Excerpt from the 1616 version of:
The Office of Christian Parents: Showing How Children Are To Be Governed throughout All Ages and Times of Their Life
Excerpt from the chapter “The Ordering of Maides from Twelve Yeare Old and Upward” pgs. 139-140.
It is then no disgrace, but great good to keep the daughters well busied in honest labor, at home or in service abroad. And at this age of twelve years and forward, the parents, and namely the mother, is to use her self more familiarly with the daughter (always keeping the gravity and authority of a mother) that so the child may love her company, and be more pat to open her mind to her mother, and not by secrecy to cause her to delight in a stranger, and to open her mind to such: for by kind usage, they shall see further into their natures, and more easily learn what need they have of marriage and so prevent the stealing away of their child, or at least of their child’s heart. And thus observing their natural disposition, on the one side they may in due time seek out an honest match for their child: and handsomely on the other side choose such a man, as their daughter may be best able to content, and be contented.
Excerpt from the chapter: “Ordering of Sonnes from Fourteene Yeare Old and Upward” pgs. 178 & 186.
At this place I could afford to make an end of the first part of the Christian parents office, which is the necessary and wise education of children until marriage: but that one thing comes to my mind, which I have figured out, because I see much mischief comes there upon: which is a kind of childish bravery, whereupon many do stand in this, our age, and so upward: and these be the words of our young bloods: I will offer no man wrong or disgrace, but if any be offered to me I will not put it up: I will not take wrong at any man’s hand.
He is a fool which is enthralled into his own anger; but gentlemen are called, gens d’armes, men that bear arms; and therefore let them read the history of Julius Caesar in his Commentaries, and they shall find, that he being a man of arms, and very valiant, would not always fight when he was provoked, no though his soldiers call him coward, but when it might be most safe for him and his army, most honorable in the issue:…
Excerpt from the chapter, “Ordering of Children in the Matter of Marriage” pg. 194.
Not withstanding I do not take the authority of parents in this case to be absolute, and without limitation. For first, nature teaches that he must use his children like a parent, that is, kindly and lovingly as son and daughter, and not as slaves or as beasts tyrannically: for if nature teach (as is before shown in this Chapter) that when children grow to ripeness of age, they should be applied to such trades, as they by natural inclination are fit, apt, and liking; then much more in the matter of marriage, the children ought to have their liking, wherein the child is to forsake father and mother, that they two may be one flesh: for what comfort is it to the child to forsake their parents, and to cleave to her to whom he has no liking? You shall have parents when they make their children a coat, they will bid them choose the color, and yet think they loose no authority over their children, much less shall their authority be diminished, if they suffer their child to view well, and consider of the husband or wife they choose for them, that they like as well as their Parents. The child must do the service which marriage requires; therefore the parents have great reason to grant the child free liberty to like or not to like, that it may the more cheerfully perform the duty, which is unchangeable during life.