provoked.
They fornicated, slandered,
brawled.
In 1637 retorted,
“Kiss my arse.”
A woman refused
like a “most obstant and grasless person.”
Women’s speech
made clout of men
precarious.  

(An erasure from pp 94-95, Good Wives, Nasty Women and Anxious Patriarchs by Kathleen M. Brown.)