From Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives:
Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth-
Century England
 

Mary Combe
 

MAN AFTER MAN among the drinkers in her inn complained that she
'put her hand into his breeches to feel what he had' and then
proclaimed that 'if it were ready to stand she was ready for him'. On the
highway she was equally direct. She ridiculed one man because 'his prick
would not stand' and claimed she had brought some starch and 'would
draw it out and starch it, to make it stand'. She often 'layed her down in
the highway between Axbridge and Crosse, and called to all persons
passing, by spreading her legs abroad, saying: "Come play with my cunt
and make my husband a cuckold."' Yet Mary Combe's activities are not
that of the normal village slut. She provided more than her body. She
deliberately encouraged and organised activities and sentiments opposed
to traditional values. In 1653 she organised a drinking orgy to which only
Cuckolds and cuckold-makers, the outcasts of respectable society, were
invited. When a respectable villager was ill, Mary visited him and tried to tempt him in front of his wife. She asked him 'whether he was able to do
her a good turn. And more plainly whether he would .x.x. her or not,
which is unseemly to write'. Before his wife could remove her she took up
the man's underclothes and threw them in the fire. Whereas all the
evidence points to sexual intercourse taking place almost exclusively by
the male lying on top of the woman, Mary Combe was renowned for
plucking up her coats and smock and sitting astride any man she found
lying on his back. She wandered around the parish naked - another
uncommon habit.

She delighted in shocking the godly. Several witnesses complained that
she 'indecently would force an honest man to occupy her, spreading of her
legs abroad and showing her commodity'. Another recalled that 'coming
to her house she shut the door and would force him to be naught with her'.

Yet again another found her molesting his apprentice, while a fourth
subjected to her charms, 'being sickly and not subject to idleness got from
her'. A respectable tradesman was confronted in his shop by the taunt:
'thou cuckold go into thy wife for she is fucking with William Fry'. The
resultant disruption to the lives of two respectable families was indicated
in his subsequent comment - that it 'caused a debate for a long time
between me and my wife and likewise he and his wife'.