Church courts heard all cases having to do with marriage and sexualily before the Reformation,'and after it in Catholic and some Protestant areas; the following are two cases brought before English Church courts in the town of Lincoln in the early sixteenth century.

[1517] ... Alice Ridyng, unmarried, the daughter of John Ridyng of Eton in the diocese of Lincoln appeared in person and confessed that she conceived a boy child, by one Thomas Denys, then chaplain to Master Geoffrey Wren, and gave birth to him at her father's home at Eton one Sunday last month and immediately after giving birth, that is within four hours of the birth, killed the child by putting her hand in the baby's mouth and so suffocated him. After she had killed the child she buried it in a dung neap in her father's...