Italy and France continued to set the dance fashions in the early 17th century. Caroso's Nobilta di dame was translated into Spanish and reissued as late as 1630 and English texts refer to the most popular European dances and steps. In England gentlemen were expected to have learnt all the main social dances. Indeed, a 1631 Middle Temple source reports 

it being accounted a shame for any inns of court man not to have learned to dance, especially the measures. 

The Italian court custom of presenting grand costumed balls or 'Masques', which had spread to France and Spain in the 16th century, spread on to England in the 17th century. Thus, in the year 1604 Anne of Denmark celebrated her Christmas in England dressed with Hampton Court Masque. According to contemporary Samuel Daniel, the Queen and her ladies were dressed as 'Twelve Goddesses' and:

ü preparing themselves to their dance whichü they began to the music of the viols and lutes, placed on one side of the hall. Which dance being performed with great majesty and Arte, consisting of divers straines, fram'd unto motions circular, square, triangular, with other proportions exceeding rare and full of variety; the Goddesses made a pause, casting themselves into a circle, whilst the Greaces againe sang to the musicke of the Temple, and prepared to take out the lords to dance. With whom, after they had performed certain Measures, Galliards, and Curantos, Iris againe comes and gives notice of their pleasure to depart: whose speech ended, they drew themselves again into another short dance, with some few pleasant changesü..

To those dances mentioned above, were soon added the French Branles (or 'Brantle'), for when Charles I succeed his father James I, the French influence started to triumph over Italian. It was hard for some, however, to keep up. Dance style in the continenal courts was becoming ever more sophisticated. In 1623 François de Lauze published his Apologie de la danse. Although the work included descriptions of many of the same friendly social branles which Arbeau had decribed 34 years earlier, de Lauze added descriptions of five feet positions, exercises to enhance capacity for bending (plié) and rising (élevé) and emphasised turnout from the hip. The continent was heading off into the world of the baroque and competencey in dancing was all.

In England country dancing was a popular past-time at all levels of society. In 1603 Thomas Heywood, in his play A Woman Killed with Kindness, has friends, in the company of some country wenches and musicians at the wedding of a country gentlemen argue over which dance to do, 'The Shaking of the Sheets' (as a joke),'Rogero', 'The Beginning of the World', 'John Come Kis Me Now', the 'Cushion dance', 'Tom Tyler', 'The Hunting of the Fox', 'The Hay' or 'Put on Your Smock a' Monday'... till one finally declares:

Come, for God's sake, agree of something: if you like not that, put it to the musicians; or let me speake for all, and we'll have Sellenger's Round.

It was even popular among royalty. In 1600 the Sidney papers recorded that Queen Elizabeth I liked to watch her ladies' dance

 almost every night she is in the presence, to see the ladies dance the old and new country dances. 

Similarly, in 1602 a letter from the Earl of Worcester to the Earl of Shrewsbury mentions that there was 

much dancing, in the privy chamber, of country dances before the Queen's Majesty, who is exceedingly pleased therewith. 

The French Ambassador, Mareschalde Basompierre, was quoted in 1626 as reporting that 

After supper the king and we were led into another roomü where there was a magnificient ballet, in which the duke danced; and afterwards, we set to and danced country dances till four in the morning.

Though the earliest Inns of Court manuscripts do not mention country dancing, from 1628 onward they do. Thus at the Middle Temple's 1628 Christmas celebration:

They began with the old masques; after that they danced the Brautes and then the master took his seat whilst the revellers flaunted through galliards, corantoes, French and country dances, till it grew very late. 

Indeed, a note book from 1648 has description of four country dances which appear to be versions of ones later recorded by Playford.

It is noteworthy that in England there was not the sharp division between court and village dancing which characterised the French and Italian scenes of the period and when it came to dancing, especially when it came to completing sets, people of all classes mixed freely (class divisions being so well internalised that people could mix without fear anyone would forget their place). Most noticeably of all to the French eye was, however, the fact that while the continental dances involved display to a partner, processions with a partner or dancing without a partner in a circle, the English dances involved couples dancing with couples within a group. For such dancing Italian and French masters used the expression 'Contra-danza' / 'Contredanse' (analogous to contemporary musical terminology -the first recorded use being in de Lauze's 1623 Apologie de la danse). Although the term 'country dance' was initially used as descriptor of place of origin (not from the city), and although the term 'contredances' was initially used as a descriptor of formation (not a partnerless or couples-by-themselves dance), as the opposites of both were the highly mannered court dances, the two terms soon became synonymous - both refering to a style of dance whether danced in court or country.

