to the house was traditionally attributed to the ‘man of the house’, Susannah claimed and made use of this right to protect herself from her husband’s alcohol-fuelled moods. She punished him by expelling him from their home and thereby turning it into her space of refuge. The space and remoteness of Hazlehead Hall spared them from turning this into an immediately public affair, noted by their surrounding neighbours.

Quarrelling over Religion

Another point of conflict was religion. Linda Pollock has named financial and religious aspects as the two biggest challenges of marriage which were of particular importance when choosing a partner.²⁸ Especially among the dissenters,²⁹ potential spouses were chosen carefully from within Puritan circles.³⁰ But although Adam Eyre married into a well-respected Puritan family, religious questions were a common cause of conflict in the Eyre household. To Adam’s displeasure, Susannah did not share his religious enthusiasm.³¹ From time to time, he could convince her to accompany him to church, religious lectures, or sermons. Mostly, however, her poor health was cited as an excuse or pretext to stay at home. That Susannah did not share her husband’s religious convictions—at least not to the same extent—is also clear from her outward appearance which Adam repeatedly criticised severely:

This morne my wife began, after her old manner, to braule [quarrel] and revile [scold] mee for wishing her only to wear such apparell as was decent and comly, and accused mee for treading on her sore foot, with curses and others. Which to my knowledge I touched not; nevertheless, she continued in that extacy til noone.³²

Susannah’s dress displeased her husband as it contradicted the strict Puritan requirements for an unadorned wardrobe. Susannah’s tone also provoked him as she bickered, scolded, and cursed in response to his demand for moderation. It is obvious that Susannah was by no means a timid wife who bent to her husband’s will without resistance. Susannah rejected his accusations, defied her husband, and gave free rein to her emotions. She may have worn the wrong dress, but he had stepped on her aching foot.

Adam’s attempt to end this quarrel also testifies to the hot-headed nature of the two spouses, for it reads like a threat in the heat of the moment: “At dinner I told her I purposed never to come in bed with her til shee took more notice of what I formerly had to say to her”.³³ Obviously, his resisting wife angered him, so he rather clumsily tried to punish her with a temporary spatial separation and the refusal of his marital duties. However, his attempts to demonstrate his male authority failed and could never lead her into submission.

Susannah was by no means willing to subordinate herself to her husband as was demanded of her in the Puritan understanding of marriage which saw the family as a ‘godly household’ characterised by a strict hierarchy. The woman had to submit to the authority of her husband. The non-conformist preacher, Edmund Calamy (1600–1666) wrote: “First reform your own families and then you will be better fit to reform the family of God”, thereby entrusting families with the task of consolidating the divine social order on a small scale in order to carry it from there into society.³⁴ This corresponded to the common ideas of the time which understood domestic peace as an important cornerstone of the social order and thus attributed an important part of social peace to peace within the home and in marriage.³⁵ Conduct books would have suggested the strong hand of the pater families who should exercise his authority, discipline his wife, and restore the rightful order of the house.³⁶ However, the Eyres’ conflict negotiations show that it was not the power of the father of the house that was applied to restore domestic peace but a compromise on an equal footing. They opted for a private settlement of the affair in order to be able to discuss and solve the matter more flexibly with regard to social norms and gender roles.

Negotiating Peace

The marriage reached its low point before Adam could initiate a resolving discussion. One night in August, his sleeplessness made him reflect on the status of his marriage:

This night ma wife had a painful night of her foote, which troubled mee so that sleepe went from mee. Wherupon sundry wicked wordly thoughts came in my head, and, namely, a question wheter I should live with my wife or noe, if she continued so wicked as shee is.³⁷

Here, it is clear that the prolonged quarrels wore him out and the thought of leaving his wife crossed his mind. He quickly realised that this would be a solution to the conflict, albeit not one that he could reconcile with his religious beliefs. He responded with immediate prayer and Christian night reading: “[W]hereupon I ris and prayd to God to direct mee a right. And after I read some good Counsell […] I prayed God again to direct mee, and so slept til morne quitely, praysed be God”.³⁸ His religious conviction prompted him not to give up on his marriage. The social consequences that a separation would have worried him as well. On 22 December 1647, Adam Eyre made a resolution:

I am resolved hereafter never to pay for any body in the alehouse, nor never to entangle myself in company so much again, and I pray God give mee grace that, sleighting the things of this life, I may looke up to Him.³⁹

That this resolution, despite its appeal to a religious way of life, was probably made primarily for financial considerations is made clear by the beginning of the entry: “This day I rested at home all day, and cast up the accounts of my expenses for this yere; and I find them to be nere hand 1001. wheras I have not past 301. per ann. To live on.”⁴⁰ The decision to spend less money in the alehouse and more time at home can be justified with a religious conversion, but it was motivated to a large extent by his annual economic balance sheet which once again showed Adam Eyre that he was living far beyond his means. That this realisation drove him to religion is, nevertheless, conclusive.

