1600 - 1649
King James I of England, VI of Scotland
1600 Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is printed. The relationship between Antonio and
Bassanio is open to a same-sex attraction reading.
The Roman Inquisition formally announced it did not involve itself in sodomy cases.
Domeninco Cresti’s Bathers at Saint Niccolò is painted. Its multiple nearly nude males has
led it to be labelled “an important example of homoerotic art” of that period.
In Zurich in the previous century there were only 8 executions for sodomy.
In Brussels & the surrounding areas there were only 26 convictions for sodomy in the
previous century.
In Ghent in the preceding century 14 men were executed for sodomy, and another 7 were
fined.
14 April. Tommaso Campanella, Italian scholar & philosopher, whilst being spied on in
prison, said to his cellmate: “O Father Pietro, why don’t you do something
so that we may sleep together, and we may get pleasure?” Pietro replied: “I
wish I could, and I’d even bribe the gaolers with ten ducats. But to you, my
heart, I would like to give twenty kisses ever hour.”
1600-1868. The Tokugawa period in Japan saw 600 works dealing with same-sex relations.
1601 Satiromastix by Thomas Dekker is produced. It contains puns about the same-sex couple
Damon and Pithias.
Poetaster by Ben Jonson is produced. Ovid learns that his son is to become an actor: “What
shall I have my son a stager now, an ingle for players?”
July. Tommaso Campanella writes 2 sonnets to Petrillo Campanella, adolescent nephew of
the prison doctor, who had cared for him after torture. The sonnets praise
Campanella’s physical beauty.
1602 Twelfth Night’s Antonio has been said to have homosocial characteristics.
1602-3 Josias Bodley wrote a Latin account of travelling through Ireland. A passage describing men
sharing beds and “who greeted their companions the back way”, which instead of
farting has been interpreted as a double entendre.
1602-7 In Brazil Diogo Botelho, the Governor-General, supervised & participated in same-sex
orgies, both as an active & passive partner.
1603 James I (36) at his coronation cares for his page Robert Carr (15) who falls and breaks his
arm.
John Florio translates Montaigne’s Essays for the Court of Prince Henry.
Ben Jonson’s Sejanus: His Fall in which Sejanus lies in Tiberius’s bed & the excesses
of Tiberius’s time on Capri are described.
The Malcontent by John Marston begins with 2 boy actors playing the parts of Sly & Sinklo,
who hint at a same-sex relationship.
Sir Francis Bacon ends The Masculine Birth of Time by imploring an unknown reader:
my dear, dear boy…from my inmost heart, give yourself to me that I may restore
you to yourself” & “secure an increase beyond all the hopes and prayers of ordinary
marriages.”
Lady Anne Clifford confides to her journal that “my cousin Frances got the key of my
chamber and lay with me which was the first time I loved her so well.” This was
prompted after reading Thomas Harman’s Caveat (1566).
Jerónimo Ponce, a ‘mulatto’ sailor (20+), accused of multiple acts of sodomy in Spain & the
New World also struck up relationships with young men in prison. A slave, Domingo
López, was convicted of acts of sodomy in the same prison. They were paraded through the
streets at the same time, garrotted at two stakes and burnt.
In a trial Giovan Battista is called Caravaggio’s catamite – this could be mere slander.
In Barcelona, a grammar teacher, forced 4 pupils to masturbate him & in a separate incident
an Italian cook is convicted of sodomising two boys.
In Seville a priest stated sodomy was not sinful in his case because he had paid for it, and
he’d been told it was the best cure for haemorrhoids.
Philip III’s Ordenaçèões Filipinas decreed galley service for mollities & shameful touching,
but children of convicts were now allowed to inherit property.
Astorre Leoncelli, Master of the Duke of Bavaria’s Horse, an Italian, was executed for
having sex with several males including a boy (10).
In Slovakia Aslborn, a cavalry officer, was found guilty of sodomizing his page boy and
executed.
1603-4 Bussy D’Ambois by George Chapman is performed. Bussy is supposed to have been the
same-sex lover of the Duke of Anjou.
