c.1500 - 1700

Question 1

social change

Answer 1

• increase in population, wealth, division between classes, printing, which led to more books
• moved between protestantism and catholicism (henry catholic, edward protestant, mary catholic, elizabeth protestant)
• civil war from 1642 - 1649
• landowners became richer

Question 2

gunpowder plot - 1605

Answer 2

• james i was on the throne - protestant who was anti-catholic
• catesby came up with a plan to blow up parliament
• guy fawkes filled a vault beneath parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder
• an anonymous letter was sent to lord monteagle warning him not to attend the opening of parliament
• the vaults were searched and fawkes was arrested and tortured until he confessed
• the other plotters escaped but were caught by 200 soldiers, catesby was killed while some other were brought to london and hung, drawn and quartered

Question 3

vagabonds

Answer 3

• people who wandered around the country without a job
• didn’t receive help because of: religion, seemed fit enough to work, carried out crime to avoid working, people paid poor rates in their own villages

1531 - vagabonds whipped
1547 - slavery
1550 - 1547 act repealed
1572 - whipping/burning and execution
1576 - houses of correction to punish beggars
1593 - 1572 act repealed
1598 - vagabonds were whipped/sent to houses of correction/banished/executed

Question 4

policing

Answer 4

• hue and cry, parish constables
• town watchmen + sergeants who patrolled the streets
• citizens
• rewards introduced
• JP’s - judged manor court cases and were assisted by parish constables

Question 5

matthew hopkins (witchfinder general)

Answer 5

• started searching for witches in 1645
• names 36 women as suspects and wore them down until they confessed and claimed they had familiars
• believed they had devil’s marks which spread fear in the villages
• disappeared from records in 1647 after executing 100 women

Question 6

witchcraft

Answer 6

• accusations caused by increasing tensions between the rich and the poor
• witchcraft became illegal in 1542
• james i wrote daemonologie in 1540
• religious change caused a lot of uncertainty
• the civil war caused breakdown of law (no assize judges)

Question 7

trials

Answer 7

• court trials: manor courts, quarter sessions + royal judges
• benefit of the clergy, those who committed serious crimes couldn’t claim it
• habeus corpus act of 1679

Question 8

the bloody code

Answer 8

• in 1688 the number of crimes that held the death penalty increased to 50
• by 1765 it was 60 and by 1815 it was 225

Question 9

punishments during tbc

Answer 9

• low level crime - the pillory and fines
• more serious crime - whipping, houses of correction, hard labour
• prisons but they were rarely used for punishment
• women were convicted as scolds
• transportation

Question 10

reasons for tbc

Answer 10

• reported crime was decreasing when it began
• media caused concerns about crime (increased printing)
• more travel made it harder to enforce the law
• landowners wanted to protect their land
• punishments acted as deterrents for crime