His turn to religion was strengthened by an event in January which finally prompted a decisive attempt to settle the marital conflict. On 1 January 1648, a strong storm hit the Eyres’ house, destroying the chimney and nearly endangering Adam’s life as falling parts missed him only by inches. To Adam, this was a sign of divine intervention and providence.⁴¹ Since God had spared him, he took this ‘act of mercy’ as an opportunity to also be merciful to his wife and to finally pacify the long-running conflict between the couple. The historian Keith Wrightson has emphasised that Adam tried to do this not by asserting his authority as husband and head of household, but by proposing a compromise.⁴² In his diary, Adam noted:

This morne I used some words of persuasion to my wife to forbeare to tell mee of what is past, and promised her to become a good husband to her for ye tyme to come, and shee promised mee likwise shee would doe what I wished her in anything, save in setting her hand to papers; and I promised her never to wish her therunto. Now I pray God that both shee and I may leave of all our old and foolish contentions, and joyne together in His service without all fraud, malice, or hypocrisye; and that Hee will for ye same purpose illuminate our understandings with His Holy Spirit.⁴³

From the “words of persuasion”, it is clear that this attempt to resolve the conflict was a verbal negotiation process in which both spouses summed up their marriage and jointly decided to settle the dispute. In doing so, they invoked the marital ideal of reciprocity together with their Christian convictions and ideals. Just as Adam Eyre promised his wife to be a good husband, she also promised to be a good wife to him and to submit to his wishes. They tried to step away from ungodly feelings and behaviours such as malice and hatred and prayed to God to help them keep their promise to each other and to Him. In addition to that, the category of privacy was a crucial element of their mediation process because it facilitated their negotiation at eye-level. By choosing to settle the dispute privately, they could—at least to some extent—step away from the gender roles expected of them by society. Adam did not have to demonstrate his power and authority as the father of the house since there was no one present to doubt his position, virility, and honour. Their private settlement allowed them to bend social norms and expectations. They would take these possibilities of private settlements even further as their dispute continued.

Although both Adam and Susannah called upon God, asking Him to support them in keeping the peace, their quarrels resumed as early as February. When Adam Eyre came home late from a funeral, he responded to his wife’s reproaches by breaking her spinning wheel which he contritely repaired the next morning.⁴⁴ The fiery temper and hot-headedness of the two spouses could therefore not be eradicated even by their peace treaty. Adam found it equally difficult to keep his resolution to go out and drink less. Time and again, he fell back into old patterns of behaviour. However, his drinking binges were now followed by long penitent diary passages in which he religiously reflected on his actions and vowed to mend his ways.⁴⁵ On 11 October 1648, Adam told his wife that she could run the house as she saw fit and assured her that “neither would I medle with her at all”.⁴⁶ On the one hand, this statement reads like a declaration of surrender, but on the other hand, it also reads like the necessary decision to find a pragmatic solution for their cohabitation that was suitable for everyday life.

Privacy as Privilege

Since it is only Adam’s diary that provides us with information on their disputes and their attempts to resolve them, we cannot know for sure that nobody was involved in the mediation process. Susannah’s perspective on the issue is not passed on and there are no surviving records that can shed light on the involvement of other family members, friends, or neighbours. If such involvement took place, Adam chose not to document it in his diary. On the page, he presents the settlement as a private one that was achieved without any interference or mediation. It is quite atypical to assume that Adam and Susannah mediated their marital conflict without any assistance. Due to the close social and spatial proximity, neighbours were often aware of marital conflicts and offered help in mediating and restoring the peace of the house as well as its surrounding community. Even more astonishing is the fact that the marital conflict did not invoke community reaction either in form of unwanted advice, mediation, or gossip.