1604 In rural Mexico 2 native men (20 & 25) were seen copulating in a steam bath. One,
implicated a local native baker (c35), who lived with another man. In all 13 native
men were named as sodomites, with 6 of them being prosecuted.
1605 The satirical novel The Island of the Hermaphrodites is popular is Paris. It is a satire on the
effeminate Henri III.
Scipione Caffarelli Borghese, cardinal, requests his “intimate friend” Stefano Pignattelli
join him in Rome, which led to a scandal.
Thomas Sherley leaves prison in Istanbul. He reported that Turks were sodomites.
In Lucca, Italy, a 14-year-old boy shows signs of syphilis. He had contracted it in Pisa
from an older youth hiring out his tavern to others.
Rome. A man complained this his wife’s brother (15) was sodomized by older youths. 2 of them were at a specific inn in Trastevere every day for immoral purposes.
A Mallorcan Dominican friar touched the genitals of 6 young men, and encouraged them
to reciprocate sometimes to ejaculation.
In Sicily, a Lombard was exiled for 10 years for stating several times that he did not
regard sodomy as a sin.
c1605 A play Michaelmas Term by Thomas Middleton written. Contains male characters who
share a bed, and a servant is exhorted to “creep into bed with him, kiss him and
undo him.”
1606 Timon of Athens by Shakespeare is written. Only male characters are included.
George Chapman’s play The Gentleman Usher is printed. It features the usher sharing a
bed with a young nobleman.
John Day’s play The Isle of Gulls is performed.
Anne Chitting & Mary Barber have the same tomb in Bury, Suffolk. Anne’s son, Henry, had them buried together, because they were such good friends.
12 May. Humphrey Stafford, a known pederast, forced a lad (16) to submit to his
advances, and sodomised another boy. The Juror, Sir Edward Coke noted sodomy
derived from pride, excess of diet, idleness & contempt for the poor. Both boys
needed medical attention. Stafford was executed in 1608.
Death of obscene Florentine poet Curzio Marignolli. Several of his poems reference
sodomy.
The French brothers Pierre & Jean Alary were bound by an affrèrement contract, which
bound them closer together than normal families. It wasn’t a sexual union.
1607 ‘On Friendship’ by Francis Bacon.
Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy contains a passage in which Vindice asks
Lussurioso when will they lie together.
Summer. Thomas Legge, master of Gonville & Gaius college, Cambridge dies, ending
the 25-year friendship with John Gostlin.
In Barcelona, a priest (26), attempted to have sex with 5+ of his pupils.
Ludovico Cardi’s The Sacrifice of Isaac’s depiction of the near-naked Isaac is supposed to
have inflamed one visitor with inappropriate feelings.
Lewis Machin wrote an Eclogue about Phebus, which could be described today as
homoerotic.
Robert Carr becomes Gentleman of the Bedchamber to James I.
John Slater, barber, was charged for sodomising the son of a neighbour.
Jamestown, the first English settlement in N. America proclaimed the death penalty for
sodomy.
1608 Coriolanus is completed. The language used by Aufidius has homoerotic overtones.
A Jerusalem court case noted that employing beardless waiters was a “reprehensible act”
- ie young boys were a magnet for sodomites.
Ram Alley, or Merry Tricks by Lording Barry was published.
A Venetian priest kept female prostitutes to entice men, in the hope that they may go on to
bugger him.
At the High Court of the Admiralty a sailor was executed for buggery.
1609 Shakespeare’s Sonnets are published, many of which feature same-sex relationships.
Troilus and Cressida is also published, which includes the relationship between Achilles
and Patroclus.
Ben Jonson’s Epicoene includes the exchange: “Boy: I am the welcomest thing under a
man that comes there./ Clerimont: I think, and above a man too, if the truth were
racked out of you.”
Richard Finch, a London merchant, was charged of the abuse of his servant [Nicholas
Wheeler] and of “correcting him unreasonably with whipcords, being quite naked.”
A coxswain was executed for buggering a purser’s boy on an East India Company ship.
Caravaggio leaves Sicily. It is later claimed he left because not everyone liked him
following schoolboys in the street.
Two men in Rome sodomise in turn a 13-year-old boy.