Although social dancing in every era in every land has always had a few detractors and although even some early 17th century French regarded dancing with suspicion (e.g. Jean Boiseul, in his1606 Traité contre les danses called the courante, branle and galliard immoral), the puritans of early 17th century England were particularly loud in their condemnation of pastime. Richard Baxter complained that the sound of pipe and tabor and maypole dancing disturbed his bible study and William Prynne was in no doubt as to where it all led when he wrote in his 1632 Historiomastix:

Dancing, is, for the most part, attended with many amorous smiles, wanton compliments, unchaste kisses, scurrilous songs and sonnets, effeminate music, lust provoking attire, ridiculous love pranks, all which savor only of sensuality, of raging fleshly lusts. Therefore, it is wholly to be abandoned of all good Christians. Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred privity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man's depraved nature. Therefore, it must needs be unlawful unto Christians. The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering roisters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to hell. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.

Under Cromwell's Commonwealth, established in 1649, dancing was frowned on as self-indulgent and sexually provocative and people could be fined for 'mixed dancing' (i.e. dancing as a couple). Puritans discouraged dance in almost any public context and, on the song front, tried to replace popular carols with psalm-based texts. Social dancing and popular song did, however, survive. On the song front broadsheets and woodcuts of old and new carols became a feature of Christmas trade and the English tradition of the wassailers lived on in the form of the waits, municipal watchmen who played tunes to mark the passing hours and were licensed to sing songs on special occasions. On the dance front, The Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell himself danced to dawn at a grand ball he put on for his daughter's wedding and for which no less than fifty violins were playing. With dancing not banned but attendance at dancing schools unwise, there was a clear need for a readily accessible 'do-it-yourself' manual. This was even the case, perhaps especially the case, in the higher echelons of society. In 1651 the composer, publisher and music shop owner, John Playford, met the need with his The English Dancing Master or Plaine and Basic Rules of Country Dances- a collection of 105 'mixed' (ie. partnered) dances. He dedicated the work to the Gentleman of the Inns of court, and several of the dances made reference in their titles to the Inns. In his preface he commends the noble past-time of dancing but 'knowing these Times and the Nature of it do not agree' excuses his publication of the book on the grounds that: 

There was a false and surreptitious copy at the Printing press, which if it had been published, would have been a disparagement to the quality and the Professors thereof, and a hindrance to the Learner. 

Playford's pocket sized manual (for it included only the essential outline of figures) proved popular well beyond the Inns of Court circle. Indeed, the proud inclusion of the word 'English' in the title may have been to make it clear that this was not a book of Continental imports but accessible indigenous dances. The book went into further editions- though no longer with the word English in the title and no longer dedicated to the Gentlemen of the Inns.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 dancing quickly returned to public life. Charles II came back from France with a love of music and dance and Samuel Pepys recorded that at a New Year's Eve Ball at White Hall in 1662, after a 'Bransle': 

the King led a lady a single Coranto; and then the rest of the lords, one after another, other ladies. Very noble it was, and great pleasure to see. Then to Country dances; the King leading the first which he called for; which was - say he, Cuckolds all a-row the old dance of England. 

The King's favourite 'country dance' had appeared in the first edition of Playford's Dancing Master, a copy of which Pepys had bought from the author a month or so before the ball. Pepys himself, was not a keen dancer. He'd been brought up as a puritan and parliamentarian sympathizer, and never really tried dancing till 1661 when invited to join in at a friend's party. He made such a bad fist of it, in an age when competency in this area was so important to the make-up of a gentilhomme, that he resolved that he should learn more... and indeed, later decided that his wife should too. In 1663 he hired dancing teachers Mary Ashwell and Mr Pembleton to come to his home, but his suspicion that his wife had taken to her male teacher and her suspicion that Pepys had taken to his female teacher, led to jealousy and arguments (Pepys noting that his wife was sometimes inviting her teacher over twice a day and that he checked the bed after one of his wife's lessons for evidence that it might have been used as part of the practise). The lessons soon ended - Pepys noting that there was no more dancing, that his coranto was soon forgotten and that he could fall 'to quiet of mind and business again'.

