Conduct books, or household manuals offering advice about marriage and the ordering of domestic relationships, attained their greatest popularity in early modern England between the late sixteenth century and the Civil War. Many of these works, including William Whately’s popular A Bride-Bush, which ran into three editions between 1617 and 1623, and William Gouge’s influential Of Domesticall Duties, which first appeared in 1622, originated as sermons and were written by puritan preachers. They are also a valuable source of information about the construction of ideal masculine and feminine behaviour in the early modern period. At the start of A Bride-Bush, which was based on a marriage sermon, Whately asserted ‘I will make the ground of all my speech, those words of the Apostle Paul, Ephes. 5. 23. where hee saith, The Husband is the Wives head.’ Towards the end of the book he noted that the male sex is ‘preferred before the female in degree of place & dignity, as all men will yeeld that read what the Scriptures speake in that behalfe’.