Moors are expelled from Spain. One reason is said to be because of their sodomitical
ways.
A Guatemalan boy (9) pushed himself on top of a mulatto boy “moving his body as if
they were engaged in the carnal act” and asking for a kiss.
A Spanish priest in the Yucatán Peninsula was charged with committing an oral assault on
a Mayan boy (16). He also alleged that St Peter and the Apostles had all indulged
in fellatio.
In Rome 2 men persuaded a boy (13) to come to an inn for food, where they sodomized
him.
Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé marries. However, he was notorious for finding young
men attractive and indulging in both active and passive sexual acts with men.
1609-10 Ben Jonson’s play Epicoene or The Silent Woman features an opening scene in which
Truewit mentions the keeping of a boyfriend as a mere extravagance.
1609-11 John Donne’s Sonnet 14 is written, which now appears to contain a metaphor of the
narrator wishing to be ravished by the Devil.
1610 The Turke by John Mason. One character says: “My office is Italianated…I am fain to
come behind.”
The Golden Lotus appears in print. A novel including bisexual relationships.
In N.E. Spain a general statement declared that the devil sodomised both men & women.
Jean de Coras, French influential jurist, said that passive partners should be treated more
leniently, as they may not have been willing partners in the offence of sodomy.
In Geneva Pierre Canal was arrested for espionage, but he and 9 of his associates were
meeting for group sex with each other. Under torture he admitted taking both
the active & passive roles and accepting money for sex.
1611 February. Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy contains a sodomitical passage.
The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton & Thomas Dekker is performed. It depicts the
real-life Mary Frith who dressed in male clothing and worked as a cutpurse. The
same year Frith performed dressed as a man at the Fortune Theatre, bantering
obscenely with the audience, singing songs & playing the lute. Frith claimed to
be uninterested in sex.
Juan Azor, Spanish Jesuit, published his belief that the sin of sodomy had to include anal
penetration.
In Cambridge a buggery case at the university was dropped for unspecified reasons.
Robert Miles gave a sermon, which mentioned sodomy, but he had to rely on Biblical
examples.
1612 February. Mary Frith [Moll Cutpurse] was sentenced to penance, standing in a white
sheet at St Paul’s Cross. She was known for wearing men’s clothing. [see 1611]
Francis Bacon’s essay ‘Of Friendship’. “Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love
perfecteth it…if a man have not a friend he may quit the stage.” The essay may
have been written for Tobie Matthew. His essay ‘Of Marriage and the Single
Life’ praises unmarried and childless men as being the best friends, and as being
the creators of the best works with the greatest public merit. In a further essay
‘Of Beauty,’ only male beauty is described.
Francis Bacon
The Count of Vila Franca (18) committed his first active act of sodomy in the Azores.
John Webster’s The White Devil contains a passage spoken by Flammineo: “Give me
a fair room yet hung by arras, and some great cardinal to lug me by th’ ears as
his endeared minion.”
Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, writer, met Theophile de Viau and they become lovers.
1613 James I makes his favourite Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset.
In Rotherhithe Lawrence Willington, teacher, was prosecuted for buggery with 3 boys.
Alban Cooke of Hoxton was charged of buggery with a man of under 20.
Melchor Armengol, rector of Bot in Valencia was arrested and accused of having
interfemoral and penetrative sex with boys. He denied penetrative sex. He
maintained his innocence even when tortured. He was degraded from holy
orders, and sentenced to 3 years in the galleys and perpetual banishment.
The Portuguese Inquisition rule-book drawn-up, which excluded all forms of mollities
from its jurisdiction.
1614 Moors are expelled from Portugal. One reason is said to be because of their sodomitical
ways.
Summer. James I (48) meets George Villiers (21) for the first time.
In Rome, an apprentice (13), returned home for medical attention. His cap-maker
master had sodomized him 30+ times in 4 months. He had also been rented out
to other interested men.
In Senlis, France, a priest was prosecuted for the attempted seduction of a novice.
