KING JAMES I ON MARRIAGE. Good advice to his son.

• Be careful whom you choose as your wife, because marriage is the greatest earthly felicity or misery that can come to a man.
• Keep your body clean and unpolluted till ye give it to your wife.
• And remember the triple purpose of marriage: for staying of lust, for procreation of children…and to get a helper.
• Make sure she is not subject to hereditary sicknesses either of the soul or the body. After all, you are particular about breeding horses, how much more careful should you be for the breed of your own loins.
• Love your wife, but rule her as your pupil and teach her not to be curious in things that belong her not.  For example,
• Suffer her never to meddle with the politic government.
• And finally: make sure she keeps good company, for women are the frailest sex.

(Source, James I, Basilikon Doron, 1599)