concepts of the rule of law and the equality of all before the law conflict with the actual distribution of wealth, power and influence in modern societies.
In Tudor and Stuart England the criminal justice system took on some resemblance to its modern counterpart. Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) was keen to strengthen the position of central government. At the same time he also wanted to continue the system whereby the dispensing of localised justice was largely in the hands of the magistrates. They were appointed on a county basis, met in quarter sessions and heard a wide range of less serious cases. Henry was also determined to establish a judicial system in which powerful barons and others could not pervert the course of justice by bribery and intimidation. He wanted, too, to provide a legal framework which would encourage the rising middle classes to pursue the wealth-creating efforts he thought essential to the country’s development.
Henry VIII (r. 1509–47) took control of the Church and because of this, heresy and treason tended to conflate and the punishments extorted for these crimes became more severe. His daughter Mary (r. 1553–8) earned the nickname ‘Bloody Mary’ because of her forceful determination to restore the position of the Catholic Church in England. During her reign at least three hundred men and women died horribly at the hands of the state for infringing heresy laws enacted under her initiative. Most of these heretics were burnt at the stake. This was a fearful form of execution. The victim was often smeared with pitch or tar and then brushwood or other combustible materials would be placed around him or her. The executioner then employed a noose to render the prisoner unconscious before the flames reached him. This did not always work and agonising death resulted. Britain’s last recorded burning at the stake occurred on 18 March 1789 when a woman was put to death outside Newgate Prison. Her crime was coining.
The quantity of business devolving on to the shoulders of parish constables increased in Tudor times. It was fashionable to lampoon these constables as officious incompetents and Shakespeare provides evidence of this with the characters of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing and Elbow in Measure for Measure . The constables resented the unpaid nature of their duties and often loftily dismissed the victims of crime if they were poor and without influence. One level below the constables ranked the watchmen. They were also something of a standing joke. Paid a pittance, they were usually portrayed as feeble old men who could not find any other work. Satirised because it was said that their instinct when trouble occurred was to ignore it or scurry away and hide in their little sentry boxes, it is unlikely that they were as useless as this caricature suggests. However, they were not the kind of force to be of much help in stemming the growing tide of lawlessness and violence in Stuart and Hanoverian London.
In the period between the start of the Tudor dynasty in 1485 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a distinct change in attitudes to crime and how it should be dealt with can be perceived. The Crown, whose preoccupation had formerly been to keep powerful and ambitious nobles in their place, now felt seriously threatened by the less deferential and increasingly restive common people. This perception was shared by the well-to-do rising bourgeois classes who looked to the Crown and Parliament to protect their property and privileges. The criminal law became one means whereby the dominant classes imposed their control over what were seen as the irreverent, truculent and criminally inclined lower orders. A substantial increase in the population and a fall in real wages and living standards in the sixteenth century were accompanied by a number of popular uprisings, there being four in the period 1536 to 1554 alone. Additionally, the end of the monastic system and its charitable and welfare
In Tudor and Stuart England the criminal justice system took on some resemblance to its modern counterpart. Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) was keen to strengthen the position of central government. At the same time he also wanted to continue the system whereby the dispensing of localised justice was largely in the hands of the magistrates. They were appointed on a county basis, met in quarter sessions and heard a wide range of less serious cases. Henry was also determined to establish a judicial system in which powerful barons and others could not pervert the course of justice by bribery and intimidation. He wanted, too, to provide a legal framework which would encourage the rising middle classes to pursue the wealth-creating efforts he thought essential to the country’s development.
Henry VIII (r. 1509–47) took control of the Church and because of this, heresy and treason tended to conflate and the punishments extorted for these crimes became more severe. His daughter Mary (r. 1553–8) earned the nickname ‘Bloody Mary’ because of her forceful determination to restore the position of the Catholic Church in England. During her reign at least three hundred men and women died horribly at the hands of the state for infringing heresy laws enacted under her initiative. Most of these heretics were burnt at the stake. This was a fearful form of execution. The victim was often smeared with pitch or tar and then brushwood or other combustible materials would be placed around him or her. The executioner then employed a noose to render the prisoner unconscious before the flames reached him. This did not always work and agonising death resulted. Britain’s last recorded burning at the stake occurred on 18 March 1789 when a woman was put to death outside Newgate Prison. Her crime was coining.
The quantity of business devolving on to the shoulders of parish constables increased in Tudor times. It was fashionable to lampoon these constables as officious incompetents and Shakespeare provides evidence of this with the characters of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing and Elbow in Measure for Measure . The constables resented the unpaid nature of their duties and often loftily dismissed the victims of crime if they were poor and without influence. One level below the constables ranked the watchmen. They were also something of a standing joke. Paid a pittance, they were usually portrayed as feeble old men who could not find any other work. Satirised because it was said that their instinct when trouble occurred was to ignore it or scurry away and hide in their little sentry boxes, it is unlikely that they were as useless as this caricature suggests. However, they were not the kind of force to be of much help in stemming the growing tide of lawlessness and violence in Stuart and Hanoverian London.
In the period between the start of the Tudor dynasty in 1485 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a distinct change in attitudes to crime and how it should be dealt with can be perceived. The Crown, whose preoccupation had formerly been to keep powerful and ambitious nobles in their place, now felt seriously threatened by the less deferential and increasingly restive common people. This perception was shared by the well-to-do rising bourgeois classes who looked to the Crown and Parliament to protect their property and privileges. The criminal law became one means whereby the dominant classes imposed their control over what were seen as the irreverent, truculent and criminally inclined lower orders. A substantial increase in the population and a fall in real wages and living standards in the sixteenth century were accompanied by a number of popular uprisings, there being four in the period 1536 to 1554 alone. Additionally, the end of the monastic system and its charitable and welfare
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