Pepys was not the only Englishman suspicious of dancing masters. William Wycherley, in his 1673 The Gentlelman-Dancing Master has Hippolita's boyfriend pretend to be a dancing-master teaching her the corant she must know in order to marry, and her father agrees to his presence in their home:

...but I hope he does not use the dancing-masters' tricks of squeezing your hands, setting your Legs and Feet, by handling your thighs, and seeing your Legs.

Though the teachers might be held in suspicion, dancing was a must - not just the continental dances but also indigenous country dances. Most of the dances in the 1651-1670 Playford editions could claim to be 'country dances' in the sense that they had been danced in the villages of England before being collected. Many had kissing actually choreographed into them - a contemporary French diarist even referring to the 'kissing English'. In the first edition of Playford's Dancing Master there were no less than 11 dances which provide for a kiss. In Playford's 2nd edition's 'Young Sir John' and 3rd edition's 'Happy Bride' (effectively the same dance) there is a kiss which is clearly meant to last 4 bars.

John Playford continued to release editions of his Dancing Master up to the time of his death in 1684. His music publishing business then passed to his son Henry. In 1686 Henry published the 7th edition of The Dancing Master under the name of his father (perhaps as a filial courtesy). It contained all 183 dances from his father's 6th edition plus 25 dances 'never before printed'. Subsequent editioins bore the name H. Playford and contained an ever increasing number of dances. The 12th edition in 1703, Henry's final before his death, contained 354 dances and tunes of which only 84 had been printed before in his father's editions. Tastes had changed in the course of the late 17th century to favour 'longways for as many as will' (already better represented in the first edition than most people today usually appreciated) over all other possible formations and to favour newly composed dances and tunes over ideosyncratic ones of the past. The foot-work too had changed to compliment these more flowing dances. Whereas in 1651 80% of the descriptions used the term 'double', no new description after 1675 used this term.

The 'new' longways English 'contredanses' began to catch the European imagination. They might not have appealed to Moliere's dancing master in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670) who thought the minuet the best of dances and declared:

all the miseries of mankind, all the dreadful tragedies that history is full of, all the blunders of politicians, all the inadequacies of great captain - they all come from not having taken dancing lessons.

It was not long, however, before they were being taught in France. In c.1697-98 André Lorin published his Liver de contredances presente au Roy, the first extant manual to provide diagrams to help understand the figures of the dances. They also began to reach the shores of the New World, but in predominantly Puritan New England had something of a difficult start. In Boston in 1676 one dancing school was set up but another closed down and in 1681 Henri Sherlott, a French dancing master, was run out of the colony because he was 

a person very insolent and of ill fame that raves and scoffs at religion, of a turbulent spirit in no way fitt (sic) to be tolerated in this place.

Not till near the end of the century, when Charles II started the process of replacing theocratic governments with political appointees, did the balance of power in the colony began to shift and 'mixt' dancing become more acceptable.

In France, though the minuet and the contre-dance had become the most fashionable dance, folk dance continued to evolve. The characteristic branle of the Auvergne gave birth to the bourrée. The exuberance of the dance is conveyed in a letter written in 1676 by Madame de Sevigné (translation):

It is the most wonderful thing in the world! The peasants, both men and women, have such an ear for music, such lightness, such talent! In short, I'm mad about it! I should like to send you for your wedding two girls and two boys who are her, with their tambourines, so that you could see this bourrée. Indeed, the Bohemians are tame by comparison. 

Although never adopted at Versailles, the dance's light footwork, raised hands, swaying body movements and snapping fingers became popular on the stage and in the villages.

Back in England, just before the close of the century, the popularity of Country dancing created a market for more than just Henry Playford's books. In 1697 John Walsh, son of the instrument maker turned music publisher John Walsh, published a collection of country dances as an addition to The Second Book of the Self-Instructor on the Violin, and in 1699 published a collection of 20 new (and rather intricate) Country Dances by the theatrical performer, choreographer and dancing teacher Thomas Bray (to music by contemporary composers such as Henry and Daniel Purcell).

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