1615 April. George Villiers is made Gentleman of Bedchamber of James I & is knighted.
Autumn. King James is described as “slabbering the cheeks” when he was hanging
around the neck of Robert Carr. Shortly afterwards Carr was replaced as
favourite by George Villiers.
Autumn. Fulke Greville writes to John Coke, informing him he plans to erect an
impressive tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral in which he also should be buried.
Microcosmographia by Helkiah Crooke brings the clitoris to the notice readers. The
rise in public awareness of the tribade, fricatrix & rubster date from this
publication.
3 Amsterdam Jews drew up a document warning that young adolescents were in
danger of being misused if they were rather beautiful or attractive.
The Count of Vila Franca (21) takes his second passive partner in the Azores.
c.1615 An anonymous poem accuses tutors at universities of infecting their students with
sodomy.
1616 William Lithgow in Malta witnessed a burning of a Spanish Soldier & a Maltese boy
for sodomy. After which he claimed 100+ whorish boys fled to Sicily by galley.
Ben Jonson publishes his First Folio, which includes an epigram to Sir Voluptuous
Beast: And how his Ganymede mov’d, and how his goat.”
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham c.1616.
1617 A courtier remarks of James and Buckingham: “I never yet saw any fond husband make
so much or so great a dalliance over his beautiful spouse as I have seen King
James over his favourites, especially Buckingham.” James addressed the Privy
Council on his right to love men: “Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I
cannot be blamed. Christ had his son John, and I have my George.”
In Valencia, a defrocked Augustinian friar (52), tried to sodomize his pupils, but also
attempted to train his pupils how to sodomize each other.
c.1617 Louis XIII is deeply attracted first to his coach driver, then his kennel-master.
1618 Francis Bacon is known to have had 25 “gentleman-waiters” at this period.
A Sicilian cleric argued that sodomy was only a venial sin & boasted he had
sodomized boys.
1619 A sermon is preached against Sir Francis Bacon’s “Catamities”.
John Browne provides in his will for his burial as close as possible to Thomas Orrell,
‘his lost friend’ in the antechapel of Gonville & Gaius College, Cambridge. They
met in their 20s, but Orrell had died 15 years earlier. The tomb has since been
lost. On his election as master, John Gostlin has a tomb to Thomas Legge
erected at Gonville & Gaius college [1582 & 1626]
Louis XIII makes his favourite Charles d’Albert Duke of Luynes. It’s not known if they
a sexual relationship.
1620 In Sicily 3 young clerics were accused of sodomising a boy (9).
The King of Spain & Portugal wrote to the Portuguese Inquisitor General demanding
constant vigilance & punitive action against sodomites.
Hic Mulier: or The Man-Woman: Being a Medicine to Cure the Coltish Disease of the
Staggers in the Masculine-Feminine of Our Times appears as a pamphlet.
Hac Vir, another pamphlet attacked effeminate men dressing like women.
1620-5 Female transvestism became a London fashion, and became a fashionable persona on
on the stage.
1621 3 May. Sir Simonds D’Elwes notes in his diary that Bacon “kept one Godrick, a very
effeminate faced youth, to be his catamite and bedfellow.”
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. Burton mentions that in 1538 when
Cromwell’s inspectors visited monasteries they discovered “gelded youth,
debaucheries, catamites, boy-things, pederasts, sodomites, Gannymedes.” He also
alludes to “those wanton-loined womanlings, Tribadas, that fret each other by
turns.”
Giovan Battista Manso writes a biography of the poet Torquato Tasso. He confirms
for 16 years after being committed to an asylum he remained completely chaste.
He reports him as saying that he would rather go mad than visit a female courtesan.
1621-5 Quaestiones medico-legales by Paolo Zacchias. Based on Hippocrates, this remained
the main authority on pederasty until the mid-C19th.
1622 30 March. Buckingham’s first child is baptised with James I as godparent. This act
made them each other’s ‘gossip’ - ie creating a godbrotherhood.
In Somerset George Dowdeney repeatedly placed his hand in the local blacksmith’s
breeches, possibly raped a boy, and indulged himself with a horse.
A collection of licentious poems, Le Parnasse satyrique by Théophile de Viau is
published. These are said to prove he was bisexual. The great love of his life was
Jacques Vallée, Sieur de Barreaux, who was 9 years younger than him.
