Harrison's masculine worries were many: What would people think that he, a preacher, had a wife of so little faith? Did he fail to protect her spiritually? How should he respond to Annis Herd, one of his parishioners? Was he in control of his household? Was he responsible for his wife's crisis? Harrison’s defense of his marital and pastoral competence discloses a great deal about expectations for Protestant ministers and their wives, whose married state was still relatively new.
While clerical marriage established a clearly masculine sexual identity for clergy, it also subjected clerical manhood to contradictory social requirements. Married men were to protect and control their dependents. They were also expected to provide their family's material necessities. But ministers—called specially to imitate the manhood of Christ—were not to resort to aggression, to protect themselves or others. Nor should they dirty their hands with economic enterprises, obsess over tithes or supplement their meager earnings by serving more than one cure. Finally, they should exact model obedience and godliness from their wives, children and servants—without breaking a sweat, raising their voice or lifting a finger.
This paper will show how his family's conflict with Herd exposed embarrassing vulnerabilities in Harrison's finances, family management and spiritual leadership. While the details are specific to Harrison's manhood, family and pastorate, they speak to larger fault-lines in the Elizabethan reconstruction of clerical masculinity, which could put a minister's sacred calling painfully at odds with his social manliness.