Crime and punishment in early modern England c1500-c1700 Flashcards
What factors affected change in crime and punishment?
- Population growth
- Economic changes
- Printing
- Religious turmoil
- Political change
- Landowners’ attitude
Why did population growth change crime and punishment?
- made it harder to find work
Why did economic changes change crime and punishment?
- Vulnerable to high rises in prices of food caused by bad harvests
- Fall-off in trade could lead to unemployment and hardship
Why did printing cause changes in crime and punishment?
- Easier to spread messages about crime and punishment
Why did religious turmoil cause changes in crime and punishment?
- Increased public belief in evil and supernatural explanations
Why did political change cause changes in crime and punishment?
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What was criminal activity like in the early modern period?
Rural:
- Enclosure of land
- Hunting and poaching
Other:
- rise in smuggling
- vagabondage
- heresy and treason
- witchcraft
What was the Game act 1671?
Made it illegal to poach on enclosed land
What was smuggling like in the early modern period?
- Rose as government introduced import duties on a range of goods
- Smugglers chose secluded parts of the coastline so it was hard to patrol
- Difficult to police as many people benefited from it and did not view it as serious
What was vagabondage like in the early modern period?
- increased as population grew and wages fell (
+ increasing food prices) - homeless unemployed beggars searching for work that turned to crime
- all vagabonds seen as violent, lazy and a threat
What were the 4 Vagabond laws?
- Vagrancy act 1547
- Vagabonds act 1572
- Poor relief act 1576
- Poor laws 1601
What was the vagrancy act 1547?
Violent and harsh
- Able bodies vagrants out of work for more than 3 days:
-branded with the letter V
-sold as a slave for 3 years
What was the vagabonds act 1572?
Harsh punishments that acted as deterrents
- vagrants whipped
- holes drilled through each ear
- imprisoned on second arrest
- death penalty on third arrest
What was the poor relief act 1576?
Improved attitudes
- Able bodied poor out of work sent to house of corrections (funded by poor rates)
What was the poor laws 1601?
Fair treatment of vagabonds
- Compulsory nationwide poor rates
- Begging was banned
- Anyone caught begging was whipped and sent back to place of birth
Overall, how did treatment of vagabonds change?
- initially unfair
- became increasingly violent
- then became more reasonable
What was heresy and treason like in early modern england?
- Heresy seen as a crime against the church and offence to god
- heretics seen as a danger as they could persuade others to follow
- Heresy punished by being burnt at stake
- Treason seen as a challenge to authority
What was recusancy ?
- Refusing to attend church of england services
- became a crime in 1570
What was the popish recusants act 1605?
- Forced catholics to swear loyalty to king james
- heavy fines for not attending church
What were the key changes from medieval england to early modern England?
- increasing wealth led to new oppurtunities for old crime
- economic changes caused huge increase in vagrants
- Game law 1671 made it illegal for poor people to hunt
- Duties on goods increased smuggling
What was the nature of law enforcement like in the early modern period?
-crime increased due to increasing population
- local people expected to deal with crimes themselves
- constables and watchmen
-more courts to deal with crimes
What were the main methods of policing in the early modern period?
- Local people got arrest warrents from magistrate, tracked down criminals themselves and delivered them to the constable
- All male householders as “Night watchmen” between 10pm and daylight
- Parish constable unpaid role to ensure miantenance of the law usually by local tradesmen or farmers - could also carry out punishments e.g whipping vagabonds
- Constables and watchmen not effective at hunting down criminals so victims turned to theif takers
- Justices of the peace, unpaid role to judge manor court cases
- Hue and cry
-sergeants enforced market regulations
-army used to put down protests
What were the key continuity in law enforcement from medieval england to early modern england?
- Communities still expected to take a leading role
- law enforcement not nationally organised
- Most courts remained in use
What were the main changes in law enforcement from medieval England to early modern England?
- role of constables and night watchmen expanded
- thief takers introduced
- benefit of the clergy could no longer be claimed for serious crimes
- habeaus corpus improved rights but didnt stop governments making up evidence at rials
What were theif takers?
A paid reward for catching a criminal and delivering them to the law.
What was the Habeaus Corpus Act 1679?
Prevented authorities from locking people up without charging them for a crime.
What was the nature of punishment like in the early modern period?
- increased use of prisons
- introduction of the bloody code
- transportation
- fines
- pillory or stocks
- carting
- corporal punishments
- hanging
- ducking stool
What were prisons like at the start of early modern england?
16th century
- holding place for petty criminals, vagrants and drunk
- not purpose built
- often secure room in local castle
- prisons at the time very poor
- in mates had to pay prison wardens for food and other basic needs
- women, men and children often housed together
- younger prisoners often bullied and abused
What were prisons like later in the early modern period?
- more purposeful - known as house of corrections
- used to punish poor people who had broken the law e.g vagabonds and homeless children
- all inmates made to do ‘hard-labour’ to pay keep and encourage habits of hard work
What were the key aspects of continuity of the nature of punsihment in early modern England?
- considerable continuity
- emphasis still on deterrence and retribution
- prisons remained largerly for those waiting trial or debtors rather than own punishment
What were the key aspects of change in nature of punishment in the early modern period?
- by the late 17th century some new punishments emerging e.g transportation
- house of corrections built to punish vagabonds
What was transportation?
- punishment that involved transporting colonies to the new english colonies in North America
- not as harsh as execution, still a severe punishent
- transported prisoners taken in chains to east coast of North America
- had to work for a fixed period doing tough manual labour
Why was transportation favoured by the authorities?
- effective deterrent
- england didnt have effective prison system so prison not an alternative
- England wanted to establish permenant colonies in north america - convicts could be used to populate colonies
- new ideas about punishment allowed possibility or rehabilitaion - criminals should have chance to reflect on crimes and change way of life
- criminals taken far from places that could draw them into crime
- ## estimated between 50,000-80,000 people transported
What were attitudes to witchcraft like?
- people of all backgrounds attracted to supersticious ideas including witches
- believed to have made a pact with the devil for their magic powers e.g flying, making people sick
- often had ‘familiars’ - cats or dogs believed to be devil in shape of animal
Laws on witchcraft
- middle ages church courts used to punish witches
- 1542 - henry viii made which craft very serious crime punishable by death
- 1568 - act against conjurations - tried in common courts, death penalty issued if caused harm to another person,
minor witch craft punishable by stocks - 1604 - James 1 - witchcraft and conjuration act - death penalty given to anyone summoning evil spirits
- George II witchcraft act - ‘witches seen as confidence tricksters, punished with fines and imprisonment
Who was Matthew Hopkins
- witchfinder general, employed to uncover witchery, significant financial wages
How did the witchcraft trials take place?
- Interrogation methods to get confessions e.g starvation diet of bread and water, restricted sleep
- stripped and publicly examined
- prick skin to prove witches couldnt bleed - blunt or retracted knives
Why did catholics want to overthrow king?
- Elizabeth’s act of Uniformity made protestant official religion of england since 1559
- Pope called on all loyal catholics to dispose Elizabeth
- Catholics in england actively prevented from practicing their faith
- James I tightened anti-catholic laws
What was the plan for gunpowder plot?
- set off explosion to kill king
- break up powerful ruling group
- replace james with daughter Elizabeth
- Guy fawkes pretended to be servant and packed cellar under house of lords with estimated 36 barrels of gunpowder
How were gunpowder plotters caught and punished?
- Lord recieved a letter warning not to attend
- robert cecil ordered westminster to be searched
- found guilty of treason
- hung drawn and quatered
- Guy fawkes tortured on rack into confession
- confessed 12 days after arrest