Historians such as Joachim Eibach and Inken Schmidt-Voges have emphasised the openness of the early modern house and its interconnectedness with its surrounding community.⁴⁷ Many rooms of the houses were freely accessible.⁴⁸ Due to close spatial and social proximity, what took place behind close walls was neither private nor secret. In these close-knit communities, people heard, saw, and knew nearly everything that went on inside their neighbours’ houses, which is why they were central witnesses in conflicts that ended up in court.⁴⁹ Servants and apprentices who shared the family’s living space shared their daily lives and conflicts as well. Possibilities and spaces for privacy and seclusion slowly emerged from the seventeenth century onwards when working and living spaces were separated. Servants’ quarters were transferred from the centre to the basement or the attic. Neighbours and guests were only invited to the parlour or the dining room.⁵⁰ This process was distributed socially and hierarchically, allowing plenty of space and possibilities of retreat for the wealthy but hardly any for the poor. Servants and day labourers had to share narrow rooms or even beds and could often only experience privacy in the outdoors.⁵¹ Nevertheless, most people managed to create spaces or loopholes for privacy, sometimes even with their community’s help. However, the possibilities and spaces for this varied according to their gender, age, and status.

A marital conflict that took place over such a long period of time as happened in the case of the Eyres should have been known to their closest social circles. However, even though both spouses came from local Puritan families, family relations or visits do not appear often on the pages of Adam’s diary. If there were any attempts at intervention or mediation by family members—something which would have been typical, if other sources are to be believed⁵²—Adam did not put them down in writing. Even if the servants and farm workers were most likely aware of the state of the Eyres’ marriage, the gossip had either not reached the community or prompted them to act on it—at least there are no indications in Eyre’s diary that the domestic conflict was the subject of community gossip. If rumours had been circulating, it would have been likely for the Eyres to react to it. How could Adam and Susannah contain rumours and reject any form of unwanted intrusions into and interventions upon their privacy? How and why could they opt for a private settlement? The Eyres’ home Hazlehead Hall, which is located a few miles away from the villages of Thurlstone and Penistone, provided the spatial room to keep neighbours at bay. In contrast to smaller and narrower living quarters, the size and remoteness of their home offered more spaces and options for privacy. Their quarrelling was out of earshot of their neighbours, and even the locking out-and-denying access strategy of Susannah’s was probably only visible to the servants. Adam’s diary does not document conflicts with servants, but a court case has survived that shows him as a supporting employer who helped servants in need.

The Quarter Sessions held in Pontefract⁵³ in 1640 list Adam Eyre involved in a “bastardy case”. Mary Turner, a young woman from Eyre’s parish in Penistone, gave birth to an illegitimate child. James Turton was named as the father.⁵⁴ Adam Eyre’s name appears in court records because he had offered to pay for the child’s maintenance until its father would agree to repay his debts to Eyre. Although it is not explicitly stated in the court records, Eyre’s involvement in the case makes it probable that Mary and James were tenants or servants working on his estate. When informed about the pregnancy, Adam chose to support the young woman, lending her money to take care of the child. While many early modern masters dismissed their servants as soon as their illegitimate pregnancy was revealed,⁵⁵ Adam tried to mediate and support Mary. Since settling the financial maintenance of mother and child was the main target pursued in these cases, he tried to force James to take financial responsibility.⁵⁶ Since rumours about illegitimate pregnancies usually spread rapidly via local gossip, his current servants would, in all likelihood, know about Adam’s supporting intervention in the case and might have reconsidered harming a good and supportive employer as well as jeopardising their own position by spreading the word about the Eyres’ marriage troubles.

Adam Eyre’s actions did not only gain him respect and credit from his tenants and servants but also from the members of his community. Furthermore, he was privileged because of his status within his community. He belonged to an influential and relatively wealthy family, and although being a yeoman he belonged to the middling sort, his actions and social networks show that he acted and aspired to be perceived as a country gentleman.⁵⁷ He called members of the local gentry his friends, moved in polite society, and was actively engaged in his church community.