According to Simonds D’Ewes, An obscure French usher in a school was saved from a
charge of buggery in London’s Guildhall by the intervention of Sir Henry
Montague, possibly by order of James I.
Death of Spanish poet Juan de Tassis, Count of Villamediana – papers show he was
accused of sodomy & the poet Quevedo made satiric jibes to that effect.
1623 Shakespeare’s all-male Timon of Athens is published for the first time.
Théophile de Viau, poet, imprisoned without a trial, accused of sodomy and atheism.
He is the author of an obscene poem ‘Au marquis du Boukingham’.
A Portugese inquisitor claims that “sodomy brings on a suspicion of heresy”.
The nun Benedetta Carlini is investigated for supposed miracles. She is discovered to
have been in a same-sex relationship with Crivellki, a younger nun. The younger
nun may have been coerced.
Michelangelo’s poems are published by his nephew erasing all same-sex implications
by altering the pronouns.
1624 22 July. The day after his marriage, Mervyn Touchet, Earl of Castlehaven coerces his
bride into indulging in orgies with his man-servants.
27 August. In Virginia the trial of Richard Cornish, Shipmaster, for sodomy is held. He
is hanged for sodomising William Couse (29), his steward. However, his brother
denied it ever happened, and he and his brother were pilloried & had their ears
cut off. The authorities may have engineered the trial to rid themselves of
Cornish.
1625 August. Archbishop Laud dreamed of George Villiers visiting him in his bed.
A re-written version of Francis Bacon’s essay ‘Of Friendship’ is published.
The headmaster of Oundle School, Anthony Death, was accused of “sorry, wanton
behaviour” against 4 male pupils, 2 of whom were aged 13-16.
Nicolas Gonzales (20), had engaged in prostitution himself, but also hired out youths
for sex in Valencia.
Baradas, a Burgundian gentleman, becomes the favourite of Louis XIII, but he has
affairs with several nobles and is disgraced after 6 months.
2 Catalonian men with an age difference of 25 years were put on trial for alternating
active and passive sex 2 or 3 times.
Inquisitors in Valencia believed it was important to parade sodomites during an
auto-da-fé because public shame was a powerful deterrent.
‘Sodoma’s’ Sebastian was painted. Later writers have found it full of “latent sado-
masochism”.
In the 262 years before this date there were only 3 sodomy cases in Bavaria.
In the past 60 years in England there were very few prosecutions for sodomy: Kent,
2; Surrey, 2; Sussex, 1; Herefordshire, 1; Essex, 0. Middlesex with a special
charter to search for sexual misdemeanours had 4 sodomy cases.
1626 A memorial is erected at Caius College, Cambridge, celebrating the union between
Thomas Legge & John Gostlin. The Latin inscription reads: “Love joined them
living. So may the earth join them in their burial. O Legge, Gostlin’s heart you
have still with you.” Legge had died 20 years earlier. Below the figure of
Legge a heart in flames is shown.
Sir Francis Bacon dies after a refrigeration experiment backfires. He leaves several
legacies to the young men in his service.
Saint-Simon replaces Baradac as the new favourite of Louis XIII, and lasts a decade.
Théophile de Viau’s health is destroyed by his term in prison, dies of TB, in the arms
of des Barreaux. Street singers called des Barreaux ‘Théophile’s widow.’
New Atlantis by Francis Bacon is published posthumously. Bacon mentions
masculine love in the same sentence as friendship of the most faithful and
inviolate kind, implying that they can easily be mistaken for each other.
1627 The History of the Life, Reign, & Death of Edward II, a play written by Elizabeth Cary.
The Cruel Brother by William Davenant has Lucio and the duke indulging in intimate
public embraces, similar to that between James I & Robert Carr.
The Royal Navy makes sodomy a capital offence, although it is rarely enacted.
1628 The Lover’s Melancholy by John Ford includes a male servant dressed as a female
called Lady Periwinkle. ‘She’ is enjoined to “suck thy master.”
