Note 164 — Chapter XII · JOHN DUDLEY, EARL OF WARWICK

John Strype says: “About this time [reign of Edward VI] the nation grew infamous for the crime of adultery. It began among the nobility and better classes, and so spread at length among the inferior sort of people. Noblemen would frequently put away their wives and marry others, if they liked another woman better, or were like[ly] to obtain wealth by her. And they would sometimes pretend their former wives to be false to them, and so be divorced, and marry again those whom they might fancy. These adulteries and divorces increased very much; yea, and marrying again without any divorce at all, it became a great scandal to the Realm and to the religion professed in it.”—Strype’s Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, vol. i. pp. 293, 294.