Module description
Legal narratives have provided cultural and social historians with some of their best evidence and their most tantalising stories: marriages breaking down, neighbours arguing, stolen purses and alehouse fights. Law was at the heart of the early modern state: it was also at the heart of social relationships. In communities, villages and towns a complex system of overlapping jurisdictions enabled people to use the law to defend themselves, to inform on each other and to mediate disputes. At its blunt end they found themselves the victims of shaming punishments or public executions. This course examines the peculiar nature of early modern English crime, law and punishment through its recent historiography, testing arguments about social control, the use of evidence, levels of violence, and changing patterns of crime. From the level of state-building down to the pettiest transgressions, we will see the law in action and follow the people in court.
Assessment details
1 x 1500 word formative essay, 1 x 3000 word essay (100%)
Teaching pattern
10 x 2-hour seminars (weekly)
Suggested reading list
This is suggested reading and purchase of these books is not mandatory.
- J A Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750 (1998)
- Cynthia Herrup, The Common Peace (1986)
- J Kermode and G Walker, eds, Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (1994)
- Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England 1570-1640 (1987)
- Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (2003)
- J M Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England (1986)
- J M Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (2001)
- Robert Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660-1725 (2001)
- Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (2000)