In Venice a priest allegedly said that it was wrong to forbid anal sex because God had
designed the anus to give pleasure.
17 July. Maritgen Jans, disguised as a soldier, David Jansz van Gorkum, arrives in Fort
Nassau. A few months later, when ill, David was found to be a woman.
The governor decides she must be married off. She chooses a jurist (35).
Jeremy Farrer was prosecuted for abusing himself in a sodomitical manner in church
ie masturbating [in Bridewell].
1629 29 September. Massachusetts Bay. When the Talbot docked the punishment of 5 boys
who Indulged in sodomiticall [sic] practices was requested from England.
This is the first known instance of sodomy in New England, but the exact age
of the boys remains unknown. It is believed that they were sent back to
England.
John Harris gave a sermon in the House of Commons condemning many sins, but for
sodomy he was unable to furnish any contemporary examples.
1630 After several years of witnessing, a servant gave evidence against another servant,
Meredith Davy, labourer, for taking John Vincent, an apprentice to his bed. No
charge was made.
Around this time Robert Hewitt was accused of buggering Marmaduke Warnham,
Roger Head, and a boy, George Hungerforde, during a single voyage of HMS
Royal Mary.
L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola is written in Venice by Antonio Rocco. It insists that the
adolescent’s erotic pleasure in anal coitus is natural and should be fostered. His
ideal were boys aged 9-18. It was published anonymously in 1652.
Dialogues by François de La Mothe, published anonymously – laid foundations for
later same-sex work.
António Soares (21), Carmelite friar, confessed he had sex 200 times with a slightly
older friar, both actively & passively, plus a further 32 partners.
Francesco Finetti, tutor, had his house raided in Bologna after being accused of
abducting his pupil (16) for sexual purposes. A naked German boy (10) was found in
his bed.
João de Sousa (27), Dominican friar, admitted to 59 sexual partners.
In Virginia Hugh Davis was condemned to be whipped before an assembly of negroes
for “lying with” a Negro.
1631 Mervyn Touchet, The Earl of Castlehaven is tried for sodomitical rape of his wife. He
was very affectionate towards a page, Henry Skipwith, to whom he gave money
and a house. He was beheaded on 14 May, and his manservants Giles Browning
and Laurence Fitzpatrick were hanged at Tyburn. Other manservants escaped
punishment.
In Toulon women were forbidden onboard ships, “so the only sinning that goes on
there now consists of sodomy, masturbation, fellatio & other charming intimacies
of that kind”.
1632 Jean-Jacques Bouchard was briefly jailed in Salerno, as a potential spy. He found a
young naked youth lying on his gaoler’s bed. He learned that wealthy prisoner
could pay the gaoler for sex with either boys or girls. He mentioned the
proliferation of male prostitutes in Naples & Rome.
In London 16 Puritan men who used to meet for sex were arrested because one of
them confessed on his deathbed that they had regular meetings for sex. As many as
34 other men may have evaded capture.
Lemitsu becomes the third Shogun. He was notorious for pederasty.
In Amsterdam Barbara Adriaens (21) was found after masquerading as a man.
c.1632 Nehemiah Wallington reported he had heard “of a group of married men in Southwark
who had “lived in the sin of buggery and were sworn brothers to it” some 7 years,
committing this sin on Sabbath mornings at “sermon time.”
1633 Historio-mastix by William Prynne mentioned that boys dressing as women on the
stage could lead to masturbation or sodomy.
John Donne’s impersonated Sappho in his poetry. He co-wrote with Thomas Woodward
when they imagined themselves in a “mystical tribadry” in which Woodward’s
muse “rubbed & tickled” that of Donne “to spend some of her pith.”
1634 Sir Henry Blount, travelling in Bulgaria, encountered pashas leading their troops
accompanied by their catamites.
c.1634 John Whytton arrives as a young scholar at Merton College, Oxford, where he meets
John Bloxham, a fellow of the college. They become lifelong friends, and would
share a tomb.
1635 Two men are accused of sodomy in New Hampshire, but the governor refuses to try
them.
Ferdinando II de’Medici marries, but he continued to commit sodomy with men.
c.1635 At the High Court of the Admiralty a sailor was accused of buggering 3 boys.
