10 - Justice and Violence

Summary

This chapter challenges some prevailing beliefs about the decline of violence and the rise of the English state. Neighbourliness was a ‘critical social ideal’ that underpinned social relations in early modern England. But village life was characterised by an atmosphere of contention and sometimes bitter enmity. Neighbourliness was put under strain by a population rise during the sixteenth century, as growing numbers of poor began to burden the community. Litigation did not supplant violence. The murder rate, moderate in the 1560s and 1570s, rose sharply in the 1580s and 1590s. Indictments reached a peak in the 1620s and did not fall to the levels that had prevailed in the mid-sixteenth century until the early eighteenth century. I present new evidence that the overall homicide rate in England was much higher than is usually claimed. The new pattern requires us to re-examine the effectiveness of the machinery of repression. I demonstrate that judicial records alone are insufficient for studying violence and suggest some alternative sources for capturing the history of violence and assess how that helps us to rethink the traditional narrative.