Suggested preparatory reading:

Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), ch. 6; Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003), pp. 10, 13–14, 31–33, 72–9, 84–90, 103–25

Martin Ingram, ‘Ridings, Rough Music and the “Reform of Popular Culture” in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 105 (Nov. 1984), 79–113 and/or idem, ‘Charivari and Shame Punishments: Folk Justice and State Justice in Early Modern England’, in Herman Roodenburg and Pieter Spierenburg (eds), Social Control in Europe. Volume 1, 1500–1800 (Columbus, OH, 2004), pp. 288–308