The language of tyranny in the context of relations between husbands and wives is used by many women writers of the seventeenth century. While most writers acknowledge the authority of Adam over Eve, particularly post-Fall, they often object to an abuse of that power. Aemilia Lanyer, in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), lines 825–830, addresses contemporary men with the bold request, “Then let us have our Libertie againe, / And challendge to your selves no Sov’raigntie;[…] Your fault beeing greater, why should you disdaine / Our beeing your equals, free from tyranny?” (The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, edited by Susanne Woods, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 87). The fault to which Lanyer is referring is that of Pilate ordering the crucifixion of Christ, which Lanyer argues has tainted all men by association, just as Eve eating the apple has tainted all women. In a tract of 1649 called A vision: wherein is manifested the disease and cure of the kingdome (which argues against King Charles’s execution), Elizabeth Poole uses metaphors comparing the king and his subjects to a tyrannical husband and his suffering wife. Poole writes, “For he is the Father and husband of your bodyes, as unto men, and therefore your right cannot be without him …. Onely consider, that as she [i.e., Abigail, the virtuous wife of cruel Nabal] lifted not her hand against her husband to take his life, no more doe yee against yours …. For know this, the Conquest was not without divine displeasure, whereby Kings came to reigne, though through lust they tyranized: which God excuseth not, but judgeth; and his judgements are fallen heavy, as you see, upon Charles your Lord” (pp. 4–5; with thanks to one of this edition’s anonymous reviewers for the Poole reference). In a digression on the implications of Eve’s punishment that her desire shall be for her husband (Genesis 3:16), Lucy Hutchinson discusses the way that wives choose the shackles of marriage out of love for their husbands. In Order and Disorder (1679), canto 5, lines 139–143, she writes, “Now though they easier under wise rule prove, / And every burden is made light by love, / Yet golden fetters, soft-lined yokes, still be / Though gentler curbs, but curbs of liberty, / As well as the harsh tyrant’s iron yoke” (Lucy Hutchinson, Order and Disorder, edited by David Norbrook, Blackwell, 2001, p. 69).