Hale also wrote what became the most frequently cited defense of the marital rape exemption, the doctrine that shielded a husband from prosecution if he raped his wife. Hale explained that a woman’s agreement to marry meant that she had placed her body under her husband’s permanent dominion. In Hale’s words: “The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.”

Hale believed that authorities should distrust women who reported having been raped. In his mind, rape was “an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.”