As an influential member of his community, Adam was frequently involved in mediation processes that threatened to disturb the community’s peace and order. Interpersonal conflicts disturbed the peace of the house and possibly also the peace of the community.⁵⁸ Since the community played an elementary role in the functioning of each household by providing mutual help and support, lending and borrowing goods, tools, or money, organising the common lands, and taking care of its members in times of need, conflicts could pose a threat to this well-functioning system of mutuality.⁵⁹ According to early modern concepts of order, the house was a cornerstone for a peaceful society. Order and peace of the house could either stabilise or threaten public peace.⁶⁰ Thus, domestic peace was not private but a community matter. Conflicts being a constant part of community life, people had to be skilled mediators experienced in different practices of conflict management.⁶¹ Although some conflicts were solved within the household, often friends, family members, or local people of high status—such as churchwardens, ministers, or local gentlemen—acted as mediators.⁶² Adam Eyre made use of his social status when he offered help in mediating conflicts within his parish and his circle of friends. He also acted as a mediator in numerous community disputes, offering his help in private, business, and church matters.

When conflicts arose between Adam Eyre and his good friend and temporary house resident Edward Mitchell, Adam did not hesitate to enlist the help of his friends and neighbours to mediate in this dispute.⁶³ The conflict between the Eyres and their house residents broke out over different ideas of cohabitation and was mediated by a couple of friends. So why did Adam accept mediation in the conflict with his friend Mitchell but not with his wife? The fact that they refused to involve other family members, friends, or neighbours in negotiating their conflict most likely indicates the danger it might have posed to the couple’s reputation within the community. In contrast to the conflict with Mitchell (who he regarded as entirely in the wrong by violating the ‘house rules’ and transgressing the Eyres’ hospitality), the stakes were higher for the Eyres with regard to their marriage troubles. As a well-respected member of the neighbourhood and a leading member of his church, the fact of their marital dispute becoming a public affair would have dealt a serious blow to the Eyres’ reputation.⁶⁴ The inclusion of other mediators might have revealed the fact that Adam could not—and did not—dare to always stand up to his strong-willed and often domineering wife and that he had to frequently stomach her numerous insults and curses.

At a time when male honour was decisively defined by his male authority as husband and father, it was dangerous to one’s good name to publicly display a lack of male strength, control, and authority towards one’s wife.⁶⁵ The much-feared defamatory term ‘cuckold’ primarily pointed at the loss of sexual control over one’s wife—for example, by her committing adultery. Closely connected to this, however, was the image of the woman as an ‘angry scold’ who insulted her husband and thus withdrew from his control before the eyes of the public.⁶⁶ Adam could not discipline his wife, and Susannah was not willing to subject herself to his authority. Thus, both spouses contradicted the gender norms and standards of appropriate behaviour expected by societal conventions. Adam’s previous attempts to rebuke his wife through threats of domestic violence failed and triggered similarly resolute forms of resistance in her.

While his status meant that he had a lot to lose if the conflict became known, it also enabled him to negotiate the conflict privately. This opportunity to keep marital conversations private was a privilege granted by his social status and authority. It kept people of his close surroundings from daring to interfere or gossip and offered him space for a private settlement of the dispute. Conflict resolution demanded a certain flexibility with regard to gender norms and expectations. Since these gender roles were crucial to their public reputation, only a private settlement would allow them the space for such a pragmatic and open negotiation.

Possibilities of a Private Settlement

Just as the peace treaty negotiated in private had allowed the Eyres to bend gender roles and expectations by arguing and compromising at surface level, they continued to make use of the possibilities offered by private settlements. When they realised that their negotiated ‘peace treaty’ could not pacify the conflict permanently, they came up with an original and pragmatic solution. Andrew Hopper, who reconstructed Adam’s professional and political ambitions in London in the 1650 s, was able to show that Adam Eyre spent almost the entire decade in the capital.⁶⁷ By taking up employment by the Strand in London, he found an excuse to stay away from Yorkshire—and thus from his wife—for long periods of time. They agreed that Adam would live in London and Susannah would run the household in Yorkshire—an arrangement that apparently suited them both. Adam’s above-mentioned concession to his wife to run the house as she saw fit and his promise to not “medle with her at all” can be interpreted as a verbalisation of this arrangement of spatial separation.⁶⁸ This arrangement allowed Susannah to maintain the appearance of an obedient wife to the outside world, bowing to the will and decision of her husband. Inwardly, their solution was probably as opportune to her as it was to her husband, since in addition to suspending everyday quarrels, his absence also gave her greater freedom and independence in her daily life.