1637 6 August. John Allexander and Thomas Roberts are found guilty of lewd behaviour in
New Plymouth. This involved spending their seeds upon one another. Allexander
was whipped, branded & banished. Roberts, a servant, was whipped & forbidden
to ever own land in the colony.
August. A Neopolitan in Barcelona admits to being sodomized back in Naples & by a
monk, but when he is reported to the inquisition, he claims it was a joke.
Scipione Ammirato criticised Benedetto Varci’s Latin love poems as ‘scandalous.’
1638 John Milton’s Lycidas published. An elegy to Edward King who drowned.
At the High Court of the Admiralty in 2 separate cases an adult sailor was found
guilty of buggering a boy, but they were both released after a year in prison.
1639 John Milton writes Epitaphium Damonis, an elegy for Charles Diodati.
In Lisbon, a schoolmaster was accused by 9 boys, aged 6-9, that when whipping them
for offences committed, he also sexually molested them.
The Republic of Ragusa [Dubrovnik] reconfirms its 1589 secret investigation of
sodomy.
Cardinal Richelieu engineers that Marquis of Cinq-Mars (19) becomes the new
favourite of Louis XIII.
1640 John Benson’s edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets altered all the “he” pronouns” to “she.”
5 December. John Atherton, the “Retrobate Bishop” of Waterford was hanged for
buggery with his steward, John Childe. That latter was also subsequently hanged.
It was later revealed that Atherton may have been the victim of a conspiracy
devised by the Earl of Cork.
William Kersley of Plymouth Colony is accused of lying with men and unclean
practices, but the case appears to have been dropped.
Emanuel d’Aranda was brought to Algiers as a slave. The Italian renegade & corsair
chief Ali Piccinin had 40 boys aged 9-15, but wouldn’t touch them. They couldn’t
venture outside for fear of being debauched.
In the past 80 years not a single defamation case involving sodomy is recorded in
London.
c.1640 Cyrano de Bergerac may have become the lover of Charles Coypeau d’Assoucy.
1641 Edward Preston and Edwards Mitchell of the Plymouth Colony are accused of lewd &
sodomitical practices. They are whipped rather than executed.
1642 8 September. Thomas Granger (17) was convicted of buggering a mare, a cow, 2
goats and 5 sheep in the Plymouth colony. He was hanged for the offence. All the
offending animals were burnt in a great pit.
In Massachusetts John Rayner, a minister, argued that touching & rubbing might be seen
seen as penetration if it occurred frequently over a long period.
William Bedford noted that in New England sodomy & buggery had broken out
“oftener than once.”
c.1642 Around this time Ferdinando II de’ Medici is found in bed by his wife with his page,
Bruto Della Molara. Her sulking resulted in his refusal to have sexual relations
with her for 18 years.
1643 In Arlington, Sussex a vicar was forced from his parish for many attempts to commit
buggery with at least 3 parishioners. He openly stated that “Buggery is no sinne.”
Religio medici by Thomas Browne. A description of ideal friendship now has homo-
erotic undertones.
A Japanese book states that shudo must conform with the idea of humanity. “So many
beautiful young men…are without soul and do not respond to admiration. But
even when you cannot take the one who loves you into your heart, you should try
and work out some sense of duty into your conduct.”
In Indonesia a young Dutch sailor was found guilty of sodomy with a Mardijker – a
descendant of a manumitted slave.
1644 29 March Manoel Viegas, guitarist and musical instrument maker, hands over love-
letters to the Inquisition from Francisco Correa Netto, Sacristan at Silves
Cathedral.
John Finch went to Christ’s College, Cambridge where he met the slightly older
Thomas Baines. At first Baines admonished Finch for his reckless behaviour, but
later they became lifelong companions for more than 36 years.
Dom Felipe de Moura (42), senior military officer, confessed to hundreds of acts of
sodomy with 19 different partners. He played both active & passive roles with
his personal retainer João de Lãbao, and had sex with him 500+ times in 4
years. On a long sea voyage he committed sodomy with a page, playing both
active and passive more than 60 times.