Apart from religious and social reasons, the couple’s strained economic situation hindered a court-sanctioned separation from table and bed as the couple’s already strained economic situation. Since a permanent separation that would equal to a longstanding solution to their conflicts was unavailable to them, they opted for a strategy that could manage their quarrels temporarily—that is, they practised conflict management.⁶⁹

Adam’s new position in London allowed the Eyres to practice an unofficial separation that kept them from jeopardising the family’s honour and good name and enabled them to live apart for long periods of time. They created a space to lead their lives separately, and this space of privacy was again a privilege of their status because they could afford to pay for two houses and simultaneously cover all their household expenditures. His enterprises in London helped to explain and justify their spatial separation and gave the arrangement a respectable outward appearance. This pragmatic resolution of their marital conflict was enabled by the privacy of their settlement, their joint decision and agreement, and their social and financial status that allowed for a temporary separation which was unattainable for those less well-off.

The Eyres developed a practice that was suitable for everyday life, one which extended the norms of everyday married life and adapted them for their own needs. This pragmatic approach shows that there were spaces and possibilities in private settlements to flexibly adapt existing norms of marriage and separation to suit one’s own needs, as long as these norms were not openly violated. Mediating a conflict successfully included the search for pragmatic and flexible solutions that expanded norms and expectations. If a long-term, sustainable solution to the conflict was not possible, it was necessary to ‘manage’ the conflict and to reduce damage to a minimum, both for the two spouses and for their social surroundings.

Conclusion

Retracing Adam and Susannah’s various attempts to solve their ongoing marriage disputes with regard to the dimension of privacy can help to broaden the perspective on practices of conflict management. Private settlements could offer opportunities to find flexible and pragmatic solutions by adapting, bending, or extending local norms and conventions, both in the communicative process of negotiation as well as in the agreements to solve the conflict. The access to such a private settlement was a privilege. The Eyres’ social standing and financial capacities made allowances for—in spite of all financial troubles—private spaces to settle disputes. Their remote home Hazlehead Hall and their possibilities to live in two separate households can be related to Beate Rössler’s concept of local privacy—a home or a space that offers access to separate spheres and spaces for private conversations.⁷⁰ This space for private negotiation and settlement was a privilege enabled by their social status. Local privacy—in the sense of a lack of intrusion or intervention—was available more easily to persons of a higher social status. Rössler approaches privacy in the form of a triad. While local privacy refers to the spaces for privacy, her categories of informational privacy and decisional privacy relate to the decisions and practices that keep information private. While many early modern conflicts were—either voluntarily or involuntarily—negotiated with the involvement of the household’s social surroundings, some were deliberately kept private. The Eyres’ attempt to control and keep information about the status of their marriage from family, friends, and neighbours in order to avoid intrusion, gossip, and other forms of social control can be interpreted as a strategy of obtaining informational privacy.⁷¹ This, however, is also closely linked to Rössler’s third category of decisional privacy, “an individual subject’s scope for action in all his social relations, a space for taking and making decisions in which individual life-projects can be devised, developed and safeguarded”.⁷² The Eyres made use of this broadened scope for action to negotiate a solution that would suit them both. By bending social norms and gender roles in private, they managed to find a solution that they both agreed upon and that improved their daily lives. Privacy enhanced the scope for flexibility and pragmatism, not only with regard to conflict negotiation, but also to other forms and situations of private conversations—a fact illustrated by this volume.

Although privacy expanded the scope for action and the bending of norms, there were limits to these flexible arrangements. The case of the Eyres shows that neither a diary nor a private home could offer complete shelter or escape from social norms and obligations. Their unofficial separation over long periods of time kept up the pretence of a functioning marriage. By bending norms and customs without breaking or rejecting them entirely, they enhanced their privacy and their resources to improve their daily lives within the given framework. They tried to keep their social surroundings at bay, but early modern houses were open houses. Families and their communities were closely entwined and interconnected. Public expectations and their mechanisms of social control permeated the walls, guided private lives, and remained a point of reference that people’s actions and life choices had to measure up to.

A sharp distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ neither captures early modern living nor the process of private conflict negotiation. On the contrary, early modern privacy can more aptly be conceptualised as a scale or a spectrum that varied and shifted between privacy and publicity. People could create spaces for privacy, practice informational and decisional privacy, and make use of the grey areas of privacy, allowing them to stray from social control and bend social norms and expectations at least to some extent. Private settlements offered more room for flexibility and pragmatism both with regard to the process of negotiation and the negotiated resolution or arrangement. Keeping up appearances, however, could not be disregarded. Therefore, the Eyres’ settlement had to keep up the pretence of a functioning marriage in order to keep and protect the family’s social, financial, and religious currencies.