In Batavia [Jakarta] Joost Schouten, a former judge, confessed to passive sex with
19+ partners over a 7-year period. Schouten and a boatswain were executed.
1645 Richard Berry accuses Teague Joanes, a soldier, of sodomising him at Yarmouth,
Plymouth Colony.
Heresiography by Ephraim Pagitt alleges that Jesuits “are the most pernicious and
dangerous sorts of all others…their idolatries & sodomitical uncleanness they
will defend and maintain.
Medulla theologia moralis by Hermann Busenbaum. He believed that mutual
masturbation if performed for sexual enjoyment without intercourse was a
mollities, but if done out of desire for that person of the same sex it was a form
of sodomy.
In Leiden a rare male-male sodomy case is prosecuted.
In Frankfurt a secret sodomy trial was held. Heinrich Krafft targeted boys and
animals. Under torture he admitted touching boys, but even under extreme
torture denied bestiality. He was removed from prison and thrown out of the
town.
In Maidstone Henry Gibbs (40), a grocer from Ashford & William Phillpott (50), an
oatmeal-maker were found guilty of sodomy. The former was hanged & the
latter reprieved.
A schoolmaster was burned at the stake, causing Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin to
remark: “how sad your death will make me, and what a misfortune it is for a
prick to live in a land where those noble desires that are only a crime for a
Queen are punished by fire.”
1646 Jan Creoli, a free black man, is executed for his second offence of buggery. He
sodomised Manuel Congo (10). Creoli was choked to death then burnt to ashes,
the kindling used was referred to as “faggots.” Little Manuel Congo was
flogged & burnt.
Two Venetian noblemen, Ermalao Foscari and Mafeo Barbaro are decapitated for
taking part in an orgy. Two younger Venetian boys Giovanni Basadona &
Giovanni Priuli are exiled for 8 years. The bodies of the executed men were
burned between the columns of the Piazetta.
William Plaine is executed in New Haven for committing sodomy on 2 persons in
England and corrupting the youth of Guilford [New Haven]. After his death it
was alleged he had introduced mutual masturbation to boys.
1647 Around this time Nicholas Sension, a prosperous merchant in Conneticut, is accused
of making sexual advances towards Samuel & Nathaniel Phelps.
Harman Van den Bogaert, New Amsterdam barber-surgeon, falls through ice and
drowns in the Hudson, after being caught sodomizing his young black servant.
In Batavia [Jakarta] a ship’s captain and a young boy were sentenced to death for
sodomy.
1648 Nicholas Sension made several sexual overtures to Jacob Gibs while working in a
marsh.
A revised and enlarged book of French law-cases is published, detailing 4 male-male
cases – one of them is of an Italian.
The fifth edition of The Theatre of God’s Judgement by Thomas Beard fails to locate
a modern example of sodomites to illustrate his point.
In Canada a soldier was convicted of sodomy & sentenced to death, but it was later
commuted if he became the colony’s executioner.
1649 April. John Durrant (16) repeatedly allowed himself to be buggered by Abdul
Rhyme, a “Hindostan peon onboard a ship.” Despite many witnesses the death
penalty was not enforced.
Caspar Gottfried von Pappenheim, Bavarian nobleman (58), had sex with young
pages, servants & the son of the Mayor of Pappenheim (18). The accused died
before sentence could be passed.
Bibliography
Aldrich, Robert, Gay Life Stories, London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.
Aldrich, Robert & Garry Wotherspoon (eds.), Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II: London,
Routledge, 2001.
Bray, Alan, The Friend, University of Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Griffin, Gabriele, (ed.), Who’s Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing, Routledge: London, 2002.
Malcolm, Noel, Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1759, Oxford: OUP, 2024.
Norton, Rictor, My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, San Francisco: Leyland Publications: 1998.
Rowse, A.L., Homosexuals in History, London: Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 1977.
Spencer, Colin, Homosexuality, a History, London: Fourth Estate, 1995.
Warner, Kathryn, Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, Yorkshire: Pen & Sword History, 2022.
Woods, Gregory, Homosexuality in Literature, London: Yale University Press, 1998.
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